Alright ,if'n yer part of my Posse there are spoilers in here. So just back off!

Art work by Storn Cook
The only son of a hardworking farming couple, Vincent Kilkenny grew up in a rural area not far outside of Abilene, Kansas. His was a happy enough childhood, for while his family was not rich, they were comfortable. Early on, Vince's talent with guns became evident, and he was soon given the task of hunting for the family's meat. It was a responsibility that he took very seriously, because each day his father gave him three bullets for his rifle, and if he didn't come back with three prizes, he had better have a damn good reason.

The War Between the States broke out when Vince was 18, and he volunteered with the Confederate Army, feeling that the government had no place telling individual states what to do. He served with distinction for several years, rising to the rank of Lieutenant and fighting at Gettysburg. Eventually, though, he'd enough of the killing and decided to head back home.

It wasn't a happy homecoming, though. When Vince crested the hill that overlooked his parent's farm, all he saw was a burned out ruin and the vulture-picked carcasses of some of the farm's livestock. Enraged, he immediately headed into Abilene and questioned the authorities. They told him that there had been a rash of attacks by the Union guerillas called the Kansas Redlegs. The renegades had attacked several outlying farms, killing the owners and livestock, and burning the farms and crops. Vince's parents had fallen victim to one of those attacks. As near as they could tell, Vince's father and some of the farmhands had made a stand in the main farmhouse, but they had been outgunned and outclassed by the guerillas. After all the men had been killed, his mother raped and put to the sword, the house was burned with all the bodies inside.

Vince was able to put together a small sum of money from the sale of his parent's farm, but most of that money went toward paying off old debts and outfitting himself for what was to come. Over the next two years, Vince Kilkenny became the scourge of the Kansas Redlegs, hunting them mercilessly across Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and the Dakotas. All told, he is reputed to have killed 13 Redlegs, all in fair fights, before the taste of revenge finally became bitter. Then he began to roam aimlessly across the West.
May 6, 1876

I arrived in Kansas City with a mixed bag of companions. There was Ezekiel Jonas, an honest-to-God fire and brimstone preacher from back east; Mikail, a skinny thief; and Telaquy, a Pawnee Indian brave. While there, I picked up a copy of the city paper and read a story about a series of murders that had taken place over the last couple few weeks. Intrigued, I did a little bit of digging and managed to come up with a pattern to the killings.

The first murder took place the Friday four weeks prior to our arrival in Kansas City. The victim, Emily Rothendale, was the madame at the Hero's Welcome Saloon. She was dismembered, and the body parts were distributed among the hotel rooms, and her head was put on display on a platter in her own room.

Murder number two took place on a Saturday, three weeks before we arrived in town. The victim, Wallace Connery, was killed in one of the rooms of the Gilded Lily Saloon. He was lying on one of the beds, his eyes gouged out and his private parts missing.

The third murder happened on the Saturday two weeks prior to our arrival in town, at the Skewered Injun Saloon. The victim, a prostitute named Jolly Joleen, was mutilated and decapitated, her head placed on display atop her dresser.

Just a week before we arrived in Kansas City, the fourth and fifth murders took place, again at the Gilded Lily Saloon. Louis Davis, a local cowboy, had his eyes gouged out and his private parts removed in one of the brothel rooms, and one of the prostitutes, Edna Mellons, was decapitated and mutilated.

The last murder occurred at the Golden Circle Saloon, the Saturday following our arrival in town. The last victim was Buford Tanner, and we were actually present shortly after he was killed. He had his eyes gouged out again, as well as his privates removed, but what was odd was the fact that he was lying on the bed and the bed sheets weren't disturbed in the least, as if he hadn't struggled at all.

There were some very definite patterns to the killer's madness. The victims were all prostitutes or the men who paid for their services, and the murderer obviously had a great deal of anger focused toward each. In the week that followed, we made the rounds of the city saloons, trying to see if we could just get lucky and happen across someone suspicious. We didn't have any such luck, but we did pick up a couple of clues that eventually turned out to be the reasons behind the killings.

The first was a short newspaper article about the murder of a local dance hall girl named Sally Macaphee. Macaphee had worked at the Golden Circle Saloon, and she'd been murdered just one week before the first of the murders we were investigating. She'd been raped and brutally stabbed to death behind the Myerhoff Stables, not far from her usual route home.

There was also a short ad about a reward offered for information leading to the location of a cowboy who rode for the Double Q ranch. Eric "Red" Buck had disappeared right around the same time as Macaphee was murdered.

While we investigate the murders and these two seemingly unrelated events, a number of correlating factors made themselves evident, enough to make us take a closer look at the possibility that these events were all part of a larger whole.

The first was the obvious factor of time. Macaphee was murdered and Buck disappeared at about the same time, pointing the finger at Buck as a likely suspect. The murders of the prostitutes and their patrons also started shortly after Macaphee's murder and Buck's disappearance. Buck had worked for the Double Q, as had Louis Davis, victim number four. When we went out to the ranch, we discovered that Buck had left his job without even taking his horse, rifle, gear or even his remaining pay. The one piece of gear that he apparently had taken was his large Bowie knife, and we found a weapon of the same sort in a trash heap near the Macaphee murder scene. The knife was covered with dried blood, making it clear that this was the murder weapon. Buck had also had a known infatuation with Macaphee and, though she was a dancer, Macaphee had reportedly been unwilling to follow through on the less savory aspects of her chosen career. It was a mindset that Buck reportedly did not appreciate.

These factors all pointed to Buck as the killer, but how? How had he managed to get alone with both men and women, killing them without any apparent struggle? And how was it that no two people could give the same description of the victim's last contact?

All of these questions led to one far-fetched conclusion: The murderer was able to somehow cloud people's perceptions of his physical form. I'd heard of hypnotists in traveling circuses being able to do that sort of thing, but I'd never paid it much mind.

It was only through sheer luck that we were able to stop the killer before he murdered a young prostitute at the Golden Circle Saloon, and it was only during the furious gun battle that we discovered its true nature. During the battle, the killer showed himself to indeed be Eric Buck, but also to be a walking corpse. The creature took more bullets than any normal being could, and it was only through some divine intervention from Zeke that we managed to kill it. As it died, it shifted form several times, between the forms of Macaphee and Buck.

The only explanation I can come up with for this madness is that when Buck killed Macaphee (and there is no question in my mind that he did) her spirit, thirsty for vengeance, somehow took up residence in Buck. I don't know if he was of the walking dead before or after he killed her, but the combination of the two angry souls created a creature of two minds conspiring for the same reason--the murders of those perceived as having wronged them. Buck killed the women who always rebuffed him, and Macaphee killed the men who constantly tormented her. It was only through our intervention that their poor souls were able to find peace, no matter the violent nature of their passing.


May 8, 1876

During our investigation of the saloon murders, we also ran across the case of Doc Polke, a local eccentric. It seemed that Doc Polke had made a deal with a local businessman named Phineas for a mine located outside Kansas City. Unfortunately, Polke had only paid half the cost and had not received the deed for the mine when he discovered a vein of ghost rock. When Phineas heard of the discovery, he decided the property was worth a great deal more than the $50 they had agreed upon. Phineas reported Polke to the sheriff as a claim jumper, who immediately organized a posse consisting of our group (excluding Zeke) and a few hangers-on. On our way to the mine, the sheriff was killed when he fell off his horse while investigating a body in a wash. The body wore an old cavalry saber, had a very leathery appearance and had his head separated from his shoulders. This didn't seem to have much to do with anything so, after we returned the sheriff's body to town, we continued on to the mine. Once there, we witnessed one of Polke's men flying through the air using some sort of backpack contraption. We surrounded the mine, two of the hangers-on, Clovis and Jethro, covering a back entrance, with the rest of us out front. We seemed to be in good shape talking the situation over with Polke, when Clovis and Jethro snuck in the back and started a gunfight that killed two of Polke's men. Polke and his remaining man fled the mine in a horseless carriage. Clovis and Jethro were killed in the gun battle, due in no small part to the efforts of my own group, myself excluded.

After burying our men and Polke's, we tracked Polke's carriage to the same depression where we discovered the desiccated body. The carriage had broken down and, while half the posse waited with Polke and his man, I rode back into town with Mikail. There, we discovered the fact that Phineas had agreed to sell the mine to Polke and was trying to welsh on the deal. We found a witness and forced Phineas to sign the deed over to Polke, albeit reluctantly. All in all, it was a good day's work, with our making an enemy in Phineas and a much better friend in Polke.


May 14, 1876

Not long after our return from Doc Polke's, two events took place that at first seemed unconnected, but later proved to be very closely related.

The first was the robbery of The First Bank of Kansas City by three unknown subjects. The robbery took place in the very early hours of the morning of May 10th, at which time the three subjects shot their way into the bank , wounding the guard, and made off with $1,000 in rough gold. The guard claimed to have shot one of the robbers, but that the bullets seemed to have no effect. He could offer no description of the men, other than the fact that they all wore cavalry sabers. This particular detail is interesting when one considers the body we had found in the wash a week earlier.

The second event was when both of the churches in town burned down on the same night. I believe that Zeke knows more about this than he his telling, but there is no way to be sure. He did, however, tell us that the day before his church burned down, a Mexican named Miguel came to his church begging forgiveness for all the things he had done and the things he would do. He wore a cavalry saber. The next night, Miguel was killed in a gun battle with a man dressed all in black, who we later discovered was a notorious gunman called the Missionary. Miguel and the Missionary exchanged words before shooting, to the effect that the Missionary had destroyed all of the places where Miguel could hide. We take this to mean that the Missionary was responsible for burning the churches. The Missionary killed Miguel (though witnesses say Miguel took two bullets and kept coming), dragged the body into an alley, doused it with some sort of liquid, chopped off its head and set the whole thing afire.

The following day, as Zeke worked to clear the rubble of his church, an unknown individual shot at him from atop a general store located across the street. Zeke took only minor wounds, but when he got to the roof his assailant was gone, leaving only a battered Winchester '76 behind.

Over the next few days, we worked to get the site cleared and a tent erected so Zeke could hold services on Sunday. Our first tent was burned under mysterious circumstances, but we managed to protect the second.

