"I swear," cried the priest, his hand clenched around a scouring brush, "I will have that beast's head!"He was dangerously close to throwing the brush, but Rodebret stood in the only available space. He would have regretted hitting the only person sympathetic to his frustrations, so he slammed the brush down instead and scowled at the floor.

The gardener crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

"I've no idea how it snuck in, and left such a mess without gettin' caught." He sounds impressed with the damn thing, the priest thought with a glower.

"I don't care how talented it is at subtlety," he snapped, standing up and restraining himself from kicking the brush, "I want it gone, and I want it gone soon." The gardener chuckled and held his hands up.

"I agree, Father. Come, we shall board up the fencin', and if that doesn't right work, we'll be damned for certain." Somewhat embarrassed by his outburst, the priest followed him outside and across the grounds.

The greyhound, ruthless and cunning in its sneaking, had brought a kill inside the Castle. On his morning rounds, the gardener had noticed a terrible smell and, following his nose, discovered a pool of thick, congealed blood at the foot of the steps to the entrance hall.

Upon being called to the scene, the priest felt that order would never again be with Kelfordshire. As long as the Lord kept his hound close, it would continue to kill and spread its filth around. To the priest, it was a personal slight - how long had he been here, tending to all the matters of a steward, and maintaining the religious strength of the various inhabitants? He clenched his fist as they walked, infuriated by the crude treatment the Lord bestowed on him. What had he done, to so deserve such a cruel master? Had he not always lived with piety and respect for the Gods, and their rules? Even before the torment of living on the Estate, he was destined to be a priest, raised under the strict rules and workings of a holy man, yet, his reward lay in banishment.

Father Bele had, not once since his arrrival, ever left the Estate.

Everything that needed purchasing, every guest that required summoning, all of it was done from behind the high, black gates. The only reprieve from the grounds was the pitiful Abbey, but even there, he could not stay long. Too many things required his presence outside of the white walls, and so, his only source of comfort from the presence of all things Van Wyk was almost never available. The idea that he was banished hadn't struck him until he reached his twenties, when he counted five years serving the Lord, but he regretted ever considering the term. Now, he was more than double that innocent, vigorous age, and the idea had only grown more true with each passing year.

He and the gardener walked in silence along the border of the Estate, the priest reflecting on his miserable existence until they found a tear in the gate. Several bars were twisted and pressed, as though some horrific force from the inside had smashed the gate inward. What was most confusing was the location - these were the Eastern grounds, far from anything even resembling a forest. What would have opened the gate, and to the empty, lifeless expanse of the fields?

Rodebret gave the priest a dark look and squatted down beside the bent bars.

"Well," he grunted, rapping his knuckles on them, "what do you reckon?"

"That we should cover this and the rest we find. I suspect more damage has been done than we originally thought." Father Bele ran his hands through his hair and squeezed his scalp. Each day grew more terrible than the last!

"I'll be back shortly," replied the gardener, and he stood up and marched away. Father Bele was left to ruminate in the cold. He stared absently at the Castle, its impressive figure cutting into the sky and showering the surrounding area in shadow. Combined with the frost and the low whistling of wind, the effect was quite dramatic.

He sighed and squinted into the clouds as they slowly spread, forming one grey lump. I pray it doesn't rain, he moaned in silence. When weather forbade much travel from the Abbey to the Castle, he was forced to remain in the latter. No food or sustenance was available at Hatchhanger, a suspicious reality Father Bele blamed on Lord Van Wyk.

Today, however, if the clouds did indeed rain or shower down hail and ice, the priest would not have regretted choosing the Castle to reside in. Combined with the effects of stress and frustration, he had begun to hear the most wretched of noises under the church.

A fact that only he and the Lord were aware of, the priest knew there was a sort of crypt, an extension of the humble graveyard that rested under the Abbey. Countless ancestors of the Van Wyk's and their offspring lay down there, and Father Bele was not terribly keen on the notion that they had somehow come to haunt the Abbey. He did not believe in ghosts, as sacrilegious as they were, but the sounds that echoed and clacked under his head at night were of concern enough.

Swallowing and crossing his arms, he looked around for the gardener, uncomfortable with his solitude. I am much too busy for this, he complained, another reason to despise the invulnerable dog. How am I to manage anything at all, if I have to clean up after a wild animal!

When Rodebret Stevonsen returned, it was with an armful of planks, stacked high over his head. He threw the planks down and removed a hammer from his pockets.

"There we are," he grunted, wiping away sweat and gesturing to the pile,"our only defense for now." The priest ceased his sullen grumblings and picked up a plank.

"Excellent, Stevonsen! It's not much, but this might be all we can do." The priest smiled for a second, before replacing the look with a determined scowl. "I will kill it, though. Mark my words, I will." The gardener laughed aloud, and in their improved mood proceeded to bar the fence.

