I’ve decided to share a bit of a detective story from my larger project for the holiday. I don’t think there’s too much that needs to be laid out before reading, although there is a fair amount of “in-universe” vernacular for periods of time that pass and some basic fantasy-ish backstory… I hope these terms are not distracting, but I think the reader should be able to guesstimate more or less what the words represent. If something is odd or doesn’t make sense, I’d love to answer any questions.

That said, I hope you enjoy the story and your Samhain this year.

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Auxiliary Investigator’s Log: Day 1

My name is Gin Gormsen, but no one’s called me that for years.  I’m a detective.  Not a good one.  I’m keeping this journal because my memory ain’t so hot lately  I am almost certainly going insane.  As an authorized Bearer of the High Seal, this document will serve as my testimony, should I be unable to act as a witness at the conclusion of this investigation.

I guess I should clear up the whole name thing for the sake of the Common Court.  And the bad detective thing.  They’re the same, more or less.

As far back as I can remember, I’ve always had a way of just knowing.  Well, just seeing.  If anything broke and no one saw what happened, I knew why.  Someone or something went missing, I knew to where.  Early on, people just figured I was trouble.  Makes sense, I guess.  The only way a kid could know that kind of stuff is if it was his fault.

My pop never thought much of it, unless it made trouble for him, in which case he’d give me a good whipping and be done with it.  The man worked almost as hard as he drank, so naturally, he preferred to ignore me and how much I looked like my mother.  After how she passed, I can’t blame him.  In the end though, the only lasting things he ever gave me were a few good scars and his drink of choice as my namesake. 

Gin’s not much of a name.

Anyway, no one ever thought much of me just… knowing things.  That’s how I got my current nick.  “Knack.”  Irony mostly.  I lived on a pretty rough street, and after a while it was common knowledge that I was the go-to for finding what needed found.  Sometimes the officer who patrolled my block would ask me to find things that’d gone missing for him.  Whether or not he thought I’d stolen or hid it, once I found what he needed, he’d say, “Good work.  Nice knack.”

He was a good man.

He was the reason I ended up becoming a public servant to begin with.  I never much liked the idea of soldiering, and I disliked the white-mana huffers in the church even more.  Where I grew up that didn’t leave much else, and when it comes to solving crimes, it helps to just know.

Now the bad detective part.  Right.  Did I write that?  Not yet.  My memory ain’t so hot lately.

Good detectives use facts.  You come up on a scene, you work with what’s there.  Draw logical conclusions.  Establish certainty through witnesses and evidence.  That’s what good detectives do.

No assumptions, no guesses, no longshots.  No inferences from things that can’t be known.

I’ve always tried to be a good detective, but it’s like working backwards when you just know.

It wasn’t a problem until lately.

Auxiliary Investigator’s Log: Day 2

I didn’t believe it when the Church gave me this assignment.  Still don’t know for sure, I guess.  The holy high-hats like to keep things internal.  Especially when they think an investigation concerns matters of… the faith.  Why would the Inquisitors send a public investigator to find a witch?  Makes no sense. 

A fool’s errand most likely.  Send me down to the South indefinitely to investigate something that never really happened.  My last case must’ve steamed up enough of the big boys around here that they decided to get rid of me for a while.

I should’ve just let that whole thing go.  It’s ruining my life.  It ruined my life.  It’s why Quinna left. The bouts of pain, the nightmares, this.

What would I even do if I caught a witch?  Burn her?  How do I prove guilt of witchcraft?  It’s been a long time since I’ve had any silver, much less enough to test for The Dark, if there’s even any kind of libra to that.

I thought the whole thing was a joke until the Inquisitor came and gave me the Sun King’s seal.  I’ve never been more scared by one man in all my life. 

Tall.  Stood two heads higher than the average man, but carried about the same amount of substance.  As if he’d been grabbed at both ends and pulled like taffy.  Spindly, pale fingers.  Long, polished nails.  Bloodshot eyes under a solid gold mask.  A death mask is what it was.

