#TRD: Eustace Simmons

[theredhavendelegate]

Iss. 6

The Unknown Rot, Redhaven's New Illness!

Part Two

Our last issue covered part of the story of the disappearance of Eustace Simmons, a local artist and lifelong Redhaven citizen. Thanks to the hard work of Delegate investigators and journalists, we’re able to bring you the conclusion of this tale, though it may beg more questions than it satisfies…

---

A gentle breeze rolls down the street, twists, scatters, and merges invisibly but for the dust and refuse it tosses into the air. Eustace’s shoes scrape along the cobbles and his fingers skitter along the brick wall, planting themselves more firmly to support him here and there.

His head throbs and his breath quakes, the night seeming more to pulse than to flow; in and out it goes, a few minutes spent in conscious travel, then a whole block passes in a blink.

Eustace swallows but the spit seems to want to rise back up with a heave. He widens his stance and leans hard, both into the wall and onto his cane. The wood bows slightly beneath his weight, then the nausea passes.

Something moves out of the corner of the painter’s view, a flash of gnarly fabric.

The scent strikes him like the ringing of a bell. It is a salty, rancid odor, like the alley behind a butcher shop in August. His senses return to him all at once. The pain in his head and hand fade, his eyesight grows sharp, and his hearing clears.

Eustace bites his lip gently and glances towards the source. He can hear the patter of shoes down an alley and pushes off the wall towards it at a run.

In the gloom of the back street, away from the flame of the gas lamps, a hunched figure trots away like a lame horse. Their clothes are dark and torn, stacked in layers and soiled. They glance back with a diseased, terror-stricken face, and round a corner away. Something crashes beyond it.

Eustace thunders after them, their scent sticking in his nose and on the tip of his tongue. His eyes grow dull yet open wide and focused like a raptor’s, his purpose fading as it is replaced by hunger.

Time blinks out again as one alley corner turns into another, as a narrow street turns into a wide one, then a narrow one again, as Eustace draws near his prey, then far again, then near.

The painter rounds a final corner and skids to a stop. The ground cuts downward sharply sharply to reveal a set of stairs, which seem to lead the blackened maw of hell itself, filled with a shade so dark that looking into for too long fills Eustace’s eyes with colorful lights and shapes.

He stumbles back a step and glances up to a sky that has lightened to the gentle gloom of dawn. He glances around. The streets and buildings here are completely unfamiliar and in a ruined state.

Eustace stares back down into the darkness. The scent is gone and pain is gradually working its way back into his hand. His legs ache softly as well, especially around the knees and ankles.

The darkness waits.

The darkness beckons.

Eustace swallows and taps his cane nervously against the ground, then shakes himself off. “If that’s where they’ve gone, then that’s where my answers lie.”

Unsure still, he starts down the stairs.

They are slick and the shadows swallow sight absolutely. Eustace descends at a snail’s-pace, pressing one hand into the wall to steady himself while wielding the cane in the other, using it to find the edges of each step. They seem to go on for minutes and, glancing back, only a tiny spot of dark grey sky peers down the well towards him, offering not a slip of illumination so far down.

The staircase terminates. Looking forward again, Eustace can make out weak light in the gloom of a linoleum hallway. Emergency lights flicker and hiss at intervals no closer than fifteen feet, and only along one wall. The odor of the space is sickly sweet, rotten, and carried upon a moist, pitiful breeze from deeper within.

The painter strains his eyes and swallows, white-knuckling his cane as he maneuvers deeper in. Each step drains him, his head aches, and soon his gait turns uneven and shambling. He leans harder and harder on the cane, on the walls, and upon the numbness overtaking him.

His eyes snap wide open. The hall around him is no longer familiar, extending in either direction forever front and back, with no sign of a staircase. A thin bead of drool has accumulated on his chin and he wipes it away groggily. There is a door to his side. “Was it…was it here before? How far did I walk?” he mutters.

He shakes himself off and stares up at the door. It is heavy, rough, and made of dark, light-eating iron. There is a track in the floor where a single wheel on the bottom can glide to allow it to scrape open. A bright brass plate on its face reads ‘Infectious Study Chamber’. An even less welcoming sign beneath reads ‘WARNING: DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT PROTECTION!’

There is a skull on the sign, a curving biohazard symbol, and pictographs of facemasks, gloves, and hazmat suits.

