Uncle Marsh had always been the black sheep of our family, a thorn in my father's

side and a constant reminder of how corrupt and decayed our ancestral roots truly were.

Sebastian Frederick Marsh was my mother's elder brother, a genetic throwback, a deviant,

and if the rumors surrounding him were true, a man acquainted with the most

hellish of sins.

His appearance was enough to make the most stoic of hearts skip a beat before its

shambling gate, flat-headed, thick-lipped, and possessing

the largest, glassiest bulging eyes found in the sockets of any earthbound creature.

His appearance was nothing less than outlandish.

He would stumble along the cobbled streets of Barton Village every Saturday morning in his

weekly sojourn to the local stores. The journey caused his neighbors great unease and passer-by

would cross the street in an effort to avoid exchanging even the simplest of pleasantries with the man.

I was particularly disturbed by my uncle's visage as I, unfortunately, shared a few of his more loathsome traits myself. Thankfully, however, these were less pronounced and shocking than those found on my uncle's grim face.

My mother too shared what was known in Barton as the Marsh look, although her deviant features, like mine, were softer and even less obvious than

my own.

She got away lightly indeed, with large watery eyes, her only obvious heritage of the tainted Marsh bloodline.

Uncle Marsh lived alone, tucked away in a rotting abode that lurked and leaned queerly at

odd angles at the back of Gunner's cloth, a feral grotto that skirted the cemetery at the south end of the village. It was a lones of sepulcher woodland, home only to the witch-elms, the creeping moss, and my gloomy uncle.

Many an odd tale was attached to the gunner's cloth.

Strange lights and raised voices were often heard from the depths of the woods on those days leading up to the

Knights of Hollow's Eve and Valporgis.

It was not unknown for local pets and occasionally, even children, to go missing and turn up dead on the mornings after those

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