Unexplained Phenomena Unit, session 11 recap: The Curse of Calhorn, Part 2
- samcyb
- Jun 26, 2023
- 36 min read
Played 13/5/23. 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:
Salem and Lesley are walking quickly through the quiet town, on a mission. They turn a corner and see their destination - Broadwall Mental Hospital, a dingy old facility, forgotten at the end of a cul de sac. As they start up the steps, they are intercepted by a lively, lanky gentleman with a moustache. He thrusts a tape recorder in their direction, invading their personal space.
“Ted Jennings here, with the Calhorn Gazette. Are you the government agents sent to investigate the mass grave in the dig site?”
He unleashes a barrage of other questions in a theatrical tone before Salem or Lesley can get a word in edgeways.
“No comment.” Salem sneers, finally.
“Have you discovered anything about the object buried under it?”
Salem stops.
“Ted- I may call you Ted, yes? Tell me, Ted, is this really what you want to do with your life?”
“Y-yes?”
“Tch. That’s pretty sad.”
“Well, that’s rather rude-”
Salem takes a step forward, now the invader in Ted’s personal space instead.
“Listen Ted, every second I waste talking to you is more time that I’m not doing my job. Go bother someone else or I’ll run you in for hindering an ongoing investigation.”
And with that, Salem drags Lesley inside.
The receptionist of the hospital leads Salem and Lesley down a journey of corridors to the room of Austin Flint.
“He so rarely has visitors, it will be good for him. How did you say you knew him?” she asks.
“Distant relatives. We’ve been putting off visiting for too long.” Salem answers.
Inside the small whitewashed room they find him, cross legged on a bed with his back against the wall, unaware of his surroundings for the moment.
“Mr Flint?”
Austin’s wide eyes lock onto him. He looks nervous, scared to move.
“Um….Yes?” he struggles to say.
“My name is Salem, this here is my good friend, Lesley.”
Lesley offers a hand to the man, “It’s nice to meet you sir.”
Austin recoils from it, shuffling away along his bed a little.
“W-What do you want?” He asks with a weakened voice.
“To talk, if you can spare the time?” Salem tells him.
“Talk about… what?”
Lesley observes the room, the walls are covered and cluttered with drawings.
“We could start with these,” he says, trying to be gentle. “This one here, the one of the ape being grabbed by…what is that? A pincer? How’d you get the idea for that?”
“Nowhere,” Austin hisses, a little too quick off the mark to be natural. “I just…imagined it.”
“Or what about this one? The black pods flying over the rainforest? Or what about the one of the pods fighting…actually, what the hell are those things?”
“They’re nothing!”
“Salem, have you seen anything like that before? Looks like a giant starfish in space.”
Salem takes the picture off the wall and examines it closer.
“No…No I haven’t…Look, there’s another one there.”
He points to a fourth image, what appears to be a giant stalk of… something, covered in eyes, surrounded by little mushrooms. He turns to Austin. He remembers Zoe for a moment.
“Did you see these as well as the capsules?”
Austin is panicking now, sweat pouring from his pale face.
“I told you, it’s just imaginary! Why do you keep-?!?”
“Look, it’s okay,” says Lesley, reassuringly. “We know what you went through…what you did…it wasn’t your fault.”
“B-but…”
“We’re here to help,” adds Salem, kneeling down to meet his eyes. “You’re here for life, Austin, and you’ll be stuck here with the truth circling around and around in your head driving you mad. The doctors and the nurses might not listen, but we will, believe us. Now, tell us what happened. What you saw on that day in 1974…”
Austin curls up on the bed, like a child telling a teacher how much he’s misbehaved. Lesley frowns with sympathy, the thing must have twisted his mind out of shape, the horror of it regressing him into an eternal boyhood.
“I remember,” he starts. “I was with Rodrigo, packing up the stuff. We were ready to go back above ground when suddenly the lights started flickering. There was this rush of wind up the tunnel and then…then…” His eyes clamp shut.
“It’s okay, go on,” says Lesley, encouragingly.
“And then I wasn’t me anymore!” Austin cries. “There was a forest, deep and dark, and hot too! Stifling, like the reptile house! And suddenly I was swinging! Leaping from tree to tree! And that’s when I saw it…the light. It was them! They’d come again! And I knew I mustn’t go, I knew it! But then my limbs were moving and I couldn’t stop them moving! We were racing, dozens of us, bounding over with no mind of our own!”
“It must have been some kinda projection from the ship,” mutters Salem. “Like he could see the command in his mind's eye.”
“They always said I was mad,” whimpers Austin. “Even when I was a boy, they…”
“You’re not mad,” replies Salem. “Just a little more receptive than others.”
Austin continues.
“And then I saw Rodrigo…he…he wasn’t one of us…I knew he wasn’t the moment I saw him. I felt all the others behind me, rushing for him, fangs and rocks and claws and spears! I grabbed the closest thing, my pick axe, and I raised it over my head and I…I…”
He begins to sob uncontrollably.
“I didn’t want to do it!!!” he howls, words broken apart by sobbing as he breaks apart himself. “He was my friend! I wanted to stop but by the time I could see reality again…he was…”
“It’s okay,” says Lesley, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to say it.”
Salem grabs the picture of the stalk creature, a collection of the giant star-shaped things behind it.
“What about this? Was this the thing that made you do it?”
“…No,” replies Austin eventually. He takes the picture into his hands. He is instantly calmer.
“That one came later, when I was here. I saw it in a dream. It told me…it told me not to worry, that it was all ok…I…felt better when it told me…”
“Two species, then,” Salem mumbles. “Interesting…”
Meanwhile, John, Ghost and Zoe set out on their way to the Coyotes Mouth, the rust of the former industrial town giving way to lush greenery.
“You think we’ll find anything?” asks Ghost.
John shrugs.
“The book talked about how the old Shamans used to conduct their rituals there, so I’m expecting at least a low-key ancient alien conspiracy.”
They hear a twig snap behind them. The trio turn in unison and there, behind them, is Lana Burbank.
“What are you doing here?” asks Zoe.
“You thought I was just gonna leave you guys to it?!” she replies. “You’re the first people to take me seriously in years! Anyway, I know those caves better than any of you.
“She’s got a point,” Ghost says to John.
John sighs and pinches the brim of his nose.