He came down to the precinct without any kind of warning.  Walked straight up and bent over me like a big hungry eel.  I gawked at him without words for a moment; staring up into unblinking hate.   I was nervous to begin with, and then came that voice.

It was… An unending death rattle.  One long scraping sound over another, articulated by popping noises no man’s mouth should make.  The voice of a predator.  Not human.

Reminded me of a barn owl who’d cornered a mouse. 

He told me I’d be investigating a witch from Haven who had attacked an estate in a southern province.  He put me through the motions of swearing to honor The Seal, and then handed it over.  He then told me I’d be leaving tomorrow and asked if I had any questions.  I didn’t.  I couldn’t have asked any questions, much less spend another minute with that thing standing over me.  …With those foul beady blood-clots of eyes looking down at me.

He wasn’t looking at me, so much as looking inside me.  Spooky bastards, them Inquisitors.  I thought there weren’t any of them left, anyways.  Shows how much I follow the affairs of The Church.

Auxiliary Investigator’s Log: Day 3

The wagon drove for around eight hours in all today.  We took more stops for my aching side than we did for the sake of the great beasts that drove us.  I’m exhausted.  I can’t sleep.  I suppose I prefer being awake to the dreams, but after a while a man needs his rest to function. 

The evening sun is setting right now over the gold of post-harvest grain fields.  It’s good to be out of the city, but I haven’t been much for the dark lately.  Always takes me back to that room.

I mentioned earlier that I could always just see things.  Did I?  Yes.  It’s not quite like that.  It’s more that I can… peel back what has happened, to see the core of the way things were.  Unwrapping a clew or a big ball of fabric, all the way down.

 It’s not quite seeing either.  I experience the visions in most ways.  Sight, sound, smell, heat.  I can experience, but can’t interact.

I call it scanning.  It doesn’t take much.  Time, mostly.  Concentration.  Usually it just happens to me.  Whenever I dream, for example.  I have to be in a place, of course, to see what happened there.  I can only see things where I am physically.  Like anyone really.  It wouldn’t make sense otherwise.

When I get a case, well, all I really have to do is go to the scene and wait.  I stand still, clear my head, close my eyes, and then it starts.  The more recent the crime, the better.  The fewer people involved, the better.  I can’t honestly say I know too much about how it works, other than the fact that it does.  After long enough, I end up just…  drifting backwards.

I can always pull myself out of it.  Could always pull myself out of it.  Like waking from a small nap.  Little hops in consciousness.

I went to the parish priest once and confessed to him that I saw things sometimes.  He told me that these visions were, “nothing but shadows; lies entertained in the absence of the Eyes of Light,” and that I should embrace the loving arms of the Church.  Two sentences cost me four denarii.  Tithe, indeed.

The things I see are real.  And I don’t much appreciate some high-and-mighty dust-mop telling me that I’m falling to The Dark One.  It doesn’t matter much now anyways what exactly my scanning­ is exactly, because now I can’t seem to control it anymore.

My last case was a tough one.  Girls were going missing in the area where I grew up.  Young girls.  Now I’m no Green Knight, but I tend to take it personally when people go after my nabe.  Especially kids. 

The problem with the case was that there was no crime scene.  No evidence.  No clues.  Just the absence of children where children should have been.  Even for me, it’s nearly impossible to work with that. 

We devoted a lot of resources to that one.  Months went by.  I would find myself stopping and closing my eyes in shops and markets, looking for some shred of evidence.  I never saw anything.  People always make it harder.

After more than a year and seven missing girls, we got a report where the mother could trace her daughter’s whereabouts to within about 30 minutes before the disappearance.  It gave us one block to work with, at least.  It was something.

We had no suspects, no witnesses, nothing.  So we canvassed the place.  It was about another month before we came to the deli. 

The shop was part of a big stone building.  Church property, being attached to a kosher butchery and all.  The inside of the storefront was small, and the owner’s great mass moving around made the hanging meats and stools even more claustrophobic.  We were hesitant to even ask the usual questions, what with butchers not being far from men of god and all, but we did it anyways.  I think my associate Flen was hoping for free food as much as anything.

