Protagonists#

• Short, Lance - Foreign Service Officer (Γιάννης)
• Miller, Liam (Agent Dave / Jocko) - Naval Special Warfare Group One (SEALs) (Παναγιώτης)
• Lensing, Emma - Professor of Philology (Τάσος)
• Bennet, Wendy - Criminal Intelligence Analyst / Assistant Professor of Criminology (Κωνσταντίνα)

St. Laurence Church, Wednesday, September 14th, 2016#

Street Legends#

The agents continue their inquiries:

Agent Locke, failing to gain the trust of the young children, addresses Nurse Chavez who points her to Alantea Curtis. Promising her money and help with her drug addiction, Agents Locke and Myra drive her to a nearby medical center. They learn about the “Hungry Mother”, the “Red-Minded Men”, the “Quiet Children”, the “Silent Slaves”, the “Speaker”, and “Shredni Vashtar”.

• Hungry Mother:

  • People whisper that Heaven and Earth are merely a farm for the Hungry Mother.
  • Most of the world, unaware that they’ve been raised as food, are called las vacas, “the cows.”
  • Reality is a lie used to keep the cattle docile while the Hungry Mother consumes their misery. Everything exists to feed her.
  • The only possible redemption comes from accepting this truth.

• Red-Minded Men:

  • They serve the Hungry Mother.
  • They disguise themselves as ordinary people to prey on the homeless, especially homeless children. Cops, pushers, pimps, pedophiles, scammers, cults, federal agents, etc.
  • They hunt the Quiet Children and their Silence Slaves, who help everyone else understand the truth about the Hungry Mother. She wants humans who see the truth to die sooner than the rest of las vacas. She can’t allow their panic to upset the rest of the meat.

• Quiet Children:

  • Angels fallen from heaven. They are only disguised as ignorant boys and girls so they might slip beneath the gaze of the Hungry Mother.
  • They refuse to speak because they know that all speech is a lie.
  • Life would be easier if they could escape the love that’s programmed into their souls, but they can’t. So, they seek to wake people to the dangers of the Hungry Mother.

• Silent Slaves:

  • Silence Slaves were angels like the Quiet Children.
  • Silence Slaves speak for the Quiet Children.
  • They know speech is a lie that makes people food for the Hungry Mother, but they can’t help but return to the comfort of the lie.
  • Everything known about the theology of the Hungry Mother was once preached by a Silence Slave.

• Speaker:

  • The Quiet Children and Silence Slaves wait for some unnamed, messianic figure.
  • The Speaker is like the Quiet Children but possessed of “the true Voice.”
  • The Speaker stole it from the Hungry Mother during its escape from her throat.
  • That makes the Speaker powerful.
  • The Speaker will be able to wake up the cattle.
  • The Speaker isn’t coming to offer grace or forgiveness, or even to give meaning to life, but for revenge against the Hungry Mother and to give meaning to pain.
  • “Speaker wake ’em all up. All come up cuttin’ and stabbin’.”

• Shredni Vashtar:

  • Jaivon Simon knows all about Shredni Vashtar.

The Empty House#

Agents Jocko and Nikita find out about the Empty House across the street, being the epicenter of the red brain graffities in the area and decide to investigate.

They notice a mangy but dangerous-looking stray dog trot near the house. It stops, sniffs the air a few times, notices the agents, whines, and runs away.

The boarded-up doors lie burst open, hacked down. The mold-carpeted floor holds the remains of camping equipment, broken needles, and trash. The air stinks of red spray-paint used to tag the filthy yellow wallpaper that bubbles off the walls in the swamp humidity.

