Account 02: The Ruins of Castle Roche

Background information

• Name: Fergus Kelly
• Pronouns: He/him
  
• Date: 1923
• Occupation: Unknown
  
• City of residence: Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland
  
• Date(s) of account: 1923
• Subject of account: The ruins of Castle Roche
  

Account

My name is Fergus Kelly. I am an amateur archaeologist from Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland. The year is 1923. I must write as quickly as possible. Forgive me if some of this is difficult to make out.

 

It happened yesterday. All of it. It sounds so strange, but it all happened in one day.

 

My flatmate is named Oscar Sloane. He is a short man who wears a tattered brown coat that looks like it was made for someone much larger.

 

I have dragged Oscar along to Castle Roche several times in the past. I do not know why yesterday was any different.

It should not have been.

The fog curled around our feet as we walked the path up to Castle Roche. It would have been a foreboding sight in ages past, but as it stood, it was clearly a shadow of what it once had been, crumbling and desecrated.

 

Cold fog drifted in through holes that had once been windows as I stood for the last time in the ruins of Castle Roche. The fog was impossibly thick, and the longer I remained there, the more it bit into me. Oscar seemed unaffected, which I found odd, as he's always been one to complain about minor inconveniences of the sort. In fact, he seemed quite happy as he and I began to walk forward, pressing on deeper into the ruins.

 

We normally don't find much there. We really only visited because it was a familiar sight by that point. It was comfortable. Yesterday was different, though.

 

As I walked, I saw a wall before me that I knew was unblemished. It was covered in images of eyes and hands painted in dried blood. 

 

I heard something behind me and turned around. It was Oscar, surrounded by cold, thick fog that obscured most of his body. I could just barely make out that he had a strange bright glint in his eye. 

 

He walked forward through the fog, and I saw a knife held in his strangely twisted hand that was used by the Irish soldiers at the time Castle Roche was built.

 

Somehow, it was only then that I realized that Oscar's fingers were all the same length.

 

Oscar jumped forward, his knife brandished in his wretched hand, and drove it down into me.

 

I elbowed him in the chest and slowly drew the knife out of my own shoulder with a sharp pain. Aggressive with fear, I stabbed him in the stomach. Oscar stumbled back and fell to the ground. His strange eyes were wide with pain. My fearful violence gave way to abject terror, and I fled.

 

I am terrified even now.

 

I hear someone tapping on the window. I see that cold fog blanket everything outside. I know that the person at the window, the person concealed by the fog, is a short man in an oversized coat.

 

I know that although Oscar Sloane was the man with whom I entered that place, the thing that accosted me within its walls was not a man at all.

 

All I do not understand is why this is happening.

 

God deliver

 

Analysis
This account comes from a book I found at my local library which I have been unable to find records of elsewhere. Unfortunately, this persisted even after I looked into the individual who wrote it, one Matthias Clark. It is entitled The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, and contains a series of clippings from newspapers, journals, and notes regarding strange occurrences up to 1924, when it was written and published. All of these materials are left largely unexplained but given a degree of context by Clark.

According to Clark, Fergus Kelly was found dead in his home some time after this journal entry was written. Investigators were unable to find any trace of disturbances at Castle Roche, including the body of Oscar Sloane or the writing on the wall. They were, however, watched by a strange man in an oversized coat as they entered Castle Roche, and both seemed terrified after they left for reasons they refused to explain.