Empire of Dirt [pt 2]

[[Note: Reddit saw it first. All parts of 'Empire of Dirt' will be posted to Reddit/r/nosleep, prior to appearing on my Prose page.]]

I sat in a boat on the Ashley River, vape and tobacco smoke wafting around, mingling with the cool night air of Charleston. My hand was crap as crap could be; an ace and a two. I either had a whopping three, or a risky fourteen. I could hit, and potentially go too far. I could hold. I could double down. I could just… stand. I looked around the table, sizing up the other three players, until my eyes settled on the dealer. I leaned forward, picked up the joint we’d been covertly passing around the circle, and took a long hit before passing it to my left. I held the smoke in for a moment, my eyes still locked with the dealer’s… And then I breathed out, heavily. As the smoke passed by my face, I held up two fingers. “I’m good.”

With a total of fourteen, I won the round. No one, not even the dealer, had totaled higher than twelve; none of them had bothered to make any sort of strategic move. By standard rules, the dealer was supposed to take hits until he totaled seventeen… But he didn’t. It was a perfect storm of impossibilities, resulting in an equally impossible success on my part. Likewise, perfect storms are often the cause of some of the greatest travesties in this world. I spent the rest of the night high and a hundred dollars richer.

As I mentioned in the comments of my first post, I did take a trip out to Folly. I took a walk in the area that I assume Doctor Harlan spent his last Fourth of July on. And I found something… Interesting. More on that, and on Doctor Harlan, later. First, however, I dug up a bit of lore about a certain mutt.

The first sighting was, if you’re willing to go by folk tales and a few darker corners of the internet, sometime in the 1700s, not too far from Doctor Harlan’s former place of residence in Charleston, South Carolina. A tribe of natives supposedly passed this tale on to a friend, who passed it on to his friend. Like a game of telephone, the tale was spread and diluted, rehashed and recycled to form half-baked campfire stories with which to frighten boy scouts. Before I learned of Doctor Harlan and his fate, I might have ignored these events entirely. I might have let them slip through my ears and gone on about my day with a smile, none the wiser to the true nature of this thing we call life.

Unfortunately, once one starts down this path, it is all too easy to pass the point of no return. And so, without further ado, it is time again for my warning, reader. Stop reading. Exit out of this tab and find something less soul-sucking to feast your eyes on. Forget about Doctor Harlan, his children, and the curious nature of the Hound, known to us only as Muggsy. Put the mystery surrounding the murder-suicide that took place on September 21st, 2010, out of your head. There is only misery of a perpetual nature to be gleaned from it.

A colonist, an explorer, a native boy; our protagonist changes in each telling. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll simply call him Nathan. Nathan was wandering the wilds near Edisto Beach; maybe he was hunting for his tribe, maybe he was lost and searching for his family, or maybe he was looking for land to settle. Whatever his goals were, they became irrelevant as night fell. By then, only one task remained; survive, by any means necessary. Nathan managed to start a campfire on the beach, and fashioned a perimeter out of several sharpened sticks. He stuck close to the fire, fearful of what lay beyond its warm light.

It was, they say, midnight. The moon hung high in the sky, stars dotted the black void of space as far as the eye could see. Waves crashed down, and the wind roared through the trees. This was a time when nature was still dominant, and so one can only imagine the sorts of howls and screeches coming from the woods that night. One can only imagine the sort of sensory overload Nathan would have experienced, his heart already thumping violently from the terror of being lost.

And so, you wouldn’t blame him for missing the one noise that mattered.

They say it began as a sort of subtle moan, somewhere just beyond the crashing waves. They say that, as the tide rose, the moan grew louder, more consistent, more voracious. Soon it was joined by another moan, and several more. They began to encircle Nathan, and it wasn’t until one of them impaled itself on his perimeter of pikes that Nathan became aware of them. Blackish ooze pooled at his feet as the creature strained to get closer to him. Soon, it was flat on the sand, a pike driven clean through its upper abdomen. Its head was buried in the sand, but its neck twisted, crackling violently, until its eyes met with Nathan’s.

They say you could see maggots, crawling just under the film of its eyes. Its body writhed and twitched without moving, its bones stuck out in several places, and something… Something was trying desperately to get out. Nathan was filled with dread, his fight or flight kicked in, and he stabbed the creature clean through the eyes. Maggots spilled out, and suddenly Nathan’s vision began fading, his body tingling almost violently.

