It is the morning after an abnormally dark night. Though, the gloom and bad omens which the cloud cover brought has been shriveled away by the bright dawning sun. The window behind Detective Morgan Romenov glares with the triumphant return of morning. The dawn is so glorious it seems it is compensating for knowing something went awry on during the night. In the Region of Feegan a blissful sunny day is never frowned upon, even if it seems to be covering up something.
Morgan puts his feet on the desk in the parlor, which the residences of the house lovingly call an office, and starts to read the morning edition of the Daily Point, the most reputable paper in Point Demore. The paper blurts out the news of the area and other events that are amusing to the local gossipers. The only thing which the paper does not shout is something to get Morgan's attention.
Detective Morgan Romenov is a brash but quiet man. A man who watches people and looks for their actions, passion, and emotions to hypothesis their next step. When this information settles with in his mind, he dashes into action.
His dress is dark and rather inconspicuous. No bright colors to attract attention and nothing to set him apart from the crowd. Despite being taller then some other men, he remains in the shadows and mostly unnoticed until the right time for him to make himself known. He usually wears a longer coat and a hat with a wider than usual brim which hides his identity more. At the present moment they sit on a coat rack in the corner of the room.
Meanwhile, Doctor Maxwell Butcher is in the basement where no sun with any good or bad intentions can reach him. He sighs as he fills up beakers and containers full of odd colored liquids and substances. He sniffs other compounds and liquids and pours them down a nearby drain. He gazes toward the empty examination table. It was very clean, very shiny, and recently unused. His attention is then drawn toward the large walk in freezer which sits on the opposite end of the wall. His fingers reach toward some latex gloves and he moves toward the freezer with an excited feverish grin.
Doctor Maxwell Butcher is a small, nervous man who has a callow face. His hair is thinning but Maxwell seems satisfied to cover it up with what little of his hair is left. His demeanor is awkward and he makes better friends with microscopic fungi than with the everyday man. Though, despite this he is still a passionate man, some would say his passion leads to many obsessive behaviors.
Dr. Butcher dresses very plainly and is not up with the current trends. He sees clothes more as a burden to wash later on after blood and sinew of bodies dry. This is why he wears his unflattering large laboratory coat when he knows he is going to work. Though the most prominent aspect of his garb are the goggles which he hears to help magnify objects and his black, stained, aged, heirloom handbag which he carries all the essentials for finding clues. Though, the goggles hang on a wall with other tools of his trade and his bag sits on a disorganized desk where he jots down his findings.
Unlike his cohorts, Oswald Von Grimmelhausen takes advantage of the sunshine and walks outside. Though his merry little jaunt lasts only for moments as he enters The Wicker Tooth, a lively bar which most refer to as a smoke-house because of the cloud which plumes inside the main hall. Drinking, gambling, and women are all hiding within the inconspicuous frame which houses The Wicker Tooth.
Oswald Von Grimmelhausen is slick, handsome, and an active man who has a shadowy past which he hopes he can reform or he faces a bleak future. He is the trio's man amongst the people and connection which helps them troll through murky waters of the crime world. He uses his power of persuasion and tactics of manipulation to win over the hearts and minds of people his other cohorts cannot.
Oswald is the most dapper of the three; a neatly trimmed mustache which is paired with a sharply angled goatee. His suits are usually matching and new. In his inner pocket he carries a small cigarette tin which is decorate ornately by a leaf, Gravon Weed, which he chooses to smoke despite its infamous legality. He also has a pair of light wired-framed glasses with shaded lenses which helps distract his fans from his blood-shot eyes.
The morning for all three proceeds almost without event until Morgan gets a knock on the door. He makes a noise which indicates that he didn't want to disturbed but he has nothing else better to do other than sit in the morning light and read the newsprint. A woman comes in quietly and shuts the door behind her. The woman, Miss Tarlo, is not only the landlady but a willing participant in Morgan's business as it helps the men pay their rent on time.
"Good Morning Mr. Romenov," she says politely with a small bow. Even though Morgan has told her that he's been under her house long enough she doesn't have to take the extra effort, Miss Tarlo still insists on showing all the proper mannerisms of a proper landlady and a secretary. "You have a gentleman in the foyer waiting for you. He's a finely dressed man who seems only slightly distress. He doesn't look like he could pose much of a challenge, but perhaps this is a chance to do something mundane for some good Pres."
