Takit's note:
This book is a copy of the original Book of Monsters.
Some pages were added after the copy was made.
Targets
Researcher's insight into the Assassin
Undated
The arrival of the Assassin marks a surprising turning point in the Louisiana Case. Before its arrival, the entity's major aspects were certainly formidable combatants, though designed for other purposes. The humanoid Assassin seemed especially sculpted to shock humans, and destroy them.
Accounts of such a creature are similar: that of a tall humanoid figure who can seemingly melt into a swarm of insects. Whether or not this is the result of trickery, or actual physical transformation, is debatable. Though with all things relating to this case, I am inclined toward belief in the most outlandish and bizarre theorizations one day, and incredulous the next.
Of this, I've noted a remarkable pattern in its behavior. The Assassin seemed capable of remarkable feats. Chief among them, the ability to split into several (three) manifestations of itself. These manifestations would function as a distraction, attacking hunters independently, while the true Assassin would use the opportunity to find the right moment to strike.
Thankfully, Harold Black preserved much of what we know. His encounter with the Assassin seems to have forged him into the man we revere today.
His account, in typical Blackian fashion, seems indirect by modern academic standards. Indeed, he does mention his failed career as a writer, and his inability to inform clearly seems to affirm this.
However, this does give a rare insight into the abilities of the Assassin, particularly their development from a human host. You'd be forgiven for missing some of the more pragmatic information, such as that the Assassin's chest seems to harbor a vulnerable point.
The Journal of Harold Black
Undated
Black leather bound, handwritten, 6"x 8.25"
1/5
Light the shadow that has so dogged my steps on the brightest days.
The words had come to me as I stumbled out of that labyrinthine prison, having for the first time become a quarry, prey to that roving swarm. My friends were dead, butchered by its blades, and my final shots had no effect, as they ricocheted off iron and stone, the swarm undisturbed, lurching toward me on a hundred thousand legs.
I had vaulted gantries, burst through doors, leapt the corpses of my comrades, to come outside again to breath clear air. And in that moment, of unrivaled and brilliant life, the final words of my father came to me.
Light the shadow that has so dogged my steps on the brightest days.
Words that I had fled from. South, to Atlanta, Tallahassee, Jackson, New Orleans, and finally Baton Rouge. Yet they had caught up to me. His cursed prophecy proved self-fulfilling. In the weeks immediately after his passing, I'd awoken from their echo in a cold sweat, and been trapped in their rumination until sun up. Watching the dark corners for the specter they heralded. In the end, it proved that the unease they caused set me on a path fraught with pitfalls. A path here.
Blinking in the sun, staggering down the steps of that prison, they came to me as a stroke of clarity. I would light the shadow that had dogged his step. I would repay my inherited debts. The Assassin, so aptly named, destroyed the man I was. A man scared of his shadow. In his place stands someone I'm unfamiliar with. Perhaps this is one purpose of this journal.
The second is the aforementioned repayment. A great deal of blood has been shed in the writing of these pages. It will prove my life's work, and perhaps that of others too
The Journal of Harold Black
Undated
Black leather bound, handwritten, 6"x 8.25"
2/5
I was not always a hunter, far from it. Many years ago, I studied Natural Science at Harvard. An ardent believer then, the secularization of the school proved to disillusion me. I dropped out, aspiring to be a writer, though found little success. Soon after, my father passed, and I made my way south.
In October of 1890, I was in New Orleans. I was a staff writer for one of the papers. I followed, naturally, the murder of David Hennessy with great professional and personal interest. Unseen assailants in the dead of night gunned down the Police Chief. Despite a relentless hunt, his killers were likely never caught. Eventually, nineteen Italians found themselves imprisoned.
I was there for their barbarous lynching, I remember two of the wretched men dragged from jail. I must admit, the sight was too much, and I left. On the perimeter of the crowd, I saw another also making his leave. The man was hugely tall, and incredibly agitated. Something about him struck me as odd, and I began to follow.
Some way down the street he noticed me. A shot rang out from the mob at the prison, and on that mark he began to sprint. I gave chase, struck by a sense of abandon.
My pursuit led me down an alley where, cornered, the man spun. He kicked up a cloud of dust into my face that blinded me. To my disgust, by happenstance he seemed to have caught a large beetle, which I felt crawling across my face. As I cleared my eyes, I could hardly believe them, for it seemed the man was scaling the shear wall of the adjacent building. Seemingly hanging off the wall, he threw something. It missed me by an inch.
As it thudded into the ground, I realized it was a long, slender blade. I fled, leaving the man to disappear over the eaves.
The Journal of Harold Black
Undated
Black leather bound, handwritten, 6"x 8.25"
3/5
Shortly after, I was fired from the paper. My editor, John C. Wickliffe, took objection to my portrayal of the events of the lynching. Later on, it came out that he himself had been prominently involved, but by that time I was in the employ of another, lieutenant Governor of Louisiana Hiram R. Lott.
My work was clerical and tiresome. I drank often and in quantity, my evenings spent in a stupor. It was during this time I met a dear friend of mine, Vincent Orsica. A friendship of chance, we always seemed to meet at night, in one saloon or another. Some years my senior, he gave me invaluable advice over countless whiskeys and cigarettes.
Over a year or so, as my trust in him grew, I shared all manner of secrets. I was close with Mr. Lott, and we frequently argued. The accounts of such disagreements seemed to interest Vincent greatly, and I shared them willingly, secretly delighted to have the rapt attention of one I respected so greatly.
He took pity on my health, and began taking me for long walks in the woods, and practicing a bit of sport shooting. The first time I saw him sober, I still remember, being surprised at how tall he was. These walks developed into hikes and hunts, and had a tremendous impact on my health, and would prove invaluable practice.
The last time I saw Vincent, we'd drunk until morning. I'd been recounting a particularly funny disagreement, over a continued obsession of Mr. Lott's. He was a great believer in an Atlantic-Pacific canal through Nicaragua. I was a stern critic, there were issues closer to home for him to worry about, and the effort in Panama was an unmitigated failure. Nevertheless, against my advice, Mr. Lott had sailed to Nicaragua that afternoon, and I was again out of work.
We left the saloon at dawn. I think it was the drink, but as Vincent walked away, he seemed to split and multiply, eventually vanishing down a dozen alleys.
The Journal of Harold Black
Undated
Black leather bound, handwritten, 6"x 8.25"
4/5
Hiram R. Lott died out in Nicaragua, another was sworn in his position of Lieutenant Governor. Wandering the docks, thoroughly inebriated, I eventually found work with a man by the name of Samson. Thus was my introduction to this bloody and violent work. It was a far cry from writing, though I hoped I could serialize my adventures at some point in the future.
Through Samson I met a young group of other hunters, and together we one day found ourselves in the upper gantries of the new prison, out Lawson way. The first of my friends was blinded by a thrown clump of insects that crawled over his face, some disappearing down his throat. Screaming, he was hardly aware of the shadow rising behind him. We watched, mouth agape, as it grew to its full stature, then suddenly drove a blade through the belly and let him drop. To my knowledge, the Assassin's first kill.
We started firing, the Assassin seemed to split into three and rush the next of us. One flew at me, and I hit it with single shot. It burst. My mouth was full of legs, thoraxes and mandibles, beetles crawling across my airways. By the time I'd cleared them, I saw another of my friends get jabbed in the stomach by the Assassin, darting to avoid a final swing of his axe, then slashing his throat, blood bubbling out of the clean gash.
I saw then into the void of the monster's face. The most remarkable feeling struck me. Recognition.
I vowed on my father's words to prevent that happening again. The massacre of my comrades. I would arm hunters with the knowledge they needed to survive out here.
It was that moment of recognition that led me to where I am today. For in that void I saw Vincent.
The Journal of Harold Black
Undated
Black leather bound, handwritten, 6"x 8.25"
5/5
I went through everything I'd written the last few years. I turned out my humble quarters for every scrap of paper I'd jotted on, every memory I'd crystalized into writing. I visited psychologists, chemists, and mystics, anyone who could do anything to help me remember. I needed to recall everything I could about Vincent.
A crumpled note and incessant questioning of strangers of the street took me to his quarters. A dilapidated garret overlooking the prison where the lynching took place. Bare of furnishing. Again, a sense of recognition. As I walked the streets outside, I realized I'd been there before. The alley the man had disappeared down. I put everything relevant to paper
Another line of enquiry took me closer. Apparently, another hunter had seen the Assassin, by the name of Glanton. I found him out in the bayou, inhabiting an abandoned church, deep in the hunting grounds. He was dressed in black and had strung bones from his clothes, yet his face was youthful and plain.
The Assassin had come to him one night, and they had fought until morning. The fight was only over when he'd planted a blast from his Romero straight in its chest, which had caused it to recoil and flee. I asked him where this had taken place. He laughed and gestured to the church. He was waiting for it to come back.
Disturbed, I returned to the city. Bringing everything together, I had a picture of the Assassin. I presented this information to other hunters, and not before long. I was ready to track it down and kill it.
Only I didn't. My men stopped me. They promised me a share of the bounty. The information I'd assembled was valuable. But they couldn't risk losing me.
They asked me instead to study the monsters. To illuminate them. I'm ashamed to say, I assented. And thus was this journal born, and found its way to you.
Light the shadow that has so dogged my steps on the brightest days.
Researcher's insight into the Butcher
Undated
The documentation is clearly unreliable. As we piece together the puzzle, we are forced to make many leaps of both logic and faith. Inconsistencies are not altogether surprising considering the sources, and the subjectivity of remembered experience. The big picture makes a certain kind of sense, follows its own internal logic. In spite of that, even I have trouble believing what I've found in regards to its first appearance in Louisiana.
The huge bloated body - clearly a relative of the Meathead - with bits of wood and metal protruding from the skin. A leather apron covers the horrors of its torso, the head of a pig, and - and somehow this is the detail that I find most difficult to believe - a flaming hook. It is comfortable with fire and resistant to heat - likely thanks in part to the apron - and to bludgeoning. A regular bulletsponge, and though more fallible to rending attacks, it is hard for me to imagine how these people managed to kill any of them at all. When driven into a violent fury, its behavior would become erratic, and flames would fly from the aforementioned hook. I shudder to think. What it must have felt like to round a dark corner and come face to face with the empty eyes and glowing hook of that seemingly impossible beast?
If the reports can be believed, these Butchers, as they were called by those who hunted them, were the stuff of nightmares. Either that, or only the most fantastical of tales have survived. Can we really separate the facts from the fictions at this distance? Perhaps not, but I am driven to continue to try, even if I never can be sure of the truth.
Clippings from the New Orleans True Crescent
Authors: Unknown
Newsprint variable sizes
July 19th, 1893
A RARE EXHIBITION.- Perhaps you have heard of the art of Taxidermy. Though you may not count it among the finer arts known to man, it can still be practiced with delicacy and skill. None have practiced the art with such whimsy as Walter Potter, an Englishman well known among his peers in his home country. Photographs of Potter's work will be on display for viewing at the home of local practitioner, Ari D'aunoy, this Saturday, admittance 5 cents.
September 22nd, 1893
Come see BARNUM'S AMERICAN MUSEUM! In town, one week only! Featuring strange and marvelous one-of-a-kind creatures, guaranteed to shock and awe, preserved by scientists to inspire and educate. Tickets available at the home of Mr. A. D'aunoy.
June 1st, 1894
You'll never have to say goodbye to Rover!
If you are mourning the passing of your favorite pet, consider the services of MR. A. D'AUNOY. Birds, dogs, rabbits, squirrels, and cats can be preserved to stay with you always. Remember the good times you shared, and amuse your guests!
Call at the home of Mr. D'aunoy between the hours of 11 and 3 for consultation.
March 31st, 1895
READY FOR HIS PROFESSION.- The body of Taxidermist Mr. Ariel D'aunoy was discovered by a group of fishermen on the road to Stillwater Bayou this past Sunday. It is not know how he came to be in that location or the poor condition in which he was found, being only recognizable by a poorly cast glass eye. Should any Readers have information about Mr. D'aunoy's activities in the past few days, please call on the Constable between the hours of 8 and 10 in the morning. Another reminder to move with caution after dark.
October 23rd, 1895
WELL PRESERVED.- The Great Fire in Algiers sent many prized possessions up in smoke. While our reporting is usually appropriately somber, one curious anecdote proved so remarkable as to be printed. A firefighter, sifting through the wreckage of one home, found preserved a curious collection: a menagerie of taxidermied pets. The eccentric collector would be pleased to know that whatever fire retardant measures taken by the taxidermist proved successful beyond all measure.
Interview with Mrs. Florence Frank
Interviewer: New Orleans Constable
Date: April 2nd, 1895
Typewritten, questions omitted(...) 8.5"x 11"
Sir, I beg your pardon, but I am certain that man brought the plague down upon this town, God rest his soul. The lu has taken so many already. My own sons have the cough. But God has delivered his punishment.
Now I know that the good Lord decreed that animals would carry no soul within their bodies. It was not wrong on hat account. But no healthy-minded man would choose such a profession! Not on my life!
