October 22nd
Dr. Katherine Sinclair blinked awake through a haze of medication to see a nurse disconnecting her IV drips. She muttered and sat up, rubbing her head. "Mmph. Am I free to go?"
"Just about. We just need to go through checkout procedures."
"Town still evacuated?" She asked.
The nurse — Katherine thought her name was Liao — nodded. "Sloth's Pit is staying vacant until November 2nd, at least. Yesterday was a bit of a mess; archivist went missing in the sublevels."
"Pickman?" Katherine bolted upright. "Shit, what happened?"
"Don't know. Dr. Mattings said he had information for you, but… there was blood found on his folder, and the archives are a mess—"
"Son of a bitch." Katherine rubbed her face. "Son of a fucking bitch. Did Mattings see what got him?"
"We're not sure. He's pretty shaken, just keeps talking about a photograph." Liao looked up. "He checked himself into the psych ward."
"And Montgomery?" Katherine frowned. "How is he?"
"He is right next to you." A deep voice came from Katherine's left.
She turned, and saw Montgomery Reynold's somewhat portly form laying on the bed with his arm in a sling. She shook her head. "You honestly thought it was a good idea to shoot hot plasma at a thoughtform?"
"I… panicked," he admitted, clearing his throat. "You need to get back to work. The rise in anomalous activity is dangerous, and this… Black Autumn that the Goatman described…"
"Well, I can't see what Pickman got, not yet." She tilted herself upward, and sat to turn herself out of bed. "I'm going to head down to forensics. See if I can persuade Guillard to surrender some of the data."
"When we meet again, I'll be bearing mead and paperwork," Montgomery chuckled.
"You aren't having mead until you're off your antibiotics, Mr. Reynolds," Liao chided.
Katherine shook her head, and made her way to the front desk of the trauma center to collect her effects.

"Dr. Sinclair!"
The red-headed thaumaturgist looked up from the coffee machine at the woman walking past her. Green eyes, blonde hair, and a face that looked like it had done far too much frowning, no mistaking it, this was Cassandra Pike. "You're out of the hospital!" the parazoologist beamed.
"Thankfully, my injuries were mostly superficial." She punched in the code for a hot chocolate. "How are you doing?"
"Just got back from seeing Claude," she said, holding out a scrap of paper. "He wanted me to give you this. It's something he managed to save from Pickman's folder."
Sinclair took the paper and looked it over, her other hand retrieving her cocoa. "Have they… found him yet?"
"No," she admitted. "He wasn't a bad person. I hope he's all right."
Sinclair read the paper closely.

ORANGE BEHEMOTH
1969 Douglas County Fair sets State Record for Largest Pumpkin
Weighing in at a ton and a half, the pumpkin, dubbed "Gourdon" by its owner Jeffery Hubble, was hauled into the fairgrounds on October 29th, vine and all. Gourdon literally broke the scale it was put on, and a new one had to be ordered from nearby Duluth for the purposes of measurement. Mr. Hubble (pictured above with his son Jeffery Jr. and daughter Eliza) says: "This is a magnificent day for my family. We've worked for years to grow Gourdon, and our hard work's finally paid off."

"Jeff Hubble?" Sinclair looked up at Cassandra. "Isn't he still alive? Runs the produce farm near Lover's Lane with his family?"
"Yeah, Claude and I bought pumpkins from him to make some Jack-O-Lanterns! He's a sweetie, and his daughter-in-law makes great pies." She chewed her lip. "They'll be out of town with the rest of the population, though. I'll see about making a call?"
"No need," Sinclair shook her head and started down the hall. "I'm grabbing Hastings, Partridge, and some of Squad Seven. I'll stop by Weiss's office and get her approval—"
"Director Weiss stepped down yesterday evening, Dr. Sinclair."
She stopped in her tracks and snapped around. "What?"
"She collapsed after hearing about Pickman, and was taken to the hospital in Duluth. As of right now, Dr. Hennessy is acting director. Claire Hennessy, from Multi-U?"
"Shit." Sinclair ran her fingers through her hair. "What's she saying?"
Dr. Pike walked a little further down the hall, to a touch-screen display. On it was various bulletins from around the site; on a typical day, it would have details about containment breaches, maintenance checks, and events such as seminars and disease screenings, as well as employee bulletins such as game nights and instrument practice. Now, it displayed a single, large bulletin, which Katherine read aloud.
"'As of the morning of October 22nd, Code Vandal has been declared. All Site-87 personnel have free reign on studies and projects dedicated to the protection of Nx-18 and its inhabitants, and the prevention of any further dangerous anomalous manifestations.' Shit."
"Ever see a Code Vandal before?" Dr. Pike swallowed. "I've heard about them a few times, but that's in places like Harkness or Eventide. Nowhere like Sloth's Pit."
"Once. 2008, around Christmas. Even then, it didn't spread this far outside the site." She strode towards the elevators. "Well, Code Vandal means open season. Time to assemble the cavalry."

Twenty minutes later, the Cavalry— Composed of Dr. Sinclair, Dr. Keith Partridge, Researcher Christopher Hastings, and agents Carl Ashe and Alexander Carracos stood outside the Hubble estate. It was a twelve-acre produce farm, normally tended to by the Hubbles and some hired farmhands. Sitting in the driveway was a maroon Ford pickup. In the fall, the zuchinni and pumpkins could grow to the size of small children, and they did it without any chemicals.
The size was, admittedly, helped by the fact that the soil here still had some of whatever bizarre magic John Chapman had left behind when he passed through here; most produce on the north end of town was comically large, from apples the size of one's foot to acorns that were dense enough to cause concussions when they fell.
The sky above was colored in the same omnidirectional twilight it had been when Sinclair and Montgomery had fought the Goatman. "Has the lighting been a persistent phenomenon?" She asked.
"It starts at noon and ends at dusk," Chris confirmed. "Only visible within the town's borders, of course."
"So, we're just here to look through Hubble's stuff? Is that legal?" Carracos asked, taking a bite from a jerky ration. He adjusted the sleeve of his uniform, hiding the cross tattoo beneath it. "Like, I get that the town's abandoned, but…"
Everyone looked at Carracos, eyes wide and faces bewildered. "You do realize that we wrote a good quarter of the bylaws in this town?" Partridge asked.
"Stupid question," Carracos realized. "My bad."
"We don't have time for this," Partridge griped, starting down the road to the property. "Mattings gave his girlfriend—"
"Fiance," Sinclair corrected.
"—a newspaper clipping about a giant pumpkin, and the sample that Mattings threw at us on his way to the psych ward was a clipping from a pumpkin vine. Hastings, you need to sample the produce."
"Right." Chris produced a pair of gloves and a respirator from his bag, as well as a set of secateurs, before heading towards the distant pumpkin patch.
"He ain't goin' alone," Ashe frowned, drawing his weapon and hustling after him. "Hey, Plant-talker! Wait up!"
Sinclair looked at Partridge oddly. "Plant-talker?"
"He likes to talk to specimens in the greenhouse," Partridge explained. "He actually ran a study to see if plants respond better when talked to. It's… inconclusive."
"I imagine— wait." She looked at the Ford in the driveway. "Is that Hubble's truck?"
"He shoulda evacuated with everyone else." Carracos quirked his brow, and spoke into his radio. "This is 7-6 calling S10 command, do you copy?"
«Sigma 10 Command reading you, 7-6.»
"Did we confirm the departure of the Hubble family? Up at Hubble Farms by Lover's Lane?"
«Gimme a moment.»
The two researchers walked towards the house. Sinclair rubbed his chin. "…maybe he took another car?"
Partridge peered into the truck from the passenger's-side window and shook his head. "Keys are in the ignition. And there's some clothes folded on the seat. Someone was going to leave in this car."
«7-6, this is Sigma 10 Command. We have confirmation that Jeffery Hubble Jr, his wife, and his children are in the Duluth safe zone.»
Carracos grabbed his radio. "…and Hubble Senior?"
«Not confirmed. Junior says he went back for the dog, and hasn't been heard from since.»
"Shit," Carracos ran up to meet them. "We may still have civilians on the property."
"Hold on," Sinclair knelt on the ground and drew a Celtic knot into the dirt of the driveway, reaching into her bag and removing a tube filled with ash, sprinkling it on the sign and speaking soft words. Arcs of light flew out from the sign, three flying towards her, two flying at the field where they could see Ashe and Hastings. "That's five," she stood. "No living things here, at least, other than us."
"Right, forgot we had a witch with us," Carracos snorted. He waved a hand through the arc of light going towards him. "This is kinda neat, though. Is it like that D&D spell?"
"It's not inherently Vancian, but this spell is meant to detect biological signatures. Sadly, it won't detect anything less complex than a fish." She looked at the bright red farmhouse that was the Hubble estate. "Guess we're going in. Carracos, call Ashe and tell them we're infiltrating?"
"Kay." He grabbed his radio and spoke, "Carl, Doc says we're goin' in. Get around to the back, okay?"
«There's something freaky out here, Al, it's—»
Carracos held up his hand to instruct the doctors to stop. "I did not copy that."
«It's dartin' through the patch like a goddamn gremlin. Don't know what the hell it— oh shit, run!»
Sinclair had never heard the same gun fire from two sources at once, and she doubted Partridge had either. They heard Ashe's assault rifle discharge in the direction of the pumpkin patch, as well as from the radio.
«GET OUT! FUCKING GET OUT! WE HAVE CODE S—» There was a loud, crackling crunch sound from the radio.
Sinclair looked up in time to see Ashe's life line go out. "Oh my god."
Hastings came running around the house, screaming, covered in blood. None of it seemed to be his own. "HOLY FUCKING SHIT! WE NEED TO GET OUT!"
The four remaining skippers ran towards the transport, the three researchers piling into the back and sealing the door behind them.
Carracos fumbled for his keys, only to drop them in the dirt. "Shit!"
Hastings reached into his pocket and handed him a set through the window in the back of the cab. "Take mine!" Chris was immensely thankful that even in the bureaucratic machine that was the Foundation, they had contingencies. On a field mission, every member of personnel on that mission was given the key to the transport, as too many missions had been wiped out due to the person with the keys dying.
The van roared to life. In the mirror, Carracos could see the farming patches being torn apart, dirt being kicked up by something he couldn't see. The agent swerved the van around, only to come face-to-face with the thing that had torn through the crops; a human form, on its hands and feet, pale, lanky, its arms and fingers too long to be human, its tongue looking like it belonged on Gene Simmons as viewed through a hellish LSD trip.
Carracos floored it. He should have made that thing into skid marks and burned rubber all the way back to the site. Instead, he watched it shoulder-barge into a grill, followed by the engine block imploding. Carracos's head banged against the steering wheel, and the world went black.

