Croatoan

(Recovered in poor condition from a sea chest at Plymouth in 1713. Supposed author: Thomas Avery, sailor and adventurer in Virginia, 1609. Text presented with minimal alteration for clarity.)

Preface

It was the summer of our Lord 1609 when we set out from the frail beginnings of Jamestown Colony, eight men in pursuit of fortune. Captain Miles Carter led us, though I myself, Thomas Avery, was chosen as clerk and chronicler, my pen as necessary as my sword. We had heard tales that gold might lie hidden beyond the rivers, whispered by natives who surely misled us, yet greed hath no ear for reason.

We pressed into the wilderness, leaving behind the swamp and palisades of Jamestown for a land untamed, rich with pine and cypress, sweltering in heat, and filled with the cries of beasts we scarce could name. We marched with the thought of treasure before us and the scent of death ever near behind.

By the twenty-second day, our numbers had shrunk. John Harker was taken by fever, his body cast into the river. Will Darnell drowned in that same river, dragged under by its currents. Still we pressed on — myself, the Captain, Samuel Briggs, Robert Hensley, Peter Shaw, Edmund Tate, and young Stephen Morrow.

It was on that twenty-second day that smoke was spied through the trees, gray and thin, winding upward as if the forest itself exhaled. Hoping for native fire we might commandeer, we followed. What we found, I set down now with as much faithfulness as memory allows, for I believe few who read this will credit it. Yet it happened, and I, Thomas Avery, swear to the truth of it: we found a woman, aged and wasted, who claimed to be the last living soul of the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

The Encounter

The hut we discovered was no more than rotting timbers set with bark and vines, leaning as if a strong wind might topple it. Before it sat a woman, hunched by a fire, her hair white as wool, her skin shriveled like old parchment. When we challenged her, she raised her head and said words that froze us each where we stood:

“I am the last of Roanoke.”

We thought her mad, yet her voice carried such weight that the Captain bade us sit and question her. I, as clerk, resolved to set down her answers as near verbatim as might be managed. What follows is that strange transcript, with my own notations.

Transcript of Questions and Answers

Captain Carter: Woman, tell us thy name.

The Woman: (after a pause) I was christened Eleanor Dare. My mother called me Nell.

Samuel Briggs: You say Roanoke. That colony vanished nigh thirty years past. How could you yet live?

The Woman: I should not. By all reckoning I should be bones beneath the earth. Yet the earth would not have me.

Captain Carter: Then prove thy claim. Any vagrant may speak of Roanoke.

The Woman: (draws a small carved figure from her rags) This was mine. A doll carved of driftwood, bound with cloth from my mother’s gown. She gave it me on the crossing. Will you have more? I can name them, one by one, as I knew them — the men, the women, the children. John White was my grandfather. He left us, promising return. But return never came.

At this she wept, and though we doubted, the grief upon her face was no false theatre. Carter bade her tell us all, from the beginning to the end, how Roanoke perished. And so she began.

Eleanor Dare’s Account

“It was not long after my grandfather’s departure,” quoth she, “that strange things began amongst us. One night, though no hand was seen to labour, the word CROATOAN was carved deep into a tree at the edge of our camp. The mark was fresh, wet with sap, yet none amongst us confessed it. We thought perchance it some sign, as my grandfather had bidden, but it was made without our knowledge, in the dead of night.

Thereafter the whispers came. From the sea rose a hot wind, heavy as a furnace breath, bearing voices soft as sighs. They spake no tongue we knew, yet the meaning pressed upon our hearts with dread. Food began to vanish, not stolen by beast nor bird, for no spoor nor print marked the ground. Fires burned to ash though no hand fed them.

We dreamt foul dreams, wherein fathers struck their children, mothers stole bread from babes, men took up axe against neighbour. Yet these visions did not only visit us in sleep, but in waking also. By day we looked upon one another with sudden hatred, as though murder glimmered behind the eyes. It drove us nigh to frenzy.