Eustace attempts to swallow but his mouth and throat are bone dry.

He pulls the door open and it does so smoothly and with an eerie silence. The room beyond is about the normal brightness of a lamp-lit interior but Eustace squints and recoils as his eyes adjust anyway.

It smells painfully clean, plain and sharp, and a little bit sweet. ”Pickles?” Eustace asks, though the room doesn’t answer. The dull corpulence of the hallway is crushed under the onrush of this new, medicinal odor.

Eustace stumbles in, tripping slightly over the threshold as he enters a large lab space bedecked with tubes, bottles, beakers, tables, cabinets, diagrams, worktops, burners, and devices which he cannot name.

He traces the ‘pickle’ scent to an open glass basin filled to the brim with a yellow fluid. There is a mass of flesh suspended in the fluid, a nondescript chunk of pale, hydrous meat. Eustace swallows, his mouth suddenly rehydrated, then he shakes himself off. He walks away from the basin, glancing back once or twice with longing and self-disgust until he bumps into a table with drawers.

Eustace startles and looks down. The tabletop is covered in papers, some grouped together with staples or paperclips, and several are stamped with the feather of Redhaven, the city crest, right next to the neat signature of someone called ‘Earnest Bell’.

The painter thumbs through the documents, skimming their contents and tossing them aside until he stops on a page dated to a day earlier in the week. He reads, quietly, “Subjects do not recover…no treatment as of yet found to be successful…degeneration of impulse controls…hunger for raw meat…wounds cease to recover…originates beyond the fog?”

Eustace can feel eyes on the back of his neck and the little hairs there rise like soldiers. He doesn’t turn around though, he just sets the papers down gently and tilts his head up. “It’s you again, isn’t it? You know what’s wrong with me?” he grumbles, more resigned than afraid.

Ragged breathing, torn like shredded foil, rasps out from behind. It is a miserable sound, limp and dry. Finally, it speaks. “You’re…y-you’re s-sick. You…y-you’ll…die…”

Eustace turns around. The ragged individual stands by the open lab door. They are grotesque even in the brighter lighting, all sores and scrapes and pale skin and rags, but they seem smaller. The painter assesses them, shifts his cane from his left hand to his right, then a flash of pain forces him to shift it back. Something clicks into place: one of their layers is an off-white, soiled coat that almost touches the floor.

“Doctor Bell?” Eustace asks.

The figure cringes, then glances back up and nods indiscernibly.

Eustace asks, his voice now quivering slightly, “Are you sure that I’ll die of this? I have a daughter, I have unfinished work, I have friends. I don’t want to let it all go. I can’t even enjoy my last days, if these are my last days, between the hunger and the aching.”

The doctor twitches a smile, then shrugs and turns half away. They clear their throat and rasp out, “One way…m-maybe…” Eustace leans back slightly and raises his chin. Bell continues, “Go out…i-into the-the mist, follow the…north road. I sent…a team. Maybe they-they’ve…got it…solved…”

Bell waits a long moment, then shrugs. “M-maybe…not…” The doctor pushes the lab door open and exits without another word.

Eustace watches as they leave. He clutches his cane tight to his chest and stands still for a while.

The lamps hiss and the medical odors pervade, and the quiet hum of the emptiness swirls around low to the ground, imperceptibly rattling the soles of Eustace’s shoes. He glances back at the desk and draws open drawers until he finds ink, fresh paper, and a fountain pen.

He shakes the pen gently. “Dry,” he mutters, unscrewing the end of the implement and taking up an eyedropper. He transfers ink from the bottle to the pen, hands shaking, then caps it once again.

He begins to write, recollecting what he can of the last few days, filling in gaps, crossing out errors, starting again. Stroke, stroke, scratch, shake, stroke, stroke, wait, wait, cough, stroke, stop.

The writing is barely legible, but deep exhaustion is spreading out under him like the gentle swell of a tide. He sets the pen down and blows on the sheet, pounces it with sand from another container, then shakes it off.

“Home first. Drop this off. Then…”

Eustace feels nauseous. The ground seems to move under him and he shuts his eyes tight. He strains the muscles in his face against a headache, clutching his cane in one hand and the letter in the other. Time turns to sap and flows around him, melting, melting, soaking into the ground…

Eustace opens his eyes. The sky over head is the murky, sunless grey of mid-morning. He is faced with a wall of lavender fog while Redhaven watches him from behind, its tallest towers waving farewell in the breezeless sky. He turns forward again, to the mist.