Sunday services were very interesting. Halfway through, the Missionary showed up and took a place in the back of the tent. Meanwhile, four gunmen approached and began shooting it out with me and Mikail. While we were dealing with them, the Missionary made his move for Zeke. Telaquy had the dubious honor of engaging him and did an excellent job of it. It was he who finally put the Missionary down, but not before some noxious vapor issued forth from the Missionary and forced its way down Telaquy's throat. I worry for my red friend.

The Missionary was dead, and I'm fairly certain he was behind the rash of bank robberies. But why was he robbing the banks, and where was the gold? Aside from three nuggets we found on his hirelings, the rest of the gold may never be seen again. And what was the Missionary's beef with Zeke?


May 21, 1876

We arrived in Denver after several days on the Black River Railroad, intent on investigating the murders of two Pinkerton agents. After a day of making useless inquiries around town, we were invited to a clandestine meeting with a Pinkerton named Palmer. The meet took place at an abandoned saloon. Palmer gave us instructions to investigate some spirit sightings reported at a local dive called the Boar's Head Inn. The reports turned out to be very exaggerated, the sightee having been an old man evidently far into his cups.

We did, however, meet up again with an attractive young Pinkerton named Ashley Grey, who we had first met while investigating the bar haunt murders in Kansas City. Apparently, she had been given the same assignment from Palmer, and expressed the opinion that something seemed a bit wrong about our employer. The job he had given us appeared to be a wild goose chase, so we decided instead to go back to our original plan of investigating the Pinkerton murders. The most obvious course of action seemed to be checking out the scene of the previous murders. When we investigated the site, we found several Pinkerton agents on duty guarding the scene and removing the bodies. This simple fact still confuses me, because the newspaper article detailing the murders was dated May 15, almost a week before our arrival! How could the bodies have stayed there that long and hardly decomposed at all? I don't think I'll ever figure it out. During our investigation of the site, we subdued two Pinkertons and took their camera. We gave the film to Ashley so that she could have it developed, and it got her killed. Or so we thought at the time. We found her body at the same site the next day, killed in exactly the same manner -- a single bullet to the back of the head.

With Ashley dead and the photos gone, our avenues of investigation were limited to approaching Palmer once again. Our intention was to leave a message at the Boar's Head Inn, but when we arrived there we found some papers burning in a trash can and five Pinkerton agents waiting to gun us down. The resulting gun battle cost two of the Pinkertons their lives before we were able to escape. By this time, we were fairly certain Palmer was involved somehow, so we decided to try contacting the local head of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, one Lawrence Cross, whose name we had found on a memo burning in the trash can. Cross' letter displayed some concern over Palmer's actions, so we figured he would be the best person to approach. Getting into the office was easy enough, but actually getting in to see Cross proved problematic. He had people in and out while we were there, including a tall, thin man named Cooper who we had seen with Palmer when he first met with us. After a couple hours of waiting, Zeke got a little impatient and decided a full frontal assault was the way to go. Predictably, the Pinks weren't intimidated, and his actions got us tossed out of the office without learning anything at all. I think I'll have a talk with him about patience and subtlety. All he managed to do was alert the Pinkertons to our presence and pick up a couple of shadows.

With our options rapidly diminishing, we decided to change our approach. First we tried to track down the photographer Ashley took the photos to. It proved to be a dead end, however, so we decided to try following Cooper. Eventually, he or Cross would notice us and one of them would have to make a move. It didn't take long. The second night of our surveillance we followed Cooper to a saloon called the Silver Dollar, a tavern he and Cross frequented. Cooper sicced four toughs on us, be we came out of the fracas mostly intact.

By this time we had learned of Cooper's place of residence, and decided to stake it out exclusively. All of our work finally paid off. Two Pinks came in the early hours of the morning and took Cooper away, apparently under duress. We followed them on horseback to the spot where the other murders occurred, where they were met by Palmer and two more Pinks. They had Cooper bound and gagged, and Palmer was standing over him waving a derringer and ranting about how Cooper was the one responsible for the murders, that he was a huckster (whatever that is) and other nonsense. It seemed pretty obvious to us that Palmer was a lunatic and likely involved in the murders, if not the one who pulled the trigger. We tried to get them to surrender peaceably, but they weren't having any and we were forced into a gunfight. One of them died and another was wounded before they realized they were bucking a stacked deck. Palmer took off during the gun battle, but after we freed Cooper he said he could take us to Palmer's hideout. Along the way he explained a little of what was going on.

He told us that he had been hired by Palmer to develop a ritual or some such thing to bind "harrowed" to Palmer and his cause. (I didn't have a name for them, but I suppose Buck/Macaphee, the Missionary and Miguel were harrowed. That fits with some of the papers we found at the Boar's Head.) Worse yet, he said that he had found a way to bind an evil spirit to a living person. He claimed that Palmer could create an army with that knowledge.

When we got to Palmer's hideout, an abandoned mine, we found the way blocked by two more Pinks. One of them ran into the mine while we subdued the other. We made our way further into the mine and were held up briefly by three Pinks holed up in an opening of the tunnel. Two of these Pinkertons died from their wounds.

When we got past them into the next chamber, we found Palmer, four people who appeared to be harrowed -- and Ashley. She was tied down over a pentagram inscribed on the floor, and Palmer was chanting something that sounded ominous. Naturally, I shot him.

The next several minutes are now a blank. I vaguely recall the sounds of a gunfight and the whip of bullets, but all I really remember clearly is standing over Palmer's body at the other end of the cavern, looking down at his bullet-riddled corpse.

It was only then that I noticed the harrowed in the room. Two of them, a Chinaman and a businessman, just stood there, taking no action during the fight. Once Palmer was dead, they just left the scene altogether. I hope I don't have the opportunity to meet them again. The other two, a cowboy and a prospector fought against Mikail and Zeke. While Zeke finished off the prospector, I pulled the cowboy off Mikail and killed him with a shot to the head.

With all the fighting over, there was nothing left to do but to bury Ashley. Which would have been a trick, considering that she wasn't dead! Relieved beyond words, I cut her loose. She couldn't tell us much in the way of Palmer's motives, just that she had known him years before, when he was still a good man. I can't say much for the man he was, but when we met him he was nothing but evil. We buried his sorry carcass in an unmarked grave, as he deserved.

Now we have to decide our next move. Mikail has said that he must leave us for a while, and we haven't seen Telaquy in several days. I'm not thrilled to be stuck with the crazy preacher, but he has proven himself to be a man of conviction, if not smarts. Stay or go, it matters not to me.


June 20, 1876

It's been almost a month since our investigation of the Pinkerton murders, and a rather quiet month at that. I've kept busy riding shotgun for Ferris' Stage Company and hanging out at the local saloons, listening to what's happening in the world. I haven't seen too much of Zeke lately, I think he's preaching to the masses somewhere in town.

The past month has been profitable, as well. With my share of the money we found in Palmer's cave, I had some work done on my Smith & Wesson Frontiers. The gunsmith re-milled the parts, making them stronger and now the overall balance of the pistols is much better. I also had her file the sites almost completely off, just so they don't snag on my holsters when I need them the most. It turned out the gunsmith is also a skilled artist, so I had her engrave the butts of both pistols with a picture of a bald eagle in flight. It's almost sad how weapons used to kill have become such works of art.

Of even greater interest has been my discovery of a small shop in a secluded corner of Denver run by a Chinaman named Lin Pao. I don't know the name of the shop, or if it even has a name, but Lin specializes in books and material pertaining to the occult. Lin didn't seem to inclined to talk to me at first, and some of the men that hang around his shop made it abundantly clear that I should find business elsewhere, but after I told him some of the things I've seen, he decided to tolerate my presence. In return for telling him everything I could remember about Palmer, his cave and the ritual we witnessed, Lin gave me one of his smaller texts about the occult. It is scary stuff, and some of it rings true from my experiences. I want to learn more, if for no other reason than to know my enemy better.


June 23, 1876

What a train ride! I still shudder when I think of the things I've seen the last few days.

It all began with an urgent letter from Ashley. As much as I like her, I'm beginning to think that girl carries bad luck around with her wherever she goes. Her letter stated that she wanted us to help guard a Union train transporting some sort of dangerous object from Denver to Washington, DC. Her letter also stated that she didn't trust the Union Army to be able to safely escort the cargo to DC. She couldn't, or didn't, tell us what the cargo was, however.

We got on the train the next morning, under the command of Lt. Nick Thyme, a rather pretentious bluebelly. The train consisted of, from back to front, a private passenger car, a freezer car, a sleeping car, a dining car, two passenger cars, the guard car where Zeke and I stayed, seven cars occupied by the Union soldiers, a flat bed with a Gatling gun and the coal car and engine. Staying in the guard car with Zeke and I were two rather unsavory sorts, also hired for the guard duty. Their names were Zeke and Earl, and most of their conversation centered around women and gambling. Lt. Thyme told us not to venture further forward than our car, under penalty of being shot. We were also kept out of the private car by a personal bodyguard.

The first day went by smoothly, with Zeke and I on day watch and our bunkmates on night watch. It wasn't until the next night that things started to go terribly wrong. We were awakened at around 9pm by a woman's scream. We ran to the sleeping car, where we found that one of the passengers had been murdered. The passenger, a brush salesman named Joe Bob Briggs, had his throat slashed, almost decapitating him. The scream we had heard was from one of the other passengers, a young woman named Anita Smith. All she and the other two passengers in the compartment could tell us was that they had turned in before Briggs, none of them later than 8:30pm. Anita had awakened later and found Briggs. They all claimed to have heard nothing. Briggs was dressed in his nightclothes and didn't appear to have put up a struggle. Curiously, given the huge gash in his throat, there was very little blood on the bed, almost as if he had been killed elsewhere and then placed there. This didn't make much sense, though, because one of the other sleepers would have heard something, and none of them fit the mold of a cold-blooded killer. It was certainly a mystery. What made it all the more ominous is that, when we told Lt. Thyme, he didn't seem at all surprised.

