BASEBALL BAT (See also, BLUNT FORCE, TOOLS) Prior to the standardization of their dimensions, baseball bats were handmade for their wielder. It is rudimentary as a weapon, but effective enough that records of using them to bludgeon a human skull pre-date the word baseball.
Single loose sheet, 11 x 16
New Orleans Sheriff Department, November 22, 1893 SHERIFF KILLER STILL AT LARGE
DEAD OR ALIVE
$1,500 REWARD
Generous rewards shall be paid to any that provide information or assistance in the apprehension of Gareth Sherringham, notorious murderer of Sheriff Weathers and six further civilians. Any who withhold information, harbor this known criminal, or in any way shield him from the law will face punishment of DEATH. Let the divine arm of the law demonstrate that it extends from the throne of the Almighty Lord, and let those who stand in its way see Salt and Sulfur. WAYNE HARDIN, Acting Sheriff of New Orleans
DESCRIPTION. -- Sherringham is 5 feet 1 inch short. Bald, with a grey, unkempt, sorry excuse for a beard. Green eyes that do not stare straight when asked a question, instead staring at his own hooked nose. Surprisingly quick for such a round man. Carries a wooden baseball bat with which he slowly beats his victims to death.
750 dollars bounty if delivered alive for state execution, 500 dollars bounty if delivered dead, and 250 dollars for information that leads to his arrest. This totals to a 1,500 DOLLARS BOUNTY.
Journal of Gareth Sherringham
Single loose sheet, 6 x 8.25
December 17, 1893
Good things do not thrive in New Orleans. I thought being a deputy might help change that, and now I am hunted by the city. If I could I would blame these people, but Wayne has offered them enough to feed their families for a full year and I myself would take up arms for such a prize. Perhaps I could select a worthy candidate to surrender to. Tabitha could most certainly use the money, her lot in life is even less fortunate than my own.
Not that anyone reading this should believe the word of The Diamond Killer, but I have only killed three men in my life. Two were at the behest of the Sheriff himself and the third, well, the third was of my own volition, though naturally I would assert that the bastard deserved what I gave him. My sole mistake was lacking the control to wait until Wayne was over the hill.
I doubt I shall survive the year while Wayne haunts every tired step I take, resourceful and cunning as he is. One imagines he is the sheriff now. A stirring thought, that. At least he won't take it upon himself to murder the vagrants of this city, but then I didn't imagine Sheriff Weathers would either. Both are men who thrived in New Orleans.
As for myself? I am tired and have exhausted all recourse. Far be it from me to damn a friend to death for sparing some bread. They shall find my shriveled body in this swamp I imagine, but I take solace in knowing Sheriff Weathers won't be there to call my corpse a fat prick.
Railroad Hammer
Railroad Hammer (See also, BLUNT FORCE, TOOLS) With the innovation of the railway came the need for simple, cheap tools to build the tracks. Simple and effective, the misshapen sledgehammer is perfect for driving spikes that sit next to high rails. They are light, adaptable, and require no adjustment for caving in skulls.
Letter to Maribelle Armstrong
Author: Abel Baker
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.
1/4
My exquisite darling Maribelle,
I wish there was something I could do to cut down the despair that will befall you once you are made to understand that this will be my final letter. When I told you that I'd be home as soon as I finished out my sentence, meant it with the whole of my heart, but recent events that will soon make the papers have all but
destroyed the man I once was. I don t know how long I'll make it out here, although I promise to fight as hard and long as I can out of respect for what you would want. I thought you deserved the truth and not some over- sweetened lie that your sharpest mind would see through in an instant. I'm so sorry.
The circumstances of this bayou determine that there are no rules for anything, and nothing is fair or just. At some point in time, there may have been someone who cared enough about the idea of mistreated inmates that they'd do something about it, but as you well know, we've been cut off from the luxuries of the places unaffected by the corruption. All we were told was to obey or be killed.
2/4
For some context, that beef-witted sheriff, Hardin they called him, made it known from the first morning he arrived at the camp that he was on the lookout for men he could lawfully deputize. Watching us break our backs in order to get the railroad in fine condition would be test enough for him to decide which of us he'd choose to free. But my buddy Marky called the promise out for the deceit it truly was. There was no freedom at stake. Anyone chosen to be a deputy would be forced to obey commands without second guessing the source, just like we did here. The illusion of free will would be more magnified, sure, with the clean shirt and the gun and the badge we'd be given if we made the cut, but like Marky pointed out, there wasn't much left in this life for us to dress up for, and being used to carry out whatever Hardin's shifty motivations were hardly came with any sort of
stay alive' guarantee
I only wish I'd listened to Marky earlier. Maybe if I had, he'd still be alive.
Letter to Maribelle Armstrong
Author: Abel Baker
Single loose sheet, 8.5x 11 in.
3/4
The beginning of the end came when Hardin became noticeably interested in another inmate called Swamp, nicknamed after his favorite hiding place to do away with dead bodies once he was done with them. Swamp's stare is bone-chilling, his mouth ever-curled into the slightest, most unhinged smile. He erupted into delighted giggles when a patrolling officer accidentally used the wrong end of his knuckle knife on an immolator and got himself cooked alive right in front of us, screaming like a child screams when it wakes up from a night terror, smelling like a mix of Ma's Sunday pork roast and burned, greasy hair.
Anyway, after Hardin arrived, Swamp decided he wanted to stick out, I guess. When he saw that Marky didn't like Hardin, and that Hardin didn't like Marky, and took it upon himself to show the sheriff that he had no problem squashing Marky like a spider.
4/4
One evening, Swamp took a railroad hammer to Marky's chest over supper, crushing it inward like a finger poking through the malty, softened bruise of an apple. I knew better than to retaliate right away, with the commotion gathering the attention of inmates and officers alike, but the seed of my current mission was planted Like a cat stalking its prey, I was silent in my search for the perfect moment, biding my time.
Like a gift straight from the hands of God, four packs of Hellhounds descended upon the camp not a day later, tearing their way through the flesh and bones of the less experienced as others scrambled to help. When I saw the railroad hammer Swamp used on Marky resting on its side in the dirt nearby, I knew my chance had come. I took it in my hands and made sure Swamp felt exactly how Marky must have, taken by surprise that bubbled from his mouth in the form of scarlet froth. Justice, done.
My sweetest Maribelle, I have reached the ending of my sentence so much earlier than anticipated, as the disturbance was the perfect time to take my new railroad hammer and slip away. I cannot come home, for Swamp was not the only one with a debt to be paid over what happened to Marky. Promise me you'll find someone who actually deserves you. This is something that I have to do for my railroad brother. I will love you until my last breath.
Yours,
Abel
Bornheim No. 3
BORNHEIM NO. 3. (See also, SEMI-AUTOMATIC PISTOLS) The futuristic-looking Bornheim No. 3 was one of the first semi-automatic pistols, featuring a five-round magazine. Named for a village incorporated into the city of its design, the No. 3 only ever achieved limited commercial success as an armament. Its designer, Louis Schmeisser, would go on to design many other more successful and innovative firearms. As the number designates, this was the third model, which was designed to compensate for certain shortcomings realized at Swiss, German, and Belgian military trials. This featured a sturdier design and stouter barrel, as well as an enhanced magazine which could be fed by stripper-clip
Correspondence, Philip Huff Jones
Typewritten, original
February 13, 1895
Venerable Son,
I must advise you against taking up arms. Let the others do that work. Your place is among those who plan, who organize. Sheriff Hardin is of our cause; maintaining his friendship is of paramount importance. He's well connected, and a good friend of the governor, whose support we also require. Do not squander this opportunity by giving in to your violent passions. Your disposition has led to nothing but trouble and will continue to do so if you give it free reign.
As for the staff member of whom you spoke in your last letter - do not be so quick to judge. Coward some may be, yet cowards too, play their part. I think, perhaps, the bravest among us are those cowards who compel themselves to act in spite of their fear. Take help where it is offered; never underestimate the offer of a life.
But now to practical matters. R. has spoken to me of another potential contact. A certain VC, already sympathetic to our cause, is in a position to, should the relationship be handled correctly, supply an assortment of firearms. Please write to him at your earliest convenience. I have included his address, though no post will get through quickly in this storm.
Sincerely,
Your Father
Correspondence, Philip Huff Jones
Typewritten, original
May 2, 1895
Esteemed Colleagues,
1 take this opportunity to inform you that we will be temporarily adding a new member to the Asylum staff. Dr. Elwood Finch, an expert in many psychological conditions and treatments, will be joining us for the period of six months in order to treat 14 individually selected patients. With many years experience and a record of near- miraculous rehabilitations of patients suffering from Chronic Mania, Delusions of Persecution, Hallucinations, and Religious Mania, Dr. Finch will take on some of our most difficult cases during his stay here.
Dr. Finch will be joining us in Jackson at the end of the month. His charges will be moved into Building C and removed from all other treatment programs. Below you will find a list of those Dr. Finch has chosen to participate, based on our patient files. Those hands needed to move these patients into their new quarters will be informed in the coming weeks. Enclosed you will find your invitation to his welcome dinner on the night of his arrival in Jackson.
In service,
Dr. Philip Huff Jones
Superintendent, Louisiana Asylum at Jackson
Bornheim No. 3 Match
BORNHEIM NO. 3 MATCH. (See also, BORNHEIM NO. 3, FIELD MODIFICATIONS) The Bornheim No. 3 proved capable over medium distances, this common high-precision modification was intended to capitalize on this. As can be expected, the stock gives better stability, while retaining a light weight and ease of mobility. The sights are enhanced to give clearer visibility. Unlike other semi-automatic pistols, the carriage return on the Bornheim does not operate vertically, giving better visibility between shots.
Clipping from the New Orleans True Crescent
Author: Unknown
Newsprint, 4 x 8in.
PHILIP HUFF JONES Jackson, Louisiana. Phillip Huff Jones was found murdered in his office last night Circumstances are currently treated as suspicious. The speculation surrounding the controversies of this medical practitioner will not have escaped the attention of our reader.
Two conflicting accounts, by way of a nurse and a doctor in the employ of the asylum, who to protect their identity remain nameless, have come to the premises of this newspaper. The nurse, having been alone on duty in the East Wing at the time of the murder, had found herself at a loose end. As the reader will remember, many of the patients were in a recent calamity relieved of their residency of the asylum, and their lives. Thus, her duties predisposed her to a good view of the office, where she said she saw Huff Jones discussing matters with two women around the time of murder. Some time after, she saw the light extinguished, and assumed he had turned in for the night unusually early. The doctor's account disagrees wholeheartedly on this matter. Occupying the office down the hall, afforded with a good view of Huff Jones comings and goings, the doctor noted no one coming or leaving his room that night. He reported hearing one gunshot, and swiftly entered the office upon hearing a heavy thud. There, he noted the room absent, but for the deceased, and a window pane smashed. Rushing into the grounds, he tells us he found a homemade marksman's semi-automatic pistol discarded on the lawn, which he promptly turned into the sheriff. A similar pistol was used earlier this year in the inconclusive alleged assassination of historian Charles Gayarr .
Huff Jones was born November 8, 1855 near Jackson, La. Having studied medicine at Tulane University, Mr. Jones was appointed Assistant Superintendent to his father, John Welch Jones, at the Louisiana Asylum at Jackson in 1882, where he served for six years before replacing his father as Super indent at the same institution He is survived by his wife and four children. It is not known, at this moment, who will succeed him at the asylum.
Bornheim No. 3 Silencer
BORNHEIM NO. 3 SILENCER (See also, BORNHEIM NO. 3) In hopes of courting lost military contracts, this silencer modification was first developed to combat complaints that the Bornheim No. 3's large magazine encouraged wasting ammunition. Suppressed gunshot sounds did incentivize more precise aiming due to the slightly reduced bullet power, but they also allowed wielders to fire without betraying their position thus making them even more wasteful with their ammunition.
Correspondence, P. Jones
Typewritten, carbon copy
August 9, 1895
Please remember that your reputation is your livelihood. If you would like your paltry enterprise to last much longer than Caldwell , you must do better. I trust you are correct when you say some will appreciate the addition of a silencer, but we are your true clientele, and you were very aware of our demands when you wasted our time.
One of two things is about to happen. Indulge me as I explain.
The first and finest of your options begins with an apology, directly in response to this letter. It continues with the shipment of weapons you agreed upon (delivered three days early) and ends with a commitment to supply us with as many of your resources as we require--in writing
If you reject this option and defy our will, then your name will be dirt. You shall dwindle as a company until all your remaining customers are filth-desperate for weapons at the desperately low prices you will be selling. I and my friends have toppled far greater commercial enterprises than yours, and you would do well to consider your response carefully.
If you fail to reply, then expect myself and a small army at your doorstep within the month. And we shall not be so polite!
P. Jones
Bornheim No. 3 Extended
BORNHEIM NO. 3 EXTENDED. (See also, BORNHEIM NO. 3, RETROFIT) This Bornheim No. 3 was slightly modified with the incorporation of an extended magazine. The retrofit was realized as desirable as subsequent models naturally incorporated their own larger magazines. This naturally compliments a high rate of fire. Military trials were unsuccessful, citing the fact that the large magazine encouraged wasting ammunition. Nevertheless, it proved a popular and simple adaption.
Journal of William Salter
Severe water damage, reconstructed by archivist
Unlined paper, 3x5 in.
1/10
Something walks this forest after dark. I have heard its heavy, dragging steps as it circles the cabin. It has not tried to enter - perhaps it has not noticed my presence. I tell myself it is some large animal, but then I think of Huff's letters, and of what I have seen with my own eyes.
It had been several days since I left the cabin. Engrossed in my work, I took little notice of the passing of time. I have been practicing on small animals and then studying their wounds, and I could no longer stand the smell of the blood. I ran out into the forest as if pursued. The air calmed me, and I was able to think more clearly. I did not intend to stray far, or for long. But even that, I see now, was a terrible mistake. I was not in my right mind, if I could be said to possess such a thing in the first place. Ha!
I heard it long before I could see its sizeable silhouette. It stumbled and paced, giving the impression of confusion. I froze and ducked behind a fallen tree. The figure was shaped roughly like a man, though far larger. However, on his shoulders where his head should be, a mantle of enormous, writhing leeches. I must retire now. My hands shake to think of it again. ws
Special ammunition
Incendiary
RN: Was it a good thing he escaped into the bayou? He met with a sorry fate, for sure, but at least his final moments were spent according to his own whims. If one's natural necessity for freedom and the pursuit of happiness can be reduced to a whim.
High Velocity
RN: Salter's (further) descent cannot merely be explained by natural psychological phenomena (if there is such a thing). The duress under which Huff placed those in his care must have exacerbated whatever latent potential there was - and was compounded when combined with the malignancy of the Sculptor.
Caldwell 92 New Army
CALDWELL 92 NEW ARMY (See also, CALDWELL PAX, REVOLVERS) The Caldwell 92 New Army was developed by the Caldwell Arms Company as requested by the US Military. After 20 years of using the reliable Caldwell Pax, many soldiers were not satisfied with the weaker shot of the New Army's .38 bullets. But despite its lack of power, the highlight of this double-action revolver is its distinguished counter-clockwise rotating cylinder that swings out to allow for an effortless reload. Fast, light, and easy to handle, it was adopted not only by the US Army and Navy but also by police departments throughout the country.
Letter found in the uniform of a guard from Pelican Island Prison
Author: "Theo"(Surname unknown)
Undated
Torn paper, handwritten, 8.5'x 5.7"
Dear Abbie,
I wish I had the strength to write you happy lies because Lord knows I already caused you and Mama enough suffering for a lifetime. But I beg you to spare me your kindness once more, for I fear this is my last chance to expel these demons before they're buried with me
Something unholy happens between these walls. I have not seen it with my own eyes, but we all know it to be true. The guards come to collect us at night break when our bodies are weak and spent from a day's worth of steady toil. No one knows how they choose, but they come with their minds already made. They snatch a man from his bedsheets and haul his struggling body from his cell. If the poor fellow manages to break free, they'll have their Caldwells ready to aim for his knees
They disappear down to the basement, where the Warden lives. He never comes to the cells, but I swear I can see him when I try to sleep. A long face with hollow cheeks and a darting tongue that grows fat from our misery and fear.
For hours straight, we can hear nothing but pain. We try to sleep through the first muffled whimpers. We awake before dawn with the enraged yells. We wash down our scraps of food with pleading sobs. We tend to work in the rhythm of agonizing howls. When we're back to bed, the silence comes. And we wish for the screams to return because our selfish souls fear we might be next.
One of the guards has taken pity on me, for whichever reason I could not tell you. He promised me he'll see that this letter reaches you, and I can only hope he's sincere. He shows me kindness and offers solace on the hardest of days. Has even made me laugh once. It's fleeting and useless, but it's the only thing keeping me sane in this wretched place.
But despite his good intentions, I'm afraid my friend has sealed my fate. I've noticed the other guards giving us odd looks, and I hear their whispers stop when I look their way.
I'm not afraid of dying, Abbie. But no sin is evil enough to deserve what happens in that basement. Forever your little brother,
Theo
Notes on the Investigation
Handwritten, author unknown
November, 1897
As curious and intellectually thrilling as it may have been, the incident has been regarded as an unsolvable mystery even by the most famous investigators of New York, among whom my former mentor and colleague cut his teeth and learned the trade of mystery solving.
Although he was devilishly talented in the art of investigation, he lacked the mental diligence our profession required. I sometimes even wondered as to whether it was the very reason why he kept me by his side. It's not important anymore though; may he rest in peace
While going through his belongings the previous night, I came across his notes and sketches he relied upon during the investigation at Pelican Island Prison, Louisiana. I must admit, some of the writings he stumbled upon on the walls of certain prison cells rekindled my curiosity as they all point at the infamous basement of the Prison. Is it possible that they are linked to the rumors locals have reported since 1894?
To study them further in the future, should the opportunity arise of course, I've included the most cryptic writings in this dossier.
Cell 33
HELL MUST BE HERE MUST BE
WHER DEMONS LURK AND SINNERS SCREEEM
LORD YOU THERE BELOW TOO I KNOW YES I KNOW
Cell 27
SMELLS BLOOD ROT DECAY MOLDY FLESH
NIGHT CAME HOUNDS HUNGRY HOWL
CRUNCH AND MUNCH AND BITE AND SCRATCH
NO MORE NO MORE NO MORE NO MORE
Cell 57
GHOSTS SCREAM
I HATE THEYR SCREAM
THEYL LOVE WHEN I SCREAM
Cell 47
I HEAR THEM AGAIN SHAMING ME
I NEED HER TO KNOW AND SHE WILL SOON
PLEASE GOD LET IT REACH HER
Caldwell 92 New Army Swift
CALDWELL 92 NEW ARMY SWIFT (See also, CALDWELL PAX, REVOLVERS) The Caldwell 92 New Army Swift is a peripheral attachment to the reliable pistol. The innovative, counterclockwise rotating cylinder has been further enhanced by using a speed loader to insert all six bullets at once. Though not an official modification adopted by the US military or police forces, it is an invaluable tool in fast-paced combat.
Journal of Candice Rouille
Handwritten, leather-bound, 4" "x 6"
April 8,1895
I'm at a bit of a loss. New York has finally requested my return, and I'm to report back within the week. Jack says to ignore the message, that they won't waste manpower tracking either of us down, but we left very different lives in New York, lives that I can't help but miss, even if just a little. What could be so important that they'd call for me?
After the last six months, a proper homecoming could grant me the retribution I so crave. I have exceeded every estimation, disproven every mockery. I still carry the cross of my spite. Yet now I also carry an oath of secrecy in the name of the Hunt. It was sworn with a mind towards betrayal, though, and they are a pack who would most definitely betray me for a pittance. In my heart, I doubt the crusade here remains a righteous one, nor do I see an end in sight
April 9,1895
Today's Hunt was lucrative, yielding more than enough to feast on the road to New York. But I am struck, once again, with doubt. Am I making the wrong choice? Perhaps it was seeing Hardin's smug face that made me second guess. I can only imagine it'd look even more smug once he hears I'm leaving. I had half a mind to load my Caldwell pistol to see if six quick bullets might wipe the grin away.
April 12, 1895
I have decided. Distance may have bred fondness for New York, but all that awaits me there are bastards I wish to humble. Here, I have a forever partner in battle and plenty more bastards to humble. Regardless, I have only one true reason to remain, and it is not gold or glory or companionship. In truth, I simply wish to stain my hands even darker with blood. A Good Friday indeed.
Special ammunition
Dumdum
RN: Nearly everything we know about what happened on Pelican Island comes from sources that were not stored in the archive, which in the fire and flood destroyed the island's secrets. But for letters in the possession of others, and one box unlocked and unmarked by the flames.
