Unexplained Phenomena Unit, session 10 recap: The Curse of Calhorn, Part 1
- samcyb
- May 12, 2023
- 27 min read
Played 28/4/23. This game was guest-GMed by Paul M Bradley, the player of Mike Jones.
This recap was co-written by me, Mike and Salems players while I was trapped in writer's block hell.
The Player Characters:
The van rumbles down the winding dirt road between the pine tree covered mountains, through the haze of the mid-afternoon heat. Inside, we find John, Ghost, Salem, Lesley, and Zoe.
Salem breaks the awkward silence.
“Sooo… Demonaco’s back, huh?”
Zoe’s eyes widen.
“Oh my god, yes! I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw him being walked into MOTHMAN in chains. Dealing with agents that have been demonically resurrected is a bit above my paygrade, but I managed to get a look at the x-rays.”
“And?”
“And he’s nowhere near human anymore. We don’t have a word for what he is.”
“Well we knew that…” Ghost mutters.
“He hasn’t been human for a long, long time, even before he died. Someone, somehow, replaced his heart with a soul artefact at some point – some kind of stone that pumps the blood with spectra-magnetic currents, and the demonic soul energy it’s been giving off has been mutating his body into a weapon, bit by bit for… god knows how long.”
“Soul artefact? Demonic soul energy? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Yeah, it’s got a fragment of a demon's soul sealed within it, powering it.”
“Could that be what possessed him while he was with the Blood Rogues?”
“It’s possible, but very unlikely. In order for any entity to influence someone, it needs a strong sense of its own identity and memory, and those things are the domain of the mind – the soul is different, it’s more formless than that. I think. Don’t quote me on that, I’m a xenozoologist, not a necrophysicist. That’s a different area of MOTHMAN.”
“I miss Mike.” Lesley mumbles, trying to make sense of anything he’s hearing.
As they emerge from the forest of pine trees, they pass an old sign with a friendly ‘Welcome to Calhorn!’ on it, and a small town comes into view ahead.
“Wow. This place looks like… what was that town in that movie…?” Lesley ponders.
“Twin Peaks? I’m getting Twin Peaks vibes.” Zoe offers.
“Never seen it. Twilight! Twilight was what I was thinking of.”
“Forks. Forks is the name of the town that Twilight was set in. That’s in Washington.” Salem says.
Everyone does a slow turn to Salem with a questioning look. John tries to slow turn but remembers that he’s driving. Salem gives each of them a deathly serious look;
“Ask another question and I will hurt you.”
At the far side of the town, they see wire fences, military vehicles and at least a hundred soldiers swarming an archaeological dig site, a deep pit with ramps down into it.
Arriving at the barricades around the site, they flash a badge, and are let through to a parking zone, and then head down into the pit on foot. In the pit they see a mass grave being examined by teams of archaeologists, but what draws the eye even more – around twenty feet away, a third of the way submerged in the dirt, is a smooth, black, oval spheroid… thing. It’s hard to tell whether it's made of metal or stone at a glance, there are no markings nor any immediately obvious signs to give away its purpose, but each member of the team can feel an ominous sensation as they step into its presence. It feels a little bit like being watched, or stalked.
At the base of the ramp, a very serious looking man in a very serious looking uniform is having a loud argument with a thin, anxious looking man in an ill-fitting suit and tie. As the thin man notices the teams approach, he runs up to them with a pleading expression.
“Who are you? Are you the FBI? Please – my name is Mr Klein, I’m the mayor of Calhorn – please tell Sergeant Bryers that th-this… this capsule? This… thing… is not to be destroyed! It’s not to be touched in any way!”
John steps forward.
“Please Mr Klein, we’ve only just arrived, we need to get our bearings. We have a vague briefing, but would you mind giving us a statement of what is going on here to the best of your knowledge? We’ll talk to Sergeant Bryers as well, and no operations will proceed until we have made an assessment of the situation for ourselves. Is that okay?”
He gestures to the others to get a statement out of the Sergeant as well. Mr Klein shuffles nervously.
“I’ve already said everything that needs to be said to the military, but they won’t listen to me. What do you want to know? We started digging here to lay the foundations for a solar panel company, but then the bodies were found, and then this thing was found, and now we’ve got too many outsiders coming in, messing with things they don’t understand!”
“What don’t the outsiders understand? What is it that you’re afraid will happen?”
“I don’t know! This town just has a history of bad luck. Of tragedies occurring whenever someone tries to open Pandora’s box. And that right there –“ He points at the obelisk. “That has Pandora’s name written all over it.”
“Would you care to elaborate on these tragedies?”
Mr Klein gives John a look like he’s accidentally said too much.
“…There’s too many. And it’ll only cause more hurt to dredge up old wounds.”
