Chapter 356: Collection of Strange Tales

Richard picked up his pen again.

He thought of the Underground Taboo Songs kept in the Briston Municipal Library.

Those miners hadn’t received a day of formal education in their entire lives.

Some could only draw their names in crooked scrawls, and those whose names had too many letters simply settled for leaving a thumbprint.

A press of the finger into an inkpad, another press onto the paper, and that counted as a signature.

But their rules? Every single one of them was weighed down by human lives.

“If you hear your name, don’t look back and don’t answer. Ignore it three times and it goes looking for the next guy.”

“Spit the first bite of your meal down in the pit into your palm and smear it on the shaft wall.”

“Never borrow a lamp down in the pit.”

These rules had survived for decades, even centuries, yet no Scholar had ever written them into a published paper.

They survived because the dead had tested them with their lives.

Someone didn’t look back, and they lived; someone else did, and they were gone.

The old men who survived told the stories to the newcomers. The newcomers remembered, and they lived too.

That was how it was passed down, from one person to the next.

Scholars wrapped their knowledge in dozens of layers of packaging, until even those at the very center couldn’t be bothered to unwrap it.

The rules of Practitioners were passed by word of mouth and never written down, out of fear that laymen might see them and stir up trouble.

The entire system kept its knowledge locked inside. No one passed it outward.

Richard continued writing beneath the ruled line in his notebook.

“Tell stories to those who don’t understand, in a way they can understand.”

He paused his pen and added another line:

“So that after reading them, they’ll know which way to hide when things happen.”

...

The next day, it was already evening by the time classes ended.

Richard walked over to a public telephone booth and dialed Briston.

The phone rang four times before it connected.

“Hello?”

“It’s me, Mom.”

“Did something happen?”

That was always her first question.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Richard said, leaning against the wooden wall of the booth as the wind crept in against the back of his neck.

“How is school?”

“It’s fine.”

“Are you eating well?”

“I eat at the cafeteria every day, and an older girl from school often brings snacks.”

“Which one?”

“Sophia. The one who talked a lot last time we had a meal.”

“Oh... She’s a very nice girl.” His mother’s voice softened noticeably.

“Where’s Evelyn?”

“Doing her homework upstairs. Do you want to talk to her?”

“I wanted to talk to you for a bit first.”

Richard quickly finished exchanging the usual pleasantries.

“Mom, I’ve been thinking about writing something recently.”

“Write what?”

“A collection of stories.”

“It’ll be filled with the old rules and taboos passed down in different places.

“Some from the mining areas, some from the countryside, and some told by the fishermen over by the Harbor.

“I’ll write them out as interesting stories, so ordinary people will remember them after reading.”

The other end of the line went quiet. Only the faint, rhythmic sound of her breathing carried through the telephone wire.

“That essay you wrote last time.” Margaret’s tone shifted.

“Were you satisfied with it?”

The question struck right at the heart of the matter.

He thought for a moment.

“It was biting, sure, but... it wasn’t actually useful.”

“Then where do you think the problem was?”

Richard thought again, then repeated the advice his mother had given him in their Briston kitchen.

“Just write the story, and let the story speak for itself.”

“And did you do that last time?”

Richard opened his mouth, then closed it.

He hadn’t.

The readers had read an accusation: the cruelty of the poor relief system, the doors that opened and shut again and again, the lye stains permanently etched into the cracks of a washerwoman’s fingers.

Once the accusation was read, the anger flared up, only to fade away two days later.

“When you were little, you were afraid of the dark.”

His mother abruptly changed the subject.

“I told you a story once. Do you remember?”

“...Not really.”

A smile touched his mother’s voice.

“A mouse lived in a hole in the wall. Every night, it heard a voice outside calling it to come out.

“The mouse was terrified and asked its mother what to do.

“Its mother said, ‘Just remember three things.’

“‘First, when the voice calls you, don’t answer.’

“‘Second, if you do answer, don’t leave the hole.’

“‘Third, if you leave the hole, don’t look back.’”

Richard’s hand slipped down from the wooden wall.

He remembered the night she told him that story.

The old house from his memories, the tiny bedroom he’d shared with Evelyn until they were seven or eight.

