Content Warning: There is reference to suicide below.
October 5th, 2017
Cops who don’t seem to know what they’re looking at and a coroner who chucks it up to being a suicide? Sounds like my kind of case. Though, if I’m being honest, it definitely feels like I’m painting myself into a corner. Come on, man locked in a bathroom with no other entry and dubious case of it being self-inflicted? Sounds spectral to me.
Sometimes, though, the case chooses you, not the other way around.
October 6th, 2017
Alright. The IDs I bought and the suit I keep nicely pressed came in handy today. The body hasn’t been interred yet, and isn’t likely to go anywhere for a few days thanks to the guy being from out of state, which was a lucky break for me and meant I was able to talk my way into examining it myself.
First thing I noticed was the overpowering scent of charred meat assaulted me. I really shouldn’t have been surprised since the news article mentioned an accelerant, but when the bodybag was opened, I was surprised by the mostly intact body before me.
Outside of the obvious cuts made for the autopsy, there was hardly a scratch on him outside of some gnarly burns around his eyes. It was as though someone had splashed lighter fluid across his ocular orbs and lit a match.
A ring of circular holes, bloodless and deep, were pocked into his right arm. It looked to me like something with knitting needles for teeth had chomped on his arm. I’m no expert, but I didn’t see any tearing so whatever did this either paralyzed him or took a bite after he was down.
What burns someone’s eyes out, but leaves the rest of the corpse mostly intact?
Maybe this isn’t something supernatural and is rather a hyper adept granny with a pyro fetish.
October 7th, 2017
Never hurts to read up on a location you’re hunting in. I dug through some old charters and checked for mysterious deaths. There were a couple about a century ago. The victims were partially burned with crescent moon wounds quite similar to what I’d found. If I’m being honest, I’m surprised with just how much information was left.
Common thread with each one was being found out in the wilderness. Sounds like I’ll be doing some hiking.
October 8th, 2017
Writing this in a tent after a long day just walking through the woods. I didn’t come across anything specific out here, but now that I’ve settled in for the night, I’ve found another commonality between victims (yes, I have scans of the books I researched). All of them, with the exception of the most recent victim, reported seeing something in a mirror. Something horrific and firey. That would match the injuries. Mostly.
Lots of horrific things have needle teeth (or so I’m told). Definitely worth checking into things and seeing if the latest guy contacted anyone about seeing things.
There’s also the mirror thing. It’s like they were viewing something out of a different world through the looking glass. Might be onto something there.
October 10th, 2017
If Grail knew what I really did, she probably wouldn’t be so keen to let me worship her grail. Regardless she was a delight and a great help with getting a copy of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. It was a little bit of a leap, but well worthwhile. The story follows Alice through a looking glass, or a mirror. After asking Grail about lines pertaining to fire or flames, she pointed me to the nonsense poem Jabberwocky.
If she knew that sometimes nonsense was actually real and are things that should be avoided, she might’ve been happier just being my go to librarian.
Anyways, I think Carroll was onto something. Each of the victims were men who blazed trails of some sort, the latest victim included, making them leaders. The Jabberwock was tied to the Bandersnatch, which is an archaic reference to snatching someone leading something.
Might be two separate creatures, but I’m willing to put money that if I take a mirror out into the wilderness I’ll get a dose of whatever those other guys faced. Now the question is: how do I kill it?
October 11th, 2017
Crap. It’s after Grail. The poem mentions cutting its head off and a sword in DnD with the Vorpal quality beheads its target so, maybe there’s more truth in that game than I’m willing to give it credit for.
So. I’ve got a sword and I’m posted up at her place. She lives on the edge of town and while this’d be the first female victim, she is the head librarian, or leader of the library. I hate to say it, but it might be a waiting game at this point. Hopefully it just gives me time to practice with my new tool.
October 14th, 2017
Grail is such a champ. Can’t say I know many people who could take being chased through their home by a spindly legged lizard. It might’ve been comical had it not been deadly quick and agile to boot. Sure it looked like the thin limbs shouldn’t carry it, but it zipped after her like no one’s business.
She even chipped in with disposing of it after I’d lopped its head off. The poem was definitely on point with that bit of advice. While I had doubts about my ability with a sword, its head came off clean and easy with a single strike. Likely a weakness for this monster rather than a luckily chosen weakness to steel.
While the body’s gone, still have to finish clean up in Grail’s home. At least hunting ghosts doesn't involve such a drastic clean up. More digging though.
Used in this post is a newspaper template from TheGoodocs.com
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