He hurries off, forcefully ending the conversation.
Meanwhile, Ghost and Lesley are taking a statement from Sergeant Bryers.
“Good to meet you… gentlemen, I am Sergeant Bryers. I understand your team will be taking over command of this operation, and we are to defer to you on any action regarding the obelisk.”
He looks Ghost and Lesley over.
“We are… *sigh* more than happy to cooperate… and be taking orders from… from a group of young upstart feds who can’t even be bothered to wear a uniform.”
Ghost raises an eyebrow, but Lesley pushes past the mumbled remark.
“Thank you Sergeant. My name is Agent Nemo, this is Agent Ghost. Do you mind sharing what you have on the obelisk already?”
“Of course. Private Wyatt!”
Another soldier, a middle-aged, wiry man with a clipboard, meekly steps forward.
“Our examinations on the object haven’t produced much actionable intel as of yet. Scans are fuzzy, only proving it to be hollow, but our magnetic stethoscopes refuse to stick to it and the material is completely smooth with no indication of any openings or seams. We reckon it's made of a new kind of metal or perhaps an exceptionally strong type of ceramic. Sonar reveals nothing beneath it, and nothing different about its underside.”
“Do you have any theories about its purpose?”
Sergeant Bryers starts looking a little more upbeat.
“Well you see, the first time I saw this monstrosity, I said ‘that’s a bomb if I’ve ever seen one’! Didn’t I say that, Private Wyatt?”
“You did, sir-”
“Still a good chance of that I’d say, but it doesn’t match any type of bomb that we have any record of, and nothing has ever been reported to have crashed here. The only other thing that makes sense to me is that it could be a new type of submarine for the land! You open that up and we’ll see if it’s man operated or computer operated! In my professional opinion, this has China written all over it.”
Zoe started off listening to the statements, but quickly got sidetracked and broke off, interested in the archaeologist's findings. Salem noticed her leaving and followed.
One such archaeologist is crouching over a skeleton, removing dirt from the bones. Zoe crouches down beside her, watching the work intently, fascinated.
“What’s the story, then?”
The archaeologist flinches as she turns to notice Zoe for the first time.
“Oh sorry! Didn’t mean to startle you. Where are my manners - my name is Zoe Gadzooks, and this is my colleague, agent Salem. We’re here with the FBI. Are you the head of this archaeology operation?”
The archaeologist stands, and Zoe does the same.
“Y-yes, I am. Dr Amelia Winters.”
“Dr Winters, would you mind if we asked you a few questions?”
“I suppose I could spare a few minutes.”
“Thank you. So – what do you think went on here?”
“Well, we’re working through causes of death on all these bodies at the moment. This gentleman? We can safely say: pickaxe to the back of the head. That one? Neck snapped. On that lady? Stabbed in lower torso. Men, women and children, all from the same time period, all suffered violent deaths. What we have so far seems to indicate that almost everyone here is both a murderer and a victim, a bunch of people who all turned on each other. For what reason, we’re still not sure. All of their belongings are still on them, so it’s unlikely to have been a robbery.”
“And when would this have happened?” Salem chimes in.
“Late 1700’s I reckon, based on the style of the coins and clothes. Can’t be too exact.”
“What are your thoughts on… the… obelisk? Is that what we’re calling it?”
“What? Oh! That. I-I’m… I’m not involved with that. That’s government business, or military business, or something like that. Above my paygrade, you know?”
“…But it might be connected to this mass grave in some way.”
Amelia scoffs.
“Really? You think something that looks like a modern day machine is connected to a crowd of people that killed each other in the 1700’s?”
“Oh, so you think it's a coincidence that it’s been found fifteen, maybe twenty feet from this crowd, at the same depth?”
“Of course. It has to be.”
“…Okay. But counterpoint - what if it’s not? As a scientist, aren’t you even a little curious about the implications of that? The purely hypothetical implications, of course.”
Amelia goes quiet. She starts absentmindedly tearing the edge of a document she has in her hand. Finally, she says;
“No. I’m not curious. Not about… that. Look, can we stop talking a-about it? As far I’m concerned, it’s not my problem.”
As the sergeant begins to lead the members of the team that were taking statements toward the obelisk, Ghost notices some commotion amongst the guards at the perimeter. A woman is struggling against being pinned down by a couple of soldiers.
“Let me go! I have to warn them –“
“Let her stand up.” Ghost shouts as he comes over. The soldiers comply, but keep a hold on her shoulders.
“ Miss, you know you’re trespassing in a dangerous place and obstructing an investigation. I would advise-“
“I know! I know – but this is important. My name is Lana Burbank, I’m a librarian, and something of a Calhorn history buff. If I can just-“
She reaches for a jacket pocket, only to have her arms grabbed again.