With nothing else to do but guard our unknown cargo, Zeke and I settled down for the night. It passed uneventfully, but the next day it started up again. During lunch we heard screams coming from the dining car. Leaving Zeke at our post, I went to investigate and found another passenger dead. Alexander Hicks, occupation unknown, was slumped in his chair in the dining car, a bullet hole in the center of his chest, fired at close range. In yet another strange twist, no one could remember hearing a shot fired, myself included. A young woman who had been talking to him said that one moment he was alive and well, the next he was dead. Several people also reported seeing a man talking to Hicks before his death, a nondescript fellow who was nowhere to be found.

About this time, the train was attacked by bandits, drawing attention away from the matter at hand. The bandits were driving a number of strange vehicles, including a steam wagon not unlike Doc Polke's, and a pair of strange, two-wheeled craft, sort of like motorized bicycles. One of them had a seat mounted on the side for a passenger and gun. This last one I dispatched with a shot from my Winchester, while the other motor bicycle and the steam wagon raced up to engage the flatbed with the Gatling crew. Zeke and I had herded the passengers into the dining car and taken the battle to the bandits from the closest passenger car. We were getting ready to move forward and help the soldiers when we heard a strange sound coming from overhead and there was a loud thump on the roof, as if something very heavy had landed. As I moved outside the car to climb up on the roof, Zeke shot up through the roof, having no noticeable effect other than to elicit a hail of bullets in return. When I peeked up onto the rook, what I saw was clearly from a madman's dream. A man stood on the roof of the car, encased in some sort of metal skeleton fully twelve feet tall. Over his head there was some sort of whirling blade, which I can only imagine allowed him to fly. On his right arm was a modified Gatling gun, and on his left arm was a blade with some sort of sharp chain wrapped around it. All of this appeared to be powered by a boiler strapped to the monstrosity's back. All I could so was shoot the guy, since it was obvious that my bullets would have little effect on the metal suit. I hit him a couple of times, but he seemed to be wearing some sort of body armor as well. I did manage to distract him, though, which gave Zeke time to climb up behind him and cut one of the boiler hoses. This caused some sort of malfunction in the frame, and it fell off of the train, exploding. About this time, we also saw the smoking wreckage of the steam wagon go by. Apparently, the boys in blue had done their job. Of the other motorized bicycle, I saw no sign.

When we got back down into the cars, it was like a train full of lunatics. The people in the dining car had barricaded themselves in, shooting at anything that moved and screaming something about someone coming to kill them. At the time, I thought they were just hysterical from the recent murders and the bandit attack. We tried to contact the people in the private car, but they seemed just as scared and shot through the door at us. We left Earl and Zeke in the other passenger car and went to check on the Union cars. We got no answer, but when we went back to get Zeke and Earl, they were dead. What could kill two grown, armed men without them being able to so much as fire a shot or even cry out? Things were definitely getting out of control. With lunatics behind us and locked doors in front, Zeke and I decided to hurry up and wait, at least until morning. There was no way we were going into those forward cars while it was dark.

But we weren't going to get any sleep. Right around midnight, the people in the dining car started shooting like they were under attack from an army. By the time we got back there, though, they were all dead, literally ripped to pieces. I've never seen anything like it. We saw someone moving toward the back of the train and pursued, but we couldn't catch him. Figuring the answers we wanted could be found in the Army part of the train, we broke down the door and entered. What we walked into was a charnel house. The car was dark due to the blood of three, maybe four Union soldiers coating the windows. There were even limbs stuffed into the holes in the windows. Somebody wanted it dark. Hoping to alleviate the horror, we pressed on to the next car, but it only got worse. The next car was a grisly mockery of a dining car for the soldiers. Body parts were everywhere and, in the center of the room, two walking dead feasted on the remains of some poor Union boy. Between Zeke and I, there wasn't too much difficulty in killing these monsters again, but it was just a sign of things to come. The next car appeared to be a chapel, undisturbed except for an overturned holy water receptacle. When we tried to gain access to the next car, which turned out to be an armory, someone shot at us -- and that someone turned out to be Lt. Thyme. He was obviously mad, and there was no reasoning with him, but I didn't want to kill him, so I shot him in the shoulder. He was down but not out when we got to him, holding a pistol to his head and raving about how the "Master" was going to get us all. Before I could get more than a few words out of him, he killed himself. I can't say I ever really liked the man all that much, but I wouldn't have wished that on him. The next car was truly an oddity. It was empty, but some sort of contraption on the roof was circulating water through the walls, ceiling and floor. It wasn't as if the water was cooling the car, so it wasn't intended for food storage. I wouldn't be able to put the pieces together until we entered the next car, where they kept their deadly cargo.

I think the Union was transporting a vampire! In the center of the car, surrounded by crates, was a coffin, and behind it two men. I've read a couple of dime novels about vampires, and one of the fellows looked just like they described them. He was tall and thin, wearing black clothes with pale skin and long black hair. I thought vampires were supposed to have fangs, but this one didn't, so I guess you can't believe everything you read. The vampire, or reasonable facsimile had a hostage, a Union soldier, which he held in front of him as a shield with one had, and brandished a pistol with the other. We were a bit stuck. He had a hostage, but after what we'd seen done to the other passengers, there was no way we were going to drop our weapons. I had no choice but to remove the hostage from the equation, and I did that by shooting him in the leg. With the hostage out of the way, in was easy enough to cut down the creature, easier actually, than I had expected. Just before Zeke blew off his head, though, he shouted something about his master getting us, so I assumed that we had not seen the worst of it.

While all this had been going on, we had noticed that the train seemed to be picking up speed. We had to slow it down somehow, and to do that we had to get to the engine. We left the former hostage in the coffin car, proceeded through another of the water cars, over the flatbed with the Gatling gun, over the coal car and into the engine. The heat was intense. Someone had stuffed all of the ghost rock they could into the furnace, and the heat had fused the controls. The train was even then accelerating, out of control. All we could do was uncouple the engine and the coal car and hope that they either jumped the tracks or ran out of steam before they hit Chicago.

With all that taken care of, there was only one car left to check -- the private passenger car at the rear of the train. We went back through all the cars, noticing the disappearance of the former hostage, and finally got to the private car. We tried to open the door again, but again someone shot at us. I kicked it open and what we saw was a young woman holding a rifle she obviously didn't know how to use. I was trying to talk her out of shooting Zeke when another vampire dropped down from the ceiling and broke her neck like she was nothing. Though he was a little bigger than the first one, this one looked much the same, except he wore a long, straight, double-edged sword on his hip, kind of like those knights in the old days used. Like everyone else on this God-forsaken train, this vampire ranted and raved about how his master would come to kill us and how we would be powerless to stop him. He didn't talk nearly as much after Zeke put that big old crucifix knife in his forehead.

Now all we were left with was a train full of dead passengers and soldiers. But there was still the matter of the runaway engine headed toward an unsuspecting Chicago. We made good time back to the last town we'd past, Peoria, and alerted the railroad personnel at the station, who telegraphed ahead to the station in Chicago. I'm told they got most of the people out, but there were still casualties and the station was severely damaged. We were questioned by the local authorities, to whom we omitted the details of the vampires, and by the Union Army, to whom we did not.

I think I've figured a few things out. I believe the second vampire got onto the train during the bandit attack. We never saw the second motorized bicycle after the first time, so I believe he may have boarded the train somewhere in the rear. I don't think the second man in the coffin car was a hostage, either. Even now, when I think about him I can't remember his face clearly, and I distinctly remember looking directly at him. That's too much like the passenger's descriptions of the last man seen with Alexander Hicks to just be a coincidence. And where did he go after we set the engine loose? I guess it's possible that he's the "Master" that everyone seems so concerned about. Zeke and I are going to Chicago to see if we can find him and get some answers. Whatever the case, we're going to do our best to put an end to this madness.


June 27, 1876

We've answered some of the questions that have arisen over the past week, but just as many have been asked lately to easily replace them, and the price has been great.

After a couple days in Peoria, resting from our ordeal on that hellish train ride, Zeke and I took the train to Chicago. Our train had to stop a mile outside of the Chicago station, and on the stage coach ride in we saw the destruction wrought by our runaway engine two nights earlier. Fully half of the station was destroyed, filled with wreckage and even still burning in a few spots. I truly wish that there had been some other way, but I will just have to live with our decision.

We checked ourselves into a local motel that evening, and the next morning we looked into booking passage on a stage to Washington, D.C. Before we did that, however, we discovered news that perhaps our quarry was right here in Chicago.

The night that the engine crashed into the Chicago station, a derelict was killed in the train yard, not far from the wreckage. The man's throat was slashed, almost decapitating him. On the second night after the wreck, a businessman named Eugene Jenkins was murdered in an alleyway near the intersection of Franklin and Superior Streets, his head fully removed from his shoulders. On the third night, Joshua Fisk, a clothier, was killed in much the same manner outside his shop on Wacker Drive and Dearborn Street. And on the same night we arrived in Chicago, seven year-old Danielle Mitchell was abducted from a playground near Adams and Federal Streets. The murders were very similar to those on the train, and they appeared to be moving southerly through the city. There hadn't actually been a murder on the night of our arrival, but we felt safe assuming that Danielle had been kidnapped by the same person or persons. The difficulty now was in finding her before she ended up like the rest.

The first thing we did was look at the scenes of each murder. There wasn't much to be found at the first three scenes, but when we talked to some of the children at the playground from which Danielle was kidnapped, we were told that she had left with a man down State Street, toward Chinatown. We checked all of the alleyways in the immediate vicinity, and in one of them we found a mask. It was sort of bulbous, with tentacles where the mouth should have been. It appeared to be handmade, and had a slightly Asian cast to the eyes, so we decided to take it into Chinatown in hopes of finding someone who could tell us where it was made. After several fruitless inquiries, we finally found a shop called Engle's Curio Shop and Investigative Services. Oddly, it was not run by a man named Engles, but rather by a tall, thin chap named David Ridgefield. Ridgefield did recognize the mask, even going so far as to say it belonged to a cult operating in Chicago that he had been investigating for some time. He told us that the cult had been kidnapping a person a month for the past year or so, all of them presumably to be sacrificed. He couldn't explain the sudden rash of murders, but the method by which the victims were killed was the same, so it was obviously the same group. He offered to examine the mask for us, and the next day we would all venture down into the sewers to see if we could find the cult's hideout. Why can't psychotic, murderous cultists ever hide out someplace clean?

