When people who have never knowingly seen a goblin think of goblins, they think of Renunciation Jones.
Renunciation is not a goblin, this much we know about because island goblins are funny little energy beings who like to possess inanimate objects in order to mess about. In this regard they are much like demons. Whether there is any real difference between demons and goblins is at present uncertain. Renunciation certainly isn’t a demon.
If you ask Renunciation about any of this – as politely and circumspectly as you can – they will point out that living to a hundred and twenty seven years of age will do this sort of thing to anyone and that it is a small price to pay for immortality.
If you ask Condolences Jones – one of the three Jones grandmothers who might be the eldest living grandmother on the island – she disputes this. “I remember how Renunciation looked seventy years ago, and it was exactly the same as they are now. T’aint age. It’s on account of working with them night potatoes. Does things to your skin. Anyway Renunciation ain’t a day over eighty six, being a few years younger than me.”
The trouble with the elders of the Jones family is that none of them really seem to know how old they are, or how old anyone else is. This too can perhaps be attributed to long term night potato exposure.
It is possible to live to a considerable age on this island, although whether that counts as a blessing or some form of karmic punishment, is another question entirely.
There aren’t many people Mrs Beaten actively approves of, but Lawrence Wilson is most assuredly one of them. Such collars! The immaculate state of his cuffs sets him apart from all others.
Frampton Jones of course also has infamously good collars, but the printing press is unkind to cuffs and sometimes there are faint and inky stains on his wrists.
Pristine whiteness is not an easy thing to achieve, especially not in the damp, mould breeding environment of Hopeless, Maine. Yes, you can make very effective lye soaps from a mix of ashes and animal fats, but the whole process is so filthy that some people question whether it’s worth getting into that state in the hopes of getting cleaner later.
Residents who used to live elsewhere may remember how it was possible to sun bleach your white cottons and linens. While islanders do occasionally get to see the sun, it is seldom around for long enough or with enough intensity to do anything for a person’s shirts.
Of course there is speculation. Might Lawrence have entered into some infernal pact, trading his soul for his laundry? It’s amazing what people will consider when they are bored enough. Might he be possessed of some uncanny power? Can he summon the sun at will? Or drive dirt from his vestments using the power of his mind? Is it some kind of witchcraft? Although this point is often refuted because witches on the island do not have a reputation for excessive cleanliness and have always tended to wear dark colours that hide the stains
The truth has everything to do with using night potatoes for starching collars. Most sensible people would take out the eyes, as those just look troubling and unsuitable. However, if you only use the eyes, and you don’t mind the smell, and you can cope with the howling and never quite shaking off the feeling that the night potatoes are watching your every move, then this does indeed result in a very presentable shirt.
There was something extra magical about the circular grove upon Urthappel Hill. Many things in Hopeless Maine were magical, so most magical things did not tend to stand out in the way that they would on the mainland. But this circle of trees was quietly striking to those who knew the ways. A perfect circle of trees, exactly on top of the hill, with no other trees for quite some distance.
No stranger to magic and wyrdling ways, Lyssa loved this place. Almost every other day she would find some excuse to be out here, purposely diverting from the quickest route to take in the hill. Some days she would sit at the bottom of one of the bigger trees reading a book. Other days she would lie in the middle of the grove looking up at the circular gap in the leaves to the sky beyond. A few times she would take some food in a basket and eat a relaxed lunch in the grove. It always seemed so peaceful to her. Welcoming. She once brought a friend to the hill, but they wouldn’t step near the top, and ran away from her when Lyssa said they were being silly.
Then one evening, Lyssa found herself out later than she expected. The sun was almost down and it cast a mournful glow across the landscape. Walking a well-known path, Lyssa realised it would run close to the hill, so she left the path and set out across the field to reach it.
Have you ever noticed how everything looks different at night? Even the familiar can look strange and unknown. Places that are one way by day, are entirely another when the sun goes down. The hill seemed less welcoming now. A blackness wrapped itself around the grove of trees, a blackness that failed to dissipate as Lyssa drew nearer. Everything was the same only different. Despite the foreboding that now enveloped the place, Lyssa was not afraid. She was not lacking in magic, and this felt more like a warning than a threat – something to scare away the casual interloper. Her curiosity was burning inside her now and she sat down within sight of the grove, but not inside it. Something held her back – a sense that she was here tonight to witness rather than participate.
She was there for a while when she saw the first small lights in the distance, bobbing and weaving. They appeared to be clustered in small groups and were not particularly bright. As they came closer to the grove, she saw them for what they were, night potatoes on the move. She had heard stories and knew that they moved around, but this was the first time she had witnessed such a parade of the creatures. She kept still and silent – she was good at this, something she had had to perfect in the past. In any event they did not seem to notice her.
