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The Legend of the Iron Coffins
© copyright 2001 – 2010 DarkWood Manor Productions, All Rights Reserved

There are many stories and legends that surround DarkWood Manor; some more bizarre and unexplainable than others. This is one those tales.
Very few of the facts in this story can be verified. Most of the information relayed here has been passed down by word of mouth, and dramatized by the author.
The Dark Hollow Horror
From 1880 to the 1940s, the DarkWood family employed a large number of people as servants and farmhands. Most of these people, and their families, lived in a hollow of the Blue Ridge Mountains near DarkWood Manor. The land in the hollow belonged to the DarkWood family, and the folks that lived there were share renters or tenants. All of them, in one way or another, relied on the DarkWood family.
When the DarkWoods arrived in Luray in 1880, only a few families lived in the hollow. Some say that those families were related to the patriarch of the DarkWood family, Leroy. Over the years, more people came to live in this area, which came to be known as Dark Hollow. The original families, and immigrants bought in by the DarkWoods, formed a very close-knit community. The residents of the hollow had a very bad reputation among other people in the surrounding county. They thought of them as uneducated, godless, and irreligious. Due to their association with the DarkWood family, they were also often accused of witchcraft. By the early 1900’s most people in Page County just avoid any and all contact with the hollow and it’s people.
In 1935, Virgil Prince was the caretaker at DarkWood Manor, and sole liaison between the people of the hollow, and Abigail DarkWood, the daughter of Leroy and Raven DarkWood. At that time, she was presumed to be the last surviving member of the family.
Virgil, and all the people that lived in the hollow, where facing a crisis. The government was acquiring land in the mountains in which they intended on making into the Shenandoah National Park. Abigail, like all other landowners, was compelled to sell the land she owned in the soon to be park. This included all of Dark Hollow. At first the residents of the hollow where not worried about the change in ownership. They had been informed that they would be able to stay on the land after it became a park, but by the summer of 1935 they found out that the government had changed its mind. They were now going to require that all people move off the mountain.
This infuriated the residents of Dark Hollow. The mountain was the only thing most of the people had ever known. The idea of leaving terrified them.
Speaking for all the residents, Virgil pleaded with Abigail to help them. She told him the matter was out of her hands, and there was nothing she could do to stop the government. Virgil returned this message to his fellow residents of the hollow. It seemed like all hope was lost. They knew that the Page County Sheriff would eventually come into their hollow and remove them by force. They desperately sought a way to protect themselves. After a long and heated argument, it was agreed upon, by most of the people of the hollow, that they would attempt to protect themselves via a dark means.
Everyone in the hollow knew that the DarkWood family had always been involved in conjuring, and such, but only a few knew of the hidden library within the walls of DarkWood Manor that contained books of ancient and forbidden knowledge. Virgil was one of the few that knew about the library, and what it held. He also knew that the only powers able to prevent him and his family from losing their home were hidden in those books. Even though it meant betraying Abigail, he intended to have that power.
While Abigail was away on one her trips, Virgil entered DarkWood Manor. This was the first time he had ever crossed the threshold of the house. His job had been to guard, and maintain the grounds as well as the exterior of the house. He had never been inside, nor had he ever been invited. Once inside, Virgil had no clue where to find the library, or the book he needed, but that turned out not to be a problem. Once inside the house something guided him quickly to the library, and the book he knew he needed almost called out to him from its place on the dusty shelf. Virgil returned to the hollow with the book.
The very next night, Virgil and members of 6 other families from the hollow had gathered in a meadow on the mountainside. During the previous day the book had revealed itself to Virgil, as if it was written just for him. It told him how to call the spell to protect Dark Hollow and it’s people. So, along with his neighbors, he built a bonfire and set about performing the rituals that were needed. The people stood around the bonfire in a circle, and Virgil read from the book. The sounds that passed from his lips, and then echoed back from the fire, where beyond any normal earthly comprehension. After Virgil finished speaking, the book slammed shut, and the fire exploded around the circle of people.
They were all blinded for a moment, but the fire had not consumed them, or even singed their clothes. Astonished by what had occurred, Virgil did not take notice of the horse and rider that entered the meadow. It was Abigail. She had ridden her horse up to his side, and grabbed the book from his hand before he realized it.

“You don’t know what you have done, Virgil!”, she spat at him.
“I’m sorry, but we do not want be taken from our homes.”, he pleaded
“There are worse things than being driven from your homes. You all have been fooled," she yelled turning toward the others in the circle around the flames.
