Land of the Blighted: Part One

Mary’s visions had begun small and scattered. A flash of a clawed hand tracking grooves in a rock. Dark waves breaking on a cliff. A pair of milky black eyes floating alone in a void, just staring on. They were simple, easily lost in the tangle of her dreams. But then they had begun to invade her waking moments. The first time she had been possessed by one of these visions, she had been riding by horse back to Jacksonville, her eyes lost to a sight of horror that had her gripping the reins and spooking the horse.

Terrifying visions were not an uncommon event for Mary. When she was not serving as hostess or First Lady, she held private seances for the distraught and the curious, which were made all the more exclusive out of necessity; everyone wanted a front row seat of Mary Todd Douglass piercing the veil between the living and the dead. But that was why these apparitions were so startling. Mary had always possessed a connection to people that extended beyond the reaches of the mortal plane, one that allowed her to call them back into her world, or speak through her a message for their loved ones. And as any Medium could expect when dealing in matters of spirits and mysticism, that sometimes meant encountering darker spirits, and even demons.

But this was something definitively out of the ordinary. Every day, and always at the most inconvenient times, Mary saw this; an island once rich with greenery now pale, like rot. A dense fog filled the space between it and the open sea, and it seemed to curl and snap at any who drew close. Clouds that constantly swirled above, coating the land in an eternal twilight. There was very little light in this once human inhabited place, with the only bright flashes coming from the streaks of sickly green lightning. And that illuminated the true terrors of this place: the Demons.

There was not just one creed of them, but ilk from every manner of hell, both the ones that humans believed in and the ones that existed beyond their religious ramblings. Some were scaled, others leathery, and a few covered in hairy hides. They ranged from the smallest worm-like beasts, ones designed to crawl down your throat and take you over from the inside out, to tall near giants with long limbs, who bent and stretched to hide behind trees as they stalked you through the woods. And none of them petrified her as much as the visage of what lay to the south of the isle. It was formless, like the black water of a river swollen with plague ridden corpses had decided to rise into the air. But it was very real, like Death had spit upon the earth and given birth to something most unholy. And every time Mary was assaulted by the sight of this place, it grew bigger, larger, and gained definition until it could craft whatever it needed from its inky self, wings to soar over its subjects and claws and fangs to rend the beasts who got in their way. It was growing stronger, and what Mary felt, or rather what the spirits sharing this awful sight felt, was that it was preparing something. To escape. For there was only one place that Mary could be seeing, the place so overtaken by demonic infestation that the British were forced to flee to American shores. The Land of the Blighted.

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Mary Todd Douglass looked back to the shore slowly disappearing behind her as the ship beneath dipped and rose with the swell of the waves. She hated to leave at such a tumultuous time, but the visions had grown to be so often that she had come to realize that they were not meant to taunt and terrify her, but were intended as a warning. Perhaps because she was not just another of the dime a dozen Mediums, but the First Lady, they had chosen her to sail to the dreaded isle. To do what she didn’t know, hence the companions that she had sought out before departing, to cover all the bases.

*John Hughes the Archbishop

(The first Archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York, in fact, whose aggressive personality garnered him the nickname “Dagger John.” Though potentially a problematic combination given both Mary’s and Miss Yen’s (see below) skill sets, Mary felt that he would have the stomach for this task.)

*Beatrice Yen the Witch

(Her parents were part of the second wave of those who had fled the invasion, and that was after their families had immigrated from China to Britain. Her grandmother had arrived in a country that looked down on anyone whose skin was darker or whose eyes were narrower than theirs, and she had found sanctuary and apprenticeship with a witch, Jane Wenham. She had taught her daughter the arcane arts, who then taught Beatrice in the new world.)

*Henry al-Samiya the Imam

(While his mother had been a member of the surviving aristocracy in America, his father had come from beyond Europe, from a world of dry deserts and mountains. As their lovechild, he had been raised as one of the nobility, and raised Christian, but had ultimately rejected the religion for his father’s.)

*Liliana Shushmit the Nun

(No, not the Catholic kind, but Buddhist. She had arrived in America in 1820 as an orphan, and found sanctuary among Monks from her country. She followed enough of their practices for room and board that she eventually decided to become one of them.)

*Jacob De Cordova the Rabbi

(British, Spanish, Jewish, and of Jamaican nationality, this man was a prime example of the American melting pot. After immigrating he moved to the newly founded Texas, where he quickly became both a political and religious leader. Hopefully he survives the encounter to fulfill that bright potential.)

There was also the crew, but it had taken a small fortune out of the President’s coffers to even get them close to the country once known as Britain.

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The six of them sat bobbing in their small boat, looking out at the approaching barrier of mist as the Jacob Bell sped away as fast as the oarsmen could row. Though they had all had their fair amount of demonic encounters, exorcisms and such didn’t have an effect on an otherworldly mist. So while the rest of them used the oars to continue on through the frigid waters, Beatrice began casting a spell to carve a path through the fog. It had first appeared alongside the demons, and had remained since the dark events of 1755. The English were able to flee out of it, but since then no one had been able to make their way to the coast. The few who had dared to cross the sea and reached the mist found their ships sunk, and themselves devoured by the demons that preferred the watery depths.

93 years later, and the barrier stood, and like the people that couldn’t get back in, the demons couldn’t get out.