Pip's Hellsborough Diary
Welcome to my journal. Here you will find diarised entries of my field notes and research when I spend time in Hellsborough. I write diary entries frequently, but if I haven't for a while, I'm either not in Hellsborough, my work in the off-world has had to take prescendence, or something tragic has happened.
Read more about The Dark Peak Calendar
Don't forget to subscribe so I can let you know when new publications are released. Want to read before you subscribe? Visit Postcards from The Dark Peak
Pinned Diary Entry Collections:
- Stranger in a Strange Land
- The Origin of Semagrams & the First Crossing of The Hinge
- The Seven Guardians of The Hinge
Van appeared briefly today in the bar, he made it clear has wasn't going to stay long -- I have no idea why that was, but he accepted a pint and downed it within a few moments, before making off. Whilst there, he quickly sketched out the differences in markings between the netherlander clans. I don't know why he wanted to share that either, but he did, and then he was gone.
I'm sat here in my bedsit above Corner News on the Middlewood road. I'm alone, I'm lonely, but I'm not sad and I'm definitely not depressed. I have found that here in Hellsborough, of you feel bored, or stressed, or tired, or lost, then there are things you can do about it.
Just focus.
This place is all about making ¢hits. That's all. Once you realise that, things start to fall into place. They did for me anyway. Since I got here, I've made quite a bit of money -- most of it by doing the wrong things.
And I don't mean "wrong" in an illegal sense. I just mean "wrong" as in doing the things that most folk don't do. Stuff I've done by mistake, or just without not really knowing what I was supposed to be doing. Call it beginner's luck, or the luck of an immigrant to this world.
My best piece of advice: Do things for fun instead of out of obligation. Don't concentrate on the money. Your work will be rewarded. Mine was.
If you read nothing else then pay attention to this. This is what has kept me alive and allowed me to prosper in Hellsborough -- it's what the past few months here have taught me.
My number one rule: You make the most money when you stop giving a chuff.
All of them jellyheads, they're caught up in status games and throwing their lives away -- most of them don't do anything. They do nothing at all, they take from the nascenti what they need to exist -- and they exist, that's all -- and that's the way the nascenti wants them -- subordinate.
The ones that achieve in Hellsborough are the Jellheads -- capital J.
The rest of them are slaves to the others -- if you let things go on around you, you are a jellyhead; if you make decisions and make the rules, you're are a Jellyhead.
The Legend of Loxley Bottom (The Gabbleratchets of Sophie Hinchcliffe) Chapter three: Wandering.
Blind. Soul-less. The cadaver that was Sophie wandered, an animated corpse. A zombie in your modern off-world parlance, but such a word doesn't exist on this side of The Hinge.
The supernatural exists in The Dark Peak -- to us humans at least. But the denizens of the hex -- the clowns, the xin, the nascenti, they're not so concerned by what us humans think of as supernatural.
To us humans, the supernatural is a real thing -- gabbleratchets are proof of that. But you'll never tie a clown down on the subject. For instance, they can physically see Shad, Van's barghest that spends so much time by my side. They tolerate him, at least here in Hellsborough -- not so much out in The Dark Peak, as Van attests in Chronicles one -- but they do not fear him like many humans do. It must be something to do with the hivemind -- and the indigenous hivemind at that -- maybe it's just something that psycmasks just cannot ascertain at all.
There are also the murk wraith -- the ghosts of the tormented. Sight of which, like a barghest, with burning eyes the size of saucers, is a sign of impending doom.
The Boggarts and the syncarids, the morivarids and murk dwelling cryptids like the Loxley kraken, the bracken man of Wadsley common, the giant raptor of Worral and the Dun Bog Beast. All are supernatural to us humans. To the denizens, not so much supernatural as naturally super maybe. Anyway, I digress.
The shell that used to be Sophie stumbled aimlessly along the banks of the Loxley river in the direction of the Damflask. "She" had no need for food any more. A dead person -- even when animated, as she was -- has no need for food, the organs no longer function, so there is no need for fuel.
Her psycmask had been ripped from her face by those rabid gabbleratchets as they devoured her oneness, their toxic saliva melting it away like it was nothing. But as with food, she had no need for a psycmask now, the murk could do her no harm.
That viscous saliva though, laced as it was with the rockcrust of generations, animated her corpse and drove her towards water. She knew somehow that the Loxley flowed in the wrong direction to where she needed to get to -- she headed upstream towards the Damflask.