Miss Tarlo and Morgan both exchange looks and laugh. Morgan starts to fold up the paper and puts his feet down. "You can show our guest in whenever you are ready."
The door stays slightly ajar and Morgan can hear Miss Tarlo and the man talking. By voice alone the man seems to be older and from how he talks and stresses syllables Morgan can tell he was raised outside of Feegan. The man comes in, as Miss Tarlo said, he is finely dressed. He is also very tall and built well for a man his age. He wears a pair of glasses which are connected to his vest pocket with a golden chain. He also has a thick mustache which most elite business men wear. His hair is well cut and parted.
The man stays standing in an alert stiff manner and looks at the office. The parlor is a good sized room. Behind Morgan a window which looks out into the well maintained garden, the nice but slightly skewed messy desk sits in front of him. Soft comfortable arm chairs sit in front of the desk for guests to sit at and talk to Morgan. On the northern wall a large wall clock ticks away as hoops and dials spin to show the moon phases and star movements. On the south wall is a nice plain couch with a coffee table. Then in the far corner by the door is the coat rack.
"How may I help you?" Morgan says as he puts his hands on his desk.
"I have come because you are the best detectives in the region," the man says as he remains standing. "And you have helped several friends and colleagues in the past. So, I was wondering if you were for hire to help me with a very simple case that has unfortunately happened at my house."
"Oh," Morgan says as he mentally rolls his eyes, "and what would that be?"
"This is something which my servants and my wife are greatly concerned about. A man, who was a servant of mine, died on my estate sometime last night. He was found in the woods on my property." He pauses for a moment and looks slightly unsure for a moment then his face snaps back into a neutral position again, "Though, it looked like an animal had killed the poor man. The servants, on the other hand, are talking about ghost. Frankly, I find it all poppycock! I want you to get to the bottom of this and put my servants and my wife at ease."
Morgan thinks for a moment and nods, "Please sit and tell me about the servant who met an unfortunate end."
The man sits down. "Perhaps I should introduce myself before we get too deep in this. I am Lord Bennet Travult and I live in the Fretten Grove Manor. My servant was the grounds keeper to my estate."
Morgan nods and starts to think about the place which is called Fretten Grove. A large house surrounded by a thick wooded area where many cliffs, gullies, and other areas to fall in or down from exist. Those who know the woods well try to avoid them because the terrain in most of the area is treacherous and full of vicious animals. Also there are rumors which there are Cizinec and Gravon clans who live in the woods.
The danger of the woods is not the thing which terrifies people; it is the old tales of the area. Before there was a manor at Fretten Grove, there was a hospital called Fretten Heights. This large hospital was for those who were deemed "mentally weary" or "mentally incompetent." This is where both the physically sick and the mentally sick came to be housed out of the eye of many normal functioning Hepian Citizens. The Doctors at Fretten Heights preformed horrifying experiments on the patients which either drove the patients further into insanity or killed them.
Feegan once housed many of these hospitals and also prisons because the old empires deemed Feegan's land useless. Then after several decades of housing the dredges of society, the captives of the facilities lashed out and revolted. This came to be known as the Mad Man Revolt. Thousands of directors, doctors, and innocent people died. Since then only the relatives and the tales of the facilities survive. The buildings themselves have either been destroyed and turned into new useful buildings or the ruins are left about.
"I personally don't know many stories about this area," Lord Travult says with a slight shrug as he runs his fingers over his mustaches, "but it has given my staff who are local a scare. This also worries my wife, not the stories, the fact a man died on our property."
"Understandable," Morgan says with a nod.
"Though, I have my doubts that he was murdered by apparitions." Lord Travul glares off into the distance for a moment, but his cool demeanor pulls back on his face. "Doug Timbule, the servant who died, was disappearing for days. I also heard from the staff that he had been drunk while on duty. Before he died, he disappeared for three days without even a word of warning. From what I have heard his wife saying, after he reappeared he started to get very drunk. So, only one can conclude that he was drunk that night he died."
He adjusts his clothes slightly and looks toward Morgan. Silence falls between the two as Morgan thinks about what he just heard.
"I will pay you a fine fee if you find out what happened," Lord Travult says as he breaks the silence. "Especially if it helps my wife and staff become at ease and helps us get back to a normal routine."
