Report 22: The Morning After

Sir,

As you could no doubt tell, it was a bad time in Pannawau last night. A lot happened, and I’m not sure my Osceola-fueled mind-hopping exploits entirely captured the scope of it. So I thought I’d codify things with a slightly more formal report than is my norm.

SECTION A: The Events of the Evening

• First, and most obviously, the Black Mirror Brute came out. I discovered that the Sad Man was not, in fact, summoning the Brute, but trying to distract it from leaving the Mountain and wreaking worse havoc. See Section B below for more details on the Sad Man’s plan.
• Alexandra Melmoth was on the loose, as well, in a Yig-Form transfiguration seemingly triggered by the presence of the Brute in the Gray World. She changed back in the early morning hours, and is currently in custody on the Alo Reservation. Her family is demanding her release, but the Alo are thus far holding firm. I’ll be heading out to speak with her again later.

Report 15: Out of the Frying Pan

Sir,

I am currently sitting in the corner booth at the Fat Beaver Inn, enjoying some pre-dinner coffee served up by LuAnn, the Fat Beaver’s lead waitress. LuAnn only has one arm, which you’d think would be a detriment in her line of work. But she handles it with aplomb. She lost the arm, it seems, in a most singular manner: singing accident. LuAnn sang in the children’s choir at her parents’ church. Voice of an angel, the preacher always said. But it was a poor congregation, and the church was in a state of some disrepair. Specifically, they had termites. So one Sunday, the little stage the children sang on collapsed, sending them all tumbling.

Now, this didn’t happen simply because of the weight of the children. There was one boy in particular, a large child (portly, is the sense I get) by the name of Melvin, who stood directly in front of LuAnn in the choir. And Melvin was filled with the Spirit, as they say, always waving his arms and dancing slightly as the choir went through its repertoire. Well, this Sunday, Melvin was particularly joyful, and began bouncing up and down, absolutely hyperactive with the power of the Lord. And (at least according to LuAnn) it was Melvin’s antics which caused the stage to collapse, and Melvin himself to fall over on top of LuAnn. His weight pushed her through the wall (which was also termite-infested), and the two of them went right into works of the rickety disused pipe organ.

LuAnn put her arm out to break her fall, and it got stuck between the pipes, which then broke the arm to pieces as the whole pipe organ structure came crashing down of top of them. Luckily for LuAnn, Melvin took the brunt of the falling pipes. But then she was left trapped, under tons of metal and a bleeding overgrown choir boy, covered in termites. It took them hours to dig her out, and by the time they did, her arm was a lost cause.

LuAnn doesn’t sing anymore. Doesn’t go to church, either.

Report 8: The Possession of Possum Reynolds

Sir,

It is approximately thirty minutes after my last report, and I’m back in the waiting room at Melmoth Memorial, enjoying a steaming hot cup of coffee I sweet-talked off one of the nurses. I don’t know what the patients drink, but the Nurses’ Lounge is stocked with a damn fine brew. Alexandra is still not back from her examination, but I’ve just spent some time with her erstwhile kidnapper, Possum Reynolds. Or rather, with something purporting to be Possum Reynolds. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was informed, if you’ll recall, that Possum had awakened and was asking to speak with the Sheriff. I decided that he should perhaps speak to me instead, and had the nurse lead me to him. Rooms in the intensive care unit are usually small, and cramped with machines. Possum’s room had those features, but it was also dark, and unnaturally humid. Like someone had just taken a shower in it. But instead of the clean smell of soap, it smelled… Well, it’s difficult to describe what it did smell like. Dirt, I suppose. Dirt and blood.

Possum seemed surprised to see me. “Ii. Ast. For. The. Sheriff,” he said, and immediately I knew that whatever was wrong with the room, it emanated from him. His lips were moving in a series of jerky stop-motion twitches around a mouthful of broken teeth. Each word was a spasm. Clipped. Brittle. And not entirely in synch with his lips. It was simultaneously disorienting, abhorrent, and fascinating.

Report 7: Touched by the White Mirror World

Sir,

I am sitting in the waiting room of the Alvin Melmoth Memorial Hospital, named for the twin brother of Oscar. Alvin was a philanthropist and international adventurer of some repute, lost and believed killed in 1970 while on a Himalayan expedition. Amazing the things you can learn from lobby plaques.

It’s been an eventful day, and I believe that it will soon become more eventful yet. Possum Reynolds has yet to fully awaken from his coma, but I’m told that the swelling in his brain is going down, and he may yet make a recovery. In the meantime, I’ll be interviewing Alexandra Melmoth on the events of her disappearance and kidnapping. She’s somewhere in the building getting an examination, but once that’s done I’ll have an hour with her, uninterrupted by her family or the hospital staff. I’m looking forward to it. Not because of her beauty, or even because I’m all that curious about what she has to say. After today, I have a pretty good idea of what she’s going to tell me. It remains to be seen how much of it she chooses to share, however, and that is something I’m very interested to discover, indeed.

I’ve come by this newfound knowledge after spending a day immersed in the world of the Alo. John Cheveyo seems to have decided that I’m at least partially trustworthy, based apparently on our investigation of the kitchen at the Opa Lodge. They were busy preparing the Continental Breakfast when we entered, and there was no sign that I had shot the owl-headed man there only an hour or two earlier.

But the layout was exactly as I remembered it from my dream. Slightly dazed, I went over to the counter the Horrible Thing had been lying on. Put my hand on it. The surface was cool and smooth and utterly clean. No stains, and no scratches from where that hoary blade had bitten through the flesh and into the wood. The thing’s awful screams filled my ears again, and I felt the gorge rise in my throat.

Report 5: Possum’s Last Ride

Sir,

Never underestimate local law enforcement.

That’s the first rule you drilled into me when I entered Agency service, and it’s never failed me yet. Today, Sheriff Patton and his deputies cracked the Melmoth kidnapping with nothing but knowledge of their community and good old-fashioned police work.

We owe this break to a bad carburetor. The Sheriff visited his usual garage to have them take a look at  his personal vehicle (a jeep he uses for something near and dear to your heart: hunting and fishing expeditions into the deep wilderness). But they told him it might be a while before they got to him. They were short-handed, it seemed, with two mechanics having called out sick for three days running.

The timing raised the Sheriff’s suspicions, as did the men in question: Jase Peterson and Robert “Possum” Reynolds, a couple of local ne’er-do-wells known for periodic outbursts of drunken violence at Pannawau County’s finest dives. “Mean as snakes, the both of ’em,” the Sheriff told me later. “And only about half as smart. Damn good mechanics, though.”