“You have let your fear and hatred blind you! Yes, the government wants to drive you from this mountain, but what you conjured here this night may very well drive you from this world! Pray that your spell failed!” and with those final words, she rode off back down the mountainside.
Almost in a state of shock the circle broke up, and silently the residents of the hollow made their way back to their homes.
A few days passed. A few days turned into a few weeks, and nothing seemed to have come from the spell cast from the stolen book. The government and the local sheriff were still pressuring them to leave their homes in the hollow. They started to believe that their dark magic had failed completely, and they need not fear any repercussions from their attempt, like the old DarkWood woman had warned them.
Nellie, Virgil’s young wife was the first to announce the news. Almost 2 months from the night they performed the ritual, the Prince family discovered that they were going to have a baby. And, almost like dominos falling, all the other families that took place in the ritual soon announced that they too where expecting children.
Virgil thought that maybe this was the desired result they had hoped for two months ago. Maybe the government would let them stay in their homes if they knew that there were so many babies on the way.
Nine months later, all the babies were born. The pregnancies had not changed the government’s mind about them having to leave the hollow. The sudden influx of new residents into the Dark Hollow didn’t make them feel any more sympathetic toward the mountain people.
Nine months later all seven of the new babies were born. Each child was delivered on consecutive nights from one another. This did tax stamina of the local midwife somewhat, but all the newborns seemed very normal and healthy.
Virgil and Nellie’s child was the last to be born, and it was a boy. They named him David. He was their first child, and they were very proud. After the first week, however, their baby started to change.
It started to grow very rapidly. Its facial features slowly became more and more…twisted. Within the first month their son was able to walk. Virgil kept it a secret from everyone else in the hollow by not venturing out to any place where he would have to talk to any one. He was afraid.
One night, about two months after the birth of the children, a pounding on the front door of Virgil’s home awakened him. He grabbed his rifle, and went to see who had come to his home in the middle of the night. Opening the door, he was relieved to see it was Tom Cave, and not the local sheriff here to evict him.
Tom had been involved in the ceremony last year, and his wife had also given birth when Nellie did.
Virgil noticed that Tom looked ghastly white in the light from the lantern he was carrying.
“What’s wrong Tom? What you doin’ here this time of night?” he asked, but before Tom could respond, Virgil realized exactly what was wrong. For the past several weeks he had watched his new son David grow from a baby into a hideous thing that had to kept locked in its room. If his assumption was correct, Tom had witnessed the same kid of transformation in his newborn child. He knew that him and tom, along with all the others had cursed themselves, and the curse was growing.
Tom swallowed hard, and searched his mind for what to say. Virgil looked away from him, and toward the door of the room that held his…son. He could hear him pacing behind the wooden door. He didn’t believe the child ever slept any more. It just ate, grew, and changed. Nellie had gone into a state of shock over what had become of her child. Virgil was barely holding on to his sanity, but he didn’t know what else to do, except carry on.
“It’s my girl, Virgil,” Tom managed to choke out the words. “Something seriously wrong with her…. I can’t…I can’t…”
“What’s wrong with her?”, he played along, but he knew all too well what was wrong with her.
About that time there came an unearthly cry from out of the darkness. It came from just beyond the light of the lantern, out on the dirt road that lied in front of Virgil’s home.
Tom quickly spun around toward the direction of the sound, lifting the lantern high above his head. In the dim light Virgil could make out Tom’s old buckboard. In the back of the wagon, he could see movement. Something was thrashing in the darkness.
“I managed to knock her out and tie her….I just couldn’t….”, Tom started walking toward the wagon with his lantern held high. Virgil followed him. The closer they got the more Virgil could see.
It looked human, sort of. He could see it was wearing a dress, but the face and the hands were all wrong. Its eyes seized upon Virgil’s, freezing him in his tracks.
“That can’t be your new born," but he knew all to well that it was.
“It killed my oldest girl, and Melissa, my wife. It just tore’em apart”, Tom sounded like he was on the verge of tears. “I couldn’t bring myself to shoot her, but I know it has to be put down. It isn’t human, Virgil. ”
“Why did you bring her here?”, He asked finally able to turn a way from the nightmare he had been looking upon.
“You got to do it. I can’t”
“You want me to shoot her?”, of course he did. Somewhere in his mind he still believed the thing to be his child.
“I can’t”, he managed to say as he turned away, and hung his head.
It was the last thing old Tom ever got to say.