"Sinclair?"
"Yeah?"
"Who invented the seatbelt?" Hastings gasped, trying to undo his. "I want to marry them."
"Someone at Volvo invented the three-point," She grunted, clicking the latch and standing. "Citizens United says corporations count as people, so you might be able to marry the corporation."
"Fuck," Partridge whimpered. He couldn't unlatch his. "I think I cracked a rib."
"Carracos, call for some backup!" Hastings banged, looking through the divider. "Carraco— oh shit. He's out cold."
"Dammit," Sinclair started for Partridge. "Get out and try to rouse him. Failing that, get his radio."
"O-okay," he swallowed, drawing his knife. It was meant for cutting samples of plant life, but in a pinch, he supposed it could rupture a jugular.
Then again, he doubted it would help against the thing crawling up to the driver's side window. The pale creature opened its mouth, revealing long, needle-like fangs. It climbed into the cab, onto Carracos— before it hissed and dropped out onto the ground. It held its smouldering hand before retreating back towards the property.
Hastings made his way over to Carracos, and checked his pulse. He groaned with relief. He was alive, at least, but the cut on his head was deep. He saw that his sleeve had been burned, and turned it up, revealing a highly stylized tattoo of a Crucifix beneath. "Son of a bitch. Sinclair!"
"I'm here," she panted, exiting the transport with Dr. Partridge. "He's fine, it's just bruised. What is it?"
"Some weird pale thing just tried to get Carracos. I think it got… burned by his cross tattoo."
"That's why I couldn't see it by detecting life," Sinclair groaned. "Homo sapiens hemophagis. Vampire. Son of a bitch."
"Wait—" Hastings stared. "Do you think that's Hubble?"
"If that's Hubble, I don't want to think about what happened to his dog." Sinclair forced some bile down. "All in favor that we kill it with fire?"
Partridge groaned an 'aye', and asked, "Hastings, you manage to collect the sample?"
"Yeah." He held up a baggie of clippings of pumpkin vine, only to discover that the bag contained a bloody pulp. "Wait, what the fuck?"
"Where did you get that from?" Partridge frowned.
"I-I just cut into a pumpkin vine near the house. I… shit, I don't have proper bio-hazard containment on me."
"Put it on the ground and back away." Sinclair looked at the van. "Goddammit. It's totaled, and we're alone with a vampire. We need an exit strategy."
They all turned to look at the truck that was in the driveway, and saw the vampire leaping out of it and into the open doorway of the house.
"What do you want to bet it took the key?" Hastings looked between the two of them.
"I c'n hotwire it," Carracos groaned awake. "Basic urban combat training."
"We've got a vampire," Sinclair explained.
"Natural or mutant?" Carracos reached under his seat and took out a first-aid kit, beginning to bandage his head in the mirror.
"Mutant, definitely. Natural ones aren't affected by Holy Anathema like crosses."
"…something infected him, then," He groaned, trying the handle of the cab's door. His vision swam with color. "Take back the hotwirin' thing. Can't bounce back from gettin' knocked out. I ain't Arnie."
"You'll be bahk," Hastings joked, trying to comfort him. He looked at Sinclair, "Will he be okay by himself? Just in the transport?"
"He's probably the safest of us all. Short of that arm getting ripped off—" The two other researchers coughed. "Sorry. He's got a Holy Anathema on his skin. And even if it did get ripped off, it might get even stronger."
"So, just don't lose m'arm?" Carracos laughed. "I can do that—" he opened the door and nearly fell out of the cab. "Shit!"
Hastings caught him and nearly fell himself. "Come on," he hefted the agent to the back of the transport. "Can you two get the truck started? I know a bit of first aid. I can probably keep him stable."
"What the hell," Partridge said, taking Carracos's assault rifle. "I have firearm training."
"Since when?" Sinclair asked, making her way down to the house.
Partridge followed, and began, "Well, when I was in Guatemala back in the 1990s…"

"And that's how we almost drove triffids extinct," Partridge finished as they entered the farmhouse. The keys were, indeed, missing from the truck. "My time in South America was… eventful."
"Why the hell do you never tell us about this shit?" Sinclair wondered, looking at the carpet. There was a very large blood stain soaked into the rug, most likely what was left of the family dog. "Bailey's been looking for inspirations for his next D&D campaign at game night. I think you could write a whole sourcebook."
"Keep in mind the last time I interacted with anyone outside of botany for an extended period," He sniffed, "I became a pear tree."
"Can't argue with that," Katherine agreed. She looked into the living room, and upon seeing a lack of dead dog, entered. The farm life had been modernized, and a flat-screen TV hung above a fireplace, to each side of which were pictures of tractors and produce.
"Wow," Partridge whistled. "That's unnatural."
"Hmm?" Katherine looked over to where Partridge was; he was standing before an old color photograph of a giant pumpkin, big enough to crush the truck it was on. Even in stills, she could imagine the bright red Chevy collapsing under its weight. "Holy shit. That's Gourdon, I take it?"
"Yup," Partridge indicated the placard beneath. "Largest Pumpkin in Wisconsin, 1969."
"Y'know, I've never really gotten the appeal of farm life," Katherine circled around a chair, "But this is kinda cozy. Pity that there's a vampire living here and we'll probably have to burn this place down."
"I wanted to be a farmer," Partridge nodded, walking along the wall. "Got a degree in agronomy, decided to go to grad school for botany, eventually ended up getting a doctorate— hello," he frowned, inspecting a black and white photograph. It depicted Jeffery Hubble and alongside another person, who Partridge couldn't quite place. He opened the frame and looked on the back. "Jeff, we're gonna do great things. Clive C."
"Clive C?" Sinclair went over to him. "Let me see that." She looked at the front, and scowled. "Clive Carter."
"You know him?"
"By reputation. He's a former mayor of Sloth's Pit. His family nearly ran the town into the ground financially. Three mayoral terms under him, one under his kid. Hell, probably half the reason the town has an economy is because of us coming in in '76."
"What happened to Carter himself?"
"Vanished some time in… the late 60's." Sinclair frowned. "Huh. Either that's a hell of a coincidence, or a lead."
They started out of the living room, before Partridge spotted another picture on the wall. He tilted his head, and beckoned her over. "Isn't that Director Weiss?"
Sinclair came back over, and raised an eyebrow. The photograph depicted Hubble, now a fair bit older, with the red-haired Director Weiss, a fair bit younger, holding a pumpkin and laughing. "It is, yeah. Not surprised a lot of S & C Plastics went here for the pies. West volunteered at the corn maze a couple of times." She looked at the date on the photograph, printed in orange on the lower right-hand corner. "1981. She seems chummy with him."
"Weiss doesn't strike me as the type to get to know townies," Partridge scratched his head, before he headed out of the living room. "So, vampires… they have the standard suite of weaknesses?"
Sinclair followed. "There are a few different kinds, but generally this kind — retroviral mutant, in case you're wondering — have the standard Stoker set. Garlic, stake through the heart, rice around the grave."
"Rice around what?" Partridge asked.
"It's mainly a Chinese vampire thing, but they work elsewhere. Basically, if a vampire sees a large collection of small objects, they'll be compelled to count them. Coins, rice, marbles… there was once a vampire at a nerd convention that got distracted by counting Magic cards."
Partridge stopped. "Are you saying that the Count from Sesame Street—"
"Is probably one of the more accurate vampires in children's media. I'm as surprised as you are." She looked down the hall, and saw the kitchen ahead, pots and pans hanging over the stove. "You think they have rice in there?"
"Can't hurt to look." Partridge took point, aiming his rifle forward.
On the kitchen counter were a series of pumpkins that were in the process of being scraped and canned. They had started to rot since the evacuation, and sitting on the counter by them was an equally-rotting pie. The pie had an odd, red color to it, and a slice was cut from it. Uneaten crust lay on a plate by it on the counter.
"Who eats pumpkin pie but doesn't like the crust?" Partridge asked. "That's the best part."
Sinclair inspected the pumpkins, finding a series of twin puncture marks on them. "Teeth marks. It tried sucking pumpkin meat before blood. Probably didn't want to give in to the hunger."
Partridge looked into the pantry. "Got some rice in here!" He called, bringing out a bag of white rice. "So, I just throw this, and…
"It goes all Sesame Street on us, yeah." Sinclair looked at the pie. "The hell is with that color?"
"You do know that Galvin is going to kill us if we don't bring this in alive?" Partridge sifted his hand through the bag of rice. "She's wanted to study a vampire for years."
"I'd rather Galvin kill us than a vampire, and we can deliver the corpse to Bering." She saw something move out of the corner of her eye. She turned, and found her self face-to-face with a large, red, pulsating pumpkin. "Holy shit. Keith?"
"What?" He asked, before he spotted the pumpkin. "Oh wow."
She took out a knife and made her way over to the the pumpkin, preparing to make an incision. "Are there any varieties of pumpkin that grow red?"
"Yes, there's the Rouge D'Etant, but…" he stepped closer. "That looks more like the fruit of some carnivorous plants I've seen." He stepped up next to Sinclair, peering in at its skin. "My god. It looks borderline Sarkic."
Sinclair produced a sample vial from her bag, and placed the lip over the skin of the pumpkin, before stabbing it into the gourd. A torrent of red liquid filled the vial. Sinclair pulled away, capping the sample and holding it before the perpetual twilight out the window. "I'm no M.D., but that looks like blood to me."
"Blood from a plant?" He turned to look over the kitchen, spotting another fruit in the sink. "It's not unheard of, but again, it's usually only from carnivorous specimens, not pumpkins." He looked over the sink. "Same variety, here. Looks like it's been cleaned out."
Sinclair turned towards him. "I think we know how Hubble became a vampire."
"A pumpkin gave him vampyrism?" He frowned. "Nobody eats pumpkins whole—" His attention turned to the pie on the counter, sans slice, and the crust next to it. Sinclair's gaze followed him, and Partridge pulled out a sample baggie, sweeping the pie crust into it. "Glad he didn't eat the crust now, heh."
"…Pike did say that the Hubbles made really good pies," Sinclair swallowed.
"Looks like he snuck a slice when he came home for the dog." Partridge groaned. "Oh god dammit."
"What?" Sinclair asked.
"A vampire from a pie. A vamp-pie-er."
Sinclair's eyebrows met her hairline, and she groaned. "God, yeah, I see why you got an agronomy degree. That was a fucking corny pun—" Sinclair stopped talking suddenly, her eyes wide. "'What did Linus used to wait for?'."
"Pardon?" Partridge asked.
"Something the Goatman said the other day. I just got it: it's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." She tapped her lips. "Big pumpkin motif coming up lately."
Partridge nodded, looking at the fruit that Sinclair had punctured. It seemed to be deflating. "I… would stay back from that."
Katherine stepped back, and turned, looking over Partridge's shoulder. "Out the window, behind you."
Partridge whipped himself around. Out the window, a good hundred meters away in the pumpkin patch, the vampire stared into the house. Partridge aimed his rifle, finger on the trigger, and it seemed to take an impossibly long step towards the window and leaped through. Partridge emptied half a clip into it, as it scrambled through. The bullets barely fazed the vampire.
Sinclair and Partridge both ducked, and watched, in horror, as the vampire began to suck the blood from the pumpkin. The fruit shriveled and rotted. Sinclair shivered. "That is fascinating, but also disgusting."
"Yeah, Galvin's really going to let us have it now; observing feeding behavior and not documenting it. Anthropology won't be sending us Christmas cards, that's for sure." He spotted a glint of silver in its hand. "It has the keys."
"Of course it does," Sinclair sighed, going to the opposite side of the counter, crouching to avoid splashback.
Partridge followed her, Steadying the assault rifle on the countertop, Partridge unloaded the other half of the clip into the thing. It did a grim, twitching dance as it was filled with lead, before falling to the floor. "Is it dead?"
"No." Sinclair took up a kitchen knife, and made her way around the counter, intent on plunging the dagger in its back and going straight through the heart. She brought the knife down—
It sprung up and caught her hand, her knife dropping to the tiled floor and cracking the linoleum. It dug its finger deep under her skin, and she felt her blood start to flow from her body. "SHIT! SHIT SHIT SHIT! PARTRIDGE!"
"I got it!" Partridge threw the rice all over the sink, and the vampire. Its fingers pulled from Sinclair's skin, leaving no marks, and it began to pick at each grain of rice individually.
Sinclair stood, woozy, looking at herself. She was pale; barely two seconds of contact had drained her of about half a pint of blood. Survivable, but it still hurt. "We gotta kill it— no, I do." She swallowed, stepping forward.
"What do you have in mind?" Partridge kept his rifle trained on it. The vampire kept counting.
"It's got some of my blood in it already. It's got part of me inside of it, and that means I have power over it." She clenched her hand into a fist, and it started glowing a dark, ominous shade of red. "Blood magic is tricky. Only three people in the Foundation know how to do it without going batshit crazy over it. I'm one of them."
"How do you not give in?"
"Let's just say I have a Roundabout way of doing it." She took a deep breath, and as the vampire was counting, pulled her fist back, and let out a cry of "Blood Red… Hamon… Overdrive!"
It was stupid, but it worked. She felt her fist contact, and she felt her blood, not yet fully mixed with the vampire's, in its body. The punch forced all of the blood into one place, through its heart, and then the magic decided to give it back to Katherine Sinclair, untainted by vampyrism. She felt the blood flow into her body, and sighed as the vampire went lifeless.
Partridge stared at her. "I'm going to assume that that was some form of incantation, and that you are not, in the common parlance, a complete and utter nerd."
"You can't work at the biggest scientific research organization on the planet without being a bit of a nerd, Partridge," She rolled her shoulders and sighed, feeling blood return to her system. "Damn that's refreshing—" she blinked. "Shit, where are his keys?"
They heard a rattling sound from the sink, and looked just in time to see a set of car keys, thrown from the vampire's hands in death, slip past the pumpkin in the plant-gut-soaked sink and vanish down the garbage disposal.
"Your time in Guatemala," Sinclair hoped, "Wouldn't happen to have taught you how to plumb, would it?"

