Episode 4. The Casebook of Dr Miller- Case 2 pt2. The Devil & The Book.

The conclusion to the Topsham mystery.

A snowy walk turns sinistern as the fog rolls in, and the truth of the apotropaic marks is revealed.

Written, narrated and produced by Charles Walker.

⁠⁠ The Time Tapes ⁠⁠ © 2023 by Charles Walker is licensed under ⁠⁠ CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 ⁠⁠

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Transcript

 Dr Miller- Case 2, Part 2

After my investigation at the vicarage of the original letters pertaining to the events of February 1855, I was left with the larger part of the day ahead of me to continue my investigations.

Deeming it only to be polite I covered the short distance to the Church and entering the uncommonly cold interior, I saw Reverand Hollingworth stood at the pulpit thumbing through what I presumed to be notes for a sermon as yet to be delivered. He looked up at the hollow echo of my footsteps and started to come down from the pulpit. I, undoubtedly breaking the etiquette one should follow in a sacred space, called out to the effect that he was not bother himself on my part, I only wished to thank him for his hospitality and to say that I had left the box on the desk and would now be on my way.

He stopped mid-way down the pulpit steps and waving called back that should I wish to see them again, I could call anytime, apart from during services, and he pointed to a noticeboard at the back of the church that held announcements and such.

Talking my leave, I stepped back out into church yard. The snow was falling quite heavily now, and all looked rather picturesque.  I couldn’t help but be reminded that the events of which I was investigating took place during a period of heavy snow.

So, what to do now? It was not quite noon, so I had some four or so hours before darkness would fall. I wished to make a start for Withycombe Raleigh, the source of the tracings of the tracks, however I had no idea of the distance or direction. I considered going back into the church and asking the reverend; however, I decided that I had taken enough his time and so determined to go back into Topsham and as I was starting to feel a chill in my bones head for the public house and see if any of my ‘new friends’ were present.

The walk back to town was quite pleasant, the countryside looking more and more picturesque under its deepening blanket of snow, the red sandstone of the now snowcapped church reminding one of a robin and its red breast.  I was however most definitely aware that I was not wearing suitable footwear and that I would have to change to the stout walking boots that I had had the foresight to bring with me on my trip.

As fortune would have it, once arriving at the public house I had frequented the previous day, the locals were indeed there at what I now presumed must be their customary table. They almost as one waved for me to join them, a gesture which I immediately accepted as I wished to engage them in conversation.

The initial talk was of the weather and the issues that it would cause, estimations of how long it may last, the snows of previous years. Finally, I was asked if I had visited the Reverend. I said that I had indeed, and the accounts were true. The letters and the tracing of the prints. I was pressed for further information but in truth I had non to give as the letters had reinforced the views of the locals, rather than adding any new information.

Finally judging that I had engaged in enough casual conversation to now be able to move on, I asked as to the direction and the distance of Withycombe Raleigh. I was reliably informed that it was some six miles to the South on the East side of the river and only some short distance from Exmouth and some mile, mile and a half from the sea. This while useful information was not, considering the weather of any great joy to me.  Six miles in these parts, in this weather may well have been a hundred miles as far as I was concerned. I asked if there was a clearly marked rout and it was confirmed that there was and even so if river was always in sight on the right, then you’d end up in Exmouth anyway. I enquired how long of a walk it would be and I was informed that only a bloody fool would take the walk in the snow, but under normal circumstances around 2 and a half hours.

I assured them contrary to my real thoughts that I would not attempt such a thing, but that I wish to make plans for when the weather was more conducive to walking. One of them at this point leaned back and stretching announced that he would not be leaving the interior of the public house any time soon, laughter all round. It was at this moment as his jacket sleave pulled tight away from his wrist that I noted tattooed onto the inside of his wrist the Sigal that was becoming all too prevalent in this small port town. He noted my gaze, for I must have stared a moment too long. I thought I may have caused offence but to my relief the fellow just smiled and shrugged and announced that it was a ‘good luck charm’, something that undoubtedly, I would come to see a fair bit if I stayed in Topsham for a while.

Now I should explain something here- you may have noticed that I have not given any names for my new companions, and this is for good reason. The names of the past reverends are well known and of public record in the events of 1855, and two are deceased anyway. The locals that helped me more that I have yet described, I wish to keep anonymous, for I wish no harm or retribution to come to them for their kindness to a stranger such as myself. That being said, and cleared up, I shall continue.

With nothing else for it, and nothing else that could be done that day, I resigned myself to spending the day at leisure in the warmth of the public house’s roaring log fire.  There was food and ale and companionship- which for the present met all my needs, there being nothing pressing that I could achieve.