We believed that the kidnappers might be using the sewers as a way to get around the city without being seen, and it went along with our suspicion that we were dealing with a pack of lunatics. The frontier isn't always clean, but it has nothing to compare to the filth you can find in the big city. After a few hours of wandering around in the muck, we finally came across two men guarding a junction of the sewer tunnels. I tried to sneak up and get the drop on them, but they spotted me and a gunfight ensued. It was then that we realized that they weren't even men, rather, they they were the walking dead. But these were even tougher than those we'd met before. Even a shot to the head, always a sure fix before, didn't do much good. It was about this time that I saw David do something I can only call magic. He'd been hanging back during the fight, and when I glanced over I noticed that his gun was glowing! Not long after, he proceeded to blow holes in those two zombies. One of them still managed to shoot him, though, and he threw his gun to me. Since my own wasn't doing much good, I picked it up. I noticed then that it was loaded with silver bullets! Even stranger, after we had finished the creatures off, I gave David his gun back, only to notice that the bullets were no longer silver. I don't know how they changed, but I decided to ask him later, after we got out of the sewers. The one interesting thing we found was a sword, just like the one we found on the second train vampire. Zeke decided to keep it for some reason.

We couldn't determine what direction to go from the junction, but David noticed something about the zombies that was of interest -- they were both coated with a thin layer of coal dust. The mask we had found had also been covered in the stuff and there was only one place with an abundance of coal. Just outside the city there was a coal mine, surrounded by a high fence and patrolled by more guards than was normal. With nothing further to gain in the sewers, we happily climbed out of the filth and got ourselves cleaned up. We couldn't very well get into the compound in broad daylight, so we just hunkered down in the wreckage of the station and waited for nightfall.

To pass the time, David explained to me a little about what he had done with his gun. He explained that reality is all a matter of perception and that, if a person's will is strong enough, he can alter reality in small ways. David had basically willed the bullets in his gun to turn into silver. Not everyone can do it, David said, but he thought I might have the will. He taught me the method for changing bullets into silver, but until I had a chance to perfect it he gave me six silver bullets. Just in case we ran into more of those zombies.

When it was dark, we went over the fence and made our way to the mine entrance. It was guarded by two men wearing white and red hooded robes, who we subdued. David and I put on the robes and, by pretending that Zeke was our prisoner, we made our way down into the mine. We hadn't made it very far when we were stopped by another cultist who told us to take our "prisoner" to be sacrificed. Well, I have to admit that we were a little worried. Aside from a huge pile of coal, there weren't any structures nearby, nor anything that looked like a place to sacrifice hapless victims. With no other choice available to us, we decided to take a walk around the coal pile and hope that there was a hidden entrance somewhere. And that was exactly what we found. We bluffed our way into what appeared to be a pyramid-like structure buried under the coal. It had two levels, the main floor consisting of a slightly recessed worship area with a raised dais on the far wall, and a large rendition of the same tentacled face we'd seen on the mask. On an altar in front of the statue was the body of Danielle Mitchell. She'd been eviscerated, and I knew right then that someone was going to pay. The second level was really nothing more than a narrow walkway around the upper perimeter of the structure. While David stayed down below with Zeke, I took the stairs up to get a better vantage point and field of fire. What I discovered up there was shocking and confusing. The whole second level was packed with enough dynamite to level the entire structure. I wouldn't have time to wonder about this strange development though, because just then a man came out of a doorway behind the dais. He was wearing a fancier version of the same robes and mask, and for several minutes he led the several dozen cultists in a long, droning chant, saying "Chthullu" over and over. Whatever that means.

This went on for a while until the leader suddenly took off his mask and revealed himself as the hostage from the coffin car on our ill-fated train. He looked out over the cultists for a moment and then looked directly up at me, like he knew I had been there the whole time. He kind of smiled at me and then started screaming about infidels and defilers. That was enough to sic every one of the lunatics in the temple on me. Luckily, they were armed with swords, not guns. Zeke decided to go for the leader (who we heard several people refer to as the "Baron"), leaving me to deal with the cultists from the second level and David to handle them from the main floor. It would have been a lot easier is the Baron hadn't shot some sort of black fire from his hands and lit the fuse to the dynamite. I think he meant to do it. By the time I was able to get back down to the main floor, the fuse was dangerously close to sending us all up in a blaze of glory, and Zeke didn't seem to be doing so well against the Baron. After warning David of the explosives, I moved to help Zeke. When I got there I found that they'd gone down through the hidden passage behind the dais, one that led down into the sewers. My guns were reloaded by then, one of them with the silver bullets David had given me. Zeke was down, and hurt bad, but I managed to get in several shots at the Baron, and the silver bullets seemed to sting him. He still got away, however, and I had to tend to Zeke. I'd get another chance at him, if I had anything to say about it.

I got Zeke to a hospital before he expired, but as I write this he's just hanging on by a thread. I've been thinking back over that night, and I don't think the Baron was really a believer in the cult. Some of the things he said and the fact that he was so willing to blow up all of his followers indicates to me that he was just using the cult as a way to procure victims. He was a vampire, I saw the fangs myself, and no human being could have taken the punishment Zeke and I dished out. He got away, though, and he's not going to forget what we did to him. He's out there somewhere, waiting for us.


July 22, 1876

It's been a long, strange trip to the East, and now that it's over I don't think I'll be in any rush to go back. Too many things have happened.

After burying Zeke in Chicago, I took the train on to Philadelphia, where I was to meet up with Ashley. Predictably, the locomotive experienced mechanical difficulties about halfway through the trip. We stopped in a small ghost town called Prairie, Indiana, and the conductor told us another train would be coming from Chicago to take us the rest of the way. The second train wasn't to arrive for some time, so I spent that time looking around Prairie. I immediately got the impression that I was being watched, and several times I caught a glimpse of someone sneaking around in the alleys. Following the mysterious figure, I found myself on the main road through town when the subject appeared on top of an overturned stagecoach. He was dressed in a long gray hooded robe that completely hid his face. The surprises weren't over, though, for he motioned to someone behind me and, when I turned around, who should I see but Zeke! There wasn't any time to ponder on that, though, because at that moment two individuals came from behind the coach and the hooded figure jumped down to attack Zeke. The two thugs seemed to be nothing more than just that, and they went down easily enough when I shot them, though one did manage to wing me. Meanwhile Zeke had killed the hooded man, though, as it turned out, he wasn't a man at all. When he pulled the mask off he revealed a bull's head that bellowed and then turned to vapor, along with its two companions!

Back on the train to Philadelphia, there was a second strange occurrence, when we were visited by a fellow with a foreign accent, who claimed he had been sent by Ashley. He told me to look for a beggar in the Philadelphia train station, one with an open guitar case in front of him. I was told to take a dollar bill, tear it in half and put one half into the case. Supposedly, this would signal Ashley's people to pick us up and take us to her.

Things didn't exactly work out that way, though. We got to the station without further incident, and we even found the beggar with the guitar case. When I tore the dollar, we were approached by two men who asked us to come with them. Assuming these were Ashley's people, we started to leave. That's when all Hell broke loose. We were just walking away when I heard, "Ashley sends her regards!" I turned around to see a young woman pointing a gatling pistol at me. And she wasn't alone. There were at least three others with her, one of them the "beggar." Ashley had set us up. The gunfight that ensued was short but bloody. We took out three of the attackers, but both of our unknown escorts were killed, one of them passing a key to me and the words "Stop them," before he expired. We made all haste to leave the scene.

Our only lead at this point was the key, which turned out to fit room 421 at the Royal Arms Hotel. We got there and searched the room, finding a sheaf of papers alluding to the existence of a group called the Inner Circle. This group is apparently made up of harrowed, and one of their goals is the death of Union President Grant. We lingered in the dead agents' room for too long, though, and several more of their friends showed up. Since they at least hadn't shot us on sight, we decided to try talking to them. They weren't having any of that, though, and rather forcibly took us prisoner. It turns out that they and their two friends at the station were all Secret Service, which, in light of the Inner Circle's plan, makes sense. They took us back to their headquarters and locked us both in a cell. By this time we'd had enough. Using one of the hexes that David had taught me, I created several bullets and removed the gunpowder from them. Wrapping it up in a small piece of paper, I put the small charge into the lock of our cell door. My mini-explosive was just powerful enough to destroy the lock and open the door. After that, it was a relatively simple affair to overpower the lone guard, reclaim our equipment and escape the building.

Problem was, we still needed to talk to the Secret Service, though we needed to do it under our own terms. To set this up, we sent a message to the Service, asking for a meet. Just to keep everybody honest, we set the meet at the train station, during the busiest time of day. Hopefully, they wouldn't want to start a gunfight with so many civilians around. My hunch proved true, as the meet went off without a hitch and we went peaceably with the agents to their headquarters. Once there, we met with the top Secret Service agent, George Smith.

Smith told us much the same story as we had leaned from his agent's notes, except that in his version it is the Pinkertons that are the power behind the plot to assassinate the President. He also told us some other bits of unpleasant news: The suspected leader of the plot was a female Pinkerton with red hair. And that the Baron, whose connection had always been in question, was the actual tool for the assassination. As Smith explained to us, President Grant was considering a drastic cut to Pinkerton Funding. The Pinkertons needed a way to either kill the President and replace him with someone more to their liking, or to at least scare him with an obviously supernatural attacker, thereby convincing him of the need for the Pinkerton Agency.

For all that we had learned from the Secret Service, we really had nothing more that hearsay to go on. I wasn't sure we could trust the Service any more than we could the Pinkertons. And the Service didn't really trust us or even believe us enough to let us help. The only way we were going to get some answers was to find Ashley.