“There’s gonna be so much goddamn paperwork…Fine, ok, yeah, you can come along.”
They step through the rocky threshold and enter into a vast chasm, the walls adorned with darkened paintings, simple drawings of the native people in their old ways of life.
“It’s beautiful,” remarks Zoe.
“You haven’t even seen the half of it,” says Lana. “Follow me…”
They squeeze through a tiny gap in the rock and the cave opens up into an even vaster space. The paintings now are brighter, more vibrant, ending in a flat wall with a vast psychedelic mural, a diamond shaped sigil at its centre.
“Woah!” gasps Zoe.
“Can’t believe this place hasn’t been flooded by tourists or researchers by now.”
Lana gives a cynical grin.
“Like the people here care about history.”
“If they did, they’d have saved us a lot of trouble,” mutters Zoe, staring at the mural. She narrows her eyes, picking something out amongst the cluttered imagery. Lana joins her side. “I wondered how long it would take for someone to notice it.”
Woven into the mural is a depiction of the capsule. More than one, a fleet of them.
“That’s why I freaked when I saw one buried under the ground,” she explains. “I used to stare at this wall for hours as a kid, but I never knew what it meant until today.”
Zoe follows the pictures as their story unfolds. A flock of people gathering around a capsule. A face contorted in terror, a blackened claw clamping around its throat. A massacre of tribes. Fragments of the spider-like creatures…
“Huh…” whispers Zoe. “It’s starting to make sense now…”
“You have a theory?” asks John.
“Part of one, at least,” she replies. “Imagine this thing, let’s call it a ship for lack of a better word, part of a fleet that came to Earth millions of years ago, back when we were still apes. A thing with the power to influence our nervous systems.”
“To scare the shit out of them, you mean,” chuckles John, darkly.
“Fear and paranoia override the rational parts of the brain,” Zoe replies flatly. “It's like stampeding cattle into a pen. The thing we saw strung up inside, it was wired into the living material of the ship, forced into becoming a battery, an amplifier for its power, sending out a wave of psychic energy that attracts people towards it.”
“But only some,” Ghost reminds her. “The others it burns.”
“Exactly!” she replies. “It probably has some low-level control over everyone, hence the fear, but certain people must be basically immune to it.”
“Why?” Ghost asks.
Zoe shrugs. “Perhaps some have mutated out of it in time, like that extra tendon in the wrist that some people don’t have anymore, or maybe there’s just always been some variation in the species. Whatever the reason, it only wants certain people.”
“What people?!” Ghost was getting angry now, the feeling of his own biology being turned against him becoming too much to bear.
“Who knows?” says Zoe, sympathetically. “Even Dr Bedlam couldn’t pin down the exact gene, only a general similarity. It must be some small element, something invisible or irrelevant to human perception, but for them… yeah, that could explain the curse.”
Lana’s eyes widen in horror.
“You mean…it’s all been one big act of eugenics?!?”
“Precisely. That slab - whatever it was - probably limited its influence to just a few nervous ticks, but once it was broken the capsule began its work in earnest. First testing its sphere of influence with the incident in 1755 before commencing a mass purge 23 years later. With the incompatible people out the way, it could better cultivate the population, making sure the majority were people useful to it, waiting for the day when we would be able to dig it up. When it sensed too much variation, it would stir up the paranoia or take temporary possession of a few individuals and get them to remove the rogue elements.”
“I feel sick,” hisses Lana.
“Join the club,” mutters John.
Ghost grabs at his hair, bunching it up in his fist in an effort to concentrate.
“But what’s it for?! Why do any of this?!?”
And then Lana has the final, horrible revelation.
“Red Wolf!” she cries. “My great grandfather! What was it he said about those creatures?! ‘They hunted men like we hunted the elk.’”
John shrugs. “Yeah?”
“I read about the customs of his tribe, they didn’t stalk elk like other tribes did. They created a lure and drew the elk to their slaughter!”
“So that’s it then? We’re just meat to these things?!” cries Ghost, his breath quickening.
“That or some other type of commodity,” Zoe adds. “Like the ape in the capsule, perhaps our biology serves some vital part in the machinery of their world, some essential component in the running of interstellar travel.” Then her expression collapses. “Or maybe not even that. Maybe it’s just some silly luxury, like perfume or cosmetics…”
She turns back to the wall, seeing the rest of the mural.
“Wait, hold on, what’s that?” she asks, pointing to the last image.
On the far right side is an enormous single image depicting the capsules at war with another fleet of ships, star shaped and bright red. Below the view from space, a group of shamans gather at the base of a giant mushroom with bright blue eyes, lightning crackling from its tendril-like appendages as it summons a circular black rock into existence.
“It’s the slab!” says Lana, suddenly realising its significance. “So that’s where they got it!”
“Wait, there’s two different aliens at work?!?” cries Ghost. “Fucks sake, it’s never simple, is it?!”
Zoe feels suddenly numb, her mind filled with a singular thought.
“I know those things.”
“What?”
“I know them…they’re…they’re the ones who made me.”
John clamps his eyes shut. “So, what, they’re nice? Though they did abduct you so… what, they’re Intergalactic PETA?”
She runs a hand across her cheek.
“No idea. Whatever it is, it’s certainly not friendly to the things in the capsule. As for its motives…”
Her mind reels at the thought. An infinity of possibilities, each with implications on who she could be, why she was made, why she’s here. It was like peering over the edge of a cliff and feeling a hand pushing at her back. Suddenly her history wasn’t an abstract anymore. It was right here, right now, staring her in the face.
“I don’t wanna worry you guys,” says Lana. “But if that capsule thing is a harvesting machine getting ready to switch on again…what the hell are we gonna do about it?”
“Find the slab again, I suppose,” says Ghost.
Zoe shakes her head.
“Whatever bits of it were left will have long since disappeared by now. We need a fresh supply of whatever it was made of and an instruction guide on how to use it.”
Ghost slumps against the mural.
“Well, guess we’re fucked, then.”
And then he jumps back.
“Woah! What the fuck?!”
“What?”
“The wall! It’s alive!”
He puts his hand cautiously against the mural. The thing is charged with a kind of static electricity, a tingling sensation that quickly overwhelms him.
“Gah! The hell is going on?!”
“I don’t feel anything,” says Lana, touching the wall.
Another revelation comes to Zoe.