“…I’m going to take out a business card so you know where and how to contact me. Is that okay?” She growls reluctantly.
Ghost nods to the soldiers holding her. She takes out a card for the local library and hands it to Ghost.
“If you’re going to be investigating this thing that’s been plaguing this town for centuries, you’re going to want to hear my family's theories before you go poking around too much. We’ve been here since it was just the Native American tribes.”
“…Okay. I understand you just want to help, so we’ll let you go with a warning, and we’ll be in touch if we need to be.” Ghost says in the most affable tone he can muster.
Seemingly satisfied that someone has taken her seriously, Lana allows herself to be escorted away.
“Everything alright over here?” Lesley says, walking up beside Ghost.
“It’s fine. Let's take a look at this creepy thing.”
They walk over to the obelisk, where John is indulging more of the Sergeants' theories about it. Ghost walks right up to it.
“I assume it's safe to touch?”
“Well, actually -”
Lesley places a hand on it. With an immediate yelp of pain, he pulls his hand away.
“What happened?” Ghost asks.
“I… I don’t know. I just… felt afraid. As soon as I touched it, it felt wrong. I can’t explain it.”
“Yeah. It does that to people.” Private Wyatt adds.
Ghost slowly goes to place his hand on it as well. He feels that same wave of anxiety as his hand makes contact, and he pulls away. He tries again, this time trying to push through the feeling. He lasts a bit less than a minute.
“I don’t know what that is. It’s just… just a horrible feeling that we shouldn’t be here.”
“Allow me to try.” Salem says, removing a glove as he and Zoe make their way over.
As Salem touches the surface of the obelisk, he feels that sense of dread. He pushes it down. He closes his eyes, tries to reach out telepathically. He feels nothing. He waits a few moments for something to happen. He gives up. He opens his eyes – and suddenly he’s in a rainforest. The trees here are familiar, but larger than any he’s ever seen. Looking down at his own arms, he is surprised to find them darker, longer, covered in hair, like an apes. He hears a sound of something shrieking through the sky, a burning light filtering through the canopy above. He feels compelled to climb a tree to get a better look. As if it comes naturally to him, he swings and leaps his way up to the top, and overlooking a deep valley of greenery, he sees a bright, shining object touch down on the horizon. It kicks up a huge cloud of dust, and the ground rumbles, the trees clatter with the force of the impact. That feeling of dread returns, bubbling up from deep within -
Salem wakes up to the other three stopping him from falling over, as he staggers back a little.
“You alright?” Zoe asks.
“…Yes, I’m… I’m fine.”
“Your eyes went weird. What did you see?”
“Nothing. Just a feeling - like you said, Ghost.”
Sergeant Bryers approaches with John and Private Wyatt.
“Alright you lot, enough lollygagging. I’m calling in the civilian drill operator, see if we can’t crack this thing open.”
John takes a stance about ten feet away.
“Actually, if it's alright with you sergeant, I have a… test of my own I want to run first. I’m going to need you all to back up, get somewhere behind me.”
The group complies. John takes out his gun - and shoots the obelisk. The bullet seems to ricochet harmlessly off the surface, but everyone can feel something in the air around the obelisk shift. A low, irritating whine emanates from it. The sound builds and builds into an ear-splitting screech that can surely be heard beyond the pit, perhaps beyond the town. Everyone in the pit falls to their knees clutching their ears in pain. Everyone except for Ghost, Lesley, and a scattered few others. Their expressions fall away, as if entranced.
And just as quickly as it began, the sound stops.
Ghost and Lesley come to, confused, not sure what happened in the last ten seconds. Everyone staggers back to their feet.
John grins to himself subtly. He got a reaction. One that he can use to the team's advantage. He turns to Bryers.
“Sergeant. It’s clear this thing is not safe to be around. You need to get all these people out of here. Set up an exclusion zone and keep everyone out of the pit. We need to be left to our own work.”
The sergeant grumbles, but folds. Shouting orders to the troops as they all file out of the pit.
“WYATT!”
“Y-Yes sir!” Wyatt responds with salute.
“You will remain in the pit with this group, oversee their operations and report any developments back to me immediately.”
John pipes up, “As I said, Sergeant, we need to be left to our own work. It’s best that Private Wyatt-” The Sergeant thrusts his finger towards John, “He stays in the pit or you don’t. There’s no negotiation here.”
The crew share glances with each other, knowing they’re not going to get out of this. Before they can even agree, Sergeant Bryers is already leaving the pit.
John starts pacing around the obelisk, trying to gauge it with his eyes. Zoe begins scribbling observations in her little notebook. Lesley is unsure of what to do, suddenly curious what would happen if he licked the obelisk. He decides against it, not wanting to ruin his palette. The team seems out of ideas. Maybe it would be best just to go with the military's plan to call in some cutting equipment to force it open.
