Cold Morning in Blackmoor
Talbot Hall, once stood above the abject squalor of the village below it. A reminder of the difference between the classes that lived in Blackmoor. But now it sat in cinder and rubble. The fire had been started in the sitting room, where two beasts ripped from folklore and nightmare did battle. Father and son, locked in immortal combat. Now, only ruin was left as a monument to their sins.
Gwen Conliffe who had helped free the last living Talbot from the curse put upon him by his father stood silently as she surveyed what remained of the hall in which she had to her dismay called home for a year. First being engaged to Sir John’s son Ben, and then falling in love with his other son Lawrence after Ben had been slain. She shed a single silent tear for the two men who fell here. And cursed the man who had brutally taken them, all so he could have her alone.
It was a cold morning. It was always a cold morning in Blackmoor. But there on the breeze carried the warmth of the fire with it. It wasn’t much. Only a brief embrace before returning to the frigidness as per usual. Within the tavern of the town sat Inspector Francis Aberline. In his hand was a glass of straight whiskey he was using to numb the pain he was in. Though it helped with the physical, it was the spiritual that caused him to drink himself further and further into stupor still. For he had been attacked by Lawrence Talbot the night before. Or more accurately, he had been attacked by the beast that Lawrence Talbot had turned into.
And, if the legends were true as they shockingly seemed to be now…then in time Francis would indeed befall the same curse. And, whenever the moon was full and the wolfsbane bloomed he would stalk the night as not a man or a beast but something in between. A Werewolf.
That was something that Aberline did not want to think about, but as he drank more the more, he realized that it was something he couldn’t ignore. He had always prided his sharp intellect and hold on logic and reason. But now, it was all crashing down. Just like when nothing ever came of the Ripper case, The man just seemed to bugger off. No longer stalking the whores of Whitechapel. This of course was worse. The Ripper had destroyed his reputation in Scotland Yard, and now this had tarnished his immortal soul.
The girl, the Conliffe girl had told him what had been told to her by the gypsies. That release could only come from someone who loved him. As Aberline got to the bottom of his pint he concluded that he would never find peace then. There was no one who loved him and no one who he loved for that matter either.
The thought popped up a few times in his mind, to take out his service pistol, put it inside of his mouth, and pull the trigger. But would that accomplish anything more than hurting him badly? Would he be dead? Would he survive? Would he seem dead only for the pale light of the full moon to bring him back as a monster? That last one was of course the worst case. The very thought of it chilled his blood more than the damned cold of this accursed little village.
For now, all Aberline could do was weep.