You walk inside the large double doors which slam shut behind you. The whole place is totally quiet and freezing cold. Every noise you make reverberates around the empty building. It's also strangely dark, what little light there is comes from small windows high above and the occasional lamp in an alcove.
The building is circular. There is an inner core, a meeting hall/courthouse which is wrapped around by an outer hallway. You are in the outer hallway now. On the far wall are museum pieces and the occasional bust, each lit by a lamp whose light seems to barely penetrate the gloom. On the other wall are large double doors which lead to the interior courthouse and meeting room.
You are on the SOUTH end. There is a BUST in an alcove on one side of the door. There is a GLASS CASE on the other side. You can EXIT, go LEFT or RIGHT, or head through the DOUBLE DOORS to the main room.
EXAMINE GLASS CASE.
ReplyDeleteThe plaque reads: "Original 1821 copy of Washington Irving's The Legend of Cecil Clementine. Irving was an avid folklorist who, despite having never been to Maryland, did much to popularize Lord's Landing to the outside world."
DeleteInside the case is an ancient book. The book is open to an etching that you've seen before. They've reused the image in town publications. A man in a steepled hat is firing a musket at a giant frog wearing a crown.
CONSULT SIMON'S NOTES: CECIL CLEMENTINE
DeleteThis might have been a high school paper of Simon's:
Delete"Irivng and a tradition of vaudville and silent film acts have popularized the image of Cecil Clementine as a puritan pilgrim heading into the swamp and wrestling the frog king, while adoring Wicomac Indians gratefully look on. This is woefully inaccurate, insofar that a legend can be inaccurate. For one, Cecil Clementine, and the whole town for that matter, was a Catholic settlement. For another the Wicomac were hardly friendly to the original settlers. It is also unclear what the creature that Clementine fought actually was. Oral histories and other written accounts use a Wicomac word that is difficult to translate: possibly "Vermin-Master" or "Waste-God," some combination of Ruler and Unpleasantness."
I for one share the view of modern scholars who think that the whole story is just a parable for the Christianizing of southern Maryland Indians."
Hmm. GO through the DOUBLE DOORS.
ReplyDeleteYou enter through the double doors which are heavy and loudly creak open. They shut noisily behind you as you enter the courtroom. The vast chamber is dim, except for streams of light that arc in through small windows under the rotunda above. The light stretches in as though in a futile struggle with the darkness; each beam is clearly visible by the dust in the air but they are barely able to illuminate anything beyond their solitary shafts. The chamber is covered in dust and cobwebs and looks like it hasn’t been in use in years. Two galleries of moldering chairs, separated by the aisle you now occupy, face a bench and a podium at the front of the hall.
DeleteDespite the isolated atmosphere of the room you are not alone. You can clearly hear a murmuring, a tapping, and a strange scratching noise that reverberates around the walls and the rotunda, making it difficult to identify its source. You finally notice a MAN sitting on the bench at the front of the room and you wonder why you didn’t notice someone who was right in front of you.
The man is short and pudgy, balding and graying with a thin goatee. His sleeves are rolled up, and there is a small flashlight strapped to his head and a loupe in his eye, a large one with multiple magnifying lenses. On the bench are many fine instruments and a bag of crushed rock crystal that glitters in a solitary beam of light. Pebbles of the quartz are scattered around his desk and discarded at his feet. The man is clearly agitated, he is muttering to himself and fidgeting in his seat. He is so engrossed in his work that he hasn’t looked up once, not even as you entered the large room. It is such a strange sight for a lonely courthouse that you wonder why you didn’t notice him right away. But the man has some graying and dusty quality to him that camouflages perfectly with the surroundings. It is as though the man had been here for so long that he was absorbed into the atmosphere, as though the ineffable attribute of disuse and age that choked this place had saturated him as well. He might as well be another dusty portrait or forgotten glass case.
SAY, "Ahem."
DeleteThe man nearly jumps out of his seat. PEBBLES scatter to the floor; some skitter right to your feet. "Dammit!" he hisses and the sharp noise violently echoes around the chamber. But he regains his composure instantly and squats to pick up the small objects, murmuring "no matter, no matter... these were only trial runs anyway... first drafts..."
ReplyDeleteHe looks up at you and flashes a smile that instantly transforms his appearance. He now appears almost charismatic. "Good morning citizen. I apologize for my outburst, delicate matters of state you see. But this government is an open book, as I like to say, and I accept all petitioners. How can I help you?"