The way we figured it, the best way to find Ashley was just to ask the Pinkertons. We didn't find them the way we intended. When we got to the Pinkerton office, we were greeted by the sight of Secret Service agents patrolling the premises. Apparently, the Secret Service had taken their Pinkerton theory very seriously and invaded the headquarters, arresting the Pinks they found and driving the rest underground. We did find a Pinkerton or, rather, he found us and stuck a gun in my back. After we calmed things down a bit, we talked with our new associate, a Pinkerton named Jonathan Blue. From Blue we got yet another version of recent events. He confirmed the stories we'd been told before, but claimed that it was a small faction of the Pinkertons that was involved in the plot, not the entire agency. He also confirmed that the Baron was part of the Inner Circle, as had been Palmer, the Missionary and Miguel. For all we learned, though, we still had twice as many questions as answers, and Blue couldn't help us find Ashley. She did find us, however.

It was later that same day, and we had gotten a note to meet Blue behind the hotel at midnight. On the way down from our room we heard a gunshot and, when we got out back we found Blue dead, shot in the back of the head, and Ashley standing over him, smoking gun in hand. By this time, we weren't sure if we should trust her, so we took away her guns and took her upstairs.

Ashley took the expected route, blaming the plot on the Secret Service. Something wasn't right about her, though. She was drawn and haggard, and there was something else that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Until then, however, Zeke and I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. We went along with her plan to investigate the Secret Service, even going so far as to take her with us to break into the Service headquarters. It was then that she proved our suspicions true.

We had snuck up on the roof of the building next to the Service headquarters and made our way through their roof entrance. I had just gotten to the bottom of the stairs, Zeke behind me, when Ashley slammed the door shut behind us and tried to lock us in. Zeke dissuaded her of this notion by letting his shotgun open the door for him and we set off in pursuit. She was fast, but we caught her and took her back to the hotel. There we made sure she couldn't cause anymore mischief. Once she was bound and gagged, we sat down to try figuring out this puzzle.

It finally came to us when we examined her weapons. When we had first met Ashley, she had a modern, two-shot derringer and her gatling pistol. She still had the gatling, but instead of her derringer she now had a rusted old cap and ball pocket pistol. I knew I'd seen this pistol, or at least its identical twin somewhere before. Suddenly it came to me. I'd seen this pistol before in the hands of the madman Palmer! I was starting to make sense. Ashley must have taken the pistol from Palmer's body after I killed him, and somehow either it or something Palmer had done had driven her mad. She had killed Blue in exactly the same manner Palmer had killed his victims. And there was something else that was nagging at me. When President Lincoln was assassinated, I remember reading that this was the same sort of gun that John Wilkes Boothe had used. We did a little bit of research and it turned out that Palmer was one of the three Pinkerton agents to track Boothe to the warehouse, and the only agent to survive the encounter. Boothe killed the other agents--shooting both of them in the back of the head--before Palmer killed him. What if that little pistol had been infused with Boothe's madness? And what if that madness was passed along to whomever possessed the pistol? The logical course of action seemed to be to destroy the pistol, but even that proved difficult. While I stayed with Ashley, Zeke took the pistol to a gunsmith in order to have it dismantled. However, the gunsmith wasn't able to loosen the screws. Next, he took it to a blacksmith and tossed it into the forge. The wooden grips burnt away and the metal glowed red hot, but even then the smithy couldn't so much as dent it. We were stuck, so Zeke brought it back to the hotel and turned to the last thing he could think of: his faith. I don't know who he talked to, but they were listening, because I saw the gun sizzle and disappear without a trace, right in front of my eyes. With the gun gone, Ashley finally relaxed and came back to herself. Realizing what she had done, she urged us to go to the Secret Service and warn them that the attempt on the President's life would take place that very night.

We immediately went to Smith, but he wasn't inclined to believe information from a Pinkerton, and he was supremely confident of his agent's ability to deal with any threat. This wasn't good enough, so the three of us staked out the President's quarters in Philadelphia's City Hall. Round about midnight, we saw a black mist settle near one of the side entrances and coalesce into the Baron. He ripped the door out with astonishing ease and went inside, with us not far behind. We finally caught up with him in the ante-chamber outside the President's bedroom. It was almost a replay of our last encounter with the Baron. Zeke took him the only way he knows how, up close and personal, while I plugged him from a safe distance. With the two of us working together, we finally managed to put him down, though things were a bit dicey for a while.

As it turned out, Grant wasn't even in the bedroom. I guess Smith had listened to us at least enough to make him cautious. So the President was safe for the time being, the Inner Circle's plan failed. Grant awarded Zeke and I Presidential Commendations--hush-hush of course--it wouldn't do to let the public know of the plot to kill him. As a reward, he donated a large sum of money to an organization that helps war orphans, all in Zeke's name. To me he gave the service of the Library of Congress, and the knowledge of the government's own hucksters, men from whom I learned a great deal. To top it all off, he made us special agents for the government, with the special mission of uncovering the plans of the Inner Circle and reporting back to the government. With all that taken care of we're on our way back to the familiar surroundings of the wide-open west.

Grant's first mission sends us out into the Southwest in an effort to expose forces that he believes are trying to prolong the War Between the States. Our mission is to meet up with a Reverend in Monticello, Arizona and from him gain some information about Northern operatives called the "Spooks" and their leader, a person called the "Ghost." Our job is to make contact with the Ghost and his/her men, and assist him in any way we can.


July 10, 1876

With our instructions from President Grant, we set off for our destination, Monticello, Arizona. We stopped in Nogales for the day so that Zeke could visit with some members of his church and collect information on our next move. That was going to take him most of the day, so I was left with little to do except relax in the saloon. While I was there, I met and talked with a young Mexican man named Miguel Cortez. We struck up a conversation and eventually he told me that he was headed toward the small town of Pueblo Viejo, just a few miles up the road. He knew the pastor in Pueblo Viejo, and the man had sent for him. I'm not much for cooling my heels, so I asked him if he minded some company, and he accepted. Leaving a note for Zeke so he wouldn't worry, we set off. Miguel didn't have a horse, and claimed never to ride them, which made no sense, but he did have a dog, perhaps the biggest one I've ever seen.

When we arrived in Pueblo Viejo we went to see Miguel's friend and he filled us in on the mystery. Father Anthony told us how some townspeople discovered a young girl out in the desert, dehydrated and nearly starved to death. The only place the townspeople figured she could have come from was a small mission out in the middle of the desert, so secluded that no one actually knew exactly where it was. The girl stayed with Father Anthony for two months, though she never spoke, seeming traumatized by whatever had happened to her. At the end of that two months, though, she was suddenly stricken ill and no one knew what was wrong with her. In that same two months, no one had seen Pastor Whitcliffe, the man who ran the mission. He usually came into town every few weeks for supplies, and his absence was starting to make people think that something had happened to him and his followers. Father Anthony asked Miguel and I to find the mission and figure out what, if anything, had happened.

After one of the townsfolk showed us the spot where they had found the girl, Miguel and I picked up a faint trail heading north, deeper into the desert. By nightfall, we hadn't found the mission, but we had picked up some observers. We never saw them, but we knew they were out there. As long as they left us alone, though, we weren't too inclined to go looking for trouble. We arrived at the mission the next afternoon, and discovered that it was actually a small cluster of five buildings surrounded by a high wall. The main doors were slightly ajar, and when we looked into the courtyard we saw four bodies, all men, each of whom had either been shot or stabbed to death. They'd all been dead for at least a couple of months. We did a quick search of the premises, determining that the two buildings to the left of the main doors were both dormitories for the men and women who lived here. Now all the occupants were dead, most of them in their bunks, apparently killed while they slept. All told, there were fifteen bodies in the two bunkhouses, bringing the body count so far to nineteen. The two buildings to the right of the main doors were a dining hall (all of the food had long since spoiled), and a rectory where Pastor Whitcliffe must have lived. That structure we gave special attention, and what we found was very disturbing. There was a large bookcase in the rectory, and it contained numerous books pertaining to the occult and specifically to the summoning of creatures from other planes. These especially upset Miguel, and he burned the lot of them. The last structure was the chapel, directly opposite the main doors. The chapel contained three small prayer rooms and a main worship area, none of which appeared to have been disturbed. The only other features of interest were a well in the center of the courtyard and the remains of a large bonfire right in front of the chapel doors. What made the fire interesting was that we found traces of gold in the embers.

It was starting to get late, so Miguel and I spent the rest of the evening burying the remains of Whitcliffe's followers in a mass grave next to the chapel. Then we set up camp in the old dining hall. It was not a restful night.

I had a dream that night, a terrible dream. I was in the courtyard with people screaming and dying all around me. Through it all, I saw a young Indian girl running away from me. I followed her and watched as she stopped a man's body and picked at it, giggling happily all the while. I grabbed her and turned her to face me, only then realizing that her throat had been cut, as had been the throat of the doll she held. Then I woke up.

The next morning we finished burying the bodies and then performed a more thorough search of the compound. Each of the occupants of the bunkhouses had a footlocker at the end of their bed, and each one contained a book, basically the tenets of the people who lived and worshipped here. The book detailed the virtues of a humble life, one without the sins of greed and pride. As near as I can figure, each person that came here to the mission would give up their worldly possessions toward the betterment of the mission. Sounds like a scam to me.

Of more interest, though, we found a hidden passage in the chapel, directly beneath the pulpit. We opened it up and went down about 15 feet into a small chamber. In the chamber we found an altar and two short passages, each terminating in brick wall. The altar was very disturbing, encrusted with what appeared to be blood. We tried to get past the brick walls, assuming they were blocking our way to further passages, but to no avail. With nothing else to do, we went back up for lunch.

The rest of the afternoon stayed interesting as we had two groups of visitors. The first was a group of Apache, the leader of whom addressed us from outside the compound. I went out to meet him and he told me that they had tried and failed to purge the evil from the mission. What struck me the most was that he said we had to kill the evil with its own fangs. After he finished they all vanished back into the desert.