Full Metal Jacket
RN: Who were the inmates subjected to such torture? The prison served DeSalle, the parish, the crimes of its people were somewhat unremarkable. Tax fraud, unpaid fines, petty theft, all were enough to earn a sentence. What kind of justice is that?
Nagant M1895
NAGANT M1895. (See also, REVOLVER, RUSSIAN EMPIRE) Designed by L on Nagant, the Nagant M1895 was commissioned as a bespoke service revolver for the Russian Empire and would see use throughout the armed forces. This created relatively stringent design requirements. The Russian Empire was a vast expanse stretching across some of the most inhospitable terrains in the world. At the same time, the nation was lagging behind in terms of modernization. Manufacturing standards at the time were relatively less sophisticated in Russia than throughout the United States and Western Europe
As a result, The Nagant M1895 proved to be a unique, albeit unconventional, single-action revolver. It proved to be durable enough to survive use in adverse conditions, and simple enough to be manufactured quickly and in staggering quantities. The cylinder is pressed flush to the barrel on firing, though this does mean that it requires unique ammunition. A major disadvantage of the weapon was that reloading was slow. Shots had to be removed individually with the ejector rod, and then loaded individually.
Letter to Frank Chambers
Author: Russell "Snakeskin" Chambers
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.
1/9
Pa,
The short is: I need you to front me $20 dollars for bail. I'm interred at Jefferson Parish, LA.
The long is: I took a train from San Francisco to Ogden, bad luck, the inspector decided my ticket was invalid. The next station was a nowhere town, Wells, Nevada. They turned me out.
I fell badly, landing on the piece which I had tucked into my belt, cut up my hip, a lot of blood. In town, the folk were not forthcoming with aid. Irony in that the gun which had in part caused my injury, was also the means by which I was able to get help. I'm not proud of threatening the woman, but I needed stitching up. Truth be told, I had to hope that none would call my bluff, I didn't believe the thing would fire after I'd landed on it
The piece could take one hell of a beating. It's Russian, called a Nagant M1895. Strange bullets, tucked up inside like they were afraid to come out. I won it in a game of street craps. The owner was a Russian, a deserter, he had made across the Pacific to escape a certain death. I wouldn't say his chances of survival really increased that much.
Well, the lady finished up her work about the time a lawman arrived to tell me I wasn't welcome in Wells. And not to wait for the next train
With nowhere to go, no money, and just a little food, there was nothing for it but following the tracks. What I was hoping for, I don't know. Towards nightfall I came to the ruin of a ranch, set in a dead gnarled orchard. The trunks bleached white. There was a dry gulch running through it, with nought but a trickle of water. Good as place as any to rest, I was lucky enough there was water.
Yours,
Russell
Letter to Frank Chambers
Author: Russell "Snakeskin" Chambers
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.
2/9
The next morning, I woke to find the dressing the woman had done was bad. The wound was festering, a fever setting in. The last thing I clearly remember, crawling on my belly towards the gulch, gulping what water I could.
Time passes different with such a fever. The first day, I took apart one of the strange bullets, using the gunpowder to cauterize the wound.
The second, I heard a rattle of a sidewinder. Somewhere in the dirt. held the Nagant tight. Funny a gun from wintery Russia would find itself out in the badlands, guarding a man drying out in the sun from a rattlesnake.
The third day, I saw the snake. Coming toward me. I took a pot shot and it went back into the brush. That evening, it came again, and I got it
The fourth day, the pain in my leg showed no sign of abating. I wished I'd left the snake there, to kill me. On that I realized what a coward I was.I saw no way out my predicament.
I pushed out all but one bullet from the chamber, and spun it idly. Placed it to my temple. Pulled. Click. Next, it was the snake's turn. Spun. Pulled. Click. We went back and forth like that, me and the snake, till the gun kicked back in my hand, a puff of dust emerged from the snake. He'd eaten the bullet meant for me.
The fifth day, the pain subsided. I ate that snake, saving the skin. With the strength, I walked on. Came across the next town. Found labor, the day after, shoveling manure. Took the first train out.
Ended up here - in New Orleans. Got picked up for playing dice. So now I'm writing you from jail. I need $20 dollars for bail
Yours,
Russell
Nagant M1895 Precision
NAGANT M1895 PRECISION. (See also, NAGANT M1895, SHARPSHOOTERS) The Nagant M1895 Precision is simply a typical single-action revolver with a sturdy leather and metal pistol stock that doubles as a holster. This allows it to be supported in the crook of the shoulder, and guarantees much greater stability, and increased accuracy
Letter to Frank Chambers
Author: Russell "Snakeskin "Chambers
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.
3/9
Pa,
I've enclosed $10. Write me that vou've received it.
The hunting started good. We bagged a few easy contracts. Quick money: Sick men. Alone in the swamps. Something rotten in their mind. In their flesh too. Each one, we took a hand. My Nagant has a stock that nestles into the forearm, accurate and powerful enough to pick them off - it turns out I'm a dead shot.
The other prisoners, we made one big posse. There's a huge Russian we call The Bear (who noted my gun, but says he himself prefers to only fight with fists), an old man named Pellella, and a girl from Oregon, Billy. The Sheriff led us, still wearing his badge.
Things took a turn for the worse when we went out looking for a man called The Butcher. Said to be impossible to kill. Hiding in an old Slaughterhouse. Two days out. The first day, Pellella and Billy had took sixteen hands a piece. They were overflowing their packs. When we set up camp, they thought aloud about heading back to town already, having so many hands.
I woke that night with a start. Pellella and The Bear were scrabbling on the floor. Were they wrestling? When my eyes adjusted to the moonlight, I realized they were fighting, just not each other. Hands, crawling over them, clawing, strangling. The severed hands of the dead men. I felt something grip my shoulder. It was Hardin. He said they got Billy already. I saw the dead girl: bruises round her neck. Hardin passed me my pistol
Pellella was being smothered. He was jerking around, trying to get himself free. I aimed true, and picked off the hands I could. My seventh shot, the last in the cylinder, was aimed at a hand gripping his neck, choking him out. 1 told him to sit still, but he still thrashed. His face blue, I pulled the trigger. It hit him in the temple. The Sheriff took no time in fanning his Pax to kill the rest, the bullets thudding into Pellella's lifeless body.
We took on a new rule. No trophies.
Yours,
Russell
Nagant M1895 Silencer
NAGANT M1895 SILENCER. (See also, NAGANT M1895, UNIQUE WEAPONS) Unique among revolvers, the Nagant M1895 can be silenced. Other revolvers have a gap between the cylinder and the barrel, meaning that when they are fired gas, and therefore sound, is expelled. This is the most significant origin of the onomatopoeic bang, such noise which a muzzle suppressor will not alleviate. When the Nagant is fired, however, the cylinder is pushed tight to the forcing cone, the opening of the barrel. The gas must instead escape through the length of the barrel, meaning that a suppressor will in fact alleviate the noise. What makes this a remarkable happenstance is that the Nagant was not designed with this in mind.
Letter to Frank Chambers
Author: Russell "Snakeskin " Chambers
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.
5/9
Pa,
I never did tell you how I got out jail. Sheriff made me earn it
Second day I was there, Sheriff Hardin does his rounds. Takes me out, makes me run up and down the yard. Lift sacks of grain. Checked my teeth. Then threw me back in with my cell-mate. An old fella, by the name of John Hayward. Stark crazy, on account of the climate, but a good man. In his sleep, he muttered about monsters in the swamp. And a sculptor. I considered his wife had left him for an artist.
Third night, Hardin comes to me. Offers a deal. My freedom, under conditions of his employment, no questions. Lady Luck had shined on me. Hardin took me into the yard. Chalked on the ground were concentric circles and strange patterns. Waiting round the edges were two other guards, and a handful of other prisoners.
One by one, me and other prisoners walked the circles, reciting lines Hardin told us to speak. An oath he made up. At the end, we were to drink a gulp of some brackish red liquid. The second boy hurled it up. He was taken out the yard and I heard a muffled cry. On my turn, the taste of nails, but I kept it down. There was to be a final test. I drew the short straw, I was first. A guard dragged a man by his hair out the cellblock. Threw him at my feet. In the moonlight, I saw it was John, my cell-mate.
Hardin handed me a gun. My Nagant. Fixed on the end was a heavy, improvised, muzzle. He explained this was as the community didn't take kindly to gunfire after dark. I understood what was to be done. He looked up at me, the crescent moon glinting in his eyes, like a snake's.
It seems having a record of these events is in my best interest. I'm beginning to wonder if I'll lose my mind.
Yours,
Russell
Nagant M1895 Precision Deadeye
NAGANT M1895 PRECISION DEADEYE. (See also, NAGANT M1895). While unconventional, the Deadeye variant of the Nagant was a conversion with an attached telescopic scope. A rear mounted stock increases the stability of firing at range. One challenge of such an attachment is maintaining accuracy over distance with a heavy trigger pull. The degree of difference in experience becomes most pronounced in such a case. Effectively accommodating this, and achieving a smooth pull, offers a great advantage, making the Nagant a capable range weapon, though still compact. Therefore, it is for the disciplined shooter to utilize one in accordance with an unsteady weapon such as the one in question.
Letter to Frank Chambers
Author: Russell "Snakeskin "Chambers
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.
4/9
Pa,
Have you been receiving my letters? I haven't heard back. We took recruits to replace Pellella and Billy. They were dead soon after. The Butcher ain't a man at all. Hounds prowl the roads in packs. Swarms of locust descend from the skies and La Llorona cries at the moon.
Hardin had been getting darker in his moods. Huff turned out to be no friend at all. I shot dead a would-be assassin on the steps of our station. An old deputy. We found a letter on the body, said it was the work of Huff, and he burned the letter before I had a chance to read it. He said things have been different. Since Lynch.
By way of congratulation, so I thought, Hardin gave me his badge, and bought me a new scope, as would fit my revolver. Said I was doing a different kind of Hunt, from now on. We scouted out an old barn, overlooking a field to the east of the grounds. I was to pick off the wandering, should they stray toward the town.
I took 12 the first night. 14 the second. The nights that came after, I stopped keeping track. Just pick off the strays as they come across the field. It's been something like a month now.
I'm worried I've done something bad to warrant guard duty. Something to take his anger. Each dawn, I tip the bodies into an open pit. The Bear stays sometimes. One of the dead men broke our boundary. He laid into him with his brass knuckles, glinting in bright full moon as he pummeled the man dead again
He's took a wound though, taking this letter to town, so I don't know it'll reach you. Write to address on other side.
Yours,
Russell
Nagant M1895 Officer
NAGANT M1895 OFFICER. (See also, REVOLVER, RUSSIAN EMPIRE) The Nagant M1895 was produced in two models: a single-action and a double-action variant. The single-action was cheaper to produce and was issued to privates, whilst the more expensive and desirable double-action was issued to officers
In double-action revolvers, the pull of the trigger performs two actions: drawing the hammer back into the cocked position and releasing the hammer to strike the firing pin. This differs from single-action revolvers, in which the pull of the trigger only releases the hammer. This action compensates for the slower firing mechanisms of single-action revolvers, as there is no need to draw the hammer back manually. The double-action design of the Officer variant confers it a relatively higher rate of fire but also circumvents novel strategies used to circumvent this, for instance, fanning the hammer.
Letter to Frank Chambers
Author: Russell "Snakeskin " Chambers
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.
6/9
Pa,
I'm sorry I haven't written you in some weeks. It's all gone to hell. The superintendent's dead. Seen in the paper too. Not like us to make such an announcement. Someone took their place, though I didn't meet them before they was dead too. Hardin is keeping his head down. Can't say I blame him. Out in the grounds, word's coming back that it's more ruthless than ever. Huff's men killing our men, our men killing Doctor John's, Doctor John's killing the Reverend's. And so on. No one knows who's riding with who no more, and we're all the worse for it.
I lost my old Nagant in one such shootout. Luck went against me. A group of the Reverend's fanatics, setting all in their path aflame, torching the charred remains of an already burned church the Sheriff and I was bunkered down in.
Did chance upon a second. Trevors had imported the latest: an Officer model with a Double-Action. Heavy pull on the trigger. Hardin asked me my preference, why I favored a Russian Imperial revolver over a good old-fashioned American piece. I recounted to him the time out in the desert. He nodded. Told me of a similar predicament he'd faced.
One of his first Hunts. Back when it was just dead men, or so he'd thought. A woman called Lynch showing him the ropes: how to heat and skim the blood, see in the dark without losing your sight, why to burn bodies. A young girl had given testimony of an afflicted parent, and they were pursuing her. A huge swarm of plague flies set on them, driving Hardin and Lynch into a bunkhouse. The swarm covered the house, and gave no chance of letting up.
Hardin sealed up the front door and Lynch went further into the house to ensure it was sealed up. He didn't see her again for a long time, assumed she was dead. But he was holed up there for almost a week and
[LETTER INCOMPLETE, ENDS HERE]
Letter to Frank Chambers
Author: Russell "Snakeskin "Chambers
Single loose sheet, 8.5x 11 in
7/9
Pa,
It seems all out war between the hunters is about to start any day now.
There's hushed word that in the middle of all this trouble is nothing but two young girls who overstepped their bounds. Not sure if I believe that myself, but everything I've heard seems to boil down to those two. None that I've met will admit to knowing them personal, mind. Either they're not real or no one wants to get entangled up. Like they're in the eye of a hurricane, everything rushing round them faster and faster, but they're unaware there's even a storm.
I've heard stories from Hardin about such storms marking the end of Summer. He's grown up with them and is rightly afraid. Speaks of them in the same tones that devout men talk about their God's wrath. I hope against hope I see one. I hope if anything kills me, it's a storm. For one, it will mean I lived to at least the end of August. Maybe even September. Another, it will mean I didn't die to one of the things in the bayou, and rise again to rot on my feet.
Dreams of young huntresses and hurricanes are a welcome relief from the funeral of ragged corpses that have marched through my dreams since I arrived here. With everything gone to hell, and everyone waiting for the cards to fall, it doesn't seem right to have such a relative moment of peace.
Last night, Walcott and I burned our white shirts. He said it was a symbolic gesture of innocence lost, to mark the calm before the storm. That was the laugh I needed to get my head out the clouds. It's sweet to think anyone came here innocent.
The officer's badge looks better on black, and after all, I'm carrying a gun now fit for some Russian Duke's son. I should look the part.
Yours,
Russel
Nagant M1895 Officer Brawler
NAGANT M1895 OFFICER BRAWLER (See also, M1895 OFFICER) The unorthodox Nagant M1895 Officer Brawler modification is essentially a knuckleduster welded onto the pistol grip, serving as a hand guard and enabling the pistol to be used extremely effectively in close combat. Should the owner of the pistol find themselves in a position in which firing a shot is no longer a viable strategy, then the knuckledusters serves to effectively concentrate the force of a punch. While unwieldy, the weight of the Nagant itself would magnify the power of the attack, as well as spreading the received pressure of the blow throughout the whole hand.
Letter to Frank Chambers
Author: Russell "Snakeskin "Chambers
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.
8/9
Pa,
Last week, we lost Walcott and Foal, horribly, something called the Assassin ripped them apart. After seeing that, the Bear blacked out. Hardin and I dragged him out. Since, Hardin's been shut up in his office. Whatever this thing is we're fighting, it's fighting back. The hunters are at each other's throats. And there's more money than ever. I thought I had a handle on this, but it's gone.
The Bear hasn't been the same since his wound. Most nights, he stays out, staring up at the moon, even when the clouds are thick. Mad. Thought about handing him over to Finch, there's not the same bad blood between us as there was with Huff. He don't fight no more, he don't talk no more.
Yesterday, I took his knuckles from him, to try and provoke any response. His prize knuckles. He'd told us, when he'd left his home, he'd stolen a brass crucifix from the church and traded it to a ship's captain, a very religious man, for passage. When they docked in America, he'd stolen it back. The captain came after him, and the Bear beat him to death with it. Since, he melted it down to a pair of knuckles and they'd been with him ever since. That was ten years ago. But he just kept staring out at the moon. Hardin saw them later, said the Bear would have those back.
When I went to buy ammunition, Trevors suggested fixing them to the handle of the Nagant. I agreed, and we welded on the dusters.
When I got back, I showed the Bear by slugging him in the face, while he stared gormlessly at the moon. Lying in the mud, I stood over him and showed him his prized weapon, ruined. He stared through me, up, to the moon.
Enclosed is twenty dollars.
Russell
Nagant M1895 Officer Carbine
NAGANT M1895 OFFICER CARBINE. (See also, NAGANT M1895 OFFICER, FIELD MODIFICATIONS). From their inception, the concept of revolving cylinder rifles had the potential to revolutionize the firearms industry. The original mechanism, developed for pistols, was applied to rifles in order to increase the rate of fire. The earliest models were engineered before the Civil War, before the widespread adoption of bullet cartridges. However, the concept was flawed.
When firing a revolver, there's a gap left between the cylinder and the forcing cone. The gasses which propel a projectile with incredible velocity are also traveling at that speed, some of which escape through this gap, known colloquially as "blow-by."While proper handling technique mitigates this problem in a revolver, the use of itin a rifle or carbine necessitates the rifle be supported fore of the cylinder, forcing the user to position their forearm vulnerable to the blow-by.
The unique cylinder mechanism of the Nagant M1895 seals the gap between the cylinder and the forcing cone. This mitigates the danger posed by blow-by to the user's forearm, therefore making them well suited to carbine conversion.
Letter to Frank Chambers
Author: Russell "Snakeskin "Chambers
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.
9/9
Pa,
Summer's finally coming to an end. The wound in my arm has worsened. With the cold coming on, I feel it more and more. Too weak to hold a rifle. Trevors had a solution though. Took my Nagant away for two days. I felt naked without it, I was stuck in working on the books.
I didn't recognize it when it was returned to me. Fashioned into something resembling a carbine. Apparently, a lot of Hunter's are doing such a thing, other firearms are too pricey. Makes me think, what others do out of desperation, I do out of a sense of sentimentality and necessity. Made me realize how far I'd come since squatting out in that ranch in the desert.
Tused it for the first time today. The Bear had gone feral, finally living up to his name. We locked him up. He just stood staring at his ceiling like he could still see the moon. Starved himself thin. Last night, we found his cell empty, the bars bent and bloody. We tracked him out. The moon was full in the sky. We knew where he was looking, if not where he was.
We stumbled down to the bayou, following the glimmer, till we found him. Standing out in the middle of a still lake. The white shadow of the moon settled on the water. The Bear turned his head, looking straight at us. For a second, I was happy. I thought the sorcery binding him had broken, he was again aware of us. His face was scratched and tore, from where he'd squeezed through the bars. It turned to a grimace, he snarled, and he started wading to us. The moon broke apart in the ripples
Hardin nodded, and I only shot once. He bucked and fell into the water, face down. The two of us just stood there, as the crickets and the bugs started up again their nightly song. We stood there till the moon settled again on the water, then we waded in for the corpse.
Enclosed is fifty dollars.
Russel
Nagant M1895 Officer Carbine Deadeye
NAGANT M1895 OFFICER CARBINE DEADEYE. (See also, NAGANT M1895, NAGANT M1895 OFFICER CARBINE DEADEYE) This modified Nagant adds a telescopic sight to the original Russian-designed double-action Nagant Officer Carbine.
Journal of James Byrne
Handwritten, original
Incomplete, chronology could not be determined
1/?
Death old friend, eternal rival, shadow that plagues my steps. Why can we not meet on friendly terms? I am certain we would have much to discuss. I saw you so many times during the war. When I tried to tell the others, after, they looked at me strangely and told me about the hallucinations, so common among those as badly injured as I, having lost so much blood, longing for death.
But were they really hallucinations? I saw soldiers breath leave their bodies and float toward the night sky like moths. I saw you walk among them, and reach out your hand, allowing injured men to lean upon your shoulder as you walked with them from the field. Their bodies remained, gored and bloody, on the cold ground, and yet at the same time, they walked with you. Hundreds of you, walking. Singing. I saw it, and I will never forget it.
But you did not see me. You did not offer me your hand. I begged for you to take me too. Yet you passed me by, as if you could not see me. Perhaps the living are but ghosts to you, only taking form once they have crossed over your shadowy threshold. And though you would not take me with you, you raced me home and took my Agatha and my Mary instead. You left me here to weep alone over my own unopened letter, on the stoop of an empty house.
The wound festers. I must turn my mind to other things.