....
DeletePICK UP PEBBLES; EXAMINE PEBBLES; SAY, "Sorry, sir, didn't mean to startle you. What exactly are you doing in here?"
Each pebble is a polished piece of clear quartz. There is something carved onto them in tiny writing, which is only visible when you hold it up to the light.
DeleteOne reads: WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF EVIDENT THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EGWCASKLN (furious scratching)
Another got a little further: WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF EVIDENT THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL THAT THEY ARE ENDOWED BY THEIR GRACASKLJ (furious scratching)
One of them started with too large letters and didn't have enough room: WE HOLD THES
The man says "Why m'boy, despite my pressing business I am still the mayor! I have resolved to spend all business hours of the day freely available in the courthouse for any citizen to ask questions or make requests."
DeleteIt's astonishing but you realize who this man is. It's MAYOR MAXWELL BAY. He was always a gladhanding personable figure, a little phony really, but always full of energy. But it looks like he has aged fifty years!
SAY, "Mayor Maxwell. Tell me, how fares the town of Lord's Landing?"
DeleteMayor Bay clasps a hand on your shoulder. "Folks are struggling here, as everywhere else in these benighted times. Sometimes it seems as though the LORD has turned his back on us. But all we need is to look to the past for our inspiration and the future for our ingenuity! I have arranged great and historic objects from our past here in this museum to remind visitors and the outside world of our importance, and with my every waking hour I shall contribute to that collection!" He lifts a pebble to the light and it dazzles. "American inventiveness and adaptability shall bring newcomers back to Lord's Landing, shall reopen the factories and the trading lanes, shall shore up silver and gold from the very swamp itself!"
DeleteHe gives an unpleasant chuckle and mutters to himself: "...in the form of merchants and tradesmen of course of course, no need for biblical outpourings of honey or mana..." but then he begins to enunciate again: "Why I have a acquired at no small expense a piece of toast with burn marks unmistakably shaped as the profile of Thomas Jefferson! Then I had commissioned an abstraction of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a collage assembled from swamp-pearls harvested by Lord's Landing fishermen, a masterpiece whose chiaroscuro of green and brown form the images of our forefathers. I now labor on our latest attraction, one that is sure to attract the wealth of the outside."
"I need only look at the personage in front of me to see the evidence that our notoriety is growing. Tell me visitor, what is your name and which of our attractions has brought you to Lord's Landing?"
SAY, "Oh I just heard there was some good fishing around these parts. Tell me, Mayor Bay, years passed I ran into a young woman in this town passing through, one Ginny Blair. You wouldn't know where I could find young Mizz Blair so I might pay her a kindness before traveling on, would you?"
DeleteThe mayor seems a little deflated. "Oh yes, the schoolteacher. She runs a charity daycare at the schoolhouse during the summer, mostly for the poor folk and crows. It's due west of here, past the gardens."
DeleteSomething crosses his mind and he lightens up. "Wait, I have something for you!" He runs to the back of his desk and crouches, rummaging around a disorganized file cabinet. He emerges with a stack of papers tied with string. He unties them and blows off some dust, revealing a stack of pamphlets with a large-eyed cartoon frog wearing a crown on the front. The frog is saying with a huge speech bubble, "Welcome to LORD'S LANDING!"
The mayor is almost beaming. "I had these MAPS printed off a while ago but I suppose I never got around to distributing them. Please, take one! He hands you a MAP.
Note: If you would like to see the MAP check the top of the blog. There is a MAP tab and an INVENTORY TAB.
Well boy howdy aint' that useful!
DeleteSAY, "Well, thank you very kindly Mayor Bay. I greatly appreciate it. Real quick before I leave you to your critical administrative duties, anyone growin' or cookin' GARLIC round here lately?"
The mayor is overjoyed "Why yes! Garlic! That most pungent and estimable herb, grown in the wild and harvested for all manor of local remedy, rustic charm, or even to flavor good old crab stew! Just the way mother always used to make it, eh? Why I remember as a child hunting in the swamp for flowers and spices..."
DeleteHe goes on like this for a while. Somehow he made talking about herbs a campaign speech.
:P
DeleteGO BACK through the DOUBLE DOORS; EXIT; WEST; TIME; LOOK.
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ReplyDelete