“No, maybe it doesn’t for you…”
She places her own hand on it. Nothing. She grabs John's hand and does the same. Nothing.
“A defence system!”
“Eh?”
“It only shocks people who the capsule deems…compatible. That way they could make sure their technology couldn’t be destroyed by them!”
“Who’s technology?”
“The mushroom people!” cries Zoe, animated by the sheer overwhelming thrill of discovery. “Lana, do you wanna do it or shall I?”
“Do what?”
“Put your hand in the centre, right there in the middle of that diamond shape.”
Lana complies and the wall suddenly liquifies before their eyes, dissolving. An enormous domed structure is visible beyond, constructed of a strange black rock shimmering with a million colours like oil catching on a shaft of sunlight. Around the edges of the ring lay a series of glowing green mushrooms that illuminate the room. Zoe excitedly runs in, and crouches down to examine them.
“Interesting. Looks like a-“
She’s cut off by a sudden burst of spores catching her in the face. She tumbles back, coughing and spluttering, before her pupils start to dilate.
“Guys…uh…I…I don’t feel so…”
But her team isn’t around her anymore.
Gone is the light of the mushrooms, the walls of the cave, the uneven stone floor beneath her. She feels lightheaded as her sense of gravity flips, pulling her upwards. She tumbles up into a night sky, stars whirling around her once again, though not as violent this time. She adjusts her balance, and begins to feel more like she’s flying than falling. As the stars come closer, some of them - wisps of light - flit around her, an otherworldly giggle rushing past her ears. She looks to where they’re moving, and she sees nine celestial bodies orbiting a white sun. She recognises Earth, but none of the others. One of them is just… flickering. Like a ghost planet.
Another wisp of light darts past her face, turning her gaze toward where she’s flying - She’s slowing now, drifting. Camouflaged amongst the starscape, is a dark red starfish shaped object, dotted with a forest of fluorescent fungi stalks - is that a ship of some kind? It looks familiar. She touches down gently, and to her surprise, the surface feels like a buoyant water, kaleidoscopic patterns of bright glowing colour rippling out from under her feet. The giant fungi stalks around her pulse with light, and with a sound of soft bells jingling, they lean down in unison towards her. Thousands of eyes open across them, shifting whirlpools of vivid pink, yellow and blue. They’re all looking at her expectantly. Looking… to her? To do something? The stalks vibrate, the sounds of bells converging into a series of noises not unlike garbled speech in an unknown language. She hears an odd, monotone facsimile of her own voice in her head whispering, translating.
“Be not afraid.”
“W-what… what are you?”
“We are the Fungus Viatorum. The enemy you fight - we fight it too. Very long time. Many worlds. Earth is the last place it hides.”
A wisp of light draws her attention to the ground, where the red sheen of the watery surface dissolves, becoming an entrance into a web of onyx caverns inside the ship. It looks… a lot like the place they’d just discovered, beyond the murals in the cave. It’s filled with many more fungi stalk creatures covered with eyes, waiting for her. One of them, with short wriggling tendrils unfurling from the top of its form, takes a tool that looks like a chisel, and carves a rough, miniature circular slab from a cave wall. It seems to beckon her into the tunnel.
“The mushroom metal. it blocks the magic of the enemy.”
“Right. The slab shields against its influence.”
As she tentatively walks down the gravity-defying slope into the tunnel, the stalk leans down to gently place the mini-slab into her hands. It, and other stalks, begin moving around her, deeper into the tunnel, ambulating like slinkies. She follows.
They arrive in a cavern, where there are five stone objects - miniature replicas of the obelisk? A swarm of wisps of light rush in, forming animated ribbons of colour connecting them all. The top slides off the first replica, revealing a crudely sculpted but familiar interior. The ribbon of colour seems to be connected to the end of the structure where Zoe had sensed a portal.
“The enemies have magic doors. Connect across far space. They are many fingers of one hand. Mushroom metal is shield at distance - but at the door, it can be sword.”
Zoe is confused, but tries to comply with what the stalks seem to want her to do.
“...’At the door, it can be sword’? What kinda cryptic-”
She places the mini-slab inside the replica, at the end where the wisps of light are guiding her hand. Immediately, the ribbons of light turn red and disperse.
“...Oh. Ooooh. Of course. Place the slab in close enough proximity to the portal, and it’ll break it, like lodging a signal-jammer into a signal emitter. Whatever's remotely controlling the ship will lose their connection to it.”
The stalks vibrate excitedly around her, seeing her figure it out. The voice in her head begins to chant.
“Cut the finger from the hand. Cut the finger from the hand.”
The voice gets quieter and further away, as suddenly she feels a vacuum dragging her back towards the surface. She begins to panic as she feels herself beginning to wake up.
“No no no, wait! I still have so many questions -”
But it's too late. She is flung back into space, hurtling towards earth. The voices of her teammates begin to echo around her.
“Zoe! Zoe, are you okay?” shouts Ghost.
“She’s breathing.” says John.
“But she’s sweating like she’s got a fever. She could be poisoned, or-”
She shoots upright violently, accidentally headbutting Ghost onto his back.
“Aargh!” They scream in unison, clutching their heads.
“Are you okay?” John asks calmly, crouching beside her.
She takes a moment to collect herself, to take in that she’s back in the cave, back in reality. She tries to process what she has learned, and how to relay it in a way that won’t make her look crazy. She looks at him, eyes wide, trembling.
“I… have seen THE FACE OF MY GOD!”
Close enough.
The team regroup at the library and share what they’ve discovered.
“Well, that’s everything,” says John.
“We’re all in agreement with the plan?”
“Grab some pickaxes from the van, go back to the cave, get as much of that alien rock as possible and shove it in the capsule before it can do any harm,” replies Ghost. “Sure thing.”
“Right, well, let’s get going!” chirps Lana, preparing to pack up.
John raises his hand. “No, sorry, not this time. It’s too much risk.”
“Oh c’mon! You said it yourself, the thing’s gone dormant since the ape died!”
“That could change at any moment,” says Zoe. “I’m with John on this one.”
“Yeah,” adds Lesley, “plus the last time they let a civilian get involved they ended up getting stuck with me.”
“But-“
“Besides,” says Salem, affecting his best warm smile, “if things go badly, we’re gonna need someone to fall back on. I know it’s not glamorous, but believe me, you’re much more helpful where you are.”