Last night a man named Finch approached me. He said he understood my plight and then, cryptically, that he could help me. What plight, I asked him. The song, he said. Not a man of many words, and likely a madman. But if so, he is a well-dressed madman - he carried upon him a fine scoped Centennial and is clearly a man of taste and means! Perhaps, in him, I can seek patronage. If it is indeed my songs that interest him. He would say no more, but we have arranged to meet tomorrow evening, and I admit to feeling the first spark of hope in many months.
Special ammunition
For regular variants
Poison
RN: Russel Chambers, most valuable for his close following of Sheriff Hardin. Did he get lost in the mud? Make it out? Following up with the father proved a dead end. Either way, he escaped his creditors, which he curiously never mentioned in the letters.
Dumdum
RN: It seems Chambers simply vanished. No further documentation of his existence can be found. In particular, Hardin's reticence to mention the man is quite curious.
High Velocity
RN: Hardin was well known after Huff died, one of many who contributed to the chaos which saw Hunter turn on Hunter. His heart was in the right place, but that don't count for much.
For officer variants
Poison
RN: Chambers' attachment to his handgun was characteristic of many Hunters. All they had, really, to rely on. It was that snake in the desert that did it, gave him a sense of luck, most likely. Shame only the gun turned up; it can't answer many questions.
Dumdum
RN: The chaos of different factions was not something that lessened over time. More would form with goals spanning from financial to demonic, but all were united in their ruthlessness.
High Velocity
RN: We torched the jailhouse once we'd taken what we needed, then returned and to burn what was left. Another loose end that could have led someone down a trail that didn't need following.
Scottfield Model 3
SCOTTFIELD MODEL 3 (See also REVOLVERS, UNIQUE WEAPONS) A break-action handgun originally patented in Europe around 1858. This gun relies on a hinge pin that joins the receiver and barrel together which can allow the two pieces to be separated for storage and travel. Unhinging the revolver exposes the breech and allows individual bullets to be added to the barrel. An owner who manages their ammo and times their shots can use the Scottfield Model 3 to pin down an opponent with continuous gunfire in a fight.
Clippings from the New Orleans True Crescent
Authors: Unknown
Newsprint, variable sizes
July 3,1894
BODY FOUND IN THE STREETS. Around 8 o'clock this morning the errand runners and job goers of Lawson were shocked to find the body of a young man dead in the middle of the street near Goddard Docks. Based on witness testimony and police reports, the body had holes of various sizes from the neck down and the eyes gouged out. Police are looking for any information on who this young man and his attacker could be.
September 28, 1895
THE LOUISIANA SLUGGER STRIKES AGAIN. Four more bodies appeared in New Orleans as police continue the search for the now infamous Louisiana Slugger. With a calling card of four metal slugs, the murderer seems to have no preferred target, killing people of all sexes, ages, and faiths. The authorities have asked that the citizens of the area to stay vigilant in keeping themselves safe as they continue to hunt down this ruthless killer. The Louisiana Slugger is alleged to have killed 27 people so far.
October 17, 1895
THE SLUGGER'S FINAL GAL. The people of New Orleans can finally breathe a sigh of relief as police have arrested the Louisiana Slugger. One Anna Lane Croix was able to escape her would-be killer after slipping out of her restraints and beating her assailant unconscious. She then ran to the police and took them to his hideout. Many were shocked to discover that the Louisiana Slugger was none other than Damien Moreau of the Moreau Family, landowners, and members of the New Orleans upper class. Damien was known for his charm, good looks, and gun collection. Police currently have him in custody and awaiting trial
Interview with Mr. Damien Moreau
Interviewer: New Orleans Constable
Date: October 18th, 1895
Typewritten, questions omitted(...), 8.5"x 11"
Yes sir, it was me. Not much use hiding it now since she can still speak. Though I will admit it took you all much longer to catch me. Just what was all my tax money going to?
(...)
Constable, have you ever felt a bullet wound? Now I'm not talking about the feeling of getting shot. I'm asking if you've ever let yourself touch one. Let yourself sink your finger into the hole a slug makes and dig around inside. Feel how hot the muscle and fat get to the touch and maybe even feel the prick of broken bone on your fingertip.
It even feels different depending on the person. An athletic young man's muscles tighten around your fingers more than, say, an old woman who needs to use a cane. If you work hard enough you can work your hand right through the arm of a small child, they're easier to make bigger holes into with just your bare hands. And the screams? Well of course a woman makes a lovelier sound, but everyone has a beautiful voice when they're begging for mercy.
You can't really find people willing to let you...experiment the way I want to, and I've been wanting to for a long time. I knew the police would come knocking if I started so I decided to have my fun, the state of Louisiana being what it is. The title and the fascination of the papers was a nice bonus.
(...)
You can call it sick all you want, sir. I just know what I like.
Scottfield Model 3 Brawler
SCOTTFIELD MODEL 3 BRAWLER. (See also, SCOTTFIELD MODEL 3) The Scottfield Model 3 Brawler modification is essentially a knuckleduster welded onto the revolver grip, serving as a hand guard, and enabling the pistol to be used extremely effectively in close combat. Should the owner find themselves in a position in which firing a shot is no longer viable, then the knuckledusters serve to effectively concentrate the force of a punch. The shortened barrel of this Scottfield variation allows for better handling of the gun during a hand-to-hand fight but causes the weapon to lose accuracy for this purpose.
Journal of Lulu Bassett
Brown leather with gold filigree 5" x 7"
Date Unknown
I'm no stranger to disappointing men, but lately they've been showing up in droves. The saloons been full of the truly vulgar type, and few of them like to pay. I've had to pull out my gun on a few bastards to get whatever's left in their wallet. This job was never easy, but I liked it well enough. With the new Johns in town, I'm not sure it's worth it anymore.
But there are always treasures among the trash. For every man I've had to deal with, I've met beautiful and powerful women. One has caught my eye. Never stepped foot into the Saloon, just stands outside and watches. I tried speaking to her once but all she did was stare at me like a fox about to eat a rabbit. God, I'd let her. From then on whenever she came, I'd catch her watching me.
Thomas Glover came into the saloon, an okay man. He got drunk enough for two and was causing a ruckus in the bar, enough to make Jacobi cut him off and kick him out. I watched him stumble into an alley and then I saw that woman follow him. Got me curious and a bit jealous, so I decided to follow too.
When I got there, I saw Thomas taking a gun to the woman's face. A Scottie with dusters made to hurt. Before he could hit her again, I got behind him and started talking soft to calm him down. It didn t work and as he pulled back to punch the woman with the Scottie, his elbow met my face. Seemed like he was about to mumble out an apology when quick as a flash she got in close and took the gun from him.
Time began to move real slow right as she landed the hit. As soon as those metal knuckles hit Thomas nose it popped right open. Right after the blood came the flesh and right after the flesh came the bone
Thomas was writhing on the ground and the woman knelt by him. She looked up at me with expectation and offered me the Scottie with the dusters. I knelt on the other side of Thomas and started beating him. When he tried to put his hands up to protect himself, she got behind him and held his arms down. We stared at each other as Thomas poor face began to crunch and squish under my fist. I couldn't hear it over my pounding heart
Scottfield Model 3 Spitfire
SCOTTFIELD MODEL 3 SPITFIRE. (See also, SCOTTFIELD MODEL 3) Although the original Scottfield Model 3 was praised for the many advantages its fully exposed cylinder offered, its weight and barrel length made it an inconvenience in situations that required discretion and great handling. To compensate for such disadvantages, the Spitfire design comes with a shortened barrel that allows it to be easily concealed, and a modified finger rest that offers a higher rate of fire at the cost of accuracy.
Interview with Julia de Guerra
Interviewer: Wayne Hardin
Date: June 17, 1895
Hardin: Before we begin, please state your full name and the reason for your presence in the Sheriff's Office at the time of the incident
Guerra: Julia de Guerra. I was appointed as translator to the interrogation conducted by late deputy Howard J. Poulin. The suspect didn't speak English, and he assumed she was a fugitive travelling from the south.
Hardin: Thank you. Tell me more about this suspect
Guerra: She hardly spoke. Even when she did, she only mumbled and stared at the deputy. She kept her silence even when he grabbed his tools and.
Hardin: Miss Guerra, I remind you that your statements are being transcribed, please be mindful as to what kind of information you share. We wouldn't want you to get into trouble, would we?
Guerra: I understand, Sheriff. The deputy needed a translator. That was the reason for my presence in the Sheriff's Office
Hardin: Thank you. Now please continue.
Guerra: Yes, the suspect. She was silent, and terrifying I must say, looked like a corpse, an expressionless, lifeless bag of bones. Her face was covered with deep scars, and her eyes, Dios mio! Her eyes, like two gates into the abyss. The deputy wanted to know where she had come from and asked about the murdered men. It seemed like she didn't understand, maybe she ignored him, but didn't say a word even when he mentioned her accomplice.
Hardin: Her accomplice?
Guerra: Yes. The deputy had heard from the townsfolk that she'd been seen with a woman near the Saloon. I don t remember the name, but when he dared say it, sus ojos... Her eyes grew even darker, the room grew silent, a chill ran down my spine. The deputy, he froze in fear, couldn't even turn around when the door was kicked open and a woman appeared in the doorway, holding a revolver with a short barrel in each hand. She smiled, so did the suspect, they looked at each other while she emptied her guns on him and the transcriber in just a few seconds, but she spared me. She looked happy, Sheriff, thrilled even, her eyes were glowing with a twisted joy. She untied the suspect, they embraced each other, and finally she spoke: Esta aqui. Mi Santa Muerte.
Hardin: And what does that mean?
Guerra: She's here. My Lady of Death.
Scottfield Model 3 Precision
SCOTTFIELD MODEL 3 PRECISION. (See also, SCOTTFIELD MODEL 3) The Scottfield Model 3 Precision is a typical break-action handgun with a sturdy pistol stock. This allows it to be supported in the crook of the shoulder and guarantees much greater stability and accuracy
Journal of Lulu Bassett
Lightly worn, brown leather with gold filigree 5" x 7"
Date Unknown
I could write a damn sonnet about all the things I want to do with this woman. Anyone who dies to the bullets from her gun are lucky that she's the last thing they see. Even watching her take a swig from a flask by the fire is enough to make my heart race and by hell's fire she knows it. She catches me staring, I can't help it, and the left side of her mouth moves up ever so slightly. If she'd let me, I would kiss that smirk right off her beautiful face.
I joke with her that we're married, we took the vow to join the Hunt together after all, and that she'll never be rid of me. I think she gets the idea of what I'm saying, and she just holds my chin in her fingers and looks at me for a while. It drives me mad. When the hell is she just gonna kiss me? When can I take her to the bed and do more than sleep? I want to see that stoic silent face scream for me. I wish I knew enough of her language to tell her how she makes me feel, I wish I could tell her how much I need her.
Sofia saved me again today. My angel and moon and stars. She was away from me for a moment, that's all it took, when that bastard Billy and his crew caught sight of me. Thought that they could get a taste right in the middle of the damn Hunt. I thought I could talk my way out of it like usual, but Billy is a special breed. Before I knew it, one of his friends had taken the stock of his Scottfield to the back of my head and my arms were pinned to the ground. I could barely make out anything in the black except for Billy getting on top of me. He had the butt of that gun to my neck, but then like an angel of death, she was right there behind him. Didn't even see her slice his greasy throat as I came to my senses and grabbed the Scottfield. The one who was holding my hands ran and I buried the muzzle of their gun deep down the throat of the last one alive. His eyes begged for mercy, but I granted him none.
That night by the campfire, I opened my arms to ask Sofia to let me hold her. I was shaken, out of anger, out of what could have been. She walked over to me and let me hold her. She was shaking too, for what reason I don't know why, but when she put her ear to my chest the shaking stopped. Maybe she needs me too.
Scottfield Model 3 Swift
SCOTTFIELD MODEL 3 SWIFT. (See also, SCOTTFIELD MODEL 3) The Scottfield Model 3 Swift is in effect a regular Scottfield Model 3 that takes advantage of a simple device with a great benefit. Said device, circular in form, can hold six rounds that can be released together once inserted into the exposed and fully emptied cylinder. This allows the wielder to spend less time and effort when reloading the gun even in quick succession.
Interview with George P. Tolsten.
Interviewer: Wayne Hardin
July 5, 1895
Hardin: Please state your full name and occupation for the record.
Tolsten: George Peter Tolsten, ranch hand.
Hardin: Thank you. Now, you told me you had information on the shootout that took place in Lower DeSalle last week, is that true?
Tolsten: Yessir, I was down by the Saloon when it happened.
Hardin: And why were you involved in the shootout?
Tolsten: Well, I just followed the boss, sir, the ranch owner, I swear. Told us we'd get double wage if we'd follow him. He'd been on edge since the murder near the Saloon, you know, after what happened to that Glover feller. Said they was looking for him too.
Hardin: Who did he think was looking for him?
Tolsten: I ain't sure, sir. Mayhaps one of them DeSalle boys, I reckoned. I'd heard they had a bone to pick with the boss, but... I don't know nothin' about that
Hardin: It doesn't matter, you're not here to tell me about your boss or his business
Tolsten: Yessir, the shooting. Was a real butchery, bullets flew like mosquitos in the bayous. In a minute, three of our men was lying dead on the dirt, them boys looked like strainers with all the bullet holes. I didn't move a limb, was scared; there's mouths I need to feed, sir, and I ain't got no reason to bite the dust soon, no I don't
Hardin: How many were they? How many men did you fight that day?
Tolsten: Yessir I did, one of'em was the whore the folks've been talkin bout, who gone missing not long ago. And the other... Lord, the other was a scary looking lady, seemed madder than a wet hen behind the veil she was wearing. When the boys were dead, the whore dragged the boss away, while the other approached the bodies holding a dark knife in her hand. She stabbed em in the eyes and carved something on their foreheads, whispering, then she licked the blade clean.
Special ammunition
Incendiary
RN: After the trial, the wife of one of the killers victims attempted to assassinate the defendant on the court steps. She'd selected incendiary ammunition for the job, reasoning that she'd wanted to burn a hole through him, and leave him no satisfying wounds.
Dumdum
RN: Hardin later noted more than half of the bullet wounds were especially unsightly, due to one of the two ladies using Dumdum ammo.
Full Metal Jacket
RN: From the police reports, their key identification of the killer was his use of distinctive full metal jacket slugs that didn't deform significantly after penetrating the body.
High Velocity
RN: Some writings note that Hardin was later seen working with the killers he was chasing. Was he always intending to recruit them? Or did his priorities simply change?
Springfield M1892 Krag
SPRINGFIELD M1892 KRAG (See also, RIFLES) The Springfield M1892 Krag is a repeating bolt-action rifle that is known for its smooth and easy-to-use bolt action, as well as for its magazine, which was considered both an advantage and a disadvantage. Although most other contemporary rifles featured a top-loading magazine that allowed for the use of stripper clips, the receiver positioned on the side of Springfield M1892 Krags required the cartridges to be loaded individually.
In 1892, the U.S. military held a competition to compare more than fifty renowned rifles used around the globe, after which they adopted the Springfield M1892 Krag. Despite its unconventional receiver, the flexibility it offered in terms of reloading made this a great service rifle for the army. The U.S. Military then modified the rifle and its components for .30-40 Krag cartridges, which were the first smokeless powder cartridges issued by the army to that date.
Reports on the Pelican Island Prison Incident
Content: Pages Recovered from Jack Marwick's Journal
Handwritten, 4 x 6
Severely damaged, almost indecipherable
August 9,1894
We arrived at DeSalle last night, or in the morning, I can t remember, nor do I want to. We noticed armed men and women moving in mud carefully, looking for something or someone. I ordered Candice to be quiet, it was her first encounter with the outlaws of Louisiana. We didn't know what to expect, but I must admit, she's a natural. It felt as if I was the one following her lead. It wasn't long before the crackle of gunfire filled the night. One of them landing face down on a porch, others shooting at someone hiding behind an overthrown cart. Before they could even realize our presence, Candice fired, and another one hit the mud. I shot then too. It was quick, and as we approached the bodies of the outlaws, whoever was hiding behind the cart came out. A sheriff, name is Hardin, a tough feller, and smart smart enough to see through someone, and we hated each other at first sight. But now he owes us. I reckon he will be a very resourceful ally, if we play our cards right
TEXT INDECIPHERABLE
August 22,1894
The prisoners are eager to tear Jabez apart. That half-wit Curtis let that prisoner take his pistol, let him blow his brains out. Now prisoners think Curtis killed him. And that narcissistic pinhead is still in the basement, dumping corpses into the sewers as if nothing is going on. I told him if anyone came near the prison they'd notice the smell first, and soon Hardin and Candice would come knocking.
I will warn the guards about a potential riot; hopefully, I'm wrong for once in my life, and we don t have to dump even more bodies into the sewers.
August 23,1894
Those savages hung Curtis. They took him to the courtyard with a rope, tied it around his neck, and threw him over the railings. He didn't even fight back. Poor bastard must have thought he had deserved this. But no one deserves to be left hanging over a cursed prison courtyard.
This is not good. I managed to cover Jabez's filth till now; despite his arrogance, despite the letters from New York. But not even I can cover this up, it's done, and the bastard is gone. My fortune is lost before I earned it.
Damn this place and him, wherever in Hell he is hiding now. If anyone finds this journal, let everyone know that
TEXT INDECIPHERABLE
Records, Pelican Island Prison
Handwritten letter found abandoned outside the prison
Author: Handwriting match for Solomon Jabez
Date: August 23, 1894
To Dr. Philip Huff Jones,
I write this in haste in the early hours of the morning. Pelican Island has been compromised and lost to the inmates. These fools do not realize that they were the foundation of scientific breakthroughs that would revolutionize the world. Will some of them die in that pursuit? Will some of them experience pain and discomfort? Of course, but their contributions would have been essential to stop whatever is happening in Louisiana.
It seems that the death of No. 47 was a major factor in breaking the ego dissolution I had so carefully crafted at this site. It almost happened too quickly to comprehend; we were fetching another inmate for conditioning when he became irrational. They've somehow been plotting, and before any of my men could organize themselves the inmate meant for conditioning had beat Smith's face in with a Krag. It was chaos after that.
I am about to leave the prison, and if I have to go via the sewers and use every failed experiment as a steppingstone, so be it. The site is compromised, and I will not sacrifice my life for things who don't know their place. Let them rebel and "take" their freedom. What awaits them outside these walls is a hell we were trying to prepare them for. No matter, let them bleed out in the mud. We can always try again.
I will write again when I am back in a secure location, then we can further discuss next steps.
Springfield M1892 Krag Bayonet
SPRINGFIELD M1892 KRAG BAYONET (See also, RIFLES) The Springfield M1892 Krag is a repeating bolt-action rifle with a side-loading magazine. To combine the modern magazine with a classical bayonet was an obvious but exceptionally effective evolution, as it made for a fast-loading rifle that could fend off nearby attackers easily
Records, Pelican Island Prison
Handwritten paper found abandoned outside the prison
Author: Unknown
I have done my duty. Now I can only pray a Rosary for the safe escape of Doctor Jabez, that he may send swift help from his many allies.
As for myself, time runs short. My only salvation is the incompetence of these brigands revolt. Unsurprisingly, these inmates cannot even riot properly. They lined my fellow guards up against a wall and demanded I transcribe their painful desecration of a court trial, but I will not participate in their mockery. Even if any of these wretches ever had the capacity to read, I imagine it was lost long ago.
I am proven astute by watching them attempt to load pistol ammunition into their Springfields. Perhaps I could feel sorry for the poor souls if they weren't planning to bury the bullets in mine and my friends skulls. As I write, I see the fear in the eyes of those noble, loyal friends. Then I turn to see madness in the eyes of those we sheltered -- madness that can only be sated with blood. I fear they shall find a most excruciating alternative method of execution.
The Lord will deliver us, however. I have fed my family and guarded this honorable institution. Our blessed work here has helped so many, and I have protected these inmates from a far worse fate. Heaven knows what sad havoc they would wreak if given freedom. One of them now affixes a knife to their rifle. A crude bayonet, and all the more painful for it. But my hands do God's work, and He shall protect His flock.
This is not my final Amen.
Springfield M1892 Krag Sniper
SPRINGFIELD M1892 KRAG SNIPER (See also, RIFLES) Thanks to its side-loading magazine, the effectiveness of the original Springfield M1892 Krag was unquestionable, and was only enhanced with the addition of a sniper scope attached to its barrel. The fast reloading combined with long-range efficiency made this rifle a great choice for those who prefer to stay out of sight and range of their prey.
