This is a follow-on from Edgar Brent’s recollection of day two in the Tikshama, so titled Bluewood Hut. The journal was discovered in 1958. What became of Brent and his party is still a mystery.
Journal of Edgar Brent.
The Tikshama - Day III, Cueburn Hut.
July 25, 1932.
We have walked into a nightmare and I fear we will not come out the other side. The Tikshama has revealed itself. It is a place of fallen angels and fiends. In the shadows of the trees, madness cloisters. It breeds insidious things in the murk, and its fecund womb which we so revered is nothing more than a wretched ground of malaise and decay. This forest teems with it. Life long ago left this place. In its wake there came an ancient death, and it has exercised its ruin with patience. There is no growth, there is only slow corruption - a chameleonic force that has latched itself to this once-supreme garden, and its appetite is neither greedy or unhurried.
This is a fetid place, and evil has settled here.
Despite our efforts, we have gone even deeper into the labyrinth of root and branch. With first light, we attempted our escape. We abandoned Bluewood and the ceaseless voices that whisper through its bones. With desperate resolve we tried to retrace our steps back to the sanctuary of the rest camp at Edding Waters, but the forest spat us out. Always, we found our way back to Bluewood. With a maddening dismay we have come to realise the path back is lost to us. There is only the path which the Tikshama wills. My words must sound insane, but we have been consumed by the forest, and we are at the mercy of the path it has left us. There is no path of return. There is no path back. Only onwards. Only forwards. Despite our hopes, despite our prayers, we have trudged deeper into shadow the forest, and we have found ourselves at a place akin to the grave.
Cueburn. It seems like this is where the Tikshama wants us. We came upon the hut by surprise. Although our pace was slow, our feet encumbered by the burden of our troubled souls, we stumbled onto the hut like somnambulists emerging from the mists of our dreams. Since our arrival, we have referenced our maps. Henry and Lilian have reviewed the distances, examined the topography. Karl, for certainty’s sake, has scrutinised their calculations. They all agree in this regard: we have traversed an impossible distance in a minute window of time. Our rationality is under strain. The guides of logic are loosening. There is a temporal manipulation at play and it is bending our minds. I can feel my thoughts struggle for grip. My self is wavering. None of us speak of it. There are no words fit to describe this malady. And with no description, there can be no explanation. We are adrift in this canopied world, imprisoned by these pillars of bark, and I am now certain that we are being hounded by the wardens of this dark wilderness.
Whatever fugue state that was upon when we stumbled onto the Cueburn hut, was quickly banished by the oppression that hunkers here. Set amongst the thick, twisted figures of the trees, the hut seems to have been born of the forest rather than fashioned by human hands. Roots crawl about its foundations, branches claw at its walls and sunlight fails to warm its roof. Only deep shadows entertain this lot. The ground is a blanket of decomposing leaves, a welcomed den for vipers and adders. It is a true beauty mark of this loathsome land. An unnatural cold also holds this place too, but its the apparitions that dwell here which causes the spirit to tremble.
Upon breaking through the tree line, is when I saw them. Bewildered by the sudden appearance of the hut, it took me a few moments to recognise the three figures watching our arrival from the side window of the building. As quickly as I acknowledged them, did they retreat into the depth of the hut and into the dimness vanish. The moment was so brief that it took sometime for my mind to wrestle with what it had perceived. The certainty of what I saw only dawned on me when I found Vera peering out the same window, her eyes transfixed on the forest outside, tears balancing on the precipice of her lids, her coat wrung in her hands, her knuckles the colour of bleached ivory. Out in the failing light, I saw them again, the three impermanent figures looming on the verge our realm, hovering like plumes of black vapour, silver pennies glistening where their eyes ought to be. This time they made no move or effort to vanish. They simply remained, their silent watch raging louder than any scream. This is place is ours. I could feel their words in my heart. This place is ours.
Vera has come to believe these wights are somehow the same entities as the voices from Bluewood - foul things which have followed us to this new hut. Even as my mind tries to make sense of what has befallen us, my instinct is to resist the connection she is asserting. What wretched evil would wish to pursue us so? What would they want with us? I can’t believe these are questions we are considering. Yet, perhaps Vera is right. There is a comparable likeness between the voices and the apparitions. One is small and childlike, the second slender and feminine in its obscurity. The last is a towering brute, and it presented itself to me with a spiteful viciousness which I refuse to dwell on. And yet, it persists.
It was whilst I rinsed my face that it came to me. Reflecting now, it was a pathetic attempt to shed the unnerving gloom of the day, but the hope of some routine, some semblance of normality would do me good. As I bent over the basin, soapy water cupped in my hands, I felt a darkness shift over my back. The candle on the shelf beside the mirror flickered, but I paid no heed to it. A distracted mind is blind to subtle warnings. That sense of forewarning deepened when a chill writhed between my shoulders. The candle flame dwindled again, and I looked up to inspect its irregularity. It was then that I saw him, looming over my shoulder. The shadow-man. His broad shoulders dwarfed me, his black mass occupying the expanse of the mirror. In the void of his face, two silver eyes shimmered behind vaporous brows, and from the oblivion of his mouth, a groan of grinding cartilage and rasping leaves rattled against invisible teeth. The mirror began to rattle against the wall, and the candle guttered. In the reflection I saw black, worm-like fingers creep over my shoulders. He leant in, and I could feel the vacuous hunger on his breath. Again, I felt that hateful declaration. This place is ours. His foul voice filled my head, a maddening klaxon of doom sounding through the passages of my sanity, and beneath the trumpeting, I felt the gargling marrow of the Tikshama boil in its slow rot.
If not for Vera’s intervention, I’m not sure what state I would be in now. Her sudden entrance banished the shadow-man, but I can feel the toll his visitation had taken on me. I feel aged, as if the dark man has stolen years from my future. My soul feels weathered and tangled, like the roots that coil about this forsaken hut. I have told everyone of the shadow-man and his haunting, and we have since covered the mirror with a sheet. We have closed the curtains. We are like children hiding from the beast in the closet. But we can feel it here. It is ever present. They are ever present. The shadow people. They are congregating all around us.
There is one thing I have not told them, not even Vera. There are long contusions where the man’s fingers held me. I can still feel his grip on my skin. Just as I can feel his shadow behind me now. I can feel his eyes follow the cursive of my pen. We are all scared. But I am even too scared to look over my shoulder, for I know he is there. Standing in the corner. Waiting. This place is theirs. And we are not welcome here.
-AB.