What follows has been edited for content and relevance to the ongoing investigation
into events in Sugar Creek, Ohio on the night of September 26-27, 2015.
into events in Sugar Creek, Ohio on the night of September 26-27, 2015.
November 29, 2013
"Black Friday" is an amazing, evocative term. There's an old-world simplicity to it that suggests something eldritch, something unknowable that fills the heart and mind with dread. "Things were never the same in the little Appalachian mining town...after Black Friday." "Mothers anxiously shooed their children indoors and worried the beads of their rosaries as they watched the sun dip below the horizon, for they all knew the dangers that ranged the night on Black Friday." It's a term that begs to be loaded with something more significant than a yearly stampede at the local Wal-Mart.
It also perfectly describes my day today, since I just learned that the lead I thought I had found four weeks ago is in fact garbage. Good old N_______ from OHC got back to me today about the button. Thought it would be big, because who interrupts their Thanksgiving holiday to tell someone that your archaeological find is a giant crap-cake, unless they are some kind of sadist? (I'm not ruling this out, N_______; you seem like a nice guy but your timing is more than a little suspect.) So the familiar digits show up in my caller ID, and I answer the phone thinking this is it, this is the one, and then I get the message that the button does not date from the period I thought it did.
Oh, it IS a genuine US military artifact, just twenty-five years too late to be tied to the Legend. The button was from the coat of an rifleman who served in the War of 1812. I ground my teeth and held my tongue as N_______ gave me the equivalent of a pat-on-the-head over the phone and told me, not terribly convincingly, not to give up on my windmill-tilting. I grabbed a turkey sandwich out of the fridge and a fifth of Jack out of the liquor cabinet (no glass for me) and have resumed my summertime vigil on the porch. It's a balmy seventy degrees outside, so I don't even need a coat. (Thanks for that at least, global warming.) Randi (who is home for the weekend) and Rachel are both staring at me through the front window with that look, you know the one, the one that pretends at concern but is really equal parts embarrassment and exasperation. Swapping bites of turkey with pulls from the bottle, and no ambrosia has ever been more...disgusting. Feh. Another few swigs and I'll be too numb to taste anything anyway.
What are the odds? What are the odds on actually finding a datable military artifact in this pile of mud and having it turn out to be from the wrong f____ing war? And in the middle of all that other tantalizing but otherwise inadmissible evidence? I have half-a-mind to drunk-dial that prick N_______ and rip him a new turkey-hole for Thanksgiving.
Also worth mentioning: I haven't found a single thing of historical value since Halloween. I dug my brains out for awhile, but all that I've unearthed since is a small pile of junk:
"Black Friday" is an amazing, evocative term. There's an old-world simplicity to it that suggests something eldritch, something unknowable that fills the heart and mind with dread. "Things were never the same in the little Appalachian mining town...after Black Friday." "Mothers anxiously shooed their children indoors and worried the beads of their rosaries as they watched the sun dip below the horizon, for they all knew the dangers that ranged the night on Black Friday." It's a term that begs to be loaded with something more significant than a yearly stampede at the local Wal-Mart.
It also perfectly describes my day today, since I just learned that the lead I thought I had found four weeks ago is in fact garbage. Good old N_______ from OHC got back to me today about the button. Thought it would be big, because who interrupts their Thanksgiving holiday to tell someone that your archaeological find is a giant crap-cake, unless they are some kind of sadist? (I'm not ruling this out, N_______; you seem like a nice guy but your timing is more than a little suspect.) So the familiar digits show up in my caller ID, and I answer the phone thinking this is it, this is the one, and then I get the message that the button does not date from the period I thought it did.
Oh, it IS a genuine US military artifact, just twenty-five years too late to be tied to the Legend. The button was from the coat of an rifleman who served in the War of 1812. I ground my teeth and held my tongue as N_______ gave me the equivalent of a pat-on-the-head over the phone and told me, not terribly convincingly, not to give up on my windmill-tilting. I grabbed a turkey sandwich out of the fridge and a fifth of Jack out of the liquor cabinet (no glass for me) and have resumed my summertime vigil on the porch. It's a balmy seventy degrees outside, so I don't even need a coat. (Thanks for that at least, global warming.) Randi (who is home for the weekend) and Rachel are both staring at me through the front window with that look, you know the one, the one that pretends at concern but is really equal parts embarrassment and exasperation. Swapping bites of turkey with pulls from the bottle, and no ambrosia has ever been more...disgusting. Feh. Another few swigs and I'll be too numb to taste anything anyway.