The second visit wasn't so peaceful. Again we heard someone hailing the compound and, when we peeked out the main doors, we saw three mounted white men. One of them rode toward the compound and we retreated back into the buildings in case they intended mischief. Only the one came into the courtyard at first, and he had seen us at the door so we moved straight into the parley stage. He said his name was Emil Bouchard and that he, too, was here for the mission's treasure. I have to say that right off the bat I didn't care much for Emil, and his thinly veiled threats and condescending manner rubbed me the wrong way. He just confirmed my feelings when his two saddle partners edged into the courtyard behind him and two more men scaled the wall behind the chapel. Predictably, a gunfight ensued that left Emil wounded, two of his men dead, one running scared and another missing. I saw the missing man run behind the chapel at one point during the fight, and a few moments later we heard a scream and a crash of breaking glass. When we went to look after things had calmed down, there was nothing but a puddle of black sludge flecked with spots of gold. But we didn't have much time to worry about it right then, because we still had a wounded Emil to deal with. He still insisted there was a treasure to be had, and we had an idea where it might be. Earlier in the day Miguel had found a gold eagle in one of the chapel's prayer rooms, wedged between the floor and the wall. After examining the room more carefully, we found that when one of the candlesticks was moved it opened a panel in the wall, revealing a small chambers and several empty sacks. Each of the sacks had been slashed open and the coins removed, though there were several laying about. Those we took for ourselves and sent Emil on his way, empty-handed. We hadn't seen the last of him, though.

Miguel and I were exhausted from all the work and fighting of the day, so we bedded down in the dining hall again. We didn't get that much sleep that night, either, between the dreams and the scratching. First the dream. I was chasing the little Indian girl again, this time toward the chapel. She ducked in just before I could catch her, and when I followed I was greeted by the sight of dozens of people hanging from the rafters on hooks. Then I woke up. It was early morning now and I could hear a faint scratching noise that sounded like it was coming from underneath the floorboards. I woke up Miguel and, being the excitable sort that he is, he shot a couple slugs through the floor, just to say "good morning," to our unknown annoyance. The scratching stopped, but we still needed to find out what was under there, so we fetched a couple of picks from the toolshed and went to work. What we found was another pair of short tunnels ending in identical brick walls. It was only missing the altar. Convinced now that there was something behind those brick walls, we set to breaking through one of them. The brick was easy enough to get through, but behind that we found reinforced steel, which stopped our efforts. Without dynamite we weren't getting through, so we went back up. That was when we saw movement in the courtyard. Heading outside, we saw something duck down behind the well, so Miguel went one way and I went the other to flank whoever it was. When I got around to the other side, though, there was nobody there! I figured maybe they were hiding inside the well, so I got a little bit closer to take a look. Before I got all the way there, though, something leapt out of the well a full ten feet in the air and landed a little ways away from me. It was Emil's man who had disappeared from behind the chapel, but he wasn't human anymore because his throat was cut from ear to ear. It was spotty going there for a little bit, but I'd dealt with these monstrosities before, so it was just a matter of getting some lead into the critter's brainpan and sending him back where he belonged.

Obviously, there was something very wrong here, something we were sure was originating from beneath our feet. And Miguel discovered something very disturbing. By drawing a map of the compound and assuming that every structure had a secret tunnel entrance, we connected the tunnels and came up with an ominous picture, that of a pentagram, the ancient symbol for black magic. To confirm his suspicions, we located the trap doors in each of the buildings and, sure enough, they matched up. At the center of the pentagram was the well, so it seemed the next logical target for investigation. It was a very deep well, though, so we had to tie two ropes together and anchor them at the top of the well. Then I took a lantern and lowered myself down. I descended about eighty feet before I saw anything, and then I wished I hadn't The bottom of the well was carpeted with bodies in various states of decay. The stench was horrendous and, needless to say, I got the hell out of there.

We were stuck. We only had one other place to check, and it was a long shot. The chapel had a small steeple with a bell and it could be reached by a ladder on the side of the chapel. I climbed up and, while I didn't find our culprit, I did spot our old friend Emil and about two dozen of his friends lurking outside the compound. They tried to shoot me off the steeple and missed, but our Indian friends didn't. We heard the sounds of a battle raging for quite some time, and when it stopped no one came to bother us, so the Apaches must have driven them off. But our troubles had just begun.

Later that night, we heard screams coming from the chapel. We got there and down into the secret tunnel with all due haste and were horrified by what we saw. In the altar chamber both of the brick doors were wide open and we could see shapes moving down the corridors. And, right before us, tied down on the altar, was our old buddy Emil. Over him stood a creature I can only assume was Pastor Whitcliffe. I say "assume" because the creature could hardly pass as human. His face, especially his jaw and the sides of his neck, was terribly burned, as was his chest and stomach. His chest and stomach wounds looked almost liquid and were heavily flecked with gold. In his hand he held an old flint-bladed dagger with a gold hilt, ready to plunge into Emil's chest. This must have been the "fang" that the old Indian told us about.

Knowing the monster's weakness was one thing, getting it away from him and using it to kill him was another thing entirely. From the passages poured several creatures that had once been human, but were now just walking caricatures of life. They moved in close to protect Whitcliffe while he chanted his foul ritual, and it was several moments before we could get through them. More were coming through the tunnels, though, and it took me several shots to hit the door mechanisms and stop the rest of them from getting to us. Our luck started to change a bit when I got a lucky shot in and managed to knock the dagger from Whitcliffe's hand. This gave Miguel the opportunity to get it and really take the fight to the devilish pastor. It was a tough fight, one that would have done Zeke proud, but Miguel was nothing if not one tough hombre. He eventually got that dagger into Whitcliffe's eye and the bastard dissolved into a pile of viscous black goo.

Our job there done, Miguel and I freed the traumatized Emil and set him free again. Then we headed back to Pueblo Viejo so I could meet up with Zeke again. He was already there when I got back, and he had healed the poor girl whose suffering had begun this whole nightmare. He had also brought back one of those steamwagon contraptions to carry us to Monticello, so I parted ways with my new friend Miguel and we set out to complete our mission.


July 13, 1876

We arrived in Monticello on toward dusk, the steamwagon driver dropping us off near the church so he could get refueled at the stage station. The town was a little too quiet for my tastes, but I just passed it off to the late hour. When we stepped into the church, though, my worst fears were realized. I've seen a lot of zombies in the last few months, but few of them turned my stomach like seeing a man of the cloth turned into a mindless, ravening monster. These last few months have also taught me the best way to dispatch a zombie, though, and some lead in the brainpan put the pastor down for good.

Problem was, the rest of the town was full of the undead, and they all seemed pretty intent on having us for dinner. We came out of the church just in time to see our steamwagon careen off into the hills and smash itself to bits in the distance, along with all of our extra gear. So now we were stuck in the middle of a town of zombies, alone, armed with only what was on our persons, 50 miles from the nearest neighboring town.

The one thing we couldn't do was stay in the church. The most defensible building seemed to be the town courthouse, just a couple buildings over. Our way was blocked by a few more of the zombies, but they were easily enough dealt with and we made it in without too much trouble. Our situation really hadn't improved that much, but at least we had a few moments to think. We barricaded the doors and took a look around. In the courtroom it looked like someone had tried to make a stand, but the creatures had gotten to him and ripped him in half. We found a curious sight in the courthouse jail, as well. A salesman named Mark Long had locked himself in one of the cells, figuring it was the safest place for him to be. I couldn't really argue with him, but I did con him out of a couple keys that opened other doors in the courthouse. These keys got us a couple of useful tools against the zombies, including a rifle and four sticks of dynamite. About this time, Zeke thought he heard the sounds of shots being fired in the vicinity of the general store, just a few buildings down the street. We couldn't very well just leave whoever it was alone there, so we made a dash for the store. It looked like the storekeeper and his wife had tried to make their own stand, but they had suffered the same fate as nearly everyone else in Monticello We did find our mystery guest, a young boy, no more than 14, named Tim, who had barricaded himself in one of the upstairs rooms. He was a stranger to these parts, just like us, and he had become trapped here when the zombies appeared. He knew a little about the town, though, including about Mr. DelMonte, a local eccentric with a large gun collection. This confirmed the information we'd discovered on some court papers and in the deputy's journal, and since we had no more ammo than what we carried, we decided it would be a good idea to visit DelMonte and put his guns to good use.

Luckily, zombies aren't very fast, so it wasn't terribly difficult for us to get to the DelMonte estate, a little more than a mile and a half away. The estate was a bit of an oddity, an oasis of green in the middle of the Arizona desert. DelMonte had gone to great expense to transplant a down South plantation to Arizona, complete with mansion, slave quarters, a huge stable and even a race track. There were also about a dozen zombies shuffling about in the front yard. We managed to fight our way through them, though the kid got beat up pretty bad during the mix-up. We got inside the mansion, but once again our situation was looking dire. We took the time we had and set about exploring.

We had several more encounters with zombies inside the mansion, during which we managed to blow up the east wing, before we found a set of stairs leading down into the cellar. We found some long, winding passages down there, leading into a number of odd rooms. In one we found four naked individuals sitting in a circle, chanting. We left them alone for the time being. In another chamber we found the bodies of dead Negroes stacked like cordwood and we were attacked by rats the size of beagles. In the last room we discovered the horrible truth about the DelMonte family and the deaths of everyone in Monticello. In a large, cavernous chamber we found a number of zombies and a grotesque abomination seemingly made up of the combination of the bodies of DelMonte, his wife, his daughter and, as we watched, Mark Long. Long just seemed to "melt" into the creature, adding his mass and limbs to the walking jigsaw puzzle of people. DelMonte was the only one in control of himself, and it sickens me to think how any man could do such a thing to his own wife and child. A battle ensued, but the details of the creature's demise are far to vivid a memory to dredge them up at this time. Suffice it to say that we destroyed the creature, killing DelMonte, his wife and daughter, and Long as well. After DelMonte was killed, the zombies seemed to lose their direction and mostly wandered about aimlessly.

We left the mansion and made it back to Monticello by mid-afternoon, and there was a large posse of Texas Rangers finishing off what was left of the zombies. They sent us on our way to Tombstone, where we will have to figure out our next move.


July 20, 1876

We arrived in Tombstone in just a couple days, to re-supply and plan our next move. We were saved the worry of making a decision, though, because I was approached by two Secret Service agents carrying a note from President Grant. In the note, Grant apologized for the events at Monticello, but urged us to look into a possible connection between DelMonte and Whitcliffe. Over the past several days, Zeke had been able to decipher Whitcliffe's journal, and we had found a mention of a small Negro woman, not unlike the one described in the diary of Mrs. DelMonte. Also, both men were originally from Louisiana, an area known for voodoo and other black arts. The letter also instructed me to meet a man named Archibald Beaumont, who was from that area and could guide us. I met Beaumont, and the two of us, along with the kid and Miguel, who we had met on our way to Tombstone, got on a train headed for New Orleans.