With a cry that pierced Virgil’s ears like a knife, the thing burst free from its ropes. Before he even realized what had happened the creature was off the wagon and on Tom’s back. It’s monstrous hands locked around his head, and the snap of Tom’s neck was loud and quick.
Virgil remembered the rifle in his hand. He raised it to his shoulder, and took aim. Tom’s lantern laid on the grown near his lifeless body. It’s light was flicking making aiming difficult, but at this range she would be hard to miss. Virgil quickly squeezed the trigger. The gun flashed, and the sound echoed off the mountains. He struggled to regain his sight. As the smoke cleared he could see the creature. She was still standing over her father’s body. In the fading light from the lantern, he could see it picking at the bullet hole in its chest. She lifted her head, and to his utter shock, she spoke.
It was a voice no man should ever hear. The sound of broken glass in chorus with nails on a schoolhouse chalkboard fused together to produce words. He wanted to turn and run, but not into his home. There was no safety there. He wanted to run past his house into the woods. He wanted to run until he found the light of the sun again. That was the only place he might be able to maintain his sanity, but he couldn’t move. Once again he was frozen in place by her eyes.
“You…can…not…kill. We…are…the….flesh….of…your…prayers.”
He knew what she meant. The horror that stood before him, and the simple cutting pain of the truth spoken, made his stomach knot tight forcing him to expel its contents on the ground before him. He lifted his eyes again, and the monster was gone.
His mind and body felt as if they had been ripped apart. He peered into the darkness where it had been standing. He wasn’t looking for her. He was looking into the hopelessness, and terror that had become his life. You always reap what you sow, and harvest time had come to Dark Hollow. The flame in Tom’s lantern that was lying on the ground finally flickered out.
He was pulled out of his spiral downward by a scream from the house. It was a human scream. It was Nellie. He turned and ran inside. As he hurried toward his wife’s bedroom, he noticed that his son’s door was open. He threw open the door to the bedroom to find Nellie. She was lying on the bed with her arms spread wide. There was a look of shock on her inert face. The gaping hole in her chest was still oozing blood. It flowed in little rivers from her body, and off the bed to the floor. He slowly moved toward the bed. He had moved beyond shock. Virgil Prince had hidden his self away somewhere in his mind. His body was moving more on reflex than anything else.
He lowered his hand to his wife’s blood splattered face. With the tips of his fingers he closed her lifeless eyes. Looking down at her chest he stared into the pie sized hole. Her heart was gone. His son had stolen his mother’s heart.
His knees buckled, and his body twisted as he fell to the blood covered floor. The last thing he felt was his wife’s blood wet against his face as he mercifully lost consciousness.

Virgil regained consciousness before the sun rose. When he went to stand, he realized he was partially stuck to the floor. His wife’s blood had glued him down as it dried. He pulled him self free to stand up right. Turning around he was shocked to see that the bed that had held his wife’s body was empty. Someone must have been there while he was asleep. Had it been the sheriff? No, couldn’t have been, because Virgil would have woken up in a jail cell had the sheriff found this mess.
He went outside, and Tom’s body was gone as well. His buckboard and horse where still tied off out front. What had happened? Who or what had taken the bodies?
He went back in to check his son’s room. Deep down he knew that he wouldn’t find him, and he was correct. The room was empty. The creature he sired was loose out there in the woods.
In between weeping, and the staggering waves of horrific dread, Virgil managed to get himself cleaned up. Using Tom’s wagon, he headed off toward his dead friends home. He wasn’t sure what he would find there, or what he was looking for, but he felt compelled to do something, and it was a way to escape the ruins of his own home.
It was only a 5 miles between his place, and that of the Cave home, but the trip seemed to last a lifetime. He kept replaying the events of the previous night, and year, over in his head hoping he would figure a way out. None of it seemed real to him, and it had to be a way to wake-up from all of this, like you wake up from a bad dream.
He made it to Tom’s place way before noon. It was empty. No signs of life at all, but what did he expect to find.
He spent the rest of the day traveling to everyone’s home that had been involved in the spell casting last year. Each house he found as empty as Tom’s. Some showed signs of violence and struggle, and others seemed like the occupants had just walked out.
Toward the end of the day he was at the foot of the hollow. He had just gone to the last of his coconspirators homes, to find what he had found at the rest. Nothing.
