My dear friend,
I hope this letter finds you well. I myself have had some troubling times of late. In fact, my troubles are why I’m writing to you now: so there is some record of my experiences. If you hear of my untimely demise, or disappearance, I want someone to know the truth.
It began after our last meeting. One of the places I stayed at during the journey home was an inn known as The Dancing Shadows. The Dancing Shadows was a grim sight with high ivy covered walls that could be seen from anywhere in the town. Normally I would have avoided that sort of place, but it seemed like something was drawing me in. At the time I dismissed it as tired from travel, but now I know there was something bigger at play.
The inside of the inn was just as awful as one would expect given the disrepair of the exterior: dim lighting, and oddly stained wood flooring. There were a few people drinking, crowded around a table in the back corner of the common room. When they noticed me and my servant, Jonas, they fell silent, as if we had interrupted a secret meeting.
In one of the dark corners I could make out the shape of what I assumed to be the innkeepers desk and made my way over. It was indeed the Innkeeper, sitting in the dark with a vacant stare. Even as awful as she looked, with prominent cheekbones and dark circles, her eyes seemed to shine in the darkness. She said only a few words as we exchanged coins for a room key, but her eyes seemed to linger. Jonas decided to stay downstairs for a bit, while I slipped upstairs.
That night I slept fitfully. I woke up from nightmares a dozen times during the night, but I couldn’t remember what they were. When dawn finally arrived I felt just as tired and twice as anxious to leave. I got ready to leave quickly, unable to shake the feeling that I was being watched, and hurried downstairs.
The common room was even more ghastly in the daylight. With the sun shining through the long glass windows, I could clearly see the dust that coated everything except for the trail of footprints leading to the back table and a squarish shape in the middle of the room. Once again everyone in the room was crowded around the same table in the back, and now I could see why. The floor around all the other tables seemed to be rotting and the tables themselves were thoroughly scratched. Upon closer inspection the scratches looked like writing in some foreign language. I traced them lightly, trying to decipher them.
“They’re incantations, written in an ancient script,” a voice said from directly behind me. I whipped around. It was the Innkeeper. I nearly asked her about the ‘incantations’, what they were for, and why they were scratched into the tables of her inn, but a light glinted in here yes that said ‘you’d rather not know’. I believed her.
“Will you be staying in town for another night,” the Innkeeper asked.
“I’m afraid I must be on my way. I still have far to travel,” I replied. She nodded gravely, but I swear I saw her smile as she turned back to her desk. There was a sickening gravity to her smile. It was then I realized my servant, Jonas, was nowhere in sight. In fact I hadn’t seen them since last night. I looked around the common room, and the rooms I booked but they were nowhere to be found.
Hesitantly, I approached the back table, where the townsfolk sat with their drinks. I asked whether any of them had seen Jonas, giving them a brief description. They said they hadn’t seen them, but I swear I saw a smile cross more than one face.
“They’ve likely just gone into town,” a gentleman suggested. “There’s fresh fruit and fair prices.”
“Perhaps,” I said doubtfully.
“Come, sit and drink with us while you wait,” a woman beckoned, patting the empty stool beside her. I did. I studied them over the rim of my drink (I don’t remember ordering a drink?). They looked similar to the Innkeeper, jutting cheekbones, dark circles, and their eyes seemed to shine, even in the shadows. I noticed the beginnings of scratches on this table as well. I stared at them, trying to follow the lines of the writing, but failing.
Before I knew it, it was sundown, and Jonas was still not back. The Innkeeper lit the lanterns as the last of the light faded.
“Nightfall,” a man said, breaking the silence and my trance (it must have been a trance). “It seems that you will have to leave tomorrow without them.” I glanced at the entrance, though I knew in my heart Jonas wouldn’t be there.
“You ought to go upstairs and get some rest, You have a long journey ahead of you tomorrow,” said one of the townsfolk.