There was quite a number of the creatures, and they all moved together until they reached the first tree, whereupon they split up – each going to a separate trunk. Lyssa was intrigued – what could they be doing? As if to answer, each night potato started climbing their respective tree. It was clearly a challenging undertaking for them, tendrils barely equal to the task of ascending. Indeed a few fell almost straight away. After which they seemed to shake themselves and then started to climb again. Lyssa was fascinated. Why were they climbing the trees? What could they be doing? She sat for hours whilst the night potatoes continued their seemingly impossible mission. Many had reached the upper branches of the trees and were making their way along boughs that overhung the centre of the grove. Some were still struggling with their climb up the main trunk, and a few were on the ground, seemingly despondent that they had fallen off again.
A small ribbon of red light appeared on the horizon and Lyssa realised she had been there all night and that dawn was about to break. She looked up at the grove – about half of the night potatoes were at the end of branches with more still climbing the trees. Suddenly they all stopped. They all turned as one towards the distant horizon, seemingly sensing the dawn. They all turned back, and again, as one, jumped. Lyssa fell back from her sitting position – she was not expecting this. Why did they jump? What were they trying to achieve?
Many of the potatoes did not survive the fall and moved no longer. Some were carried away by their comrades who had not fallen so far, or were lucky.
And so it came to be that Lyssa became somewhat obsessed with the night potatoes mysterious ritual. It seemed to happen roughly every two weeks, coinciding with half or full moons. She stopped visiting the grove in the daytime – that no longer held any excitement for her. Now, she just came to see the night potatoes climb.
Many times, she saw them climb and many times she saw them fall. She wondered whether she should help in some way, or intervene. She thought about carving steps into the trunks, but that seemed unnatural and she knew the tree spirits would be unhappy with her, besides, that was not her way. She had a strong sense that this was something the night potatoes would have to do for themselves. By now she had realised that they didn’t seem to care that she was there, or didn’t even sense she was there, as she was able to enter the grove and observe them close up.
On one occasion a large proportion of the potatoes managed to complete the climb. At the end of the branches they held out their tendrils – the branches were just close enough that they could hold each other and create a circle – albeit with a few gaps. Just before dawn, they all jumped together – holding tendrils as they fell. Seeing this, Lyssa gasped. What was it all about? She had been standing by one of the bigger trees and knelt down to get a better look at the nearest potatoes. Most were not moving, whilst some were already limping away. A couple of the more mobile ones seemed to suddenly notice her and scuttled away to the nearest patch of darkness. A small one seemed to panic on seeing her and dug itself into the ground.
It was only a few weeks later that Lyssa experienced her transmutation. She had been standing in the grove watching the latest group of night potatoes attempt the circle. They seemed to be doing better than before. At this point there were no stragglers – all were making the climb. Lyssa found herself ridiculously excited – what if they all jumped together? What would happen? She found herself turning around to check on all the participants in the night’s ritual. Higher and higher they climbed. Then out onto the limbs of the trees – moving towards the centre of the grove along narrower and narrower branches. Lyssa was spinning faster now, trying to see when the circle would be closed. Tendrils were reaching out – seeking their potato pals. Laughing, and almost dancing, Lyssa looked up. Before she had a chance to move the circle was complete and the night potatoes had jumped.
There were a few moments when Lyssa was not sure what had happened, but then she felt tendrils in her hair, her ears, her mouth and her nostrils. Strangely, she was not afraid, not weirded out by this, but accepted it. There was a ring of night potatoes around her head, and she could see more night potatoes entering the grove. She felt compelled to pick up a solid branch lying on the ground – it became her staff. A few of the bigger potatoes climbed the staff and settled upon the top. She sensed a calling, a message, a title. The night potatoes around her head withdrew and made their way to the ground. She stood in the centre of the grove, hundreds of Night Potatoes all around. This was her coronation. She had become The Queen of the Night Potatoes.
No one jumps from the moon with night potatoes. Not even in the strange hallucinations that are brought on by eating the wrong sort of seaweed during a complex occult rite designed to make you think that you are in fact jumping from the moon.
Even when you go out into the woods on a dark night, compelled to find the moon fruit that appeared to you in a dream, you will not jump from the moon with night potatoes.
If you wake, shivering in the dawn to find yourself on the roof, in the company of a donkey who is probably chewing your clothes, you will not remember night potatoes helping you jump.
They would like you to jump with them, though. It takes them hours to climb trees in straggling groups, their tendrils barely equal to the task of ascending. The lights of their eyes guide them, and might draw attention to their ascent. If you followed them, you could jump with them, but this absolutely never happens.
When the time is right, the night potatoes link tendrils and, under the watchful gaze of the full moon, throw themselves into the sky. If you stand in just the right place and look up, it will seem that they are falling from the moon. They are not. But they do certainly fall. All the way down to the cold, hard ground.
Older and more cynical night potatoes will be there to observe the impact. Eyes are collected for the making of vodka.