He was, the story goes, found with what would have colloquially been identified as a demon. Modern scientists would have likely labeled it as a water logged wolf or deformed dog. If you paid close attention to the beginning of James’s story, Reader, you can probably guess what position Nathan was found in. He was labeled a heathen, a blasphemer, a witch. You see, no matter how you spin it, Nathan was guilty of one of two acts. Beastiality, or consorting in the worst of ways with a Demon. And, in the 1700s, that wasn’t the sort of thing you simply went to prison for.

Some versions of the story say Nathan was hung. Others say he was burned alive. Others still… Well. Others say he was banished. In his exile, the legend goes that he slowly changed. At first, they say, he was simply losing his sanity. Who wouldn’t, in his situation? But before long, it was said that his skin became black as night. Maggots filled his eyes, he developed severe anorexia, and his hair grew patchy at best. That, of course, is merely a legend.

I promised to address both my trip to Folly and the next chapter in Doctor Harlan’s story, but I fear I may only have time to type out the former. I trust that you, Reader, will bare with me. I will explain the reason for my sudden urgency soon enough. That said…

I spent a few hours yesterday on Folly Beach, putting myself in the shoes of the Old Man and Doctor Harlan. I was able to locate more or less the exact spot Harlan spent that day at. If one were to drive to Folly Beach, they would find a handful of one way roads running parallel to the shoreline. If they took a left, and continued down one of those roads for a moderate span of time, they would eventually come to a dead end, with a handful of parking spaces nearby. Now, if one were patient enough to park their vehicle and hike down a road for a mile or so, they would come to a secluded segment of Folly Beach, complete with large rocks, a bit of wilderness and marshland, and a fine view of an old lighthouse.

I brought my camping chair, a small cooler, and my tablet out with me, and spent the day perusing various forums, exploring the strand of beach, and enjoying a cold beer with my lunch. The day in a poor man’s paradise helped to ease my mind, which was good, considering what happened next.

A small group of teens- a girl with blue hair, a boy with short black hair, and a boy in flannel and jeans with messy brown hair- bumped into me as I packed up my belongings. The girl, who I now know to be named Jay, apologized profusely. The boy with short black hair, Matt, helped me pick up my chair, which I had dropped on my foot. And, finally, the boy in flannel helped me to my feet, as I had fallen perfectly on my ass after yelping in pain, given the aforementioned chair landing on my aforementioned foot.

The teens offered to help me back to my car, which I declined at first. They insisted, however, and so I gave in. The boy in flannel carried my chair, while Jay and Matt continued apologizing to me. I eventually managed to halt the apologies by making small talk, which, damn my mortal brain, led to the topic.

“…Harlan, you might’ve guessed, was relatively shocked to realize his tablet had been on the cooler all d-“

“Wait, wait,” the boy in flannel said. He fished his phone from his pocket with his free hand, and shoved it into my face. “This is you?”

I stared at it blankly, until I recognized my own words. “Y-yes, actually. It is.”

“Right. Sure. That entire forum is for roleplaying. You just pretend shits real, like a-a-a VR game or whatever. How about you take your bullshit story, and shove it waaay up your ass, you fu-“

“Hey!” Jay shouted, shoving him. “Bullshit or not, it’s a cool story. We owe him for hurting his foot, anyway, so be nice, T-“

Matt interrupted. “Wait, what was that part about the old man, again?”

All three of us turned our attention to Matt. “Uh-uh-uh, right, um… He was an older gentleman, maybe mid 60s or 70s. His name was Carl Roiland, I believe.” The black haired boy scratched at his clean shaven chin, debating heavily.

“What’s the matter, kid?”

“I don’t really know if I should be telling some random ass thirty-something dude this, but I’m Matt Roiland. Carl Roiland is my grandpa. I remember him raising hell about some perve and his mutt out on Folly Beach back before he died…”

Needless to say, my heart started racing. A lot of the conversation is lost on me, partially because I wasn’t entirely sober, partially because I was trying to manipulate the conversation accordingly. In the end, I did it. I set up a meeting with Matthew Roiland’s grandmother, and a few other of his relatives. If this pans out as I hope it does…

Listen to me. Even as I curse this knowledge, I seek more of it. I seek resolutions, where I surely know there are none. You may have guessed by now, Reader, but my stake in the business surrounding Doctor Harlan and Muggsy is far greater than a mere delivery of information. I’m afraid my time is up for tonight, but I promise to return soon enough, Reader.

As I loaded up my car, the teens made their way back out to the beach. I fired her up, pulled out, and drove off, my windows rolled down so that the wind would cool me down and drown out the excited thumping of my heart. I could hear the waves crashing… And a faint moan, somewhere past the horizon.

Goodnight, Reader.

Goodnight.