(...)
Mr. D'aunoy first took the quarters adjacent to ours one year ago. I brought him our family's well wishes, as a good neighbor must, and he offered a tour of his shop, for he would both live and work on the premises. I was hocked when he showed me the racks of skins. There were rows and rows of fine, sharp knives, and other strange tools I did not recognize. I didn't know what they were for, but from the look of them, they were horrible. Sharp, horrible things. I hate even to think of them. I took a disliking to him immediately.
I had always thought preserved animals were stuffed, somehow, like a toy bear. I didn't know what had to be one. But Mr. D'aunoy, with no little excitement, explained to me that he made clay models of the animals and hen stretched the skins upon them like a coat! It is no wonder God has cursed us with this plague. Only a man of the Devil would do such things mark my word.
My husband and I made clear that he was not welcome, and yes we encouraged our neighbors to do the same. It as our Christian duty. Of course, our Tommy took a liking to the man. Fool he is. I forbade him to ever cross his threshold, but I'm sure he has, and no manner of hidings will cure the boy.
One day he was just gone. I wish I could say I am sorry to hear he has passed, considering the state they found him. But that was God's justice, you'll mark my word.
March 4. I have been forced to flee my home. The flu reached our neighborhood and I was handed the blame. I had thought more understood my profession, especially after so many came to see the Potter exhibit! I do not covet death. I preserve animals so as to appreciate them! The act is a celebration of life. I feel deeply misunderstood, and yet I have to laugh. I share the plight of so many great artists before me. Though my own lack of skill did not do the art justice at first. I was bad with the eyes, and the results were uncanny. Mrs. Glover fainted when I brought her mounted Cleveland back to her, and made me take it away to be burned. I have since become much more proficient in casting the eyes. She was not wrong. Cleveland's eyes had a glassy, demonic look to them. By the time I was required to cast my own, my skill had improved considerably.
I hope to return to my home in a few weeks, though that may be optimistic. Perhaps the plague will have taken my wretched neighbors by then. The night I left, the three boys already had the cough. The mother won't be long after, once they pass, if their predecessors are any sign as to how the illness progresses. Thinking of how they turned people I once thought of as friends against me, my thoughts grow morbid. Perhaps I should return and stuff the boys. That would show that shipwreck of a woman just how artful I am. But what am I saying? I have never even killed an animal. Would I be capable of preserving a human child? I do not think so.
March 5. This building used to be a Slaughterhouse. (likely the one in Stillwater Bayou)
It reminds me of home. There are several carcasses (swine) hanging in one room - though this place appears to have been abandoned for some time - and there is plenty of lumber from which I can build drying racks for the skins. I must amuse myself somehow, in the time I spend here in refuge, and I plan to put my mind to the task of preservation. I will have to overcome my aversion to hunting in order to feed myself, and I plan to preserve and mount whatever animals are destined to meet their end by my hand. I have set up quarters in a small room with a sturdy, working door, and in another I have arranged what instruments I was able to bring from the house.
While exploring the other rooms, I have found evidence that someone with a similar, if more gruesome, passion dwelled here once. I hope I do not meet him, though as I said, this place appears to have been empty for some time.
Tomorrow I will build several racks and begin by drying the skins of the pig carcasses I mentioned, and perhaps preparing one of the heads for future use. At the very least, it will be good practice.
March 9. The events of the past two days may be of significant historical importance. Though my hand shakes as I write this, I intend to record the facts before the faults of memory and fancy distort them. If you are reading this, know this is no exaggeration or fabrication. This story is true.
I was on a walk. I am a poor marksman and hunter at best, and I have had to dedicate much of my time here in the pursuit of small game for my supper. As I walked the grounds, I came across an enormous carcass, over six feet tall, and at least 350 pounds. Its flesh was soft, mealy, and pale, and at its shoulder a well of leeches, now dead but clearly not an addition to, but a part of the body. I have never seen anything like it, animal or human. And the creature had no head! Not a head that been removed - a body, naturally formed, without that appendage.
I was badly shaken by the sight, but excited as well. Immediately an idea began to form - I could preserve this fine specimen, and sell it to the Showmen (or - dare I hope? - Ward's?), and make my fortune! It took a considerable amount of work to move the body without assistance, but I found rope and slowly hoisted it onto a small wagon, which I was able to wheel back to my makeshift office. The door was large enough that I could wheel it directly into the laboratory. I skinned it immediately.
Its organs were unfamiliar to me, both in shape and substance. The skin was thick and tougher than it looked, like that of an elephant perhaps. The leeches should be easy enough to preserve - they have a tough carapace and a simple shape to mimic in clay. The creature will be more difficult. I have begun the amateur, and am so far happy with my work. With no brain or eyes to remove, it was a far easier task than even the smallest dog. No trouble with casting eyes this time!
March 11. Still waiting for the skin to dry. Growing restless, so walked into town for a drink. The news is bad. They are calling it a plague now, as it has worsened. Many are dead, and there were corpses piled in the streets. It would be prudent to wait here as long as I can and avoid the sick.
March 17. The skin is finally dry, and I was able to draw it across the amateur this morning. I found a large spool of wire, which should help hold the form, but it is an unwieldy mass, and I have had to attach the body to a number of branches to hold it upright. Without access to more modern materials, I am forced to improvise. It looks most fearsome. I have no doubt that I will get a pretty penny for it.
March 18. It held together through the night! It was warm yesterday, and I worried that the heat might cause deterioration. However, it is stable. I wrapped my leather apron around the body to ensure that everything holds together as it sets, and to conceal the hasty incision I made, in my shock, to investigate the innards.
This is a dismal place to live, but not at all bad as a workshop. In a storeroom, I found preserved a large quantity of salted meat. At first the smell was bad, but it's sated my hunger while I work. I have been feeling more optimistic than ever. It was luck that brought me here, and this gentleman will surely make my career. There are horrible noises at night, but somehow, I sleep.
March 19. The creature is far too unsettling without a head. Perhaps it sounds silly - it is a monster! - but I have decided to attach one of the pig's heads to its body, to complete the picture, and the experiment has been a success. The thing looks even more horrific. Now to consider how I will transport it into town when I return. It is stormy tonight, and part of the ceiling in my sleeping quarters has caved in. Sleeping in the workshop tonight, if the thunder doesn't keep me awake the night.
Researcher's insight into the Spider
Undated
More people than you think suffer arachnophobia. A primal fear of something poisonous lurking, weaving traps, able to scale any surface. At odds, though, with its domestic function: keeping a dwelling clear of flies and other undesirable creatures. A spider the size of a quarter, though, is manageable. But, at the size of a horse, even the most rational and logical would recoil in disgust at an eight-legged arachnid, gnashing its mandibles, expelling coils of webbing.The Spider strikes the ardent occultist as one of the most outlandish and monstrous examples of the hysteria that so gripped the bayous. An example, though, that in all its multifaceted dimensions and exhaustive iterations, vindicates that hysteria.
References keep cropping up throughout the archive, of something not quite human and not quite spider, a semi-sentient mass of limbs, poisonous in both body and intent.
The hunters were pragmatic, that much can be said. Most information preserved concerned how to combat such a beast. It hit hard, then retreated to the shadows to ready its next assault. Hunters were advised to keep moving, as the Spider could apparently spit poison, which lingered some time after in the air.
Melee weapons, which could slash or pummel, proved effective at rending its limbs and breaking its bones. Poison and other toxins were ineffective.
I'm sure that a more fastidious study of the source text would doubtless reveal more insights.
The best sources I found to work with though were interviews given by the notorious JV. A detailed physical description, and at least reference to Black and Scognamiglio (the latter suspiciously silent on the subject in his own writing). Some pages missing, though the most relevant are reproduced here.
What is known though, is that this Spider was of the greater possessions of the greater evil that lurked there. All the more that can be discovered of it, the more clearly we will see the picture as a whole.
Interview with John Victor concerning the Spider
Interviewer: T Collins
Undated
Typewritten, questions omitted (...), 8.5" x 11"
1/5
-2-
(...)
Of Dr Reed, there was no sign, but the rest of his party was dead. How long were they holed up there? Bodies wasted thin, sprawled where they'd fallen, flies covering them like grave clothes. Chests disemboweled, organs consumed.
I dug a pit as the rain poured. The exertion, the cold wet, exhausted me. I dragged the first body through the mud from the barn to the hole. It left a trail of offal. Crows flocked in. They rose cawing murder each time I passed through with another corpse. With my back turned, they descended back to the entrails. Faster each time.
The final was the smallest, a child. I remembered her face. Blank eyes. The crows did not rise, well fed. I kicked them aside, dragging the body of the girl through the mud, too weak to even shoulder her. Night fell as I backfilled the mass grave, the crows mournfully scorned the remainder of their feast.
The first time we fought the Spider, I remembered that night, that pit, that child's face. Swimming up at me, out of sodden earth and memory.
We never again found the grave I'd dug. Too many long nights. Too many crumbling barns. Too many pits excavated, in earth turned a hundred times, plowed by processions of hunters burying the dead and killing them again.
But it was the girl's eye, leering out of a fold of the Spider's flesh, screeching, pleading, spitting. The poisonous bile burnt my own eyes like hell. I was blinded, I stumbled out of its nest, clawing at my eyes to clear it.
Seeing that eye, the thought struck me that Reed was responsible for this. But it was impossible. Even in his most macabre faculties, he came up short. The spider was the work of something more evil. More primal.
Interview with John Victor concerning the Spider
Interviewer: T Collins
Undated
Typewritten, questions omitted (...), 8.5" x 11"
2/5
-3-
The others refused to hear of such a thing and were yet inclined to disbelief. My legitimacy at that point was waning. But I didn't recognize it then, hindsight is twenty twenty.
"John," I remember Huff saying, "Your account is simply misguided. The form this being has taken, that of a Spider, is of the class Arachnida. Insects are of course Insecta. Our accounts of the Demon all align on the simple observation that in all its diverse manifestations, it favors the form of the Insect - that which most aligns with its inner malignant machinations." Or some waffle like that. The others agreed.
Then the other hunters brought in their reports. That such a beast existed. It went at odds with everything we knew. Why a Spider? Scognamiglio, genius if there ever was one dumb enough to hunt, figured it out, of course. Why it was different, what it was for. For me it was too late, the damage to my reputation was done, the AHA in disarray. That's another story. One we'll have time to go into. But that's all to do with the Twins.
Anyway.
We did what we could to kill it, and a hunter did so. Daniel Glanton . Ah, that name's familiar to you? He was the first I knew of. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Then another hunter made a claim to have killed it again, and proved it. Then another. I killed it. I did what I could to verify the stories, but a pattern emerged. There was more than one of this thing. But: never more than one at once, if that makes sense. It was re-forming. Scognamiglio would have been able to explain it better.
As the money rolled in, the competition became fiercer. Friendly rivalries became outright firefights. We all wanted a piece of it. Thought not in a literal sense, as banishing burned up most its body.
We weren't getting any closer though, and though I'd seen it once, that girl's face wasn't going away.
Interview with John Victor concerning the Spider
Interviewer: T Collins
Undated
Typewritten, questions omitted (...), 8.5" x 11"
3/5
-5-
I told you already that the Spider poisoned me real bad the first time I fought it. I don't know if it affected my memory, if that was in the poison, but it seems likely, because I remember little else about that night.
I had come through to a dock, central in the dead zone. Scognamiglio likely presumed later that this was its origin location, where it first - manifested. I can't attest to that being true.
When I arrived, there was a hunter bleeding out in the dirt. In one hand was a machete, in the other, an unhuman appendage. I recognized him, a Populist from Alabama. I put him out his misery.
I didn't know then, but that body part had belonged to the spider. It had once been a forearm, I think. Too many joints, one ended in a large knuckle and branched off into two deformed toes or fingers. Impossible to say. It was tipped with a thick black nail. The flesh was raw and blistered where it wasn't calloused.
The exact function of that appendage soon became self-evident. Entering the dock, I could hear something moving around, though couldn't see where. The interior was strange, as if it was covered in something: the angles were softened, like under dust sheets. Giant strands of white ropy webbing, I saw as my eyes adjusted to the light.
I found myself then in an open room, light streaming in from the upper windows, a half built boat sat rotting. I could not spot the origin of that scuttling I'd so far heard.
Black viscous liquid, a droplet the size of my fist, splattered onto my sleeve. Instinctively, I followed the tendril of viscous bile upward, toward the ceiling where her eye peered back. Hanging off a beam, ready to pounce, lurked the twisted and malformed mass of my quarry.
As it pounced, I had time for a single shot. It must have struck true: the monster, for a moment, was stopped in its tracks. A moment that, on reflection, saved my life.
Interview with John Victor concerning the Spider
Interviewer: T Collins
Undated
Typewritten, questions omitted (...), 8.5" x 11"
4/5
-8-
The time I killed a Spider, I was more prepared. I'd searched Black's journal for the relevant pages, but I fear my copy is missing them, and that may be the only one left.