What are the odds? What are the odds on actually finding a datable military artifact in this pile of mud and having it turn out to be from the wrong f____ing war? And in the middle of all that other tantalizing but otherwise inadmissible evidence? I have half-a-mind to drunk-dial that prick N_______ and rip him a new turkey-hole for Thanksgiving.
Also worth mentioning: I haven't found a single thing of historical value since Halloween. I dug my brains out for awhile, but all that I've unearthed since is a small pile of junk:
I wonder if there was an illegal landfill at the head of the creek at some point in the past; certainly would account for all this stuff being jumbled up together. There are some rings and bits of jewelry mixed in that might be worth something, but I haven't taken the time to clean them to find out. It's all in a box in the office closet...with the head. Why haven't I thrown that out yet?
December 7, 2013
Back on the porch again, early morning. It's cold today, no unseasonal heat. I'm shivering, but not from the cold. I just finished emptying my guts into the toilet, and the chill is a relief. My penmanship is likely garbage right now, but I have to get this down before I lose it.
You've probably already guessed it, Dr. V________, but the dreams are back, and they're worse than before. I'm just not sure what they are trying to tell me this time.
Cannon and small arms fire has filled my unconscious mind these past few nights. I'd wake up every morning with my throat and eyes burning from black powder smoke, like I'd just dropped in from the Siege of Yorktown. Shouts battered my eardrums, all in English this time, and flashes of red and blue uniforms faded in and out of the battle haze. I was semi-lucid in these dreams, and I ranged around, straining for some hint of where I was. All I could figure was that it was nowhere near Ohio. I saw trenches and defensive earthworks, Spanish moss hanging from artillery-blasted trees. I smelled water, lots of it, close at hand, with a faint trace of salt.
I saw the button, too, of course. Saw a whole bunch of them, dangling from blue coats lined up in a row behind long guns along the trench line, rifle fire crackling in the air. Sure, fine, very exciting, great detail and all, but what the f___ did this have to do with the creek? Hard to say if the headaches or the frustration were more intense when I woke up.
Last night, though...it couldn't have been more different. I was in a place of near-complete silence: no guns, no shouts, not even birdsong. All I could hear was the faint trickle of water flowing, and the faint rustle of grass as a solitary figure walked toward the source of the sound. I knew in a second this was the creek. My point-of-view was nearby, just inside the treeline, and I just gazed out at this figure for the longest time. He had knelt down by the water with his back to me, and he was partly in shadow, yet he was quite clearly at complete ease, peaceful, drinking in the quiet and the solitude.
I might have shared his outlook, but for two reasons: one, the silence did not seem peaceful at all to me, but incredibly tense, like everything was holding its breath to see what happened next. The second reason, and definitely the more significant one, was that everything in this dream was...well...red. (Like how I wrote that in a different color, Dr. V________?) It was like I was viewing everything through a thick, translucent smear of blood. I felt myself try to blink several times, to clear this gore from my eyes, but they seemed lidless, and would not respond.
Suddenly, I felt myself launch forward toward the figure. I felt huge, massive, as I erupted from the brush and raced across the open space. My vision doubled, then quadrupled, and I realized I was seeing him from all sides, multiple points of view all converging on him in the center. It was a him, as I could see all the details now: a man in a familiar coat, with familiar buttons that flashed in the sun as he jerked upward and careened back, his red-stained face and eyes frozen in fear, mouth open to scream -
It's kinda something how florid my prose gets when I'm recounting these dreams, especially when you consider I just finished horking up last night's dinner five minutes ago. That and the self-mockery you've witnessed helps me to objectify the situation, to separate myself from the mortal terror that chased me awake, from the shriek that started in his throat and ended in mine and now is the reason why my penmanship sucks so bad because I can barely keep a grip on it with how badly my hand is shaking...
What should I make of this, Doc? Prior to two months ago, I'd say it was just a nightmare. But the last time this happened, it...connected to something real, for want of a better (crazier) term. What does this connect to, then? Is it just leftover flotsam from last time? Or something new? And if it is somehow...significant, what is it significant of?
