Afterbirth, North Dakota

The story of Afterbirth, North Dakota first came to my attention through back issues of the Bismarck Daily Sentinel, which I was reading for my own private purposes. This was before the Great War, of course, and many of its pages were concerned with the tensions that anticipated it, but the paper still made space for local occurrences. Many of these were of little import: the winners of local contests, the highlights of a fair, a new building being erected to house the blighted state’s government, and … a stray mention of Afterbirth, found abandoned at high summer.

The name drew my attention; you have always known me to be shallow, and I shall not deny it here. I paged backwards through issue after issue of the paper, searching for more context—and I found it. I wish I had not.

The disappearances were not strikingly odd. Things happened in those days and I have certainly seen my share of mysteries that were no more than spousal murder or bad grain alcohol and an unfortunate cliff. Crimes of passion covered up by grieving families, the excesses of ungelded youths …

Hardly worth my time, you understand.

But I was unlucky, my dear, for I was bored and the library had microfiche of the Afterbirth Circular, a small monthly paper which I do not doubt I was the first to mark—much less view!—in nearly a century, and it took a rather different approach to the disappearance.

They were reported, of course, with all the concern one might except, but later issues of the paper seemed to reject them. Names—and descriptions, my dear, for I know how things were in the States back then—reappeared in banal contexts months after they were reported gone. The departed returning utterly unmentioned!

By then I could smell some unknown taint upon the town’s memory; the trace of something from beyond, the sort of thing that I have made it my life’s work to hunt, and so I booked a ticket on the next zeppelin from Boston and set out to see what might remain of Afterbirth a century past its death.

The zeppelin’s interior rather reminded Isobel of one of the Riviera’s less fashionable resorts, being outfitted in a vaguely continental style that suffered both from the airship’s weight limits and its age; scuffed foam and peeling paint will never recreate luxury, though someone had tried their best a decade or two ago, when whoever had then owned the vessel had been convinced that a touch of old world verve was all that was needed to tempt its bored passengers into the gambling hall.

It did not smell, at least, which is not always a given on a cheap flight. She could have tolerated a smell up to a point, but nearly 48 hours with one, as the zeppelin meandered its way across the country, would have left her in an awful mood.

She had arrived late, and so there was quite a line ahead of her at the airship’s reception desk. A scattering of suited salesmen cast out into the States’ depths, a handful of disheveled students fleeing Boston’s universities, and even two tourist families! Isobel really could not understand why tourists would decide to visit Boston, of all places, but it takes all sorts to make the world.

The receptionist was cute, at least, and the way her eyes flickered behind her glasses as she compared Isobel’s ticket to the ship’s own understanding of its passenger list was quite fetching.

“Carnacki … Isobel, yes?”

“Precisely.”

“Might I see your papers? You were a late booking, and it seems like some of the paperwork wasn’t properly filled in when you bought the ticket,” the receptionist glanced up, an apologetic smile on her lips, and Isobel flushed with something unlike frustration.

“Of course, uh, let me see …”

Isobel’s smile twitched.

“… there we are! And I see you have cabin 623, that’s on the starboard side of the vessel, ah,” the receptionist glanced up at Isobel, and the women felt herself reduced in her estimation, “the right-hand side. Marked with green stripes along the floor, you see?”

“Yes,” Isobel sighed, “I do know what starboard means.”

“Oh! That’s wonderful, ma’am, now,” she tapped her desk, “I see that you have fifty pounds luggage allowance …”

The rest of their interaction went roughly as one might expect, and when Isobel finally lugged her bags off to her tiny berth she had no greater ambitions for the journey than to nurse her pride with whatever alcohol the airship might be able to provide and to avoid all unnecessary contact with the receptionist. The first part, at least, was easy; the ship had no fewer than three bars dispersed across its length, all conveniently near an entrance to its casino (gambling being the best way yet found to occupy passengers during a slow journey).

I do not mind travel. I could not conduct my work if I did. At its best it is an experience to savor; at its worst it is an inconvenient aside. This was of the latter type, and accordingly I spent most of it drunk. I believe that at one point I attempted to gamble, and as I disembarked with my wallet no lighter than when I boarded I must believe that I was successful, but the less said about the rest of my journey the better.

“Soooo,” Isobel’s dining partner said, rolling out the word as she toyed with her half-full glass, “you’re not from around these parts, are you, Miss Carnacki?”

“I am not, no.”

“The name’s a hint, but the accent is a dead giveaway. What is that, vintage Airstrip One?”

A calculated jab.

“I was raised in Britain, yes. After the liberation.”