The blankets were always damp in the winter, smelling of coal smoke and the faint, unyielding mustiness of old cotton.

He would curl up beneath the covers, only the tip of his nose exposed, flushed red from the cold.

His mother sat on the edge of the bed, a hand resting over his blanket, her voice pitched low so she wouldn’t wake her daughter.

In the next bed over, Evelyn was already asleep, smacking her lips. Occasionally she would roll over and kick the edge of her blanket to the floor.

“Your aunt is an associate professor. She uses Latin terminology every day.”

His mother’s voice carried through the telephone wire.

“When the students walk out the classroom door, they forget most of what they heard. But the mouse hole story my nanny told me when I was little...”

“Thirty years have passed, and I’ve never forgotten it.”

Richard leaned against the telephone booth and switched the receiver to his other hand.

“Stories live longer than lessons.”

Margaret spoke slowly.

“People forget lessons, but they don’t forget the stories that made them cry, laugh, or tremble in fear.

“Write whatever you want to write.

“Bury the lesson deep in the bones of the story, and let the readers chew it out themselves.”

Richard stood there gripping the receiver for a long time, saying nothing.

“Alright, we’ve talked too long. The phone bill is expensive.”

His mother’s voice returned to its usual everyday chatter. “Do you want me to get your sister...”

“No need, Mom. I just talked to her last week.”

“Then go to bed early. Don’t stay up late.”

“Got it.”

“Do you have enough warm clothes? The Imperial Capital is colder than Briston. The collar on your coat is too low to block the wind...”

“Mom, it’s enough.”

“Alright then... I’ll hang up?”

“Yeah, bye.”

Over the next few days, Richard found the time to draft a list.

The list was filled with the old rules he had personally experienced, heard from others, or read in encrypted texts since joining the trade.

Some of them were already organized in his notes. He picked out a few that were foundational, easy to grasp, and widely applicable, and started writing.

His first piece was set in a mining area, masking Briston under the fictional name Ironbridge.

In the winter of 1873, the Ironbridge coal mine hired a doctor to treat an apprentice.

The apprentice was fourteen, and he had come down with a high fever on his third day down in the pit.

When the doctor examined him, he found a wad of cotton dipped in wax stuffed into each of the boy’s ears.

He pulled the cotton out. It was clean. No blood, no pus.

He asked the foreman about it, and the foreman said it was an old rule.

He pressed further, asking what kind of old rule it was. The foreman just gave him a look and didn’t answer.

The doctor threw the cotton into the trash, prescribed some fever medication, pulled on his coat, and headed back toward town.

He stopped when he walked past the mine’s ventilation shaft.

From beneath the iron grate, a voice was calling out a name.

The doctor went back to find the foreman, who listened with a blank expression.

The foreman walked into the dormitory, pulled out a candle stub from under the apprentice’s pillow—one the doctor hadn’t paid any attention to earlier—lit it, and set it on the windowsill.

Then he took a packet of coarse salt from his pocket and sprinkled a line across the threshold.

He pulled up a stool, sat in the doorway, bit down on his pipe, and fell silent.

The doctor asked how long he was going to sit there.

“Until dawn.”

The doctor wanted to ask more, but the foreman wasn’t looking at him anymore.

The next day, the apprentice’s fever broke. On the doctor’s way back, he passed the ventilation shaft again and found it completely silent.

He made three more house calls to Ironbridge after that.

And every time he passed that ventilation shaft, he unconsciously slowed his steps.

His second piece was set at the Harbor.

A washerwoman living on the back streets of the docks had lost her husband.

His fishing boat was found, but he wasn’t on it. The blanket on his bunk was folded neatly.

Once winter set in, someone knocked three times on her back door every night.

She opened it once, but no one was there.

There was only a puddle of water on the steps. It looked like footprints, the toes pointing outward.

She sought out the retired old boatswain down at the docks.

“Next time someone knocks, ask a question... ask which road they took to get here.”

“Why?”

“Your husband was lost at sea. There are no roads on the sea.”

That night, three knocks sounded again.

The washerwoman stood behind the door and asked the question.

It was quiet outside for a long time.

Then a voice answered. It sounded just like her husband.

“I came from the water.”

For his third piece, he wrote a story tied to the market.