Journal page found in the woods near Scupper Lake
Handwritten, torn, water damaged
Author unknown
May 4, 1895
Haven't had any luck hunting. I hear gunshots every second. Other hunters, I reckoned at first. Then I saw a man blast another's head with a shotgun. I retched at the sight, and when I looked again, the man was gone, leaving the corpse behind. I'm not sure if I'll ever find game here. It's getting dark. I will wait for a quiet moment and escape. Should've listened to Ma.
May 5, 1895
Lord, this place is cursed, I shouldn't have come here. I wish I could forget last night.
I was scanning the riverbank through the scope of my Krag when I spotted two old ladies with hunched backs dragging a wheelbarrow. Their long, grey hair reached their knees, and their faces were hidden under the hoods of their dark gowns. The wheel squeaked in the quiet of the night. When I noticed what they were carrying in the bed of their wheelbarrow, it terrified me. There were human limbs, split heads, innards cut into smaller pieces. I remembered the butcher's story of two old women asking for discarded meat to feed gators, back in the day. The women slowly approached the man that got killed yesterday. I shivered as they severed his limbs, putting the pieces into the wheelbarrow. After, they moved to the edge of the river, where the water started bubbling. Then they threw the pieces in while they sang an off-key lullaby. The water started moving even more aggressively under the floating meat. Maggot-like creatures emerged. In only a few seconds, the surface of the river was covered with bright red foam.
Special ammunition
Incendiary
RN: The more that comes to light about the prison, what goes on there, the more it begs the question: were the perpetrators under a malign influence, or did they create one? Could it have been that in their experiments, they Ignited something they couldn't put out?
Full Metal Jacket
RN: With how things transpired here, it's no wonder that so little of what happened here ever came to light - that the cover-up worked. The corruption was not just of the body, but of the spirit. Virtues and values would be strewn like autumn leaves in the wind. Lead investigators turned collaborators.
Winfield M1876 Centennial
WINFIELD M1876 CENTENNIAL. (See also, WINFIELD, RIFLES) The Winfield M1876 Centennial was so named for its debut at the 1876 Centennial International Exposition, the first World's Fair and a celebration of the United States first century in existence. What could have been more American, therefore, than for Winfield to mark the occasion by releasing a higher caliber variant of their iconic repeating rifle. With significantly more stopping power than its predecessor, this became a favored rifle amongst big-game hunters.
Interviewee: William Carter
Topic: Local folklores
Single sheets. Typewritten transcription. 8 x 11 in.1/5
Now many of my fine tales are those of my own but many of my finest tales are those of dear friends, retold while supping broth and passing a flask of whiskey around the fire. And the finest of those stories was told to me on such a night as this, when a light snow flurry graced us with its presence, and the flakes were turning to drops before us and hissing on the coals. So this isn't my story, but another's, and that's the story of the hunt for the last wildcat
Two women in my company, Ethyl and Jana, were travelling with me in the shows early days as we traipsed up and down the East Coast. That year, I remember we marveled at the forests of New England, bustled through New York and Philadelphia, and sweated through the Carolinas, and then at the end of summer, were held up in Virginia. In Richmond, an unsettled debt had caught up to me, and I couldn't pay wages. So, for some time, the show came to halt. They was understanding, but many left not to return.
Ethyl and her sister Jana tried what they could to get together a few dollars to get us all on the road again. They had a sick mother at home, see, and had to send a little money each month. Now, they had had one stroke of a good fortune: in Philadelphia, we'd performed at the Centennial Exhibition, and taken a sponsorship from one Mr. Winfield to shoot his new Model 1876. So they wrote to his company again, and some kind secretary offered them a bit of money to tour the hunting towns of Virginia and make a show of the rifle.
So I forlornly said goodbye to them for a brief while, and they set out with not much else than their wits, a pair M1876s and their famous trusty six-shooters. They went from town to town, drawn deeper into the ancient bower of ponderous woodland and marsh that had once formed the first frontier. Though now enclosed with roads and towns, that place harbored many mysteries much older than our own young country.
Interviewee: William Carter
Topic: Local folklores
Single sheets. Typewritten transcription. 8 x 11 in. 2/5
Ethyl and Jana visited all the bigger towns, Harrisonburg, Lynchburg, Roanoake, and so on, performing their shooting tricks. They spun and fanned their Winfields, shooting pennies clear out the air, plucking the stems from apples, and piercing the hearts out of playing cards. But that weren't all they did to make their mark, as where the season permitted, they hunted bears, elk, and boars. Mr. Winfield was delighted as mail orders came in from across the state, and he dispatched a courier to take them a message, as a particular opportunity had arisen
Deep in the Monongahela Forest, a small town by the name of Marlinton had made its name in the national press. Marlinton was a town as old as they come, the first town founded west of the Appalachians, by a man called Marlin and another called Sewell. Shortly after founding the town, the two had quarreled badly, and the story went that Sewell went out to live in a nearby hollow sycamore tree. What a tree that must have been. I can't rightly picture it. Marlin found him soon after, killed him there, and left him to rot in the roots. The town took Marlin's name, but soon misfortune befell it. The townspeople figured that Sewell's spirit was cursing them, so they began leaving gifts in the tree hollow to placate him, and the town had better fortune.
Marlinton had made it into the press, though, as a particularly gruesome gift had been found in the tree. Now people normally left little offerings of food and drink, nothing too precious. But then, something had begun leaving different offerings, mice and birds and so on, their necks snapped. And over time the offerings had grown bigger: stoats, ferrets, cats, goats, and finally a dog. The wounds to these poor creatures only grew more savage: skin shorn off, limbs torn asunder, heads lolling at the base of the trees.
That was enough to spook people, so one man volunteered to keep watch over the tree, and catch the culprit. He weren't seen back in town for a while, and when they returned to the tree, they found him doubled over, lifeless and stuffed into the hollow trunk. His wounds were such that the people concluded that they could of only been caused by a wild cat, toying with its prey. So the put out a call, for someone to help them with their problem.
Winfield M1876 Centennial Shorty
WINFIELD M1876 CENTENNIAL SHORTY. (See also, WINFIELD, RIFLES) The growing popularity of the Winfield M1876 throughout the country brought a wide range of users who desired more flexible versions of the rifle Some took an increased recoil to be a worthwhile trade-off for this flexibility.
Clipping from the New Orleans True Crescent
Author: Unknown
Newsprint, 4 x 8 in.
A most peculiar show by William Carter's company. I had heard tell of their marvelous feats from my extensive network of academic peers around the country, but none quite prepared me for the spectacle I witnessed this weekend.
Carter sells himself and has been sold to me by friends as a rambunctious and extraordinary showman, yet the man I witnessed seemed entirely different from the proud performer on the posters all around town. He and his tales both reeked of sorrow, and he took up no gun in his own gun show, which I might allege to be false advertisement.
The show itself was pedestrian. I fancy that I myself could shoot a penny out of the air (I have certainly seen the trick done enough times) and it seemed like something of a ramshackle set of showmen without much coordination. They seemed to please the rabble-rousers and children in the audience, at least.
It was the ending of the show that truly arrested me. As the final applause rolled on for longer than what was deserved, a pair of outlaws, armed to the teeth, stormed through the entrance and screeched Carter's name with violence greater than any pistol shot heard previous. A silence immediately grasped the crowd until the pair fired their guns into the air, and everybody scattered in terror.
Winfield M1876 Centennial Sniper
WINFIELD M1876 CENTENNIAL SNIPER (See also, WINFIELD, RIFLES) After the Winfield M1876 Centennial's stunning debut at the 1876 Centennial International Exposition, the rifle soon became a firm favorite among hunters. Its increased stopping power over lighter repeating rifles made it ideal for big game hunting. To capitalize on this, the rifle was later sold with fixed hunting scope, a variant which proved even more popular.
Topic: Local folklores
Single sheets. Typewritten transcription. 8 x 11 in.
1/1
At the time, there were half a dozen other Wild West Shows approaching our size. We were bigger than ever, the money was good, and the competition fierce. And things got bad after that, we lost a lot of good performers.
I told you about Ethyl and Jana already. Then Jane, well. We developed a double act, her and me, and performed it for a year and one day. It was a hit. It went this way.
We plucked a story out of thin air: the time Jane chased me down to set me straight. We set up a series of obstacles she would chase me through, and all the while we'd be shooting at each other, dramatically just missing every time, panes of glass shattering, and barrels of water sprung with leaks to mark how close we'd come to death.
There were some greater feats too. I would shoot a rope Jane was climbing, she would cause something to fall in my way, and when I thought I was home free she'd shoot the nut off a wagon wheel so it collapsed
Jane always used a Centennial, I trust you remember her prior association with that gun? This had a scope attached, to catch a dazzling light, and she would hardly break a stride when the ring of her gunshot was followed with a crescendo, the crash and bang of something falling apart. Always pursuing relentlessly. It was pulse-racing, and the danger of it delighted the crowd.
The finale featured me trapped, cornered at last. I would raise my six shooter and fire a final time, the audiences holding their breath, only to hear the empty click of an empty cylinder. Except for one year and one day after our first performance. I raised my gun, and Jane her rifle, but there was no hollow click to relieve the audience. Instead, the terrible ring of gunshot, and Jane's groans as she collapsed.
Winfield M1876 Centennial Shorty Silencer
WINFIELD M1876 CENTENNIAL SHORTY SILENCER. (See also, WINFIELD, RIFLES) Once the rifle is reduced in size, a suppressor attachment makes the Winfield M1876 both dynamic and quiet. It's well suited for hunting multiple creatures in a small area with speed and subtlety, but requires some deft handling.
Letter on rough paper, very worn
Author: Unknown
Handwritten, 8.5 x 14 in.
April 2, 1889
We're out of food. In case I die, tell my sister Jo Barnes that I'm sorry. I never thought I was until I stared death in the face with a parched throat and empty stomach. Wish I at least knew what I was dying for.
By way of explanation, I work for William Carter's gun show. On my third performance, two ruffians who knew Carter came charging in with guns blazing and we all ran for cover. Didn't see my shooting partner, but Will says that if he ain't here, he's dead. Frankly, death in exchange for not being in this metal box is getting more tempting with each breath. Not sure what Will had this box for, but there was a couple Centennial rifles and a skeleton inside, so I'm too scared to ask. Took the rifle, of course
Not sure what we're waiting for. It seems like we'd stand a good chance in a fight: three of us against two of them. But Will said he'd shoot me if I so much as talked, even attached a silencer to his rifle so that he could do it without giving away his location.
I'm near out of the ink I had tucked away. I want to know what these two were so angry about that they'd wait us out for two whole nights. We heard them patrolling above us just an hour or three ago.
April  3, 1889
Will says to get ready to sneak out all quiet-like and see if we can catch them by surprise. That being said, I take back my apology, Jo, you thieving sack of cattle shit.
Winfield M1876 Centennial Trauma
WINFIELD M1876 CENTENNIAL TRAUMA. (See also, WINFIELD, RIFLES) As the original Winfield M1876 Centennial's reputation quickly grew in the same year it was introduced to the market, many firearms enthusiasts and hunters discovered its potential in terms of modifications and attachments. Although many preferred professional solutions such as scopes, others relied on makeshift modifications to make this already- versatile rifle more effective in certain situations. This particular version of the rifle features a reinforced stock that delivers a hit as heavy and deadly as a sledgehammer, making it viable in melee combat.
Journal of Candice Rouille
Handwritten, leather-bound, 4 x 6
July 15,1894
Another suspicious murder, and another crime scene without a clue. I wonder why they assigned me to this case, why didn't they ask Jack? He is the Hawkshaw after all. But I will not be disheartened. This alleged New York Ripper will eventually leave a trace behind, and I will be waiting for him.
July 27,1894
Jack visited me today, asked about the case reports I was glancing at a disemboweled woman with a crosscut on the spine, nothing pointing at the murderer; a dead end I must admit. No wonder they gave it to the only woman in the office. Bastards. But Jack was supportive. He said I deserved better than an impossible case and mentioned a cross-states investigation of which the details he refused to disclose until I agreed to join him, and as expected, I did.
We are to leave next week and arrive in DeSalle, Louisiana to investigate a so-called association involved in, well, alot. I can hardly wait to leave, I will finally prove I'm as capable as others, if not more.
August 11, 1894
Jack is missing. He said he would head to the Saloon, that he needed to clear his mind after the shootout. But today I learned that no one in the Saloon had seen him, or knew of his whereabouts. I am worried something bad happened. But Hardin didn t seem concerned whatsoever, he continued attaching a clamp to his Centennial's stock, and looked at me dismissively. Said us city types would come and go. He's been suspicious of us since day one, and Jack's disappearance made it even worse. I don t understand, we're helping him with the cases he's been struggling with. Is it envy I see in his eyes? Or maybe he knows why we're here. I feel we will know soon enough.
August 24,1894
Something terrible is happening in Pelican Island Prison. Gunshots heard on the island yesterday. I telegrammed New York to ask if I could investigate but was ordered to leave the matter to the local law, in other words to Hardin. He insisted I stayed out of it, but I didn't back down. He saw I wouldn't quit. Maybe he's seen something in me, or I earned his trust, because he gave me what he swore he didn't have: A contact at the AHA. I reckon I will need to continue the investigation alone. I must go deeper into this so-called association.
Special ammunition
Poison
RN: It seems the rural and wild areas of our country are prime to breed not just the monsters of these tales, but the tellers the accounts far and wide. Carter appears to be the latter, though it's possible that he and his associates were often the former - the monsters.
Dumdum
RN: Carter was known for his skill in turning rumors into sagas, trading on stories people had heard whispers of to make his tall tales seem believable.
Full Metal Jacket
RN: Reference to such a hunt taking place was not directly found in historical papers of the area, though similar stories dot the country. Does that mean that Carter was stretching the truth, or rather that there was a reason the story wasn't published?
High Velocity
RN: An uncharacteristic melancholy in Carter, according to this reviewer. Likely as much a performance as both Carter's show and stories.
During the early days of the infection, Sheriff Wayne Hardin was instrumental in halting the rapid spread of the infection.
However, the inmates he recruited to be Hunters proved unreliable, and as events spiraled out of control, he found himself putting many of them back under arrest.
Arsenal
“Brass Flower” LeMat
The preferred side arm of Sheriff Hardin, this was known to pack a punch when the chips were down.
“Peacemaker” Pax Trueshot
Sheriff Hardin fancies himself the epitome of a lawman–one who would do anything to keep order in his territory. This Pax Trueshot allows him to keep a firm grip on his responsibilities. Neutralizing a threat is the most surefire path to peace.
“The Noose” Vetterli 71
The last remnant of law and order, Sheriff Hardin is spread thin, yet still receives luxuries from those who admire his fine work. That's how Hardin tells the story of this Vetterli 71 Karabiner, though alley rumors give a much more gruesome account.
The Louisiana Event case file includes several pieces of information.
Stamps on the file case:
FEDERAL BURO OF INVESTIGATIONS / NEW ORLEANS DEPARTMENT N. 174 / --OLOGICAL RESE-RCH INSTITUTE / NEW ORLEANS
Baton Rouge - Governor Murphy J. Foster made a rare statement in regard to recent speculation of an epidemic affecting a minority of undesirable populace deep in the bayou. We remark that it is rare for him to comment on such tattle, however, as he acknowledged in the statement printed forthcoming, there has been an unusual hysteria clinging to this topic, no doubt stirred up by anarchists or populists out to seed fear into the populace in the run up to the election next year.
There are reports of an epidemic, a plague if you will, concerning populace deep in the bayou. I refer to this as flagrant speculation. The people affected by this are no doubt of a low creed. It is not uncommon for their sort to be afflicted by maladies which we superior men to not need to fear. Claiming such a thing as an 'epidemic' is therefore naught but a misinterpretation of their natural state. This being the case, calls to close the port of New Orleans will go unheard. Good, God-fearing folk have my assurance that there is nothing to fear.
Governor Foster has gained a reputation of holding dearly the best interest of the people, indeed his work today chiefly concerns protecting the best interest of the Louisiana people, against threats to democracy posed by carpet baggers, freedmen and populists. Business interests were rightly assured by the statement, citing how closing the port of regulating their constitutional rights to free trade could threaten their ability to provide employment. Henrik Graf, one such businessman, had this to say:
Some of those in my employ have cited malady as cause for idleness, allowing this hysteria to spread amongst the torpid. I will be the first in saying lethargy is the real epidemic, one entertained by the work shy, fundamentally no more than indolence.
Further to this, we traced the sources of some of these rumors, finding them to be based on the ramblings of the criminally insane, practitioners of voodoo, women afflicted by mania and the idle poor. We would advise the dear reader to take such stories with a pinch of salt, and to rely on the word of those who know better.
Several short articles
Seemingly newspapers clippings
Each one bears a handwritten note as a location
Massachusetts
A queer game has been being played in Holyoke, MA, by the name of Mintonette, featuring knocking a ball back and forth over a net. Seeing the invention of the so called "basket ball" not four years before in Princeton, one can only wonder how many odd ball games will emerge from this region in the coming century.
Washington
President Cleveland was heard making the following remark in regard to the Venezuelan Boundary Controversy: "Gold beneath controversial soil does not always hasten the resolution of uncertain or disputed boundary-lines. Mysteriously, sometimes they even move."
Chicago
The recent Labor Day celebrations were confirmed to be the largest in the country. This being the holidays first anniversary since its nationwide adoption, in light of the Pullman Strike.
Atlanta
Booker T. Washington delivered a notable speech today, announcing the compromise that blacks will receive basic education and due process, while the whites will continue their rule of the southern whites, thereby ending decades of agitation in the tiresome pursuit of equality.
El Paso
The trial of John Selman for the murder of notorious outlaw John Wesley Hardin is ongoing. New testimony was brought forward today asserting that Selman committed multiple rapes during the Lincoln County War. We, at the Gazette, could not comment on the defendants clear guilt.
Latrobe
The first professional game of so-called 'American Football' was played here two weeks ago, between the Latrobe YMCA and Jeanette Athletic Club (Latrobe won 12-0). Could this be the birth of a new American past time?
New Orleans
A new bout of Yellow Fever has claimed the lives of 100 citizens over the last several months, and shows no sign of slowing down. This could mark the first outbreak in the city since the devastation of 1878, and is another sorry chapter for the history of a city which has already suffered.
Graffiti in Voynich ?
Torn article about graffiti
Seemingly newspaper clipping
The beginning and the continuation of the article are missing
... as such street art is by no means unique to our century.
Once dismissed as the lunatic ravings of wannabe gangsters graffiti is on its way to claim its rightful place as a true art form of the punk era.
"Treating cave paintings as graffiti might be seen as stretching the definition a little bit, but precisely that is truly what they are", says Dr. Klein and adds, "We have graffiti in ancient Ephesus in Pompeii and Rome."
Dr. Klein firmly believes street art has had a continuous existence ever since our ancestors learned to produce paint.
"This assumed genesis of graffiti in the New York subways assumes not only a narrow definition of street art but is also flat out wrong. Aerosol cans and hip hop do not define graffiti. They can merely be another page in this massive book."
Dr. Daniel Klein and his team are currently working on uncovering examples of street art from the late 19th century. Their research revealed particularly interesting examples from New Orleans.
"We were fortunate in this case. These photographs were found in a private collection. The owner, one Rebecca Collingwood had them donated to our university before passing away."
To the untrained eye, these examples of late 19th century American graffiti may seem like unintelligible gibberish, but Dr. Klein seems convinced there is a method to the madness.
"We do believe they at least share a common semiological ancestry. The signs appear to possess similar characteristics. Whether it was its own micro language or only random art remains to be seen. Interestingly, they also seem related to the pseudo language seen in ...
Letter to MDM LAVEAU
Handwritten notes are present:
- at top: “from Jones’ collection”
- at bottom: “who’s transcribing these? Find originals!”
MOST ESTEEMED MDM LAVEAU,
I WAS HONORED TO RECEIVE YOUR LETTER. I HAVE INDEED HEARD OF YOU. YOU ARE CORRECT IN SAYING I WEAR A MASK OF SORTS--I HAVE TAKEN AN OATH TO MAINTAIN THE SECRECY OF THE AHA AND WOULD I BREAK IT I WOULD NOT SURVIVE TO GLOAT. IN A SENSE, IT IS BOTH MASK AND SHIELD. BUT IF EVEN HALF OF WHAT I HAVE HEARD ABOUT YOU IS THE TRUTH, THEN YOU LIKELY KNOW OF WHAT I SPEAK.
I HAVE CONSULTED WITH SEVERAL OF MY COLLEAGUES ON THE MATTER, AND WE ARE OF ONE MIND. A PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN US WOULD BE OF BENEFIT TO ALL. I WOULD HEAR MORE OF YOUR VISIONS OF THE CITY'S END, FOR WE HAVE ALSO SEEN SUCH THINGS, BUT THERE ARE OTHER PORTENTS AS WELL.