The butcher was happy to oblige our inquiries, waving his massive hands in gestures of welcome, nodding his round, bald head solemnly in sorrow for the poor, poor, young girls.  His face was a dervish of emotions.  Heavy brows heaved and bowed with colossal effort, his lips moving as though they were unaware of the words that pushed their way out of his mouth.  Every time he stopped talking he would smile, lower canines protruding just slightly, giving him an uncannily porcine appearance.

He was enthusiastic in the kind of stupid, manic way that people who want to help can be. I drifted off more out of boredom than anything.  I scanned for maybe three minutes.  And then I saw her.  A girl, maybe 12 or 13, walked in through the door, nervous.  She followed someone through the door behind the counter, screamed, and then nothing.

I was kicked out of my scanning by a giant, jovial hand patting my shoulder with far too much power.  “Typical Vigilium,” he laughed, “can’t even keep your eyes open on the job.”

I opened my eyes, and looked at the butcher.  The girl had been taken here.  And I had no way to prove it.  I asked to take a look around, but Flen wouldn’t have us wasting the Shochet’s time.

After that, I went to the butcher’s nearly every day for weeks.  Always buying little things.  Making pleasant conversation.  Trying to find a sideways moment to sit still and scan; hoping for a way to get behind the inner door and see what had happened.  Eventually, I did.

I came in late.  After he was usually closed, but the door had been open.  No one was in the store, so I went in the back.

I found a place in the giant room where I was mostly hidden by the larger cuts, and closed my eyes.  Almost immediately, I saw the butcher walk to an empty fireplace with a parcel in hand.  He grabbed the poker, and with it he pulled open a trap door hidden under ash and grate.  He latched the door open, and descended down a stone staircase, with package in hand. 

Immediately, I opened my eyes, and without thinking, ran to the trapdoor and down the stairs.  Hindsight has always been my forte.  Foresight not so much.

There was no thinking.

I ran down the stairs to find the butcher standing in a torch-lit room, chains hanging from the ceiling and the walls.  He stood over a broken shape, with its head down and feet chained.  Food had been removed from the parcel and he was carving out portions with a paring knife.  She didn’t look up.  She didn’t even notice me.  But the butcher did.

He slit her throat without hesitating.  The blade swept across her chin in one clear cut, and he covered the small distance between us before the blood even had time to drain down her delicate throat. 

I was armed, but unprepared.  A clumsy thrust of my dirk found way through his lower ribcage; angled awkwardly out the side.  He bellowed, mass still in motion, and crushed me as we fell to the ground.  My head hit the stone corner of the stairway, and the world turned black.

I awoke to sharp, agonizing pain.  His paring knife had struck true, deep into my side just above my hip.  My head was bleeding.  I couldn’t get out from underneath the slumping, dead weight of the giant man.  His empty face looked down at mine, blood dripping from his mouth onto my neck.  Unblinking, bloodshot eyes, again.  Again?

I don’t know if the torch went out or I lost consciousness first.  I do know it was only a few moments before the room went dark once more. 

I couldn’t pull back from it this time.  The scanning pulled at me too strongly.  It was like I was plunging in freezing water, unable to breathe or swim.  The room began to unfold, past events crawling backwards towards me, and I sank deeper and deeper into the past.

I fell back for years in that nightmare.

There were twelve girls in all.  Not seven or eight.  One at a time, in every case.  There were several other men, who entered the room like the butcher.  Realizing twisted fantasies of malice in their personal playground.  I never saw their faces.  They were always masked.

The girls were kept alive until they were used up, and then they were butchered in that little room.  Usually the next one came within weeks.  He fed the bodies of the old girls to the new girls until all the evidence was gone. 

There were no days in that room.  Only the times where the butcher would come down the stairs with their food and torchlight.  It was cold.  The chill almost stung, accented by the stench of death and putrescence. 

I don’t know how long it was before I fell backwards past the abductions.  Scanned far enough back to before they happened.  Eventually, it was just me.  Me and the crushing weight of death and isolation.

