The Stranger and the Holy Man (Tales from the Ghostwood)

This piece was the original prologue to my first, full-length novel titled "The Ghostwood Demon." Very quickly I decided to remove it and a totally new prologue was written instead.

“I once met a strange, tired man, not long after I had arrived in Little Ashbury. His eyes were the darkest brown I had ever seen, but they seemed sad. He seemed to be on the verge of tears, yet when he smiled at me, I saw such warmth. Such happiness. He was a troubled character. I'd met him leaving the Ghostwood Arms and, in his drunken stupor, he had told me that his name was Flagstaff and that he had lived in the area for a long, long time.


An incredibly long time.


I asked him if he needed any help on returning to his home, but he told me that he could never return home. That he was cursed to remain here forever.


After a little while he began telling me a strange tale about Heaven and Hell, yet he had different names for them. Names he said were only remembered by those who needed to know.


After a few more minutes of him mumbling incoherently he made to leave. But before he departed, he turned to me, now seemingly stone cold sober. He warned me that no matter how tempted I was I must never go into the woods. He told me that inside the woods lay only darkness. And he warned me that whatever I thought I knew about death was a lie.


I continued to meet with Flagstaff many, many more times over the years and we eventually became good friends. And that’s when I found out what lay in the heart of the Ghostwood. That's when Flagstaff told me the story that would rock my very beliefs to their core...”


Extract from the diary of Reverend Ernest Goldsmith, August 1851

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