The path on the other side of the bridge took her toward what rapidly became clear as a town. Yes, a town — a town no one had heard of — a town that, according to the wooden sign beside the road her path had rapidly become, was called "Grimshaw", and had been established at some point in the 1700s. (The sign wasn't as clear about that, or perhaps had been worn down by age or burned by some ne'er-do-well looking to make a mark upon local history.)
At once, it seemed an ever-expanding labyrinth of cottages and constructions, as well as a diminutive, almost tiny fishing village, sat by the side of an especially briny and unpleasant lake at the edge of an equally-unpleasant swamp.
Grimshaw, she thought, as she coerced her way into the town proper. Surely, there must be some reason this town is here. But what?
Indeed, what? It wasn't clear to her at first glance; but what was clear was the proper age of the place, which appeared to be at least a hundred years older than most towns in Inglenook, most of which had only been established after the Enlightenment had ended, and so were all mostly new, industrial-type materials, rather than the older forms of stone, brick, and exposed wooden beams that seemed to comprise the houses and shopfronts here.
Distracted as she had been by her thoughts, she found herself on Bleaker Street. She knew it was Bleaker Street on account of the signs on the building walls and corners of the occasional intersection that pointed it out as being Bleaker Street. Appropriate name, she thought, as the street had been misted in a light daze of droplets and particles when she arrived and now seemed to mostly be clearing up. So it goes.
A random passerby, let's call him George (although that isn't his name), ducked around her, and she turned to pause him in his path for a moment. "Excuse me," she said, "where are you off to tonight?"
"Nowhere," he said, "and certainly not the Crying Wolf. And you shouldn't be either."
"Why not?" she asked. "Where is the Crying Wolf? And what?
"Nowhere you should be, and nothing you should know," our friend who wasn't called George said. His goatee — salt and pepper but obviously once very blonde and straw-colored, like a field of golden cloth — glistened in the lamplight, which appeared to be electric.
At least they have some form of modern amenities, Grace thought, as she noticed the lamplight wasn't flickering like a candle but was instead very consistent, if not quite as bright as those of her torchlight or other properly modern amenities back in Inglenook.
"You're very curious," she said to not-George.
"Stop by the theater sometime," he said, as he pulled away to head back down the road. "You might catch a show and see the full range of my curiosity there, if you'd like to."
"Maybe," she said, as he turned and headed for a further street, turning beyond her view.
Well, she thought. Perhaps the Crying Wolf, then.
It turned out to be a pub, located on the corner of a side street and Bleaker Street itself, with a wooden sign on dangling hooks above the door. Carved into the sign was a picture of a crying wolf, which Grace would've thought was appropriate if she hadn't been distracted by the idea that, very possibly, every business and residence in Grimshaw had carved wooden signs to declare what they were.
Perhaps it made sense, if this town was really as old as it seemed, or perhaps it was just home to a cult of woodcarvers and that was how they liked to present themselves to the world. It would certainly have been an appropriate way to announce their status, identity, and purpose, that's for sure.
In any case, the Crying Wolf had a solid, thoroughly-modern door with a large handle on it, which Grace pulled to enter, revealing a bar scene somehow both full of people and as dreary as the outside was.
"Perhaps I've come on a bad night," she said, putting her thoughts out of her head and into the world this time. No one heard her, as distracted as they were by everything going on around them and this one activity or another, but she was already externalized in her lines of thinking, so it seemed her thoughts were now on the outside of her body and existence, rather than on the inside, where they had been before. So it goes.
She approached the bar, where a barman who seemed more like a bear than a man was preparing drinks for the various townsfolk there. When he noticed her, she said, "Can I have a water, please?" which, of course, was a normal request in most restaurants, but in a bar it could be quite strange or perhaps even offensive if you were in the wrong one, and sometimes very responsible, because bar cultures are as varied and diverse as the people who tend to prefer going to them, rather than staying in, having a couple there, and settling down with a nice book, or a record, or a nice projector tape to watch, or something.
She got her water, but the barman didn't like it. He seemed very gruff about it, and focused at once on a spot on the bar, taking a towel to it for far longer than he needed to, until Grace took her water and vanished in between the brick pillars and wooden floors of the place.
It was small, like a rectangle, and there were at least three different cliques there, at least that she noticed: the fishermen, in the corner; the young people, at the bar itself, those who seemed either the most sad or the most social; and the especially active young people, who were either playing darts, punching a bag, or tossing themselves at a random stretch of wall that seemed to have no special decoration other than the stone bricks from which it was made.
She approached them this time, and asked of them, "Aren't you afraid the wall's going to hit back one of these days?"
One of them — a girl with long, brown hair down to her shoulders, and eyes that seemed to bulge out like an insect's eyes, although not entirely in an ugly way — said, "That's the idea."
"What is?"
"It's not a real wall," said her friend, a girl with much shorter, black hair in a bob around her head, and tattoos across much of her arms and legs. "It's a fake wall. The Crooked Man put it there, and sometimes it eats you if you're not careful and catch it the wrong way."
"So," Grace said, "are you trying to catch it the wrong way?"
They were silent, as one of their friends had just collapsed against it, pretended to be stuck, and then revealed he had only just broken his own thumb and had either done it intentionally or was trying to play it off as having been much cooler of an event than it actually was. So it goes.