Lana sighs, conceding the point.
“Fine. Well…good luck out there.”
They walk for some time, the streets eerily quiet and empty.
“I can’t see a single light on in any of these windows,” Ghost notices, “Where is everyone?”
“I’ve got a horrible feeling that I know,” says Zoe. “C’mon.”
As they approach the border of the exclusion zone, Zoe’s suspicions are confirmed. An enormous crowd has gathered around the barriers, all fighting to get a view of the pit. The military jostle them back and forth, struggling under the crest of the human wave in spite of the reinforcements.
“This is insane!” barks Ghost. “How did they even-?”
He picks up a discarded and lightly trampled issue of the Calhorn Gazette. “Damn, look:”
MYSTERIOUS CAPSULE FOUND, GOVERNMENT REFUSE TO COMMENT.
“Ted Jennings,” mutters Lesley. “That little bitch.”
“I’m going to cut those loose lips off his face” Salem raises.
“I’m only doing the will of the people!” shouts Ted, as if summoned by the mention of his name. “If you people refuse to let the people know the truth, then-“
“HEY!” cries Amelia Winters, forcing her way through the crowd. “Where the hell have you guys been?!”
“Conducting investigations,” says Salem. “How have-?”
“You need to reel in Sergeant Bryers, now! The guy’s gone completely nuts! He’s down there in the pit TALKING to that thing!”
“Oh God,” whispers Ghost. “That’s all we need right now.”
“I know what you are…” hisses Bryers to the faceless machine, a dozen soldiers positioned around it. “I’ve always known…no wonder they tried to keep me from rising up the ranks. They couldn’t get me to play ball, oh no, no way I was joining their little club…”
“SARGENT BRYERS, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!?” shouts Ghost, flanked by Lesley and Salem. “You were told to keep clear!!!”
“I know what it is!” he cries. “It came to me while I was keeping it under observation. It’s a spy device! All this time it’s been watching us! And I know who did it, too!”
“Get out of here!” Ghost screams. “That’s an order!”
“YOU ORDER ME?!?” Bryers sneers, storming towards Ghost as if he were going to walk right through him. “Oh yes! You do like to give your orders, don’t you!”
“Please listen!” Lesley pleads. “We know what-“
“Let me tell you what I know!” interrupts Bryers, turning and sticking a finger in Lesley’s face. “I uncover a strange new machine, something that is clearly a military matter. Then all of a sudden some nobodies from the FBI show up and start poking around, and within minutes they’ve got the thing open despite all our best methods and equipment failing. Isn’t that a coincidence?!? Then next thing you know, they’re telling me that I can’t look inside and that I should just keep clear like a good little boy!”
“But you saw what happened with Private Wyatt!”
“Oh yeah! Good point! They also get my best private killed with their meddling. Or was it meddling at all? What did Private Wyatt see that you wanted unseen?”
Their blood runs cold as they realise what is happening.
“Who do you REALLY work for? Who REALLY runs the FBI these days?”
The guards raise their rifles and turn them on the three agents.
“Shit…” whispers Salem.
“This is bad.” Zoe says, watching from up at the edge of the pit, as she and John are on their way to the van. Already she can feel the eyes of a few of the soldiers turning on them.
“John, we have to tell them what's really going on. If we don’t, the army are going to-”
“I’ve got a better idea.”
John reaches for his pistol.
“I really hate guys that monologue.”
“What the hell are you - wait, hold on - NO!” cries Zoe, grabbing at the gun. Too late.
“It’s the deep state, isn’t it?!” raves Bryers. “I knew it all along!!! That’s why I never-“
A loud bang rings out and Bryers falls back into the mud, clutching his chest. He picks himself up and lifts his hand, revealing only the slight damage to his bullet-proof vest.
“I knew it!” he growls, pointing up to the others on the surface. “Spies and infiltrators within even the government itself!!! STOP THEM!!!!”
In an instant, a soldier marches up behind John and cracks him on the back of the head with the butt of his rifle. John collapses unconscious.
“Oh shit!” shouts Zoe, narrowly dodging the same fate.
“Get out of there!” she cries into the pit. “RUN!!!”
Soldiers close in, grabbing Lesley and Ghost as they struggle helplessly against them. Salem closes his eyes and tries to tap into his powers again. He dips his toe into Bryers’ mind, only to find himself submerged in it. The fear and paranoia is channelled through the sergeant and directly into his own head. Salem is shaking with second hand fear as he’s pinned to the ground. There’s no hope of stopping it, only one option remains: Crank up Bryers’ paranoia to such an extreme that he loses all authority, all sanity, maybe even topping himself in the process.
Salem pushes his ability as far as he can, crimson spilling from his nostrils and pain searing through his skull as he seeks to not just observe, but control.
Bryers feels his mind being breached, his heart accelerating to the point where he can hardly breathe. A voice drills into his mind, so deep and dark that his sweat runs cold, “Traitors…Spies…Everywhere…” it whispers to him.
“Spies!” he rasps, slowly backing away from everyone. “Traitors! Spies! Get back! I’ll kill you all!”
Suddenly he finds himself surrounded by darkness. He looks around, realising where he’s backed himself into, the capsule’s interior envelopes him. The smell of decay is still lingering and before he can make another move, the entrance seals up once more. He begins to shake.
“Hello?” he whimpers, like a child lost in the woods.
The wall to the blocked off section peels away and a scuttling echoes through the tunnels. Bryers gets a glimpse of the enemy before its crab-like claw pins him to the ground.
“No!! Get back!! Get away!!”
The creature doesn’t listen. It raises another claw and plunges it into his chest.
Bryers screams, the last sound he will ever make of his own free will.
The screams of Sargent Bryers seem to have shocked the frenzy outside into silence. Salem, now free of the soldier’s restraint, pushes himself off of the floor. A puddle of blood where his face had been, his head throbbing from the mental strain of what he has just done. He barely even registers the low droning sound or the faint vibration that fills the air as he rises to his knees. His eyes are not just bloodshot but as red as the blood beneath him.
It’s only hearing Lesley’s scream of horror that brings him back to reality. The capsule has turned transparent, a network of nerve endings silhouetted against its bright white glow.
Sergeant Bryers turns to look at them, his lower half removed, entrails spooled out across the interior walls. He opens his mouth and the deathly reverberated cry rips itself from his throat, louder than ever. The whole crowd is stuck with horror as a rush of supernatural wind whips up and the light of the capsule begins to steadily pulsate.