How do I dare answer that question, given what it could mean?
One other thing, and I'm not really sure how to explain this. I shot out of bed, sweaty, bellowing, and raced down the hall, barely making it to the john before my stomach turned inside out. But there was a moment, just a flicker between sleeping and waking, where an incredibly powerful sensation seized control of me, all the stranger due to my nausea just a split second later.
In that brief moment, I was hungry. Ravenously, insatiably hungry. Like I could eat the world.
December 7, 2013
Back on the porch again, early morning. It's cold today, no unseasonal heat. I'm shivering, but not from the cold. I just finished emptying my guts into the toilet, and the chill is a relief. My penmanship is likely garbage right now, but I have to get this down before I lose it.
You've probably already guessed it, Dr. V________, but the dreams are back, and they're worse than before. I'm just not sure what they are trying to tell me this time.
Cannon and small arms fire has filled my unconscious mind these past few nights. I'd wake up every morning with my throat and eyes burning from black powder smoke, like I'd just dropped in from the Siege of Yorktown. Shouts battered my eardrums, all in English this time, and flashes of red and blue uniforms faded in and out of the battle haze. I was semi-lucid in these dreams, and I ranged around, straining for some hint of where I was. All I could figure was that it was nowhere near Ohio. I saw trenches and defensive earthworks, Spanish moss hanging from artillery-blasted trees. I smelled water, lots of it, close at hand, with a faint trace of salt.
I saw the button, too, of course. Saw a whole bunch of them, dangling from blue coats lined up in a row behind long guns along the trench line, rifle fire crackling in the air. Sure, fine, very exciting, great detail and all, but what the f___ did this have to do with the creek? Hard to say if the headaches or the frustration were more intense when I woke up.
Last night, though...it couldn't have been more different. I was in a place of near-complete silence: no guns, no shouts, not even birdsong. All I could hear was the faint trickle of water flowing, and the faint rustle of grass as a solitary figure walked toward the source of the sound. I knew in a second this was the creek. My point-of-view was nearby, just inside the treeline, and I just gazed out at this figure for the longest time. He had knelt down by the water with his back to me, and he was partly in shadow, yet he was quite clearly at complete ease, peaceful, drinking in the quiet and the solitude.
I might have shared his outlook, but for two reasons: one, the silence did not seem peaceful at all to me, but incredibly tense, like everything was holding its breath to see what happened next. The second reason, and definitely the more significant one, was that everything in this dream was...well...red. (Like how I wrote that in a different color, Dr. V________?) It was like I was viewing everything through a thick, translucent smear of blood. I felt myself try to blink several times, to clear this gore from my eyes, but they seemed lidless, and would not respond.
Suddenly, I felt myself launch forward toward the figure. I felt huge, massive, as I erupted from the brush and raced across the open space. My vision doubled, then quadrupled, and I realized I was seeing him from all sides, multiple points of view all converging on him in the center. It was a him, as I could see all the details now: a man in a familiar coat, with familiar buttons that flashed in the sun as he jerked upward and careened back, his red-stained face and eyes frozen in fear, mouth open to scream -
It's kinda something how florid my prose gets when I'm recounting these dreams, especially when you consider I just finished horking up last night's dinner five minutes ago. That and the self-mockery you've witnessed helps me to objectify the situation, to separate myself from the mortal terror that chased me awake, from the shriek that started in his throat and ended in mine and now is the reason why my penmanship sucks so bad because I can barely keep a grip on it with how badly my hand is shaking...
What should I make of this, Doc? Prior to two months ago, I'd say it was just a nightmare. But the last time this happened, it...connected to something real, for want of a better (crazier) term. What does this connect to, then? Is it just leftover flotsam from last time? Or something new? And if it is somehow...significant, what is it significant of?
How do I dare answer that question, given what it could mean?
One other thing, and I'm not really sure how to explain this. I shot out of bed, sweaty, bellowing, and raced down the hall, barely making it to the john before my stomach turned inside out. But there was a moment, just a flicker between sleeping and waking, where an incredibly powerful sensation seized control of me, all the stranger due to my nausea just a split second later.
In that brief moment, I was hungry. Ravenously, insatiably hungry. Like I could eat the world.
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