I DARE NOT COMMIT MORE TO PAPER. LET US MEET AND DISCUSS THIS FURTHER IN PERSON. THE COMING MONTHS ARE, IN OUR ESTIMATION, CRUCIAL. PLEASE WRITE ME AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE.
QUAM PARVA SAPIENTIA MUNDUS RECITUR.
PHILIP HUFF JONES, M.D.
Letter to DR. JONES
Handwritten notes are present:
- at top: “transcript? Found inside a French-German dictionary Berlin Public Library”
- at bottom: “THE Caldwell?”
MOST ESTEEMED DR. JONES,
I CAN NOW CONFIRM THAT THE FIRST SHIPMENT IS UNDERWAY AND, I HAVE BEEN PROMISED, SHOULD ARRIVE AT LOUISIANA BEFORE THE MONTH IS OUT. THIS SHIPMENT IS, PERHAPS, OF A BIZARRE AND EVEN WHIMSICAL CHARACTER, AS IT CONTAINS PROTOTYPES OF A HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL NATURE. I TIRE OF WORKING TOWARD A NONEXISTENT PERFECTION AND LONG TO CREATE SOMETHING TRULY ORIGINAL, BUT MY FATHER VALUES BUSINESS OVER ART, AND I FIND MY IDEAS SHATTERED AGAINST THE WALLS OF HIS OBSTINANCE. MY FAVOR WITH HIM DETERIORATES FURTHER WITH EACH NEW DESIGN. I HOPE IN YOUR HANDS THEY WILL RECEIVE THE APPRECIATION I BELIEVE THEY DESERVE. SHOULD THIS BE SO, I CAN PROVIDE YOU WITH MORE, SO MUCH MORE. THERE ARE DESIGNS OF WHICH I HAVE YET DARED TO SPEAK, AND I BEGIN TO SUSPECT YOU WILL BE THE FIRST WITH WHOM I CAN DISCUSS MY PLANS.
I NEED NOT CALL YOUR ATTENTION TO THE SIGNS OF THE TIME: THE EVIL OF WHICH YOU SPEAK FOLLOWS US BOTH IN VARIOUS FORMS. WE MUST ALL FACE DOWN OUR OWN DEMONS. THOUGH WHAT YOU FACE SOUNDS TO BE OF A PARTICULARLY VILE NATURE. YOUR OWN BRILLIANT PROSPECTS MUST BE REALIZED, FOR IT IS NOT FATE WHICH MAKES SUCH MEN AS YOURSELF. YOU MAKE YOUR OWN FATE. THERE IS, HOWEVER, SUCH A THING AS COMPELLING FORTUNE, HOWEVER RELUCTANT OR AVERSE. AS REGARDS TO MYSELF, PERHAPS I TOO WILL SUCCEED, SO LET US BOTH KEEP A GOOD HEART, AND TO WORK TOGETHER TOWARD OUR MUTUAL SUCCESS.
WITH SINCERE ESTEEM AND FRIENDSHIP,
V. CALDWELL
Journal entry
Handwritten note at bottom: “Journal entry by Alessandro Guardini”
2 FEBRUARY 1895
THE ADDICTIVE NATURE OF HUNTING EVER MORE DANGEROUS GAME IS GETTING TO ME.
A THRILLING GAME OF WITS, FOLLOWED BY A SHOWDOWN OF A NATURE MOST GLORIOUS...
I FEEL LIKE I WAS BORN TO DO THIS.
I HAVE HUNTED ALL MANNER OF BEASTS UNTIL NOW. TIGERS, CROCODILES, ELEPHANTS... BUT ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TRULY SATISFIED ME, FOR THE PREY WAS ALL SIMPLY ACTING BY INSTINCT RATHER THAN THOUGHT. MERE BEASTS... TOO EASY TO PREDICT, TOO EASY TO KILL...
WHEN I BECAME A MEMBER OF THE ESTEEMED HUNTING LODGE OF ST. LEOPOLD, I TOLD MYSELF THIS, FINALLY, WAS WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR. MAKING PREY OUT OF THE MOST ACCOMPLISHED HUNTER IN THIS WORLD.
HUNTING PEOPLE INSTEAD OF ANIMALS...
BUT THERE IS NO GLORY IN SHOOTING GAME A FEW FEET FROM ITS CAGE. THERE WAS TRUE SKILL INVOLVED.
I HAVE BRIEFLY CONSIDERED BECOMING A LAW MAN, A BOUNTY HUNTER, TRAVELING THE FABLED WILD WEST AND TRACKING CRIMINALS. BUT NO, CRIMINALS BY THEIR VERY NATURE OUGHT TO BE STUPID.
I HAVE NO INTEREST IN MEASURING WITS WITH THE DUMB.
PRECISELY THAT IS WHY I CAN'T WAIT TO REACH NEW ORLEANS. THIS FIRST OPEN HUNT IS MY CHANCE TO IMPRESS DR. JONES AND HOPEFULLY QUALIFY FOR BETTER HUNTING PARTIES IN THE FUTURE. THE SOCIETY UNDERSTANDS WHAT A HUNTER ACTUALLY NEEDS.
A REAL HUNTER NEEDS NO PREY, FOR PREY MAY, BY DEFINITION, NEVER HOPE TO WIN. THEREFORE SINCE THE HUNTER WOULD NEVER LOSE, THERE IS NO ACTUAL SKILL INVOLVED.
NAY, A HUNTER NEEDS A DEMON, FOR LACK OF A BETTER TERM.
A TRUE HUNTER NEEDS ANOTHER TRUE HUNTER.
LET THE GAMES BEGIN...
DON ALESSANDRO GUARDINI
Journal entry
IT IS THE NINETEENTH DAY OF THE SHAWWAL MONTH OF THE YEAR THIRTEEN TWELVE.
WE SHALL BEGIN IN THE NAME OF HIM WHO'S MOST GRACIOUS AND MERCIFUL.
WE HAVE JUST ARRIVED IN THIS STRANGE LAND OF HEATHENS. OUR FEET STILL THINK THEY'RE ON WATER EVEN THOUGH OUR MIND KNOWS AND CHERISHES THE EXISTENCE OF FIRM LAND UNDERNEATH. DESPITE NUMEROUS STORMS ON OUR WAY, WE WEREN'T CONCERNED WITH OUR OWN WELL BEING, FOR CHINCANE PREDICTED MY DEATH ON LAND. ALTHOUGH WE KNOW HIS MAJESTY AZRAIL ALONE KNOWS WHERE AND WHEN OUR LIFE SHALL BE TAKEN, WE KNOW CHINCANE'S DECK IS NOT TO BE IGNORED. SINNERS, THEY MAY BE, BUT FOOLS THEY ARE NOT.
AS IT WAS BROUGHT TO OUR ATTENTION BEFORE THE JOURNEY, THE HEATHEN VESSEL WAS DIRTY AND UNCOMFORTABLE. THIS WAS OUR FIRST JOURNEY TO THEIR NEV YORK. IT LOOKS UGLIER THAN THE OLD YORK. IT IS NOT WORTH ANYONE'S ATTENTION.
THE MASTER OF THE CARAVAN ASSURED US THAT OUR STAY HERE WILL BE A SHORT ONE. TOMORROW MORNING WE SHALL BE ON OUR WAY TO NEV ORLAN IF GOD WILLS IT. THERE WE SHALL FIND AND SLAY A SOUTHERN DJINN OF THIRST AND FILTH. ITS HUSK SHALL BE SOLD TO THE TRIBE OF AMERIKAN HUNTERS IN EXCHANGE FOR FORTY CARDS OF THE TRUE DECK.
MAY GOD FORGIVE OUR SINS.
ABDULLAH BIN ABDULAZIZ, MASTER OF TREASURY
Three railway tickets
from different railway companies
Queen & Crescent
SOUTHERN RAILWAY
No. XII
AUGUST
GOOD FOR TRAVEL FOR TWO ALONG THE QUEEN AND CRESCENT ROUTE FROM CINCINNATI TO NEW ORLEANS AND FREE TRANSPORTATION OF 100 POUNDS OF BAGGAGE PER PERSON. THIS TICKET WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED FOR PASSAGE AFTER DATE CANCELED IN MARGIN HEREOF, AND IS WORTHLESS IF MORE THAN ONE DATE IS CANCELED.
Issued to: R. RAMSEY, A. LYNCH
Whose signatures appear on the last page of this document.
NOTICE TO TICKETHOLDER
Conductors WILL NOT ACCEPT this ticket unless all conditions are fully complied with, and that the contract MUST BE properly SIGNED IN INK by the person whose name appears on the ticket.
GEORGIA RAILROAD
ONE WAY PASSAGE TO NEW ORLEANS
GOOD ONLY ON TRAINS SCHEDULED TO STOP AT POINTS IN BETWEEN THE ABOVE LOCATIONS WHEN STAMPED BY SELLING AGENT.
BAGGAGE TRANSPORT IS NOT INCLUDED IN THIS TICKET.
811914 H??? A??? illegible signature
MONDAY 188? 5∗17 last digit of year faded out
WESTERN NEW YORK & PENNSYLVANIA R'Y CO.
BUFFALO, N.Y. MARCH 15 1895
PASS: GUS MARCH
FROM: BUFFALO
TO: NEW ORLEANS
GOOD FOR ONE TRIP ONLY UNTIL APRIL 15, 1895 UNLESS OTHERWISE ORDERED
WHEN COUNTERSIGNED BY: ______ illegible signature
NO: 2515216151512
Advertisement
RAWLING'S
VAPORIZING INHALER
FOR COUGHS, ASTHMA,
DEAFNESS, HEADACHE, COLDS and all Throat Bronchial and Lung troubles. The only advertised remedy endorsed by the medical profession. Price, $2, with four months supply (enough to cure the most chronic case). Send C.O.D. if desired. Established 1882. Consultation and tests free at office. Ladies waited on by Mrs. Rawlings.
.R.A. Rawlings, 42 Rue Dauphine S.
Interview transcript, 1/2
Interviewer: Unknown
Interviewee: W. Hardin
Undated
I laughed when one of the kids told me they were actually called Mercy Trains. Mercy Trains, Orphan Trains, it's all going to end in a coffin, isn't it kid? He looked scared, and he damn well should have been. I told them there're monsters in these swamps. Most of them have learned not to believe in fairy tales, with the kind of lives they've had. They've already learned there aren't any knights or fairies coming around to fix their problems. Not without a heavy price. They already know the world is full of monsters. They're just used to the human kind. Not sure which is worse in the end. I put them away all the same.
Desperate times, desperate measures. But you already know why we did it.
The train arrived at night, and none of the kids knew where they were. I like to use that to my advantage. Keep them disoriented, keep them from getting comfortable, nervous as a doe. We let them sleep a few hours before we got them up and dusted off and handed out the guns.
Barely any of them knew how to shoot. City kids! A Winfield is pretty easy to handle though, and we had quite a few laying around. We couldn't waste any ammunition on target practice, so they set off without much training to speak of. When we ran out of guns, we handed out knives. I really didn't expect to see those kids again.
We had about an hour until the sun sets. I made it clear their lives depend on what happens tonight, but to be kind, I also told them they were working for the law now. If any of them survived, I told them, I'd deputize them. If.
Interview transcript, 2/2
Interviewer: Unknown
Interviewee: W. Hardin
Undated
The first group out was attacked by a pack of the dogs. Was proud to see them take down three of them, but not without a few causalities. I couldn't look away; their flesh tore so easily... But it gave some of the others the chance to slip away.
I told them, use the knives to get the right hands and bring them back as a trophy - if the thing has hands – paws in this case - prove to me you killed at least three, and we'll see. Didn't want none of them just hiding out there and coming back telling stories. Always need proof. Can't build a case with no proof.
I sat on the roof to wait. Had a fair view from there, though the trees blocked a lot. I had saved a a Marksman for myself, and I had a lot to think about. With the jails cleared out, I could feed five or six through winter. What I'd done had crossed a line in the law I had vowed to uphold, but what good was the law when the world changes like this? One of the loyal ones, Russel, would take the hit if it came.
About then I started to hear gunshots in the distance, screams, but mostly it was quiet. Even the bugs gone silent. Took about an hour before they started coming back. Which means about an hour until they started to run out of ammunition. Five of them. Five out of almost 200. Worse odds than I expected, but what did they have to live for anyway? Nothing. No country. No law. Nothing, no more. Same as me. You got to fight hard to even scrape by, and even then you wake up wondering what the point is. Everything looks like a prison these days.
Predator, prey, the world has its way, and I have nothing but time.
I remember I was humming that to myself. It's one of my favorites. Felt pretty fitting, though I was angling for a fistful of dollars from Huff for this. I watched the survivors, keeping low, thinking. They'd collected a hell of a lot of trophies, the littlest one wearing them around his neck. Then I had to consider. Is the most dangerous one going to be the most help? Or the biggest danger to me? I've always been a good shot. It didn't take me long to decide what to do. Didn't need an extra mouth to feed if it might be trouble later, nope.
Chapter One: Daughter of Decay Undated
Tale of Forsaken Soils, First Harvest
Something's eating the bayou. I must lead the Grounded in the hunt for its mouth.
The smell of its drool is in the air like a dew that clings to the fences, the trees, the trigger of a gun. I can feel its hunger. It's the same hunger I felt when eating the berries that grew from my mother's ribs, the turnips that bulged from her hips beneath the soft soil.
I wonder if she felt me eating her, like I feel the air eating me.
I followed the odor across the swamps to a clearing. The air quivered from whatever had uprooted the weeds and grass scoured the soil.
A wonderful silence was broken by a bundle of spines rising from the earth.
Some living altar wriggled from the ground with wet quills. It grew and heaved with breath from its many holes and dens. Barnacles sputtered, ripe with the stench of Rotjaw. At my feet, ash began to rise.
A man crawled out of the tall grass, steam wafting from his back.
"Need help getting off the ground?" I asked.
"No," he replied. "I'm afraid I'll never get to touch it again."
His skin ashed away. The altar breathed him in one gasp at a time.
"You're Mr. Chary, right?" I said. "Wish I'd met you sooner, so I could tell you some secrets are best left alone."
"Some secrets must come to know of me, no matter the cost." He spat tar, disappeared more.
"Does a fox know the name of the rabbit it eats?" I asked. "Do you think it wonders what the rabbit feels?"
He laughed. He laughed himself away and out into some other world. Not dead or even afraid of death, judging from the echoes he left behind. He'd stay a rabbit hunting foxes until the day he breathed his last.
Chapter Two: The Beekeeper Almanac of the Swarm
First Comb
Listen, little daughter, this tale will nest an egg inside your heart. Nurture it. Bless it with rotten mint and the bones of your enemies. You will need it hatched to go where I have gone.
Only then will I hold you and say that you are beautiful. Only if you ascend with me will I call you mine.
* Page Torn, Pasted with Black Honey to 1895 Almanac *
At the start of our ascension, we were a colony without direction. Hornets infiltrated our hive and like we should have, we attacked as one. But somewhere along the line, we lost sight of our true purpose: to ascend to become the purest of vessels of the Sculptor's power, the Targets, the Corrupted.
After Sofia's blood-bolt landed true on the Murmurstone, it yawned open. Rift light poured from the stone's mouth--blue--in curtains--divine. The first stage of our ascension was at hand. The Death Pact fled; appendages from our Lord erupted as altars from cracks in the soil.
Four Hunters more blessed by the Sculptor than we rose with them--bloated--alive--not alive. Four Drowned angels, full of mud. We shot and fired and bombed and pushed, but they paired off. They pushed back with filthy weapons and insects I would've held so close to me, so precious and holy, but they sacrificed them.
They shall not be forgiven. To see them set my heart on fire. It made me doubt my vows, and so I crushed my heart to pull the trigger of my gun and believe once more.
One of our Brothers leapt from an altar onto the Murmurstone, dynamite in his teeth. The explosion stilled the air, and the stone shrieked, opening up like a jaw before it caught one of our Sisters, diving away with her into the soil. It ripped her apart, smearing a long red line as it went.
I can feel it. Some queen is ready to descend from the fog and lay her larva with a quiet thorax. How I wish to go up such soft flesh and palpitate it like her. How I want to be the first thing seen by what's born from that womb.
How I wish I could birth anything other than a human.
Chapter Three: Drowned Rat Ink of Papyrus Scroll
Found at (illegible) Collection
Breathe water. Gulp tar. Pump mud through your heart, if you have one still.
Never was a fan of sunshine. The cloud cover is the only thing keeping me from losing my--
--Cold and violent, the Land of the Dead is with you. Let its tides taste your thoughts. Cradle your ambitions, your fingers as it strangles life from the living--
One moment, I'm back in the bayou, finding what I was sent here for. Then my sight splits in two. In four. In numbers I don't have the mind to count anymore. Like that damn Witch told us, the Land of the Dead has sown its Desolation here.
Honestly, I always hated the bayou. Was almost happy to see it--
--Sink. Sink so far it feels like rising. At the bottom of the world is the sky, where our Moon makes her knives so sharp they--
Was almost happy to see it dying.
Found the Helmsman with two Smugglers. Still had that awful metal around his face. When he saw us, he tried to shoot me with an empty gun.
"What are you sailors more afraid of?" I asked. "Ghosts, or captains?"
Laffite stepped out to join me. The Helmsman ran, but--
--Stab. Bite. Their eyes, remove them. The things they've seen, remove them. Feed them to the many thousand mouths that gasp, swallow, funnel to the Land--
I came to my senses holding one of the Smugglers' heads, and an arm too. Oh well. The Witch told us this might happen. That even if our Drowned-selves lost control sometimes, we were doing the right thing.
Every blessing rides on the back of a curse--
--every shadow laughs on the back side of blood.
Chapter Four: Daughter of Decay Undated
Tale of Forsaken Soils, Second Harvest
My introduction to the Drowned was seeing The Delphine's captain and the Rat rip two Hunters in half.
At first, I'd judged the amount of blood in the air as signs of Rotjaw. I was wrong.
Death seemed the only conversation to be had with these Drowned creatures, but a stranger's hand stayed my rifle, tipping the barrel down. When I looked up, there stood a man in a suit with long coat tails.
He offered me a cup of steaming tea. "May we speak somewhere less...ghastly?"
He had my respect for sneaking so quietly through the bramble, so I obliged. We went to a train car made into a small outpost. The man smelled of earthen depths that should never be touched, covered up with perfume. He was an animal if animals sought to mate with money.
"Pretty country down here," he said.
I eyed my tea, was afraid to drink it.
"Now, I know Finch departed this world with somewhat of a shaky reputation," he went on. "But the operation you Hunters are set upon extends far and wide. So, I've come down to offer assurances. Bounties will still be paid. The parties I represent would hate for harvesting to diminish."
"I don't care about money, I care about keeping the soil free of curses. These Drowned poison it with altars, with ash."
"Ah yes," he said. "These Drowned folks. I beg you to speak with them. Show compassion, even." "They rip Hunters in half for fun," I replied.
"Did you consider they may be horrified by that?" He rolled a Bounty Token across his knuckles.
"Like you are horrified of losing money?" I asked.
"No," he said, inhaling steam. "More like the horror your mother felt when you ate the berries from her ribs. When you chewed the turnips bulging from her hips beneath that soft, soft soil.
Chapter Five: The Beekeeper Almanac of the Swarm
Second Comb
When you were a baby, I placed you in a beehive. The bees did not sting you, but you cried and soiled yourself. Even then the bees forgave you--crawled down your throat to let you know--but you couldn't accept their forgiveness. I am earning that forgiveness for you. Everything I do is for you.
* Page Torn, Pasted with Black Honey to 1895 Almanac *
Butcher's Cleaver failed us. Brothers and Sisters gathered at the sawmill for his sentencing. The Cowl had bound the Cleaver to the base of a log flume.
We were forbidden to chant. We were instructed to think.
"I am thankful for our leader bringing us together," the Cowl said. "But I am ashamed of his failure in securing the Murmurstone's Graven Path--the passage to our Lords."
A Brother hooted. A Sister slid a katana through his throat.
At the flume top, Morrigan and Midian poured out a large trough. Beetles glistened in torchlight as they rushed in a black flash of abdomens. I spooned blood honey onto Butcher's Cleaver, and it drew in the swarm to envelop him.
The sounds of insect ecstasy were broken by the crack of a rifle. The Cowl worked the action of his Krag, and another shot rang out. The swarm of beetles took each bullet, shredding in a spray of mandibles--feelers--exoskeletons.
"We must imagine a new kind of violence," the Cowl continued. "The way one creature does not stop eating another until its body is gone."