The woman smirked at Isobel’s carefully neutral expression. Maybe getting under her skin wasn’t her original goal, but both of them were wine-flushed and unsatisfied, and she greatly enjoy the way Isobel kept on breaking eye contact to compose herself.

“The liberation? We put it differently here.”

“Do you? I was unaware”, Isobel replied, though of course she wasn’t. “Please, enlighten me.”

“I would be happy to, if you’d like to find some less polite company after dessert. Don’t want to get thrown off the ship,” she almost laughed at her own joke, “you know!”

“… well. You know which cabin I’m in.”

“I certainly do, ma’am.”

I have always despised the middle states. The coasts, at least, still retain something of the vitality of their founding, even if it has now been largely lost in senseless imitations of past glories. They are places where people can live, and are home to some of the most delightful collections of obscurities this side of the Atlantic—which, to forestall your question, I still do not dare to cross. Someday you will find me at your door, free of this horrid curse, but not yet—but the middle states are nothing. They are places where people come from.

Bismarck, North Dakota did nothing to disabuse me of this belief. It was a sad little city laid out according to aspirations which it could not begin to meet, and, worse, attired according to a style aping its own malformed past. I do not know what possessed me to think that this journey was a good idea—but you know me, my dear. I am so often seized by passions and left helpless to do anything save see them out, no matter what blighted depths they draw me into.

The zeppelin had arrived near midday, so after I deposited my things at a local hotel I was left with more than enough time to prepare for the coming journey. I acquired a car, a driver, and what camping supplies he thought would be necessary, and then proceeded to spend the rest of the daylight hours ensconced in one of the city’s few libraries, pouring over their maps of the region and the accounts I could find of Afterbirth’s earlier history and visits to its grave (of which there were plenty, for the States adore mysterious ruins, but precious few of them rang true).

My driver was a gruff old park ranger, an involuntary retiree from the States’ crumbling system of national parks. A lovely fellow, and I greatly enjoyed dining with him that night (as is my practice when employing helpers), for good conversation makes it so much easier to ignore when a meal leaves one wanting. The middle states so love meat and cheese that they forget every other flavor!

It was filling. No one could deny that, my dear, and I feel no shame in admitting that I was barely able to finish half of it.

The next day we began our drive north.

When Afterbirth lived it had squatted in a rough depression between two hills, huddling close to the ground as if to evade notice. In another context a watcher might have graced it with the title of “valley”, but here one hardly could. No road led to its forgotten foundations, and the car carrying Isobel and Horace (her temporary assistant) bounced and shuddered as it slowly pressed forward along the unmarked trail which was Afterbirth’s only link to the outside world.

Isobel sat, glowering at the scattered trees.

“Did you know,” Horace finally ventured, driven by some unknowably masculine drive to fill the car’s empty air, its radio having finally given out nearly half an hour prior, “that we’re just outside the Red River Valley here? Used to be a lake.”

“I did not.”

“There’s some really fascinating geology, honestly! Been a while since I last taught a class about it, but I’m sure I could hazard a—”

“Please don’t.”

“No?”

“No. I’m going to need to focus on more recent history, unless you have any inklings about what happened to Afterbirth.”

“Ah,” Horace tapped his chin, eyes entirely off the road, “I might have a bit to tell you there. See, there were plenty of disappearances in those times, people run off because they didn’t like where they were or murdered by bandits taking their things.”

“Perhaps, but I have my doubts. There was never any trace of the bodies found, and people have looked rather hard over the years. No sign of violence when detectives were first dispatched to investigate. Doesn’t fit a massacre at all.”

“Mmm, well,” Horace hemmed and hawed for a moment, in that inimitable style common to all men who have attained a certain age in public service, “in any case, I dare say we’re here.”

“Oh!” Isobel’s attention snapped to the car’s windows—and, indeed, the narrow path was opening onto the town’s sunken remains, the afternoon’s golden illumination an utterly unfit accompaniment for the darkness that Isobel was already certain lurked somewhere within them.

Little enough remained of Afterbirth. Foundations marked some of its former buildings, but of most there was no trace. Scatterings and gravel and rock seemed to mark its roads, but I could hardly swear even to the positioning of the town’s Main Street.

A century of ruin will erase so much, but …

Will you trust me, my dear, if I tell you that it felt like something more was at work? We have both seen other ruins. We know what should remain, and what should not, and I will swear to you that there should have been more trace of the town than there was—and that several of the traces I found, which I will now tell you of, should not have endured.

We found an unbroken, though dusty, mirror, of the appropriate style for the time of Afterbirth’s demise. We found fresh charcoal-stains marking a collapsed chimney’s bricks. We found an un-aged musket emerging from the trunk of an ancient maple. And, as night began to fall, we found a perfectly preserved photograph of a crowd thronging a street in celebration of some unknown parade.