At the time though, he had carried out a great feat in just compiling the information. We were divided, every hunter for themselves. At that time, I'd sooner kill you than give away a hard fought trade secret. Black had managed to extract hundreds. Of course, the price had been paid in blood, just not his own. Knowledge is of course more valuable the less it's distributed.
The Spider was formed of many human forms, shaped together into one entity. Black termed the central human the "alpha entity." The Spider has, after all, one head, located in the mandibles. Its sensory and faculty. There was a bulbous, swollen mass on its back. That was the lungs, heart, stomach. All grossly engorged to give the Spider athletic endurance and agility.
Thing is, one man don't have enough limbs. A few extra have to be grafted on. Some are still recognizably human, others, well, not. It's not exactly clear when one begins and another ends. Black observed some legs had as many as five joints. The mandibles are the most malformed, each two arms fused together, the strength to punch clean through a man.
Reed's party had become one. I'd even made it first possible, burying them together. See, a Spider must be formed out of a number people who'd shared great and insurmountable suffering. The bayou was full of that.
So, if it's human in its construction, you might ask: how did it make web, or how did it produce poison? Black could only guess. "Inverting the function of the liver?" I remember he'd put in the margin. Doesn't make sense to me. Might've made it resistant to toxins and poisons itself. Essential when you think what it was designed to catch.
Interview with John Victor concerning the Spider
Interviewer: T Collins
Undated
Typewritten, questions omitted (...), 8.5" x 11"
5/5
-9-
And that's just what Black wondered about. Why was this thing designed to be so deadly? So much more developed than any others? He thought it was simply a builder. There was these huge cocoons, in the church for instance. Incubating more and more of the plague.
Scognamiglio had his own theory. Even explained it to me once. I don't remember the circumstance of our meeting. It was sometime after I'd killed it myself. I believe he cashed out my bounty, even. He said, part of the Devil, The Lord of the Flies, the Sculptor, whatever you want to call it, went bad. Not often, but they did. When it weakened, they went feral, or something like to that. Hard to imagine, isn't it? The Spider, Scognamiglio speculated, was there to make sure that didn't happen. It was faster and stronger than anything else, symbolically different to the insectoid forms of the others. It's function was cauterization. Destroy the bad parts. Trap them in webs. Kill them. Eat them.
I was never witness to such behavior, never saw it, didn't believe it. Scognamiglio though, he was a smart one. Argued his case. He said that obviously, when hunters were after it, the Lord had greater concerns than cutting chaff. Didn't help him in the end though, did it?
But coming back to Black, that the Spider was there as a builder, was just as viable really. Or I hope so. You'd have thought that our priorities would have been straight. That if the Spider was eating the bad parts, we'd have let it eat to it's hearts content. Less for us to kill. Nicer to think we were stopping it from building something new, right?
But, in all honesty, I think even if we'd have known that, I don't know if we would have done any different. I'm inclined to believe Black. Less speculative. More concrete. In the end, what it does don't matter. It's how it dies.
Researcher's Notes
Handwritten
Undated
The question of the beak is paramount. Initially, I had supposed it a mask, fashioned from the scavenged detritus the creature holds so dear, a theory supported by the fact that the beak's composition does not resemble that of any bird yet catalogued by man. However, dissection reveals that the periphery of the beak-structure is fused with the bone of the skull, though the mandibles and the surrounding musculature are curiously positioned, non-functional, and show extensive scarring. The scar tissue is singular, exhibiting attributes of both keloid and hypertrophic tissue, and marked in such a way as to suggest a violently expediated healing process.
From this, I must conclude that the beak was not part of the beast's original physiognomy, but rather a more recent addition — an addition that could only have been made through a most gruesome surgical procedure — and that the healing process was accelerated and warped by the transformation process of which I still, maddeningly, know so little. I shudder to think of it, for I can imagine no circumstance under which a man might agree, of his own free will, to allow such a surgery to take place, or the physician willing to perform it. Finding that physician - possibly under the influence of the corruption themselves - would give the most valuable insight into this creature. Perhaps the Sculptor is not, in the end, the most egregious being in the Bayou. One must only read the headlines of the daily papers to know the staggering capacity for cruelty of the human specimen.
Researcher's Notes
Handwritten
Undated
Rumor — though a mixture of fantasy and fact - has provided me with several interesting directions of inquiry, putting word to stories untold by physiognomy and flesh. Even when rumors provide little concrete insight into a specimen, they often illuminate the state of our own collective mind.
There are two distinct interpretations repeated among the Hunters who gather to exchange stories over their meager evening refreshments. Those who have faced Scrapbeak in combat place great emphasis on his behavior — the piercing, pain-ridden howls; the obsession with birds; and the hoarding of scrap and other objects both morbid and banal. It is these Hunters who gave him the name that has become parlance, and the same group suggest the creature is more bird than man — whether through close observation or a desire to still their conscience. It is far easier to kill a bird than to kill a man. Though perhaps I am naive.
Those who have only seen Scrapbeak from afar or heard tell of his ghastly silhouette are convinced that it is Death Himself, come to wander the Bayou. Though I could be convinced of many strange things, I believe this tale says more about the teller than about the beaked beast. Having lived amongst the corruption and seen the causalities wrought by the Sculptor these many months, they see Death everywhere they look. Though factually incorrect, the metaphor holds. Death does haunt the Bayou, hungry and untiring, picking off all those who greet him with relentless regularity. Death walks among us, though this beaked visage is only one of many masks he deigns show to all who will know him.
From the office of Charles Burke,
Attorney Typewritten, interview transcript
IN ATTENDANCE Charles Burke (Attorney), Avis Wyndham, Jr. (Defendant), Mary May Sterling (Transcription)
Page 1
CB: Good morning Mr. Wyndham.
AW: (silent) (nods)
CB: A quiet type. I see. Well, we might be able to make that work for us in court. Let's start with the charges: 25 counts of first-degree murder, including the murder of your own father, Avis Wyndham Sr., and with additional charges pending that tie you to a dozen other missing persons cases. And you intend to plead not guilty?
AW: (nods)
CB: I see. Now, son, as your Attorney, I am under a strict oath to keep whatever you say between us — well you, me, and Mary here. So, I need to know for certain. Did you kill any of those men?
AW: No, sir, I did not. I didn't kill a single one of them.
CB: The evidence seems to suggest that you knew or had met many of them. Is that true? AW: Yes, sir.
CB: Were you involved in their deaths in any way?
AW: I think it's safe to say they had it coming.
CB: Had it coming how, Mr Wyndham? Don't beat around the bush.
AW: Everybody knows what's out in the Bayou, Mr. Burke. Everybody talks around it. Don't want to admit it. But you all know what's out there. I reckon anybody who chooses to go looking for it wants to die. Death is waiting out there, waiting for us all. I reckon showing them where he's hiding's just the same as selling somebody a gun. Ain't no harm in it. Ain't illegal. Ain't me pulled any triggers.
Researcher's Notes
Handwritten
Undated
But what of the birds? They arrived before the beaked beast first appeared! They are drawn to the Scrapbeak specifically - not just the so-called Sculptor's power - that is evident in their behavior. But the timing of their appearance indicates foreknowledge of what – and who – would come.
This is a great cause for concern, and does not follow the established pattern. Which is to say: the patterns I had previously identified were but wishful thinking on my part. My mind races, and I grow uneasy. What troublesome future does the sudden arrival of this new foe foreshadow? Will we be compelled to face an ever-increasing cast of hideous foes? How long will there be men enough to keep fighting this ghastly war?
Other instances suggest that the Sculptor does not create from scratch, but rather takes that which is present, twisting and molding it until a new form emerges, one more suited to its errands. (Or perhaps, more familiar?) I cannot guess at the purpose of this new monstrosity, but the early appearance of the birds seems to me to indicate there was more than one pawn at play this time.
I have begun to comb the papers for any sign, any scrap of evidence. In the other cases, I did not form a theory until long after the initial event. But a trial has caught my attention: a man named Avis Wyndham, accused of killing his peaceful, bird-loving father, and several dozen others. It was the detail about the birds that caught my attention. His testimony has been delivered with a disturbing cheer, and an almost prescient smugness, as he insists that he is innocent, and invites the jury to visit the Bayou themselves. He is not currently allowed visitors, and I do not have the funds to bribe the rat-faced attorney who represents him.
From the office of Charles Burke, Attorney
Typewritten, interview transcript
IN ATTENDANCE: Charles Burke (Attorney), Avis Wyndham, Jr. (Defendant), Mary May Sterling (Transcription)
Page 1
CB: Well, son we have our work cut out for us. The prosecution believes they have evidence placing you at the location of at least 14 of those murders. You have no alibi, no friends, no property, no job, and no surviving close family. Now, considering your history, and your age, I don't know how on this green Earth you got the money together to pay my fees, but you're not on trial for that. Not yet anyway. (laughs) But this is serious, son. If we are going to walk you out of that courtroom a free man, we are going to need a hell - excuse my language - of a story. Let's start with your Father. The prosecution will be sure to use his death against you in any way they can. Tell me about your relationship, what kind of man he was. Save the silent treatment for the courtroom. What I need is a story.
AW: Well, I guess we have to start back at the war. Papa lost the first leg in the war. The arm in what come after. And the other leg, well, that's another story. Maybe we'll get to that later.
He worked as a rag man, and it suited him. He'd drive around in that old cart collecting broken old pots and pans and scraps and rags and things. Seemed the more broken something was, the more he liked it. Meant there was something he could fix. Something he could take apart and put back together again. He loved tinkering around with that old junk.
He come back from the war, met mama, rest her soul, and they had me. Never married, those two. Didn't much like each other. No real animosity between them either, but you know how people are about couples having kids and not getting married. I've had to make my peace with that.
Papa was a nice man. A quiet man. A peaceful man. The neighbors all agreed. But they don't know what happened in that house in the dark hours. Ain't none of them known what he was really like, did they? Well they gonna find out now.
Old Avis, the Rag and Bone Man. (laughs) He didn't have much time for me. Wasn't worth his time. I wasn't worth anybody's time. Neighbors all agreed on that too.
From the office of Charles Burke, Attorney
Typewritten, interview transcript
IN ATTENDANCE: Charles Burke (Attorney), Avis Wyndham, Jr. (Defendant), Mary May Sterling (Transcription)
Page 1
AW (cont. From page 2): Papa loved birds. Kept a few in a little wooden cage, drove them around with him in that damn cart. Customers loved that. “Bird man’s back!” That’s what they’d yell when they spotted his cart, start gathering up their scrap for him.
Regular little magpie, daddy was. He’d ride all over the bayous, go where nobody else would. People appreciated that. Liked that he remembered them. Liked his little pet birds. He didn’t mind getting a wheel stuck in the mud sometimes, and he liked the stories. They got some real tall tales out there - or I used to think so. Now I know they aren’t stories at all. Learned that the hard way. Anyway. One day he let me ride out with him - would have been just near the end of summer and the last time I ever seen him alive - have you ever been out to the Bayou Mr. Burke?
CB: Not recently, no. But that isn’t relevant. Tell me about that last day with your father.
AW: It was so hot that last week of August, you remember? Hot and sticky and it just seemed like the air was swarming with insects. Seemed like everybody was on edge. Those disappearances they want to blame me for were already in the papers, and the flue and the rest of it. We’d buried two customers that week - shown up for their scrap and stayed for their funerals - and there was gunfire all the damn time. You could barely sleep for the sound of the gunfire. There was more and more strange folks coming into town too. Coming in on the train and going back out in a coffin.
Anyway, we had a row. I…I was angry with him. Wanted him to pay me mind. Stop talking to those stupid birds. Start remembering he had a son. And I’m ashamed to admit it, but that night I killed his birds. Cracked their necks and left them for him to find. Papa said ain’t no good man ever harm an innocent little bird, Avis. What did he know? There ain’t no good men. Not me, not you, and most certainly not Papa.
People said Daddy was a good man for what he done fighting in that war. But it’s complicated, what happens in a war. No matter what side you’re fighting for, war is always a deal with the Devil. And you don’t come out of a deal with the Devil like you were before. There’s no winners. There’s just more cracks opened up in the world for the Devil to come through. Daddy cracked, and the Devil come through him. Daddy cracked, and brought the Devil right into our house. Into me. And so I brought the Devil back to him.
A lot of people mistake quiet for peaceful. Daddy made that mistake. He ain’t quiet now, is he, big mouth like that, no he sure ain’t quiet now.
Harold Black, The Nature of Tidal Phenomena: How Jaws Beyond Death Retreat and Advance the Seas
We were wrong about the moon.
There are tides which exist beyond her influence. For the coming and going of those waters leaves a shadow, and the shadows of that tide are ruled by a titan of rot. This is why the moon is bare: each phase of darkness runs its teeth along those craters and valleys to wilt whatever lushness may attempt to grow there.
The Rotjaw, as we call this female alligator specimen, defies the physiology of any known aquatic reptile, or creature descended from “living” taxonomical orders. Putrefaction has encompassed her skull, leaving it bare and smooth. It is easily capable of crushing three men. The jaws instill in one a paleolithic fear, something felt by the first mammals to witness their parents eviscerated by reptiles.