Then, the violence starts.
Somewhere in the distance a man in the crowd is stabbed in the back by one of the soldiers. A woman is suddenly strangled by her husband. A baby thrown to the ground by its mother. The ones who don’t kill begin to walk, zombie-like, lumbering down the pit towards the opening maw of the capsule.
“It’s the harvest!” cries Zoe. “It’s begun!!!”
The whole street erupts into chaos, a pandemonium of smashing glass, screams, and gunshots that rips through it like a hurricane. Zoe struggles to push through the crowd as they cram blindly towards the pit, narrowly dodging attacks and attempts to stop her as she lurches forward to grab the unconscious John. She heaves with all her strength, pulling him out of the crush and shoving his body into the back of the van.
“Lesley!” she cries. “Salem! Ghost! Where are you?!?”
Salem is doubled over, screaming in agony as his powerful mind becomes a powerful weakness, split open and bombarded by the projections of the ship. He claws himself into the mud, shoving his exposed hands and face into the ground to save them from the burning light enveloping the pit. In his head he can see the apes, all those millions of years ago. He is one, fleeing for his life as the others hurl rocks in his direction.
He’ll burn. He needs to stay alive.
He’s running now, shoving past countless people, pistol in hand. Nothing else matters now, survival is the only drive, the only focus. A soldier raises her knife and charges at him wildly, her face disappears as Salem fires into her. Dead at his feet. He continues and any who get too close perish in a desperate hail of gunfire. A knife tears at his back, he spins and cuts them down too. A rock cracks across his cheek, he leaves another corpse behind. Each kill strikes his mind with a flash of the past, pummelling an ape to death with rock and stick. The dead apes pile up in the ancient forest and the bodies spread across the pit. Salem trips on over them as he climbs the slope to the surface.
There is no thought, no composure, nothing left of the suave and cunning manipulator he once was. The ship has laid him bare, exposed him for what he is at his most base and desperate, and for the first time in a long while he is truly afraid.
Lesley is frozen, fighting with every part of his will to resist the urge to join the savage crowd. It’s like swimming against the tide, his thoughts are ablaze with the psychic invasion.
No! He screams internally. Not me! I’m not my genetics, I’m not what you say I am!
He knows this fact more than most. The fight almost feels familiar to him, the same clawing against his own physical form, the fight to hold onto his identity against a world that sought to reduce him. He’d fought that battle during his transition, he’d fought it when he thought he’d never walk again, and both times he had won.
With a sudden burst of energy, he tore himself free of the capsules power and bolted up to the top of the pit, practically throwing himself into the van as he did.
He had won once again.
“Tie me down or something!” he demands of Zoe. “Superglue me to the fucking chair if you have to! I’m staying where I am no matter what!”
Ghost can barely think. His legs are carrying him along with the former Calhorn residents into the waiting capsule. He struggles to clear his mind, the heavy pulsating drone filling his entire body, overriding whatever natural sense he might have had, but soon his iron will kicks in once more and he pries himself from clutches the herd. Slowly, desperately, he staggers towards the ramp, his progress halted every ten paces by a body or a fight or an amping up of the capsule's mental hold. He screams, clutching at his head in sheer fury at his sense of helplessness.
Slowly he climbs, slowly, slowly…
Zoe dodges to the side as a possessed resident swings a broken bottle in her direction. She slams the back doors shut and dashes towards the driver's seat.
“C’mon, we’ve got to go!”
“But what about the others?!? Salem, Ghost, we can’t leave them!” shouts Lesley.
The residents are flocking to the van en-mass now, pounding the armoured plating and preparing to tip the thing onto its side.
“If we stay any longer then there'll be no hope for any of us!!”
She revs up the vehicle.
Salem collapses onto the edge of the pit, free from the burning light, but still maddened by its power. He curls up, covered in mud and blood, screaming through clenched teeth as he tries desperately to close his mind.
Ghost staggers up next to him.
“We need to get out of here,” he rasps. “Gimme your hand.”
Ghost reaches and grabs Salem by the arm, but Salem, still in survival mode, bats the hand away. Rolling to face him, he kicks and punches away at the perceived threat.
“NO!” Salem screams with a gutteral violence, “GET OFF OF ME!”
Ghost dodges what he can and tries to restrain him. “SALEM, IT’S ME!”
For a moment, Salem seems to calm down and recognise his teammate, but just as soon as he does, he feels hands around his throat. He lets out a choking cry as Ghost squeezes the life from him, succumbing again to the call of the ship.
Suddenly, Ghost feels the red-hot barrel of Salem's gun pressing into his temple. The pain of it shocks Ghost back to his senses and he pulls his hands away from his fellow agent’s throat.
“I’m sorry,” he rasps. “I can’t…we need to get the fuck out of here.”
And that’s when he hears it, the rev of the engine. He looks up and sees the van speeding away. His friends have abandoned him.
“Wait!!!” he screams. “Come back!!!”
Salem, still suffering his spiral of mental chaos, seizes the opportunity. Bringing both feet up under Ghost’s chest and kicking him off with all his strength. He rolls and begins clawing his way through the mud like an olympic swimmer.
Ghost hits the ground with a thud. Sitting up, he glimpses Salem running away, his mind unable to process anything other than fight or flight. Something breaks within Ghost, a betrayal that cuts deep into his spirit.
“Fuck you all…” he whimpers, before the call of the obelisk pulls him back again.
Salem runs blindly, leaping over rubble, throwing people out of his way, until finally flinging himself through the smashed-up window of a nearby house. He curls up, gripping his head, trying to blot out the noise which is flooding his mind.
“Martha! Get the nails! We’ve gotta board up these windows before…!”
Salem looks up. A middle-aged man is standing at the foot of the stairs, a few planks of plasterboard under his arm. The man drops the planks, shouting incoherent warnings, and Salem pulls out the pistol, jabbing it at the air.
“Don’t come near me!!!” he screams. “I’ll use it!!! I will!!!”
And then the noise in his head gets louder. The capsule's influence is growing steadily, the force of its signal tearing at his nerves. He screams and drops the weapon, the outside world leaving him behind.
“No!!!” he wails. “I’m not compatible!!! You don’t want me!!! Get out of my head!!!”