Oddly enough, he hadn’t encountered anyone else along the way, not that he wanted to neither. He was having a hard enough time just being in his own company much less try to talk to another person that was outside this mess. Maybe everyone was gone. That’s what the government wanted in the first place. Maybe he had just helped them out rather than stop them like he sat out to do.
He knew there was only one place to find an answer, but he didn’t want to go there. Against his the will of his trembling hands, he turn the wagon toward the west, and out of the hollow. He had to go to DarkWood Manor, and he had to talk to Abigail DarkWood.

It was near dark by the time he had started down the road leading up to the DarkWood home. He had been down this road hundreds of times before, but this had been his first time here in over a year. The last time he had been there was when he took the book. He had never had the courage to return after Abigail had caught them with her stolen book. Rumor had it she found another to take care of the property.
He always found the manor to be creepy during the day when he worked on these grounds, but at night the place felt like hell. As he approached the house, he could see lights on in several windows, but that light didn’t offer any relief to Virgil. He tied up the horse, and went up to the front door.
He raised his hand, which left like lifting an anvil, and knocked on the door. He could hear the sound echoing through the halls beyond the door.
The eons of time that seemed to pass before the door opened tore at Virgil’s already fragile mind. He wanted again to run, but he held himself still. He had to find out what had happened, and where were those…children.
The door opened.
“Hello, Mr. Prince! How delightful of you to come calling. Is this a social visit, or do intend to pilfer another volume from my library?” Abigail smiled at her former caretaker with all the southern charm expected from a woman of her position.
“Miss DarkWood, I’m sorry I stole that book. I just thought it could save our homes.”
Virgil’s voice was full of weariness and fear from what had befallen him in the past 24 hours.
“Has it worked? Has your homes been saved, Mr. Prince?”
“No mam, it ain’t. That’s why I came here. I wanted…”
“I know what you want, Virgil”, her voice was drained of all it’s earlier charm. The change in her tone sent a chill down his spine.
“You want to know what happened to your new born children, and why they have turned on you. You may not be aware of this yet, but they have turned on everyone. At this very moment they are finishing off anyone left in the hollow, and they won’t stop there,” her eyes bored into him, and he felt the weight of his sin. He buried his face in his hands in shame, and to hide from her accusing eyes.
“Don’t behave like a child, Virgil. Follow me,” She turned sharply and made her way down the long entrance hall.
His fear made him hesitate for a moment, but he dared not disobey her. As he stepped through the threshold, the heavy door swung shut behind him.
“This way. We don’t have much time. If we are to act it must be tonight.”
He continued to follow her deeper into DarkWood Manor. He kept his eyes turned toward the floor. The house did not seem to invite him in as it did on his first venture into these halls. It was quit the opposite this time. He felt like a thousand eyes where upon him, glaring at him in hatred. He felt the menacing dread that most people described feeling when just looking at the house from the outside. On the outside all one had to was look away to escape that feeling. There was no looking way when you where inside.
Abigail stopped in front of a door. She took out a key, and inserted in the lock, and opened it wide.
“Come in, I believe you may remember this room.”
He crept past her into the room. It was the library from which he had stolen the book, but it looked different than he remembered. It was darker than he recalled it being when he got the book, and it smelled faintly of decay now. He hadn’t noticed that his first time here.
The most notable difference was the seven large casket objects that lined the far wall. Abigail entered the room behind him, and closed the door.
“Please….tell me what happened to our children?”, he needed know before he fell any further into this madness into this madness.
“They are not your children. Yes, they did indeed wrap themselves in the flesh you gave them; used it to incubate themselves, but they are not yours. Of course you did open the door, and awakened them with this,” she reached for the bookshelf, and pulled down the tome that he had stolen a year ago. She looked at it as she held it in her hands.
“Books are full of knowledge and power. Some good, some bad, and some…well, lets just say some shouldn’t be opened at all.”, she walked across the room to lay the book on a table near the coffins. She turned back around to face him.
“There are things that lurk beyond. Creatures that got shoved out of our world long ago when we were just bugs. They were exiled in a dimension parallel to our own.


Of course they want desperately to return to our world. They claw, and press at our reality constantly trying to find a way in.”
Virgil stared at her as she spoke. What she was saying seemed insane, but only insanity could explain what had happened.
“The book you….chose…to steal is a particularly foul tome. It was composed to act as key to unlocking a door to another reality. It is a key and an invitation to a set of creatures known as Killcrop. When you miss used this book it opened the door for them. They entered this world and found purchase in your flesh.”
“Dear god,” Virgil whispered. If his mind had not already been shattered the night before, then this would have done it.