Inside they notice the same symbols repeat across the wall, repeatedly, in the same uniform order:

• AT FAR RIGHT: A pair of alligators, on hind legs and baring jaws at each other in a sort of arch. A shape like a car beneath.
• LEFT OF THE ALLIGATORS: A pole with a pair of bull horns atop it. The half-circle of the sun—radiating lines of light—sets behind the symbol.
• LEFT OF THE POLE: A picture of the moon over a nondescript line of horizon. Stars dot the background in a uniform pattern across all instances of the image. A dead tree in a distinctive shape, empty limbs curling, is silhouetted in the foreground against the moon.
• BENEATH THE MOON: A campfire seen through a thicket of skinny trees. A ring of stick figures hold hands around it.
• ANOTHER DESIGN IS DRAWN HERE AND THERE: A small, childlike figure with red hands stands triumphantly over four larger, adult victims all lying in blood. The head of each victim has a red splotch that might represent the brain. Other children and small predatory animals watch in a crowd.

The agents start hearing a high, harsh whisper, coming from a hole in the wall, leading into a basement:

• “She hungered. She God. She Sredni Vashtar. She eat it all, but eat you most. Ate with and on forever on. You stink of Outside.”
• “Hungry Mama, mama to you. They grab babies from heaven, but Hungry Mama send you, say Mine, give back! Hungry Mama make both. Make us and make you. Make us when God save us.”
• “God gonna eat Hungry Mama. Wake up and bust free and eat.”
• “Elle and Sammy thinks you feed God. Thinks you not like us. Thinks you Red-Minded. Thinks God is ate you up. Tommy thinks you just is do the chewing. Just a tooth. Which? Ate up, or eat? Or ate up and eat, same time? Like us? Like bite the tongue.”
• “We find out which. We see. Smell and see. Ate or eat? You a tooth, make you sharp. Just meat? Eat you up. Surprise Jenny. Singing good for surprises. Only good in it.”
• “Phil first to go tea time and come back after. You know Condy were second. Others went in the ground, but Phil different. Most different than everybody. Phil change.”
• “I ask Phil teach me the milk trick he’d sell the red-mind men. Hadda ask hard. You smell it? The tricks we was taught? You wanna see? Learned it to show you.”

The Basement#

The basement has decayed even more than the upper house. Paneling and drywall crumbled away from raw, clammy bricks. The floor is a rot of soggy carpet and ragged foam over rough cement. A strange, earthy fume of burned herbs or fungus haunts the air, drifting from a mass that smokes in an ancient coffee can. Candles flicker around a sort of shrine built of cat bones and alligator teeth. Paraphernalia of every kind of high litter the floor and a couple of wobbling tables and folding chairs.

The Scent is very strong, but it conceals something else.

Jennifer Leah Wills waits for the Agents. She manages to send Agent Jocko into a hallucination, while Agent Nikita attempts to stop her by taking a shot. Agent Lance arrives a few moments later and manages to shoot down Jennifer.

Agent Jocko regains consciousness after seemingly spending an hour in Yelena’s Hut. Jennifer somehow manages to revive herself. Agent Jocko pins her down and slowly cuts her head off. She died staring at him with reverence and awe.

Agent Locke arrives at the Empty House after hearing gunshots from within St. Laurence Church.

The Hole in the Wall#

In a thin scum of foul water, atop the bones of small dogs and cats, cringes a withered and bloody white man mauled by torture, eyes recently blinded. Philly Phil begs for his life.

The Scent is overwhelming. All the Agents, bar Myra, leave the basement. Myra learns that:

• Jennifer made him teach her those things. She had to torture him first and gouge out his eyes.
• He promises to teach his “songs” to the agents.
• “That Good Smoke” helped him survive by selling himself to all kinds of perverts and making them experience and live their sick fantasies.
• “The Witch Oil” is what Jennifer wanted to keep herself alive, even after death.
• Agent Myra could not suffer the overwhelming Scent emanating from Philly Phil. He took him out with a bullet in the head.

Decoding the Signs#

Agents Jocko, Locke, and Nikita investigate the house. They didn’t find anything except for the symbols.

Staring at the one with the tree, the moon and the stars, Agent Locke pondered: “Is that a star formation?”