"This sounds interesting enough," Morgan says with a slight smile appearing across his face. "Especially since I have never seen a ghost or murderous ones at that. I think we will definitely look into this."
"What are your fees?" Lord Travult gets out his pocket book from within his jacket.
"I have a flat fee plus labor." Morgan says as he watches the pocket book carefully. "For you, I would say a flat fee of 5,000 Pres with an additional 200 per day for labor."
Lord Travult thinks for a moment and nods. He pulls out five One-Thousand-Pres-Notes and puts them on Morgan's Desk. "Five Thousand is a small price to pay to put everyone at ease and have some normality back into my life."
Morgan carefully takes the money. "Shall we meet at your Manor in the early afternoon?"
"That will suffice."
"Oh, and about the body, is it still on your property?"
He looks nervously for the moment as he thinks about the body, "What was left of the body we have kept on the grounds, though we had to move it for risk of it being carried off by a lion."
"And when did you find the body?"
"Very early this morning," Lord Travult says as he looks at a pocket watch, "Perhaps not even fours hours ago."
"And where precisely is the body now?"
"In our private graveyard in a mausoleum."
"That's all, Lord Travult. My staff and I will meet you at your Manor in a few hours."
Lord travult nods and gets up and walks up out of the room. Morgan can hear Miss Tarlo wish him a good day, but the Lord does not respond back. Morgan presses a button on a shiny metal box which sits on his desk, he can hear a distant buzz from the other part of the house. Miss Tarlo comes within a minute of the buzzard.
"Yes, Mr. Romenov?" She says with a polite bow as she enters the room.
"Could you go fetch Dr. Butcher? I believe he might be down in the basement."
Miss Tarlo bows but she looks slightly unhappy, "Yes, I will."
Mis Tarlo leaves the parlor, goes into the kitchen area from the foyer and then opens the door to the basement. She climbs down a set of narrow stairs and enters into the basement. The basement has been outfitted to equip the needs of Dr. Butcher, but had previously been used as a preparation and embalming room by past owners of the house.
Maxwell is standing over his examine table, and as Miss Tarlo approaches she can see it is a cat that Maxwell is disecting. The body is opened and some internal organs of the cat are placed near it. Her stomach starts to turn.
"Dr Butcher..." She says meekly.
"This animal died in the most fascinating way!" Maxwell says as he turns around. His white gloved hands covered in cat guts.
"Hopefully that wasn't a neighbor's cat."
"Oh no," Dr. Butcher says with jubilation, "I found it dead in an alley a while ago. I was saving it for a slow day."
"You are needed upstairs," Miss Tarlo says with disapproval.
"I am not done!" He says with frustration. "I am close in finding out what poisoned this poor creature!"
Miss Tarlo looks at Maxwell the same way a mother would look at a child who is procrastinating. "You are needed up stairs, you have a job."
Miss Tralo leaves as she grumbles to herself. Maxwell sighs and takes his gloves and goggles off then he goes up stairs. He finds his way to the parlor.
Morgan hears the door open, "Well, looks like we have another case. We're to examine a body which was found at Fretten Grove."
"Oh," Maxwell as the jubilation from opening the cat carcass avalanches into fear.
The Butcher family has had a long history in the Hepian Empire as Doctors. In fact, Maxwell's Great-Grandfather was working in Feegan during the Mad Man Revolt but was spared because he actually helped and cured sick people unlike his colleagues. The stories passed down the Butchers were strange and horrible ones, for Maxwell's Great-Grandfather knew and disapproved of the people who conducted experiments on their patients.
The story of patients of Fretten Heights particularly frightened Maxwell as a child. Though, knowing of the murder in the woods brings up one name, Randolph. The story of Randolph begins with a man who should have been put to death for he killed half a town, but the head doctor at Fretten Heights insisted in sparring Randolph's life. The Doctor was going to show the medical community and the world that he had found a cure for pure homicidal rage and insanity. As the story goes, the "good" doctor had a machine which was called the Bombardment, a machine which challenged and over powered all the senses of the human body. It was a large metal chamber which colors, lights, pictures, and sounds would be randomly thrown at the person getting the treatment. If that was not enough, the chair which patients were strapped him both spun vertically and horizontally while emitting small shocks of electricity to the skin.