Salem notices Ghost absentmindedly twirling an odd object between his fingers as he’s thinking - a key made of dark bronze metal with teeth jagged and abnormal, too abnormal to fit any normal lock, a luminous blue grip fashioned into a shell-like spiral.
“What do you have there?” Salem asks.
“Hm? Oh, this - I found it during the heist case in Skelos city. Think it belonged to a werewolf.”
Salem withdraws an odd-looking key of his own - a thorny shape of birch wood so pale it could be bone, woven like wild vines wrapped around themselves, flattening into a crude handle at one end. The other half was a mess of bitter spikes that formed the teeth of a key, stained red by blood.
“I acquired this old thing in remarkable circumstances many years ago. I sought it out because legend has it that it's imbued with magic that allows it to conform to any lock, and not just ones that we can see. I’d wager that yours is of the same make.”
“Why has this not come up before?”
“Oh, I’ve used it plenty of times. Just not when anyone was looking.” Salem replies smugly.
Ghost looks at his own key, cogs beginning to turn.
“...not just locks that we can see… are you implying that we could use one of these on… this?” He gestures to the obelisk.
“How about both at the same time? More magic is better, right?”
“...*sigh*. Sure, why not. We don’t have a better plan.”
They approach the obelisk slowly, and prepare to press their keys to the surface of the obelisk in the same spot. Deep breath. They make contact.
They instantly feel something wrong is happening, the black surface begins to vibrate, shaking the ground beneath their feet and sending shock through the keys and down their wrists. Ghost and Salem stand their ground, as much as the pain makes them desperately want to pull back. The point of contact beneath the keys begins to glow like a blacksmith’s burning blade. Sizzling red, then redder, then a bright yellow that fades into a striking white. The sound, that horrible sound returns, growing louder and louder, screeching out and filling the pit around them with its agony.
A boom of force sends Ghost and Salem flying away into the dirt. A blinding tunnel of light shoots out of the obelisk, engulfing Ghost and Private Wyatt, blowing past them and scorching one of the walls of the pit. It stops almost as quickly as it appears, the obelisk’s cries are replaced by the gut wrenching screams of Private Wyatt, rolling around on the floor like a man on fire with the visible parts of his skin now bright red like a dreadful sunburn. Ghost clutches his own flesh, anticipating pain, but he is totally fine.
“The fuck?” he murmurs.
Lesley covers his ears to drown them out and screams “MEDIC! STRETCHER!” at the top of his lungs. Two soldiers charge into the pit with a stretcher, stumbling in their hastiness. A few more soldiers follow behind to secure the area. Wyatt is sedated and carried off out of the pit.
The gang climb back to their feet, watching private Wyatt being taken away. All but Zoe.
“Guys!” She calls out, “Look at this!”
They all pile in and look at the fresh hole now standing out clearly in the surface of the obelisk, no bigger than a golf ball, where the keys had been pressed. John hears a faint hissing, like wind on a calm day. He moves his hand closer to the hole and feels the rush of air moving inwards through the gap.
“It was vacuum sealed…”
“Precisely,” Zoe agrees, pressing her stethoscope to the surface once more and listening closely, “That explains why we couldn’t hear anything inside,” her face changes suddenly before she continues, hands shaking, “before…”
The whole team looks at her with a doomful intrigue.
“What’s in there?” Lesley asks, unsure if he actually wants to hear the answer.
“Whatever it is. It’s breathing.” she answers.
John snaps his fingers.
“I’ll ask if they’ve got a snake cam.”
Bryers returns moments later with a snake cam for the team, through the greenwashed screen of the camera’s night vision mode they see a glimpse of what’s inside. A mess of organic matter decorates the interior, what look like tendrils and veins are fused to and stretching across the inner walls.
As they withdraw the camera the interior of the pod merges with the outside world, bringing the strong smell of pungent decay for all to smell. Something is rotting.
As the UPU agents and local soldiers begin covering their faces to fend off the stench, the hole starts to expand, the metallic hull folding in as if being sculpted by an invisible hand.
Hesitantly, the group treks inside the mysterious capsule, the floor squelching under their shoes as they traverse the flesh and sinew. John stands guard at the entrance as the others explore the darkness. The smell is even worse now, they can taste it in the air. One end of the pod seems to be blocked off, and all light perished beyond a few feet. Ghost begins smacking his flashlight, trying to get the blasted thing to work, spouting curses all the while.
