The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings.
-The Walrus and the Carpenter, by Lewis Carrol
Prologue: Meet Mr. Wesley
Mr. Blake Wesley, of number sixty-six, Castle Rd, was proud to say that he was perfectly normal, thank you very much. He was the last person you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because he just didn't hold with such nonsense.
He had pale hazel eyes and greying black hair, and no noticeable scars or distinguishing features. His jaw was neither square nor pointed, his nose neither large nor aquiline, his chin clean-shaven and his hair firmly under control. Apart from a slight limp in the left leg, widely considered the result of an accident in his youth, he seemed in every way a completely ordinary English gentleman nearing his fortieth year.
Since Mr. Wesley first purchased the old Price place, nearly ten years back, he had embarked on an impressive series of repairs, alterations and redecorations, restoring the century's old farmhouse to its original appearance. The building, now known as the St Just Bed & Breakfast, for the name of the town in which he settled, had long since become an integral part of the local community, serving as not only accommodation for infrequent visitors, but a friendly spot for the tea and biscuits so beloved by the folk.
Mr. Wesley himself, though consistently courteous and friendly to his numerous visitors, neighbours and acquaintances, remained somewhat of a mystery to the town. For sure, he was perfectly amenable to conversation with both the ladies and the gents, as he walked his large black dog Romulus around Lands End, or worked in his spacious garden of beautiful and unusual plants, or prepared pastries and meals for his visitors and their kin. But for all that, no one knew much about him.
Where did Mr. Wesley come from? And why did he choose St Just, isolated at the south-west corner of Cornwall, practically in the ocean. His accent seemed to remind one of the Surrey area, but there was a hint of something else, as if he was fluent in other languages than simple English. He was known to have been boarding schooled, but no amount of conversation had managed to retrieve its name. For that matter, he had never had visitors from the school, nor any visitors at all, as if there was no one in the world that knew who he was.
Mr. Wesley, for all his friendliness and social graces, was also intensely private. Those few privileged to enter his private chambers could be counted on a single hand. Thence, they returned tales of dozens of paintings, clearly the work of the gentleman himself, picturing a young girl with vibrant red hair and chocolate brown eyes, which almost seemed to stare at the viewer. The romantics of the village posited that this was his long-lost love, dead in some horrible accident when they were very young, but their elders merely shook their heads. Leave the gent's private business be, he's as much a right to privacy as any other soul. And so the days went by, one month stretching into the next, and Mr. Wesley remained, for all his unknown past, completely and utterly unremarkable.
But Mr. Wesley had a secret, a secret which would overturn the tidy categorisations of his neighbours and completely change their views of him. For Mr. Wesley slept safely each night with a ward around his property, a silencing charm on his bedroom, and a scratched and beaten piece of holly hidden safely beneath his pillow.
And in the night, Mr. Wesley woke up screaming.