William Royden

It described the Projet du Meridional as an urban legend among fringe academics, having to do with a privately funded group of five men, one of whom was named Forge Cording, who had traveled the world for two years researching a supposed curse that had stricken an Irish family.

The details were sparse.

On the morning of the 9th, I took the train from Maryland to the western edge of Robinson and walked from there to my grandfather's house at the end of Bryan Lane, carrying the Sony camera I had used to eke out a living for the past three years.

In fact, I had been in town with it ten months before, shooting some preliminary location shots for a very friendly independent movie producer named Trent.

I'd met him through a friend of a friend of mine, and for several hours we had driven around town as he looked for locations to film part of a low-budget horror movie.

That day's casual shooting of churches, parks, and cemeteries had turned into more of a private documentary for Trent.

He'd grown up nearby in Hashem, and he had me get shot after shot of the nicest parts of Robinson in order to convince his wife to move there so they could raise their children in a pleasant suburb.

The 9th of October was the day after my grandfather's 85th birthday.

I spent a couple of hours with him before I was to meet Cording.

He had gotten visibly more frail since I had seen him in March.

We sat on his front porch on the quiet nine acres where I had spent much of the fifth through thirteenth years of my life.

Without mentioning what I would be doing the rest of the day, I asked him if he regretted never really leaving the town during his life except to fight in World War II.

He told me he loved this place, and the only time he had any doubts about it was during a period of five years in the 1970s when he said things had gotten, quote, very sad and very painful, end quote.

When I asked him what he meant, he shook his head and said he was sorry.

He didn't want to explain it.

I left him at about 10 a.m.

I met my employer for the day, Cording, at the Robinson Commuter Train Station.

He was younger than he sounded on the phone.

Couldn't have been more than 35.

He was tall and gaunt.