“But how do you know?”
She stopped. “I know because I see the damage the very presence of evil has scourged upon us. You ask any man here, and they will tell you the very same.”
I had no right to disagree with her thoughts on the matter. Ayla had lived in this village possibly her whole life. Yet there lay with her the uncertainty of who or what was truly responsible for the deaths at play. None of the conclusions I’d seen or heard directly pointed to Silas.
As if she was reading my mind, Ayla tossed her head back. “Follow me.”
Passing the winding road far from the bustling square, we arrived at a shambled shack. Shingles were scattered in pieces along the cobblestone, leaving barren holes on the roof.
Ayla rapped against the door, the hinges shuddering under her knuckles.
A voice called from behind the door, then swung open to the bloodshot eyes of a wrinkled woman. Glassy orbs narrowed and then widened.
“Ayla, child I wasn’t expecting you.”
“It was an unplanned trip today, Hilda. I was hoping to introduce you to my protege who has been assisting me as of late,” Ayla said, gesturing with open arms toward me.
The woman flickered for a moment, lips wrinkled into a smile as she allowed us to enter.
There was not much in the home. A table sat in the corner, held up by three legs, surrounded by chairs missing a rail or two upon the back rest. A bed clothed in ratted sheets was pushed against the wall and in the center, and a brick fireplace with a glimmer of flame lapped up the burnt logs.
Hilda pulled the chairs in close, depositing herself in one of the seats and gesturing to the others. “I may not have much, but what I lack, I make up for in a quaint sense of hospitality, I suppose. Now, Ayla, this is unlike you to take on someone much less bring them here. What is it that you want?”
“Can a woman change it up every now and then?” Ayla quipped. She brushed back her hood, and ash strands bounded loose from their hold, spilling overtop the blue cloak. She tapped her nails against the stool, beckoning me to sit.
And sit, I did, for what Hilda said next did not bode well for what Ayla had brought me here for.
“I suspect you are here for me to tell your young protege why the town is cursed by that beast on the hill. Or the pungent death that festers even among the bright flowers of the youth.”
“Well—actually, I . . .”
The words muddled in my brain.
Ayla’s stone-hard gaze flickered under the faint flames, and I was stunned into silence. I pursed my lips together and chewed at the inside of my cheek as Hilda stoked the fire.
“Life here wasn’t always so morbid and fraught with tragedy. I was just a girl when the castle appeared, seemingly out of a thunderclap. My Ma and Pa, like the rest of the village, thought nothing of it. An ‘act of God,’ perhaps, they had thought initially as no one knew of the beast that lurked beyond its stone walls. That perhaps it was the act of the devil himself—an abomination to the world.”
The fire crackled in agreement as a log cracked in two and joined the likes of the ashes.
Hilda pointed to a pair of black-and-white photographs upon the mantle glided in the last fineries. I imagined she had no heart to sell, even if it meant feeding herself or funding the repairs for her little home. In the photo, the man and a woman posed for the camera, their images having faded with age to where they were nothing more than ghosts among the gilded frames.
“It wasn’t until the deaths became hard to bear that we began to realize the true extent of evil. Shadows and nightmares were the first, haunting the children and scaring them to where they no longer slept as they screamed all through the nights their horrible visions. Then came the sudden illness where not a single doctor could cure. With each sickness came the inevitable deaths, and soon, it had becomeinsurmountable. There were no longer enough grave plots dug daily to contain the bodies.
“So much darkness in those days. Many have seen the man fly down on wings of shadows to take the lives of so many people.”
“Is that what happened to your parents?” I asked. “Did they—did you see the man?”
Hilda, silent for a moment, stoked the burnt logs with the iron hook. Her gaze lifted to the photo to reminisce about the memory of when they were alive and well and perhaps the tragedy.
Ayla’s expression remained flat, never giving away the intentions she had in bringing me here or any motives.
“Yes. They had caught the illness from the dark and shortly succumbed soon after. Not even my sister, a trusted nurse, could treat it. It got her that summer of the same year.”
“Could it have been a disease rather than a person?” I blurted.
I kept telling myself I had no right to pass judgment onto her or any of the village people. This was their home, and I was just a stranger to them living with the beast—who’d allowed themselves to be touched by him.
“I think it is best you both leave.”