Moreso, the exposed skull is a tuning fork for energies unknown to man. The inept refer to it as electricity, though necrophagic energy is more appropriate.
A constant tearing of physics roils inside the reptile’s abdomen. I believe she has ingested some sliver of cosmic firmament. This allows disease and organic compounds from a “Land of the Dead” to summon themselves around the Rotjaw when provoked. This black primordia may be the source of all known decay.
Some madmen have amplified the abomination’s "creative" energies by means of an electric cage. But no cage can contain such a mother for long. For the Rotjaw has tread lands beyond extinction and returned with physics that repulse my scientific sensibilities; some fragment of God’s abandoned grace that’s now found the fertile loam of our souls to fester in, to make itself home.
Enola’s Diary
Day 2: 1812
Mama taught me to act like a queen, and a queen does not wish people dead.
The Redcoats invaded Fort Saint Philip during the hurricane. They trampled every small creature I’ve raised: my turtles, newts, frogs, snakes. Mamma’d be happy about that, always said people’d know we’re poor if I played in the dirt. But they shot her. So I rowed the boat out to sea so hard I broke my shoulder.
Better to drown than be British.
The blockade fleet was confused in the storm. Their cannons fired at each other. I saw a sailor take an iron ball to the chest. He sloshed into the rain and misted red and covered me. I could taste him.
But I wished him dead. He died. And for going against my teachings, I’ve been cursed.
In the center of the wind and rain something poked its gigantic eye through the storm. Like a gigantic insect. It blinked. And it swept my rowboat underwater. I came out the other side to somewhere else. It’s not home. It’s not any place at all.
Day 15: 1812
The trees are wrong here and I blame them for everything. The beetles cream at me from the banks of this forever swamp.
I don’t need to eat in this place. I can remember thirst, the feeling of a cold glass in July. But I don’t feel it here either.
The marsh channels change direction when I’m not looking. There are shadows that move on their own and flick long tails. They look like the shadows of alligators.
Day 25: 1812
The Redcoats are here. They found me and started shooting. All I have is a pen, these pages, and of course, the only egg I could save from the fort.
Enola’s Diary
Day 4,345: 1812?
One of the smaller Redcoat ships got “swept” here with me. Their cannon is always firing. They planted their flag and think they’ve claimed this land, too. A squad of them found me, called me a witch, raised their rifles.
But those gator shadows swam up and ate them from toe to head. They rotted and turned into puddles of black.
Day 14,677: ??
I’m not growing old. My mind is growing wide with holes, and teeth are filling those holes right up. That’s the only word for it. Teeth.
The spirits of those reptiles follow me like a parade. It feels like they want to crown me.
Day 28,900: ??
It hatched. The shadows of those hundred alligators slid onto the rowboat and wriggled into the egg. Then lightning, lots of lightning.
She’s a baby alligator. I’m calling her Princess.
Day ??
Princess was born wrong She’s so angry. I watched her grow the length of my arm in a few minutes, or days. She burrowed into one of the lost soldiers and ate him from the inside out. She likes me. I put the sailor’s funny hat on her skull, one with nice gold trim and vellum. Then I rode her for the first time.
Day ??
Today we attacked the boat. I practiced holding my breath for a week, a month, a year. I swam slow down the channel, across a river, and ocean, whatever it is here. And I held onto the bottom of their ship. Princess follows me wherever I go.
The boat rocked like a crib as she ate them and broke the thing in half. I sipped the blood that leaked through the hull boards.
Wish Mama could see me now. I’m gonna be a queen here.
Enola’s Diary
Day ???
I won’t ever sleep again. Even though Princess tries to sing me to sleep with her coos. They rumble the water so hard my body goes number when I float beside her. That’s the closest I get to sleep. Being paralyzed in her wake, sliding quietly under the moon that won’t move.
Day ???
The soil rotted the flesh off Princess’s snout. It’s cold when I kiss it. Her skin feels like dead flowers. But her blood can bloom in the way things bloom here, with black sickness and bubbles that are fun to pop with a stick. If the bubbles touch your skin, it stings you and your eyes go all silver.
Day ???
Princess won’t stop biting at the sky. I tried crawling in her mouth to stop her, but she wouldn’t let me. Something in our home is changing.
Day ???
Another ship has come. It’s unlike any I’ve ever seen. It has a big wheel of paddles that spin. Princess smells the blood of people on it. She growls and I know she thinks two of them are dangerous.
Day ???
They took her. They took her away. They took her away from me and did something that has ripped the sky in half and my heart in two and I will not forgive them.
Day ???
I’ll be alone forever. I wish I could drown.
Day ????
A woman with hair as white as the moon found me. Her eyes are blacker than the dirt. She wants to be friends, so I’m giving her my diary. She said she can bring me back to Princess. But I won’t be the same. Princess won’t be the same.
I wonder, when a queen dies here, what kind of flowers grow on her grave?
Algiers Ice Repair Invoice
Statement #0234
Supervising Electrician: Frederick Dellowit
If miracles exist, we’ve made one here.
When Mrs. Carmichael got trapped in the cage around the alligator, she flashed into lightning, a screaming, human lightning. I’ve never seen lightning crawl before, but she did, it did, and the gator bit her, roiled her current through its veins. I think she’s trapped inside the cage now.
I can smell her scratching through the copper.
The cage was built to channel electricity from enough field coils, alternators, and makeshift voltaic piles to power a town. The Relic promised me this would work. It promised to show me truth and fame and discovery.
It promised me my name would be remembered.
The alligator’s “animal electricity” is generated by rot. I’ve learned this through the jolts of its arcs tasting me.
They are diseased, organic lightning.
No amount of shooting could stop the alligator, not with that girl commanding it from shore. The thing swiped down the columns that support the hurricane deck and caved the roof. It electrified the whole ship.
We’re trapped now. We’re all evaporating in a moment of time that stretches as slow as the moon moves. All that will be left is this invoice, my scientific legacy.
I think this creature will never die. Its decay will come in seasons.
This alligator will have ten thousand lives because of what we’ve done. Each time a storm bolt strikes a wayward cow, a sailboat, a miner who stopped at the throat of the mountain to smell a flower - it will be the jaws of this thing finding a mole.
I’ll name this energy: Arc Bloom. I hope it makes something beautiful out of all of you.
I licked the open spines of each reptile I caught. Kissed their eyes. Carved my symbol work onto them. Cast my wishes onto each yellow, wet bone. I was the last thing they saw when they died and sank to that place where the worst of worst men are trapped forever, fiddling their knives.
I sent them there to find the one, the grail of gator kind that sludged down troughs of swamp before man took form from clay, learned to spit and scalp. I sent them alligators to prepare their queen for me, feed themselves to the birth jaws from whence they came.
And they’ve done my work well. They obeyed me as an animal obeys the direction of blood in the water. They followed my will and brought her to me.
She’s a big one.
Attempt One: lured her to the Mint Parish Baptism. Bit the preacher and sent him flying with his arms out like a cross. Boiled the rest of them alive when she purged her shackles. Her rot’s a hot black tar that sparks lightning underwater. Smells like incense. Made me sneeze n’ my bolt missed.
Attempt Two: made waxed dynamite, strapped it to a broke-legged horse, floated it downstream. She bit it half in two and bloomed to burn them equine entrails. She flung the dynamite off. Almost popped me instead.
Attempt Three: caught her alone at night. Just nipping at the stars. Could jabbed her with my lance, got it over with. But she growled deep, and it comforted me like signing to a child. It was something beautiful, and I don’t even know what that word means anymore.
So I let her go this once. I wanted her to do it again.
[ Description is missing ]
[ Description is missing ]
Infected
Researcher's insight into the Grunt
Undated
It is quite difficult to perform any typological analysis of this Louisiana incident. I'm starting to think these events may have been the beginning of the zombie stories we have today. It certainly matches the pattern: Some kind of deadly infection hits a settlement, almost wipes out the whole population, and then the dead rise from their graves in order to feast on the living. Though this is the only zombie story I've heard where the zombies take up weapons - torches and blades in most cases - to wield against the living. The old adage holds: truth is always far stranger than fiction.
It seems like the hunters of this era were simply calling them Grunts. There are conflicting reports of course, but the material I have found so far appears to be talking about what's probably a slow-moving and mostly human creature, possibly the victim of a viral infection, or controlled by some kind of greater spirit or Loa.
While at times I seem to be grasping at straws to identify some of the more specialized monsters in the source texts, Grunts are ubiquitous, to say the least. Of particular value, an autopsy performed and recovered almost in full from the journal of Dr. Reinhard Winkler that I've included in the archive.
According to reports, you could quickly dispatch a Grunt quickly with a well-placed head shot. I still wouldn't want to meet one in the dark. And certainly not in numbers.
Journal of Dr. Reinhard Winkler
Transcribed from original, typewritten, 8.5” x 11”
1/5
Tuesday, May 7 1895
It took Father Nico and his children six hours to draw the wards. In the end, he fell asleep, exhausted from his ordeal. Only two of the boys died this time. The rain did not help. Yes, it's a bit rainy today. I never liked rain. It underlines the smell of urine. It just feels wrong, unhygienic. It washes away the clean, allowing the dirt to prevail.
Can't smell the rain today, though. The stench in the laboratory is still unbearable. This is certainly not decomposition. Decomposition is natural. Nasty but natural. After all, just as Carnot postulates, everything rots. Doesn't it?
Everything dies.
DAMNANTQVODNONINTELLIGVNT
No, this is something darker, something deeper, perhaps something unnatural and as wrong as the smell of dog piss after rain...
Not the smell of death.
It's the smell of life which should not be.
Journal of Dr. Reinhard Winkler
Transcribed from original, typewritten, 8.5” x 11”
2/5
Wednesday, May 8 1895
It stopped twitching at dawn. Not sure if it's dead. Not sure if the word even applies. The creature has the appearance of a perfectly normal, if decomposed, human being. Yet inside, i suspect, there is some kind of darkness, a hint of something, dare I say, satanic.
Father Nico broke the silence, assuring me that the darkness is unable to breach the wards now, rendering this specimen inert.
Apparent cause of death
Multiple bullet wounds in the cranium I'd say under normal circumstances. If I can ignore its missing larynx. Its throat looks chewed off. Fang marks of a beast of some sort. Something we haven't seen so far?
I have difficulty finding a suitable classification for these specimen. Philippeaux calls them Zonbi, an older Haitian word for human beings controlled via magic. Although fairly accurate, I believe it's too narrow of a definition.
The wards may be doing little more than securing Father Nico's peace of mind, truth be told. I've more faith in bullets having rendered this thing inert, than his ritual.
But Black's notes refer to them as a "vessel," an empty receptacle for whichever spirit decides to invade. Or perhaps, just a vessel for the plague. This too feels accurate so far. Need to investigate more...
Journal of Dr. Reinhard Winkler
Transcribed from original, typewritten, 8.5” x 11”
3/5
Sunday, May 12 1895
Can it be just four days since my last entry? So much lost in such a short space of time.
I'm coming around to Father Nico's interpretation of this thing. There is comfort in faith. Believing, again.
Dissection still proving to be difficult. Tissue collapses and disintegrates under the scalpel. With great difficulty, I managed to reach the vital organs. It looks fascinating, to say the least...
There is no significant anatomical change as far as I can tell. It is very likely these thing are still fundamentally human. Torn muscle fiber all around. Suggests resistance to motor s- [there was a brown stain here. his hand writing gets progressively worse.] As if the body itself is controlled by some invisible consciousness against its will ['against its will' has been struck through once].
It's just a theory, but maybe this thing ['thing' has also been crossed out] person is still alive inside. Despite the state of decomposition, I believe there might be an actual person trapped in this body. If this indeed is the case, it must feel like a personal hell. Witnessing yourself as a monster. Of course, if that's the case the obvious question is what is controlling these grunts.
Perhaps, the belief that there is something controlling these people is what's given me comfort.
That there is a meaning behind all this death, or, that there is indeed something greater.
Journal of Dr. Reinhard Winkler
Transcribed from original, typewritten, 8.5” x 11”
4/5
Monday, May 13 1895
Sun's up today. The stench is unbearable. Lots of flies. Laboratory surrounded by no less than 10 of the grunts. They keep hurling themselves against the wards. Against the walls. I signaled William. Hope he makes it in time.
Father Nico and the children are doing what they can. What they can.
Opened the rib cage today. Saw it was buzzing ['buzzing' is again crossed out] moving.
All the internal organs, with the curious exception of the heart, seem to be at least structurally intact.
Something wrong with the heart. Seems deformed ['deformed' is scribbled through] spherical in form. Pulsing, but not pumping for lack of a better term. Even in death, it keeps on pulsing in a dark, sticky fluid. I had to check the wards to see if they are intact, fearing that dark presence is making it move again. But no. This is some kind of primal reflex. Leads me to think it's still alive. Or dead.
I postulate that the fluid inside the heart itself may be causing the disease. Or vice versa. Too tired. Need sleep. Need to focus. Need more time.