More shots. More holy carnage. More beetles pouring down the flume to replace their fallen.
"See how they move? No leaders, no weak points, just purpose. Pure and noble."
We listened to the Cleaver's muffled squeals as the beetles continued to feast on the honey, on him.
"We shall become like the swarm," he concluded. "Find your own way. Deceive. Lie. Incinerate. Surge until the Graven Path is found. If you fail, the other Pacts will ascend. Punishment is all that will await you."
Chapter Six: Drowned Rat Ink of Papyrus Scroll
Found at (illegible) Collection
--Let us drink from the fountain of death. Here's to the Hunter. Here's to--
The Kid whistled as he dug. Water poured from a hole in his cheek. Thirteenth Mate tracked some Demented who were rounding up unpledged Hunters with ropes.
"Try digging quietly," I told him. "Like the captain."
We'd lifted a map from the Helmsman's friends. All the Smugglers' weapons were cached, ripe for the pickin'.
"Do you still see it?" The Kid gurgled, digging out more weapons.
"What you mean--"
--You can never unsee the Mound. It towers. Always looms. Runs the rain silver. Blows ash that seeps through worlds. Its weight is the weight that makes all things sink--
"Oh. You mean that Altar Mound as tall as a mountain? Yeah, I still see it. Gonna be seeing it forever, I bet."
Captain and the Kid handed me guns and dynamite bundles. The weapons were mud-caked. Holding them was the first time I realized I'd never be clean again.
"Kid, you ever just want to give up?" I asked without meaning to.
"Sure, 'course I do," he said. "Then I remember we're lucky."
What a brat. A brat with enthusiasm. Guess I admired him for that. He was right, we could have been trapped in the Land of the Dead's Desolation. Turned into strange statues. Devoured alive by myths we never heard of, which now roamed the dead swamps.
Thirteenth Mate fired off a flare. The other Pacts had found us. It was time to drag all our fates underwater to drown hand in hand.
Chapter Seven: Daughter of Decay Undated
Tale of Forsaken Soils, Third Harvest
The four Drowned reeked. Dead fish smell misted out their mouths as they panted. They huddled in shame around weapons and a weeping altar. I felt bad for them.
I stood with the other Pacts who were gathered. This was more people than I'd ever seen before. Felis and her Primal friends, sad folks from the Death Pact, my fellow Grounded and even Smugglers showed up.
With all our guns drawn, the Drowned spoke first.
"Place your ear to the earth," they said. "Listen."
I was the only one to do as they said. Ear to the ground, I heard many hearts beating. They beat deep and rooted. I didn't need to listen long to know one of them was mine.
"The Sculptor's gifts aren't free," the Drowned Rat told me. "Every time you touch an altar, something is taken from you. A knowing. A truth. It has grown in the Land of the Dead, returned with teeth to eat us all." She shot the altar and it screeched.
"That's lunacy," Felis said. I hushed her.
"Soon you'll not belong to yourself anymore," the Thirteenth Mate said. "The blood in your body will marble. You'll be trapped inside the worst thing you've ever done, and the Sculptor will feed on it. It'll swallow this place whole."
"Doesn't matter," the Drowned Rat said. "We're being collected, eaten--here's the point. If you want to stay yourselves, follow us. Or don't. We all got our own problems."
"Go where?" a strange solo Hunter asked. I smelled a sickly honey behind her mask of branches. She scribbled notes in a large almanac.
"Down in Kingsnake Mine, there is a passage made by the Murmurstone: the Graven Path. We'll make for it at dawn."
Tears stained my mask. I'd heard more than my own heart in the ground. I heard my family's. I heard a last chance to say goodbye to them.
Chapter Eight: The Beekeeper Almanac of the Swarm
Third Comb
The only way to split my soul was to have you. With you, I could feel twice as much. See twice as far. You were to be a queen in a queen-less land. You were to be a miracle of a daughter, not a curse.
* Page Torn, Pasted with Black Honey to 1895 Almanac *
We Demented got to the mine first and uncovered the passage. The Cowl was pleased--he spared me. My Brothers and Sisters had gathered plenty of others to bless the Graven Path for our ceremony.
"Bleed the path wider for us," he commanded.
Deep underground, all sounds were amplified. Five unpledged Hunters were pinned by lances in a circle around the rift passage. Their blood leaked into the Graven Path and made it pulse with waters from the Land of the Dead. We tossed Mr. Chary's equipment in--knives--brackets--jars of organs--more knives and restraints. The hole widened.
"We've worshiped our Targets as devotees, acolytes," the Cowl told us. "But perhaps it is the Targets who worship us. We will seek them out. It is time to give them our blessings."
We forced groups of unpledged through the Graven Path and stormed forth in their wake. A thousand ship bells rang, and through their echoes we sank.
At the Graven Path's end, I slid into a fountain. In the distance, a great Mound loomed, spiraled and kinked and made by giants of insect-kind. Lightning flashed, and monsters hunched and furrowed in the distant mists.
Legends unknown blocked me from this throne. So a legend myself I set to become.
Chapter Nine: Drowned Rat Ink of Papyrus Scroll
Found at (illegible) Collection
Those Demented breached the Graven Path, went through before us. The Drowned and I felt it in our lungs when it happened. We puked. It hurt us. It took everything we had to gather our supplies and lead just a handful of Pact members to Kingsnake Mine. It wasn't much, but it'd have to do.
We put the five Hunters impaled around the Path out of their misery. I asked for their names before we passed through, but the insane ringing of ship bells cleared them from my mind. We got spat out, and the swampland mazes of the Land of the Dead stretched before us. Every gooseneck bend and turn changed, distorted. Each step of the way, some new and horrible sculpture blocked our path.
The first statue was a man making a fire. Then a herd of white bison, followed by a one-legged woman nailed to a cypress tree. In a switchback of reeds, a priest screamed, frozen in white marble flames. A Meathead impaled a man against the beam of some ceiling that wasn't there. Another man with a katana held back, ready to swing.
We stopped at the statue of a train bent over a hill. Marching out of it were stone children holding guns. A moon-white Sheriff Hardin pointed them towards the Mound.
"What are all these statues?" Daughter of Decay asked.
"They're sculptures. Stories. Legends and tales brought here by the Murmurstone," I told her.
"Why?" the Kid asked. "What's the point in having all these stories?"
He placed his hand on one of the children's guns, opened his mouth to swallow the rain.
"They've come here," I told him, "so that the Sculptor can figure out how all of 'em end."
Chapter Ten: Daughter of Decay Undated
Tale of Forsaken Soils, Fourth Harvest
Down here, we were fruit that didn't need the sun to grow. No thirst, no hunger. Overhead was a Moon with a rotten black scar like a goat's eye. Ash drifted up from the dead land and gathered there in piles. I heard echoes of Mr. Chary laughing in its soot. It sounded like he was fighting the Moon.
A great Mound rose from the south. When the fog cleared it seemed to be a mountain, a tower, a volcano and insect nest all in one. We climbed up a marsh bank for a better view and came across a ship, or the skeleton of one. It looked brittle, like a dandelion, ready to fall apart if you made a wish and blew on it.
"Welcome to the Delphine's Ghost, the Drowned Rat said.
We boarded. She said this ship began the story we were in. Sculptures were all over the boat. A statue of the captain jumping over the railing. An eyeless man at the ship's wheel. Dead statues grew all over the deck, and in the hold was a Rotjaw statue absorbing a stone woman.
"Get on, Laffite," the Drowned Kid said, and pulled him in. The captain's arm burst into black fire when he crossed the threshold. The boat didn't want him on board. He stood ashamed on the shore and watched us leave.
The paddle wheel groaned on its own, and the rudder twitched like a horse tail. This boat needed no captain. It steered itself toward the Mound and steamed ahead. Sculptures were everywhere: an old soldier with his legs sawn off and a bird on his shoulder, someone trapped underwater in a rope nest weighed down by cannonballs. We almost sunk the ship on the statue of a woman split open from giving birth to a Meathead.
I knew somewhere out there was a sculpture of me. I felt myself growing there in stone. I felt shadows stalking me. They were waiting for me to find myself.
Chapter Eleven: The Beekeeper Almanac of the Swarm
Fourth Comb
The first time I was stung, I cried with joy. The blessing of the stinger is holy. The spreading of venom in blood makes openings in your soul. From there our Lord's thoughts emerge. But some thoughts you must be wary of, child. Some thoughts must be killed before they kill you.
* Page Torn, Pasted with Black Honey to 1895 Almanac *
We pushed groups of unpledged Hunters in front of us, blindfolded and tied to ropes. We shot them if they slowed. The landscape reacted to our swarm--Armoreds hulked from the fog--sheared limbs--the air filled with Hive screeches--and we fired and impaled and reveled in the mud and bile we spilled.
Statues of monsters forgotten by books and time blocked our way: herds of decayed horses frozen mid-gallop, fleeing a skeletal giant--a tree-high horse to rule all horses, its ribs split open and sucking in the old soldiers and the equine alike to mash them with its bones.
The closer we came to the Mound, the more deranged the fights became. Our crusade pushed through herds of leeches and waves of Grunts that set off old ship mines buried in the mud. Every hunk of shell lodged in our flesh only affirmed our vows. Bite wounds and poisoned spines became the language of our story.
We were chosen to rule over this endless place--chosen we had to be chosen. We would prove it at the Mound under a dying moon.
Chapter Twelve: Drowned Rat Ink of Papyrus Scroll
Found at (illegible) Collection
--Myths and curses from Desolation's past roam under an injured Moon. Fables cannot die. Fables can only seek the blood of those who made them.--
Got pinned in a ravine. Something huge came for the Delphine's Ghost, seemed to give everyone a different vision.
Felis called it a landslide full of bones. Kid thought it was a giant serpent. That Worm Bite fella saw it to be a legion of knights with tombstones for heads.
I called it something to shoot, and shoot it to sunken hell we did.
Each time some new horror struck at the ship, the landscape closed up and trapped us. We shot and stabbed our way through it all. And at the ever-wandering center of the Land of the Dead, we found her: the creatore of us four Drowned.
That white-haired Witch who calls herself Lynch.
She sat on a sculpture of Rotjaw. In the gator's mouth, that Gar woman was nestled with a little girl on the tongue. They held a bundle of wilted lilies between 'em and laid fast asleep in the cradle of teeth.
"Strange sitting place you got there," I told her.
"--It's a promise I've kept,--" Lynch said. Her voice still spoke only in my head, just as always.
"Great," I told her, jumping off the bow. "You promised a plan if we brought the Pacts. Give it now."
"--The Lord of the Dead is anxious. He knows I am to win our wager.--"
A walkway of pillars and columns stretched away from us. There stood the Lord of the Dead. Was hard to make out its shape. Something like a man stabbed with a thousand knives. Maybe just some unnamed thing you miss every time you blink.
"Let's hear it. The bet, the plan."
"--Erase the bayou's history. Wash clean its transgressions and sins. I've channeled all I could manage into you four. Drain the rest from the Mound, and your Drowning will end.--"
"Sounds like a trap. What'll you gain from it?"
Lynch looked to the sky. Flicked a knife at the Moon.
"--I will have a mouth as wide as the Sculptor. I will learn to hunt as it hunts, and take what it cannot.--"
Chapter Thirteen: Daughter of Decay Undated
Tale of Forsaken Soils, Fifth Harvest
I made the ship stop, in a pale glade where a statue of myself stood. It was of me as a little girl, sowing seeds into my mother's fingers. Sculpted bits of my cousins, siblings, aunts and uncles stuck through the soil too. I stood a minute, a year, ten dozen seasons of fog.
"I came all this way," I finally said, "to share my harvest with you."
I shot a hole in my statue. It bled over the garden. If I had tasted of them, it was only fair for them to taste of me. My life was theirs too. The shadows following me bowed in respect.
Weeds must be pulled with a cold heart, and so we pushed onward to the Mound.
We crept up on the Demented horde as they crashed upon the Mound's slope in horrible shrieks and waves. The entrance to the Mound's center was barred by a goliath gate of beetle wings. We wouldn't be able to pass through the elytra shells sunk into the rock. The Demented pounded upon the barricade and fought off every terror the bayou has ever known as rows of Meatheads pushed them into the channel, piled upon them to drown.
Everyone but the Drowned jumped ship and left to fight off the monsters and Demented, but the shadows which had followed me drew in close. I crept in their shade as they guided me through body piles and rows of traps.
I ducked, waited. Shot who and what I could.
The shadows pointed to a gathering of Immolators at the gate. One bullet was all I needed. They erupted in a chain-inferno and set the gate aflame, revealing it to be alive. Pus and insect blood hissed from the cracks in the wings, and the Delphine's Ghost churned ahead and rammed the injured gate.
The entry tore open, and a tremor shook the Mound. Hosts of shadows escaped from within the gate, free to roam whatever land they chose.
But my shadows stayed with me. For there was still a season of harvest my family wished to guide me through.
Chapter Fourteen: The Beekeeper Almanac of the Swarm
Fifth Comb
Little one, I've seen the hive where all souls converge. Sky high and stretched with star larvae. Lords quivered from those constellations and combs. Their eyes wept with all the love we waste, and there--in the black rain--I tasted all I've wasted on you.
When I recall the flavor and spice of it, I almost remember how to forgive you for leaving me.
* Page Torn, Pasted with Black Honey to 1895 Almanac *
Cracks from the steamship's impact broke open the slope of the Mound. Inside were layers upon layers of the Target's pupae. They spilled out--goo slick--tarnished and black in the fertilizer of banishment. My Demented guzzled in their rawness. They slurped and burrowed into the pulsing nursery until they were out of sight.
I didn't join them. They ignored the Delphine's Ghost but the ship's journey had not ended. It struggled against wind and the ichor gushing out the gate, so I boarded in secret. I knew there was a greater miracle to behold beyond these gestating Targets, and so I left my kin behind to journey into the Mound.
Only the Drowned were left aboard the ship, dead quiet and still.
The paddle churned for years, decades.
Sculpted combs spiraled along the walls into the sky. Each glowed with stars--eggs--larvae--promises from beyond.
After an eternity, we beached onto an island at the core. Every altar ever made was stacking in a maddening pile. To see it in Dark Sight was to stare at the sun. At the pile's peak was a platform for a statue, but it was empty.
I abandoned ship, dodging gunfire from the Drowned until at last I climbed upon the platform and made myself a legend above all others. A black rain poured from the high combs. I opened my mouth to taste it.
As the first drop touched my tongue, I felt the rumbling of a queen about to descend.
Energy flowed from the altars and swirled overhead. The walls burst and caved. An egg spiracle winded down from the center of the rift storm and the fools fired their guns, their lances, tossed flaming jars and explosives that lit the cavern. All useless.
I was to witness the molting of our Desolation's Lord. I was to be a child to it, the kind of child my daughter was never brave enough to be.
Chapter Fifteen: Drowned Rat Ink of Papyrus Scroll
Found at (illegible) Collection
Lynch lied. Figured as much. She meant to feed us to this thing being hatched, this monster born of Desolation. I fired all my rounds anyhow, tossed some Depth Markers for fun. Then I smelled a life bursting into flames.
Laffite finally made it to us. Came on an old rowboat. Rowed so hard one of his hands fell off.
He flopped aboard and the Delphine's Ghost blew its whistle in disgust. Whatever long-sowed punishment he earned scorched him with blue heat, orange embers. He looked ashamed and at peace at the same time.
This is what atonement must be, I thought. Don't think I'll ever seek it out myself.
He burned and crawled into the engine room to open the boiler. Inside was a navigator's hell no artist could describe. Whatever its shape, he accepted it. Hugged it, even.
Lightning and smoke roared from the smokestack. We abandoned ship as the Delphine's Ghost said goodbye to the Land of the Dead and the Land of the Living, and banished as a summer thundercloud rising around the madness that throbbed from above. Her bow crashed upon the hatchling and tore open its gulping throat. Black steam ballooned its gut and burst. Rest of our dynamite went off, and if this thing had a mind, it was blown apart with the force of a volcano.
--Your sins may be forgiven, though you will carry them always. May their scars live on forever. May you live to feel the unfeelable.--
Storm bolts struck the altars, and we heard every statue across the land shatter. The Graven Path flooded in on a surge of light. Brain chunks glowed in constellations upon the walls, think some last thought. The Path spread a cover between us and Desolation and splashed over the cave. It drank us in. Spat us out all across the bayou, in trees, creeks, and on roofs and walkways.
Wherever our stories end, it wasn't down there.
Lynch said we four Drowned hold all the bayou's sins now. I don't feel much different than before though. Rain feels cool. Bullets cause pain, and pain reminds me I'm alive, or alive enough. A mosquito finds the sunlight warm on my cheek and drinks. I wonder what desolate plain it feels itself upon as the shadow of my hand covers it.
I wonder if I'll be fast enough to pull my gun when that shadow comes for me.
Epilogue
A mosquito lands on a woman's cheek. It drinks her blood, tastes something feral roiling in its murk. She tries to crush it, misses. The spores infect the insect's mind - set it flying north - toward a shadow beginning to bloom.
In the wake of Desolation, the quiet that settles over the bayou is all too brief. The Backers' influence emerges as they try to make their mark. Echoes from the Land of the Dead rouse those who once fought to keep its gates sealed. Something terrible rides on the wind as bullets fly and the sound of a train approaches from the distance. There are those who want to restore justice in the bayou, and there are those who vow to ensure that nature's law reigns supreme.
The Death Pact
Tales from the Land of the Dead whisper through the bayou and stoke new fears. The Death Pact vows to keep the Graven Path sealed and explore what dangers lurk beyond the veil.
The Lawful Pact
Sheriff Hardin has rounded up Hunters to restore order and justice to the bayou. The Demented must not rise again. With a new arsenal from a mysterious Backer, the Lawful prepare to purge chaos from the swamps.
The Primal Pact
Primality ensures there is only one rule of law in the bayou: nature. The only justice they bow down to is delivered by tooth and claw, and they will defend themselves against The Lawful Pact to keep their instincts unsullied.
Chapter One: Sheriff Hardin Letter regarding Bounties, 1/2
Author: W. Hardin
Undated
To Our Stalwart Benefactors:
When I'm done here, the devil will be branded with Louisiana justice. He'll be nothing more than a stain on your shoes, easily cleaned. I swear.
The train you sent coughed enough smoke to blot out the dawn as it trundled away. The man it left behind was slender with a haughty figure, top hat and all. This can't be who they sent, I thought. No way, no how.
Instinct drew my revolver as I waded through the smog, as fine of a first impression as I can give. A whistling wind swept the air between us away to reveal his pistol pointing back at me in kind. Took all of my restraint to hold my finger steady. I asked his name instead of shooting, but he was silent. That's when I saw what surrounded him: at least twoscore cases of ammunition and weapons around his feet. I suppose ghosts must have unloaded it--he didn't seem the type to do it himself.
I also suppose I have y'all to thank for the boon.
"Which way to the Bounties?" he asked after neither of us pulled the trigger.
But someone else did: a gunshot rang from the station, and a bullet ricocheted near his head. It didn't take long to snuff out our would-be ambusher. I read her rites, tied her to a tree, and stepped back ten paces to execute. The from the train shot her from five.
"I'm a Statesman," he said. "I know how to treat vermin."
Chapter Two: Felis Exodus of the Primals
Recorded verbally, transcriber unknown.
I tracked Hardin. I wanted his blood. His scent lingered on bushes and the insides of sheds, along with another smell, something that was like fox piss and campfire. It was easy to follow.
Winds have always blown through the bayou, and Primals catch scents easily on that wind. But when Desolation bloomed, our Pact fell still, frozen and unsure. So I tread across rising ash and through parted, rotting mists. I became the wind to blow it all away when no wind would come.
I found the den of Desolation, I fought against the ash. It was more of a vision than a fight, and when I returned, it was the wolf who sought me first--that boy who cries alone in the night. Lonely Howl had seen a name written on the moon.
"The sheriff has risen to the top of the pack," he said. "He got to Rotjaw before us, claimed her as his discovery. He sat back and let the Pacts take on the fires and the wrath of Desolation. He's ready to step into the fight now, and he's strong."
"We won't be tamed by cowboys," I replied.
"The Death Pact seems not to mind," said Howl. He had a vial of ash that he'd carried with him since the first blooms of Desolation appeared. I snatched it from his belt.
We knelt over a stump. A slug crossed its rings, didn't notice us.
"There is no law here." I poured the ash on the slug, and its skin hissed and bubbled. "Only nature. Only hunger. Desolation showed me unexplainable things. I see the world different now. I can feel Corruption spreading outside the bayou."
The slug crawled on and smoked like it was a train, a hexed premonition.