I stood up to speak. I wanted to say that I couldn’t sleep, that Jonas was missing and that we had to look for them. I wanted to say I wouldn’t leave without them. I opened my mouth, but I was already upstairs. I was in the room I had paid for, standing in front of the bed in my nightgown, and I had no clue how I got there. It must have been another trance. I DO NOT remember going upstairs. But I do remember what happened afterward.
I decided I wouldn’t stay in the inn anymore. I had to leave. I gathered my courage and redressed. When I opened the door to the hall I could hear chanting. I thought of the Innkeeper, who mentioned incantations. I wanted nothing to do with this town anymore. Far too frightened to investigate, I headed towards the stairs, to the exit.
You can imagine my terror when I realized the chanting was coming from the way I was heading. Praying silently that the stair wouldn’t creak, I made my way down. The lanterns cast moving shadows across the walls, pulsing with the chanting. Somewhere in my fear-clouded mind I thought it looked like dancing. The Dancing Shadows Inn. I leaned further over the railing, and gazed into the common room.
The townsfolk and the Innkeeper each stood in front of a table with a mound of meat on it, chanting. Their attention was on the deep pit in the center of the room, where the squarish clean spot was that morning, so I crept further down the stairs.
All at once the chanting stopped. They looked at me.
“You want to see what happens next?” The Innkeeper smiled, eyes shining in the lowlight like a cat’s. I nodded.
“Come then,” they said in unison. I approached, and I saw. The pit was about two meters across, and three meters deep, but it didn’t have walls. It seemed more like the opening to a tunnel. It was dark down below but I could see shapes moving about. The Innkeeper held the lantern over the pit. Those things in there were horrible. They had pinkish flesh, like a baby mole rat, but twisted. And so many eyes. All shining in the light. There were only three… things, but there must have been hundreds of eyes. Some of the eyes were clustered on the ‘face’ but they were sprinkled all over their bodies. Their dozens of limbs-or whatever they were- twisted around each other, like climbing ivy choking a tree. They were twisted and horrible, and I expected them to lumber along, but when the Innkeeper threw in the first hunk of meat, the closest one dashed over.
It attacked the flesh while I looked on in horror. It consumed the meat like it was drinking water. The teeth in its many mouths shredded it to a puree and gulped it down. With each pulsing gulp, it changed a bit, untwisting somewhat. Some of its eyes would close, and melt into its flesh.
“Blessed meat,” the Innkeeper whispered to me, then louder: “Very good brother. I daresay your transformation to a mortal vessel will be complete before sunrise,” she cooed at it.
When it finished the first hunk the Innkeeper tosses in another. One after another until it was almost human, and there was only one hunk left.
It must be incredibly obvious to you reading this, but I was so fixated on the monstrous ritual that I had forgotten about Jonas entirely. That was until the Innkeeper tossed their head down to the creature. The creature looked human now. It had to tear the flesh with human teeth, ripping every piece off of the skull.
When it finished, it looked up at me with Jonas’s face. It had the same jutting cheekbones as the rest of the townsfolk, but it was Jonas’s face. Besides being too thin the only difference was the eyes, which shined in the lowlight.
“There are still many others awaiting transformation,” it said, those shining eyes locked on me. I ran. I left everything I wasn’t carrying and ran. I didn’t stop to rest until I was halfway to the next village.
I wish I could say that was the end, that I would never have to think of The Dancing Shadows or anything I saw there ever again. I wish I could dismiss it all as a dream, a figment of imagination, but it’s after me.
They walk among us. It looks like Jonas, but IT IS NOT JONAS! Everytime I think I’ve traveled far enough, it resurfaces. It looks like Jonas, and for a moment I’m convinced that everything was a dream. Then I catch a glimpse of its eyes shining in the shadows.
I can never stay in one place for too long, it can track me faster now. I’m no longer safe for more than a week. I grow weary of this constant travel, and I fear it will soon catch me. I must be moving, but remember if you hear of my disappearance, you know why.
Keep a lookout for shining eyes,
I.J.
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