Before they can continue, Zoe freezes in place. She looks around frantically, confused. This thing reminds her of something, something forgotten, this feeling of deja vu overwhelms her. Salem can almost taste her inner turmoil, hear her scraping through the dark and uncharted parts of her own mind looking for an answer. She collapses into the muck, mumbling something and hyperventilating. Salem runs to her side.
“What’s wrong?”
“I-I… I can’t explain it. I shouldn’t. I don’t know what’s happening - what happened before-”
“Slow down. Talk to me. You’re…”
Something dawns on Salem as he places a hand on her shoulder to comfort her.
“You’ve been here before?”
That brings Zoe out of her own head, she locks eyes with him.
“How do you know that?”
“Hey, is she okay?” Lesley shouts from across the space.
“She’s fine, just give us a second.” Salem shouts back.
Taking Zoe aside, Salem whispers;
“Zoe. Can you keep a secret from the team?”
She nods.
“My ability to… read people, their micro-expressions, their emotions, their desires. It’s evolved into something a little more than that these days. Now, if I try, I can probe someone's thoughts and see them as if they were my own. I can do it to their memories too. I can feel you tapping on the door of a repressed memory, but you’re too scared to open it. If you want, if you’ll let me, I can open it for you.”
She hesitates.
“I’m different, that much I know, but the details…if you can find something…anything.”
Salem gently takes one of her hands in his, places his forefingers to her temple and closes his eyes.
In the murky black, he sees Zoe, wandering through dark stone corridors - like the corridor they’re in now. An explosion. Stars whirl around her. She’s lying on a table of some kind of plant matter. A similar table lowers itself from the ceiling, and on that table - another Zoe flickers into existence.
Salem and Zoe open their eyes.
The whites of Salem’s eyes streak red with bloodshot as he returns to the here and now. Zoe’s eyes begin to glisten in the dark.
“Oh god…” She whimpers quietly.
“You’re… you’re not Zoe.” Salem struggles to say.
Tears stream down Zoe’s cheeks.
“…I’ll tell you everything.”
“Finally! You little pain in my ass! Let there be light!”
At last, Ghost’s flashlight decides to grace them with vision. Although some of them soon wished that it hadn’t. In the glowing beam they come to see what was hidden in the dark end of the capsule.
Hanging, crucified to the wall, is a primate - or half of one. The poor creature has been vivisected at the stomach, its entrails and nervous system pulled out and stretching across the walls of the pod. The team had been standing in its guts the whole time. It should have died from such a mutilation, but it hadn’t, the beast wheezes painfully as its head hangs low against its chest.
Lesley politely moves past Ghost to get a closer look, along with Zoe. The two of them study the creature, Lesley jumping back into the investigative mindset that helped him write his University Dissertation. The two of them whisper ideas and deductions out of earshot of the others, before finally revealing their combined findings.
The creature isn’t just an ape, but an early hominid, one of the ancestors of mankind itself. Long extinct, or so they thought.
“If what you’re saying is right then this thing has to be millions of years old, how could it have survived this long?” Salem asked.
“It barely is anymore.” Zoe answers, pointing to the body of the ancient hominid. Its flesh has begun to decay at an advanced rate, withering into dust now that the pod has been breached and invaded by the fresh air.
“Time is catching up with our old friend here.” Lesley remarks, grimly. Struggling to watch the innocent creature suffer.
Ghost looks to the creature and to Lesley, seeing her discomfort. “There’s no honour in letting it die like this,” he pulls his pistol from its holster, ”We can grant it peace at least.”
As he begins to raise his merciful arm, the hominid’s eyes shoot open, staring deep into him. Energy pulses through the stretched out nerves of the beast and it screams, and those screams distort into the sound heard earlier. Salem’s nose bleeds as he drops to one knee, Zoe clutches her ears, Lesley falls and freezes, and Ghost finds himself paralysed, unable to put the ape out of its misery.
“Get back!” Sergeant Bryers ordered at the top of his lungs, “I said get back, men! That is an order!” John turns from the pod to witness a crowd moving towards him, and Bryers, and the capsule. Military and scientific personnel marching forwards, entranced and zombielike. John raises his sidearm, unsure but ready for anything.
Bryers goes to shout again, “I ORDER YOU TO-” but stops.
John turns again to see Bryers succumbing to whatever is happening, spinning and stumbling towards the capsule. John grabs him and throws him away from the capsule with all his strength. The horde passes over him, some stepping over him and others tripping. Those that fall just continue to crawl forward.
Before the worst can happen, the decay takes the primate once and for all. Its body fades into dust and the screaming stops. The crowd of zombies outside turns back into people, confused and uneasy. Some of them pick their Sergeant up off of the ground. As John sees the situation calming down, he enters the capsule. The others explain what had happened and John collects some samples from the hominid’s remains to study later. As they begin to leave, he notices something: a small hole in a formerly blocked off section.