That great source of water dragged her forwards like iron filings drawn towards a magnet -- or an alcoholic towards a full bottle of rhum.
The mud on the banks of the Loxley grabbed at her bare feet and sank between her toes, making her slip and slide. She stumbled over devilish rocks and grasping roots. Bracken and thistles stung and bit at her unclothed flesh. But she felt no pain -- there was no pain any more for Sophie.
The damage to her skin, to her body, went nowhere. The nerve endings didn't register any pain. Her brain had no feeling.
She was spotted by an slipperman, alone on the banks at this time after murkfall. He was dirty from a day on the banks, covered in muck and filth, almost invisible in the murk. He watched with a lecherous glint in his eye as this young woman approached through the murk.
This slipperman, although human, didn’t believe in the supernatural.
All that is reyt daft, he were known to say in the pub when someone raised something out of the ordinary as the subject, tha lot 'as to be crackers to believe in any o'that rubbage.
I doant believe in none of that stuff, tha daft buggers, he would say, before pitching back another pint of ale.
But Jed, what about the skull moon, his friends would say -- Tha ain't supposed to go out when the skull moon is up. D'divi knows, tha is not supposed to go out, tis dangerous and tha is likely to come a cropper.
Just a trick of t'murk. Just tha lot go on believing that, and I'll keep tekin me share of them slippers from the river in the murkneet. I’m not taking any effing smelt from you D'divi worshippin' chuffers. If tha lot is too scared to come out of tha 'ouses at neet, that's tha own business, nowt to do with me.
Me, I'd rather be deed than live in fear like tha lot does.
Sophie was almost on top of him.
Stumbling in the darkness, she pitched forwards landing in his lap. She turned what was left of her face towards his. Gargling half-words that meant nothing, expelled from a brain that no longer functioned, screaming like a murk wraith from a ripped throat that could no longer form human sounds.
Is tha reyt? He stammered. His words caught in his throat, he said no more.
She stared in his direction. Her empty eye sockets and vacant face howling at him.
He dropped her into his slipping tackle and ran for home, not stopping until he was back in doors.
By the time he got back to his home up the hill in Dungworth, he was panting worse than a barker that had been without water for a week.
When his wife came into the kitchen to find out what all the noise about, his terrified eyes made her scream.
Scrabbling back to her feet, Sophie shumbled like an automaton along the Loxley trail. She passed onto the long lane, and beyond -- into the emptiness of the wisewood proper, and followed the scent of the Damflask.
After that hard freeze came the first snow of Bleak. I got out with Shad, of course, a bit of snow is no barrier to Shad and I getting out in The Dark Peak or to the pub. We started out down the Loxley, avoiding hills and staying in the valley, which seemed sensible, but I couldn't help myself and ascended the bank by a few hundred paces. Of course, to my chagrin, I still managed to slip on dead leaves and dirty ground on my way back, smothering by leg in muck and filth. No broken bones, just a jolt and an embarrassing look about, just in case anyone saw me. I don't think anyone did, there wasn't anyone around that I could see.
That proved to be the end of it for me though and after that I couldn't wait to get back the The Middlewood road for a tasty pint of three of porter, to warm my chilled bones. No sign of Van these days, not sure what he is up to -- but we need to meet up soon, since I have almost finished my research and write-up of Sophie Hinchcliffe and we need to start work on the second book of his Chronicles.
The frost bit hard overnight, and snow is forecast for the next two days, but today was bright and cold. The bleak is here. I haven't been looking forwards to it, but your can't postpone the inevitable, can you? I was thinking about that when I got up onto Wadsley and Loxley commons. But up there I felt a weight lift from my mind. I haven't been in the off-world for a while now, and I have no reason to go back there. Things that happened there are now behind me -- that CCJ that I got through no fault of my own has now been cleared -- and all that paperwork that existed from my studies, which is just paper of no worth has been burned or shredded -- or at least disposed of in some way; I had to pay a few ¢hits to get it done (I figured a way to transfer ¢hits from here to the off-world via my contact in Hillsborough), but at least it's all behind me now. I don't think there's anything left now that connects me with the off-world. With a clear conscience, I can now move on. I can tell you with a clear head and a clear heart all of the things that help me survive and prosper here as an incomer, an immigrant. I'm looking forwards to it.