Even a botanist, it seemed, could work their way around a pipe wrench. It was a long, painful job, but the pipe was eventually undone, and the keys recovered. Sinclair and Hastings took the bed of the truck, while Partridge drove and Carracos slept off a concussion.
"This town's gone crazy," Partridge muttered to himself from the front of the truck. "Hastings?"
"I'm here, doc," He said.
"I think that my theory was correct."
"Wait, what theory?" Sinclair frowned. "You've been doing theories?"
"Long story short," Partridge informed her, "There's a documented anomaly in town, one that Site-87's not cleared to know about. Something beyond E-Class weirdness."
"Holy shit. Well, Hennessy's reasonable. She'll probably have files on the location."
"Let's talk to her tomorrow," Hastings panted. "I need a drink."
"I concur." He paused, turning onto main street. "Sinclair?"
"Yes?"
"After this has blown over… would you mind seeing if you could invite me to a game night? I've always wanted to learn Dungeons and Dragons."
"Sure thing, sir." She smiled, and looked east, as S & C Plastics showed itself over the hill.
The omnipresent twilight, eventually, faded into night. The stars declined to show themselves, hiding behind dark autumn clouds.

« Chapter 3 | Black Autumn Hub | Chapter 5 »


by DarkStuff

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Curtain Call

The Really Really Real Adventures in Capitalism

I've Been Through the Desert on a Horse with No Name

On the Radar for the miniseries The Ursus Maritimus Incident

Group of Interest / Canon Hubs

Hub
Notes

Dr. Wondertainment Hub
Made w/ taylor_itkin does not match any existing user name

What a Wonderful World Hub
Made w/ help from Uncle Nicolini, a canon sprouted from Vend-a-Friend!

Wilson's Wildlife Solutions Hub
My pride and joy, my very own Group of Interest

Are there any questions?

Our brains collapse into black holes. There is only so much information the human brain can store, and entropy would eventually have it collapse entirely. Fortunately, our machine works faster than physics the way we understand them. Nobody will know they're dead, and we won't be present to handle the aftermath.

Have you tested your machine?

No. There is no way to test it. If it works, we all die. Which means it's a one shot. All we can do is trust the equations and the conscience within. We have been able to test some cursory abilities, to make sure it works on a simpler level, but there is no way to know if the end goal works before executing said end goal. Worst case scenario, we all die and are here to feel it, which is what would happen if we didn't activate the machine anyways.

Specify cursory tests.

They were extraordinarily dangerous, which is why we only have two. In the first, the tested subject entered a coma. We believe her consciousness left her body completely, and dissipated into the universe. The second one, our subject's conscience was able to connect with my partner's. In this way, we know that we can connect souls, and we can release souls. But we could not test its ultimate use.

This, for obvious reasons, is a last resort.

Of course.

If we come within a month, this will be considered. In the meantime, your research will be monitored. Make your theories more practical. Work harder to prove them. We will see if we need your help in time. If your machine does indeed fail, it should at least provide a quicker more painless death than the inevitable.
Mr. Young, please take a seat.

Rachael was doing very important work.

60%

It wasn't homework, to be sure, but it was important.

60%

Only two days ago, while stressing over a math test in class, Rachael made the lights go out.

60%

Nobody suspected her, but she felt it. She felt her mind searching the cables and wires running through the walls.

60%

Right now, she was figuring out how to charge her cellphone without a charger.

60%

Work damn you.

61%

"Rachael," her mom called up to her, "get out of your cave and come to dinner, you've had your 'just a minute' already!"
And she had. Rachael Davidson practically danced down the stairs, rubbed her dog's face as she passed by, and spun into her chair. Rachael had accomplished something. She was learning control. She sat down, facing a bowl of split pea soup, the best possible addition to her day. Silently, her parents stared her in the eye, and they all simultaneously bowed their head. In unison, they hummed "Bless, oh lord, this food to our use and us to thy service, and keep us ever mindful of the needs of others. In Jesus' name, amen." Rachael didn't hesitate to dig in, ignoring looks from her parents.
She was having the best day she could remember, even better than Disneyworld, even better than her 13th birthday, even better than 8th Grade graduation. She had a purpose now, she was excited, she was electric, she felt like the queen of this crappy town, of this stupid country, of this dingy world!
She looked at her toaster and could feel its functions, reach through it into the outlet, and faintly feel a rat gnawing on a large important wire. She could warn her parents that they might have a rat problem, say that the fuse box looks faulty, tell them the fridge isn't as cold as it should be. She could search the house all the way into her room, and she could turn on the cat feeder without having to lift a finger. She did so, felt it hum, and felt so very, very alive.
She glanced around the room, searching for some more things she could test her abilities on without drawing attention. A home computer she could email, an alarm clock she could make go off, a TV absently playing Fox News that she would be glad to shut up.
"Wow."
"What?"
"You finished so fast."
"I have homework. It was delicious. May I be excused?"
"If you have homework, of course. Lights out by 9:30."
"'Course, mom!"
She was halfway up the stairs, contemplating her abilities. She could see everything's internal workings, activate things without a power source - where did the electricity come from? - in the right situations she could unstick an elevator, operate dangerous equipment from afar, anything with wires were her - brains had wires, brains were all wires and electric impulses, she could be a therapist, she could find cures for Alzheimer's, she could look into her mom's mind and see what she's seeing… huh.
She peered down beneath the landing, spying her mom between two stairs. She knew it was dangerous, if she screwed up who knew what would happen to her mom. But she can look through things much easier than she can affect them, what's wrong with taking a look? She hesitated for a second, contemplating the situation. It didn't take her long to weigh her options.
Rachael closed her eyes, concentrated, found the glowing oblong thing that was her mother's brain, and held it. It was difficult, she winced at first, touching it was like a constant static electric shock. She got used to it, her mom noticed nothing. She dug deeper.
She could feel the impulses, thousands of nerves going off at once, information coming in and out. She thought that in time, she might be able to read these electric messages. She barely knew what she was feeling, surges and waves soared through Rachael's body, her eyes felt like popping out of their sockets, but she held on, she maintained. She got used to it, and absently wondered if she looked suspicious right now. Maybe she was slumped on the stairs. She'll know soon enough, she thought.
She concentrated, hard, her head felt squeezed and twisted as she tried to figure out what her mom was seeing. Her biology class had conveniently explained pieces of the brain recently, and she worked her way through nerves and axons towards the back of her mom's brain, towards her occipital lobe. She felt around it, she knew. She knew she couldn't maintain this for long, she could feel it. But she wanted so badly to know. She reached a hand in, grabbed this large pulsing sphere, and felt another shock siege her body, and…
And…?
Hello?
That's not right, she must've done something wrong. She was surrounded by white, pure white, extending in all directions up down left and right.