The following day proved to be bright and clear. The snow had stopped falling and the snow on the ground was not so deep as I had presumed it would be by now. This, I felt, was a sign to put my plans into action. I knew the walk was of around 6 miles and also that Exmouth was only a short distance from Withycombe. I had concluded that I did not have to travel there and back in one day- which 12 miles in the snow may have well proved a challenge. But rather, I could walk to Withycombe, carry out my investigations and then walk the shorter distance to Exmouth and procure a room for the night there. If the snows came in, then it would be of no great hardship to spend a couple of nights in Exmouth. Also, the original reports had mentioned Exmouth, so it was a place of interest to me in any case. I convinced myself that there were simply no negatives to be had to my intended course of action.

I partook of a hearty breakfast and stepped out into the brisk air and bright winter sunshine. I had for this jaunt remembered to wear my sturdy walking boots and my herringbone tweed country style jacket proved to be suitably warm if a little heavier than I was used to.

The walk proved to be pleasant, as I have previously mentioned the capping of snow to the landscape was pleasant to the eye and the world seemed to be peacefully silent, sounds being muffled, and I would presume the wildlife taking refuge against the cold. Occasionally I came across tracks, those of fox or bird, not I am glad to say of the kind I had witnessed in the tracings I has seen the day before.

I judged by my brisk pace, the snow being not so deep, and by the time on my pocket watch that I was roughly halfway there. Stopping for a moment and wondering whether to find a suitable tree stump to rest for a few minutes or whether to just push on, I noticed that there was a fog coming in from the river side. Not wishing to possibly be caught in the fog, even though the path was well defined by hedge I decided to push on. A chill winter fog I was well aware, could lower the temperature considerably. I kept a good pace with the thought of every step bring me closer to my destination and the fact that the distance was no shorter to my destination than it was to return back to my starting point. The fog now was close to the path moving in slowly from my right and looking ahead I saw that it had already started to cross the path some distance ahead. Not wishing to deviate from my route I pressed on, quickening my pace somewhat. At what point it happened I don’t know, and I would guess that I had been walking in the thinner edges of the fog for some time, but I now found myself with a wall of white fog on all sides. I had a compass which I now checked, and I knew that as long as I continued to head South, I would reach one of my two destinations.

All sound was now gone within the shroud of white that I found myself in and my own breathing became apparent to me. I could feel the cold touch of the fog on my bare face, and I pulled my scarf a little higher over my mouth as even the air was chill to breath.

It was as I momentarily stopped to adjust my scarf that I noticed a darker, undefined shape away to my right in the fog. The whiteness of the fog aiding in highlighting the grey form. The hedge was just such a form now, but this was different, there was motion. I called out, ‘hello’, there was no reply. It may have been my imagination, but I thought I saw the movement falter for a moment before continuing on its way.

Giving myself an internal pep talk, I started off guessing that I could only be a mile or so short of my destination now, but there were more shapes in the fog. Not fast moving, nor well outlined- but slow and shifting as if they were changing their shape. This is presumed was a trick of the fog itself as it shifted, but something inside told me that this wasn’t the case. I have to admit I was starting to feel somewhat uncomfortable at this turn of events and logic was to some extent abandoning me. I push on faster, my feet slipping in the snow, my breath more pronounced and my heartbeat in my ears- there being no other sounds to drown them out.

It was then that all of a sudden I heard the humming, not as of a person, but rather a machine or- I realised the constant buzzing of..... what?

I felt sudden cold and lightheaded, panic, shock maybe? The shapes were more numerous now and the buzzing louder and more incessant, how many I could not truly estimate, a dozen, more?

I stumbled and did not fall, my arm caught and held firmly by something.

‘Be quiet, and don’t move’ The voice was thinner in the mist but still recognisable as one of the locals from the public house, the one with the tattoo.  He pressed something into my hand, something small, round and cold. ‘Keep that and don’t drop it, you got me?’ I nodded.

The shapes were all around us now, close and then far or seemingly so. The fog disguised their forms, whatever they were, yet there was something more. It was almost as if they were easier to perceive on the periphery of vision. Looking directly at them, the forms became even more indistinct and impossible to focus on.

We stayed still for how long I can only guess, a few minutes, an hour, I have no idea, although it seemed an age. Slowly the forms retreated and with them the fog. We now stood once again in the wintery sun, two walkers on the path with only our footprints around us.

My saviour, for there is no other word, informed me that he had relatives in Exmouth and that we were about 2 miles out, far further than I had thought. We could stay with them for the night if I so wished or he would stay with them and guide me to a place to stay.

I nodded as I had no breath for words, yet he seemed calm and focused- far so more than I.

