At some point or another, every known mystic on the island has predicated something terrible about Barry Dodd. Slightly Mystical Mary was adamant only a few months ago that Barry would be killed by a hideous monster from beyond the stars. Clearly she was wrong.

Some of you well remember when, ten years ago or so, Agatha Innovation Jones had a series of highly accurate predictive dreams about future events. The one thing she got wrong during that period of extreme enlightenment, was that Barry Dodd did not go on a sudden killing rampage in the vicinity of Old Gaunt Town. It is of course possible that her prediction prevented the attacks as for weeks afterwards people shunned the old town even more thoroughly than usual, and shunned Barry for good measure. We had a special food parcel delivery team leaving sustenance at his door in case the cause of the anticipated killing rampage was transformation brought on by extreme hunger, or death.

But in the end, none of it happened, and Eustace Pennygoat had had some kind of vision about how Barry was going to summon an elder God so a lot of people wanted to follow him round and keep an eye on him instead. He ended up also being followed about by a swarm of teaselheads, which as far as we know don’t constitute an elder god even when they band together in large numbers.

I remember when part time astrologer Leniency Jones predicted that Barry Dodd, under the influence of the sign of The Cuttlefish Overlords, would return to the sea and assume his true form. He didn’t.

I remember when Barry started an ambitious allotment scheme to try and grow vegetables that would not fight back. Cuthbert Rockbottom – a recently shipwrecked rune master – assured us that Barry’s digging would uncover the grave of an ancient monster that would devour us all. This did not happen. Cuthbert Rockbottom died shortly thereafter – apparently he got lost in the dark and walked off a cliff. He may not have been the island’s greatest seer.

There are of course many other such examples, but these remain my personal favourites. Barry has foxed the would-be prophets one final time by dying quietly at home in an entirely unpredicted way. Both Eustace Pennygoat and Leniency Jones assured me that it was just a ruse, and that all the signs made it clear to both of them that on the seventh day he would rise up and eat the faces of anyone who saw him. It is day eight, readers, and I have no eaten faces to report to you.

Barry Dodd is the director who gave us Ragged Isle (which we love)  http://www.raggedisle.com/ . His current project is Night Is Falling https://www.nightisfalling.com/

Barry’s death was brought to you by the Hopeless Maine Kickstarter. We’re all out of individual graves, but if you back the project and would like to be killed off with a bunch of other people and stuffed into a mass grave, just let us know. We’d be delighted to throw you on the pile…

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/countrostov/tales-of-hopeless-maine