Post by Grimm on Sept 8, 2020 14:24:35 GMT -5
Phinehas stood on a ridge top. Up there among the limestone outcrops, in a clearing where the sun blared down. He felt the sweat on his brow, and the sensation of a single drop rolling down his back beneath his shirt. But even so, he could smell it. Fall. Leaves rusting as they rustled. The sound of a bone trumpet sonata as the wind rushed down the hollow.
He looked down the hill towards where the Black Chamber used to stand. Where scribes and scriveners recorded what had happened, what was happening, what was to happen, all in the name of the Black Hand. Phinehas saw not so much a crater as it was a thin layer of ash and brick dust scattered across an acre or so. Where it was only a matter of time before other representatives of the Black Hand congregated for an investigation.
They would not abide this. There was no turning back now. Phinehas had crossed the Rubicon, as the saying went.
Yes, they would definitely show up en masse, but they wouldn’t find so much as a scrap of paper left intact. All that work, those chronicles for as long as history has been recorded…gone. That electro-magnetic pulse device orphaned by the Chronological Order had been more…thorough than Phinehas had anticipated. Thank goodness all the rest had been deactivated and destroyed by Dominic and his splinter group allies, or things would look much different now.
What the Black Hand didn’t understand – what it refused to acknowledge – was that, yes, the soil here was the perfect matrix for secrets and hiding places. For tobacco and corn and heirloom tomatoes. But beyond that, it was also good for gnarled orchards and horse skulls under floor boards. For pipe smoke, sorghum presses, shovels and hatchets. For Yuletide family brawls more violent than anything sanctioned by Pure Class Wrestling. For a brother’s shattered headstone and an empty grave.
They thought they knew. They were confident in their schemes and precautions. But they didn’t know. They couldn’t. No one from beyond this valley could ever really know.
That the tree around which the town had sprouted was the only death they recognized. That those from beyond clawed at its roots, and its branches glowered at those on this far side of the end.
Back to the more immediate, though…Phinehas would have some time to prepare for when the Black Hand was certain of his involvement, because it was only a matter of time until their suspicions were verified. And they wouldn’t forgive him, no matter what tasks he had executed for them in the past. Phinehas sure wouldn’t, if he were them.
The question-in-the-form-of-a-choice remained: did Phinehas have the luxury of traveling to South Carolina for his match against Jason Willard (temporal anomaly or no), or would he have to go AWOL in order to prepare for the inevitable reckoning? Phinehas wasn’t a fool and neither are you, dear readers, and you both know that course of action would be a dead giveaway. Grimm did not miss matches, for crying out loud. He might as well send them a signed and notarized confession right now. And Jason Willard, disappointed as he would be at missing out on another chapter of that story of theirs, would still manage to fill the spot with a journeyman wrestler or a curtain-jerker. The Anarchist would not – should not – get off so easily.
What would Willard do in his place? Send the family away, perhaps, under witness protection or his safety room in Anaheim? Or maybe he’d make them part of the strategy, as Trojan horses or bait or mere distractions. Either way Phinehas knew this thorn-in-his-side (one of several, over the years) would manage to embrace the chaos with a smile, and let it all burn around him as it may.
Phinehas looked over the ashen field. Beyond to the dark river filing away at the edge of the known world. At the barrenness, while listening to the quiet. A first-person witness to the ecological implications of being afraid. A landscape of fear that stood as a result of a perception of risk. There were such places to avoid in order to minimize that risk…and if the Black Hand didn’t know it before, it would know well enough, soon enough. Jason Willard knew about such things, but he simply didn’t care. If a shovel in (not just to, but actually in) his head didn’t dissuade him, well, guess they’d be facing one another ‘til kingdom come. And the Hangtown Horror would welcome it.
Sure, the Black Hand could try to exact vengeance, whether it be by the intentions spelled out in their Book (hee hee, they still considered it theirs) or otherwise. Whatever the method, it might be interesting to see how close they got to those intentions. As far as Phinehas was concerned, there would indeed be prompt, severe justice, but it would not be as they expected. The Black Hand would not get to determine the resolution, for the Book, that which held their entire existence, that which they had entrusted to Hangtown, had exposed their treachery. And the EMP had laid bare the foundation of their world, the one for which they had strived so hard and for so long to mold in their image.
Phinehas smiled back at the scarecrow-stitch-grins scattered across the fields of the river valley. He closed his eyes and pictured the blades, the blood, and the droning of bees. He had been granted a look behind their sacred and dreadful veil…and had seen that only Babylon’s infernal machinations could bring Babylon down. Try as they might, they would not be able to forsake the works of his own hands.