To the mist.

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[theredhavendelegate]

Iss. 5:

The Unknown Rot, Redhaven's New Illness!

Part One

Another supernatural tragedy struck Redhaven as local painter Eustace Simmons passed this week due to an unusual disease. The Redhaven Delegate has secured, with permission from the family, a report on the circumstances of his passing and the source of his strange illness.

It seems that the new world we find ourselves in does not abide by all the same rules as the previous one did, including the rules of life and death... ---

Eustace Simmons, stubbled face crumpled with effort, grunts along the evening sidewalk. Another man hangs from his shoulder by one arm, the other slung loosely across the neck of a woman with her dark, greying hair tied into a bun.

Eustace and the woman carry their charge along for another minute or so then slow to a stop, setting the man on the ground and propping him against an unlit barbershop.

Eustace leans hard against his knees and huffs, coughing out, “Did he gain weight d’ya think, Minerva?”

The woman finishes coughing herself and then cackles disdainfully. “Its all water-weight, or booze-weight, I guess. Too much for one evening, methinks. It’ll be a few more blocks yet anyway, so catch your breath.”

Eustace grimaces and raises a brow. “A few more blocks? He lives right down at the end of Linden, doesn’t he?”

Minerva rubs the back of her neck and shrugs, gesturing vaguely toward an upcoming street corner as she replies, “You didn’t stop by George’s place before going to the pub, but they closed off Linden Street this morning to take down a few of the damaged buildings. We’ll have to go around.”

The man groans and begins to protest, but his companion hushes him. “Just relax, we’ll be there before you know it. I’m not cutting through any constructions site, either. I’d throw my back out! Now, help Georgie up again, he’s starting to drool.”

Eustace does, though his brown eyes remain half shut in annoyance the whole time. “Throw your back out,” he mutters, “As if that weren’t what we were already doing.”

Minerva doesn’t respond as the two continue to carry their friend down the road.

They pass the construction site, previously humming but now silent and desolate. One formerly filled building lot is now an empty foundation, a repository for rubble, mostly brick and wood. Several other lots are cordoned off and waiting. They carry on another block and then turn down an alley by the light of the gas lamps, the moonless, starless skies overhead.

Between breaths, Eustace mutters, “Do you…hear…that…Minnie?”

She doesn’t answer but a figure emerges from up ahead.

They are covered in layers of dirty, torn clothing, hood and all, and they reek even at a distance. Their gait is uneven, unsure, and they stumble against a wall to hold themselves up.

As Eustace and Minerva draw close and start to pass, the figure groans, “H-help…me…please…”

Eustace responds almost right away, taking a careful breath first. “Sorry, we really have to get our friend home. There’s a clinic down the street though, the way we came. The doctor is a live-in so you should[TWO DASHES]”

Eustace is cut off as the figure darts upright. Their hood flies back to reveal a sickly, pale visage, sunken cheeks and eyes, their face and neck covered in open sores, purple bruises, and unhealed cuts.

Before either Eustace or Minerva can shout or dodge, the person lunges towards Eustace and takes hold of him by the arm. They grab his right hand and yank on it with desperate ferocity. They bite into his hand, deep, and Eustace kicks them several times until they thrash away.

Eustace stares at the gangly figure, arms held up defensively, primed for another attack, but the assailant slinks off into the shadows again, muttering, “Sorry, sorry, sorry…”

“Is your hand alright?” Minerva asks, breaking Eustace out of his focus. She is half lent against a wall, barely holding George up under his armpits.

Eustace glances down at his bloody hand and then winces, looking away and paling.

“I’ll take that as a no?” A low, gruff voice emits from George now, he’s eyes have just cracked open.

The drunk sobers up slightly and lifts himself to his own unsteady feet as Minerva wipes her hands off on her skirt. He speaks, though his speech is slightly rounded, sanded off at the corners. “Whaddid ya do to piss that guy off, eh? Grumpy bastard, he was.”