I did something wrong. Oh shit, I did something wrong. My mom's blind, she's seeing nothing, that's what's going on. I have to pull out.

But she couldn't. She couldn't let go. She felt nothing, smelled nothing, heard nothing, and saw white. Just whiteness. This is when panic set in.

Shit shit shit shit shit.

It was like a choir in her head.

Shit fucking no, I did something wrong, I'm in a coma or she is or we both are, I wish I listened to me more often, god fucking-

There was a dark spot.
Could she move?
She could move.
She panicked in the direction of the spot.
And she was scared.
She saw darkness again, a night sky and a cobble street, gas lights and long vaguely Victorian looking dresses. Everybody's motion was frozen, like she was looking at a colored in black and white photo, men in fancy suits just going about their day. She could see a club, boozy bachelors and wooing women, a beggar on the side of the road and a bratty child spitting in his face. All their heads… where their brains should be, she saw lights so intensely bright it hurt to look at them, and a soft glow emanating throughout the rest of the city, through the walls. But none of this scared her.
What scared her were the hands she saw.
Long twisting arms extending from beyond the skyline, reaching into the heads of all these people, grabbing tightly to their minds. These were mobile, so very mobile, writhing and twisting while even the raindrops held stoutly to their spots in mid air. She could see them spreading throughout the city, disappearing behind buildings, tugging on the neurons of their heads, even more extending up into the sky, into space, going beyond the limits of vision. She couldn't move, couldn't squirm, couldn't run, as something made its way over the horizon. She was paralyzed, unable to speak, to turn, seeing herself stuck in the air dancing in the street, some large amorphous being making its way into her vision. She wanted to run, anywhere, even take her eyes away from the thing - how huge must it be, glowing from beyond comprehension.
And she felt it. Staring at it, it stopped. And she couldn't think, her thoughts replaced by true terror, a pressure in her chest, head, and stomach, a hint of nausea taking hold of her eyes and throat, as she stared at it, with no eyelids to shut. And she saw it.

i t
l o o k e d
b a c k

It was a long time before anybody heard from Rachael Davidson again.

Sometimes I Wish… | Waiting on the Good Times »


October 21st
Isaiah Howard Pickman dragged himself out of the archives for the first time in twenty hours. The man was no more than forty, but years of working in the dark, retrieving this and that for Researcher A or Agent B had taken its toll, nevermind the hassle it was to digitize the collection that Site-87 had. But, after several long, drawn-out hours, he had made his way out of the archives with what he needed.
Dr. Sinclair was likely still asleep after the predicament yesterday. In a perfect world, he'd just drop off the data and get set up to watch the World Series in a couple of days—
Instead, he ran into somebody who, in Pickman's opinion, was rather unpleasant. Before him was a tall, young man with salt-and-pepper hair that defied his age. He was lanky, borderline skeletal, and wore a pair of glasses so thick it made it look like his eyes were masked by shadow. The man looked down at Pickman with just the slightest amount of animosity. "Isaiah."
"Claude," he retorted, shoving past him. "Move it. I have documentation I need to deliver to Dr. Sinclair."
"She's resting," Dr. Mattings intoned. "She has three IV drips connected to her, and Reynolds is still getting stitches. Dumbshit opened up his arm to shoot fire."
Isaiah wondered, like many other people who worked at S & C Plastics, what Dr. Pike saw in Mattings. Cassandra Pike was (past tense being the operative term here), by all accounts, a trainwreck of a human being. Between being whammied by 3773 so hard she had to take a quarter of a year off to a very large, very nasty fight between her and Dr. Mattings, she should have been fired a dozen times over. Yet, every time, Dr. Mattings vouched for her, and his word meant a lot; he was, currently, the deputy director of biological studies at Site-87, and parazoology fell under that purview. If he said Pike was invaluable, then by god, she was.
Still, Pike had gotten better. Medication and therapy had seemed to help her out. Mattings was anything but mellow; his face screamed "sarcastic", and that was the general tone of his conversation as well, sometimes hurtfully so.
Isaiah pushed past him. "Yes, well, they both asked me to look up something for them."
"Autumn of 1969," Mattings walked with him. "Miracle Mets win the World Series, Wal-Mart is established as a company, and the whole country is still reeling from the fact that Apollo happened." He crossed his arms. "The… Unclassed Anomalous Entity, they said that this was worse than the Great Fuck-Up of '76?"
"You're hearing it thirdhand," Pickman shrugged. "But according to them, yes." He opened the file he was carrying. "From what I can gather, a few things happened in Sloth's Pit in 1969. Biggest is the Douglas County Fair."
"Just that?"
"Couple of other things; local kid's author puts out a new book, 'Uncle Zadok', doesn't sound very pleasant. The mayor resigned, which was unexpected." He leafed through the papers. "Finally, a fire gutted Berry's Restaurant. Should have stayed gone, if you ask me."
"Their food would probably taste better as ash shoveled into your mouth," Claude admitted, leaning against the wall. "The fair in Sloth's Pit? Really?"
"Yeah, they moved it to Superior the next year. A few newspaper clippings I've found talk about just… typical fair stuff." He leafed through the folder. "Candy apple booth being shut down because of high demand and low supply, reviews of the horse show, interviews with some of the animal keepers, and a Chevy truck being stolen at the fairgrounds." He pointed to a particular piece. "Check this out."
"'New Girl Scout Cookies a Hit in Sloth Spit'. Good to know they made that mistake even back then." Mattings read further, brow quirking. "Wait, seriously? They tested Samoas here?"
"I'm as surprised as you are." He closed the folder, only for a photograph to fall out of it. "Shit, grab that!"
Mattings grabbed at the photo; it was a Polaroid, black and white. He peered at the picture, his eyes going wide. "I think you got a photo from the wrong section."
"Why?" Pickman doubled back and looked at the photo. "No, see, written on the bottom, 10/31/69."
"This photo doesn't make sense," Claude swallowed. The photograph showed a fire engulfing the front of the fairgrounds, and within it, one could almost make out a hellish, screaming face. Fire trucks were around it, dousing the blaze, but there was also a van among them, with a man next to it holding a camera towards the fire. "Look."
The lights in the hall flickered, and Pickman's eyes widened. "What the hell?" He snatched the photo back and stuffed it in the folder. "I-I need to get to Weiss's office. We need to figure out what the hell this means." He ran off down the hall.
Claude Mattings ran after him, practically skidding around the corner, turning the hall into where the elevator should be— only to find reality significantly altered from its previous state.
Before him and the archivist lay a collection of tents and barns and stalls, with the sound of screaming children playing in the background; screams of excitement, not of terror, like they were on a roller coaster as opposed to having their skin flayed off. There was a night sky above the fairground, and the stars of autumn shone overhead, somehow visible through the thousands of lights from the carnival. Signs advertising funnel cakes and elephant ears and candied apples and kettle corn and cotton candy lined what had once been the walls of the site, and on top of everything else, there was the smell of animals; horses, poultry, cattle, all of this mixed together in the background of the fair.
When the two of them turned around again, they saw that this phenomenon had extended behind them. "Holy shit," Pickman swore "Holy shit, what the hell?"
"Were the Fairgrounds on Site-87's land?" Mattings asked, backing away and bumping up against a food stand.
"No. They were way up at the north end of town." Pickman held his folder snug against him. "What do we do now?"
"We follow Grimm Countenance protocols. Refuse any food or drink from here, don't question the native's motives, and try to find the exit as soon as possible." He walked down the row of food stands.
"Mattings?" Pickman followed behind him.
"What?"
"There are no natives. This place is abandoned." He looked in each of the food stalls. All of them were empty.
"Hmm." Mattings peered into the funnel cake and pretzel stand's window. "Signs of recent habitation, though. Fryer's on, and the batter for the cakes was being prepared."
"And there's that," Pickman pointed at the air, as the sound of a rumbling ride and excited screams filled the space of the park once again. "So, something's here, or else we're being fucked with." He pulled away from the booth, and began walking. "I'm willing to bet it's the la—"
Suddenly, Pickman tripped over a cable on the ground, and fell flat on his face, hands flailing to catch himself, eliciting a gasp of pain as his nose hit the dirt.
"What is this?" Mattings stepped forward, looking at the thing on the ground. It was connected to a generator, rumbling away, powering all of the stands, but it wasn't any plastic cord; it appeared to be a vine. He took out a pocket knife and cut out a slice of the vine, placing it in a sample bag retrieved from his pocket.
"Mmph," Pickman stood up, rubbing his head. He noticed a candied apple booth before him, which had a slightly rotten sign reading 'Sorry, Closed'. "Yeah. This is… some kind of version of the fairgrounds. No idea how to get out, though." He chewed his lip, and looked around. "If I had to guess, the exit is somewhere…" He started down the rows of food stands. "This way."
"…huh." Mattings pushed his glasses higher on his face, and strode after Pickman. "Well, lead on, MacDuff."
The two of them wound through the labyrinth of food carts, and the stars seemed to start to flicker out overhead.

