the story thus far
Book 2 (09.07): Scream in the Mountains
"Two minutes later, another cat came into the room. It was black as midnight, and as large as the biggest dog. It lay down among the red-hot coals, lazily batting them with enormous paws. Then it walked over to the other cat and said: 'What shall we do with him?'
"The first cat replied: 'We should not do anything until Emmet comes'."
- "Wait Until Emmet Comes," traditional folktale as retold by S.E. Schlosser
When JJason dared the Conclave to contact him via a maildrop, he didn't imagine that the shadowy group would take him up on the offer. The letter from Exu hinted at answers, included the strange annontations and symbols he wrote on a map of swan migrations. The more we looked into the map, the more we found stories of telescopes, quiet zones and things hidden in the mountains of the Virginias. Exu implied whatever we had stumbled into was related to these tantalizing bits. That investigation lead us to fragments in a filesharing system from Dr. Elizabeth Riley -- a presentation, a poem, a song and yet another map. Together, they suggested our world is full of unexplained noises, including something called the "Scream" in the Virginias responsible for the collapse of a radio telescope.
At the same time, Sapagoo (who had retrieved the Trussed Swan hard drive from the scene of a ritual in Atlanta) heard from the cryptic "DC" and we suddenly had a name to go with the initials: Devon Conrad. Calling us "Providence," he invited us to the "Feast Before the Scream" promising that there we'll finally meet psychic dreamer B.A. Saint Feline as well as someone named Emmet. A reservation from Foresight Property Management arrived just after, confirming accommodations in West Virginia the weekend of October 26th. We started preparing, but we had idea what we were preparing for. We couldn't help but ask Howard if it might have something to do with what happened to his friends on a Halloween in 1999.
The other dreamers, the ones with recurring nightmares of the city, like B.A. Saint-Feline, were not of one mind either. They seemed consumed by their own questions and arguments, spilling out into Craigslist. Devon wasn't the only dreamer who had connections to the Feast, to West Virginia, or to those called the Hidden: many of the dreamers longed for the solitude in the mountains, and many of them dreamed of Emmet, too. Some of the dreamers in West Virginia worried about strange men asking stranger questions there in West Virginia, perhaps claiming to be with Foresight. Other dreamers began to fear what happens in a strange warehouse in the city of nightmares, a building marked by a symbol of four scythes. This was how the Outpost discovered Forsythe Security, a company with different interests in same region of West Virginia. Among their consultants were two ex-Sentries: Arthur Lydney, our old compatriot capable of questionable choices, and his employer Peter Severn, a Sentry at the heart of the disagreements that shook the Outpost in 2003.
As five of the Sentries prepared to head into the West Virginia wilderness to meet with Devon, B.A. Saint-Feline and the mysterious Emmet, the rest of the Outpost began to worry about the complete lack of communication in the National Radio Quiet Zone. It wouldn't be until days later that we'd finally hear their story (in all of four parts, most written during their road trip home), see their photos, study their videos. While they were in West Virginia, we could do nothing but bite our nails, worry if we had sent them into danger and call a lone payphone in futile hopes of reaching them.
The night of October 27th was a sleepless one for many Sentries. Having lost all contact with our investigators in the field, we turned to the only people we thought could help: Arthur and his friends at Forsythe Security. When Art headed off at dawn on an ATV to the top of Bald Knob to save our investigators from the dangerous cultist, we had no idea that Art was doing it behind his employer's back. Our investigators in West Virginia, just returned from the mountain top wilderness but not back in communication, might have witnessed the last phase of Peter trying to clean up the mess: Devon was abducted from the street in Cass, West Virginia that night by unknown men, all the while screaming, "Help me, Providence."
The Sentries had so much new information, but at such a cost, and the horror wasn't over. B.A. Saint-Feline had decided to stay in West Virginia during this event called "The Scream," something no dreamer was willing to face. On that Halloween, something strange happened that we still don't understand. Maybe we seeing directly into B.A.'s memories or glimpsing the world through her eyes, but over the course of the day her website devolved bit by bit into a chaotic mess. It wouldn't be until days later that we would hear from her and know that she survived, but she seemed even less sure than us of what she experienced. We were even less sure why Peter Severn wasn't even looking for us or Devon or the Dreamers in those mountains: he was looking for a man we know as Spukhafte Fernwirkung, the man who might be behind the cult we've been chasing since the death of our friends.