They traveled around the Estate when they finished, and found three more similarly damaged locations. One had been so badly twisted that the priest was forced to move as many of the stone benches nearby as he could into the hole before they boarded it up. Their search concluded when they reached the gate leading to the forest.

Trees loomed high overhead, reaching forward and groping the air. A heavy, sweltering heat seemed to pour out of the trees that, though starved and lifeless, were still thick enough to quickly blot out the light. The two of them stared and felt something inside their hearts curl and pull away. Not here, they seemed to say in faltering beats, take us not towards these sinister depths!

Forcing his eyes away from the trees, the priest let out a chuckle that was much closer to a whimper.

"The gate is unlocked," Rodebret noted after a minute, when his limbs had unlocked and reached for the bars that separated the woods from the grounds.

"The Lord is hunting again," the priest replied, with a disdainful sniff. "I can't say why, in this weather, but I also don't question it."

"Does he hunt often, then?"

"Indeed. It is one of his great passions, and his method of religious expression." This caused the gardener to snort and drop a plank.

"Religious? And how do you explain that?" He picked the plank up and replaced it on his pile, walking away from the gate to further peruse the damages to the fence.

"I wouldn't laugh," warned the priest, but the gardener did not scare easily.

"Go on, then," he said, looking back and smiling. "Defend him and explain how a hunt serves such a noble purpose."

Oh, to always be his mouth, Father Bele thought of the Lord. Always answering for him and his damned choices!

"You are Echoist, are you not?"

"Indeed."

"Then, you are aware that we are cursed to endlessly repeat the choices of our Great Gods?" The gardener snorted and kicked at the fence, highlighting their fifth damaged discovery.

"Aye, what of it? He doesn't run 'round eating his brothers." The priest chuckled grimly at that, for though it was true, it was not terribly far from what was historically accurate.

"The Golden One ate his sacred brother, so that he might make Man, and it was his blood that did this. Thus, our Lord hunts and takes that which will emulate this great sacrifice."

"Oh, bother it," the gardener complained, screwing up his eyes. "I asked you a simple question, Father, not for a lesson in the supreme Holiness of our Lord."

"Mind your tongue," he chastised without meaning it. "Nothing done by him is done in vain, or without religious purpose."

"I've gone and moved in with a grip of lunatics," was Rodebret's only response to this. They placed the boards together and hammered at them until the entry into the fence was sealed. Although it was poor, it would suffice. As a test, more than anything.

"I respect the wishes of our Lord," the priest said after a silent moment of rest, "but I cannot allow this dog to roam free." Rodebret looked at him with a significant expression.

"Ah, look at you, Father," he said with a heavy laugh, "standing up for yourself!" The priest waved an annoyed hand and sighed.

"For all of us. If that beast is allowed to run about, it will hurt something living before long." He stood up and smacked his hands together.

"Have you a shotgun, by any chance?"

Having retrieved several guns from his rooms in the Castle, the gardener met back with the priest at the door of Hatchhanger Abbey. I've something rather important to share, the priest said, before sending him off to find a gun. I fear it has much to do with the dog.

Curious and rather excited to be involved in something unrelated to a hedge or a tree, he met with the priest quickly.

Father Bele stood before a gravestone at the side of the small church. His expression bordered on regret and sorrow.

"Unless you're hidin' a body," the gardener gruffly joked, "don't look so bloody dour!"

"Well," the priest replied, a sad smile on his lined face, "there is a great deal more than just one."

He turned and walked to the edge of the property, where the only large gravestone stood, as tall as they were. On either side of it sat two angels, garbed in heavy cloth and holding what could have been scythes. Bearing the same intelligence in their faces that every other figure did, scattered around the grounds in stone, it was obvious who the artist was.

"Come, Stevonsen. It's time you saw the crypts."

The priest stepped to the grave and groped about the ground until he found the two handles, hidden in stone. He pulled, and with a loud, shuddering groan, two doors opened and revealed a dark entrance. Feeling the same sense of dread that the woods inspired, the gardener thought of his family and despaired inwardly.

They did warn of this, he thought, stepping forward and hefting the two guns he'd brought onto his shoulder. But then, how does one refuse employment from so important a man?

The priest fumbled in his robes and pulled forth a candle, lighting and holding it aloft. The darkness barely moved, but what the gardener could see were stairs, crumbling and rotting away. He watched with growing apprehension as the priest stepped down and pressed his weight on the compromised step. When he did not fall through, he looked back and nodded.

Hoping that they came up before long, they descended into the crypts where the priest had heard so many strange noises. Feeling very much like two young boys, unfit for anything serious or necessary, they disappeared into the depths, soft gusts of wind shutting the doors behind them.