“Was this here before?” he asks.
They all step forward.
“No, it wasn’t - where’s that snake cam?” Ghost answers.
The green tinted screen powers on. They all stare together as the camera excavates the abyss beyond. Shapes begin to form and they slowly start to see the passage that lays ahead. Tunnels devoid of life seem to stretch on forever, splitting off into endless different passages extending far beyond the outer dimensions of the capsule.
“There’s no way that all of that can fit in here.” Ghost remarks.
“...Unless the space we’re poking a snake cam through is a portal.” Zoe responds.
“Oh god, not more portals.” Lesley groans.
John hushes them into silence as something moves across the screen. Something…impossible is skulking in the dark, small and creeping on pitter pattering legs. Spider? Crab? They try to make sense of what they’re seeing but nothing fits the bill, a dark smoke clouds around the unknowable body as if it were a creature born of living darkness. Just looking at it makes the team uncomfortable, like they should not be seeing what they so clearly are. This feeling takes root deepest in Ghost, who’s heart stops for a moment. He clutches his chest and almost collapses as he feels his mind being assaulted by the mere concept of this…thing…
Hands shaking, lungs gasping for air, Ghost staggers out of the capsule, quickly followed by the others.
“Sergeant Bryers!” he calls.
The Sergeant looks up, still recovering from his unusual experience.
“You have to expand the range of your barriers. I want an exclusion zone a mile wide round this thing, got it?!?”
Bryers bristles at this nobody trying to order him around.
“My men need to be on alert! If that thing is a foreign weapon then we have to be close in order to-“
“Do what I say!”
“Now listen here!”
Lesley pushes himself between the butting heads.
“Woah now! Let’s all just chill out for a sec. Listen, Sergeant, I’m sure you know what you’re doing-“
“Someone has to-“
“-but in this case, we really have no idea what it will do next. We wanna make sure that people are safe.”
“Besides,” John adds. “There’ll be plenty of time to investigate when we tell the Chinese that we found their little machine.”
Bryers lights up.
“So you agree that it’s China?”
“Of course,” John lies. “That or a coalition of powers. Iran could certainly have contributed.”
“I hadn’t thought of that…” but then Bryers’ eyes seem to narrow.
“Now that’s odd, why are you suddenly agreeing with me on this? What is it that you’re-“
The sentence is cut off by a blood-curdling scream.
Bryers leads the charge as they all rush up the pit to the ambulance where Private Wyatt is laying on a stretcher. The sight makes many of them want to heave. The parts of his body touched by the light are now far beyond a mere sunburn. The skin is charred black, the left eye socket welded shut with melting flesh, his lips peeled back into a horrific pained snarl. He raises a hand and the pinky finger snaps off like an old twig.
“Help me…” he whimpers, every breath wracking him with pain. “What’s happening to me?!?”
The orderlies slam the ambulance doors shut and the vehicle speeds off to the nearest hospital. No amount of painkillers or sedation would help him now.
“Holy shit,” whispers Lesley.
“Must have been the obelisk's self-defence system.” Zoe says, trying to bury the horror under scientific curiosity. “Or maybe some knee-jerk discharge of energy brought on by the keys.”
“Whatever it was, it’s probably not gonna trouble him for much longer,” mutters John.
They turn back to Bryers, his face as white as chalk. His eyes are wide, but filled with a new clarity, as if the shock of Wyatt’s condition knocked some sense back into him. He turns to the others.
“One mile, you said? …I’ll get reinforcements.” He hurries away.
“So what are we gonna do?” Lesley asks the team as they fully regroup.
Ghost takes out the librarians business card.
“I think it’s time we got some answers.”
The crew step cautiously into the library, an old-fashioned building littered with papers and stray books, clearly Lana has turned the place upside down looking into the deepest archives of the place.
“Ah! There you are!” comes a voice from the back. Lana steps out with a huge file of papers clutched to her chest. “Sorry about the mess, I’m the only person who works here. Mayor’s under pressure from the government to slash our funding, something about libraries being a backdoor to communism.”
She clears a space on a table and slams down the files.
“Calhorn’s got a lot of bad luck hanging off it, but I think this is the stuff that really tells the story.”
They look over some of the papers. Tales of random acts of violence, industrial accidents caused by seemingly deliberate neglect, xenophobia, bigotry, and a shockingly high number of schizophrenic mental episodes; to the point where a whole new mental hospital had to be built on the outskirts of the town.
“That’s why the mayor was so keen to get the solar plant built,” she explains. “He’s got it in his head that saving the economy will stop all this.”
“You don’t agree?” asks Salem.
Lana shakes her head.
“This was happening long before the mines closed.”