"Let's see how hungry Hardin is," I said. "Let's see how far he'll go to eat."
Chapter Three: Sofia Addressed to Lulu Bassett
Translated from Spanish
Ink on Blank Train Schedule
We held lanterns at the bottom of Kingsnake Mine. Worm Bite crouched before a mud sculpture, something like a snake eating the moon. It reminded me of how you look when you're biting an apple. "The Graven Path is closed," Worm Bite said. "I've made sure. But something is still wrong."
He was surrounded by mud art. Crude Mountains. Sludge trees and animals. The landscape of a lost mind.
"It's time for you to come out," the Bone Mason said. "You don't know what it was like in the Land of the Dead," he replied, anguished. "It was a war, a religion being unmade."
"Rest," I told him. "You walked into Death's dream and woke him up. We've won."
"Every grave I've dug was wasted," he said. Some tall nest of clay stood at the center of his works. He placed a pocket watch on it.
"Did your mud friends tell you that?" I asked him. "This is a calendar. Just wait. In one minute, an Altar will emerge right here."
We waited. Water dripped.
Each drop brought an image to my mind. Visions. Trees taller than I'd ever seen. An infected chimney with infected men crawling out from the top. Miners sipping molten metal from a cauldron until their jaws burned off.
Suddenly, the mineshaft trembled. The floor bulged, and emerging spines uprooted Worm Bite's pocket watch calendar of mud. He huddled at the foot of the Altar, looked up to it like he'd seen it a thousand times before.
"You can never unsee the Mound," he said.
"Fine," I told him. I sunk a round of Pennyshot ammo into the Altar with my Derringer. "You can't shoot what you can't see."
Bone Mason dragged Worm Bite away as the thing readied to explode. The sound of it echoed throughout the tunnels of the mine.
Chapter Four: Sofia Addressed to Lulu Bassett
Translated from Spanish
Ink on Blank Train Schedule
Worm Bite's memory is bewitched from his time in the dead world. Sometimes he thinks he's been shot and screams, remembering old wounds. Sometimes he thinks he's just been born, forgetting his name, thinking the Bone Mason is his mother.
Now he's spread his madness on to us.
When I smell one of these Spine Altars, I see a forest bent in furies of the wind. Terrible machines growl and gnash the earth. Dead horses decay on high hills, ripped in half by monsters.
We sought out help from our new kin, Brood and Bile--the blackbirds.
"The gravedigger contains echoes of the Land of the Dead," Bile confirmed.
We pushed Worm Bite forward, and he told his tale of statue fields, of a terrible serpent swallowing a steamboat, of monsters piled so high they scarred the moon.
"A ritual can show us more," Brood said. "Let's find out where these Altars are coming from."
The duo arranged six human skulls that were studded with gunshot wounds. From their beaked masks, they pulled tongues wrapped in sage, connecting them with wire, sliding them through the old, dead flesh. They wound the wire around a Spine Altar and shot it. The explosion made the metal hot, turned the tongues into rays of light.
We were blinded by that light. Drawn into a vision. Blood gushed from a train engine and painted a red line across the desert. Hunters fled the swamps and crawled along the line towards a range of mountains. We soared over a lonely bayou: the quiet paradise the Primals hope for. Boss Targets screamed in their lairs. The Corrupted shivered and walked the woods.
The only souls left were damned--The Drowned. Hunting forever through rain, fire, sunsets, and blooming ash.
Our sight returned as the smoke faded.
"These Altars and The Drowned are entwined," Bile said. "They dwell in a place as broken and flooded as their souls. Darin Shipyard."
Chapter Five: Sofia Addressed to Lulu Bassett
Translated from Spanish
Ink of Blank Train Schedule
We found The Drowned banishing an Assassin in the boathouse. They peered out of openings in the walls and floor to stare at their reflections in the water. A new witch hunter was with them, that Hex Breaker. He hid beneath his hat, scribbling notes as the Drowned Rat muttered.
"It's our burden to keep the Graven Path closed," she said. "When we breathe, mud churns. When we sleep, our eyes fill with blight. Our very lives are what have sealed the Land of the Dead away."
"Then why have the Altars returned?" Worm Bite asked. "We destroyed the Mound."
"It's for the same reason flies come out of dead bodies," Thirteenth Mate said. He stroked a Choke Beetle that chittered in his arms. "They spread where they can."
"We still hear Lynch." The Drowned Kid stepped forward. "Singing as she goes about her work."
"And what works is that?" I asked.
"Lynch has tossed her personhood aside," Hex Breaker said. "If she ever had any to begin with, anyway. She's a kind of nature we don't understand."
"She can only exist where the Corruption exists now," the Drowned Kid added. "We hear her voice far away. Traveling."
The new witch hunter had heard of Lynch's work, had come to learn her ways from The Drowned. "Do you know what salvation a witch seeks?" he asked. "What makes them dance naked under a moon, or eat the heart out of a living deer?"
The Banishing crackled and roared. Hex Breaker answered his own questions.
"They want to taste a blackness beyond sleep," he said. "They want to bathe in the well all curses flow from. And to do that, they cannot stay a witch. They must become a monster."
I believed him.
Corruption has spread somewhere new, Lulu. I've dreamed it. Lynch has joined Death to grope our souls. Their fingers pry white inside my mind. If we don't stop this, you will lose me.
I showed the Statesman where that ungodly gator gave me my limp. He wanted to know everything there was to know about Rotjaw--her lightning, her Token, her size. Eventually, we decided to hunt her for some good old-fashioned payback. It was the perfect chance for him to have his questions answered in person...and for me to grab some sway over his arrogant, prissy self.
Didn't take long before we ran into the stench of vermin. Of one mind, the Statesman and I cracked open our case of ammunition. Both of us knew the cases were supposed to last for the long, grueling crusade ahead of us, but damn it if I can't resist the temptation of cutting a little loose, not when we'd been blessed with the means.
Just this once, I told myself.
Afterward, over the bodies that were now riddled with all different kinds of bullets, we got to talking. Like equals this time. Bloodbaths always get the heart pounding and the mouth yapping. I flattered him by sayin' he's got a better shot than any lawman I'd seen before, save myself. He told me he's never met a sheriff who'd stay to protect a town where only the dead remain.
I told him I'd mustered at least three fine Hunters who were all for my cause of bringing back order. He told me his benefactor had plans for a lawman who can lead a slaughtering force from the front line.
I told him I'd like to be privy to those plans. He said I was already doing my part.
Turned out we saw the same bayou--well, almost. To him, it was the ruins of remarkable towns which were already in ruin. To me, it was chaos that needed order.
At least the very least, I agreed on his idea for what needed to be done about it.
Later, the Statesman and I took turns testing his new Mako rifle on the Demented rabble scattered around Moses Poultry. They slobbered over themselves, hoping to bite the throats from the Spider, lost in their delusions of ascension.
I got one in the leg, then passed over the rifle. The Statesman pumped the lever and waited, watching our prey scrabble in the dirt. It was then he told me about the benefactors. He said they were a council of rich folks playing poker with Bounty Tokens, dabbling in the occult. Well, not just the occult--our occult. Felt good to be initiated proper, to get a scrap of food after what it felt like a full winter's starving. The Statesman took another shot and passed the rifle before I registered a Demented's head explode to pieces. I aimed for another one, wanting to see if it'd been a lucky hit or if the rifle really could fire true from three hundred yards. Took my time, just like he did, but I reckon it was too long, since the lone man standing left his dead partner to the Hunter with the wounded leg. Regardless, my shot landed true as steel, just as I heard the kicker.
The idea of a new law done lit a fire in my soul. Same one as on the day I was handed a revolver and swore to protect New Orleans. Excitement is what it is. No, it's greater than that...you might call it faith.
Faith can blind you, though.
Someone in the bush tagged me with a silenced rifle. The ammo was something that had me bleeding from both my ears. I took cover and patched myself up. When the dust settled, the Statesman was gone.
Whoever took him only left behind a fish speared on a branch, wearing his top hat.
I am nothing if not a man of restraint, so the first idea that struck me was to do nothing.
The Statesman knew what he signed on for, didn't he? Knew from the moment he got swamp muck on his shiny shoes. I'd only need to write a letter to say he perished on the Hunt, and then there'd be one less person to answer to. Hell, if I'd have known how much he was still getting paid, then I very well might have gone through with it.
Instead, I did what I always do: my duty.
This was our opportunity, our test. Us Lawful had spread ourselves across the bayou and held guard in our own stations, but now was the time to gather and demonstrate our worth, time for me to demonstrate my leadership to those who ceded it to me. We were the beginning of a new law, so steel and gunpowder had to test the truth. I had to show that our authority would birth order.
It's true that this test would involve purging unruly citizens from the Earth. Once every green moon, duty and pleasure do happen to mix.
So I investigated. Hard interrogations, not that soft jail-cell-prodding the Governor always called for. When the next train pulled in, we had to have the Statesman in tow, or else the additional arsenal he commissioned was fixing to be forfeit.
Chapter Nine: Felis Exodus of the Primals
Recorded verbally, transcriber unknown.
We waited for Centipede's arrival. I sat by the fire while Lonely Howl prowled the perimeter. Ants circled the coals, the broke free to flee south. They carried a mouse rotted down to just its head and spine.
It was a good omen. This is how I knew she'd been successful in securing a great bounty.
"They're coming," Howl barked.
"Be still," I said. "Yap like a cub, and your prey will sense weakness."
Howl quieted, and we heard shadows scuffle across leaves. An owl high in an elm spooked and flew off. Centipede dragged a man behind her, his hands bound, his head covered with a potato sack. The coarse material was a world away from the fine clothes the man wore. He was a well-dressed devil, or thought of himself as such.
I ripped off the man's hood.
"You'll regret this," he snarled, eyes glancing wildly around our camp. If he was one of us, he'd have bitten off Centipede's thumb. But he wasn't. He was domesticated.
"I'll remember every face in this godforsaken swamp," he went on. "We'll chase you down like foxhounds and stomp your faces into the mud."
"You'll forget this chase soon enough and go back to Hunting money," I said. The ants hadn't gone far. I picked up the mouse corpse and placed it by the fire. Its spine curled from the heat. "You call yourselves the Lawful, but you bark like animals. They are barks of fear, not command."
"You're Felis." He spat into the dirt. "I know you. Mark your days carefully. You only have a few free ones left."
"You're not dead yet, but you could be." I rose from the fire and nodded. Centipede pushed the man to his knees. Sweat dripped off his face onto the mouse remains and glistened in the light. "Would you like to know why?"
Chapter Ten: Felis Exodus of the Primals
Recorded verbally, transcriber unknown.
The Statesman didn't believe us at first. It was only when I had Centipede show him her tattoos that he was able to understand: insane and twisted markings of insects beheading mice, foxes, oxen, men. She had been a Demented follower once, before she was one of us.
When we first found her, Howl and I had followed Hardin's trail and come across a bloodbath, the remains of the Lawful's "order." A single Demented cultist was left breathing in the mess, and we took her.
Centipede had earned her name for her adaptability, the quickness of her strike. She'd made poisons and worked them into bullets for the other Demented. I saw her eyes flicker with instinct. She could do more than follow madfolk chasing false prophecies.
I showed her the wilds. Showed her the beauty in the chase, the kill. Showed her that the Sculptor was just one in a long chain of hunger, that there would one day be something bigger than it, too. All we could do was rise to the top of our own pack.
"So you left me alive to tell me this?" the Statesman asked into the dying fire. "What good will it do you?" I knifed open a Starshell round. Ants had swarmed back to the rotting mouse, and I poured out a circle of black gunpowder to trap them there.
"We tell you this because you're not a threat," I told him. "You're bait. We honor our bait, respect it. Even you."
I dropped a coal on my trap and the Starshell powder flashed, incinerating the ants and setting the mouse head on fire.
"Bait can be a warning and teach lessons to its kin, if it survives the bite."
Chapter Eleven: Sofia Addressed to Lulu Bassett
Translated from Spanish
Ink on Blank Train Schedule
When I eventually spoke to Hardin, I was surprised he didn't recognize me despite hunting us before. Perhaps he didn't care about our crimes anymore. We gathered in a cabin raised high above the water. The Lawful had caught three Primals and were interrogating them.
Below us, Rotjaw lumbered.
"This isn't law," the Bone Mason told him. "It's ruthless and unusual."
"Beg your pardon, Ma'am," Hardin said with a tip of his hat. "If I wasn't sworn on this badge, these degenerates would have their hands behind their backs holding nothing but toothpicks. They're filthy kidnappers."
He asked the captured Primals questions about Felis and a stolen Statesman. Each stayed silent and was kicked off into the water with Rotjaw. We tried to get him to stop. Every Pact was needed now, but Hardin couldn't see the bigger threat.
"Do you know what makes us Hunters?" I asked him.
"Sure" he said. "Tracking, staying quiet, but you here just don't see fit to shut up."
"It's the inoculation," Worm Bite said. "That concoction runs through all our blood. Gives us Dark Sight. Do you know who made that shot?"
Hardin Fired a shiny new rifle to send Rotjaw into her fit. "Sure I do. But if it's all the same, I don't care who made the gun I'm holding. I just mind if it puts a hole where I want."
"Finch's blood was strong enough to open the Land of the Dead," Worm Bite continued. "What do you think Lynch could do to us, with all her design flowing in our veins?"
The Sheriff paused at that. "Listen," he said. "You folks want cooperation? Answers and help? Join me in getting the Statesman back, and I'll put you in touch with the people paying out Bounties. I heard they beat Death at poker and got all the secrets of the world in their pockets."
Chapter Twelve: Felis Exodus of the Primals
Recorded verbally, transcriber unknown.
We took the Statesman to the rail line. "Here," I declared as we reached the railway. "Behold the iron scar paved by your money. Behave, or we'll feed you to the steam beast when it comes."
"You promised you'd bring me to the station," the Statesman said. "You can't tell me you don't understand what a train is."
"The way of civilized man is a mystery to us." Iron Bark laughed. "That station smells of you lawmen. They'll leave and come to our woods for you."
We crouched behind old cannons. I found fresh bird droppings on the hot metal, could tell the Lawful scared off mallards and drove them down this way. We wouldn't be flanked.
The train should've been there at high noon. "They're late," Howl said.
At all once, gunshots crackled from the tree line.
Bullets glanced off the rail and hit Iron Bark in the leg. Howl flashed his revolvers in return, turned a white-shirt's kneecaps into crumbles of gravel.
Centipede threw a spear and a gurgling cry confirmed that it hit her target's throat. I shot an oil barrel, and smoke caught the south wind, giving us cover.
"Come out, Felis," I heard Hardin call after the gunfire stopped. I peeked out over the rail. The battered Statesman held Centipede at gunpoint, three Hunters dead around her.
"We bought you animals out," the Statesman said, patting Iron Bark on the shoulder. "Turns out money talks more than mouse heads and summoning stones."
Pebbles shook along the track as a whistle shrieked like a shot dove. Guns fired from the train, and railmen fell off to the sides, dead, covered in Hive filth. Iron screeched on iron, and the train stopped. The blood-smeared freight cars shed dust from crossed deserts, and their doors burst open.
Chapter Thirteen: Felis Exodus of the Primals
Recorded verbally, transcriber unknown.
Iron Bark had sold us out to Hardin. They stood side by side. That grave-digging halfwit was at the tree line too. Seemed the Death Pact had saddled in with the lawmen.
"There's deeper evils out there," called Hardin. "Just look at the train. Our problems here have spread." Two Meatheads crumpled the wall of a freight car and tumbled out. One knocked a cannon onto a lawman, breaking him open. A leech fed on his exposed lung and swelled like a tick embedded in a dog ear.
"Let's compromise," the sheriff went on. "I want to die from old age, not poison and monsters."
"Funny how compromise always involves kissing your ring, Hardin," I said.
"Let us hold Hunters accountable." He waved a pistol in the air. "We can't have more Demented, or another fall to the Sculptor."
"Look at your hostage," I called back. Howl tossed a bundle of dynamite, and the Meathead split like a flower. "The only thing that saved her was the freedom to be wild. To follow her instincts."
"Hunters aren't beyond the law," Hardin shouted, his hand grazing his badge.
"Nature is the law." I ripped a weed from the soil. "I'm taking the train. Will you agree not to shoot?"
"You calling for a truce?" A genuine ask.
I stood, and some Hunter in his union suit showed up late. He stumbled from the trees and shot, maybe even by accident. The rest opened fire in response. I ran, made it to the train as the firefight went on. Howl stoked the engine, pulled me onboard.
"Let's call it more of a head start," I shouted to Hardin, and the brakes unlocked.
Chapter Fourteen: Sheriff Hardin Letter regarding Bounties, 2/2
Author: W. Hardin
Undated
To Our Stalwart Benefactors (and your many cast shadows):
Never hurts to have scouts on hand, and that's what I designated those Primals after I gave the Statesman his hat back. For now, anyway.
We let the lot of them take the train--it was infected anyway, and I'd prefer a clean ride across the wests of our country.
The Statesman couldn't give a straight answer as to why our Backers would send a train in such condition. Was it a test? Some statement or warning? We agreed that at best it was a call for aid.
So, aid I'll give, along with the official leave of absence I'm about to offer Louisiana and her mud-slicked shores.
Ten years I've served these parts. Three now under the name Sheriff Hardin. Seen lots in the way of bedlam and betrayal in that time, with my loyalty pointed north, south, east, and west. I never considered doing more than upholding law in New Orleans until now. You'll make a fancy man of me yet.
A new law needs the sacrificing of the old one, so I've been told. Mark my words though, this "truce" won't last. When it expires, I won't need a train supply of firepower to keep it in check.
I'll need an army.
See, we put down vermin here, your honor. But they breathe the same air as we do, and sometimes it's hard to see what side of the fence you sit on. So some get let go--this time. You know what it does to a sheriff to shake the poison-marked hand of a stray, rabid lion? Swallow his pride and betray the law he was sworn to die for?
Neither do I.
Chapter Fifteen: Sofia Addressed to Lulu Bassett
Translated from Spanish
Ink of Unmarked Map
This letter I won't give to you. I will keep it on me for now. My words mean nothing if not aimed at you, so I have to put them down like this.
You're asleep in the railcar and the desert passes quickly. Our hands are cold when they touch. It's the coldness of leaving a place. No goodbyes are ever warm, even when they are from a swamp as vile as ours. The bayou will always steam with regret, taste like gunpowder. I think I'll miss it.
We both smell like low tide and rot from the Land of the Dead. Shaking hands with The Drowned has lingered on us. But the bayou is their burden for now. They're only guardians we could find, but they fit. They've earned it.
Vultures are circling some animal walking across the playa. It's following the trail of some circus caravan. Dying in the desert is dry and desperate. Death has has no passion there. His kisses are cacti and blisters. He's all heat and shimmer, thin as a snake in the distance where sand meets the sky. The Death I made my deal with was different. He was giant, a rotting skeleton who gurgled with the rasping throats of men caught in trees. He was something that lurked in floods and graveyards. That is Death in Louisiana.
I do not know what Death will look like further west, but I've heard rumors. Sunsets paint the canyons and make the rocks bleed. The air is thin, hard to breathe. Things are alive there in a wildness the swamps forget.
On the other side of these mountains, dying will take a new shape. Its shadows will be the skeleton of you and me, back-to-back, and a thousand gun barrels waiting to sing.
Epilogue
Hunters ride uneasily on the rails towards mountains, following an unseen trail of despair. A new hunting ground waits for them, painted red, high and dry and thirsty for blood.
CHAPTER ONE: THE RESEARCHER Wax Cylinder Transcript
Phonogrammarchiv, Vienna
Recording Date 1896: Harold Black
Transcription Date 1899: Unknown
[Sound Annotation.] Labored breathing. Footsteps. Trills and rushes of a high mountain habitat.
HB: We've trekked in from the Northeast and made rest at a cascade of outcrops on the western side of Mammon's Gulch. The surrounding peaks are staggering, indifferent to our presence.
[Sound Annotation.] Train whistle fades in distance.
HB: Preston is boisterous. Stands at six foot three. He's dressed out of his fine clothes, perhaps hoping to fit in with us. Brewer and the others are not impressed, if raised eyebrows are any unit of measurement.
[Sound Annotation.] Birds set off.
HB: Clearly he's a novice, but it's worth noting that Preston can be quite endearing. He favors the use of a spyglass over any gun or blade, always on the lookout for something new to expose or discover.
[Sound Annotation.] Shambling, Screeching, Shots ring out.
HB: The Corruption here is in "full bloom," for lack of a better term.
[Sound Annotation.] Rifle set down. Notes scribbled.
