Polyphemus

Ologies: A Study of Arcane Specialists {Paranormal Investigations and more}

<Snipped quote by jasonwolf>

SEPH KANE IS THE ZODIAC KILLER

@AdobeFlash

He can't be! He keeps giving us repeated and unsolicited assurances that he isn't the Zodiac!

Ologies: A Study of Arcane Specialists {Paranormal Investigations and more}

I've been trying to make Max a "pompous but likable" type, and I realized I've basically just made Frasier. Educated and well-heeled guy from Seattle comes out to New England to work and find adventure.

Ologies: A Study of Arcane Specialists {Paranormal Investigations and more}

The alarm rang and the man awoke.

"Awoke" was perhaps a strong term- Maximilian Cotto often found himself in a sort of half-doze in the hour before the alarm went off. A conscious dream. Sometimes he had pleasant thoughts, sometimes he saw things he couldn't be certain were real or a nightmare. Given the number of occult books packed into the sprawling old Cape Cod style house, Max had no way to be sure.

At any rate, Max got out of bed, stretched, wandered into his newly refinished bathroom for a leisurely shower, an exacting shave, and to meticulously brush and floss before combing his hair. His grooming routine completed to his exacting specifications, Max then entered his walk-in closet and dressed for the day, selecting a dark blue three-piece. Scrupulously clean and boasting the latest gadgets, the kitchen had been recently expanded and refurbished as well. Aware of the Wells and Raick tradition of bringing breakfast foods (and trying to remember when his turn was coming up), Max did no cooking, instead brewing a pot of strong, freshly-ground Ethiopian coffee- a born Seattleite, anything less than the best coffee would elicit no enthusiasm from him. He drank precisely one cup of the flavorful brew, before pouring the rest into a Thermos to be drank at the office.

Now it was time for the part of his morning ritual that he always, always dreaded.

Max returned to his bedroom and got the items he needed from his bedstand- his Hand of Miriam necklace, his revolver, his shofar. Revolver in one hand, shofar in the other, he walked to the door of his library. Max glanced down at the bottom of the case-hardened steel door- the Ward of salt was undisturbed, a positive sign. He turned the key in the heavy deadbolts in the thick door, took a deep breath, and walked in.

This one room had required more renovations than any other part of the house. Several bedrooms and a study had been joined in one cavernous chamber, the walls knocked out and the ceiling raised to accommodate his magical library. The windows had been bricked up to prevent natural light from coming in- or the escape of any of the demons he occasionally Summoned in this chamber. The walls had been thickened from the inside with a layer of reinforced concrete. And of course the hermetic seals, the rerouted ventilation, the careful light and climate control to protect some of the more ancient volumes.

Revolver raised, Max made a thorough and careful survey of this room. Having this many magical books in one place could become a bane as much as a boon. They gathered arcane force of their own, and there was always a possibility that the amount would reach a sort of magical critical mass, a weight too heavy for our reality to carry. His teachers had warned him of this hazard of amassing too many occult books- no one wanted to repeat the infamous experience of the Hermit of the Rif in 1895. No one at all. Max looked for what he had been told were early warning signs. Nothing out of place from when he left it last night, no ectoplasm, no scorch marks, no smell of brimstone. Good. Ever cautious, Max took a careful look at the heavy steel safe in which some of his more dangerous tomes were locked. Still untouched since the move, still unopened since he had placed the script for The King in Yellow inside with the other dangerous works last month.

Finally satisfied that there was nothing to see here, Max walked over to the desk in the center of the library, picked up the book had had received via airmail yesterday. A 1922 edition of Tobin's Spirit Guide in the original French, unlike the abridged and bastardized English translation. Most of the French copies had been destroyed by bombing in WWII, but through determined Internet searches he had chased down a copy in Bruges. He thought it might make a useful reference guide to keep in the office- though honestly only Lenya would be likely to use it and the higher-ups probably had everything in there memorized.

Done with his morning routine, Max donned a light scarf- it was getting cold earlier than he was accustomed to- and made the morning commute in his Chrysler 300 sedan. The drive into town passed uneventfully, and he was soon walking into red-brick building that housed Wells and Raick.

He planned to stop only long enough to grab a Bavarian cream donut on his way up to the bullpen, but saw he was not the only person working on the most important meal of the day- Lenya was also hunting through the donuts with an intent expression on her face. "Guten Morgen, Lenya," he called with a smile and wave. Excitement getting the better of him, he set down his Thermos long enough to open his briefcase and pull out Tobin's Spirit Guide to show her. "I managed a decent find. Thought we might keep this around the office for quick reference." This was a difficult and rare find, surely a fellow bibliophile would have some enthusiasm for it. A good way to start out the day.

Ologies: A Study of Arcane Specialists {Paranormal Investigations and more}

Very true. Just spitballing.