Journal of Dr. Reinhard Winkler
Transcribed from original, typewritten, 8.5” x 11”
5/5
Tuesday, May 14 1895
A breakthrough. It turns out the heart is more of a nest!!
Father Nico has been too embattled to share my delight in the discovery. It seems that the loss of the little ones has worn his resolve.
If only I could get inside his head, direct him to the matter at hand.
The heart seems to be pumping some sort of nutritional fluid into the veins, which in return house tiny larvae. Is it pumping insects? Need samples.
Something else I haven't caught before. The circulatory system now seems venated. Like the wings of a horse fly. I'm quite sure this was not the case before. The specimen appears to be changing, evolving. How did I miss these changes? All that venation and there is no blood. Is the black liquid its blood? For what purpose? I don't know. ['it whispers' has been scratched out furiously] I am exhausted. Eyes burning. Head buzzing. Where in the nine Hells is William?
And now the specimen seems to have developed a new postmortem reflex. Semi-regular spasms; It is as if the chest cavity is going to explode. The grunts are almost in.
Marked
Researcher's insight into the Armored
Undated
I've used the works of Scognamiglio himself to illustrate the comprehensive analysis of the Armored, a rare pleasure as so few survived. A more physical analysis is available from Harold Black. It follows:
The Armored, its name has proved remarkably ambiguous. Some invoke a defensive figure, one that is willing to slip back into its shell. That could not be further from the apparent truth, as many accounts suggest the opposite. A creature well protected, enabled to go on dangerous offensives. A shock troop; with more mobility, and so flexibility, than the gigantic Meathead.
To paraphrase George Washington, "offensive operations are the surest means of defense." So, this specimen is seemingly equipped to relentless pursuit of its targets, protected from their retaliatory fire. One account cites it intelligent enough to smash through doors, though this cannot be verified.
So, what is its armor protecting? A fool would think itself. No. Again and again, these enemies are encountered in proximity to Rifts, those apparently vulnerable or important locations to the beast. They lurk behind doors, linger on doorstops: all potential chokepoints, all vital locations to control.
The hunters' name for it was pragmatic; they did not dabble into occultism to explain it. While it's as certain this creature existed, as certain as the Grunts at least, its taxonomy is indeterminate. Some think of it as little more than an Armored Grunt, some mutation having thickened the skin and developed a chitinous exoskeleton. I would differ on this point, it's frequently noted that the Armored's husk is particularly flammable, and was vulnerable to all manner of incendiary devices.
Others, who perhaps align more closely with my own beliefs, think of it as something distinct in its own right. That such a mutation must have a more significant purpose.
De Servus Diaboli
Author: Tamrat Scognamiglio
Manuscript, translated from Voynich, bleached leather binding, 11" x 17"
1/2
The Armored, named for their inhuman chitin, flesh dried, hardened. A hollowed husk of hope, a knight errant arrived dead on his horse.
The lord of pestilence has stripped the Walls of Dis of their guardsmen. Now, the cursed roam the nine circles free. Hell has been harrowed a second time, but the saved souls are not deserved to rise to heaven. To Earth instead, to sanctify our hallowed ground with their Satanic sentiment.
I've written thus far of the miser Grunts and glutton Meathead. Fitting analogies, for beyond the Walls of Dis is the refuge of the truly penitent, sinners of malice.
A legend from my childhood. A debtera, wandering the desert, is visited upon by a tempestuous marid. Undeterred by the swirling smokes and sands, for he knows that it will pass, he staggers on. The noxious winds rise to a tempestuous whirlwind. The man walks on, even as the skin is shorn from his bones. He arrives at a camp, the travelers recoil in shock. He is now clothed in light. He rests at the fire and recounts his tale. At sun up, he finishes abruptly, for he has turned to stone.
The legend is true across the world, even here. There's an old tale of a fisherman who sails deep into the gulf to catch a great fish. He fights it for three days, until it comes close enough to spear. On the journey home, sharks eat the fish. The exhausted man returns with the bones, which are large enough to impress the other fishermen. He has nothing but glory.
Stubborn, resolute in the face of death, vainglorious in his onset. These are the traits that raise men and woman to great feats. Then doom them.
These are the raw virtues and sins of those who are made Armored. Indomitable will, that in death, catalyzes their petrifaction. A curse and a blessing, for the hardened chitin is at the mercy of our own hellfire. A spark of ignition enough to set it ablaze and burn the will out from within.
-71-
Clippings from the New Orleans True Crescent
Authors: Unknown
Newsprint, variable sizes
August 24, 1858
A TOUGH YARN. Frederick Lichten returned from the Yukon with a strange tale of an unfortunate friend. This companion, Ernest Spleger, had found some geodes, masses of quartz, while prospecting. In one such mass, there was a cavity lined with crystal, containing fluid, called the water of crystallization. Spleger, with a jesting remark, drank the fluid, and soon after complained of a weight and pain in stomach and bowels. He soon died, his body instantly rigid. In not a few hours, petrifaction took place. The whole body, flesh, blood, heart, liver, etc., becoming solid.
April 16, 1893
WANTON COMBUSTION. The unfortunate but nonetheless remarkable story came to us of the poor fate of a man at one country sawmill. Having had a mishap using animal fat to clean up sawdust, he made merry with friends, heartened by his bizarre visage. As she is want to do, tragedy struck suddenly, when he caught the spark of an oil lamp, and caught alight immediately.
March 27, 1895
PETRIFACTION BY ARTIFICIAL MEANS. Charles D. and Frank T. Boyds, of Lafayette, think they have discovered a method of turning human bodies into stone, preserving them forever. In the basement of their establishment on Cottage Grove Avenue is the body of a young man who died July 18th last. The body was treated, and turned to a substance resembling stone. All of the blood was withdrawn and the fluid injected. After two weeks, there was no trace of decomposition and the flesh began to harden. Strange growths, resembling that of papery wasp nest, still puzzle the men, who declare that not long more is needed to perfect the fluid.
De Servus Diaboli
Author: Tamrat Scognamiglio
Manuscript, translated from Voynich, bleached leather binding, 11" x 17"
2/2
Tales akin to the Armored's enhuskment are rare, yet petrifaction innumerable, spanning cultures separate by centenaries and continents. Treating these allegorically, we are first familiar with Greek mythology: the prototypical Medusa, curses of various Gods and the ship of the Phaecians. They occur across Catholic hagiography, from the miracle of Saint Hilda, to the shepherd punished by God after betraying Saint Barbara. Giants caught by the break of day recur throughout Germanic legends as often as lone men turned to stone pillars do Slavic ones. I know of oriental stories, from French Indochina and Japan, featuring ill-fated valiant heroines.
For stories originating from our own continent, I know of two. There is a hill in North Carolina where a Cherokee lookout was punished for cowardice. And there are the more recent Apache tears, where seventy five Apache riders, facing defeat in battle, rode their horses off cliffs rather than be captured. Their wive's tears turned to stone upon hitting the ground. But, these stories explain geological phenomenon, irrelevant thanks to the field of Geology. We are able, for instance, to explain phenomena like the stone wood in Mississippi.
But these fall flat here. Hunters return with stories of hard men, which bullets ricocheted off. Yet clearly, their substance is that of a hardened wood pulp, layered thick and robust. There are medical legends of a Treeman syndrome, turning flesh to bark, but this too seems inappropriate.
At an apparent dead end, I wrote to two others I knew to have a background in science: Dr. Reinhard Winkler and Harold Black. Dr. Winkler was preparing to embark on an investigation into the anatomy of the basic Grunt, and was unable to assist me. Mr. Black agreed, and I'm indebted to him for his physical analysis.
A friend of mine, from when I rode with the Sinners, came to me with an opportunity. Armed with no more than a sword, he had hacked at an Armored, to no avail. When he thrust the blade, he was able to stab clean through an armor plate and pull it free.
-73-
The Journal of Harold Black
Undated
Black leather bound, handwritten, 6"x 8.25"
1/2
When I arrived at the laboratory, a Turk was leaving. Tamrat met me and lead me through to the yard, showing a carriage full of waspish armor plates.
Tamrat was younger than I imagined, his writing having a quality heavy with the weight of years. I swiftly picked apart what little he knew of Natural Science.
First, physical tests. These seemed a novelty to Tamrat. Smaller caliber bullets seemed unable to penetrate the thickest pieces, the impact absorbed. Larger calibers were able to punch through. To test the degree to which the power diminished, we armored a dead swine. The first two shots found a bad angle and glanced off, however the third pierced, and then went deep into the pig.
Visually the plates were similar to paper, akin to the large cocoons found in Healing-Water's Church. Their composition far dissimilar. The material somewhat similar to chitin, commonly found in exoskeletons of crustaceans and insects, and scales of fish and amphibians. On a microscopic level, these are fibers, like whiskers, that fuse at the ends and form into a dense matt. Impossible to determine if they are naturally human, or not.
The day after, we awoke to find the armor gone. Or rather, disintegrated. Covering the laboratory was a layer of dust. On closer examination, we found tiny black maggots crawling among the granules, writhing, and feeding.
We torched the house and rode from Algiers before the crime was discovered. Tamrat was forlorn at the loss of his library, and we parted ways at the docks. But we had learnt a vital lesson. Never bring anything back into the city.
I had read enough legends myself to know not to steal fire from the Gods.
The Journal of Harold Black
Undated
Black leather bound, handwritten, 6"x 8.25"
2/2
I had a brief encounter with Dr. Winkler, before he departed. He stated the investigation was fruitless, the Armored was little more than a Grunt with an exoskeleton. I would have to find a live specimen.
Their behavior was fortunately predictable. As their tough exterior testifies, they're used primarily as protectors. I needed several blooded hunters to assist me. But I lacked the funds, and Tamrat was drinking away the loss of his books.
Isabella agreed to my terms. A conduit, I was confident her attunement could lead us to a virulent rift. Isabella curiously rejected the notion that she was a seer. She had troubles enough being typified as a mystic or practitioner of voudou. Few contracts were offered to a black woman, suffering the worst of both discrimination, so she was at least affordable.
We found an Armored quickly, however were unable to control it. A shotgun blast dismembered its lower body, slowing it down, prime for a clean kill. However, the arrival of other hunters forced us to abandon it.
Isabella found and drew a second into a bear trap. Immobilized, she was able to precisely hit its cranium, dispatching it in a single shot.
The specimen was fresh, but our time limited. In the forty minutes we spent there, it's a sure death to spend more than an hour in the hunting grounds, I noted that the chitin plates seemed to grow, some two inches, even after death.
Deep in the chest cavity, a disturbing anomaly. A third arm, slender and sinewy, sprouting what could only be described as fangs. It was crooked and underdeveloped, though an incision showed, thick with muscle. Could it be growing? Emerging to give the Armored some new ability? Or was it evidence of something lost along the way? An underutilized specialization?
Dr. Winkler's thesis proved false.
Researcher's insight into the Hive
Undated
Of the ten creatures I have researched thus far, it is the Hive who haunts my dreams. Though she appears to have been classified alongside the other Grunts, she was a far more dangerous creature, setting a swarm of insects upon any human in range until their bodies were punctured and swollen and heaving with their vile poison. Only her own death - the death of their host, the Hive Mother - stopped their persistent attacks. Though she could be safely killed from afar with a shot to the head, the positioning of her body made the task difficult even for the best marksmen. Blunt damage could harm her, though little else, and in the time it might have taken to try, her beastly swarms would have already stung their prey into flight or submission.
Looking at the bigger picture, I am attempting to understand the purpose each form served in the eye of their creator. The documents I have collected - in particular the interviews with Ada Shell - have led me to hypothesize that the Hive's function was both to host and to disseminate the malady. Convert or kill at a distance; perpetuate the "race." I am reminded of the writings of Trask, active at that time, who was convinced that a woman's divine mission was the "perpetuation of the race" through continuous breeding. The seed of this idea - twisted though it became - was personified in the first Hive on record, as you will see.
Interview with Ada Ruth Shell
Interviewer. 'AHA member"
Date: Retracted
Typewritten, questions omitted(...), 8.5" x 11"
1/4
Mama always said not to let my mouth hang open, or a spider'd crawl in. Didn't believe her at the time, but after she went, I never forgot it. I was 13 the day it happened. I know because it was my birthday. Nothing to celebrate. Barely any food to speak of. And Mama so sad. Mama'd a babe that'd died that same year, and Papa'd followed it up to Heaven. Her life was hard and getting harder. Seven kids living, four under the ground, and nobody to help keep us in mutton.
We had one room and a leaky roof, all of us sleeping where we could. No happy memories there. Only found out I was pregnant after we'd all been brought in to the asylum. Doctor told me. I told him well then Praise Jesus, cause I'm the Virgin Mary, and he shook his head. But I wasn't lying. I had never had relations. When they cut the baby out of me, I wasn't supposed to see, but I did. It was strange, and hard, and dead, like a piece of old, chewed-up wood. Don't have any living children.