The trip was uneventful except for an Indian attack on the train during the second day, during which Tim blew one of the poor bastards to smithereens by shooting a stick of dynamite he had on his person.

We arrived in New Orleans the next day and, using Beaumont's knowledge of the area, we visited several of the local shops that catered to the occult. And who should we find running one of those shops than out old friend Emil Bouchard from that accursed church in the Arizona desert! Emil had looked better, and it didn't take much to convince him to give us some information about our mystery woman. He seemed too frightened to really offer much help, but it appeared that he had not given up his despicable outlaw ways, if the two young women held in chains in his basement were any indication. Naturally, we let them go and summoned the New Orleans police.

Emil's information had yielded a name, Madame LeVeau, but we had no idea how to find her. We visited another of the occult stores Archibald knew about, where we men an odd fellow named Dambalah. Well over six feet tall, he was the biggest man I've ever seen, but he had an aura of power about him that had nothing to do with mere physical size. He spoke mostly in riddles, but I did learn that the LeVeau estate was somewhere out in the swamps that surround New Orleans. Our next step was to get out there and do some investigating.

We rented a raft from a man Archibald knew and, under his guidance, poled out into the swamp. We'd been traveling for most of the day when the raft was suddenly struck, then bitten in half by the biggest damn crocodile I've ever seen. It was easily thirty feet long, with a mouth big enough to swallow a man whole, and that's exactly what it did to me! It came right at me and, rather than get bitten in half, I figured the only thing I could do was jump right into its mouth, behind and in-between those massive teeth. I eventually got spit out (I guess I didn't taste too good) and Miguel finished the beast off with a blast from his shotgun. It slid under the murky water and was soon gone from sight.

With only half of our raft left, it took some doing but we finally made it to the LeVeau plantation. Much of it was a burned out wreck, especially the upper three stories, but the first floor was largely intact, as was much of the second floor. A search of the first floor didn't turn up much of interest, only a small library stacked with books on the occult obviously written by a hack. The upstairs proved much more interesting with a large painting of the family, including Mr. and Mrs. LeVeau, daughter Delilah and a son whose name and face had been obliterated by the fire. In the master bedroom we found some sort of occult altar containing several charms and also a small study that contained more occult texts, these written by people who truly knew the black arts. We also found a journal written by Delilah , and it was quite revealing. Something had happened to her around her 17th birthday, something that had kept her from writing in her diary for several months and when she began to write again her script was juvenile and her words simple, as if she had regressed back to childhood. What was odd was that everywhere her brother's name was written, the letters were smudged and unreadable.

With the mansion well searched, we moved on to the grounds. Behind the plantation house we found the family cemetery plot. The LeVeau mausoleum wasn't hard to find, and inside it we found a hidden chamber very similar to the one we had found at Pastor Whitcliffe's little retreat for cultists. Down below we found another altar, this one much darker than the first and covered in what appeared to be dried blood. Perched atop the altar was a small lamp, encrusted with blood. And underneath the altar was a second journal, this one written by Madame LeVeau, that answered some of our questions. It confirmed that Madame LeVeau did in fact practice voodoo, something that made her very unpopular among her neighbors, despite her best efforts. LeVeau practiced white magic almost exclusively, but when her prized daughter became sick as a child, LeVeau made a terrible pact with the darker side of her voodoo magic. In return for the continued health of Delilah, LeVeau offered her son Bernard to the dark spirits, and I believe it was this heinous act that eventually drove her mad.

We had learned everything we could from the estate, so we took the journals and the lamp back to New Orleans. Dambalah helped us in his own cryptic way, helping us figure out that we could find Madame LeVeau by using the lamp as a guide. Squeeze a few drops of blood into the oil, light it and follow the flame like a pointer. Following its flickering flame, we journeyed deep into the swamp once again, finally coming to a raised island of dry land amongst all that water. A light was coming from the back of the island, and we could hear the sounds of drums and chanting.

About this time, the strangest thing happened. A beautiful young woman, the spitting image of Delilah, suddenly appeared right next to our raft, apparently walking on the water! I have come to believe that, in fact, she really was Delilah, or at least her ghost. There was nothing we could do to stop her from coming with us, and I'm not sure any of us wanted to.

We reached the top of a small hill at the back of the island and found ourselves looking down at a ramshackle hut next to a roaring bonfire. Around the fire a number of naked people danced, all of them white except one small black woman who could only be Madame LeVeau.

When they saw us, LeVeau and her compatriots immediately opened fire, but not with guns. Instead, the ground shook and beams of black energy hit all around us as they cast their dark spells. Luckily, they weren't bullet proof and several of them fell to our return fire while the rest of them retreated into the shack with Madame LeVeau. We followed, but when we got into the shack we were greeted by the sight of our crocodile friend from a day earlier, big as day, alive and walking upright! By the time the dust had settled, we had killed the creature a second time, watched it change back into the form of a young man we can only assume was Bernard. Madame LeVeau was also dead and, with her mother and brother killed, Delilah's spirit apparently had no reason to stay and faded away as well. I felt empty as we returned to New Orleans.


July 23, 1876

Once again the path before us was unclear. With Madame LeVeau dead, we had stopped her from corrupting anymore people, but her death hadn't answered any questions. Why had she done what she did? And what was her connection to this supposed plot to prolong the war? Without these questions answered, we didn't know where wo should go next. But we were about to encounter forces even greater than Madame LeVeau...

It all started when the kid sold a couple of antique dueling pistols he'd found in the LeVeau mansion. On the way back to our hotel we were attacked by a man with the head of a bull and two man-sized figures who seemed to be made out of nothing more than sacks stuffed with straw, grain and earth. The bull/man was easy enough to take out, though he did graze me with a couple of his bullets. Zeke and the kid had a little more trouble with the scarecrows, but they managed to take care of business. We won the fight, but we were left with yet another question: Who else wanted us dead? The list seemed to be growing longer by the day.

Preoccupied with the search for answers, we almost missed the tail we had picked up. I split off from the others and got behind the tail, cornering him, but I neglected to check to see if he had backup. I won't make that mistake again. His backup turned out to be a Texas Ranger by the name of Dwight Yokum who, after everyone had calmed down enough to holster their guns, made us an offer not unlike that of President Grant. Work for them to discover who was trying to prolong the War Between the States. We were a bit concerned about working for both sides, but since they both wanted the same thing, and neither one was actually paying us, what the hell. We agreed, and he told us to visit the library and look up a book by Edward Fitzhume titled "The History of Indian Legends."

We got to the library and found the book easily enough, and discovered one page with the corner folded. That page described the "Sconces of the Mayans," a pair of antique dueling pistols with a checkered and, some say, cursed past. The last owner of the pistols was a Southern officer living in the bayou, and it was then that we put together the connection between the article and the two pistols the kid had pawned. We didn't really have time to contemplate our findings, though, because all hell broke loose. Two men armed with some kind of modified shotguns opened up from across the room and, at the same time, two women started spraying lead at us from the side. In the ensuing gunfight, I killed one of the men and one of the women and wounded the second woman while Zeke dropped the second man. By the time it was all over, the police were on the scene. I managed to slip out the back, following the miraculously unhurt second man, but Zeke and the kid were arrested on the spot. Apparently, the librarian had been killed during the gunfight, but not by one of our bullets. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I finally caught up with the second gunman and beat a confession out of him, finding that the man who had hired them was a tall black man in a tophat. With nothing else to do, I first went back to our hotel and collected our belongings, then I moved to a new hotel, just in case I'd been identified. Next I went back to the shop where the kid had sold the pistols, only to find that they'd already been sold--to a tall black man wearing a tophat. I was beginning to see a connection.

I still needed to get Zeke and the kid out of jail, though, so my work was far from over. I tried the direct approach, just going in the front door to get some answers, but the first thing I saw was the woman I'd wounded talking to the police as nicely as you please. She didn't even look hurt! I beat a hasty retreat and returned later that night, talking to Zeke through his cell window. It was then that I learned the librarian had been killed. We also discussed our next move. I was of a mind to steal some horses and break them both out of jail, but Zeke wanted to learn a little more about what was going on. We waited and, luckily enough, Ranger Yokum got Zeke and the kid out the next morning, under the pretense of taking them into federal custody. He let Zeke and the kid go and urged us to finish our business in New Orleans and leave Louisiana as soon as possible.

Our only lead was the tall black man, and we had no idea who this might be until the kid piped up that it was probably a man called Papa Bones, a local character who lived in the Haitian quarter of the city. Amidst the hostile stares of the locals we made our way to Papa Bones' shack. There were two toughs out front, so Zeke went around the back. That's when business really started to pick up. We heard the bark of Zeke's shotgun, and that was all the excuse the kid needed to open up on the two toughs while I charged the shack. When I got inside I saw two more of the scarecrow creatures crouched over the body of someone who could only have been Papa Bones, and one of the creatures had the pistols. While the other charged me, the one with the pistols ran out the back. A quick shot took the one creature down (I don't know why Zeke and the kid had so much trouble with them), and I set off in pursuit of the other.

The creature was almighty fast, I'll give it that, and I was hard pressed to keep up with it. I soon realized that we were headed toward the train yards, and I just managed to keep the creature in sight until we reached them. It had some help at the yards, though, in the form of two guards who slowed me down enough to make me lose sight of my prey. The last I saw of it was when it boarded a train just leaving the yard. I just managed to get onto the train, followed closely by Zeke and the kid. We had boarded the caboose, and Zeke went up on top of the car while the kid and I went in the back door. By the time we got in and dispatched the two zombies guarding the car, though, the people in the forward cars had released the caboose from the rest of the train, leaving us empty-handed.