Eustace presses his hand tightly between the folds of his overcoat, barely staunching the flow of blood at the cost of a sharp spike in pain. He responds through gritted teeth, “Don’t know, they just came at me. Damn.” His face pales again and he groans, “Minnie, can you get George home now that he’s walking? I need to get back to my place before I…uh…” Eustace’s head grows light and his vision flashes with darkness, but he shakes off the sensation. “…before I pass out.” He finishes curtly.

George steps in an uncertain circle, then nods. Minerva withdraws a baton from her coat, just a metal stick a half-foot long, and nods as well. “We’ll see you tomorrow at the pub again, right?” she asks, voice shaking just a hair.

Eustace grins, though it shows as more of a grimace, and he answers, “Of course, you two are the only people I can stand to be around these days besides Millie. See you in the morning, good night.”

“Good night.”

“Night.”

---

Eustace sets a stack of off-white dishes into a kitchen sink, bread crumbs and coffee stains inside and atop them. He rinses his hands off with plain water, taking care around the right one, which is wrapped in partially soiled gauze.

He wipes his face with a dish towel as well, evacuating the remnants of his breakfast from his motley stubble.

He finally makes his way out of the kitchen and into a side room, a painting space into which falls the dull, whitish rays of the sunless dawn. There is an incomplete painting propped upon an easel, a collection of brushes and pigments, and an unusual still life arranged before them.

The center of the scene is a disused typewriter surrounded with carefully stacked notepads and writing instruments, arranged not for practically but for visual appeal. The pads, pencils, pens, and quills form patterns that subtly lead the eye around the table, to the typewriter, then back out for another lap.

He opens a few of the pigments and takes up a brush in his right hand, then begins to work.

The first few strokes are simple, easy, then his hand begins to rebel, attacking him with flares of pain that make him grit his teeth. Sweat beads up on his brow, errant strokes demand patient correction, more time, more pigment, thicker layers, dip, dip, stroke, flare, grit, sweat, dip, dip, dip.

Eustace throws his brush across the room and the gauze comes loose on his hand. A fleck of dark, rotten blood flies from it and lands on his canvas. He stares at the spot.

There is a knock a the door, genial, confident. Eustace chokes once, then clears his throat and calls out, “I’ll be right there.” He lumbers to the kitchen and removes his still-soiled dishes from the basin, then washes his hand fully. Black-red something comes away, thicker than blood, though the pain isn’t as bad as Eustace expects. He ruins a towel drying his hand, packs cotton around the wound, and wraps it up with fresh gauze.

A voice calls through the front door, slightly muffled but high and calm, “I can go if it’s a bad time.”

Eustace’s heart jumps and he turns hard on his heel toward the voice. “No, no, not at all!” He powers over and opens the door with his left hand to reveal a pleasant young woman, almost his spitting image though with much longer hair. “Millie, dear, it’s great to see you! Come in, please! I could put on some coffee or something if you like, tea maybe?”

The young woman smiles smugly and enters, “Oh, the royal treatment? This is a much warmer welcome than I’m used to.” She sits down at a small round table as her host fills a kettle. jovially, she continues, “And you’re going with Millie now, not Mildred? What’s gotten into to you?”

Eustace answers casually, though his tone is flecked with worry. “Well, I’m just a bit shaken up lately is all. It’s just quite nice to have something to take my mind off of things.”

Millie raises a brow and asks, “Shaken? What’s that for, is the painting difficult? You aren’t already running out of supplies, are you?”

Eustace sets the kettle on the stove and turns around, raising his bandaged hand into the air. “It’s just this. I was attacked on the way home from the bar the other night. Strangest thing, the fellow bit me on my good hand. I’ll be fine though, it just needs time to heal.”

Millie raises an eyebrow, unconvinced, but doesn’t question it. “Well, Harvey gave me a day, so I thought I’d swing by to see your latest project if you don’t mind. I take it you aren’t done?”

Eustace tuts and pours coffee into a small cup with a floral pattern. “Not quite, I’d be done today, but it seems unlikely now. Technically it was supposed to be a surprise for you, but I don’t mind sharing.”

“Oh no, I love a surprise so don’t spoil it! We’ll just chat then, I’m in no rush.”

And they do for a little while. Eustace’s focus goes in and out and Millie flashes him an odd look here and there, but the subject matter remains light. Eustace grumbles about the pain in his hand, the prices at the pub, George’s drinking habits, and Millie matches with comments about her coworkers and how strange the sky is to look at, day or night.