The smell of animals grew stronger the further on they went. The hoofprints on the ground and the large piles of scat by the side told Mattings that they were near the horse stables. From here, he could hear the sounds of horses nickering and cows letting out mooing sounds. Even so, the carnival music grew louder.
"So," Pickman coughed. "You and Pike?"
"Wedding's in February," Claude nodded. "Took us months to get the forms. We're probably just going to do it at the courthouse in Superior, honestly. She doesn't much care for silk or finery, and her family couldn't give less shits about me."
Silk and finery? Pickman frowned. Who talks like that?
"Ever been married?"
"I was, once." Isaiah rubbed his hand. "Right out of college. She was beautiful, blond hair, brown eyes, a smile that could blind a man. But… it didn't last for more than a year."
"Why?"
"She got pregnant." He rubbed his beard. "I realize how that sounds, believe me. But I had some tests done the previous year and… well, found out I was sterile." He sucked air through his teeth. "I sued for divorce as soon as I found out. Still had to pay alimony."
"Hmm," Claude thumbed his nose. "Well, Cassandra and I aren't intending on having children anytime soon. Or at all. I hate kids—"
These last words elicited a response of silence. All of the animals stopped braying and knickering and clucking as they came into view of the various barns on the fairground. Sitting in front was the first sure sign of human habitation they had seen: a red pickup truck, parked in front of the horse barn. Pickman walked towards it.
"What are you doing?" Claude asked.
"It's an old Chevy. Dad had one of these." He approached it, cautiously. "I realize Grimm Countenance applies, but if this is here, maybe we can drive it out."
"Good thinking," Mattings admitted, walking alongside him. As he approached, the smell of animals gave way to a putrid scent of rotting meat, like someone had left a steak in the sun for weeks. "Oh god, what the hell?"
Pickman stopped, and bent over, retching. "Fucking hell. Smells like a roadkill enthusiast convention."
"No, Sloth's Pit had one of those once," Claude commented, pulling up his shirt over his nose so he could breathe. "This is worse."
The archivist approached the truck, frowning. "…I've seen this before." He looked up. "This is the exact truck that was stolen. From the fairgrounds, I mean, in '69. They never found it. Guess it ended up here somehow." He looked in the truck bed and turned away, gagging. "Holy shit."
"What?"
"Explains the smell, at least," He gagged, stepping away. "Human remains in the back. Covered by some plant matter— looked like pumpkin vines?"
"Well, we sure as hell aren't driving that," Mattings frowned. He reached into his pocket, and took out a flashlight, shining it towards one of the barns. Within, he saw the head of a horse, sticking out of one of the stables. His light began to flicker, before fading out. "There's a live animal in there."
"Really? Where?"
"A horse, it—" Mattings performed some percussive maintenance on his flashlight. When it blinked back on, a horse's head was on the ground from the neck up. A form cloaked in black crouched over it, and looked up at Mattings, showing its teeth the color of rotten leaves, and eyes that shone with the last light of summer. "Oh shit run!"
"Wha—" He spotted the thing sitting over the horse, and shouted, "Oh SHIT!" The pair of them ran into the night, towards the quickly-fading lights of the rides. In their haste, they failed to notice the bed of the truck was suddenly unoccupied.

Some time later, the pair of them had come to rest in the moonlit shadow of a dilapidated Ferris wheel. Any sounds of fair rides had come to a grinding halt, and they were left in the ruins of merry-go-rounds and other fair rides.
Mattings spoke up first, panting. "So. What triggered this?" Claude asked, looking behind him. This was the edge of the fairground, flanked by a tall, cement wall.
Pickman took out the photograph, and looked it over. "Time paradox in a photograph? Or some kind of Foundation countermeasure so that we never find out that they were lying to us?" He brandished the photograph. "The Foundation wasn't in Sloth's Pit, it didn't even know about Sloth's Pit, until 1976. What the hell is a van that says S & C Plastics doing at an anomalous-looking fire in 1969?!"
Claude wavered. "Is this even real?"
"Has to be, on some scale," Pickman reasoned. "The Foundation did a ton of tests with Polaroids and cognitohazards back in the Omega-7 days, so they could control 105. None of them worked. Even on photos that had nothing to do with it—"
"Her," Claude mumbled.
"—implanted cognitohazards wouldn't take." He pulled at his thinning hair. "We're by the rides."
"That we are," Claude swallowed.
"Have you never been to a fair before, Mattings? They always put the rides at the front of county fairs. Easiest way to get kids inside." He took out his phone. "If there's a way out, our phones will pick up a signal."
Mattings took out his own phone, the signal showing zero bars. He followed Pickman, who followed the wall. "Despite everything," he said, "I love her."
"Hmm?" Pickman asked.
"Cassandra. We've had our disagreements, our fights. But…" Mattings sniffed. "I'll be damned if her smile isn't what gets me up in the morning. She's got snaggleteeth, you know? Her canines look like vampire fangs. It's so cute, though." He went forward, holding out his phone. "If I survive this, I'm not having a courthouse wedding."
"That's the spirit," Pickman smiled. "These last few days have been hell, but—"
Claude's phone suddenly chimed to life. The message "Fifteen Missed Calls" showed up on the screen; he had signal. He looked up, and saw the unmistakable shade of fluorescent light of a Foundation site from beyond the ticket booth of the fairgrounds. "There!" he gesticulated. "There! Through there!"
"I see it," Pickman grinned, running forward.
There was an aperture by the exit of the fairgrounds, and sure enough, it seemed to lead back onto the archival sublevel. Pickman almost reached it, but Mattings put his arm in front of him. "What is it?"
Mattings frowned. "Something doesn't feel right." He looked down at his feet, at the rustling leaves by his ankles. "Step carefully, Pickman."
The archivist swallowed, walking towards the exit. Claude stepped in front of him, and he felt something catch his leg and squeeze, starting to grow up his calf. He tried calling for help, but he felt something take root down his throat.
The archivist felt cold as something constricted his arm hard enough that he felt the bones shatter. He let out a gasp of pain, but all that came out was air. His other hand still clutched the folder with the information he had gathered. And the photograph…
He threw his folder through the portal. His hand froze before his fingers could make a fist to crumple the photograph and throw it after him. "Matt…ings…" he called.
There was a great, awful sound, followed by a great, awful silence. Dr. Mattings turned back to face the fairgrounds, only to find an empty hallway behind him, devoid of any opening, any archivist, any entity.
Dr. Mattings looked at the ground where the aperture had been, and saw a blood-stained folder with a single, dead leaf on it. The leaf crunched and fell apart as if it had been stepped on, and footprints sounded down the corridor.
Claude Mattings ran to the nearest security alarm, away from the phantom footsteps.

« Chapter 2 | Black Autumn Hub | Chapter 4 »


1
“I can't do this,” sobs Director Alice Wistuba in the arms of her female lover in the rare moment they have together and when her pager beeps softly three hours later, she is still out of bed before waking, stumbling drunkenly, eyes scanning, lover abandoned behind her because there is a hierarchy of things that must be done and this is number one on that list and it is day one-
2
- “Open up!” yells Junior Researcher Natalie McCreed on day two. The words leave her lips in broken half-screams, cracking, jumbling in desperation, tripping and falling as she bangs on the sealed blast door. “Please!” she begs, and they do not open the blast door for Junior Researcher Natalie McCreed as she stands in her ripped clothes with an empty gun at her side and the heavy breathing of something she is not cleared to know about creeping up behind her. They do not open the blast-
3
-”I'm here, it's okay,” begs security operative Alex Whittingham from behind his protective helmet that manipulates his voice into a monotone drawl. The person he speaks to is bleeding out onto the hard linoleum floor because they knew it could happen but it would never happen to them, it would never happen here, would it? Could it? Even on day three when the days fade into nights fade into days and the bars on the windows cast long striped shadows on empty break rooms and empty bedrooms and Alex Whittingham comforting his dying boyfriend on the cafeteria floor under harsh fluorescent light and a voice filter used in interviews and containment logs, never saying talk to me but meaning a similar sentiment, breaking rules but also-
4
-”Don't drink that!” orders D-43248, a skinny man in his early twenties who did something he regrets but is smart enough to tell the other five that he's leading through dark hallways and endless staircases in hushed tones and garbage fires to not drink the water from the water fountains on day four because the sewer lines were smashed the night before and the water coursing through the site's vast pipes is likely no longer safe. They find water leaking from the ceiling above and water on the floors as they walk but good god what water can they drink? Is any water potable? Did anything breach that could have contaminated the water? How would they know? Why do they care? It seems ridiculous that in the groaning confines of the site and smatterings of friendly fire in the distance they would be concerned about water of all things, but it's with cracked lips and cotton mouth that they drink the water that comes from the 3rd level tap on day six. It's grey with rust and particulate when it comes from the sink and D-43248 still drinks, hands under faucet to mouth, not the worst thing that's ever happened to him here but still enough to fear that after all they've been through it could be the water that does them in-
5
-”Almost there-” breathes Maintenance worker Colette Dale to the older woman half-slung over her shoulder, barely breathing. The stairs they climb are concrete and cold, but it's true that they're almost there, almost there, just a few floors left to go. The older woman does not respond in the small space in front of them illuminated by her LED flashlight beam in the early morning of day seven. Dale moves faster-
6
”Chin up, kid,” says Containment Officer Simon Lorell to his son, who is standing there alive with tears streaming down his filthy cheeks and dripping onto the gun he holds that Simon would never have let his seven year old child hold in any other situation. He smiles to him and hugs him with his remaining arm. They're almost out. It's day eight but they're almost there-
7
”We got the motherfucker!” yells Mobile Task Force operative Lora Wimae in joy on day nine with her semi-automatic in one arm, kevlar rubbing against her bruised ribs, drenched in rain and dirt and blood in the dark forest surrounding the site with a mobile containment chamber the size of a train car loaded onto a semi truck bed behind her-
6
”See? We're out,” says Containment officer Simon Lorell from where he lays strapped to a gurney in the medical evac helicopter on day ten. His seven year old son winces as the medic tending to him disinfects a gash on his leg. When the helicopter takes off, his son is buckled into one of the seats, and Lorell waits until he's sure he's asleep before he rests himself.
5
”You saved me,” says the older woman to Colette Dale. She's taught her everything that she knows, and Dale doesn't think for this reason that she's really able to be thanked in this situation, but in plastic tents set up outside the ruined site on day eleven she can't say no when she hugs her.
4
”You built a mobile osmosis system?” asks the regional disciplinary officer to D-43248 as he sits across from him with a raised eyebrow. D-43248 looks up from his shoes on day twelve to meet his superior's eyes. He might not be as deep in shit as he expected.
3
”Alex?” croaks Alex Whittingham's partner of four years from where he lays in a hospital bed on day thirteen. Whittingham told himself many times that he wouldn't cry, especially not now, not when the two of them were six hours from home dressed in street clothes in the soft light of the lamp he's been reading by to pass the time for the past few days. He does anyway. His boyfriend does, too.
2
”Don't touch me,” snarls a frazzled and violent Natalie McCreed to the rescue workers that pry open the blast door on day fourteen. They look for the too-high-clearance-level-hot-breath-being that should be there with her. They only find its body.
1
”That's fine,” replies Director Wistuba over the phone from her temporary apartment far away from the site she runs. The man on the other end of the phone is far above her in rank, and when he tells her to start rebuilding, she does, because containment is like two lovers sharing breath; there is a give and take, a rise and fall. The water pushes against the levee and the levee pushes back. It's rusted in places; it was built by someone before her. Sometimes, the water builds too much, and the levee breaks.
Sometimes, it's just a matter of swimming until the tide recedes.
It is day fifteen when Director Alice Wistuba begins constructing a new levee at the waterline.