HB: With the Incursion here still in its infancy, I wondered if some semblance of order and hierarchy might appear amongst the Corrupted. But this is not the case. They are all as disorganized and lobotomized as in the bayou.
HB: Despite their mindless, abominable presence, I feel myself being studied from beneath the trees.
[Sound Annotation.] Journal closed. A rock thrown, tumbling indifferently down a cliff.
HB: No, catalogued. Catalogued is the word. Just as a blind curator navigates the dense archives of a museum, and slips some small, dead thing into its perfect drawer.
CHAPTER TWO: THE RESEARCHER Colorado Investigation Log
Location: Mid-Gulch Saddle Depression
Day 2: Morning
We discovered a survey group's destroyed campsite.
It was in total disarray and mostly incinerated. Brass equipment intact. Salvaged the following surveyor logs:
Dale Guerard: PLSS Acreage Report
Day 1: Grahm switched us to the Solar Compass. Our prismatic is being thrown off by ore deposits along the western slope. The compass is heavy and hot in the sun-it burned Grahm's hand.
We're five degrees off true north on account of the magnetism. Will re-walk the links for accurate acreage in the morning.
Day 4: Melanie has her seismometer ready. The thing's acting up. Jumping like a cricket in a thunderstorm, is how she put it. Can't be on account of the ore, though. Strange.
Day 5: Grahm's dead. He measured out the acre with 255 chain links, then vanished in a sudden flash of heat that seemed to come out of nowhere. The leftover links he'd been carrying somehow heaped and fused to his skull. We buried him—it was the only thing we could think to do. What could have done that to Grahm?
Poor Melanie. Just last night, when we were laughing and drinking around the campfire, she said she'd never get married, especially to Grahm. So why's she sleeping all alone on that patch of scorched earth where we found his body?
Melanie L. R. Seismographic Readings
Reading 1-4: Criss cross scrambles
Recalibrated Reading 4-9: Looping circles
Re-Recalibrated Reading 10: The needle has written in cursive.
"Too late now. Too late now. Too late..."
CHAPTER THREE: MARSHALL BREWER Mammon's Gulch Field Report
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.
Preliminary Report:
Wyatt Preston adores the sound of his own drawling voice. He'd talk the ears off a barndoor, if a barn door gave half a shit to listen .He certainly adores his home in the peaks. He leaves gold coins on tree stumps, out of either superstition or respect.
The expedition to Colorado demonstrated Mr. Preston's resources beyond all else. Fine China on the train. Cigars from some country I can't pronounce proper. He had a massive leech in a gold cage as a pet. I wanted to ask how he managed that—if there was a caged Meathead in one of the cars—but it seemed rude somehow, in the same way it's rude to ask a magician his secrets.
The researcher called Harold Black joined us as well-Preston wouldn't leave until I tracked him down. I trust Harold's word, despite his indifference to justice and order. He confided to me that Mr. Preston is doggedly pursuing ways to end the Corruption. There is fresh hope in all this rot, supposedly. Preston says that he wants to outfit us like a proper army, cleanse this land proper. He says that when the threat passes, he'll show us the oil field he's so proud of.
It was only after we arrived at our destination that something became clear. High and mighty are the words we've swapped, pretending we dispelled the plague of New Orleans. But the truth is that we've just shoved it down one gutter, only for its head to pop out another. And with it has come leftover filth we failed to purge in the bayou, clinging to its heels: Demented Hunters are here, too.
This morning, a little group of them sent up hellfire that brushed sky.
I just hope that Preston understands what he's dealing with out here, understands how easily it could all fall to pieces.
Phoebe Brewer
CHAPTER FOUR: SNARE "Journey to My Descendants"
Author: Snare
Handwritten Journal, 8 x 8 in.
Preston has brought lawdogs with him. They are promised wealth and station. When our adoptive father saw what had happened here,
he called for aid. Only we came. But in the end, all it took was money. All it ever takes is money.
I have seen our enemy up close. I have seen the scars across Marshall Brewer's cheek in the center of my sights.
She and her troop were wise to cover their tracks, but they did so with the skill of a child hiding from a bear, leaving a trail of Grunts anywhere they went. Their killing is sloppy and savage.
Buckshot reminds me to tread careful. I can spit on their skills all I like, but it is their confidence we must track. The lawdogs do not need to be smart. They could kill us with a storm of bullets without a second thought.
There are many kinds of storms here now.
Come evening there was thunder, yet the sky remained clear. Dust and a strange glow rose over the low eastern range across the way.
Hell came upon us in an instant when the source of the ruckus finally came into view: a herd of horses, galloping, on fire. Flames flickered from their sunset hides, licked their heels. Their manes sparked in a way only death could see as pretty.
We cannot outrun this nightmarish Corruption, or the things it brings with it. Along with the presence of the law dogs, what options does that leave us?
CHAPTER FIVE: THE RESEARCHER Wax Cylinder Transcript Phonogrammarchiv, Vienna
Recording Date 1896: Harold Black
Transcription Date 1899: Unknown
[Sound Annotation.] Great plumes of fire. Metal buckling and caving. (Or the spine of a mountain grinding on ore.) HB: The oil field is burning. It was set ablaze just as we came upon it.
[Sound Annotation.] Roaring. Explosions and hot whistles through rock.
HB: Preston has sent off Brewer to the north. He thinks this could be the work of bandits or other such greedy, bitter minds.
[Sound Annotation.] A marathon of sprinting. Embers swirling. Grass crackles and burns as if stained with the blood of witches. HB: A dozen Immolators have swarmed the oil field. The heat is too intense to see clearly, but they are in a circle. What is that they're...
[Sound Annotation.] Wax warped by heat. Unintelligible.
HB: Preston's oil burns differently. It seethes with the rage of things hidden in the earth, brought to light.
man. The odor contains the
[Sound Annotation.] Tree collapses. Wax warped distortion.(When a tree falls, does it feel itself falling forever?) HB: This heat. I do not think it's natural. It smells of things that should have never been touched by faintest traces of iron and ruined flesh when you stand downwind.
[Sound Annotation.] Long crackles of fire. An indistinct prayer is hidden in its flare. HB: Some shadow has taken form here. I will abandon Preston and investigate it alone. Let Brewer look after him.
Note: (Set curtain on fire to reveal the stage cloth.)
There once was a wandering puppeteer, a man of myths who crossed many seas. In his search for greater legends, this traveller found himself caught in a tale too peculiar and strange to not play a part in.
Note: (Puppets size up the audience.)
It all began when the traveller came across the corpses of three railmen and two strange characters getting dressed in their coal-stained clothes.
We shall call one, Pig.
The other, Bee.
Note: (The metallic click of guns cocking.)
Pig and Bee offered the traveller a deal: if he helped them achieve their goal, they would let him live. He gladly accepted and slithered into a dead man's trousers. He stained his eyes with soot and took on the speech of someone who tends the steam boiler on a locomotive.
Note: (Bring train prop in frame with flywheel and weights.)
And so, they set upon a train as a troupe of actors would a stage. They tended a ravenous and furious furnace in a nest of spinning iron and belching steam.
Note: (Fall to knees. Stoke imaginary furnace. Pray to the invisible rich.)
As the time passed, he discovered more and more about Bee and Pig. He learned that they were outcasts from a cult of delirium and murder. Worse still, they had been forsaken by the very thing they worshiped.
Note: (Raise mountain slowly, drop Corrupted fast.)
The train ventured over the type of barren lands where death itself forgets its name. They came upon the promised land: Colorado. There, a sickness had brought nightmares of the dead to life.
Note: (Puppets stare in awe at the sight that sprawls before them.)
Their faith had been rewarded, after all. They'd been given a second chance.
CHAPTER SEVEN: MARSHALL BREWER Mammon's Gulch Field Report
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.
Warning: Those local Trappers know how to spring sharp iron around your waist. They know these slopes like we know a swamp.
* * *
After the oil field was set ablaze, Preston sent us with powder barrels to the northeast trestle bridge, wanting it blown up to cut off access to anyone who might want to come for what's his. We went through Miner's Folly. The sad assortment of dilapidated buildings were all cinders and smoke, freshly burnt.
Demented folks had themselves a bonfire, most probably.
Before we could make our way through, we were stopped by a pair of angry Trappers. We drew iron on each other, then I realized that the mountain man, Thomas Bridge, was with them. They saw that he knew me, seemed surprised we didn't want each other dead. It was enough to make them lower their rifles.
In the end, we came to a bit of an agreement: we'll stay out of these Trappers' more treasured territory, if they help us in the fight against the Corruption of this land. We went our separate ways, but I couldn't help but look over my shoulder on the way out—I didn't trust the female Trapper, could practically feel the sear of her death-wish glare on my back.
Once that was taken care of, we had the business of the tracks to finish out, Preston's orders. The explosion was quaint, but enough to send the rails crashing down.
Between the oil field and the town, Mammon's Gulch is falling. I can't say quite yet whether it's into our hands, or into the fires, but one thing is for certain:
Preston's money doesn't impress death, not even a little bit.
Phoebe Brewer
CHAPTER EIGHT: SNARE Bait Locations and Conservation
Leatherbound Journal, 3 x 4 in.
Friday
Found two sets of tracks.
First Set: boot prints from the north. Running, fumbled, crawled over the dam, into the beaver lodge. Scents of fear, piss, oil used for rock splitters.
Second Set: Came north, Veered south. Lumbering steps. Still hot, burned everything they touched. Scents of tar, iron, overcooked
meat.
Saturday
We followed both sets of tracks back to Graystone Pit. Found another Hunter ripped in half.
Lower half was smeared over a granite wall, then left i ǹ a kneeling position on the ground. Upper half was shoved into a ceiling crack above the rest.
The smell is different—heavy with sage. Must be the work of a different creature entirely.
Found a note and payment in a pack nearby: I'm sorry to send you to the Pit with so little information. "Our" superstitions and rituals have become too dangerous. I don't know what Boss has done. He won't talk about it. I hope these cases of ammunition are enough to fix the current predicament. The sage bundles are for burning—may they keep you safe.
Stalk quiet and brave down there.
Signed - Delacroix
We circled up to the top of the Pit. Found some Hunter tending to a mountain bluebird. It was burned, sopped in oil with just one wing left. He sketched it, then crushed its skull clean.
We approached him. Offered the note. Delacroix is a Foundry man. He seemed half honorable, at least. We told this Hunter, Harold, that we've heard screams coming from Kingfisher Foundry for ages. It's haunted. Cursed. We won't go near it.
Harold sprung right for it. He's an animal hungry enough to lose a leg for a scrap of meat.
CHAPTER NINE: THE RESEARCHER Kingfisher Foundry Log, Mammon's Gulch
Comments: Harold Black
Original Author: Delacroix
Oil Reinvigoration Ritual #14
Observer: Delacroix
Change Log:
Iron plug casings have been strengthened to better bear the forces. Subjects are compressed and forged from the neck down, and only after being fed Tokens. (Convinced the Boss this was more humane. Ingesting the Bounties puts them into a trance.)
Bore Depth: 700 Feet, 3 Tokens, Elwraith Rite 9
Bandit 1 ignited. His tooth (a gold capped incisor) shot out of the bore shaft, buried itself in my arm. Had to dig it out myself, then Boss confiscated it for the gold.
Bore Depth: 984Feet, 4 Tokens, Eyeless Navigator Rite 2
Bandit 2 begged for us to take care of his grandma out on some prairie, had to be sedated. Flesh bulged with enough pressure to break his casing, clogging the shaft. Had to re-bore the shaft to unclog it.
Bore Depth: 0 Feet, 0 Tokens, God's Grace
Bandit 3 convinced me over. He had a PLSS contract from the government on him. Last two subjects weren't bandits either, they were cartographers. Boss lied big time. I can't keep contorting innocent people and holding that guilt in me.
Bore Depth: 1,325 Feet, 6 Tokens, Finch's Lullaby Rite 1
I won't abide threats and slander. I relieved Delacroix of his station by feeding him the final Tokens before encasing him in the plug.
His casing struck brimstone. The reinvigoration worked at last. It turned the clay into treasure. Oil spewed out every derrick but something crawled back out, dripping lava. It's a miracle the oil pools didn't catch fire.
* * *
Deduced Methodology:
I believe subjects ingested between 3-6′′Bounty Tokens" each. Rituals were performed. Subjects were "contorted" into iron plugs, which were dropped down boreholes of various depths. Seems as though spontaneous combustion and physiological metamorphosis resulted.
I'm unsure as to what "crawled back out" the bore shaft. Could it be the same thing that set fire outside the Foundry and then stalked me through the tall firs?
Note: (Begin Act II with Pig and Bee puppets hugging the Mountain.)
Bee and Pig reveled in this devastated land. Cold machines ripped precious ores from the soil. Pipes sprayed black earth into the air. The mountains watched over the trenches and scars of the great gulch with no interest in those who suffered within it.
Note: (Kick rope so guillotine beheads Corrupted puppets.)
The pair were well versed in executing monsters. Their carnage was strange, for they worshiped the master of these many diseased puppets. Pig squealed in the oil fires. Bee prayed to hives.
With their senses sharp, they traced the hand of their puppet master to Grizzly Lodge. Sickness and evil gusted from its chimney like it was an ancient wound, a place of miraculous birth.
Note: (Make Bee crawl in first. Whisper a secret the audience can't hear.)
Inside were the lower halves of men kneeling in a circle, killed by some unknown monstrosity. Bundles of sage were tied to their waists, and Bee and Pig burned them to cleanse the air.
Note: (Dangle Cultist, Pig swings corpse to play with it.)
In the cellar was a pit dressed for rituals. Barrels had been hoarded, mounded, and blessed. There was a stench of Tokens. Bee and Pig fell to their knees and the traveller traced every symbol of salvation he knew.
You ever see a flaming body fall down a mine shaft? Pretty eerie. It made my hairs stand on end.
Preston had us clear a mine where Demented had supposedly dug in (we didn't find any, just some puppets and a tent. How did those assholes get up here in the first place?) Then there was this roar that almost caved in the tunnel. Preston said it was the oil reservoir shifting. He used fancy rockhound terms for "roar," but that didn't explain the flaming body that suddenly fell from the pit entrance above us. Preston said that kind of thing happens all the time. Mine workers get sad and try to bring light to the darkest parts of the world. Can't say I relate to that.
We spent the night down there, and I took it as another opportunity to case Wyatt Preston up, down and sideways.
Preston isn't through-and-through evil, from what I've seen so far. He's the kind of boy who stole his daddy's gun to shoot ant hills. Trick with him is, you let him talk on long enough, he starts to let stuff slip.
Preston has friends with even more gold in their pockets, turns out. He said they're into occult stuff, chanting in masks and swallowing goat eyes and whatever else it takes for them to gain more, more, more—other than taking up the Hunt themselves, of course. That's for others to do for them.
After Wyatt finished off his handle of wine, I snatched a journal from his coat. Wrote down some names, sent 'em along. You've got digging to do while I keep playing this rich boy's nanny.
The oddsome trio tracked whatever was birthed from that haunted fireplace. Pig crawled on all fours, sniffing footprints and blood. Bee held amber to the moonlight and traced the paths it revealed.
Note: (Harold puppet's whistle, do not forget the timing, get it right.)
In the thick of night, they found not a creature in the woods, but rather a man of words and sketches—a researcher. Pig held a blade to the man's throat, but the traveller was intrigued by the dear word worm. An idea was born, something unexpected but exhilarating.
Note: (String Harold puppet from tree, bring in ghost elephants and tents with the flywheel.)
With quick deception and wit, the traveller bound the man as he would a most precious puppet. If his idea were to come to fruition, he'd need to lie, and lie well. So he told Bee and Pig that far away, a wandering spectacle of death and whimsy was approaching.
The traveller had been a member of this wandering spectacle long ago, he fibbed to his companions of the road. His voice rising, he continued to conjure fabulous deceits. This word worm had seen the show and mocked the poor traveller's every performance. Had jeered, booed, thrown bricks and cats at him! He even tore down his stages and spat upon on his art!
The traveller made sure to give his all to this performance, and he could tell it was working. Bee and Pig nodded as they listened, leaned in while the story continued. They knew how it was to feel the effects of sacred efforts fallen flat.
Now, the traveller said, his performance coming to a close, he would take a long-earned revenge on the word worm. He would punish the man privately until dawn as Bee and Pig continued their hunt. It was a personal matter. Surely, they could understand.
Note: (If tears are shed, lower clouds to let them be rain.)
And so the traveller found his exit. Bee and Pig applauded his demented hunger before setting off to hunt more lies and legends and things that should not have been born. With a pain in his heart, the traveller whispered goodbye after them.
Then he untied the word-worm and began to spin new tales to tell.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE RESEARCHER Sketchbook #45: Colorado
Illustrations and Notes
Penned by Harold Black
I sketched the strange puppet fellow who saved me from Demented savagery. I owe my life to more people day by day, it seems. Hayalî took a liking to my ink, and so an easy gift of it was made.
As he recounted his tale, I divined the hunting lodge is the source of this Incursion.
The Lodge's chimney is covered in hardened pustules and forms a "birth canal," for lack of better terminology. Through it, the
Demented and their jester found the remnants of a mass storage site of Bounty Tokens. The trio glowed in Dark Sight from its contaminated energies.
I cannot prove much, but if I were to venture at a cause for a Corruption springing forth from this Token depository, it would be ritual tampering.
We were no strangers to occult "experimentation" in the bayou. We recognized it here. It was as brutal and barbaric as always.
I was wrong about Preston.
My theory: He released Token energy deep underground and awoke the Corruption in Mammon's Gulch. Intense heat and fire were either a catalyst or byproduct of its awakening, possibly involving what became of the Foundry man "Delacroix." Victims include the 3 PLSS Surveyors from the destroyed campsite we discovered before.
As Preston seeks to pry dark secrets from the earth, I will pry the secrets out of him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: SNARE "Journey to My Descendants"
Author: Snare
Handwritten Journal, 8 x 8 in.
We watched from afar as Harold laid a single bear trap in front of Pa finely carved chair. It was not hidden well, but the animal it would catch was not crafty enough to notice.
Tea boiled over the fire, and he shot a flare into the dark.
Preston came up the slope and took the nicest seat for himself. Iron snapped to his leg. His screams called Brewer over right away. I clung close to the shadows with Buckshot as we listened.
Harold wove together a tale of people stuffed with Bounties and dropped into oil. He gave locations of Demented rituals and summoning sites. While he was speaking, I watched Preston. He had the look of a lapdog who had wandered off into the woods.
We stepped up to the campfire and sidled up to Harold. The scars in Brewer's face met the scars in mine. She would stay calm in our territory, according to our agreement.
Buckshot told them that some tracks we found were filled with fire. Others led to severed bodies and witchcraft madness. Terror not seen in Louisiana was here, and it grew from Preston's properties.
Brewer did not pause long. She took her gun off Harold and set it to Preston. The man did not beg for his life. That is the confidence money gives you.
Preston threatened to end the Bounty System. Hunters follow gold above all else, he said. Corruption could spark again in the bayou, spread from Colorado, and we would fail.
He proposed a trade. Information for his life. Locations of more Bounty Token graveyards. Industry barons obsessed with the Sculptor. New Inoculations. Magics deeper than Dark Sight. "Old eyes" awakening in forgotten parts of the world.
The deal was made. It would be "our" Gulch. He would leave Colorado, and we would take his fortunes and cleanse his mess. We would take his gold and build with it a trap for all who might come after, telling us how to live and how we would be allowed to die.
Blasted was the landscape of the high west peaks, where men broke teeth on boulders for just a glimpse of gold. They bored into the earth and burrowed tunnels. They stole the river's soul with water wheels and severed trees for joy and industry. Blood and money tasted the same on their tongues. No amount of either could calm their greed.
Among these men, a fool sought out long dead secrets of the world. He believed some truth lurked in lakes of oil and the mountain's many treasures. He believed that truth whispered to him from precious veins of ore, from tar pits.
Once his drilling began, it never ceased. Black blood gushed from derricks in celebration. His efforts drew the gaze of more fools, darker fools with darker knowledge to trade. They slit the throats of goats under full moons and bayed in tongues with lungs full of incense.
Then the black wells ran dry. Whispers from the boreholes faded to silence. The fool searched for cursed treasures to extract more ichor and wealth from the mountains. He bound them to screaming victims and dropped them down into places they were not meant to go. Each life fell upon a long-sleeping evil beneath those far rocky ranges.
That evil awakened. The dreams within it rose and found new bodies to live inside. Ribcages were split open, and skin rotted to the ground. Devils took to the river as fire learned it could spread from the hearts of men.
Corruption granted the fool's wish and overtook all he owned.
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