Group RP 𝐄𝐥𝐬𝐞𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 // Worldbuilding

[chap]

THE RECORD KEEPER

He dwells in the crypts of the old church. This is not conjecture nor is it superstition. I have seen him with my own eyes.

Beneath St. Else Chapel there ar passages the priest does not speak of openly. Old storage rooms. Burial alcoves sealed with damp stone. A place where the air tastes of candlewax long cooled. And there, always deeper than expected, is the scratching sound. Pen against parchment.

The Record Keeper sits at a plain table surrounded by stacks of books and papers, some so old they crumble at the edges, others strangely fresh, their ink still wet as if written moments ago. He does not look up. He does not speak. He simply records.

Names. Dates. Events that have not yet happened. On one occasion, I saw my own handwriting among the piles; notes I had not written. Descriptions of things I had not yet witnessed. Margins filled with corrections, as though someone were editing my life in advance. Father Mallory refuses to descend into the crypts anymore. He claims the Keeper once wrote his name, paused, and then slowly drew a line through it. Three days later, an older man on the island who had been attending church every Sunday for years forgot Father Mallory's face entirely.

Not dementia. Not drink. Just absence.

It is said that the Keeper does not chronicle history. He catalogs what the island allows to remain. Sometimes pages go missing from parish records. names vanish from census lists. Old photographs lose their subjects like breath on glass. People call this forgetting. I do not. I believe it is bookkeeping.

The Record Keeper never rises from his chair. Yet the archives grow taller, the stacks never diminish.

And the scratching continues, steady and patient, as though the island itself is dictating... and he is only taking it down.

— E. Thorne​

 

[chap]

THE RUST SAINTS
I have not seen them.

This must be stated plainly, if only to preserve the thin difference between record and myth.

The Rust Saints are spoken of only in lowered voices by those who once worked beneath Whitlock's machines. They were not islanders, most of those men. They came from the mainland in decades past when the factory still breathed, when shifts still changed, when the ferry brought in workers who did not yet understand what sort of place they had agreed to labor within. The oldest among them spoke of figures far below the production floors.

Hooded shapes. Chain-draped silhouettes standing motionless in unused corridors, as though waiting for instruction that never came.

No one claimed to approach them. No one claimed bravery enough for that. The stories always ended the same way:
A man turns a corner.
He sees something wrong.
And he backs away without ever looking twice.

Some insisted the Saints were not objects at all, but presences; industrial reverence given form. Not guardians, but remnants of devotion, rusting prayers left in the dark. The detail that repeats most often is the sound. Not footsteps. Not voices. Only the slow, patient creak of metal under weight, echoing through pipe and concrete long after the machines themselves fell silent. One worker, drunk enough to speak honestly, said that the Saints were only 'listening'. Listening for the thing the factory was built around.

Another said this:
"They ain't worshippin' God down there. They're worshippin' the work."

Of course, these are only stories, but St. Else is an island that feeds on stories.

And the Whitlock Factory has always been the hungriest mouth on it.

— E. Thorne​

 

[chap]

THE SPIRE WORM
There are some things the sea keeps quiet out of courtesy.

And there are other things it keeps quiet because no one would return to speak of them properly.

The Spire Worm belongs to the latter. I did not name it. I have never seen it. I am only writing down what was told, in the careful cadence of men who do not exaggerate because they do not need to. It was a fisherman's tale, retold to me over a counter smelling of brine and bait.

The story begins, as they always do, with fog. A trawler too far out. A compass that will not settle. The Spires looming somewhere ahead like broken teeth in the ocean. They say you can hear the Worm before you see it. Not the waves, but something else. A dragging sound, deep beneath the water, like metal over stone. The fisherman, Burt or someone Burt became in the telling, claimed the sea went strangely still. Not calm. Held. As if something vast below had paused to listen.

And then the water near the boat buckled. No splash or churning, but a great fold. A shape rose, long and pale and ridged, more suggestion than body at first, as though the ocean itself were trying to remember how to form it. They call it a worm only because the mind needs something familiar to hold onto. But Burt said it was too large for the word. Its length disappeared into the fog in both directions, as if it were not emerging so much as passing by.

No eyes, but a round mouth filled with teeth. The texture of something old, scarred and barnacled, moving with the slow certainty of a thing that never needed to hurry. It circled the Spires like a guard dog, surfacing close enough for the men aboard Burt's vessel to smell it. And then, without drama, it went under again. The sea resumed its motion. The fog resumed its lie. No one spoke until they were back on the island and, even then, only one sentence was offered: "That thing ain't huntin'; it's guardin'."

I asked Burt what, exactly, it guards. He did not answer. He only looked out toward the harbor, toward the unseen line of ocean beyond it, and after a long moment, he said: "Don't go thinkin' the Spires are just rocks."

— E. Thorne​

 

[chap]

WHISPER CROWS
The crows on St. Else are not unusual at first place. They are the same black birds found anywhere along the New England coast; clever, watchful, patient. They gather in the pines. They perch on fenceposts. They pick at the margins of the world. But here, they do not behave like birds. They behave like listeners.