I was gravely unsettled.

My helper seemed untouched, brushing it off as merely the sorts of tricks that local rapscallions might play on a visitor—but what local rapscallions? Afterbirth was fifty miles from any other town, and visited by precious few people each year!

It seemed better not to confront him with these questions. Solid disbelief is often more useful than even the ancient Saaamaaa Ritual when it comes to warding oneself against the darker sorts of manifestations, and we set about preparing for the night—him with our tent and fire, and me with the Electric Pentacle and lengths of insulated wire studded with projective antennae sufficient to enclose both our camp and our vehicle in an adequate approximation of the Defensive Star, insulating us from whatever might find us in the night.

I now believe that this was a mistake.

The rain woke Isobel, a soft patter-patter on the tent’s nylon walls. She grumbled and turned over, eager to return to sleep, but the motion brought her face-to-face with Horace—awake and staring wide-eyed at the tent’s little mesh window.

He saw her motion and shushed her before she could begin to talk, gesturing towards the outside in response to her confused look—and when she cast her eyes upon that window too, she saw, by the ample light of the half-full moon and the cloudless sky, that whatever visitor their tent had attracted was certainly not a natural rain.

Her blood ran cold as it kept on tapping on their tent, and her mind whirled through possibilities—what sort of thing might have found them, passing through the Electric Pentacle so easily? A classic haunting, some Saiitii Manifestation capable of forming within the pentacle’s bounds? Or, worse, something that had already been there, which she had trapped within—for what might have lingered in Afterbirth’s soil after the town fell to ruin?

She could hardly begin to say.

The patter of rain continued for the remainder of the night, never intensifying and never subsiding, until it finally departed with the first breath of dawn. Isobel did not sleep another wink, eyes flicking towards the noise of each fresh touch, petrified in her sleeping bag—but Horace quickly returned to sleep, proving too used to the mysteries of the States’ uncanny depths to be of any use against them.

There was little enough to find in the morning. The Electric Pentacle still buzzed away, drawing its electricity from the car’s battery; the wire marking the boundaries of its insulating vibrations was unmoved. Not a twig was broken nor a leaf bent, and yet, when Horace and Isobel finally stood outside their tent and peered around the ruins—

“That’s not right,” Horace growled.

“What?”

“We weren’t here last night. We were … fifty feet thataway,” he pointed, “you can tell by the tree.”

Isobel stared at the tree, and then at Horace. She was no woodsman. “You sure?”

“Yeah. I remember, because I looked at that tree and thought, huh, that’ll be a good place to piss if I need to in the night. Because it was distinct and near, you see? But now it’s over there.”

“… I see,” Isobel eventually replied, barely hiding her disgust. “So that’s …”

“Bad. See,” Horace’s voice settled into a more rehearsed register, some remnant of his park ranger training coming to the surface as he shared his wisdom, “there are plenty of things out in the woods, yeah? Weird creatures. Things the natives knew about and didn’t tell the settlers, because why’d you tell someone who’s killing you how not to die? And I’ve run into plenty weird things in my time, but nothing that patters away at your tent and moves you somewhere you didn’t lie down to sleep. It’s fucking weird, Miss Carnacki, and you’ll have to pardon my language in the face of something like this.”

“Okay,” Isobel nodded, “so what—”

“I think we get out of here and eat breakfast on the road. Don’t want to draw any more attention than we already have.”

Even now I do not know what I awoke among Afterbirth’s abandoned foundations. It was not of this earth, nor, I think, of any proximate celestial sphere; but beyond that there is little space for speculation. It was once intelligent, even if its thoughts were stolen, and it was capable of acting with a purpose that is uncanny even among the most developed hauntings, though I cannot say what that purpose was, nor what became of it once it claimed Afterbirth as its own.

I am deeply unsettled, my dear, and there is little I can do but count myself lucky that my grandfather’s electric pentacle serves as well now as it did in his day. You will be greatly unhappy with me for relying on it so, of course, and do not doubt that I plan to muster my own defenses in the coming weeks—for I have heard the tap of raindrops on my windows on clear nights and I worry that I might still retain some of the attention I attracted there—and perhaps even implement some of the improvements I have been weighing since I first read the transcripts of the Garders Lectures …

But that is immaterial.

For now I am well enough, and safely ensconced in my rooms just outside Harvard’s walls, and thinking of you. Know that there is nowhere I would rather be than at your side except in your arms—and, god willing, I will soon find a way to make that possible once again.

Always yours, in every way that matters, Isobel Carnacki