xoxoxoBruce • Jul 26, 2015 2:02 am
This is a very long story. A mystery of sorts. It turned out to be 40 pages of size 14 type in MS WORD.
footfootfoot wrote:Supposedly the story is true,
This story is about a place that dwells on the mountain; a place where bad things happen. And you may think you know about the bad things, you may decide you have it all figured out but you don’t. Because the [COLOR="RoyalBlue"]truth[/COLOR] is worse than monsters or men.
Maybe I allowed myself to be disarmed by the fact that he came at three in the afternoon. He knocked very softly for a man of his stature, hulking as he was at six foot four with wide shoulders and big, hairy knuckles. When I asked how I could help him, he reached into his coat pocket, withdrew an envelope, and held it out to me. Who wears a coat in August? I took the envelope and looked it over. Its face was stamped over several times with information for the St. Louis Correctional Facility. A letter from prison. Great. I didn’t know anyone in prison. Then, I noticed a post-it note paperclipped to the back of the envelope. It read simply:
Please allow the courier to be present to witness the reading of this letter.
I looked up at the man towering over me on the porch. Though he was large, he didn’t appear threatening. If anything, his calm smile made me think he might be rather friendly. I asked if he had any clue about the contents of the letter or why his presence was necessary for the reading, but the tall man shrugged and gestured towards the foyer. I nodded and invited him in.
In the kitchen, we both sat across from one another at the table. I offered him some coffee, but he silently declined. Glancing up at him one last time, I peeled the flap back and pulled out a ten-page letter, scrawn in hasty handwriting on lined yellow paper. The letter began:...
Original Timeline Chapter 1
“Knot finders are like the undead. You can't kill them unless you take off the head.”
The official inquisitor of the Hall of Justice squinted at Wray. “There's no such thing as the undead, Your Honor.” He shook the square bottle in his right hand and the remaining poison sloshed around the glass like liquid emeralds . The other half had been poured down the throat of the inquisitor's latest subject, a woman strapped to a rack a few feet away.
She was barefoot. The rest of her clothing were rags. And her head hung down with dark tangled hair obscuring her features. Her body twitched for a moment before relaxing. She raised her head revealing strange brown-gold eyes. Something wrong skittered behind her gaze. Wray gave the inquisitor a stingy smile. “Any more of that and she will be of no use.” “I'm just trying to do my job, Your Honor.” The inquisitor smiled back revealing black teeth. “Justice wanted a confession so I'm going to give 'em one.” “The truth serum works best in smaller doses.” “Well, what will you have me do? The git won't say anything no matter what I do.”
“I have a better idea.” Wray folded his arms until they disappeared under the folds of his gray-green judicial robes. A joke, he thought, on him. He was no judge. But unlike others who fell into the thankless job and never got out again, he was going to do something about it. And the wretch on the rack was his ticket to it. “Extracting a confession and capital punishment are mere formalities under the law. The evidence is quite clear on the matter. And the victim has no friends or family, in this jurisdiction at least, who could plead otherwise. I've spoken with Calner. The knot finder will be of more use to us alive than dead.” “Oh? What sort of use?” “For traversing broken tethers.” The woman on the rack screeched. “No! Just kill me now. That's suicide!”
The inquisitor set the bottle of poison down on a nearby table and scratched his head. “Well, if that's the case, I'd say the use would be worse than the punishment. Broken tethers are supposedly impossible unless you're a legendary Ancient. Are you sure you don't want me to continue to extract a confession?” “I'm sure.” The woman screamed. “You bastard! You don't know what the hell you're asking, you privileged toad. There are things on the tethers you don't know about. And if you knew about them, you'd think twice about traversing the tethers, even to see dear old grandma. There are things out there. Things that if you saw, you'd want to gouge your eyes out.” She began thrashing around on the rack, but the leather ropes held and all she succeeded in doing was tangling her hair further.
“The git is mad,” said the inquisitor as he rolled his eyes. “There's no rhyme or reason to her fits. You say something, it could be anything, and she goes off. Nearly skewered one of my assistants earlier when he decided to question her about her family.” “Mad or not, knot finders are hard to come by,” said Wray. “Even harder to come by are any knot finders who will traverse a broken tether. Or in this case, unwillingly.” “Good luck with that. It's going to be difficult to have her come along with you with the git in this state. Do you want me to use the tranquilizer?” “Have you used the tranquilizer on her before?” “No. But there's always a first time for everything.”