Inktober 2019 Day Three: Many Questions are Raised…

Inktober Prompt: Bait
Goldspot Prompt: Venom

Bridie, Bridie, Bridie,

You must calm down! You write in such a panic that I can hardly decipher your meaning. It has always been so: Remember when we were were small and you tore up your basement steps all in a state, so terrified you couldn’t form words? You tugged my sleeve until I crept down the stairs with you, only to find a “monster” made of a mop, some towels, a bucket, and the ambient moonlight?

Don’t be upset; I’m not implying that you’re inventing monsters now. But you tend to be less than articulate when you are frightened. 

I shall tell you what I’ve extrapolated from your note, then you will tell me how well I understood your letter, and then we shall figure out what to do.

So: two days ago (is that right?), while caring for your father (that part is clear), he became, you wrote, “agitated.” What do you mean by that? Was in in pain, angry — disturbed in his mind, in his faculties? You say, “He insisted with a strange urgency that I go for a walk, out in the woods where we used to play>” What was strange about his desire for you to get some air? Could he be feeling ill at ease that you spend so much time in his chamber and might he merely wish for you to care for yourself by visiting the scene of so many of our innocent games? Has Dr. Morgan noticed a change in his demeanour?

Now, Bridget, I come to the part that most puzzles me. To calm your father, you agreed to the walk (good) and strolled down the path to the pond (how well I know that lane!). As you walked, you told me, “the trees became strange.” In what sense, Bridget dear? Odd? Your tone implied that the trees, the ones we climbed, that grew as we grew among them, were unfamiliar. But how could that be?

And then your story becomes strange indeed. You wrote that a fog, a “miasma, a mist full of venom,” filtered through the trees. No — wait; you write that it emanated from the trees. (How could that happen?) It was, you maintain, an unnatural fog, one that thickened behind you and, you seemed to say, breathed a venom that drove you, running, toward our pond. Please explain how a mere fog was “venomous.” Was it truly poisonous or, perhaps, was it infected by your fears for your papa, by the sometimes fetid air of the sick room? I do not doubt you as much as it might seem, but I want to be sure I understand what you’re telling me.

Bridie, you end so wildly!: “Bait! Bait! Nothing but bait! My skirt covering nose and mouth, I ran ran ran. Instinctive feet, somehow home. And a note to you.”

If you wrote me after such a shock, I can well understand why your earlier note carried such a pall with it, a pall that has only grown heavier after reading your letter today. Again, I urge you to write swiftly back to your

Steadfast friend,
Hannah

Inktober Day Two: A sense of foreboding steals in…

Inktober Prompt: Mindless
Goldspot Prompt: Chill

Inktober Day Two

2 October, 2019

Well, Bridie,

As happens so often, our letters must have crossed in the post. I was pleased to see it; I was expecting your recipe for pumpkin soup — goodness knows I’ve asked for it often enough!

Your missive started out well enough; I am pleased that your dear papa is improving. But, Bridget, as I read on, I confess a chill brushed through my soul and left a pattern of ice crystals there. I can hardly say why. There seemed to be a creeping, mindless aura to your words that has settled over my own brain like a living mist and has quite put me out of countenance.

Write back at once to either reassure or confide in

Your anxious friend,
Hannah

P.S. And please don’t forget the soup recipe!