“Why do you stick around then?” chimes Ghost. “I can’t imagine the people here take kindly to you, what with you being Native American. I mean, this isn’t exactly the land of love and tolerance.”
She shrugs.
“I’m native by blood but…well…my tribe was wiped out a long time ago. My great grandfather was the last one who knew their ways. I don’t have a people now. I don’t belong anywhere. Might as well stay here and help you guys.”
“Thank you,” says Salem. “Truly.”
And with renewed interest, they began to piece together the mystery of Calhorn.
From the private letters of Mrs Evelyn Knight 1754:
The story of a blacksmith who destroyed his own house while attempting to create a new type of musket, killing himself and his family as well as damaging a stone slab placed in the woods by the natives 400 years ago. She notes that said blacksmith often suffered from nervous episodes.
Nervous episodes, like we all experienced around the capsule…I wonder…
Thinks Zoe to herself.
From the official town records 1755:
Reports of a Mr Edward Smith discovering several of his neighbours falling under some kind of trance and gathering around the ruins of the broken slab, in spite of all his efforts to wake them. The authorities blamed the incident on the “pagan witchcraft” of the natives and ordered the slab to be removed in spite of the local tribes' protests. They claimed that the slab was there to ward off a great evil, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.
From the private letters of an unknown citizen 1778:
A horrifying account of the incident which led to the mass grave. It began with two children stoning to death five-year-old Julia Smith, daughter of Edward Smith, claiming that she “was not one of us” and “would have burned.” From there, a wildfire of paranoia and accusations began to spread. The Smiths and many others were accused of being English spies, witches, catholics. Within an hour, dozens of people were massacred, their bodies dumped in a shallow grave when the remaining people came to their senses.
“It seems like the thing has the power to stoke negative emotions,” comments Zoe. “Hatred, jealousy, paranoia, fear. It can play people like a cello.”
“But not everyone,” says John. “Haven’t you noticed that? Edward Smith wasn’t affected, even when all his neighbours were. And what was it those children said about his daughter? ‘She’s not one of us’.”
Zoe feels her stomach drop. What side of the division is she on?
“And the line after it!” says Ghost. “‘She would have burned’ like what happened with Private Wyatt.”
Salem nods, thoughtfully. “Perhaps the ones it can’t control, it kills.”
Ghosts' eyes widen, now it’s his turn to feel sick.
“That light hit me square on and I’m fine. Does that mean…?”
He remembers the ape, how he couldn’t kill the beast even when he wanted to, and now he knows it’s true.
The account ends with a chilling line:
“I do not exaggerate when I claim this was the devil's work, for the strangest of all details made itself apparent to me. For as the mob rushed by my window, clubs in hand and murder in their eyes, I swear to Christ himself, I saw a flock of hideous goblins following close behind. Mother always said I could see the hidden truth of things.”
Salem's eyes narrow.
‘See the hidden truth in things’…perhaps he was a psychic too, able to see the underlying power making it all work, like the vision I saw when touching the capsule. Maybe it awakens it in them, like a byproduct. Could explain the high schizophrenia rate.
He turns to the next document.
From the evening edition of the Calhorn Gazette, July 9th 1974:
The town is swept up in yet another murder case, the latest in the so-called “Calhorn Curse” a mine worker called Austin Flint killed his coworker Rodrigo DeLacey, drove his pickaxe into the man’s skull without a moment's warning. Dragged from the site still screaming about how he “wasn’t one of us.” He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent for treatment in Broadwall mental hospital.
“He’s still there, y’know,” Lana points out.
“Good,” nods John. He’ll be our next port of call.
“Hey! What about this?” Says Lesley, holding up a small paperback book.
Extract from “cleansing the hive, genealogy and unexplained violence” by Doctor William Bedlam 1992:
As part of an investigation into seemingly random acts of violence, Doctor Bedlam identified that the people of Calhorn town have an unusually small amount of genetic variation, not enough as to make the gene pool unviable, but a larger number of similarities than is typical.
“Perhaps it is this which leads to the so-called ‘Calhorn Curse’” he writes. “Building from the Selfish Gene theory proposed by Richard Dawkins (which claims that all behaviours can be likened to the struggle of genes trying to recreate themselves) it could be seen that a common genetic template has taken root in that area to the point where an over abundance of deviation in the pattern triggers a violent response in those members of the ‘genetic tribe’ creating a violent frenzy similar to that observed in certain insect hives or the packs of many of the more simple mammals. Calhorn may be an extreme example, but perhaps this behaviour is universal…”
Ghosts face scrunches with confusion.
“That…doesn’t sound legit.”
“It’s not,” replies Lesley. “The Selfish Gene theory was debunked decades ago, it was considered dubious even when it was proposed back in the 70’s.” He turns back a couple pages. “Still, the genetic census looks real enough.”