The last thing I remember in the dream was the butcher’s face after he found the room for the first time.  Curiosity lit his face.  He cleaned up a bit.  Before he left he smiled that same damned pig smile of his.

I woke up alone in an infirmary.

My situation produced another investigation.  This one led by the Church, not the Vigil or the Republicans.  I was extensively interviewed, and for a brief time I was charged with the murder of a Holy Official. 

I couldn’t explain why I was there.  I couldn’t explain how I knew.  I couldn’t tell them what he’d done.  I’m an honest man, but I’m not stupid.  Facing the chopping block for murder is still a shining bauble compared to being tortured by Inquisitors and burnt alive for heresy. 

The charges were ultimately dropped, but the case was taken out of Vigil hands, and we were left without resolution.  The public had been aware of the kidnappings, but the Church forbade discussing the topic any further.  I was demoted, and generally ostracized by the rest of the Vigils.   

My wound healed, but not right.  Something’s wrong just under my rib and I get pain sometimes. 

I dream that room still.  The scanning comes and goes as it pleases now, dragging me through times long past, whether I like it or not.

Drinking helps with the pain and the dreams, but it takes a lot.  It’s almost as much of a problem as it is a solution. It’s why Quinna left.

The sun’s about up now.  We’ll be on our way soon. 

I didn’t believe it when the Church gave me this assignment.  Still don’t, I guess.

This sanctuary treats madmen. Maybe they’ll have a spot waiting for me. 

Auxiliary Investigator’s Log: Day 19

Four days of nothing but goddamn rain in this goddamn rice field of a countryside.  Wet. Constantly.  And hot.  Even when I’m under the wagon’s cover the humidity turns my balls into a sweaty jungle-swamp.  Sorry.  Ordained document…  I’ve never been much for talking proper. 

This evening I arrived at the “sanctuary.”  Big, whitewashed stone building.  Lots of it is new, but it’s certainly built on an ancient plantation of some kind.  Old money here.  Must be a great family.  Maybe church funded.  Not that any of that is pertinent.  I’m not concerned with the ancient history of the place.  Just recent.

The local chief of the Vigils said the building was set alight by an escapee.  Young girl from Haven.   She killed the head doctor and a couple of the orderlies with some kind of blasting wand, and then set a bunch of patients loose to cover her tracks.  Said she ran from one end of the campus to another, then started a fire.

Burned the curtains, he said.  The place would’ve gone completely up if the rain hadn’t kept it down.  The humidity here is good for something, I guess.  Anyways, it’s late, and I’m not doing another goddamn thing until I get me some dry clothes and a roof over my head.  This place gives me the creeps anyways.

Auxiliary Investigator’s Log: Day 20

I was hoping to interview patients and staff, but from the looks of things, they’re still rounding up the crazies.  I’ve been limited in my investigation to the wing of the estate that was most severely damaged by the fire. 

Most anything that might have been of value was burned up, but there was a journal in what was the doctor’s office.  There were hundreds of pages, but between the fire and the rain the whole thing is pretty illegible.

This burnt up scrap’ll have to do while I don’t have the option of real work.

Auxiliary Investigator’s Log: Day 21

The doctor was named Ugos Ceremoniz, and he was apparently one of the wealthiest men in Aurelia.  Friends with the Steward of the High King, as well as a former Republic Representative.  Makra Sanctuary was not only his family estate, but it was also a Church funded site in various capacities.

That explains why the Church would send an investigator.  Big people look after one another.  This witch is going to be made example of.  I see why they’d send someone to catch a witch, just not why they would send me.

I still haven’t gotten to ask many questions, so far, the only information I have on the suspect is limited to a general description and whatever I think the doctor wrote about her.

There’s not a lot left of his journal, so I’ll just transcribe what’s intact to begin my profile of the suspected witch.

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Legible Excerpts from the Journal of Ugos Ceremoniz

As doctors, we protect the public from sickness.  Our duty extends beyond the afflictions of the body, however.  As doctors, we share a grave responsibility to protect society and the average citizen from the social disturbers, the violent agitators, multiple murderers, and magic addicts responsible for our ever-increasing violence, crime rate, and societal deterioration in respect to moral standards.  While we may treat the symptoms of deviant behaviors, we must fight such self-destruction at its root.

