The Dark Garret

Hello all,

I hope you don't mind me do this, this is the first draft of the first page of a new short story I am working on. I hope you enjoy it.

The Faery of Earth and Water

From the Diary of Obadiah Morticaine 24^th June 1880

It had been a troublesome day. I was bone weary and cold. I had come from the old St Mary's Chapel on the bridge and had been given my fill of edging my way through a building that had had little maintenance in three hundred years. It was a sorry medieval pile in the midst of modern soot covered brick monsters.

But it was up Duke Street in the depths of night that I found my feet leading me. They carried me over the cobbles, over the rails pitted within them, that linked the dirty, high walls. Within their confines, the dark satanic Yggdrasils still trickled black smoke into the sky, where in the day, men toiled to stoke them to bursting point, obscuring the light with sickly darkness from high windows that I could see peeking at me. They watched me along my route like some overgrown bespectacled pervert that was too afraid to move lest he give away his devious intent.

I heard the tap tap tap of my boot soles on the cobbles. I wanted any distraction from the factories that closed in around me.

I pushed on. My footsteps kept my mind focused. Much louder were they than the wind through the chimneys, than the ticking noises from machinery and engines winding down for the night, than the night-watchman doing his rounds. They were louder than the call of the owl and the ethereal whoosh of its wings. But that, I did not mind. That, I found an immense reassurance, a reminder of the days that had extended into pre-history, an eternity before these terracotta blocks that surrounded me, accumulating and pumping out filth.

I knew I had to get away from the chapel, where my business had led me into contact with a confrontation with souls willing to abuse the energy residue left by the Padley Martyrs. I know I needed to get some fresh air, to walk of the troubles that my day had given me. But why my feet had led me along this route, I had no idea. It was niggling at me, gnawing at my soul. There must be some purpose for this.