Could the surrounding acre offer some offense only the storm could see, and so provoke it to withhold its draught? Mayhap Boles and I were the culprits, though I couldn’t recall any outrages in the past week that would have affronted the very weather. Yet there it was, the sound of rain all about, a torrent of drops invisible through the gloom. As I turned to speculate with Boles, my bone-dry palm outstretched as evidence, the investigator’s glare into the shadows sent a shudder through me. I’d seen the look all too often. “Not rain, Quintin.” He spoke steadily without turning. “Steps.” And like a devil summoned by its name, a thing of bone and rot and ageold hunger pulled itself through the night’s veil. And it was not alone.
—Ailson Kindler, “Case of the Dreaming Dead”
Far more than the politicking of petty villains and the roaming of wayward ghosts account for Ustalav’s brooding pall. From the superstitions that preoccupy villagers to tales of shadowy groups that trade souls for power, the legends of the grim country know far greater variety than merely tragic deaths and spook stories. Yet the people of Ustalav excel in the telling of accounts of depraved souls, tainted blood, and dark magic, in part because of the mysterious traditions that pervade their lives, but even more so because, for them, the grimmest stories are all too often horrifying truths.