Grace watched, and sipped, and took in the sights of the evening on her first night in Grimshaw, and her first night at the Crying Wolf. Although there seemed to be no one of special interest there — and no one who might know a thing or two about why the town was there and what she might be able to do with it or for them — it was certainly an entertaining bunch, regardless.
"Do you wanna smoke?" said the girl with tattoos and a short, black bob.
"I don't smoke," Grace said.
The girl shrugged, and a few of her friends left for the back door alongside her.
Moments later, Grace ambled to the back herself, which appeared to be a small courtyard, lit in electrical lights like all the rest, with chairs stacked up in a corner and a covered roof to protect from the rain. Regardless, it was clear the moon was already out, and already full, and there were slivers of its light pouring through the slats and spaces in the cover of the roof, although it didn't need to be, given the courtyard already had enough light for such things to be visible.
"So you don't smoke," the girl with the bob said. "But you can watch."
"Yes," Grace replied. "I'm looking for something."
"He's not here."
"Something," Grace repeated. "Not someone."
"Oh," the girl with the bob said. "Do you want a drink?"
"I have one," Grace said.
"Why are you here?"
"I'm not sure," Grace said. "What about you?"
"I work at the theater, down the road," the girl said. "We're rehearsing tomorrow, and we were today. But it's a weekend, so, why not? Can't I have a nice time when I want to?"
"Yes," Grace said, "I suppose you can. Maybe that's what all of this is for, in the end."
"Just to have a nice time?"
"Just to have a nice time."
"Right. Well, it is that," the girl said, taking a puff of her smoking implement, which appeared to be not entirely quite unlike a phorium inhaler, a device most typically used to inhale refined aetheric mist back in Inglenook. "Want some?"
"I'm fine," Grace said, tilting her head at the implement.
The girl shrugged, and passed it to her friend.
"What is this place?" Grace asked.
"Hm?" the girl responded. "It's the Crying Wolf. You're at a bar."
"Yes," Grace said, as though she had just been told the sky was blue and the air was made of oxygen. "But this town. Grimshaw. What is it?"
"What? This is it, man," the girl said. "It's just been here as long as we have. You're either from here or you're stuck here, and either way, you're not getting out."
"Stuck here?"
The girl puffed on her implement. "Like a skeleton in the swamp."
"Well, let's hope that doesn't happen, then," Grace replied.
The girl nodded, coughed a little, and said, "So, you're not from here."
Grace was silent.
"Good luck," the girl said, put out her implement, and headed back inside with her friends, leaving Grace alone in the courtyard.
Grace finished her water inside, and ambled for a little while, before people started filtering out as the night wore on. She had no idea if there was a last call of any sort at this bar, but she figured it was time for her to go as well, and so — feeling as though she hadn't really accomplished much of anything — left not too long after that.
Mildred Dollanganger lived in a house in Twisted Oaks; that is to say, when she wasn't with her family at the Dollanganger Waxworks in Grimstead central. The house in Twisted Oaks was not hers, nor was it anyone else's, but it had been abandoned for long enough that Mildred and many other kids from Grimstead around her age tended to hang out there as a "secret hideout" from their overbearing families, and the rest of Grimstead too.
It was this house to which she so often retired after her nights of drinking and gaming at the Crying Wolf, and the only downside she tended to see was that it wasn't closer to the Peerless Playhouse, where she worked and volunteered her hours as makeup artist for the others there. It was normally about a half hour's walk to around 45 minutes, down to around 15 if she took her broomstick, and although most people in Grimstead did occasionally have vehicles such as cars and motorcarriages, she preferred the lonesomeness of her broomstick to anything else, so that tended to be the option tor her.
The night after she met Grace Morgan followed much the same way; and if it hadn't, she might have ended up on the Spring-Heeled Ripper's target list the same as Grace, who had been walking at the time.
"What were you doing out that late?" Clotilde, her sister, said upon learning of the facts the next day. "Drinking with your friends again?"
Mildred, spending a few hours at the Waxworks before rehearsals that night, nodded with a coquettish look. "The same as every night. And the Town Watch didn't even notice."
"They like you, Millie," Clotilde said, giving Millie a scornful look. "They're not going to notice anything but you, your tattoos, your hair..."
"Maybe," Mildred said. "They wouldn't notice you at all. Then again, you never leave this place, so they'd never have the chance to."
Clotilde scoffed. "You're barely ever here," she said, rolling the sheets of a notebook for upcoming tour schedules between her fingers. "I have a responsibility to this place, just like you do. Unlike you, I didn't abandon it to paint clowns all day and wait for the swamp to dry up."
"I didn't abandon it, and they're not clowns," Millie retorted.
"Actors," Clotilde replied, spitting the word with crooked lips. "There's very little difference with some of the ones you have on-stage over there. You know Victoria still sells potions at the street fair, right?"
"We haven't accepted any of her auditions in months," Millie said. "Constance won't let us. I'm here now anyway."
"And rehearsing tonight."
"You don't have any tours tonight, right?"
"Now that you mention it..." Clotilde raised her eyebrow and glanced at a random page in the tour book. "Ah, it says here you'll have to stay all night and mop either way."
Millie gave another coquettish smirk. "Nope!"