October 3, 2023.
LORD BURLEIGH’S JOURNAL
October 3, evening.
After waking at the appointed hour, we gathered once again in the estate’s well kept library, which Mrs. Harker had been good enough to clean of the remaining body-parts and blood of our former hosts. We who remained were the good Doctor Fielding, Mr. Blothem, the railway man, Mr. Dockett, the gardener, myself, and Mrs. Harrier, who appeared to have slept quite little, with deep shadows beneath her blood-shot yet still quite pretty eyes.
The good Doctor lit his pipe, and began. “Our defenses have held quite well over-night. I have inspected the larder, and we should have provisions for another two weeks or so, which will surely be enough time to allow for our rescue. In the mean-time, I have invented a distracting enough game using a deck of playing cards I discovered in our host’s bedchambers. Adding to our amusement, the suit signs are all quite comic depictions of French politicians, which should entertain us until help arrives.”
“A game! How delightful!” exclaimed Mr. Blothem. “I adore a game. Surely we will all forget of our troubles. Please, Doctor Fielding, explain to us the game rules which you have devised.”
“Sirs, if I might interject,” said Mrs. Harrier, her voice cracking with womanly emotion. “My husband and brother are still blockaded within the garden shed, and they are without food or drink for two days now. Surely we must mount an expedition to save them and bring them in with us, where their wounds can be tended and their bodies nourished and brought back to strength.”
We men were all filled with sympathy for this poor deluded woman, clearly destroyed by grief and fear.
The good Doctor Fielding set down the comic playing cards, and cleared his throat before speaking. “Ah, my dear Mrs. Harrier, how wondrous it is! You sometimes appear almost to have the mind of a man, utilizing logic and sound reasoning, and yet it gladdens me to perceive that you still you retain the heart of a woman. While us men contemplate survival, at all costs, your heart aches for your husband and brother, no matter how foolish such thoughts might be. I do not question God’s wisdom for making you so! And am glad that He created Woman that she might show Man these gentle things, folly or no.”
“Yet, Mrs. Harrier, I am heavy hearted to need to explain to you that to open our defenses, even for a moment! may open us five to the dangers outside our doors. You, more than anyone, has seen what these creatures have been capable of by their wickedness and inborn evil. Your husband and brother would not begrudge us our own safety for the slim chance of their own lives.”
As the good Doctor spoke, Mrs. Harrier’s eyes filled with tears, which saddened us all, and I was glad for the knowledge that soon we would be learning a new game to distract us from this sorry interlude.
“Please,” she spoke, through gathering sobs. “I could hear them from my bedroom window, they cried for help, all night. It is only twenty strides from the servant quarter’s door to the garden shed, and we know that these creatures sleep through the day, and only prowl at night.”
Mr. Blothem rose from his chair, to lecture the hysterical woman. “Now, Mrs. Harrier, we must forget these men. They were doomed from the moment they chose to fight off the creatures that we might close ourselves in this house. It is better to put it out of your mind! Come now! Do not dwell on the past!”
Mrs. Harrier turned to me, trembling in her way. “Lord Burleigh, I beg of you to listen to me. Peter served with you in the Army, surely you must wish to rescue him!”
I spoke to her, as gently as I could, so that I did not enflame her female emotions any further. “Your Peter was a fine soldier, and any fine soldier would feel gladness if given the opportunity to sacrifice his life for a commanding officer.”
Mrs. Harrier staggered back from us, a sudden, inhuman rage behind her eyes. She looked as if she were to dash for the door herself! The good Doctor cried out: “Restrain her, Mr. Dockett! Before she endangers us all!”
Mr. Dockett leapt forward and grasped the woman in his thick hands, using a rope of twine to secure her as she struggled. “I’m roit so’wry ‘bout this, Missus,” he said, in his incomprehensible way. “Yer husbind is a good man, and yer brother is a good man too, but the Doctar knows whass best fer yaer. Now I’ll bring yer up to yer bed, and when yer feelin better we’ll teach ya the rules o’ the Doctar’s fun new game.”
We all found it quite an upsetting episode. However, by the time Mr. Dockett had restrained Mrs. Harrier to her bed upstairs, and returned with a bottle of fine brandy, we were all in good spirits once again, and learned the Doctor’s game with aplomb.