A housewife bought an old Bronze Mirror at the market for two pence. The stall owner claimed it was cleared out of a confiscated inn.

She hung it in her bedroom to use while combing her hair.

On the seventh day, her husband mentioned that her complexion looked better than it had recently.

On the fourteenth day, the widow next door who delivered their eggs asked where the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes had gone.

She went back to her bedroom and looked in the mirror.

The face in the mirror really had grown younger. The crow’s feet were gone, and the deep lines on her forehead had faded by half.

When she left for work, she turned right. But the textile mill was to the left.

She stopped after three steps and turned back around.

When she got home from work, she called for her dog.

The dog tilted its head, looked at her, and shrank back in fear.

It took him a day and a half to finish the first drafts of all three stories.

He sealed them into an envelope along with a short letter.

“Dear Miss Charlotte:

“Attached are the first drafts of three stories. Please review them.

“I wish to write a story collection, each piece between one and two thousand words, focusing on the bizarre tales and taboos passed down in various regions.

“On the surface, they are light reading for entertainment, but at their core, each story contains at least one old rule.

“They will show ordinary people what they ought to do if they ever encounter such things.

“The formatting borrows from the structure of medical case reports and the judicial summaries of circuit judges.

“Each piece is narrated by an ‘eyewitness,’ complete with the time, location, profession, and age of the individuals involved.

“This format makes them read like true events, while also allowing readers from different regions to relate to their own circumstances.

“If you believe there is a chance of publication, please forward them to the Editor-in-Chief.”

Charlotte replied quickly.

“I’ve read all three. The chill in your last piece was buried deep beneath the text; readers had to turn several pages before they felt the cold on the back of their necks.

“But this time, the chill creeps down the back of your neck from the very first line.

“The difference is that your last piece left readers angry, while this leaves them afraid.

“Fear is more effective than anger. Fear makes people follow instructions.”

Richard’s lips curled up slightly when he read that.

“Fear is more effective than anger.” Charlotte had nailed it perfectly.

He continued reading.

“The Editor-in-Chief has seen them. He says this material isn’t suitable for the Northern Literary Review right now.

“Wartime censorship is strict on horror literature, and the editorial department doesn’t want to invite trouble at a time like this.

“He suggested that you could self-publish them as pamphlets and distribute them through newsboys and street stalls.

“The newsboy distribution networks in the northern industrial cities are still operating. A penny pamphlet can be pushed out to dozens of cities.

“Newsboys aren’t regulated by the Censorship Bureau.

“Penny pamphlets fall into the category of ‘citizen entertainment reading.’

“They are in the same bracket as astrology guides, church sermon summaries, and Christmas recipes. No one will treat them as ‘publications’ and review them.”

Richard considered her suggestion seriously.

One penny could buy a hot pie in Briston, or a pint of milk in the Imperial Capital;

One penny was a seventh of what a female textile worker earned for two hours of labor.

The price was exactly right.

Another line had been added at the end of the letter.

“Also, the Editor-in-Chief asked me to tell you not to limit yourself to Northern stories.

“Write about the south, write about the Harbor, write about the cities behind the front lines.

“The more places people can relate to, the wider the reach.”

Richard folded the letter and tucked it into his drawer.

He leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, calculating a different sort of ledger in his head.

Distributing pamphlets through newsboys meant broad coverage, low barriers to entry, and loose censorship.

But the most crucial benefit wasn’t among those three.

The most crucial benefit was that the people reading them wouldn’t feel like they were being ‘educated.’

A miner fresh off his shift, drinking a penny-a-pint beer in a tavern, might casually flip through a couple of pages.

When he read the story, his first reaction would be, “Hey, this ghost story is pretty interesting.”

He wouldn’t feel like someone was preaching to him. He wouldn’t even realize he’d committed it to memory.

But if, one day, something called his name...

He would remember the story, plug his ears, and survive.

He turned back to his desk and began writing his reply.

“Thank you and the Editor-in-Chief for your advice. I’ll revise the Harbor piece.

“Regarding the self-published pamphlets, if the Editor-in-Chief knows of any reliable small-scale printing presses, please introduce me.

“Also, I would like to give this booklet a title. For now, I’m calling it the Collection of Strange Tales.”