As the night potatoes themselves cannot or will not speak, we can only speculate at their motives. There are those who say they do it to placate their own strange gods. There are those who say that night potatoes are evil, and determined to eradicate foolishness and gullibility from their gene pool. Others speculate that it is the urge to jump from the moon that sends them up trees and that they just don’t get physics and have no idea how far away the moon is.
Whatever the truth of it, we can assume that Lovecraft would find them entirely upsetting.
Human residents of the island make night potato vodka whenever they forget what a bad idea this turned out to be last time someone tried it. The usual method is to capture and kill night potatoes, then ferment them – usually in some sort of bucket. The bitterly cold weather in winter makes it easy enough to freeze off the excess water. What results is often excellent for starting fires, and likely to leave a drinker mad, blind, glowing, or all three.
This is as nothing when compared to the night potato vodka made by night potatoes. Night potatoes are not known for eating each other. However, sometimes a night potato dies of natural causes, and this will go unnoticed by their comrades until decay starts to set in. There is a particular sort of fungi that grows on the eyes of decomposing night potatoes, and it is from this fungi that the night potatoes themselves brew their vodka in tiny receptacles.
Whether it is the naturally glowing eyes of the night potatoes that result in the fungi also glowing, or whether it is the fungi that glow and the night potatoes gain their eye glow through drinking it, is hard to say. My suspicion is that this is a more complex and circular relationship.
If a human has ever partaken of the vodka made by night potatoes, none has ever survived to tell the tale. It does not suggest itself as an especially survivable experience but no doubt at some point, someone will be willing to test this theory – either for science, for poetry or in the hopes of finally escaping from the island.
With so few ways to pass the long, grim evenings, it’s a sad inevitability that some people die from their attempts to alleviate the boredom. It must be said that Becca ‘poo-head’ Willson has done remarkably well to survive this long, given her penchant for games involving sharp and pointy implements.
Last week’s drinking contest at The Squid and Teapot resulted in five casualties, and while the other four participants might yet recover – as yet there’s no news from the Hunger Hill Home for the Weak and Confused – Rebecca Willson, did not. She did however, win the drinking competition in question having seen her four challengers slump beneath the table in turn, while she continued with the night potato vodka, seemingly unaffected.
Night potato vodka is a new delicacy for the island, but one that we may not enjoy again in the future, given the implications.
Somewhere in the second round of contested drinking, observers noted that Becca had become unusually pale and transparent – something she had not previously been known for. During the third round, she began to emit a faint glow and by the fourth round that glow had become pronounced. Friends begged her to stop drinking but reports have it that she laughed, did a little bum-wiggling dance and went for another bottle. Shortly afterwards, the glow increased, until by the end of the evening, there was mostly just glow, and very little corporeal presence left.
It was later discovered that an agent of change had drowned in the last bottle, which may have led to these devastating effects. No one I have spoken to is inclined to experiment with this for the sake of discovering the truth, which seems fair enough.
It may henceforth be most appropriate to consider Rebecca Willson deceased. She’s turned out to be one of those awkward cases where the status of the person becomes uncertain. While mostly non-corporeal, a glowing entity believed to be her remains present in a corner of The Squid and Teapot. Phantasmagorical bum-pinching has become something of an issue in the pub, if further evidence were required that in some way at least, she remains with us.
As there is no body to bury, we’re going to have a massive wake for her in the pub.
If you’ve read The Gathering, you will know to be wary of Hopeless Maine’s Doc Willoughby. If you haven’t, I shall skip over some details about his medical practice. As the books progress, you’ll all find out more about his ideas. For now, suffice to say he’s the sort of man to pronounce: ‘sacrifices must be made’ and mean that people other than himself should be making sacrifices. Or being sacrificed.
He is the island’s only practicing Doctor. Now, many island residents have washed in from shipwrecks, bringing up to date knowledge of the world with them. Doc Willoughby is not one of those. He has no formal medical qualifications. He did know the island’s previous resident medic, but ‘training’ would be a strong word to describe what they did together. ‘Drinking’ might be more representative.
It is of course entirely possible that Doc Willoughby has read some medical books. He’s seen the insides of enough dead people to form a few relevant opinions about human bodies. He is, in all fairness, pretty handy with a needle, and people who need sewing back together have a slightly improved chance of survival if the Doc sews them back together than if he doesn’t. This may be because he is never afraid to pour alcohol over a wound.
He prescribes alcohol for most other complaints. Sometimes he adds a few herbs or berries, to change the colour and smell, because he thinks this makes his potions seem more scientific and credible. Usually he sticks to plant material he knows it is safe to eat.
Otherwise, Doc Willoughby takes a philosophical approach to illness, encouraging his patients to square up to their mortality and the likelihood of death. He considers statements like ‘you should die fairly quickly’ to be reassuring and uplifting.