One night I woke and saw my sister Sarah wandering into the wood. She was bare-foot, her eyes closed fast, her hands outstretched as though some spirit led her by invisible cords. Never had she walked in sleep before. I followed, fearful she would fall into the river, yet she went with strange surety.

She came to a clearing unlike any other place in God’s creation. There the trees bent all one way, as if some mighty storm had pressed them down, yet no storm blew. The earth was barren; no herb nor grass took root. The air was still as death.

There I beheld Sarah at a tree, carving letters with a jagged stone. Her fingers bled, her nails split, her gown was torn, yet still she carved: CROA. When I touched her shoulder, she started as from a dream, and spake, ‘They must come, for they too are here.’ She knew not what she had done, nor whence the words came.

The next morn she was gone. None found her. None heard her leave. I wept sore, yet none heeded, for others too began to vanish in the night. Always it was in silence. Never a cry, never a struggle. One by one, as if plucked from amongst us.

Each night thereafter we built great fires, hoping to keep at bay the darkness. For when the light waned, the whispers drew nearer. ‘Whenever the fire sinks low,’ quoth I, ‘the darkness creeps in.’

But fire could not hold them forever. The ground itself sickened. Where once maize grew, naught but withered stalks remained. Fish would not be caught. The very air tasted of ash.

Then began the chanting. From the trees, bodiless, voices rose in rhythm, though no throat gave them. A hundred voices, or but one split a hundred-fold — I knew not.

The last night we were but a handful. CROATOAN had been carved full upon a tree, though none admitted the deed. I knew then it was not the hand of any settler, but some other power that claimed us.

We built a fire early that evening, heaping upon it all we had. But the hot wind came, and the flames bent low as if pressed down. I took into my hand a stalk, dry and crumbling, and felt it turn to dust betwixt my fingers.

Then the chanting began again, louder than afore. From every quarter of the wood came screams, yet no man or woman stood there. I clutched my doll, for it was all that tied me to life.

And in the dark I saw her. Sarah. My sister. She stood before the tree where CROATOAN was carved, her back unto me. I called her name, but she gave no answer. I drew nigh, trembling, and laid hands upon her shoulders. She turned…”

Here Eleanor broke off, her voice failing. She looked upon us, her eyes hollow as wells.

Present Account

“—And what did you see?” asked young Morrow, scarce above a whisper.

Eleanor’s lips moved, yet no sound came. She looked into the fire, as though dreading its dying glow.

Then Robert Hensley, seated opposite me, stirred and peered downward. “God preserve us,” quoth he. “Look ye at the ground.”

We followed his gaze. By the light of the fire we beheld the earth about us. Where we had sat and trod, the grass was blackened and the leaves curled dry upon the bough. Naught but death beneath our feet, though an hour past the place had been green.

Samuel Briggs clutched his musket, his knuckles white. “’Tis trick of eye,” he muttered, yet his voice betrayed no faith.

Then Carter, our Captain, lifted his head sudden. His eyes fixed upon the trees yonder, where the fire’s reach grew dim. There stood a tree bent slight in its trunk, and before it — God witness my words — a figure stood that was not there afore.

It was a woman, facing the bark.

Carter spake, his voice quavering: “Hallo… Sarah?”

At the name, Eleanor Dare shuddered and covered her face. After a pause that seemed a lifetime, she whispered: “What happened next, you ask?”

As if on cue, the figure turned. It was Sarah. But her visage was ruined beyond the craft of man. Her eyes and nose were gone, carved clean from her face, as though the tree itself had claimed them. Her mouth gaped, yet no tongue lay within.

We cried out in horror, some leaping to their feet, some fumbling at their weapons. But in that instant, ere we might act, the fire — our only guard against the dark — was snuffed, though no wind stirred. Blackness swallowed us whole.

In that black I heard Eleanor’s voice, thin and breaking:

“They must come. For they, too, are here”.

Here the writing ceases, the ink blotting as though the pen were dropped. No more pages follow.

Closing Note

What befell Thomas Avery and his company thereafter is not known. Only this journal, half-rotted, remained to tell of the last of Roanoke.

— Transcribed from a recovered manuscript. All language rendered for readability while preserving period tone.