July 25, 1876

The further we unravel this mystery, the more tangled it seems to get. We were left on that train car, battered and bruised, with no idea where we should go next aside from a not found on a zombie that read "Locate Midville, Texas." With nothing else to go on, we headed back to New Orleans and booked passage on a train headed for Houston. We couldn't find Midville on the map, so we figured someone in Texas could direct us. Indeed, we checked a library in Houston that indicated that Midvill was between Dallas and San Antonio, but that was all. We hired a stagecoach driver named Mike Long in San Antonio, and he agreed to help us find Midville. The first two days of our journey in this accursed mechanical clap-trap went quietly, but the third day brought an attack from four bandits who seemed to appear out of thin air. We managed to drive them off, killing several, before we entered a narrow canyon. A short way into the canyon we came across a barricade made up of boulders and a log across the trail. This was obviously the second part of the bandit's ambush, with a Mexican and renegade Indian attacking us when we got out to move the log. With their backup gone, they didn't prove to be much trouble and we left them there, alive but horseless. We continued on through the canyon and finally found ourselves at the top of yet another canyon looking down into a valley holding a small town that could only be Midville. At the far end of the valley was a low mountain, where there was no record that there was one. Taking one of the bandit's horses, I scouted in one direction, while the rest of the group took the steamwagon in the other direction. Maybe an hour later I heard a great deal of gunfire coming from their direction, and when I turned to go back I met them halfway, flying along like the Devil himself was hot on their heels. When I finally caught up with them they told me about a worm creature as big as a barn that had tried to eat them. I guess I'm lucky that they're still around at all.

The canyon that I had been following was the one that actually led into town, and we soon found ourselves on the road into the lost town of Midville. The first thing I noticed was an overwhelming sense of hardship. We passed a family working a farm, a man and two sons, all of them showing signs of abject poverty. Their clothes were in tatters, none of them had shoes to speak of, and not even a horse to pull their plow. The father threatened me with a bow, and seemed very anxious for me to leave.

When we got further into town, Mike's steamwagon finally gave out, and we had to walk the rest of the way. We stopped in the saloon to wash away the trail dust in our throats. The kid started a short tune on the piano, and things started to get really weird. These little, giggling green critters started popping out of the woodwork and attacking us. They weren't difficult to kill, but one of them tried to crawl inside one of my guns! It was then that we realized that they were attracted to our machinery. I'd read a little something about these things once, they were called gremlins and they like to play hell with anything that has moving parts. The more we fired our guns, the more of them that shoed up, so we had to revert to more primitive methods, namely knives and clubs. It took some work, but we finally managed to get rid of most of them when the Sheriff came along and blew up the the rest with a half stick of dynamite.

The Sheriff filled us in on what had happened to Midville. Five years earlier, a great earthquake had struck, separating Midville from the rest of the world and killing most of the town's livestock. Two of the worm creatures, called Mojave rattlers, killed the rest of their animals, save a couple of cows. The townspeople did manage to kill one of the rattlers, but the other was trapped in the canyon, the only way in or out of Midville. Then the gremlins cam through the telegraph wires, killing the operator. The townspeople soon learned to avoid the use of complex machinery, how to get by without much meat and how to just get by as best they could.

Now that we were in Midville, we needed to figure out who else wanted to find the town, and why. While we'd been talking to the Sheriff, we'd also met the local blacksmith, a fellow named Whitney. He seeded to be a bit of an eccentric, so his shop was one of the first places we visited. He turned out to be something of a tinkerer, and while we talked to him I got the feeling he wasn't telling us everything. We decided to come back to him later. We wandered around town for a while just talking to the people, and uncovered several interesting details.

1) A flying beast had been seen in the night sky on several occasions, but the only eyewitnesses were the town drunk and a young girl. 2) The cave in the mountain behind town were strictly off limits. The Sheriff would put you in jail for going there, and Whitney had already spent several nights in jail. 3) The telegraph lines still stood, and they even went straight through the mountain! No one knew how this was so, and no one dared to use the telegraph because it drew more gremlins.

I decided to check out the caves behind town while Zeke and the kid snooped around Whitney's shop. I wouldn't know what they found there for some time. I never actually made it to the caves, because I was attacked by a mob of gremlins throwing stones. There were an awful lot of them, and they acted as if they were protecting the cave from intruders. I relented and decided to come back later.

The next day, Zeke and the kid checked out Whitney's shop more carefully, especially a certain locked room in the back. I went to talk to Whitney, partly because I was uncomfortable breaking into his private room and partly to distract him while my friends did just that. Whitney eventually wandered back to his shop, and when we got there Zeke and the kid had really hit the jackpot. The locked room in Whitney's shop hid an assortment of occult texts and trappings. Whitney knew then that he was caught and quickly spilled the whole story.

Five years ago, Whitney had been a blacksmith bored with the drudgery of his everyday work. One day, a black man wearing a black tophat came to town. Initially unpopular, the stranger soon found in Whitney a man willing to use black magic to create work shortcuts. Soon, Whitney had mastered the techniques required to create imps to help him with his work. But Whitney wanted more. He convinced the stranger to help him create more powerful helpers. They went to the hill behind town and into one of the caves to perform the ceremony, but something went terribly wrong. There was a great explosion and when the dust cleared much of the cave had collapsed. The stranger had apparently been killed in the blast, as only his blood-stained tophat remained. The only living things in the cave were Whitney and a huge, hideous bat creature, bigger than a man and sporting a long barbed tail. The creature flew away, but behind it remained a shimmering portal that spewed forth a continuous stream of gremlins. When Whitney escaped the cave, he found the town isolated from the rest of the world and he realized that it was his fault.

Since then, Whitney had been working hard to find some means to close the portal. He'd created several devices toward that end; a pair of small globes and some sort of complex device, all their functions completely unknown to me. Whitney was just about to tell us about them when he died.

He was shot from behind without warning, by the very scarecrow creature that had stolen the flintlock dueling pistols from us in New Orleans. Those very same guns were the ones that killed Whitney. There were three of the creatures, and when the fight began it struck me that fire might be a good weapon against them. I had been carrying around an ax handle for a while, just in case we ran into more gremlins. I dipped it in some hot tar that Whitney used for patching roofs, and I lit it and destroyed two of the creatures while Zeke dealt with the third.

I swear, we seem to go from one fix to the next. Here we supposedly had the tools to close the portal, but no idea how they worked. The only man who could show us was dead, and if we didn't figure it out soon we'd be stuck in Midville for a very long time. Our unknown enemy obviously didn't want us to close the portal, so that just strengthened our resolve. More lives than our own depended on our success.

I took a close look at the devices Whitney had created, and I finally figured out what the globes were designed for. They were both roughly the size of a grapefruit, one with 12 evenly spaced holes in it, the other with six larger holes, evenly spaced as well. Each of the globes had a crank as well, not unlike that on a music box. I fiddled with it for a bit before I realized that I could put .44 bullets in the ball with the smaller holes and shotgun shells in the other. Apparently, you crank the ball up and throw it, and a short time later it goes off, shooting in every direction. If we run into a situation with a large group of enemies, they would be very useful. The other contraption looked like some sort of wildly modified phonograph. I didn't have the foggiest idea what it was for, but there was a globe of green goo on it and the kid had the idea that maybe it was for trapping gremlins.

With these objects in hand, we headed for the caves the next morning, and the whole town was there to see us off. On the trail to the cave we encountered more of the gremlins and tested our device. It indeed worked, sucking the gremlins in and converting them into the green goo. After that, they pretty much left us alone as we approached the cave. We finally got to the cave, and had only just entered when Tim fell through the cave floor into a lower chamber. He was attacked by a mob of gremlins, but somehow he managed to drive them off before I dropped down to help. When we were all in the lower chamber we noticed several passages leading deeper into the mountain and we all felt the oppressive presence of something greater, deadlier and far more evil that the gremlins. We chose a passage and soon felt the presence stalking us. It eventually attacked us at an intersection, a sneak attack on the run. All we ot was a glimpse of a bluish winged creature, bigger than a man, with fangs and claws. It was gone before we could do much, but Zeke managed to cut it before it got away. We continued on through the tunnels, and eventually heard the sounds of mining. We rounded the corner to see dozens of gremlins mining the cave walls. While we watched, one of the creatures came into the cavern triumphantly holding some sort of golden object over his head. The object, whatever it was, seemed important so we decided to try capturing it. I pushed the gremlin capturing device around the corner and cranked it, sucking more of the gremlins in. Unfortunately, the one with the object got away, Tim hot on its heels. Zeke and I were attacked by the winged creature again, so we couldn't follow. The fight with the creature was brutal, and I took a wicked slash across my chest. We drove it off, though, and Zeke used his powers to heal my wound.

We set off after the kid and found him in another cavern, beset by dozens of gremlins. At one end of the cavern was a hole, almost like a sinkhole in reality, if you will, and there was an image behind it. There was no time to ponder this, though, as we saw the gremlin with the gold object, which we now realized was a crown, jump into the portal and disappear. Zeke went after it while I cranked the goblin catcher again, sucking in the last of the creatures. The box started to hum ominously, like it was overloaded, and I had to do something to get rid of it, so I threw it into the portal. They reacted to each other and the portal collapsed in upon itself.

Our troubles weren't over, though. The winged critter, while greatly weakened, attacked again. We drove it off again, and Zeke was in hot pursuit this time. The creature escaped, however, and we made our way back to the surface.

The townspeople were overjoyed when we told them about the gremlin's defeat. They decided to have a little party in our honor. I wasn't able to enjoy the festivities, though. The winged creature was still on the loose, and anyone knows that a wounded animal is the most dangerous kind. My fears were confirmed when, during the party, the body of a young man was dropped from the sky. We heard the creature screeching and a moment later it tried to fly off with a young woman. As one, the three of us fired at the creature, bringing it crashing back to the ground. Zeke finished it, once and for all, ending that part of our nightmare.

Over the next couple days, we helped the Sheriff hunt and kill the rattler with dynamite, opening the way for the townspeople to flee their imprisonment. Zeke told us that the place he saw on the other side of the portal had been Monticello, where we had fought the madman DelMonte. There were people there, and it hadn't been long enough for the town to be repopulated. Now it is time for us to return to that accursed place and, with any luck, get the answers we've been seeking for so long.