The wretched oddities of the Kansas spring

There have been multiple chapters in my life, the end of which I could not see beyond while living amidst them. Medical school, the war, and then my adventures with Jack. I swore loyalty to a man and based everything I did around that. But Jack is dead, and I know now that he was striving toward those ends for some time. Daring the reaper to take him, but It left me behind. And while I sometimes tell myself I regret that it is so, I find myself looking to continue on in this life without him.

My most recent endeavor has brought me back to employment with the Hennessey agency. I had a pressing need to leave behind many figments and details of my previous chapter, and this opportunity presented itself at the exact right moment. The work seemed straightforward, if unpleasant, occurring during the Kansas spring. But it has not been simple work. There is more happening just now than the minds of men are meant to encompass, and I fear myself in a position to have to apprehend the worst of it. As is usually the case, I am unable to leave a question unanswered once I have seen the fullness of it. A curse most savage in its reliability. In any case, it is this rotten country that Jack’s killer disappeared into, and so while here, I will also hunt about for sign of Orson Thorpe, the water-headed murderer of my friend.

I travel with a passing competent group of companions. I have no complaints of any of them, least of all Jimmy. A truer friend than I deserve in the wake of Jack’s passing. The others are Herb Zobrist, a self-styled gunslinger; Elijah York, a former or current law man from further west, having involved himself in the most improbable campaigns during the war in California and Arizona or something of the like; Cody Caldwell, a gambler who shows the same amount of prudence as Jack did with his loquaciousness; and last of all, Sister Marie, a nun who has improbably gained employment, and with a detective agency of all things. The impropriety of travelling rough with a woman is somehow mitigated by her close and loving relationship with her husband Jesus Christ. At least that is what we shall say.

We find ourselves tasked with discovering what has happened to one Doctor William Henry York at the behest of his brother, Col. Alex York. The undertaking of which is a simple matter of following his return trip along the Osage trace and asking after his whereabouts in the towns along such. However, as I said, our experience has been anything but typical. I shan’t bore myself with recounting the tedious details of this, but I will record the many anomalous details here.

 

Silage Boy

 

Near the town of Hepler, tucked into a depression behind a tree, was a dead little blonde boy, who’s skin showed clear marks of having been cut open and then sewn back shut. When I investigated, it was discovered that the child had been stuffed with silage. I cannot account for this. There is nothing that I can even conceive of that would make this make any sense at all.

 

The Hell-on-Wheels affair

 

Near Osage Mission there was a man found dead by asphyxiation at the Devil’s Rock pile. He had some curious possessions which we were able to scrutinize as we helped the Sherriff determine the cause of death, he had some curious items on him that proved related to our further findings. One of the items was a sketch journal, and in it was a rendering of Jack Cole’s hand, complete with his tattoo of the Ace and Jack of Spades. He also carried a pocket watch with an odd symbol engraved upon it, a sword on flame and a small brass key.

We were further asked by “the Big Swede” to investigate some disappearance down at the local railroad construction camp. We agreed in the name of the agency, hoping to improve our reputation and garner some assistance in our own investigation from the Sheriff and others. We found the camp to be much as we expected; segregated into individual teams by race, with little communication or cooperation shared between them. After trying to get sensible answers from the Irish, we eventually began to speak with the leaders of the Negro camp and finally found some reasonable men. I find myself more and more pleased the older I get with the end results of our fighting during the war. And has been the case since that terrible conflict subsided, I find I am more comfortable in the company of outsiders and the misunderstood. Isaac Baines, their foreman, told us about his missing man, Derry Hubbard, who disappeared down by the river while trying to relieve himself.

Heading down to yonder riverbank, we soon found tracks that lead us to poor Derry, quite dead. His chest had been pried open and his guts trailed out in the river. But his eyes were also missing, and in his sockets and around them was caked tar. These details made no sense, but we did see the tracks of a bear leading upstream.

We found a second body across the water, guided by the tell-tale presence of carrion birds. This was one of the Irishmen and this time, instead of missing eyes, we found that his smile had been widened, and tar was again in the wounds. Only, instead of bear tracks, we found what appeared to be the tracks of a giant river otter, or similar creature, much larger than any such creature ever grows. We speculated about how this might be and came to nothing.

Continuing upstream, we sighted a small cabin approaching nightfall. Fearing the presence of murderous otters or more likely, men masquerading as such, we set up an overwatch and had Jimmy and Herb scout on foot.

What we found inside only added to the general bafflement we felt already. There had clearly been a mighty struggle, with blood strewn about the cabin, and sign that an effort had been made to clean it up. Layered over this dried blood, as if it had come later, was flecked tar. So it seems murder was done, or at least great violence, and then whatever the source of the tar is arrived and did who knows what.

The cabin appears to have been the home of three women of non-traditional beliefs. It contained a ludicrous assortment of possessions and puzzling evidence. There was a large bed in the loft and a wardrobe bursting with women’s clothing. There was also a black slicker and hat hung up that didn’t seem to fit. On the wall was hung a large shiny sword emblazoned with the same crest as was previously seen on the pocket watch and a carpet bag with the initials JAL – our only clue to the identity of the dead man, who these things surely belonged to. We found many portrait sketches of 3 mature women fit for wanted posters.

The place was also host to a vast collection of “witchy” artifacts. Dried herbs, unidentifiable specimens in jars, queer books, weird sacrificial knives, candles everywhere, a cauldron, and any number of other oddities. In the fireplace were the bones of human children. I would estimate four in total. So clearly the residents were of fine character.

We found the corpses of the women depicted in the drawings in the basement, arranged to form a sort of odd nest with their bodies, two of which had their eyes removed. The whole area positively reeked of wet fur and some fouler chemical stench. They were flecked with tar and a gaping tunnel had been freshly dug through the frozen, beshitted Kansas soil. In life, they were:

 
1. Maurine Mcateer – A matronly woman in her sixties, 4’8” with homespun clothes and blue-woad tattoos. She’d been hacked and stabbed repeatedly, and her heart was removed.

2. Eva Strausler – Also in her sixties, 5’6” with long tangled white hair, sharp features in a black dress. She’d been hacked by a blade and her heart was also removed.

3. Ciri Terfel – Mid 40s, buxom, long read hair and blue eyes. Many would describe her as comely. She was well dressed and fashionable, especially compared to her companions. She had wounds consistent with a sword, including a chop to her neck that nearly severed it clean. Her heart was also missing, and the cavity caked in tar.

 

So again, we’re presented with a situation where violence of an explainable, if abominable sort was done, preceding the arrival of some tar exuding beast that perhaps drug the bodies into the basement to use as a nest? I hope that I am wrong in my assessment, but I cannot imagine what else would explain all that we found. Not that this passes for any sort of sound explanation. The dead man, JAL, must belong to some secret society that perhaps hunts witches? He seems to have come here in search of them and dispatched them at length. But what was his connection to the Otter beast? Perhaps the beast was allied with the witches, and it arranged their bodies thus as a comfort to itself at the loss of its benefactors?

 

In addition to all this, we found two odd books in foreign languages that appear to have belonged to the witches. Die Fibel ver Loren(the book of the black corpse) and a book in Gaelic.

 

Having found no trail to follow, and finding no demon otter by the river nearby, we left all of this madness behind. I am possessed of few definitive opinions about all that we have found, but of one thing I am certain. Kansas is a wretched place, and never more so than in the spring. I would pay quite dearly to be back in Chicago, or really any other place than this.