October 20th
Sloth's Pit, Wisconsin was quiet. It wasn't right; with Halloween just over a week away, it should have been bustling with children running home after school to stare at the windows of the Witch's Hut costume shop, or telling stories about how they totally saw the Goatman outside the school, guys, and how it would totally chop off Mary Quinn's head if she didn't admit to stealing Jimmy Striker's cupcake at lunch last week.
The streets were barren, evacuated. Too much of a risk, with the events that had transpired the last two days. The only people out on the streets were either incredibly brave, incredibly well-paid, or incredibly curious.
Dr. Katherine Sinclair and Montgomery Reynolds were among the latter category. They were escorted through town by Raymond February of Sigma-10. All of them were wearing black jackets that bore the word "FEMA" in large, white letters on the back. It was the standard cover story for evacuated towns, despite the fact that it endlessly encouraged conspiracy theorists.
February kept whispering prayers under his breath, in front of the two mages. He couldn't help but wonder at the irony of this, saying prayers to a God who had decreed that the likes of them should not be suffered to live. They were good people, though, and Leviticus was, in his family, generally considered to be non-canonical, much like Dr. Sinclair's opinions on The Lion King.
Dr. Sinclair stopped in the middle of main street's curve in order to draw a square of chalk, which she and Montgomery were chanting over in hushed voices, like a soft wind stealing the last leaf off of a maple tree. The pavement between them glowed, and within the square, several thin, white strands of energy made themselves known.
Katherine reached into the square and plucked at one of the strings, hearing a soft twang as it reverberated. "Yeah, same as on Clark Avenue. The Leylines are… corrupt."
"Bit lower-pitched here," Montgomery frowned, crossing his legs. "It's… eerie. This much power…"
"I don't want to think about it," Katherine stood, scuffing the chalk square with her foot, a sharp crackle marking the spell's energy dispersing. "We're just here to collect readings to send back to Sigma-3."
"Right," he stood, looking at the page of a notepad he had been given. One of the researchers, Chris Hastings, had made a connection between the locations of the scarecrows and a pictogram of a Jack-O-Lantern's face. Now, they were comparing them to a town map, and checking each location that looked like it had some significance. "Next location is… in the middle of Baby Bone Wood."
"Great," Raymond sighed. "Goatman territory. I hate that place."
"Old Capricorn is harmless," Katherine stated, starting down Babylon Road, towards their destination. "He may even be cooperative, provided he knows what's going on."
"The spooks watch this town all the time, Katherine," Montgomery shifted his shoulders. "I feel sorry for them. '76 and the deaths at the camp left a psychic scar, imagine what this has done…"
A cold wind blew through the street. Dr. Sinclair shivered, and Montgomery put an arm around her. "Thanks," she smiled.
"Where in the woods do you need to go?" February asked.
"There's an old wishing well near where some of the lumberjack housing used to be in New Toronto. They say if you look into it, you can see something look back up at you."
"Let's… not put that to the test, okay?" Raymond grinned, nervous. "I'd rather get home with all my sanity intact."
They both nodded, and Sinclair started leading the way, comparing the map to the notepad page.
God dammit, Pryce, February thought. Why did I get occult detail this year?

Raymond February chewed his lip as he stood guard. He didn't know why he was so shaken; he'd been in the Choir Boys for three years, shot at immortal heart-stealers while yelling Hail Marys and hoping they'd die. People turning up as scarecrows was child's play.
Still, as the two magicians chanted next to the old, boarded-up well, he felt cold without a single breath of wind, and felt damp air without a drop of rain on his skin. And he heard the crunch of leaves without any footsteps to accompany them.
Surrounding the well were the ruins of four log cabins, worn away from over one-hundred years worth of Wisconsin summers and winters. Some small animals — the odd badger or coyote — had made their homes among the damp wood, burrowing for grubs and roots. But now, the forest had gone silent and grey; the lighting was wrong. Raymond had managed to see the eclipse, at totality, and the lighting seemed almost like that. Twilight on all sides. "…how much longer?" He asked.
"This'll be the last one today. I'm plenty wigged out too." Katherine plucked at some of the lines of energy, contemplating what she should be doing. In a perfect world, she would be sitting in her quarters with a hot glue gun and some synthetic fur, finishing up the mask for her Halloween costume. Instead, she was here, testing leylines.
Then, with a loud twang like a guitar from hell, one of the lines broke. "Uh-oh."
"Uh-oh?" Raymond asked.
"Broken Leyline." She stood up and quickly broke the spell.
"Is that bad?"
"If we were in New York, no," Montgomery said. "New York has so many redundant leylines in it that the Foundation has looked into using empty ones to transmit high-speed internet signals. But out here, in a nexus?" He took a deep breath. "Ever hear of Nexus-29?"
"Yeah," Raymond nodded. "The one in the southwest with that weird broadcast coming out of it. They sound like a buncha weirdos."
"Ever hear of the sandstorm down there?" Montgomery cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders, looking at the well. "That was the result of only a dozen leylines breaking, which set off a chain reaction of hundreds of others. It…" He hissed through his teeth. "It was not good."
"Breaking leylines, Class-5 hauntings, people turning up as scarecrows." Sinclair rubbed her head, and looked at the sky. "This… this lighting isn't right. We need to get out, now."
"Way fu- way ahead of you, doc," February began marching back to the town. His path was cut short by an axe flying in front of his face, thrown by some unknown force, and embedding itself in the oak before him. Its blade came so close to his nose that he reflexively sneezed.
The three of them spun their heads to face the source of the attack, spotting a seven-foot-tall man with the head of a goat standing among the trees, three sets of horns on its head, and its eyes red and hateful, with hourglass pupils. Its fur was matted and black, and it bore its teeth at the three of them, letting out a hellish bleat.
"It's just the Goatman," Sinclair groaned, letting out a laugh of relief. "Scared us there! Good one. Sorry, but we-we're not terribly in the mood for that kind of business!"
The axe by Raymond's head dematerialized, and reappeared in the Goatman's hand. It let out another bleat, and threw the axe again, which managed to weave its way between Sinclair and Reynolds, and chop off a lock of Sinclair's hair.
"Oh shit," she exclaimed. "Whatever got the town got it too."
"Katherine!" Monty pushed her to the ground as the axe came around like a boomerang, missing her neck by a fraction of a second. The Goatman caught its axe, and started towards them.
The doctor gasped, jolting up and starting to run back to town. The Goatman pursued, its hooves booming like cannonballs on the forest floor, with Montgomery and February running by Sinclair.
February, for his part, drew his sidearm and fired blindly behind him at the Goatman. The shot grazed its calf, and its black fur was spattered with blood. The Goatman flinched and clutched its head, before it let out a bellowing roar that shook the leaves from the trees, an impossible sound that seemed to turn the sky darker than it was already.
"Son of a-" Raymond caught himself from swearing, and just screamed. "What do we do?!"
"You run!," Sinclair yelled back. "I'm gonna stop him from catching us!" She bit down on her right pointer finger, breaking the skin with an audible snap, stopping in front of a tree and quickly scribbling a sigil into the bark.
"What are you doing, Katherine?!" Monty yelled.
"Buying time!" she called back, breathing some Will into the sigil. A shadow fell over her as the sign glowed a dark red, and she turned to see the Goatman bring its axe towards her. Time turned to molasses.
The Goatman brought down its axe at Katherine's head-level, and she ducked down, covering her head. The axe split the tree, the force cleaving through the sigil. The magic within fizzled, sparked, and exploded; what Sinclair had meant to be a stunning spell had instead turned into a magical flash-bang.
"No!" Reynolds yelled, twisting and running back to Katherine. From under his sleeve, he produced a leaf of paper. He unfolded it, and from the folds he drew a cavalry saber, its steel blade inscribed with runes, glowing with pure anti-thaumaturgial energy. Spellshatter, Katherine had called it. Hopefully this would be powerful enough to kill a thoughtform.
The Goatman got to its feet before the mage did, and shot a glare down at her. It showed an odd kind of mercy, extracting its axe from the tree. It threw the mage over his back, and bounded into the woods with the barely-conscious doctor over his shoulders.
"NO!" Montgomery yelled, slicing his arm with the blade and yelling out words of power, of fire, of hate, towards the beast. A white-hot beam of plasma came forth, forged from his blood, hot enough to vaporize brass and liquefy rock— but then, he realized, he would hit Katherine, as well as Goatman. Five feet from the creature, he let the spell fizzle, leaving only scorch marks on the ground in its wake. Reynolds fell to his knees, and looked at the retreating form of the Goatman.
Raymond took a medkit from off his belt and started bandaging Reynold's arm. "We need to get back to site. Get you medical attention, and get reinforcements."
"Hell with that," Reynolds grunted, trying to stand. Raymond forced him back down to his knees with a soft pinch of the shoulder, eliciting a gasp of pain from the older mage.
"Hold still! I'm trying to make sure you don't bleed out from your hoodoo voodoo bulls- bunk!"
"It's not voodoo, it's hermetic thaumaturgy." He growled at February. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Beg pardon?"
"I have literally, not once, ever heard you swear! No fucks, no shits, no goddamns, no cunts, no motherfuckers!"
February shrugged. "Swearing is just something that's never appealed to me."
"You say that as you hold back a bullshit," Montgomery winced as the bandages tightened. "Seriously, why?"
"Swearing just leads to more anger. And I couldn't afford to be angry when I was in the Choir Boys. Angry meant dead." He tied off the bandages. "You're a grown man, for god's sake. I'm going to call for backup. We wait for the cavalry to get here, and then raid Koch's Hovel to get her back."
"You call for backup." Montgomery stood, wincing and holding his saber in his good hand. "The woman I love is out there, in the woods, with a psychotic tulpa. I'm going to cut it to ribbons if it so much as touches her hair."
Raymond ignored him. "Sigma-10 Command, this is Agent February. We have a missing researcher, taken by a UAE."
«Copy, February. Squad Six is En Route. What took them?»
"…the Goatman." Raymond February swallowed a swear hard as he saw Montgomery Reynolds run off into the woods.

