story Chapter 2

[Butchern]

The drive out to the swamp was scenic if not a little bleak. Everything was green and brown and damp. The road out of town was well paved, and the fields that surrounded it on both sides were fenced in and dry enough, but after only about twenty minutes of driving, the fences ended and standing water and swampy wetlands began to slowly encroach on the road.

 

The paved rode ended at a scenic overlook, which was little more than a turnaround for cars with a few benches and a wooden rail. Beyond the overlook was a vast wetland that ran all the way down to the Wadmalaw river. The road continued on as a one lane gravel path, running parallel to the river. It looked like many cars had taken that road before. The road, no doubt, led further into the swamp. The investigators knew that the Sheriff had driven our there and that there were houses along that road, but from the scenic overlook they couldn't see anything but a gravel road disappearing into a sparse pine forest.

 

There were still a few hours of daylight to drive around the swamp road, but they couldn't stay long if they wanted to avoid driving back in the dark.

[Sir Lazeabout]

Malcolm rides along in the passenger seat, keeping a look out for anything that looks unusual. He has to admit that his familiarity with anything that doesn't have streetlights is on the limited side.

[matt_s]

Coupard idly hums to himself as they headed down the roughly paved road.

 

Malcolm, do you want the gun? I have no special expertise with the thing beyond "line up the ol' sights and pull the trigger". Not sure if you were of the right - or wrong - age for the war.

 

Once arriving to the overlook, Coupard murmurs, Onward, to wherever the road shall lead then?

 

They owed it to Broder, and those long departed young women, to see this through to whatever end.

[matt_s]

As Coupard steers the car back and forth on the serpentine gravel path through the swamp, he runs through his musing on the matter aloud for the benefit of himself and Malcolm.

 

Let's start from the beginning, shall we? In or around 1798, a meteor shower was observed that was tied - albeit by superstition - to a rock with such bizarre behavior as what we observed in the laboratory. That indicates something altogether extraterrestrial in nature. Curiously, the first grave in Ravenel is 1798 as well. I trust coincidence only so far. I note that the phenomena in the literature was in the Himalayas, quite literally half a world away, but a meteor shower depositing debris over a wide swath of the Earth is not far out of the question. The rock's behavior we observed could be a prototypical manifestation of the ooze that animates those accursed birds.

 

That timeline also corresponds to cults reported in the late 1790s. Perhaps our beloved daughter succumbed to their vile depredations. And poor Ms. Ramirez was also a young woman, troubled in some way by the birds. A guess is that exposure or infection by the birds inflicts a measure of madness, that festers until the fruit is ripe for the picking, to use a somewhat grotesque analogy. And there was a group of loggers who disappeared near Ravenel at that time. Something horrific happened around 1798, and then maybe reoccurred, which brings us to...

 

The 1890s deaths are another puzzle. The string of deaths aligns with a rumored occurrence a century earlier where evidently young women were sacrificed to the birds. And the Himalaya report noted a bird which was knit together by fungus. That is like our nasty customers we have encountered. And there perhaps is a real cult out there. The books on avian anatomy were suspiciously checked out of the library after all.

 

That brings us to the singing. Singing naturally is a traditional form of worship, embodied by pretty much every faith I can think of, although all those examples are of course wholly benevolent, and this one is rather fouler.

[Sir Lazeabout]

"Indeed," Malcolm says. "I think that, as risky as it is, we need to find these singers. If they do indeed worship these foul birds, they might know things about them that still mystify us."

[Butchern]

As the investigators drove deeper into the swamp, they discovered many other gravel and dirt lanes down which they could drive their car. Most of these lanes ended abruptly in wetlands or in a raised dry patch that a small house set on. Some ran right down to the river where the investigators saw small boats tied up near the shore with fishing gear hanging from tree branches or stowed in nets that were staked to the ground in case the river swelled. It was a veritable maze of roads and houses, but nothing that struck the investigators as a place they could begin their investigation, not without going door-to-door . . . which seemed inadvisable.

 

The maze took them further and further away from town until reached the end of the line. The road was now surrounded on both sides by the river and by the swamp. There was literally no going any further. The road ended in a raised field. A small wooden house sat near the wetlands that marked the border of the swamp and a large dilapidated barn stood near the road. As they pulled into the small field to turn their car around (no one appeared to be home), they saw a massive flat stone standing in the center of the field, about halfway between the house, the barn, and the swamp. It was huge, probably three feet tall and completely flat on the top, like some sort of stone table. They couldn't tell if it was round or how deep it was, but it was easily six or eight feet in diameter.

[matt_s]

Coupard carefully set the car into park, shut off the engine, and stepped out. He carefully his fingers against the grip of the revolver to steel himself against whatever they would find here. The ground had a bit of give underneath his boots, but it was not the consistency of soil that was at the forefront of his mind. The barn was worth a second glance from the outside. There were always plenty of abandoned buildings on marginal land though, places where the cost of demolition was simply not worth the potential profit of redevelopment.

 

The Professor turned away from the barn and slowly approached the stone structure. Over two meters in diameter was truly monumental. Either a glacier in some long ago age had deposited it there, it was the product of many hands hard toil, or a more bizarre hand was at play. Coupard thought he could be able to identify its origin and basic mineral composition, hopefully from a distance, if he just took a moment to think. The rock could be a glacial erratic, deposited by some bizarre coincidence, but given the etchings of a dark history in Ravenel and the events that had brought them here, coincidence was disturbingly unlikely.