Interview with Ada Ruth Shell
Interviewer. 'AHA member"
Date: Retracted
Typewritten, questions omitted(...), 8.5" x 11"
2/4
Oh, yes sir, my pardon, what happened that day was what you were asking about, I got off track. I don't like to remember it, but I'll try to tell it quick, get it all out in one go and be done with it.
Mama'd been quiet all day, sadder than usual. It was July. Like I said before, I know for sure as it was my birthday. The mosquitoes and the flies were fierce. We didn't have glass on the windows, not even paper. I was watching her and she was fanning the flies off and chewing on her finger, nervous habit of hers, and she's chewing and I'm watching and a fly just crawls up her finger and into her mouth and she doesn't do a thing. Seemed everything happened quick after that. More flies and other things beside. The room was full of them. Like a plague of locusts, straight out the Bible.
I couldn't take a breath without getting them in my mouth. I saw more and more and then more going into Mama's, and then her ears, and her just standing there, not moving, fanning and chewing and fanning.
The noise was terrible, the buzzing loud as a saw, and the others just screaming and wailing, and I closed my eyes and covered my ears. But the cracking sound that followed that was loud as if the roof was coming down. I opened my eyes and Mama had kind of...folded in half and...opened...and well really it weren't my Mama standing there no more but this thing, this nest thing like the wasps build out the shed between her rib cage, her rib cage! I could see her rib cage! And she-it. It was screaming and the other children were screaming too still, especially Edward and Henry, they took it the worst I think, and I don't remember much of what happened after that is what I'm telling you. It's why I'm trying to find my siblings, sir, though its been a few years. It's why I wanted to join your little shooting club.
(...)
Yes, I understand. Go ahead. The files are all there. My notes won't be much use to you I should tell you, I'm no good at spelling. Woman who worked there helped me get those papers, read them to me 'til I had them memorized. I don't need them anymore.
Patient files, Asylum at Jackson
Author:. Dr. Warren
Printed form, handwritten, 8" x 10.5"
Patient Record
Name:
Ada Ruth Shell (female, colored, 13 years)
Edward Shell (male, colored, 9 years)
Henry Shell (male, colored, 9 years)
Grace Shell (female, colored, 8 years)
Samuel Shell (male, colored, 5 years)
Admitted: July 19, 8:00
Admittance notes: Five children admitted together. Siblings. Two did not survive incident. Neighbor delivered to Dr. F., reported strange behavior.
Ada Ruth Shell - Will not speak. Crying, but sits quietly. No outward signs of physical injury. 3 months pregnant.
Edward Shell - Restless, pacing. Pupils dilated, vacant gaze. Multiple lacerations on the left arm. Will not speak.
Henry Shell - Restless, in constant motion. Multiple lacerations on the left side of the face. Will not speak.
Grace Shell - Clings to intake nurse. Will not speak but makes shrill noises, as an infant crying. Attempted to suckle though clearly long past the age of weaning. Hair and face caked in blood and possibly feces. Agitated. Refused bath. Given sedative.
Samuel Shell - Treated for three broken fingers, broken nose. Appears calm. Plays with blocks. When questioned, says the flies flew away with his Mama, but that God would fly with her to Heaven and keep her safe until he could bring her back to him. Says the flies "are the wings on Heaven's angels." Reacts violently to the presence of insects.
Interview with Ada Ruth Shell
Interviewer. 'AHA member"
Date: Retracted
Typewritten, questions omitted(...), 8.5" x 11"
3/4
Well, thanks to you, sir, I found Samuel after our last conversation. Still in the asylum. Still playing with his blocks. He fixated on those blocks when we were first taken in. Never stopped I guess. Talks normal enough, for a five year old. But he's a young man now. I hope they give him comfort. He barely acknowledged me, though he seemed to know who I was. Asked if I'd brought his Mama along with me, and wouldn't speak again when I told him I hadn't. Just humming to himself. Nurse told me he still doesn't much like bugs.
I thought maybe all of us were infected. We were all living in that house. All eating the same food and breathing whatever was in that air. I thought it would happen to every one of us, person for person. I think that's what they removed from my belly. Some kind of larvae gone wrong. Baby didn't come and didn't come and...well I told you about what they cut out of me.
Edward and Henry went violent. They wouldn't speak. Being their sister I always thought they were more than a bit thick, but after, it wasn't just my teasing. They couldn't speak right and there was something strange about their eyes. Only seemed to remember how to use their fists and wanted to use them on anything that moved. Had to be restrained. That was horrible to see. I hate the thought of being tied to a bed. They must have too, the way they carried on, but they had attacked a doctor and seemed hell bent on hurting themselves too. The doctor must have given them something to calm their nerves, for it was only that first night I heard them. Problem with lice, too, I heard a doctor saying. But I was transferred soon after. Never heard another word, but like you said, seems they are in another asylum, still strapped to some bed. No visitors allowed. Danger to the public. My God if Mama could see us now.
Wasn't more than a headstone to find of Grace. Sweet baby Grace. [begins crying] l'll be needing that constitutional now, sir.
Interview with Ada Ruth Shell
Interviewer. 'AHA member"
Date: Retracted
Typewritten, questions omitted(...), 8.5" x 11"
4/4
The day she turned I didn't see much. I told you before. Just closed my eyes and pressed my body hard into the corner of the room. I didn't want to see or hear. I didn't care much if I lived or died. Guess that's why I didn't run. Didn't see a point to living anymore if something like that could happen to my Mama. Just froze up. I'd guess it was Viola and Lily that got her out of the house, though like I said, I had my eyes pressed hard closed. They must have run and she followed and...well I could hear what happened, even if I didn't see it with my own eyes, and I did see what was left of the bodies. Viola got a bit farther than Lily, almost to the treeline. I don't know if it would have helped if she had made it to the woods. Both of their bodies were swollen from the bites. Hundreds and hundreds of bites. All red and swollen with the poison.
The first time I saw her in the swamps was my first real look at her since the Change. I didn't expect, well, it was like looking at my own face in the mirror. Never knew how much we shared a resemblance. Guess I kind of grew into it. Always thought Viola'd taken more after her, and me out of the Changeling's basket.
I heard the screaming first, recognized it in an instant, and the sound brought me right back to that room with her screams and theirs. Then across the field I saw her, bent over all wrong, twisted and shambling and with that big paper nest sitting between her own ribs. Her own body turned against her. I don't know if my Mama is in there anymore. Her mind, I mean. Her soul. What happens to your soul when you become, that? I've heard there are more than one now, but they all look like my Mama. They all look just like me.
It was all I could do to force myself to shoot. I did, but I hesitated, and my hands were shaking and I missed and, well, that's how I lost the arm, but you know all that already. But I'm going back out. Your training won't go to waste. I'll get my Mama the rest she deserves.
Researcher's insight into the Immolator
Undated
The Immolator seems to be the most tormented of them all. The smallest movement sends him into a rage, attacking chaotically, and when shot he burns even hotter and charges like an angry bull. He is, of course, extinguished in water (and can be fatally consumed by his own internal flames), but otherwise, represents the most intelligent example I have seen. The beast can actually open doors!
I have noticed certain Biblical parallels in the story that - I believe -describes the very first occurrence. Did the religious factions have it right after all? I wonder. We both assumed that the folklore was just that: lore, scary bedtime stories. Another author's futile attempt to force linear, comprehensible human meaning onto an inexplicable event. What if this time, they got it right?
The beatings that led to Jeremy's transformation must have taken place in a volatile location, but it is unlikely that any of the perpetrators were aware of that. One witness survived and is listed as having been admitted to the asylum, diagnosed with religious mania, and terrified of hellfires.
I found both Clemens' journal and part of the serial referenced and added both to the archives: it's quite a violent tale.
Journal of Father Vincent Clemens
Undated
Original burnt, transcribed, 8.5" x 11"
1/3
Today the responsibilities of my post weight heavy upon me. I must bear these burdens before God for my Congregation, and long have I done it gladly. It is a great honor to lift the burden of Sin from the shoulders of my Constituents and bear that weight to God. But the words spoken to me through the confessional's webbed partition this very morning have not left me, though their content I would absolve before God of my own accord. May that I bestowed peace upon the Confessor, for I have found no peace myself.
Though wrong it may be to make record of this confession, brought to me in good Faith and confidence, I hope that in writing this account I may exercise its memory from my own mind, and relieve the burden of its memory. I shall write these words, and then let the hearth's fire consume them, and be done with them.
It is very dark tonight, and the night is full of inhuman barks and chirps. Though I know them to be the cries of the grey fox that haunts the chicken coop, I cannot help but shiver at every child-like cry.
Journal of Father Vincent Clemens
Undated
Original burnt, transcribed, 8.5" x 11"
2/3
I stall even now, unwilling to commit the boy's tale to paper. When he first spoke, I supposed him a liar. Now, in the darkness of my chamber, as his words continue to echo within me, I am no longer so sure. Enough! I must begin!
"It was a strange thing," he told me. "And I weren't sure it were real, even as it were happening. You see, Father, my first sin is what work I've taken on. I stoled. Lied and stoled." The boy's language was atrocious, and my transcription does it no justice. No wonder he had fallen in with thieves. Ah but it was God's will perhaps; had he been well spoken he would have been but a well-spoken thief.
I stifled a yawn, as a Man of God must, and patiently bid him continue. I hear confessions of this nature dozens of times a week. Thievery, adultery, lies. Men are so predictably monotonous in their expression of weakness. Already, I felt boredom begin to encroach upon my mind.
"Well that Preacher, yeah, one found tied up bloodied outside his church last week? You seen it in the papers?"
Boredom fled. He paused, but I urged him on. I knew the Preacher of whom he spoke - Reverend Jeremy Byrne - and though I cannot say I liked the man, an attack on a Man of God cannot go unpunished.
"Well I weren't there for that, but that was just the first act of the play you might say. I was there for the second. I knew it were wrong, Father, but I do what I'm paid for and last night I was paid for coming along to take that Preacher out to the Bayou."
Take him out to the Bayou. Though I may mis-remember many of the boy's words, I am certain he uttered those. A euphemism even I know is shorthand for murder.
Journal of Father Vincent Clemens
Undated
Original burnt, transcribed, 8.5" x 11"
3/3
At this point in the story I must make my own confession. I had not heard such a tale in months! Though I knew many murders were committed in my own Parish weekly, perhaps even daily, most murderers were not the sort to hold council before God. I found myself taken with a most unholy curiosity.
Suddenly, I could feel my blood pumping through my veins as if in a frenzy. It had been some time since I had been to purchase one of the adventure stories sold for a dime at the local general, and I found myself thinking of one of the most recent I had read as I sat there listening, clutching my rosary beads as if my grip could force the story more quickly from the boy's pale white throat.
I asked the boy, then, quite plainly, if he had murdered the man, and he was silent for some time. I grew impatient and demanded he speak.
"I couldn't say, Father. I couldn't rightly say." His tone was thoughtful, and bore no remorse. Oh Rogue! Oh Devil! "The men I was with, they beat Reverend Jeremy fiercely. I hung back, on watch, but I was more watching Mr. Jeremy, Father. And just when I thought he couldn't take none more, he starting screaming. Scripture it were I think, though he sounded like the Devil himself."
I was on the edge of my seat, barely daring to breathe lest I distract the boy from the course of his story. His breath had quickened. The memory clearly disturbed him. I must know more!
"He kept right on screaming, and then there was a light, like fire, and he begun to burn. Didn't see anyone light a match he...he just..."
And that is when that idiot of an altar boy came screaming into the church, having just received the morning paper, saying that Reverend Byrne was missing and two found dead out in the Bayou and had I seen the news?
The boy fled. Though I caught site of his back as he sped through the church doors, I doubt I will see him again.
Reverend Jeremiah and the Black Hand
Date published: January 1896
Author: Jasper Priest
Dime novel, pulp paper, 6.5"x 4.25"
3/4
Reverend Jeremiah and the Black Hand
He wasn't much to look at in his plain black suit, but he was a Man of God and anyone could see it. His faith shone through in his optimistic step, his kindly smile, and his polite manner.
Yet he had a harsh word to say about the local Black Hand Gang and their activities in the city of New Orleans. When he spoke of Charles Matranga, the congregation could feel the heat of his brimstone upon them.
Reverend Jeremiah's harsh words soon reached the ear of the Mayor, who had promised to take action against the Black Hand. The men of the Black Hand were fearsome and violent men, their bellies set on drink and their minds set on gold.
The first threat came by letter. But Jeremiah had no family to hold hostage and the vile threats did not shake him, for he believed that God would protect him. He had the Black Hand's letter published in the newspaper, accompanied by another righteous sermon condemning the criminals and calling for their immediate arrest.
So, men were sent to his home in the night, where they dosed the Reverend with chloroform to keep him quiet, removed his little finger, and clove his tongue in two.
But Jeremiah would not be silenced, and when his tongue was healed he could not be stopped from taking the pulpit once again. "They have tried to make a Devil of me," he hissed at his congregation from across the pages of his Bible, "but only God can make a Devil, and God has not yet sent me from his light."