The whole town is enveloped in madness. Crowds of people are leaving their homes, leaving their cars in the middle of the street, marching in the direction of the dig site, their friends and family begging them to stop, only to be violently struck down in a mindless frenzy.
The van swerves away from the raucous mob, dodging weapons being thrown in its direction, as fast as it can go towards the cave in the woods.
The further they get, the less and less Lesley can feel the influence. He snaps out of a trance, to the sound of Zoes voice.
"Lesley? You with me?"
"Uh... Kinda... yeah. Yes. I'm back."
"Okay, great. I need you to do something for me. You see my bag?"
"...Yeah?"
"I need you to get my laptop. I need you to log into the UPU historical database, find out anything you can about this Native American warding ritual, or this alien stone material we're going to be using for it. We need to know as much as possible to get it done right."
"Okay. Got it. What's your password?"
"It's Oshawott05."
"...like the Pokemon?"
"YES LIKE THE POKEMON!"
"...I like oshawott too…"
“It’s one of the best and cutest designs to come out of generation 5 - wait! Sorry, we need to focus! Geek stuff later! If we survive! I need you to work out how much of that stone we’d need to sever the link.”
Lesley looks confused.
“But surely we just need another slab to-“
“If I’m right, that rock works like an absorber for the capsule's power. The slab was only effective because it was dealing with the power projected from a partially dormant ship buried under tonnes of dirt. With the thing out in the open at full blast, we’re gonna need a lot more to deal with it!”
“Well how the hell do I work THAT out?! It’s not exactly a thing you can just google!”
“I have a special programme for this kinda thing, punch in the dimensions of the capsule, nature of the energy and range of influence and from there it can calculate the size of the necessary counterforce.”
“And what are any of those dimensions?!”
“…y’know what, let’s just say a lump the size of a suitcase.”
Suddenly they are caught off guard. A gang of possessed people emerges from an alley and throws a brick at the van. Zoe swerves, narrowly avoiding another attack from the side, but the van careens off the road and smashes into a tree, the bonnet crumpling with the impact.
“C’mon, run!” cries Zoe, charging from the vehicle with pickaxes in hand, quickly followed by a slowly recovering John and Lesley.
The cave is rearing into sight. She almost starts to believe she’s safe when the bullet from a hunting rifle grazes her leg and she topples. John turns and shoots the hunter dead before picking Zoe up and making a final mad dash towards the Coyotes Mouth.
As they reach the jagged threshold, they freeze in terror. A humanoid shape is moving in the darkness beyond.
“Hello?!” calls John, pistol at the ready.
“Oh,” murmurs a female voice. “It’s you, thank God.”
It’s Lana. She stumbles out into the open air, her face covered in pale ash, broken by harsh red slash marks and deep purple bruises.
“Christ, what happened?!” asks John.
She points to the pulsing glow of the distant capsule.
“That thing. I felt the wind rise up and then there was this droning pulse sound and then a brick was being thrown through the library window.”
She slumps down to rest on a nearby rock.
“After the brick it was a chair, then a Molotov cocktail. That’s when I knew I had to get out of here. I jumped in my car and fled, figured you guys had failed so I just…went to wait it out ‘till everyone was dead.”
Zoe parks herself next to Lana, the others taking the pickaxes and getting to work on the inner cave walls.
“I’m sorry, none of this should have happened.”
Lana looks out at the town, shrouded in fire and screaming out en-masse.
“It’s funny, y’know. When I was a teenager, I’d have been glad to see the town on fire. I used to be so angry, like I owed that rage for the sake of my people, or the ones who would have been my people if…” she sighs. “But now…you think it would have been like this if that thing hadn’t been there?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…do you think it would have turned out the same no matter what? How many of those people down there would have been normal nice people if that thing hadn’t been dripping poison into their heads for generations?”
Zoe shrugs.
“I don’t think it invented their prejudices, just dialled them up a notch. On the other hand…It’s possible some of them wouldn’t even have been born if the capsule hadn’t been meddling with the bloodlines. It’s woven itself into your town like ivy up a tree. There’s no way of telling where it’s meddling ends and human nature begins…”
Lana wipes her face with her sleeve, tears making streaks across her ash-smothered cheeks.
“It’s fucking evil.”
“NO!!!” Screams Salem, curled up in the corner of the house and rocking back and forth. “Stop it!!! Stop the noise!!!”
“We’ve gotta do something!” shouts the homeowner's wife. “He’s scaring the kids!”
“I’m not gonna move him, if that’s what you’re asking,” the man replies. “Guys got a gun! Not to mention the friggin shotgun on his back!”
“Well just calm him down at least! Please!”
The man thinks for a moment before running to the bathroom and bringing out a towel. He gently lowers it onto Salem's shoulders.
“Ok, buddy, just breathe slowly, ok?”
Salem feels the warm towel draped over him and clings to the sensation, using it to pull him back down to reality. He calms his mind and tries to focus on something positive.
The face of Agent Alethia floats back to him. He remembers talking to her, remembers the good times they’d had as she trained him. Remembers the laughter, the joking…the ravager. How she betrayed him, drained his psychic powers to stop him from becoming more powerful than her.
He has to stay alive.
He will survive to see the look on her face when the student becomes the master.
Salem's eyes snap open and he stands up.
“Thank you,” he says.
“No problem,” says the man, nervously. “Uh…would you mind stepping out of the way so my wife and I can board up the window?”
“Sure,” says Salem. “I’m sorry for scaring you.”
The man laughs nervously. “Heck, if it wasn’t you it would be someone else. What on Earth’s gotten into those people?!”
“I don’t know,” Salem replies. “But if I were you I’d keep very quiet indeed. Go down to the basement if you have to.”
The man nods.
“Just what we had in mind, sir. Oh, I’m George by the way.”
“And I’m-“
A baseball bat swings through the shattered window. Salem grabs the attacker and pulls them half in before blowing their brains out with his pistol.
“-not going to bother you for much longer.”
He pulls out his shotgun and steps out into the chaos of the streets.
“Be seeing you.”