“Are you going to report it?” Millie asks abruptly.

Eustace spaces for a moment, then responds, “Report what? Oh, the attack?”

Millie nods.

“To who, the police? They’ll just turn it over to the confederates, and the confederates don’t work for locals like us.” Eustace grumbles.

Millie shrugs and says, “Well, at least have your hand checked. I’m sure the clinic by George’s will take a look.”

Eustace nods and the two sit in silence for a minute or two. Millie finishes her second cup of coffee and rises. “I think that’ll do it then. I have a few errands to run but it was nice catching up.” She flashes another smile, this one warmer, and sets her cup in the sink. “Tell George and Minnie I said hi, and…dad?”

Eustace raises an eyebrow.

“Take care of yourself, alright?”

“Of course,” Eustace answers with practiced, dry composure.

He rises a moment later and shows her politely to the door.

When she’s gone, he returns to his studio and takes up his brush again, this time switch-handed. The effort feels wasted. The strokes are even less confident then they were in his right hand, and the corrections even more demanding. Dip, dip, stroke, dip, wait, wait, glance, dip, stroke, curse, grumble, stroke, wait, wait…

Eustace sets down the brush and turns away. It’s dark outside already. The light coming in the window is the yellow flickering of the gas lamps. Eustace glances back to the clock above the doorway. “The pub is already closed? How did I miss so much time? Hmm, I hope Minnie and George aren’t worried too much.” “I suppose if they were,” he thinks, “then they’ll swing by”

Time seems to melt again as Eustace heads to his bedroom. The night carries on but sleep doesn’t come, just more pain in his hand and a growing headache. He turns and throws his bedding on the floor. He’s beginning to sweat and his stomach rumbles ferociously. He rises and mutters, “Breakfast, I only had breakfast today.”

He stumbles to the kitchen and digs through the pantry, bumping his knees, elbows, and knuckles on every available surface. He pulls out bread, crackers, vegetables, canned fruit, and despite the continued growling in his stomach, the hunger in his throat; the sight of them elicits disgust.

He pushes the goods away, drops them on the floor and discards them to-and-fro, until he finally gets to the fridge. It’s a small appliance, one that sits just at counter height with a large radiator on top. He opens it up. Inside sits an uncooked chicken breast among other things.

His stomach growls again and the pain in his hand flares up ferociously. Something about the pale meat, partly thawed for tomorrow’s dinner, is hypnotizing. The gentle, gelatinous pink, the fatty streaks of white, all glistening and soft, demanding to be--

Eustace is leaning over the sink. “How did I…” He stares into the basin. His hands are slightly slimy, especially on the fingertips. There is a taste lingering in his mouth as well, just faintly there, sweet and savory. He washes his hands and then checks the fridge again.

The chicken is gone.

Eustace feels as though he should want to retch, but he feels comfortable, full and satisfied. The pain in his hand has eased tremendously as well and his headache has fled.

“Something…something is very wrong with me. I need…I need to go somewhere…” he mutters. “Where though? The clinics aren’t open at this hour, and what would they even do?”

Eustace flexes his right hand and a mild pain jolts through it and up his arm. He peels back the bandage slightly. The wound still hasn’t healed at all, and neither have any of the little bumps or bruises he’s suffered over the course of the day. His mind flashes back to the alley, to the wounded person who bit him.

Quietly, Eustace heads into his studio and takes a notepad, not one from the still life but a spare one, and begins to write:

“Millie or whoever is reading this, I’ve come down with something terrible and am searching for help now. Please take care of the house until I’m back, and if I don’t come back, the house and everything in it should go to Millie Simmons.”

He signs his name beneath in a clean, cordial hand, then tears the note out.

Eustace walks back into the kitchen and sets the note on the round table, takes his coat from a hook by the door, and grabs a rarely used cane.

He feels ill at ease, something is lurking within him, behind him. He considers running from it but steels himself instead.

He opens the door and disappears into the moonless streets of Redhaven.

---

The story doesn’t end there, but further investigation is ongoing at this time. The Redhaven Delegate will have the complete picture soon, so if you want to know what happens next, make sure to pick up the next issue as soon as it comes out.

As always, The Redhaven Delegate stands with The People, and for The Truth, no matter how strange. - Harvey Donaghue, Editor-in-chief, TRD

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