DON'T MISS NEXT WEEK'S ISSUE, THE LAST STAND OF REVEREND JEREMIAH! In this issue Reverend Jeremiah, the great preacher turned detective and the star of your favorite adventure series, takes on organized crime in the Great City of New Orleans.
The Last Stand of Reverend Jeremiah,
Date published: January 1896
Author: Jasper Priest
Dime novel, pulp paper, 6.5"x 4.25"
4/4
The Last Stand of Reverend Jeremiah
The second threat came delivered by hand: six hands of three thugs who dragged Reverend Jeremiah from his bed out to the Bayou in the dead of night.
They wanted him to stop preaching against the Family and against Black Hand. He would never stop preaching he said, though his split tongue slurred the words. They laughed at him and pushed him to his knees.
"Reverend, you have a lot more to lose than your tongue. But our boss isn't a Godless man. And if you promise to stop your ed out to the Bayou in the dead of night. They wanted him to stop preaching against the Family and against Black Hand. He would never stop preaching he said, though his split tongue slurred the words. They laughed at him and pushed him to his knees. "Reverend, you have a lot more to lose than your tongue. But our boss isn't a Godless man. And if you promise to top your slander of his business, to stop your preaching all together, he won't call us out again."
Jeremiah looked off into the distance, as if reading from a page. "But if I say I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name, his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it. Indeed I cannot."
He was rewarded for this speech with a blow to the head that sent him face first into the muck. But the Reverend did not despair. He could feel the frenzy of his faith burning within him, like a fire.
"Whenever I speak, I cry out and I proclaim violence and destruction!" The Reverend was shouting now, and the thugs took several steps back. A most unholy light, it seemed, had begun to emanate from his face. The thugs looked at each other nervously, uncertain what to do.
"Let him that STOP ME be DESTROYED like the cities of old that the lord OVERTHREW without MERCY." With those words Jeremiah howled in fury and as his rage consumed him, he burst into flames, consumed by heavenly fire, though no match had been struck. He ran at the biggest of the men, setting his clothes alight and sinking his teeth into the gristly flesh of his neck as he tore at skin and muscle and fat with his teeth.
The screams could be heard for miles.
It truly was a miracle.
Researcher's insight into the Meathead
Undated
Frankly, I'm not sure why they referred to this thing as a Meathead at all. The creature has no head. It could best be described as a bloated, headless, humanoid monster. More easily cut than shot; a hard hitter, but too well insulated to take much damage from a fist or a blunt object. It appears to have a symbiotic relationship with leeches, though these, too, are not the creatures you might recognize as such. The leeches appear to have acted as the creature's sensory organs, allowing him to see, to find prey, and to weaken that prey with their own poisonous bites. They are a clever extension of the creature, advance troops in a way.
Scognamiglio, that fool. He called them Soul Farmers, but I can't see why. He thought they were vampiric essentially, feeding on souls rather than blood. He imagined them walking into towns in the night, harvesting the "souls" of the people. But read just one first-hand and description of this creature, and you will understand that it could not just walk into a town to quietly harvest the souls of its inhabitants. It had no eyes, no mouth to feed with, and it barely fit through most doors. It is not a subtle creature. Not in any way, leaving trail of leeches in its wake.
However, I believe I have found documents that Scognamiglio missed, in his single-minded focus on the occult, and I have unearthed a letter from our own Dr. Huff among the papers of William Salter almost lost for the carelessness of my colleague!, that may illuminate its origins.
Journal entry
Author: "ws," thought to be William Salter
Page torn from journal, handwritten, 8.3" x 11"
Summer, '95
I took as many papers as I could carry from the asylum when I ran. I didn't think about it much at the time. Just wanted to be gone. I could not stand the thought of being confined there again, however much good my first stay might have done me.
For many days I avoided those papers. They are a remainder of unpleasant things. Dark thoughts. My confinement and the masochistic doctors...; However, this morning I felt my strength returning and as I sipped my chicory, I began to examine the bundle of papers. I intend to find out what is happening in this city, and I hoped there might be mention of the plague or medical speculations as to its origins. I did not expect to find this.
I no longer know what to believe. This is no plague. Strange creatures roam the swamps. And men, perhaps stranger still, hunt them. The birth...;my god. I do not know what to think. The very idea is fantastic. Or it should be. But I have seen the creature of which they speak with my own eyes, seen its enormous, leech-covered body pacing on the shore. The...I can't bring myself to write it...of Hannah Kinney, as told in the letter. Could it be one and the same. I shudder to think.
I must apply myself to my work, and continue to practice and train. If I can find work anywhere, it will be among the men who have dedicated themselves to fighting this thing. I must prepare myself for the worst. ws
Letter regarding Hannah Kinney
Author: PHJ
Ripped letter, reassembled from transcription, handwritten, 8.5" x 11"
1/4
January 9, 1895
Jackson, Louisiana
Honored Members of the American Hunters Association,
I must begin with an apology, as I am obliged to write by a most unpleasant situation. This letter will be of little comfort, but we may yet avoid further suffering.
Perhaps you have already been informed of the death of Mrs. Hannah Kinney and the disappearance of her husband, AHA member Jonathan Kinney. Much has transpired in secret, and to our detriment. The loss of the Kinneys has been a great blow to our morale, a blow no doubt confounded by the emerging reports of a new beast roaming the bayou. The giant bloated carcass, allegedly blind, spews leeches which act as its eyes. What the lower ranks have taken to calling "Meathead." The Kinney's own implication is inexplicable. It is my duty to elaborate it.
You will be aware that for a time, the AHA did not allow the initiation of women, though it is unlikely that you know why we were forced to take this measure. The decision was much to our own detriment, I can assure you, for it was not a lack of skill that kept so large a group from our ranks. However, the horrible events that led to this decision have become of the utmost importance, and I will share the story with you now, believing that it will aid us in solving this difficult problem.
Fortify yourself, for you may find what I have to say sickening.
Letter regarding Hannah Kinney
Author: PHJ
Ripped letter, reassembled from transcription, handwritten, 8.5" x 11"
2/4
When our AHA chapter was first founded many, many years ago, there were but few female initiates. Three were initiated, and they thrived as well as any who have chosen to bear such a burden. However, after a time, it was found that one of these initiates was with child. Though we did not know it, this condition in the Initiated is extremely dangerous, perhaps even more so than the creatures and monsters to which we have become accustomed to facing in our work.
After the quickening, the mother began to show great power, more than we had ever seen in a single Hunter. We awaited the birth with trepidation. Toward the end of her term, the mother moved into AHA lodgings and one of our own doctors remained at her side at all times. She did not survive the birth. The child - or better put, demon, for the ritual blood in her veins took human form through the flesh of the foetus - killed 12 Hunters before it was laid to rest. I need not tell you that the scene was gruesome, for the creature had acquired great powers through the body and the breath of the mother. Through this event, we first learned of these gruesome possibilities.
This brings me to the unfortunate fate of the late Mrs. Kinney, and the events of this past month. Mrs. Kinney's husband was a member and, unable to keep a secret from his wife, he told her of our Society and his role in it. Together they performed the initiation ritual. She was the first female hunter to be initiated in many decades, and she disguised herself to avoid detection. However, the pair's considerable skill in the hunt did not escape notice. Together, they rid us of more terrible creatures than most of us will destroy in a lifetime. But in their place, they left something worse.
Letter regarding Hannah Kinney
Author: PHJ
Ripped letter, reassembled from transcription, handwritten, 8.5" x 11"
3/4
A close friend of Mr. Kinney's became aware of the couple's secret this November past, after a desperate encounter with an entity of great power. He described Mrs. Kinney to me in a letter as follows:
"I have never seen such vicious displays of power. We feared Hannah would be killed; yet she destroyed the entire hoard herself with a wrath, a fury, and a joy that I fear to recall. I urged Jonathan to inform the Society council of their secret. He refused; I never saw him again."
No human woman could survive the birth of such a child. While in the womb it lends the mother unimaginable power; once born, it seeks only to devour the host. Dr. Henry attended the birth, and described it to me personally as follows:
"Her eyes glowed, and her skin steamed. A grin appeared frozen upon her face, though her moans and screams spoke only of pain. Even as the creature clawed its way from her body, disgorging leeches and disemboweling the mother-devouring her flesh as it did-she laughed. She laughed! Long after her pulse had stopped she laughed. I shall never forget that sound as long as I live. We should have burned the body. We should have burned the entire building to the ground."
Letter regarding Hannah Kinney
Author: PHJ
Ripped letter, reassembled from transcription, handwritten, 8.5" x 11"
4/4
What emerged from the mangled corpse of Mrs. Kinney was already the size of a child of 6 or 7 years old. Yet it bore no head and in its place a mass of leeches writhed.
Dr. Henry fled, and by the time he returned to the lodge with a band of armed hunters, it, and the body of the mother, had gone. I suspect that it devoured the corpse, though perhaps we will see Mrs. Kinney's visage again in the bowels of the swamp, or in the belly of the spider. Who can say?
The AHA stands at a crossroads. A transformation began with the death of Mrs. Kinney, and our actions now will determine the path both the AHA, and Mankind, will be forced to follow. If only the couple had known to use the new serum in their initiation rite. As you know, women are welcome among our ranks today, as the latest serum - the very serum that allows us to walk among the infected and that gifts us with the Sight - also prevents conception. This information should not have been kept from you. It was both unethical and unwise. So much horror could have been avoided.
These circumstances call for a more organized approach than to which we are accustomed. This creature must be destroyed, alongside its brethren. Arm yourselves - I have commissioned special arms, and ammunition, from Henry Caldwell himself for this purpose - and band together. Our enemy grows ever stronger, and we must do the same.
With high respect and esteem,
PHJ, Director
Packs
Researcher's insight into the Hellhound
Undated
First the facts: the so-called "Hellhounds" were pack animals (most often seen traveling in groups of between two and four), aggressive, and fast. These hounds would work together to take down a target, and while they do not appear to have any kind of special defenses, they did not have any particular vulnerabilities either.
Now, I know I have said in the past that I find certain aspects of this case unbelievable. And yet, you must know that I do believe. If I did not, I would not be keeping this journal. But the Hellhound, omnipresent in myth and legend to the point of banality, strikes me as the one creature among them that is more likely a story than a reality. People have always feared dogs, even as they began to domesticate them and live side by side. Were these specimens really supernatural creatures, as reported? Or just highly aggressive, feral dogs, made all the nastier when the plague made food - and human kindness - scarce?
Scognamiglio believed they were Italian mastiffs, possessed by the corruption. Other sources describe them as "undead dogs," but we must consider their reliability. Braggarts exaggerate. Reports of viciously collared and muzzled hounds indicate that there was in fact an infection, but whether it was of supernatural (corruption) or scientific (rabies) origins, I cannot say, as the other sources on this point, to my mind, are inconclusive at best.
De Servus Diaboli
Author: Tamrat Scognamiglio
Wolves are naturally indigenous to the Americas, and therefore also the domesticated hound. In Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz's Historie de la Louisiane, he remarks how the indigenous Natchez people used domesticated dogs a great deal, commonly as beasts of burden to transport trade goods. As with all things, there is a darker past to be discovered. Le Page du Pratz reports on the day he heard of the massacre at the Post des Natchez. After more than a decade of peaceful coexistence, the French commandant had demanded land from the Natchez. In retaliation, "les Français des Natchez ont été tués par les chiens de Sauvages," the French were killed by the Savage's dogs.
Albeit, my French is not what it was, and my ability to translate may be marred by the years. But clearly here, these unleashed dogs savagely massacred the colonists. I can only imagine the braying hounds of hell bearing down on the settlers. Out in the bayou must still live the ancestors of such dogs, when they come back with stories of Hellhounds roaming the woods in vicious packs.
Cerberus comes to mind, the quintessential mythological hound of the underworld. In a cursory examination of my library, I produced a list too lengthy to enumerate here. In overview, the majority of myths emerging across the world depict dogs as the loyal friends and helpers of men, particularly those of Native Americans, always our first port of call.
Thus the distinction must be made between these stories, and the legend of the Hellhound. The omen of death. This emerges all across the Albion isle. From Northern England, the monstrous Barghest and Gytrash. From the Eastern coastline, the redeyed Black Shuck. The south, the Yeth Hound. The Isle of Man, the Moddey Dhoo. Wales, The Gwyllgi and Cŵn Annwn. The list goes on. Why so many from Britain? Perhaps, lurking in the colonial mindset, is a latent terror of a servant turning against their master, one which America has surely inherited.
Journal of an unknown author
Undated
Battered, brown leather, 4.25"x 8.25"
1/3
Lots of folks hunt as a team. I don't. Part of the reason is that I simply don't trust people. I can't. Not after. Well, nevermind.
I don't need a partner. Never did. Tried it. Didn't work. Didn't last.
Now I have Bunny. Bunny is a German Shepard, huge ears. You'd think that naming a dog Bunny would be insulting, but Bunny's not offended. Me and Bunny, we have an agreement. Life is too short. No need to take everything seriously. When things go to hell it's usually because too many people are acting too serious. I don't like serious people. Stay laughing, stay alive. It's hard to keep making jokes in the dark, but Bunny helps. Bunny won't leave me.