“The ones you brought into this world, your…children, are all different. They all have different traits, and are transforming the flesh you gave them into different forms, but they are all as equally malignant to us as any cancer could be. They will feed on every soul and mind they encounter. As you already…”
“Show me,” Virgil interrupted, “show me how to kill them. I’ll do it.”
“They can’t be killed, Virgil”, she looked at him as if he was a fool. “I know of nothing that can kill them. I don’t even know how to send them back. It is beyond my understanding. The best I can do is contain them. I can lock them away, but they won’t be dead.”
She turned back toward the book and the caskets that lined the wall.
“These coffins are made of cast iron. The metal will help restrain them. I had these specially made and brought here six months ago. Not an easy task to order seven iron coffins without raising suspicions.”
“You knew that this was gong to happen six months ago?”, Virgil’s voice rose beyond the whisper it had been since he had started talking to Abigail. “You knew what was gong to happen to us, and you didn’t say anything? I’ve lost my wife, and everyone else is dead!!”
“Yes, I knew six months ago! I warned you that night, but what was I to tell you and your coconspirators? Should I have told you that your wife carried a demon in her womb? You wouldn’t have believed me. You would have thought the old witch was trying to trick you. You had to come to me.”
Virgil hung his head again. His anger quickly faded. He had no one to be angry at except for himself.
“Now, lets get this business done.”
Abigail opened the accursed book and began to read. The ritual took over an hour. The words and utterances that came out of Abigail as she read from the book were indescribable in any normal means. Virgil wasn’t even sure the words where coming from her at all. At the end Virgil had to sacrifice a small amount of his blood to the ritual. Abigail cut a across his palm with a knife to allow several drops blood to drip into each of the iron coffins.
“Blood attracts blood. Sin attracts sin.”
It was one of the few things Abigail said during the ritual that he was able to understand.
Shortly after he gave his blood, and Abigail told him it was done, and too long after the first…thing slithered through the library doors. It moved soundlessly across the library and sank into the first iron coffin. It was a site that he wished he had never lived to see, and it had to repeat six more times before all of them where captured.
He almost recognized the one next to last to enter the library. It was Tom’s daughter. Her eyes were the same as they were the night before, but she had changed more. The Killcrop within her had become fully formed.
The last to enter was David, his son. His features had changed to the point there was nothing that Virgil could recognize, but once again the eyes gave his identity away. It was the only one of the Killcrop that looked directly at him. It kept its eyes on Virgil the entire while it was getting into its iron coffin. Once again he felt that urge to run, and keep running, but he knew all to well that there was no place to run.
With some effort, Vigil and Abigail slid the lids on to coffins, and sealed them. All the coffins had strange symbols on them. They were markings he had never seen before, but he knew they had to have something to do with keeping these creatures locked away.
The night had past, and by the time they had finished their work it was already midday.
“I will keep six of these iron coffins here,” she informed him. “They will be secure beneath this house. You can take your son’s coffin burry it somewhere in the hollow. It’s best you don’t tell anyone where you place it”
Abigail called forth some odd looking servants, and they helped Virgil load the iron coffin in the back of his buckboard. He found it strange that these mysterious servants did not even ask who or what was in the coffin. Of course it was the least strange thing he had noticed in what all that had transpired that night at DarkWood Manor.
As he was making ready to leave, Abigail came outside.
“Do as I have instructed, Virgil, and this matter will be closed for us.”
“I shall”, hanging his head, still not able to look her directly in the eye.
“I’m sorry for your loss, but what has been done has been done. That cannot be changed. Now take your burden, and never return to DarkWood Manor.”
He looked up at her last words, but she had already turned and retreated back within the walls of the house.
He turned the wagon down the road, and off the DarkWood property. Slowly, him and his burden made their way back to the hollow.

Six months later, the local sheriff, and his deputies did a final swept of Dark Hollow to make sure everyone had left. They found all the homes empty, and many had left behind all their belongs. They found it strange that they would leave their stuff behind, but the sheriff didn’t make an issue out of it. He was just glad no one was there putting up a fight.
At the Prince home, they did find one occupant. It was Virgil Prince, but he wasn’t in any shape to put up a fight. They found him swinging from the rafters of the old house. By the looks of his dead body, he had hung himself several months back. There was no sign of his wife. They figured she had run off with someone, and Virgil just took the coward’s way out.
There were no reports of them finding any iron coffin.





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