[Sir Lazeabout]

Malcolm hangs back, keeping a lookout. He may not have the scholarly qualifications of the professor to examine the stone table, but he should be able to keep them from being blindsided by suddenly arriving locals.

[Butchern]

Even with a bit of a closer look, it was clear to the investigators that there was no one home. There were no lights on in the house, and the barn looked like it was not in use for anything other than perhaps storage. There were some reasonably fresh tire tracks in the yard. Other cars had been though here in the last few days at least, maybe earlier today.

 

The closer the investigators got to the stone, the larger it appeared. It was probably ten feet in diameter on its longest axis (it was more oblong than round). Coupard could see a silver hue to the stone, almost metallic, as it peeked out through the mud and vines that grew over it, but he could not make out what sort of stone it was. It looked artificial.

 

As he drew even closer, Coupard could see that the top of the stone had been cleared of vines and swept of dirt; the broom marks were still visible in the dirt that remained. The stone was flat and smooth on top, certainly not the work of natural forces. No matter how much time it had, nature could not produce such a thing. This was the work of hands—oblong around but flat on top. The stone top was engraved with drawings and some sort of script on a ring around the outside of the top of the oval. Whatever the stone was, it looked hard, heavy and strangely porous. It might not even be stone at all. There was no easy explanation for that this thing was made of.

 

One of the investigators produced a compass and it appeared to work normally. Neither of the investigators could recognize the language of the script, but it reminded them Aramaic, Hebrews, or Arabic . . . something in that vein, at least. There were footprints all throughout the yard and all around the stone as one might expect for a yard in front of a house in the swamp.

[Butchern]

Malcolm decided he wanted a good look at the stone while there was still enough light to do so. He approached the stone, and leaned over its surface so he could take it all in at once.

Malcolm recognized the drawings on the stone as primitively astrological in nature. How that might convert to legitimate astronomy, he could not say. Regardless, many of the constellations were oddly positioned, as if the drawings were made when the earth, or perhaps the stars themselves were differently arranged in the heavens.

The drawings were ancient in design if not actually ancient in their production. They reminded Malcolm of the cave paintings he'd seen in occult books about visitors to Earth in the Earth's pre-history. They were primitive in style but intricate and intelligently drawn.

The drawings depicted a journey. The journey began from off the side of the stone and traveled to the center, or was it the other way around perhaps? The script on the stone remained a mystery.

Edited January 14, 2023 by Butchern (see edit history)

[Sir Lazeabout]

"Fascinating..." Malcolm says, wide-eyed. "This is quite interesting, from a purely anthropological point of view. If I had my guess, I'd say that it's a recreation of some age-old legend carved into rock, of visitors arriving from the stars to commune with the primitive people of the time. It surely ties in to our bird cult. Do they believe that the fall of asteroids was some manner of astral vessel?"

He isn't quite willing to admit the possibility of that really being the case, not yet. But the thought is growing like a tumour at the back of his mind.

[matt_s]

Coupard was grateful that Malcolm could glean more from the stone than he could.

There is much strangeness to be expected when we pull aside that worn veil lying astride the world, it seems. Messengers from the stars, perhaps aspected in those foul birdlike things? Wisdom purchased with the fell currency of innocent blood.

I say we finish taking a look around here - I expect we've seen pretty much all there is to see, but who knows - and then return after nightfall to eavesdrop on this purported foul chorus. On the way back, we can keep an eye out for a clever place to stash the car.

Actually, let's take a close look through the windows of that house. If they live so close to the stone, I doubt they are unrelated to any conspiracy involving the same.

[Butchern]

Malcolm put both his hands on the stone as he leaned over to examine it. When he went to leave the stone, he found that one of his hands was stuck to the surface. At first it didn't want to budge at all, but then, with some effort, an odd burning sensation crossed the palm of his hand as he pealed it off the stone. The removal was painful, but he didn't leave any of his skin behind. Malcolm's palm was hot to the touch for nearly a minute, and the small cut that he had on his hand before he leaned on the stone was now oozing blood . . . though there was no sign of any blood stain on the stone.

Edited January 16, 2023 by Butchern (see edit history)

[Sir Lazeabout]

"Ow!" Malcolm clutches his wounded hand. He must have cut himself on sharp edge of the stone... even though he can't see any such edge now. Shaking his head, he ties his handkerchief around his palm for now and dismisses the incident from his mind. There are mysteries to be unraveled, after all.

[matt_s]

You alright there, Malcolm? Was there some strange interaction with the stone when you cut your hand on it?

Coupard looks more closely at the stone, noticing its evidently unblemished surface. The stone, it seems to have absorbed or otherwise deflected the blood from it. If it is taking in the blood, where is it going, and for what purpose? Might sacrifices feed the burgeoning malevolence within and be connected to the mysterious force that animates those disturbing avian facsimiles?

That phenomenon - it demands investigation, but bleeding on it will have of course the expect exsanguination effect, hardly conducive for, well, the rigors of our investigation. And who knows what unpleasantness it may induce.

Coupard will now take a second look at the ground surrounding the stone - was there any blood or other indications of "worship" there -  before looking in the windows of the house. There is probably something of interest within that house, but if we wish to snoop on the people here this evening, a burglary - unless you have means of doing so with subtlety - will raise the alarm as to the presence of outsiders even further. Yes, I fear even our relatively subtle presence here has not gone unnoticed.