A Father’s Memoir to His Sons, Drawn from the de Blois Family Archive and Translated from the Original French

Please try to understand: when my involvement with the Thing (for I refuse to humanize it with the word “her”) began, I was far too young to understand what I was doing. The sins of childhood are often the most difficult to weed out, for their roots go deepest, twisting and tangling around the very structure of our subconsciousness. If I had even the slightest notion of what I would stumble onto, of what I’m terrified may be passed on to you boys, I would have rather disappeared on that first day, never to be seen again. I know talk is cheap, but this is the truth.

The woods of Breizh were once dark and deep, full of magic, mystery, and wonder…but also of terror. The instincts of the neo-pagans—a longing for a more organic, nature-centered life—are sound, but their approach is horribly naïve. The old ways were not the way the Boomers picture them, not even remotely. It was not simple ignorance or bigotry that led Christian monks to call our old ones demons. Rather than try to lecture you, however, I shall simply tell my own story as an example of what calamities can befall the curious. Make of it what you will.

The dry-land dock is not exactly a secret place, but locals do not advertise its whereabouts either. I couldn’t have been much older than twelve when I first came upon it. I didn’t really have many friends at that age, so I would often spend hours wandering the woods outside our village alone. I frequently imagined a Tolkein-esque world in those woods, though this was still a few years before the Saxon poet would begin to write his legends. Perhaps we were drawing inspiration from the same source, something from our collective Celtic memory.

I remember I wasn’t terribly surprised when I came upon the dock. There are many old and abandoned structures in the countryside of Brittany, and many are far more ancient than this. It seemed quite clear that a large pond or small lake was once at the site, but that it had dried up at some point in the recent past. Given the condition of the wood, I guessed it couldn’t have been more than a few decades prior.

For some reason, I was intrigued by the place. Not only by the dock itself, but by the surrounding landscape. The ground immediately surrounding it was still a depression, with nothing more than simple grass and weeds growing in it. The circle immediately outside this depression, however, was completely overgrown by bushes and vines, forcing me to actually crawl on my stomach to reach the interior. In retrospect, I’m not entirely sure why I thought the effort was worth it, but I felt so drawn to the place that I did not question it at the time.

For several weeks that summer, I went to the dock every day, considering it my secret place, my Rivendell (though I didn’t have that word for it then). No one could find me there; no one even knew it existed, as far as I could tell. Sometimes I would just lay on my back on top of the dock, watching the clouds—or the stars, as the case may be—and drift from the world of daydreams into that of actual dreams.

It was on one such occasion that I first saw her. Have you ever seen a stranger that you seem to know from somewhere, but you can’t tell for the life of you exactly where? It was like that but even stronger, because she knew who I was.

She would simply come and lie next to me, as if it was something she always did, as naturally as a wife coming to her husband of many years. In this dreamlike state (when you are neither fully awake nor fully in the other realm), we were both the same age, somehow reconciling youth with the sense of knowing one another for a long time. Later in life, I would learn that Edgar Cayce would enter into a similar state before he could receive his visions; I only hope he never had to encounter what I did.

We continued in this manner for all of summer, but when the Jesuits called our class back into session, my visits had to be less and less frequent. We had barely exchanged any words up to that point, communicating instead with the 80 percent of ourselves that is nonverbal, but she began to plead with me not to go as summer turned to autumn. Her speech was beautiful, hypnotizing. Almost poetic. But it seemed oddly old-fashioned to me. Her French was interspersed with words of the old language and, though I struggled to recognize all of the vocabulary, I somehow understood the underlying meaning of what she said.

Though it pained me, my fear of the black robes was sufficient to force me from her presence during the school week. I asked if she could not come and visit me at home, but she lamented that she could not, so long as my father kept crucifixes over all our doorways.

Again, I have to remind you boys how young I was then. Though I immediately recognized that something strange was afoot here, I was too innocent to suspect the true nature of it. Or maybe, deep down, I simply didn’t care. I was also still too inexperienced to know that much of my thinking had shifted from my brain to another part of my anatomy.

So, late the following night, once my parents had gone to bed, I took the crucifix down from our front door. I did so of my free will—I must acknowledge that—but still with a deep ignorance.

She began to come to my room shortly thereafter, and words struggle to describe how magnificent it felt. We had finally progressed from simple companionship to other things beyond my youthful imagination. The warmth, the closeness, the wonderful sense of belonging and acceptance…it felt worth the pain for the longest time.

She would stay with me afterward for a while, and begin to tell me stories. Stories of what our country was like before the black robes and their ancestors came. Tales of when we would frolic naked in the woods and revel directly in nature’s beauty. Her descriptions made Gaul seem like a true Garden of Eden, and to think what small a price there was to pay!

All the old ones ever demanded, so she would tell me, was a small sacrifice four times a year, on the solar and lunar holidays. The victims were almost always willing (almost always, yes), and the event was held with deep reverence by the celebrants. The sacrifice, usually young, would be clothed in a ceremonial white tunic and led into the stone circle. After the laying down of herbs and the passing of the medicine pipe, the priests would offer their prayers to those who “had ruled once and will yet rule again” and have their gift prostrate him or herself before the alter. The slitting of the throat was very quick, and after a few brief moments of pain, the victim would go to his or her ancestors, to the same realm to which we would all eventually follow. She made it sound rather wonderful.

We continued in this manner for several years. After telling me a story, she would leave as suddenly as she appeared, and I would go downstairs to restore the crucifix to our doorway. It may sound incredible to you, but yes—this was my experience every night for perhaps half a decade—until I was old enough to leave my father’s house and was to take a bride of my own.

To my surprise, she was not even remotely upset when I told her I was to take another woman. She only asked that I not forget her, and allow her to come to me every now and again when my wife wouldn’t be the wiser. She had a deal. Perhaps because of the strangeness of our relationship, I never considered this to be infidelity. Such are the rationalizations the mind can make when it knows it wants something that is bad for it. Human reason often does little more than to help us justify our self-destructive behavior to ourselves. It is a servant of the passions, not the other way around.

And yet, in my case, clear negative consequences only began to manifest themselves after this deal was struck.

Pain was slow, at first…

***

At this point the manuscript cuts for a time. The handwriting for the previous paragraph had become noticeably more erratic, allowing me to almost physically feel the pain my ancestor must have felt as he wrote this.

***

…After I had finally worked up the courage to tell her “no,” she really began to turn the screws. She would visit me at all hours of the day and night: at work, during Mass, when I was with my wife, when I was working at my in-law’s business. My mind would think of nothing but her, and she would offer me no respite until I gave her what she demanded. And even that was only for a brief time.

Believe me when I tell you this: I tried, I really did try. Brevis ipsa vita est, sed malis fit longior and all that.

After a time, I rationalized that, if I cannot expel her, I could at least contain her. No one could see her other than me, and if I could keep her away from those I cared about, it should be enough.

It wasn’t. One by one, everything I cared about fell under her malicious influence. It was not enough that I simply wither away and die; she compelled me to spread my pain to others. Rather than spread the damage and endanger my loved ones further, I choose to run away with her, to go to a remote place where we could hurt no one but myself. I suppose you will find me sometime in the future, if you see fit to look for me at all, that is.

I will end my cautionary tale with this: do not let addiction into your life. She is an unforgiving mistress, eager to take everything from you and will still never be satisfied.