This city is a strange one. Old and dirty. Empty. It carries an air about it like it used to be something once. There are ghosts everywhere but they lack substance. No soul. People must have gathered here in numbers once…
Once upon a Time… Those good old days…
Those days simply did a better job of hiding what this place really is. The glitz and glam of the ’20s all the way to the ’40s, covered the shiny teeth of the beast below.
Meanwhile… The deaths never stopped.
Woe to the person who would die upon these streets, in these houses, or the grips of some foul institution here. Pray that it is the Lord above or Devil below who takes their soul before the creature this deadly pit feeds gets it.
Rest in Peace.
Morticians in this town are well instructed on the feeding of the beast. Possessed and turned to servants of the city, it is a strong and Godly death dweller who can resist its pull.
There are many stories of those strange men who deal with the dead here. One of which had the unfortunate fate of running out of money…
It wasn’t the man alone who was responsible for the horrific discoveries, the city had just as much to do with it.
A cremation furnace is a prized item for a funeral parlor and many problems are caused if it breaks down. In the case of this poor mortician, his did. Given that most of the poor souls coming his way were homeless, indigent, or had no one to look after them; the city paid him a stipend for taking care of the bodies.
A stipend they had not given him in months even though he had informed them of his situation numerous times.
So what’s a poor old ghoul supposed to do? He started piling up the bodies anywhere he could. Closets, storerooms, the shed outside… It wasn’t until the smell of rotting corpses started to bother the neighbors that anyone even cared.
Tragic.
Though no one was too hard on the mortician. The city recognized their fault in the matter but fined him for abuses of corpses anyway.
No… You don’t want to die here… Especially alone… You really don’t even want to get close to the place if your anywhere near death… It will get you. Sometimes it knows your coming and sends an emissary out to greet you…
Mr. Carter was a mortician here as well, a very prosperous one I might add. He was an odd man but given his profession no one questioned it. Not even when they observed him numerous times down at the port. Welcoming in passengers from the steamships, standing too close to certain people with his tall walking stick.
A walking stick that was marked with measurements.
Additionally, no one in the city thought it strange at all that when one of those individuals Mr. Carter had greeted died, and a coffin was already built for them, custom-sized. It was just another interesting occurrence in the city that Mr. Carter always had a bed to fit a body, no matter what size person they were.
Mr. Carter’s strange habits at the port may have been odd, but not as odd as the large tank that officials found under his house in downtown. Long after the mortician had passed away, his home was torn down for a new bank. When this was done, a large cistern was found sunk into the ground in a room under his house.
What that particular host of the dead used the mysterious underground tank for no one ever found out.
The death rates soar as the years fly by. No one notices just how many are gone over the course of time…
From fire to murder to plague and disease. The people who survive here are the ones on their knees…
Welcome to a house of the old beast, one awakened by blood long time ago…
Sometimes things get out…
Those killers, born of this place like monsters from boils and tears in the nether, spawn of some unknown evil.
Those of you who do not see, do not, cannot believe…
Beware, beware of this dusty concrete you tread over. Those shadows that move, those blank eyes that stare, they come from something questionably human. Eyes that calculate, eyes that are hungry…
Eyeballs you may see again. Later. Rolling up at you from under the murky waters of this creek here.
This creek, this little river Styx, has floated many a bloated body and soul through the bowels of the city.
Look deep into its yellow acidic depths and see the past plagues and pollution it has caused. It swells with satisfaction at the job it has done and will do in the future.
The future…
In this place, the future is as good as the past. Time stands still in judgment here. Sometimes it comes, sometimes it goes.
Sleep now they say… Forget about it all now, the madness of this desolate hole, the death. The beast. Forget it all, it is all in your head.
Lo’ behold this if you wake up dead. Stare down at your corpse with a tear in your eye, not knowing it was your time to die.
You’d have left this place sooner, if only you’d known, now it’s too late, your time is gone.
Written about a real place and true stories. Artistic license has been used to protect all identity.