Ghost staggers this way and that, jostled by the bottlenecking crowd all marching towards the capsule. The light is practically enveloping him now, the entrance just a few feet away. A part of him still fights to break free, but the closer he gets, the harder it is to even recall his name. Amelia Winters to the left of him, Ted Jennings to the right of him, hundreds of faces all around. He’s as helpless as a child swept along by white rapids. No! He cries internally. This can’t be it! I won't be driven into a meat grinder! I won't! His body won’t listen, it carries on regardless, closer, closer, closer, until… Crack! A bone in his leg suddenly breaks. He tumbles to the ground, a part of him still struggling towards the fatal light. Crack! Another limb. Then his back arches, his skull crunches. “What’s going on?!?” he screams. “Oh God!” His whole form is shrinking, changing, shifting. Black feathers erupt from the pores of his skin, his lips turn to bone and stretch out, his eyes turn black as his skull caves in. And suddenly he’s flying, shooting off into the sky and away from all those doomed people. The burning town becomes at once entirely visible to him as the wind whips him higher and higher. Well this is a weird dream, he thinks. Must be some way to process what’s…wait, no, this is really happening isn’t it? …Holy sh-! But he doesn’t have time to finish that thought. The sensory overload finally catches up to him and a wall of whiteness washes down the back of his eyes. His consciousness sinks into a void and he plummets onto the roof of a house, his form morphing back into a humans as it does.
“Is this enough?” asks Lesley, him and John carrying an enormous slab of the black stone between them. Zoe nods. “We’ll have to hope. John, you think the van will be good enough to drive back?” “No chance. We’ll need a mechanic to look it over.” “Damn. Then I guess we’ll have to walk. Lesley-” “Take my car,” says Lana. “You’re already too wrapped up in this,” says John. “I can’t ask you to take the risk of-” “Risk?!” she interrupts. “If we don’t get there soon then the whole town dies! There’s a risk for you!” John sighs. “So much fucking paperwork…”
The car is old, very old. It skids and lurches as the crew dodge falling debris and the attacks of random townsfolk. Lana grapples with the steering wheel, eyes fixed to the road as Zoe reads out instructions from her phone’s map. “Left! Left again! Ok, keep going. We’re nearly there, just keep going for-” A high-end tesla slams into them, swiping the car off the road and into a wall. Zoe checks how everyone is. Thank God, no one was hurt. Mayor Klein steps out the tesla, wielding a heavy golf club and swings it down into the windshield, his eyes wild and crazed. Lana leaps out of the car, trying to wrestle the club out of his hands. “Mr Klein! Mr Klein! Andrew!” “You’re not one of us!” he raves. “You never were! You never will be! You have to be destroyed! We must be pure!” “It’s using you!” cries Zoe. “You have to resist it!” “You must be destroyed! Destroyed!” “Fuck this.” says John. He punches Mayor Klein in the face. He drops the club and staggers back, squaring up to fight the older man. The two grapple for a moment, Zoe and Lana leaping in, beating at his legs, kicking away potential new weapons. John pulls out his gun and the sight of it seems to snap the mayor out of his trance for a moment. “Wait, where am I? What’s going on?!” But as soon as his sanity returns, it is attacked. The capsule screams into his mind, causing the mayor to grab fistfulls of his hair. He stumbles this way and that, getting dangerously close to a burning wreck that was once a bookshop. Lana reaches out. “Mr Klein, get back!” But it’s too late. The former mayor topples back and falls into the fire. He screams in agony, rolling from side to side as the flames envelop him. “We’ve gotta help him!” shouts Lana.
“There isn’t time!” John barks, grabbing the two of them and dragging them back to the car.
“That’s another vehicle we’ve ruined,” says Lesley as he drags the small boulder from the backseat. “We’re just gonna have to run.”
“We’d better get moving,” says Zoe. “Look.”
And just in the distance the edge of the pit is visible. The crowd is thicker than ever, the whole town is gathered now. In a few minutes, it could all be over. The team grab the rock between themselves and begin to sprint, praying that it’s not too late.
At last they reach the pit, the heart of madness. The formerly lush grassland is chewed up by the weight of trembling feet, noise assaults the ears, light hurts the eyes. They gather by a crumbling wall and briefly work out a plan. “Ok,” says John. “Zoe, Lana, and I will go down the pit. We can use the rock as a shield from the burning effect. Lesley?” “Hmm?” says Lesley, snapping himself from a trance. “Yeah, I think that’s a good example of why you should stay away. Handcuff yourself to a lamppost or something. You’ll be ok.” “Hey!” comes a voice in the distance. They turn. Salem approaches, barely recognisable under layers of blood and filth. “Jesus Christ, dude,” says Lesley. “You ok?” “Barely,” he replies. “You three going down the pit?” He cocks his shotgun. “I’ll clear the path.” And off he goes without further prompting. “Ok, ready everyone?” says John, realising the pace of things. “Yeah,” replies Lesley. “Just wish we knew where Ghost…Oh…What?!?” The three look up. Ghost’s body lays on top of the roof of the opposite building, covered in cuts and bruises. “Right!” says John. “Lesley, you go up there and look after him. The rest of us…” He looks down at the pit, Salem carving out a path with his shotgun. “You know the drill. Go! Go! Go!”
They descend.