Bunny knows I don't really think he's a rabbit. It's just my way of poking fun at him. In return, he likes to wake me up by biting my ear.
It's always the left ear. I have no idea why. I'm not sure if he has a reason. Bunny is a creature of habit. So maybe it's the left ear only because it was always the left ear. Left ear works. Bunny is smart. He won't mess with something that's working.
Probably I'm being sentimental. Probably our relationship is purely professional. It's never a good idea to give too much of your trust away. Friends betray each other eventually. Sometimes the trophy turns out to be a set of dry bones. Now who's the serious one?
Journal of an unknown author
Undated Battered, brown leather, 4.25"x 8.25"
2/3
Bunny is gone.
Never left my side since he was a puppy, and now Bunny is gone.
He's not stupid. He knows where his next meal is coming from. He wouldn't leave on purpose. Back before, I would have thought a gator had gotten him. Happened all the time. But the swamps have been silent. There aren't any gators anymore.
I'll put up signs. Ask around. Maybe he found a new pack. Maybe he got taken. I hate to think I may never know. I hate to think of hunting without him. I hate to think of anything without him. Good ole dog.
What I don't like is indecision. I want purpose and clarity and decision and action. Bunny never stopped to think. Bunny always acted on instinct. We could all learn something from Bunny. Good ole dog. I miss him I'm not ashamed to say.
Now I know I said I don't go in for trust, but I realized this morning its not true. I trust my six-shooter. There's nothing a well-placed shot won't fell. I could shoot the wings off a fly if needs must.
Could shoot the memories out of a poor old man lost his dog.
Clippings from the New Orleans True Crescent
Authors: Unknown
Newsprint, variable sizes
December 26, 1891
A FAMOUS MADSTONE. The fame of the madstone owned by J.J. Anderson of New Orleans, has spread abroad. A year or so ago a colored man was terribly lacerated by the fangs of a mad dog in Mississippi. He was successfully treated, and since then some seven or eight people have applied the madstone. Another victim, T. Parton, travelled from Memphis, Tenn., to test the madstone. Applied, it continued to absorb the virus for fully two hours before it refused to adhere any longer.
July 16, 1892
WILD DOGS IN THE SOUTH. In the bayou country, described by most as a wilderness of forest, wetland, and brushwood, a race of wild dogs have established themselves. Their numbers are increasing rapidly, fears are entertained that these animals will become troublesome. When the Southern Pacific Railway was under construction the camps of workmen were frequently moved, and the dogs were left behind. Like wolves and foxes, they have found ways of sustaining themselves.
March 13, 1894
VITAL HOUND CARE. If he is infected by rabies, signs appear in six to ten days. He will be restless, impatient, often getting up only to lie down again, and constantly licking or scratching some particular part of his anatomy. He will be irritable and inclined to dash at other animals, and he will sometimes snap. He will vainly endeavor to rid himself of a thick, ropey mucous discharge from his mouth and throat. If he can, he will probably stray away from home. Ferocious dogs may attack any living object in sight.
January 29th, 1895
GONE TO THE DOGS. Eliza P. H. Nicholson published in his paper, our friendly rival, on an important matter, regarding his SPCA refuge, some five miles south of New Orleans. There are saved many poor dogs and horses that have experienced cruelty. This past Sunday, a rogue employee, hysterical and a carpet-bagger by all accounts, was apprehended having opened the barn doors. While justice will be taken swiftly, estimated one hundred dogs and horses escaped
Journal of an unknown author
Undated Battered, brown leather, 4.25"x 8.25"
3/3
I hoped Bunny would come back to me but not like this. Couldn't say how long he'd been dead. Body was already stiff as a board. Was terrible to see him like that, and the way he was all ripped up, it looked like he'd been in more than one fight. Bites and cuts all over. But knowing my Bunny, whoever he was fighting with out there looks worse.
Man who brought me the body said he'd suspected rabies. Read all about it in the paper. Said Bunny had attacked his Retriever, already looking like hell's mutton and with that thick mucous about the mouth the rabid ones are said to get. He'd bitten up the Retriever fierce, but then, he said, he was very sorry, but he'd had to shoot my Bunny. He had children about, he said. Livestock. Well he said those words and before I could even think I had my knife at his throat, ready to kill him too, with my bare hands if I had to. Practically foaming at the mouth myself.
Well, I calmed myself. I didn't kill the man, and he bought me a bottle by way of an apology. Can't seem to quench my thirst though, and my throat hurts too, but well, that's probably from the mourning. Can't bear to just sit and stare into the fire any more. Thought I saw a hound rushing at the fire, and I drew and shot. Just shooting at the air though, no hound here at all.
Researcher's insight into the Water Devil
Undated
My initial suspicions about the origins of the Water Devil have been refuted absolutely by my latest research. I had thought the thing was related to some species of eel. Even a Gar or a Bowfish would have seemed logical. Or so I thought. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me begin with the creature itself, as the hunters knew it.
Though it would be easy to mistake it for one many-tentacled creature, the Water Devil is in fact a swarm of smaller aquatic animals. It seemed to sense the presence of anything entering its home waters, and its movements were quick and decisive. Because of its swarm-like nature, it was hard to kill with bullets or any sort of melee attack, and often the best recourse was simply to run for the shore.
For a long time, the waters of the bayou appeared to have gone silent. The usual wildlife had either fled, or been killed. Or both: it is likely that the creatures devoured whatever wildlife was not quick enough to flee to safer waters, but several populations of alligators clearly survived the infestation. Collins and Scognamiglio seem to agree on this point, as well as on the creatures' appearance, though at the moment, I find all of it a bit fantastic. No wonder, as our main surviving source on the subject of its appearance is a fictionalized version of the tale.
Though the logic (well, the assumed logic) of these creatures' form and function may be twisted and strange, the Water Devil feels outside of that framework, like an experiment gone wrong. I cannot pinpoint its purpose for the larger organism, and I imagine that, for example, a monstrous, ravenous alligator, able to move both in water and on land, would have served its purpose more immediately.
Letter regarding the Water Devil
Author: Hayden Collins
Undated
Handwritten, 8.5" x 11"
Dearest Xavier,
I hope this letter finds you well. I was greatly saddened by the fact that you were not, after all, able to come to New Orleans, but I understand that business must come first. We all have to eat, especially you, you great brute. But my crude jokes aside, I greatly respect what you are trying to accomplish.
Thank you for taking the time to read my latest. I was heartened to hear your positive response. Sadly however, I still cannot find a soul who will publish it. People simply do not believe that what I describe could have possibly have happened to two young women. It seems to me, the people who say these things have not spoken widely with the "weaker" sex. You remember my rejection letter from that damned Tousey? There have only been more of the same. I am beginning to think I will have to rewrite the thing after all. Though for now, I do not feel up to the task. I feel a certain debt to the facts, so for now, I will let the manuscript rest in the drawer of my desk.
But I have not stopped working, and in fact, enclosed you will find a copy of the first published installments! For now anyway, I will have bread and wine. It came to me - or I should say he came to me - during an evening spent at Finn's. I can hear you laughing even now, and no, I have not given up any of my vices. I was drawn to the man because of his face, which was scarred almost beyond human recognition, and I stayed at his side until dawn listening to what he had to say. He was as eager to tell the tale as I was to hear it, and I made sure that Sal kept us well in our cups. You may not believe it, but I stayed true to the tale he told of the "many tentacled beast of the swamps," though the scars on his face were the only offer of proof. This town is awash in the strangest tales. I do not regret the move, though I miss you dearly. There is enough inspiration on these streets to fill a thousand novels. You will hardly believe the tale yourself. Do tell me what you think.
Your Brother,
Hayden
Serial published in the New Orleans True Crescent
Author: Hayden Collins
Date: May 4th, 1910
1/6
He might not be a Hero, but he fought the Devil in the swamps of Louisiana - and he won. But at what price? Find out this week in...
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW, Nr 1
A weekly adventure serial by H. Collins.
His face was scarred and discolored beyond all recognition. He was a Free Man, a Black man, once a slave, but never to be again, for he had armed himself and would fight nail and tooth, would kill and would die, before he ever submitted to such conditions again.
His name was Jonas, and he was fond of his Winfield, like so many before him, and felt himself as powerful as a regiment of men with it in his hands. Should you manage to catch sight of those hands on one of the rare occasions he was without his calf's hide gloves, you would see that they were as soft and as smooth as a porcelain cup. Once, his face must have been the same. But all who had ever seen his face without scars or his hands without gloves were dead, most by his hand, with the exception of the lover he had lost and mourned and whose memory he fought for still.
They had been partners in the Hunt, Jonas and a man called Gator, initiated by an old Preacher who thought them both too desperate for any other work. Correctly, it must be noted, for both felt compelled to wander, to hunt, and to fight. Both avoided the indoors, feeling most at home with a rifle on their backs and the stars above them, ignorant though they were of the fate written there in their name among them.
Though the Preacher who initiated them never did manage to convert them, Jonas and Gator would meet the Devil in the shallows of the Stillwater Bayou, and only one of them would live to regret it.
Serial published in the New Orleans True Crescent
Author: Hayden Collins
Date: May 11th, 1910
2/6
He might not be a Hero, but he fought the Devil in the swamps of Louisiana - and he won. But at what price? Find out this week in...
THE DEVIL. YOU KNOW, Nr 1
A weekly adventure serial by H. Collins.
"Move your drumsticks Beefrat, we don't have a year to get to Bully."
They'd been walking for hours and still hadn't found the bounty they'd been sent to find.
"We're walking in circles Harpo, there ain't no way around it. Around it. Get it? Regular poet, me."
"You would have starved to death a poet. Or a comedian."
"Well I'm going to starve to death a Hunter, aye."
"Dark times when the Sight can't set us right."
These Hunters were rumored to have powers that led them to their quarries - and the rumors were true. A small motion of the hands and a short incantation whispered and the world became a misty grey, their targets a bouquet of blue sparks visible only to those who had been initiated.
But that day, when they moved into the Sight, the landscape was bleak and empty, and they were unable to catch the trail of their quarry, and they were beginning to feel a sickness come upon them. The swamps were silent, and though the distant moans and screams of a Hive punctuated the day, as they always did now, there were no human screams, no gunshots. They thought themselves alone.
They were wrong.
Serial published in the New Orleans True Crescent
Author: Hayden Collins
Date: May 18th, 1910
3/6
He might not be a Hero, but he fought the Devil in the swamps of Louisiana - and he won. But at what price? Find out this week in...
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW, Nr 1
A weekly adventure serial by H. Collins.
Harpo and Beefrat rested upon the shore, clutching their stomachs.
"Might be the flu, Harpo, come for us at last. Haven't felt right since we broke fast. We never should of ate that meat." Somewhere beneath the layers of dirt caking his face was sickly pale white skin, the mouth framed by a straw-brown mustache and beard. The other looked much the same, though his beard was longer, with a touch of red.
"My insides are wailing. And with the Sight off..." he trailed off before finishing his thought, but his meaning was clear: it was an ill omen. He looked down at his shaking hands, where several strange lumps were developing. "I fear the worse, Rat."
The meat they'd had had been wormy and rotten, but they had eaten it all the same. They had drank away the money from their last bounty in a single night and had no money left for good fruit or bread. This bounty might have filled their stomachs with something better.
Meanwhile, from the thicket, Jonas and Gator watched.
They had been tracking the same quarry as Beefrat and Harpo and had planned to eliminate their competition and to loot what weapons they could from the corpses: a double bounty. But now the two men on the shore were acting strange and having removed their hats and coats, were moaning and scratching at their faces and arms.
It was safest to shoot from a distance.
Their aim was true.
Serial published in the New Orleans True Crescent
Author: Hayden Collins
Date: May 25th, 1910
4/6
He might not be a Hero, but he fought the Devil in the swamps of Louisiana - and he won. But at what price? Find out this week in...
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW, Nr 4
A weekly adventure serial by H. Collins.
Jonas drew his knife down the length of the Harpo's body from chin to pelvis, expecting the spill of organs and the stench of foul rot and death. He intended to take the heart, but he was greeted with a great flow of thick, segmented white worms, spilling from the dead man's flesh.
The worms had already devoured the organs - some still had blood smeared across the mouth cavities, opening and closing in the air as they sought after more flesh. Jumping back, Jonas reached for his rifle and began to shoot, but landed no hits. The stubby, writhing creatures, turning a reddish orange now that they had been freed from the man's carcass, skimmed across the mud and slid into the dark waters of the bayou.
The dead man's partner, Beefrat, had run towards a building on the far side of the water at the first sound of shots. He stopped and began to convulse. The white worms poured out of his mouth, his ears, and the gaping sockets where they had eaten their way through his eyes. His corpse emptied of the foul creatures at last, his body collapsed into the water.
Jonas and Gator stood on the shore, watching, but ready to run. The water began to churn - the worms had swarmed around the corpse to finish off the remaining skin.
Would they stay and fight or would they let the creature go? The men's eyes met and after a gruff nod, they waded out into the water.
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