"KATHERINE!" Montgomery Reynolds yelled, leaping through the brush with more agility than his form would suggest. "KATHERINE!"
He had been running for half an hour. He was lost. Exhausted. He knew town was somewhere to the south, but in the eclipse-like twilight, he didn't know where south was. "God… dammit." He coughed, and stuck his saber into a tree. "KATHERINE!"
He rested against the blade, using it as a support. His body was made for sitting in front of a table and translating arcane texts, not running through the forest after a supernatural monster, like a knight or — god forbid — a video game character. Katherine was the woman of action, when the time called for it, banishing zombies or fighting minor deities. He was Dumbledore with a broken wand, while she was Morcant LeFay, burning bright with magical force. She should be on Sigma-3, not in this anomalous burg. Yet, she stayed.
Did she stay for him?
He stopped his contemplation and pulled his saber out. He plodded forward, looking at his bandages. He needed stitches, not this. He should have cauterized the wound, but the nerves in his arm would be shot. It took six months before Katherine was able to use a keyboard after she burned her hands with a fire spell.
'The woman I love…'. He had said it back there, to February. He was a grown man, almost a decade older than Katherine. She had seemingly ignored any attempt he made to show his affection towards her, but all the same, he—
"INFERNUS! INFERNUS SEPULCHRUM!"
Montgomery's attention fell on a gout of fire shooting from the ground some three-hundred meters away. Fire magic, and a woman's voice. Katherine had sworn off fire for the last four years.
"Oh god," Montgomery hustled towards her, wheezing and panting. "Katherine, I'm coming!"
"INFERNUS!" the voice came again. It wasn't ritual magic, no preparation. He doubted she even had time to carve a sigil. She was doing pure invocation. It would wear her out in minutes.
He came past a cluster of trees, and found Katherine standing before the Goatman, blood trickling from her mouth. A circle of fire twice the size of the Goatman enclosed it, and it stood in the middle, looking warily at the pair of them. Katherine was slumped against the wall of the small, stone hut where the Goatman resided- Koch's Hovel.
"Oh my god," Montgomery panted. "You're… You're…"
"…drained," she groaned, slumping against the wall. Her jacket was torn, the sleeves almost entirely incinerated by the fire she had called up. "Made a circle out of ash. I figure, it's a demon, and I figure that if I think it's a demon, it'll play by demon rules, so I figure I can bind it into a circle—"
Montgomery walked around the burning ring, and wrapped his arms around her. "I was terrified." He took off the jacket and put it around her shoulders. "Are you all right?"
"I'm one of the best mages the Foundation has outside of Sigma-3, Monty," she sighed, looking at her scarred forearms. 'Non Contenti Sumus', they read. Branded onto her skin by beings not pleased by her prior sacrifices. "I'll be okay. I just… need to incinerate about ten pounds of hamburger as penitence for borrowing some power."
The Goatman, behind them, roared and slashed through the circle of fire with its axe. The first blows glanced off of an invisible barrier as the two of them moved warily around the edge, away from the beast. Katherine stumbled, and the flames flickered. "I overdid it," she coughed. "Too much energy, too little sacrifice. Circle's gonna fail."
Monty looked at the failing circle, placing Katherine behind him and drawing his sword. "How long do we have?"
"Three…two… one…"
The Goatman leaped out of the circle, and its blade met Monty's saber. The clashing of the two weapons produced a spark of blue light, and the Goatman's eyes faded from red to yellow for a flicker of a second. It rubbed hits head and murmured a plea, before its eyes returned to their hellish, red state. Its blade came down once more.
Monty parried the attack, luring it away from Katherine. She started to call out something, but it was difficult to hear between the steel of blade against the flesh and wood of the Goatman's axe. "What are you saying?!" He asked.
"Y-You can't kill him!" Katherine panted. "He's a thoughtform! Something about his story's gone wrong!"
The Goatman trying to bring its axe down on his shoulder. Montgomery parried it, and drove his blade in between its ribs. The Goatman had power, but lacked grace, and fumbled once more when the Spellshatter drove itself into its side. "So, what?" He asked. "I have to tell a story at it?!"
"I-I don't know! I'm not an epistemologist!" She winced at the sight of Monty dodging an axe to the shoulder.
Monty had a realization. Everyone left in town was so scared shitless, and that fear had to go somewhere. It had all funneled into Sloth's Pit's personal bogeyman. The best way to get rid of any bogeyman was with five words:
"I'm not afraid of you," Montgomery growled. He forced himself to believe it. "I'm afraid of what's happened to this town, of what's going to happen. I'm afraid of what's going to happen to her if I don't get her medical attention. I'm afraid of what will happen if I never tell her that I love her. But I am not. Afraid. Of you."
The Goatman stumbled, stuttered, its form shimmering, before its axe hit the ground and vanished, and it stood before them with white fur, trimmed with red, one pair of horns and a face with yellow, hourglass eyes.
It collapsed to its knees and groaned, retching. Montgomery Reynolds wondered if Tulpa could vomit. "Oh my god," The Goatman slumped against a tree, tongue hanging out. "Now I know how Coyote feels. Damn that stings."
Katherine stood up, and stumbled, leaning against Monty to look him over. "…we could very well contain you, you know. Just… stop you, right here. Bring you back to the site."
"…you have worse to worry about than me," The Goatman stood up, rising gradually from the legs up, straightening its back, then its arms, then its neck to look at them. "This is bad. What happened in town is as bad as… what you did. To the camp."
"We're not responsible for this," Montgomery held up his hand in parley. "We can assure you of that."
"I know. This is something from before you came here. I barely remember it myself." The Goatman rubbed his face. "The Black Autumn. We all agreed to forget it. 1969." He laughed. "What did Linus used to wait for? I can't even remember," he clutched his head in his hands and kept laughing. "Why am I laughing? It was godawful. We all agreed to forget. And we did."
Katherine almost asked 'forget what', but then realized the utter idiocy of that question.
"All I can tell you is that the worst is yet to come." He shivered, and entered the stone hut, crouching down in the doorway. "You need to stay as far away from the woods as you can. All of you. We… we're glad you got the town out safe." He picked up a tin can from a pile in the corner of the hut and chewed it anxiously. "I'm not the only thing that's awake in the woods."
"Dr. Sinclair!" a voice called.
"Reynolds!" another shouted. Members of Sigma-10, come looking for them.
"Go," the Goatman said. "Tell them. The Black Autumn is coming again."
The pair of them nodded, and limped towards the group of lights flashing through their trees and calling their names. After a while, Katherine spoke up. "We're adults, Monty. You don't need to beat around the bush."
"I'm a decade older than you."
"Seven years," she mused. "My mother married a man a ten years her elder. And you're… well, you're not that great at hiding feelings." She shifted against him. "I've known for years. And… I wouldn't mind sharing some unprofessional time with you."
Reynold's lips quirked into something resembling a tired smile. "If you feel that way," he said, "We can find some relationship declaration forms. I haven't filled one out in six years, however."
"They updated it," she sighed. "You have to list any anomalous properties or conditions you possess now. I have one from two months ago in the lab."
Montgomery looked at the sunset. "Let's sign it over some mead, then? I still have some reserve from the Black Garden."
"Sounds nice," she smiled, resting up against him. "Thanks."
The two of them walked into the beams of the flashlights. They would get rest, get their injuries treated. Then, they would do what they had wanted to do for years.

« Chapter 1 | Black Autumn Hub | Chapter 3 »