The trek is agonisingly long, the group constantly bumped and pushed by others as they move unthinking towards their death, or possibly worse. The light scorches their fingers as they hold out the stone. It’s not big enough for them all so Lana takes the brunt of it, Zoe and John forced to rip clothing from the dead as an alternative. As they reach the bottom, they find the floor littered with corpses, those killed by Salem, those killed by other people, and those simply trampled underfoot and suffocated by the mud. It’s like a vision of hell, or something only seen in shaky recordings of natural disasters. Bodies crammed together, barely able to move, their murmurs or cries for help overwhelmed by the all consuming drone of the harvesting machine. Lana calls out in terror, a hand somewhere is reaching for her, another hand gripping a knife, ready to slash her throat. Zoe lurches forward and shoves the unknown attacker to the ground, their whole side of the crowd collapsing, bodies piling atop one another as they still try to clamour towards the waiting door. And finally they’re there, the burning white glow now impossible to escape. They need to get inside or else they’ll be fried. Salem blasts a hole in the wall of people, Zoe crying out in horror at the endless death, and they pile through the capsules maw. “Back! Push to the back!” shouts John. “Or else we’ll be trampled!” They move towards the left hand side, the writhing mutilated corpse of Sergeant Bryers just a stone’s throw away. Time slows. Through the marching hoard, Zoe sees the network of tunnels once more, the wall that concealed them now completely gone. The residents of Calhorn are marching still, on and on into the impossible distance. Where are they going? she wonders. What could be meeting them on the other side? Salem places a hand on her shoulder. “You can’t save those people,” he says, bluntly. “Just think of them as dead already.” “But…” she begins. “...But maybe we can…” She stops. He’s right. There was nothing they could do, not now. She had to stop it before any more crossed the threshold. “C’mon!” she cries. The team begins to push the black boulder, fighting past the crowd, inching ever closer to the portal. Salem falls to his knees, battered by a hand holding a bottle of beer. John is dragged back by the hands of Ted Jennings, slowly wrapping round his neck and squeezing the life out of him. “Destroy…I must…Must kill…” Zoe heaves the rock ever closer, every muscle aching, ever nerve fraying. Please! Please! Another hand joins her. She looks up. Lana is throwing off another attacker, shoving with her free hand, pouring the last of her strength into this one task. Salem lets off a few cracks of the pistol and the attacker slumps forward. Lana frees herself and lunges towards the rock. “One more push!” shouts Zoe. “One, two, three, HEAVE!!!” The bolder slides into position. The effect is immediate. The vision of the tunnels begins to shimmer, the threshold glowing yellow and orange. An etheric fire breaks out across the portal's surface and the pulsing drone of the capsule becomes strained. “Run!!!” she screams. She grabs Lana and sprints at full pelt, followed quickly by Salem. The possessed residents flit in and out of sanity. They scuttle like beetles exposed from under a rock, running this way and that. John hurds them along, shoving as many out the capsule and towards the far end of the pit as possible. He turns briefly to see the writhing body of Ted Jennings, his leg caught in the mess of nerve endings inside. No use. The capsule seals up, the pulsing light getting quicker and quicker like a heart convulsing in cardiac arrest. A final, ear-splitting shreek fills the air and it explodes in a flash of light.
For a moment, all is quiet, only the crackling of fires and the distant whir of police sirens assure Zoe that she hasn’t gone deaf. She turns and sees Amelia Winters staring up into the sky. She checks for a pulse, finds nothing.
"...Dammit,” she sighs.
Slowly, heads begin to rise, the surviving civilians huddle together, trying to comprehend what just happened to them and gazing in horror at the sight of their ruined town.
John wipes the sweat from his brown and slumps down next to her.
“Well, we did it.”
“For now.”
“What?”
Zoe turns slowly, looking John dead in the eye.
“That was one capsule. What about the others?”
John turns away, a haunted look on his face.
A few hours later, the van is being towed out into town again, the truck waiting for the emergency services to clear away so it can be set off for the UPU repair garage.
Zoe sees Salem sitting on the sidewalk, breathing hard, staring off into nothing. She sits down next to him.
"Are you okay?"
No response.
"Maybe that's the wrong question. Are you going to be okay?"
He sighs. “Yeah. I'm going to be okay. It's strange, I've... I found some kind of clarity in all this mayhem. A reason to get through it."
"Oh? And what's that?"
"...It's personal. Need to keep some secrets to maintain my mysterious charm." He smiles weakly.
"Speaking of secrets,” says Zoe.“I wanted to thank you for uncovering mine. I've been carrying it alone for so long, it's... it feels like a weight has been lifted for somebody else to know... what I am. What I've been through. What I'm living with. It feels good to have someone who understands. Not that I'm trying to hint at anything."
"Heh. Of course not."
They sit in silence for a while, absorbing everything. Zoe gets to her feet as she sees Lana limping in her direction.
"It's over?"
"More or less."
"What'll happen now?"
"Well. The people that we work for will be coming shortly. Clean-up crew and all that. They'll take this all away, they'll get things back as close to normal as it can get. And you know what?"
"What?"
"They'll make people forget that today ever happened. They don't give people a choice about that. But you've helped us a lot today, so... I guess I'm giving you a choice? Do you want to remember this?"
Lana doesn't miss a beat.
"Abso-fucking-lutely! It might have been the most traumatising day of my life, but it's also been the most... validating. I knew something was going on my entire life, and now I understand it, and I know that other people know. Yes, I want to remember."
"I should have probably clarified before you answered, that remembering would mean having to work for the people we work for. To stop you telling other people, you understand."
Lana's face drops.
"You mean doing more of this? Of what we did today?"
"Not necessarily. There's plenty of perfectly safe, behind the scenes jobs, you don't have to work in the field." “Really?” “Yeah, my job is mainly just studying the things we find.” “...but you do have to do field work.” “...Well…Sometimes. But that’s only when this team needs an extra pair of hands.”
"...Can I take a minute to think about it?"
"Of course."
Lana takes a few steps away. Zoe turns back to Salem.
"I think I handled that pretty well."
"You think so?"
Salem points at Lana, who is now sprinting to an abandoned car, getting inside, and screeching off into the horizon, never to be seen in Calhorn again.
"...She chose option C."
"Gotta respect it."
"Ya gotta respect it."
Ghost comes to, slowly, strapped down to a stretcher and ready to be sent to a hospital. “Why is it always me who ends up like this?” he groans. “Dunno,” says Lesley, still by his side. “What I wanna know is how you ended up on that roof.” “I…Can’t remember.” He closes his eyes, trying to focus. “I remember the capsule starting up, me and Salem getting to the top and then…oh.” He looks up, Salem is looking at him from across the street. They both turn away. “Shit,” he whispers. “...Wait…there was something else…” Images begin to return to him, but only faintly. There was something about the others, Zoe, John, Lesley, something they did with the van…something that broke him…No, the image was gone. But wait, something else as well… “Did…Did I turn into a bird or something?!” Lesley looks down at him. For a moment they say nothing until he finally gives him a gentle pat on the head. “Sure thing, buddy. You get some sleep now.” The stretcher is carried onto the ambulance and Lesley shakes his head. “I really miss Mike…”
A few hours later, a fleet of black helicopters arrive and the FALSE HYDRA team begin their work. The town of Calhorn has its past buried once again and as the sun rises on a new day, a brand new ghost town reveals itself to the world. Calhorn is no more, its people scattered across the tri-state area with all memories erased. Documents are seized, reports made, and evidence scrubbed. Soon nature will come to claim what little remains. The rubble stands silent in the breeze with no one around to mourn its passing.
The curse of Calhorn is gone, and it took the town with it.
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