Tales from Solemn Vale: The Stack

Atop a grassy outcropping on the cliff edge overlooking the mostly submerged wreck of the Persephone, a strange structure protrudes from the ground. The old red brick chimney, commonly known as ‘The Stack’ around town, extends fifteen feet in the air above the rocky ground. The treacherous cliff path to get to it, as well as its distance from any roads or viewpoints, make The Stack a well known spot for teenage hangouts and underage drinking. The weathered red brick is covered in graffiti, and if one would climb to the top of the construction, they would peer down into nothing but darkness with no bottom in sight. 

Town records are vague as to what exactly the Stack was for, or what it must have been built to vent. Many claim it’s simply leftover from a never completed property, or all that remains of one.  

During the night the chalky brick of The Stack is oddly warm to the touch. People say it just absorbs the heat from the day gone by, but there are a few who claim to have seen smoke churning from The Stack in the dead of night, belching out from the bowels of the cliffs beneath its protruding exterior. Sea maps state no cavern extends below The Stack, with the chimney apparently just continuing straight into the ground. Put your ear to the grass though, and it’s almost like you can hear movement down there. Under the low sound of the waves, a low and churning rumble, like the gears of some ancient machine. 

Birds that fly directly over the stack have been seen to twist in flight, as if their sense of direction is suddenly compromised. They spiral from the skies, flapping wildly, to crash into the ground not far from the old chimney. Even sitting near the Stack itself has been known to bring a feeling of dysphoria, nothing a few drunken teenagers would notice at first, but too long around the Stack does more than make you feel strange. The longer spent by the Stack, and the churning becomes louder, in the air even without an ear to the ground, the sound becomes more complex, intricate, until the sound of cogs and gears and pistons can be heard. 

The sound of the infernal machine follows visitors to the Stack for some time. They feel it in their fingertips, in the ground beneath their feet. Those who’ve been to that old chimney too many times know that something is down there, beneath The Stack. They know that one of the darkest secrets of Solemn Vale is not born, but forged.