It is said among the locals, never as a joke, that you must not speak too loudly in the woods. Not because something will hear you, but because something will answer. The first reports are always small. A visitor muttering to themselves on a trail, a name spoken aloud in frustration, a careless sentence thrown into the fog. And then, from above, from the branches, the same words returned. Not in a bird's voice, but in your own. Wrongly placed. Wrongly timed. Wrongly shaped. Whispered warnings and grim omens.

"Turn around."

"You don't belong here."

"He's behind you."

The crows do not mimic as parrots do. They do not chatter. They do not squawk. They speak only when spoken to first and, even then, only in fragments; as though the forest itself is testing out your language through their throats. Some insist it is superstition. Others, simply nerves gone awry. Hazel Quill, of course, insists the crows are only being polite. "They don't like the silence," she once told me. "Silence makes room for other things."

There are stranger details, if one listens carefully. Some say the Whisper Crows gather more heavily near Whitlock Manor. Some say they do not appear at all on clear days. Some say that if you speak a secret aloud beneath them, you will forget it by morning, but the crows will remember. I have never heard them speak in my own voice. Not yet. But I have walked beneath their branches and felt the weight of their attention.

As if they are not only watching you, but rehearsing.

— E. Thorne​

 

[chap]

WHITLOCK HOUNDS
They are seen at the borders first. Not at Whitlock Manor itself, but in the treeline surrounding it, where the roads narrow and the land becomes quieter, as though sound is less welcome.

The locals call them Whitlock Hounds. They resemble wolves in silhouette. Dark bodies, low heads, the patient stillness of predators who do not need to rush. Their legs drawn out like wire, like stilts, like something stretched past what bone should permit. They stand higher than they ought to, their proportions making the mind recoil even before fear arrives.

Some islanders claim they are merely dogs kept by the family. Others laugh too quickly when they say it. The Hounds do not bark. They do not pant. They move silently through pine and mist, their limbs bending with an unnatural grace, as if gravity negotiates with them differently. They are not hunting game. They are not scavenging. They patrol the boundary, the unspoken perimeter of Whitlock land.

Gideon Marsh once told me he saw one watching him from between the trees, head tilted slightly, considering whether he was permitted to exist where he stood. He backed away. Slowly. The hound did not follow. It simply remained, motionless, guarding nothing visible. It is said they will not chase you. Not unless you run. Not unless you cross a line you did not know was there. Hob Carrow claims the old Whitlocks bred them generations ago to keep thieves away. Hazel Quill claims they are not bred at all.

"They're what the manor sends out," she said, stroking Pebble absently. "Like a hand feeling in the dark."

Pebble will not go near the manor road. That alone makes me wary. I do not know if the hounds are loyal. I do not know if they are alive, in the classic sense of the term. Only that the Whitlocks do not need fences.

The island provides its own.

— E. Thorne​

 

[chap]

THE WOMAN IN THE CORNER BOOTH
She appears at 3:17 am.

Not every not and not in any pattern a sensible mind can hold. Some weeks she is spoken of twice. Other months she is not seen at all. She offers no schedule. Only the hour. Always the same booth. The corner, nearest the darkened window, where the diner's lamp throws more shadow than light. Mara Keene insists the bell above the door does not ring when she arrives. Janey Carrow insists no one pours her coffee.

And yet, there it is. A cup, steaming faintly.

She sits with the stillness of something that has already been waiting a long time. Hands folded or resting loose in her lap. Hat brim low. Face half-lost in the soft gloom. She does not eat. She does not read. She does not look at anyone directly. Those who have spoken to her describe the same unease: the sense that she is listening, but not to them. Listening instead to the building itself; the pipes, the settling wood, the slow breath beneath the floorboards.

Once, Hob Carrow laughed and called it a ghost story, but no one stays in the diner past three when the fog is thick. Janey told me she blinked once and the booth was empty, the coffee still warm as if she had never left at all. I saw her only once. October 12th. She lifted her head slightly, not toward me, but toward the window beside her. As though watching something outside that I could not yet see.

It is whispered that if she ever turns fully to look at you, you will not leave the diner unchanged. That some part of you will remain seated there long after your body walks out.

I cannot confirm such things.

— E. Thorne​

 

[chap]

THE WOODEN BRIDE
They are always found in the woods.

Hanging from low branches along woodland paths, swaying slightly as if placed there with care. A crude effigy made of twigs, dried flowers, scraps of ribbon gone stiff. Always facing the trail. Always fresh. No one admits to making them. No one claims to have seen hands at work. And yet, they appear often enough that the island has developed the usual habits of avoidance: eyes averted, footsteps quickened, conversations reduced to murmurs.

Janey Carrow calls them 'bad luck dressed up pretty'.

Hazel Quill calls them 'a ceremony without guests'.

If you take one down, it follows you into sleep. People dream of a wedding in the woods: lanterns hung from branches, unseen music, vows spoken by voices that do not belong to any priest. The bride is never fully visible, only suggested in pale fabric between trees. If you leave it where it hangs, you dream nothing at all. A blank night, as though the island has taken your mind and wrapped it carefully away.

Sheriff Pike once attempted to remove an effigy himself. He returned with his hands shaking and would not say what he saw in the dream, only that he woke tasting earth. The wooden brides are not violent. They do not pursue. They simply wait, suspended and patient.

A reminder. An invitation.

Or perhaps a warning that the island is always preparing a ceremony and one day, someone will be required to attend.

— E. Thorne​