The rest of the journey was uneventful, and we eventually found ourselves in Exmouth. I have to admit I took in little of my new surroundings in and so will not describe them here although I have been back there since.

I will rather describe the conversation that took place at the coaching inn that I elected to stay at and before my saviour retired to his relative's house.

I sat there silent in the secluded nook we had found for some considerable time, words and common sense having abandoned me. He waited, patiently, silent. Finally, coming somewhat to my senses and feeling some of that fogs chill leave my bones, I took a sip of the brandy I found to be in my hand and asked, ‘what was that?’.

I shall recount his explanation as near as I can in his own words.

I shall start if I may at the beginning.

I have lived here all my life, my parents having a small farm some two or three miles from Topsham. My father died when I was still a young lad, and so it was me and my mum and my brothers that tended to the farm.

My mother was, (he paused), a cunning woman. I must have looked confused, as he elaborated. A Witch. Not as you’d imagine in a fairy stories, but rather a woman wise in the ways of the old world and of nature. These parts used to have our fair share of them. Our farmhouse, and here he turned his wrist over to reveal the Sigal, had these marks on the doors and windows. When I was older, maybe thirteen or fourteen she gave me that, he indicated at my still clenched hand, opening my hand I found a small coin into which the same design as the one I had witness all around Topsham was etched.

It’s a Witches protection mark. It works against, well I am getting ahead of myself.

The farm, that was mentioned, there were two I believe, in the letters and reports of 1855, the ones derelict that had the hoof prints around them. Well, those farms weren’t derelict the day before. I remember the families and I used to play with the lad from the closest of those farms. Of course, no one remembers that- they had been derelict for years, hadn't they. You see the mark, he nodded at the coin again, means you remember things as they were not as they’ve become.

What you witnessed tonight, they, come once or so every decade. Always around the same time. Today is the eleventh- I don’t know if you have considered that or made the connection with the reports? The events all those years ago which you are so interested in took place during the second week of February. Now as it were.

It is always for a few days in February and during that time people go missin. No one else who is left, remembers them, apart from us, he again showed the mark. The church and the public house and a few other places are protected an most of us make our ways to those places when we see’s the first snow in February. We keep it to the original families; it’s best the rest of the world doesn’t know. But now you know.

Who or what they are, I don’t rightly know. Why they come here and why people go missin, I don’t rightly know. But I do know that they don’t seem able to stay for long. It’s as though they are pulled back as though they can’t fully be here- like their forms, not quite solid, not quite formed.

I do know one other thing. He leans in at this point his voice barely audible. The Coven, that my mother was a part of. They used to meet and perform rituals- not like people think, but rituals for a good harvest, for protection, to aid someone, to thank I guess the old gods for all we have. There was one that joined their group, and who had it would seem some ideas. They had a book. I never saw it but I heard my mother talking about it, to one of the others over a drink in our kitchen. She had concerns about it. However, others apparently did not and they- coincidence or not maybe- performed one of the rituals from this book on February the ninth a year before the first visits- or so my mother said. She said nothing about it until she was dyin and then she told me all. She said that some of the others in the coven got nervous during the ritual, she wouldn’t say what, but there was somethin in her eyes when she told me- an the circle was broken or some such before the ritual was completed. An that’s why, they can’t fully be here and why they keep coming back- to try to fully crossover- her words not mine.

There are those of us that watch, including the reverend Hollinsworth. So, that’s the truth of things and you have no reason to go to Withycombe Raleigh or anywhere else you may have had a mind to go to now. You won’t find any more in those places than I have told you now.

I have given you a gift- the coin. It means that you can remember. If it works elsewhere, I have no idea. But keep it, keep it even if not for protection for memory of what happens here. For memory of there are things best not looked at too closely.

His last words were mumbled almost to himself, they change things, they re-write things. Then looking up he said finally- don't go looking for her, the one that brought the book. She disappeared shortly after the broken circle, and she weren’t seen again. The book went with her. She’d probably be dead by now, although my mother said she was young but with experience that belied her years. An that book, well, if it’s lost, then I believe that is for the best. There was more of a command than a relating or thought to his last works on the subject of the book. Then I Believe That Is For The Best.

I asked no further questions, and I left Topsham the very next day. I stopped off at the public house that I and those locals had frequented on the two previous days and I left some such money behind the bar as to keep their glasses filled for some days to come. It was my thanks without words.

I came away from Topsham and my experiences there a changed man. I went to find some peace from my memories of John the Farmer back in last September- but I have found no peace. Only fear and more questions. I now believe John to be somewhere else, and only God knows where.

The book, now that may have the answers I seek.