In The Village of Orchard Hale
But now a great terror had ridden into the village center, and the folk of Orchard Hale had flown into their homes and bolted their doors and windows.
Some hid in root cellars, some under their beds, and others ran away into the night as far and as fast as they could.
The wraith, Lichant, cared not, intent only on the path to the village’s edge where the blacksmith’s shop lay, the rusted remnants of its sword wrapped in burlap and leather tucked beneath its arm.
The smith sent his young apprentices running to safety out the back even as the wraith’s shadow fell across his door. When the door slammed open, the smith fled, too. The wraith entered the shop but did not pursue its owner.
The villagers knew not the wraith’s business, only that the forge fire roiled and glowed in the windows of the blacksmith’s shop, and that sulfurous smoke gusted from the chimney as if exhaled from the hells themselves.
A soulless song, an incantation of no melody, permeated the air, the words unknown to any but the wraith, their texture unclean, foul.
All who heard it covered their ears, but they could not fend off the dread that wormed into their hearts.
The clang of hammer upon anvil clamored through Orchard Hale with an unnerving mechanical cadence even as the dim moon descended in the west.
· · ·
In the ash gray murk of dawn, the door to the blacksmith’s shop opened.
Those who dared peek through the corner of a window or keyhole observed the hellish form of the wraith step outside.
A rising wind lifted the black rags of its ancient garb around it.
Soot and smoke and the taint of ill-forged steel drifted in the air.
In its boney hand it grasped a sword that gleamed a sickly green color. The wraith lifted it above its head and loosed a wail of triumph that rent the countryside seemingly into tatters.
And then it was gone. Vanished. The shadow that had hung over the village dissipated just like that. The villagers heaved a sigh of relief that the dread creature had departed, leaving them no more than shaken, but as the morning progressed, they came to realize this was not entirely true.
In the village of Orchard Hale where nothing ever happened, horses foundered, cows gave sour milk, the local moon priest went inexplicably blind, and children grew fevered with the pox.
All the expectant mothers went into early labor and lost their babies, and the hearts of four villagers, including that of the blacksmith, failed at the same exact time.
Or so it is said.