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“Grandsire?” Iris Dark called as she stepped through the Way from the London Office into Percival Darke's private sanctum. She had heard Marshall and Carter call it the ‘The Museum', presumably because they saw Darke as a relic. It was appropriate nonetheless since, in addition to being Darke's home and workspace, it also held his private collection of curiosities that he had accumulated over the centuries. Whether they had been purchased, stolen, discovered or invented by his own skilled hands, these were the few rare objects that were worth more to Darke than what they'd fetch on the open market.
It was a strange place, to be sure, and Iris didn't even know where it was. It was windowless and she never heard any noises from outside, so she assumed it was deep underground, yet it was utterly lacking any sort of ventilation system. It was obscenely ornate, yet rustically antiquated, not even possessing electricity. All electronic reports and messages had to be printed off and translocated to him via ravenwave.
The entrance hall was lined with braziers that burned with spectral, smokeless flames, their sepia light dancing on the marble walls and pillars. The echoes of her bootsteps were the only noise as she set out seeking for her living forefather.
It had been a little over three years now since she had become Percival Darke's proxy, the end result of a complex chain of events set in motion by a clause in a will and a (temporarily) successful assassination attempt. Darke was by far the most reclusive partner of Marshall, Carter, & Dark, and preferred to be represented by his proxy as much as was practical.
Iris was aware that she wasn't the first of Darke's descendants to hold this position. She had been preceded by a Benjamin Phineas Dark, and an Abigail Agnes Dark before him, and a Johann Dark before her. The position obviously had its perks. The shares she had been given had made her an instant billionaire, and the company health plan included various forms of life extension and resurrection. Darke also allowed her mostly free rein to do as she pleased, since he was well aware that a being as ancient as himself was out of touch. She was currently using MC&D's inexhaustible resources to finance several anomalous tech projects, and had plenty more ideas on how she might spend her billions of dollars and very long life.
An interesting consequence (though not necessarily a downside) of her new position was that people frequently thought she was Darke, just as they had with her predecessors. Staff and clients alike often viewed her as a centuries-old sorceress of unknowable power. Some people whispered that Darke was like a Time Lord, and rejuvenated into new forms every so often. Others said that he had never been anything remotely human, and his ‘descendants' were only those who had pledged their lives to him for the assurance of a tolerable afterlife. Iris had even caught wind of a rumour that she had been a call girl whose body Darke had desouled and possessed. She could hardly blame people though, since nobody knew what Darke was.
Not even her.
She had a theory though, one she had compiled from three years of interaction with him and her newfound expertise on the anomalous world. She believed that Darke, who she knew to be an alchemist and thaumaturge of great skill and power with deep knowledge of the Ways, had phased himself slightly out of this reality and into the Darkness Between Dimensions. The way he moved made it seem like he wasn't fully corporeal, and he was always shrouded in a dark aura. The void's inherent lack of entropy kept him from ageing, and its low Hume level would afford him powerful reality bending capabilities. He never faded because of the living creatures he consumed (not ate, consumed). In addition to their matter and their EVE particles replenishing his own, their Hume field replenished his. It made a weird kind of sense. He immersed himself in the Darkness, sustained himself on the Darkness, empowered himself with the Darkness.
So they called him Darke.
It was only an educated guess at best though, as she knew better than to ask him.
She poked her head in his workshop, and found it empty. The antique alchemical laboratory, the spectral forge, and the electro-thaumic workbench were all unused at the moment. She checked his study next, only to find the divination circle unlit and the vellum codices all in their proper places.
She was just about to work up the courage to try his bedchamber (where she would at best be disturbing his rest and at worst interrupting as he attended to whatever carnal needs a being of his nature possessed) when the study door slid open. Iris exhaled a sigh of relief as the tall, cloaked form of Percival Darke glided in with several books clutched in his hand.
“Grandsire, there you are. Just got back from the Library I take it?” Iris asked.
“I was able to locate some Erikeshan texts from a reality where they were a little more empirical than they were in our history,” he replied as he shut the door and set the books down on his end table. “I suspect I may be able to synthesize the substance they used to forge the Chains of Jaspetar. One never knows when one might need to imprison a colossal Elder God. But that can wait. What did you need?”
“Chan said he found a vendor selling Astrakhan Springwater at the Utterly Bazaar, and brought back a sample for testing. There is a sizable market that could afford to use the ‘soul sucker' but refuse because of moral objections. We could stand to make a lot from ‘cruelty-free' life extension.”
Iris took the vial out of her pocket and handed it to Darke. He clasped it in his boney, ashen, slightly translucent hand and meditated on it for a moment.
“It's giving off a lot of Akiva radiation, indicative of a divine origin.” He then squeezed a single droplet onto his tongue. “It's not pure. They've watered it down. I can hardly blame them, since most of their customers would have no way to tell the difference. If they're willing to sell us the pure stuff then we can make a deal.”
Darke handed the vial back to his heir, and then suddenly grew pensive.
“Chan's the one we assigned to the Circus of the Disquieting, correct?” he asked.
“Yes, we recently came to an agreement with them allowing us limited use of their Way generator,” Iris replied.
“The Kaleidoscope, yes. A truly astonishing invention,” Darke said as he sat down in his reading chair, gesturing for Iris to sit beside him.
He rung a small silver bell and an imp of a creature dressed like a renaissance period servant with its face hidden behind a brazen mask appeared from around the corner. It carried a silver tray bearing a hot chocolate for Iris and a chalice of cold, condensed miasma for Darke, so heavy it was almost liquid. The servant, or slave, or whatever it was immediately retreated from sight so as not to disturb its master for any longer than was absolutely necessary.
“Herman created that contraption a hundred years before the Foundation invented their first Multi-Universal Transit Array. He was a genius with the Ways,” Darke reminisced as he both inhaled and sipped his beverage.
“You knew Fuller?” Iris asked, blowing on her hot chocolate.
“We met in the Library, when I first discovered it late last century…sorry, no, the century before last. Most of the other patrons like to keep their distance from me, but Herman couldn't resist the opportunity to pick my brain. He was ravenous for arcane knowledge. He must have read thousands of books on the supernatural, spoken with hundreds of otherworldly sages, explored countless other realities. To tell the truth, he was so intelligent and well learned I suspected he was one of my many unaccounted-for descendants."
Darke smirked as he observed Iris trying to hide her revulsion at the thought that she might be related to some kind of carnival freak.
“As a man of means with a fascination for the occult, he was obviously a good customer. As a cunning entrepreneur of dubious morals, he was a good business partner. If I was feeling generous, I would even go so far as to say he was a good friend.”
“Until he tried to steal from you.”
“Until he tried to steal from us, yes,” Darke nodded, chuckling at the memory. “He actually created a Way into the soul-sucker's room, despite my wards, only to realize it was too big to fit through the door! We walked in on him trying to disassemble it. He said he was doing a service call, had to make sure the machine was operating at tip-top efficiency. Amos was furious.”
“Understandable, given how reliant he is on that thing.”
“True, but we were perhaps needlessly cruel to the Circus in the years that followed. I regret that, and am glad it's behind us now. Herman Fuller's Circus is a wondrous place Iris, and their Kaleidoscope an invaluable resource.”
“Yes, I'd thought you'd have some ideas on how to capitalize on that,” Iris smiled, an avaricious gleam in her eyes. “You must know about some hard-to-get-to places worth visiting. Where should we send Victor next?”
“Mr. Chan, even with a Clown at his side, may not be fully adequate for what I have in mind,” Darke replied. “I think it would be best for my proxy to accompany him. It would be good for you too, I think, to experience the anomalous ‘in the wild' as it were, not safely confined to our cages. You've mastered your occult studies with me enough to handle yourself in the field, and I have foreseen you will come to no harm.”
“I'm not worried about that Grandsire. My only concern would be that our agreement with the Circus made it very clear that Victor was to be the only one allowed through the Kaleidoscope.”
Darke only chuckled at the suggestion.
“The Man with the Upside-Down Face may seem intimidating to an undersized Chinaman or an incontinent old dotard, but even he trembles at the mention of the name ‘Darke'. Give them a ring and tell them that the Heir of Percival Darke will be accompanying Mr. Chan on his outings from now on, and see if old Manny voices any objections. Come, let us see if we can find someplace appropriate to wet your feet.”
He arose from his chair and gestured for her to follow him. They entered into his map room, which had numerous decorative maps framed upon the walls. Globes of various worlds rotated in perpetual motion above their pedestals, and the long shelves held innumerable scrolls and atlases. This was a room from which a man from before the Age of Reason could navigate the Multiverse.
"You know, if you would let us digitize this information I could make an app that could let us plot Ways on a smartphone," Iris suggested, still drinking her cocoa.
"Truth contained in the Chaos Tongue cannot be properly represented by any other language, including the binary language of computers," Darke replied. "Besides, the information contained in this room is far too priceless to risk leaking out onto that vile noospheric web of yours."
He began to pull down various antique maps until he found the one he wanted. It was a map of the ‘Yesod' multiverse, one of many such multiverses, depicted as a tree. It had twenty-one main boughs, representing the known hubs, each with dozens, if not hundreds, of branches. The ‘floater' universes were depicted as stray leaves. The roots of the Cosmic Tree reached down into the Darkness Below (which Iris knew was not the same as the Darkness Between Dimensions, but still wished they had more distinct names) where they were attacked by the imprisoned Scarlet King. The tree was simultaneously threatened by Yaldabaoth from the Heavens, though He was contained in Mekhane's silver web.
Iris knew such a map was neither literal nor accurate, but it was a charming piece of esoterica nonetheless.
“Let's see. The Realm of the Unclean has His Holy Tears and some advanced technology…but it also has the Unclean. Maybe we'll work our way up to that one. There is that Antarctic Empire…but the Foundation does have a fairly strong presence there. No, to make the best use of the Kaleidoscope we should go to a World we could never get to otherwise. Ah! Kul-Manas!”
“Kul-Manas?”
“Yes, it's a charming little city-state in a delightful floater universe. Populated mostly by mystic bird people. I've met one of them on my sojourns to the Court of Alagadda. He seemed to be a man of some standing among his people. I'll pen him a letter, see if maybe his World would be interested in establishing trade relations."
"What would they have to trade?"
"The Feathered Folk collect knowledge and technology from across all the worlds and cobble it together in a way that is uniquely their own. Their magic and technology are not only advanced but exotic. I know of nothing better for generating short-term profit than novelty. You may head back to London now if you wish. I'll see to this, but do not forget to check your letterbox. I don't want another incident like the one with the Eidolonic Collective.”
“I was as embarrassed about that as you were, Grandsire,” Iris said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “Anything I should do to prepare for the assignment?”
Darke clapped twice, and his diminutive servant appeared and presented a book to Iris while relieving her of her mug. The book's title was Otherworld Laws and Universal Constants.
“That should prove a sufficient primer for now. If I think of anything else I will send it to you.”
Iris nodded, already starting to read the book as she showed herself out.
Darke glided back to his study and grabbed a quill and parchment. Before he started writing, a small objet d'art that he had paid no attention to in years suddenly caught his eye.
It was a marionette, a souvenir from when he had attended the grand opening of Herman Fuller's Marvellously Macabre Mechanical Marionette Matinee. Fuller always did put on one hell of a show.
Darke knew what had become of Fuller, what his own Circus had done to him. He had foreseen it long ago. Still, the fact that it had only recently transpired did give it a bit of a sting. For a moment, Darke wondered if he should do something. He wondered if he should free Herman from his living hell, help him to retake the Circus, and exact revenge on those who had betrayed him.
Then he considered the cost.
Pushing the marionette out of sight, he set to work on his letter to Kul-Manas.

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