“It’s a shame Dr Bedlam didn’t know about the capsule when he wrote that,” sighs Zoe. “He wouldn’t have wasted all that time on bunk science.”
“Yeah, I dunno,” says Lesley, looking up from his phone. “I just checked the guys Twitter and he talks a lot about ‘white genocide’ I think he was gonna write that stuff no matter what.”
“Oh…that’s…that’s a shame.”
“Well, that’s everything.” Says John. “I think we should get moving with-“
“Wait! Hold on!” calls Lana, one final book in her hand. “Just found this one. I meant to show you.”
She hands John the book: Testimonials of the Native American Peoples. By Professor Fredrick Wright 1933.
“It’s this page here,” she explains. “It's…from my great Grandfather. I used to read it a lot as a kid…”
From the testimony of Red Wolf or the Calhorn Miwok people:
A legend, the story of a race of creatures who once stalked the land. Creatures who hunted men like his people once hunted the elk, who’s form could not be beheld, whose very existence was so horrifying that the native people never even gave them a name. To name them would be to grant them more power. It was said by his people that these horrific creatures were driven away many thousands of years ago, but their evil remained in the woods of Calhorn, an evil which drew people to it and pitted them against one another. The evil was growing more every year until finally, in the distant past of his tribe, the gods granted the shamans the secret to sealing it away. The stone slab was placed over the source of the evil, keeping it at bay until its destruction in 1754, and now it is stronger than ever.
“This evil exists the world over. How many places do you have in your own peoples folklore? Places that are cursed and feared by even the bravest of men? You must contain this evil once more, or else the horrors of Calhorn will come again and again, each time more horrible than the last. I know not of the rituals or techniques my ancestors used, all I know is that the secret lay in the cave known as the Coyote’s Mouth. Go there and you shall find what you seek…”
The crew look up from their research, a little wiser, but no less haunted.
“Well then,” begins John. “Anyone wanna start forming an idea of what the hell is going on?”
“I’m nearly there,” replies Zoe, but I think I need just a little more info before…”
She trails off, her face growing pale, her hands shaking.
“Are you ok?” asks Ghost.
“Ok, before I go on…I need to say something. I…”
She pauses. Salem touches her arm and catches her eye.
“Are you sure you want to tell them? It’s not something they’ll be able to unhear.”
“We need to be on the same page.”
“Tell us what?” Ghost interjects.
Zoe takes a deep breath. Salem takes a seat and observes the team’s impending reactions.
“Two years ago, I was abducted by aliens. The experience is… fuzzy, but I remember getting away. UPU intercepted my escape pod. They ran some tests on me, and concluded that I wasn’t completely human. It was then that it clicked for me - the aliens cloned me- her- us. I am the clone. They still have the original me.”
She pauses to catch her breath, and blinks back tears.
“I spent a year locked in a cell, being experimented on. Once UPU were happy that I wasn’t some alien sleeper agent, they gave me a job, putting my biology degree and my ‘unique experience’ to work for them. I had it put in my contract that they would look for the other me and give me regular updates on their investigation, but I feel like they’ve been blowing me off recently. It’s weird, but I’ve come to think of her almost like a sister, and I need to know that she’s okay. That’s the reason I applied to be a field agent with you guys too - so that maybe I could one day… save myself.”
The room is quiet.
“I did not see that coming.” Ghost mumbles.
“Me either.” Lana says.
“Oh shit, we forgot the librarian was here!”
“Oh my god, you guys suck at keeping secrets!” Lesley pouts.
“That’s what FALSE HYDRA is for.” John states, matter-of-factly. “If we didn’t make a mess, they’d have nothing to clean up and then bang goes their budget.”
“Man, that’s depressing.”
“Welcome to the government, kid.”
“Lana,” says Zoe, eager to get back to the case. “Do you know where that Coyote's Mouth Cave is?”
“Sure, I used to play there when I was young. I’ll mark it on the map for you…”
“I’m going to the hospital,” announces Salem. “I’m…interested to know why Mr Flint was found insane. I think he may have some insight on all this.”
Insight like clairvoyance. He thinks to himself. I’d put money on it…
“Ok, that settles it,” says John. “Zoe, you and Ghost come with me to the caves. Salem, you and Lesley proceed to the hospital. We’ll have this thing cracked within the hour…”
As the military tries to hold back the increasingly large crowds gathering at the exclusion zone, Sergeant Bryers looks down at the jet-black capsule. It’s funny, he thinks, but the more he watches it, the more he feels as if it’s watching him back.
“Spies…” he whispers to himself, the word echoing though his mind as if emerging from a deep dark cave.
“Yes…I feel them…there are spies everywhere…”
To be continued...
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