Ologies: A Study of Arcane Specialists {Paranormal Investigations and more}

In fairness we could probably solve a lot of cases with magic. Missing persons for example.

Ologies: A Study of Arcane Specialists {Paranormal Investigations and more}

So, since we're publicly advertised as private investigators do we handle any run of the mill cases in order to keep our cover?

Ologies: A Study of Arcane Specialists {Paranormal Investigations and more}

Handyman should be an ambiguously supernatural being or at least strong enough to lift the rear end of a car.

Rigor Mortis

One of my top people is working on a CS.

Ologies: A Study of Arcane Specialists {Paranormal Investigations and more}

Yeah, I got introduced to roleplaying on the Alternate History forum. Good crowd there, but a little dysfunctional, lots of arguments.

Ologies: A Study of Arcane Specialists {Paranormal Investigations and more}

Word of warning, I know this story sounds unbelievable, and frankly I have trouble with it myself. So you're within your rights to doubt it. I wouldn't hold it against you for thinking it's bullshit.

This happened years ago, when I was in college (I'm probably way older than a few of you). A friend of mine (let's call her A) had got her hands on an old Ouija from a garage sale. So, being dumb nineteen-year-olds, six of us get together for shits and giggles and use it one fine afternoon. Years later, I learned that six people is the absolute worst number for Ouija, but whatever.

So we're messing around, asking various questions, not getting much until something spells out SCREWLOOSE, which to this day I assume is the name of something we were talking to. Just for laughs, because we don't know any better, we ask it how much it really knows. Over a couple hours, Screwloose (again, only assuming this is a name) tells us personal secrets, stuff we hadn't shared with the other people holding the planchet. This freaks some people out, so they get up and leave (without saying goodbye). The rest of us laugh it off, get on with our lives.

About a week later, A's roommate C comes to my friend M and myself. C is worried about A- she's been skipping classes, ducking homework, staying up late to mess around with this Ouija. M and I go to talk to her, this good little Catholic girl, and she matter-of-factly tells us she's been talking to Screwloose. Again, we shrug it off, tell her she shouldn't be skipping class.

A few more days pass. C calls M, a little more freaked out. She's roommates with A in a college, remember, which means they share one bedroom. Lately, stuff has been moving around, C keeps hearing strange sounds and having nightmares. And the night before, C woke up to see some dark figure standing over A's bed.

We go to see A yet again, and we get a little freaked out ourselves. A had lost about ten pounds, had huge dark circles around her eyes, and kept denying there was any problem. Then there was physical evidence. Like I said, A was a Catholic, and was in the habit of taking off her rosary and dropping into a glass while she slept. We found that glass completely shattered and the rosary missing. The way the glass had shattered was weird, too- the round base was intact but the glass was spread out around it in a perfect circle, like it had exploded from the inside. Not really sure what to do at this point, I give A a lecture and take away her Ouija. I take it back to my own dorm and shove it under my bed, planning to figure out what to do with it in the morning.

The nightmares I had that night are far worse than anything I've had before or since. A tall woman in a red dress bursts into my room, climbs into my bed, attacks me, whispers things in my ears before she tears them off. I wake up in a cold sweat, arms and face covered in deep scratch marks. I assume I somehow scratched myself up in my sleep, because I don't want to think about the alternative. The following day, M and I drive the board out to the middle of nowhere and burn it. It's over, right?

Wrong. I keep having nightmares, so bad I can't sleep. I see a woman in a red dress out of the corner of my eyes every once in a while, but say nothing. Two years later, I compare notes with M, discover he had a similar problem at the same time, except he was seeing a man in some kind of hooded robe, like a monk's habit or one of those boxer's robes or something like that.

He didn't tell me until two years later, but one night M got jumped suddenly while walking home from the library alone. The way he tells it, for a second he was convinced he was struggling with a person in a robe, only to find out it was actually a trash bag blown by the wind. He tells me he must have been mistaken, it was never a robed person. I have trouble with this- I have been in dangerous situations with M and he's kept his cool. A tornado, a mugging, some drunks attacking us outside a bar- M had been fine with those things. He's not the type of guy who's going to freak out and assume a plastic bag blowing in the wind is someone coming after him. So he can try to convince himself all he wants, I'm going with his initial impression.

And worst of all, A has made herself a new Ouija out of cardboard. You ever known a drug addict, or someone with a serious drinking problem? That's how she was with this Ouija.

There's not really an end to this story, no climax. The semester ends, A transfers to a school in Kansas and we don't really talk anymore, C drops out. M and I don't really talk about what happened for a couple years. I don't really know how things ended up.

But I do still sometimes have nightmares about a woman in a red dress.

Anyways, sorry for the wall of text. Like I said, you're free to disbelieve this story, and if you think it's untrue I hope you at least got some entertainment out of it.