Popping, snapping, catching, clicking, grinding, grating.
And when they came, they would find this land was not created for the likes of them.
For they knew the great and terrible name, Dillinger. As did Jason Willard.
He looked down the hill towards where the Black Chamber used to stand. Where scribes and scriveners recorded what had happened, what was happening, what was to happen, all in the name of the Black Hand. Phinehas saw not so much a crater as it was a thin layer of ash and brick dust scattered across an acre or so. Where it was only a matter of time before other representatives of the Black Hand congregated for an investigation.
They would not abide this. There was no turning back now. Phinehas had crossed the Rubicon, as the saying went.
Yes, they would definitely show up en masse, but they wouldn’t find so much as a scrap of paper left intact. All that work, those chronicles for as long as history has been recorded…gone. That electro-magnetic pulse device orphaned by the Chronological Order had been more…thorough than Phinehas had anticipated. Thank goodness all the rest had been deactivated and destroyed by Dominic and his splinter group allies, or things would look much different now.
What the Black Hand didn’t understand – what it refused to acknowledge – was that, yes, the soil here was the perfect matrix for secrets and hiding places. For tobacco and corn and heirloom tomatoes. But beyond that, it was also good for gnarled orchards and horse skulls under floor boards. For pipe smoke, sorghum presses, shovels and hatchets. For Yuletide family brawls more violent than anything sanctioned by Pure Class Wrestling. For a brother’s shattered headstone and an empty grave.
They thought they knew. They were confident in their schemes and precautions. But they didn’t know. They couldn’t. No one from beyond this valley could ever really know.
That the tree around which the town had sprouted was the only death they recognized. That those from beyond clawed at its roots, and its branches glowered at those on this far side of the end.
Back to the more immediate, though…Phinehas would have some time to prepare for when the Black Hand was certain of his involvement, because it was only a matter of time until their suspicions were verified. And they wouldn’t forgive him, no matter what tasks he had executed for them in the past. Phinehas sure wouldn’t, if he were them.
The question-in-the-form-of-a-choice remained: did Phinehas have the luxury of traveling to South Carolina for his match against Jason Willard (temporal anomaly or no), or would he have to go AWOL in order to prepare for the inevitable reckoning? Phinehas wasn’t a fool and neither are you, dear readers, and you both know that course of action would be a dead giveaway. Grimm did not miss matches, for crying out loud. He might as well send them a signed and notarized confession right now. And Jason Willard, disappointed as he would be at missing out on another chapter of that story of theirs, would still manage to fill the spot with a journeyman wrestler or a curtain-jerker. The Anarchist would not – should not – get off so easily.
What would Willard do in his place? Send the family away, perhaps, under witness protection or his safety room in Anaheim? Or maybe he’d make them part of the strategy, as Trojan horses or bait or mere distractions. Either way Phinehas knew this thorn-in-his-side (one of several, over the years) would manage to embrace the chaos with a smile, and let it all burn around him as it may.
Phinehas looked over the ashen field. Beyond to the dark river filing away at the edge of the known world. At the barrenness, while listening to the quiet. A first-person witness to the ecological implications of being afraid. A landscape of fear that stood as a result of a perception of risk. There were such places to avoid in order to minimize that risk…and if the Black Hand didn’t know it before, it would know well enough, soon enough. Jason Willard knew about such things, but he simply didn’t care. If a shovel in (not just to, but actually in) his head didn’t dissuade him, well, guess they’d be facing one another ‘til kingdom come. And the Hangtown Horror would welcome it.
Sure, the Black Hand could try to exact vengeance, whether it be by the intentions spelled out in their Book (hee hee, they still considered it theirs) or otherwise. Whatever the method, it might be interesting to see how close they got to those intentions. As far as Phinehas was concerned, there would indeed be prompt, severe justice, but it would not be as they expected. The Black Hand would not get to determine the resolution, for the Book, that which held their entire existence, that which they had entrusted to Hangtown, had exposed their treachery. And the EMP had laid bare the foundation of their world, the one for which they had strived so hard and for so long to mold in their image.
Phinehas smiled back at the scarecrow-stitch-grins scattered across the fields of the river valley. He closed his eyes and pictured the blades, the blood, and the droning of bees. He had been granted a look behind their sacred and dreadful veil…and had seen that only Babylon’s infernal machinations could bring Babylon down. Try as they might, they would not be able to forsake the works of his own hands.
Popping, snapping, catching, clicking, grinding, grating.
And when they came, they would find this land was not created for the likes of them.
For they knew the great and terrible name, Dillinger. As did Jason Willard.