Just as we have developed city-planning, we should propose mental planning, with which we may formulate theories and practical means for directing the progression of man.  My work is dedicated to the hope for a better society.  One without sickness in body or mind, and one without weakness in form or character.

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Many of the patients I receive at my institute are submitted in response to an unmanageable development in violent behavior.  Conditioning such patients is difficult often to the point of seeming impossibility.  This is worrying in that successful treatment is often never achieved, and that the patients are often a danger to not only themselves, but also to those around them.  I have recently begun to investigate a method which may succeed in pacifying these belligerents where reward systems, conditioning, and even medication have made no progress.

                The operation in question consists of an incision made to the frontal lobe, via the eye or the nose.  The result of this surgery is immediate.  Patients who were once uncontrollable and bestial in their violence become docile and passive.  There is some loss in cognitive performance, but subjects thus far have left with some function.

                While this procedure does not elevate subjects to common standards of typical behavior, it removes from them their affliction of hateful disobedience.  Some may question the usefulness or social beneficence of such a result, but I steadfastly maintain that society can accommodate itself to the most humble laborer, but can neither trust nor thrive alongside the mad thinker.

                Typically, results have been positive after surgery.  In a peculiar case (a very mad boy who had become a management issue at home,) the patient committed suicide.  Death is always regrettable, but I believe this cloud has a silver lining; that being, and interest in suicide can actually be considered an increase in function.  In turn, it may be deduced that surgery did, in fact, promote wellness, despite the end result on the patient’s behalf.

                I have only made a handful of trials in the last month, but I will be increasing the treatments and monitoring patient behaviors as time moves forward.

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Three years since my discovery of the prefrontal lobe incision, I have made another breakthrough.  This advancement has occurred with respect to my subjects that display a dissociative sense of reality.  Using a device provided by an associate of mine in the Merchant States, I am able to reset the minds of patients via a shock to the system.  My shock treatment not only appears to reengage patients with the reality they seem to hate so much, but it has also shown great promise in correcting behavioral dysfunctions in other patients as well.

                Specifically, I attach the suction cups on the ends of wires to the patient’s head.  These cups receive power from a water wheel or a special jar (I am still learning the intricacies of my associate’s magic,) and the consequence is a convulsive grand mal seizure, an artificially induced epileptic fit.

                So far, successful cases include a particularly difficult woman who falsely accused her husband and father of abuse, and elderly woman who grew aggressively noncompliant after eviction from her residence, and an elderly man with a severe alcohol problem.

                My most interesting subject undergoing this treatment would be the young woman from Haven.  Apparently she fell into a divergent reality shortly after an incident involving a devil in her home town.  I can only speculate as to what happened, but judging from the fact that one of the other children in the town was banished and another sent to a heathen monastery in the Middle Kingdom, there is little doubt that the event was truly shameful to the citizens of Haven.

                Causes aside, her imagination is truly incredible, and her ability to manipulate is almost as impressive.  She often pretends to predict events, or read the orderlies’ minds, and has convinced at least one of them of her abilities.  Being educated in such subjects, I am not moved by cold-reading and other parlor tricks, but I do appreciate the rarity of such effective manipulations by someone with so little cognizance of the real world.  I sincerely hope that this treatment will help her regain her place among the functioning members of society.

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                I have had to reprimand one of my orderlies.  I caught him attempting to engage the Haven girl in… unsavory activities.  In addition to simply being disgusting and a violation of the Sun King’s Edicts, he jeopardized months of therapy.  If she were to interpret such an encounter as a reward it could ruin my efforts thusfar…  I fear that with weaker breeds of men, time spent amongst the beasts merely makes more beasts.  I’ll have to seek more assistants of Aurelian stock.  These river-worshipping Merchants don’t seem to have the faculty for self-control or delicacy.

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                …despite my greatest efforts, I will be performing the surgery tomorrow.  Truthfully, the procedure has not lived up to my hopes, but it is still the only effective choice I have in regards to….