This method to cure people did not bode well for over half the patients put through it. Randolph, on the other hand, survived this treatment longer than any patient before. For years and hours on end, Randolph endured the Bombardment treatment. Then one day, in an unforeseen accident, Randolph killed the orderlies which were taking him out of the machine. From there, he killed everything from that machine, which happened to be in the sub basement level, to the entrance of Fretten Heights. Then he ran into the woods. For weeks they looked for Randolph, but he was never found until his dismembered body was found at the bottom of one of the many gullies.
The story says that now when anyone is in Fretten Grove on a dark moonless night the bloody ghost of Randolph rampages through the woods. If he finds anyone crossing his path he will dismember their body.
Maxwell fidgets with a piece of string inside his pocket as he thinks and what color is left in his pale face fades.
"Oh, that sounds really fascinating." He nervously says as he tries to put up a brave front, "This has nothing to do with the ghost tales, does it?"
"Lord Travult, our employer, doubts it but his servants are dead sure of it. In my opinion it is ludicrous. From the sounds of it, the body was found dismembered as if it was eaten by animals and I am sure that's what happened."
Maxwell becomes a little more fidgety and looks about, "Great... When do we go?"
"As soon as we get everyone on the same page and we get there." Morgan stands up and goes to his coat hanger and retrieves his hat and coat. He grabs his mobile talkie and spins the rotary.
"Let's see where Oswald is." Morgan waits as he hears the tones through the speaker of the mobile talkie.
Through the noise and the commotion of the Wicker Tooth, Oswald hears his mobile talkie ring. He takes from the holster on his belt and answers it with a charming smile despite the person on the other line not being able to see him, "Hello?"
"We have a job," Morgan says through his phone, "it is at Fretten Grove."
"Oh yeah?" Oswald says as he looks toward a woman he was previously in the company of before his mobile rand. "Why are we going up there?"
"There's been a murder, we'll fill you in as we go."
"Okay," Says Oswald as he motions a kiss toward his lady-friend. "I will be right over."
Oswald takes another jaunt through the blissful morning sun as he start to smoke another Gravon Weed ciggerette. He can feel what fear or shock from hearing he was going to Fretten Grove just fade away. His feet planted on the ground but he feels as though his head is detached and floating miles off. He finds himself at the door step of Miss Tarlo's house where the others are waiting on the porch. Oswald nervously fidgets with the splintering handle of his old heirloom bag and Morgan leans against a wall and waits.
"Are you ready?" Morgan says a little gruffly as he supports himself and starts to walk toward the shed where the autos are located.
"Prepared for anything," Oswald says as he puffs out a ring of smoke into the air as he opens the door and climbs into the passenger side of the auto.
Morgan puts his feet on the desk in the parlor, which the residences of the house lovingly call an office, and starts to read the morning edition of the Daily Point, the most reputable paper in Point Demore. The paper blurts out the news of the area and other events that are amusing to the local gossipers. The only thing which the paper does not shout is something to get Morgan's attention.
Detective Morgan Romenov is a brash but quiet man. A man who watches people and looks for their actions, passion, and emotions to hypothesis their next step. When this information settles with in his mind, he dashes into action.
His dress is dark and rather inconspicuous. No bright colors to attract attention and nothing to set him apart from the crowd. Despite being taller then some other men, he remains in the shadows and mostly unnoticed until the right time for him to make himself known. He usually wears a longer coat and a hat with a wider than usual brim which hides his identity more. At the present moment they sit on a coat rack in the corner of the room.
Meanwhile, Doctor Maxwell Butcher is in the basement where no sun with any good or bad intentions can reach him. He sighs as he fills up beakers and containers full of odd colored liquids and substances. He sniffs other compounds and liquids and pours them down a nearby drain. He gazes toward the empty examination table. It was very clean, very shiny, and recently unused. His attention is then drawn toward the large walk in freezer which sits on the opposite end of the wall. His fingers reach toward some latex gloves and he moves toward the freezer with an excited feverish grin.
Doctor Maxwell Butcher is a small, nervous man who has a callow face. His hair is thinning but Maxwell seems satisfied to cover it up with what little of his hair is left. His demeanor is awkward and he makes better friends with microscopic fungi than with the everyday man. Though, despite this he is still a passionate man, some would say his passion leads to many obsessive behaviors.
Dr. Butcher dresses very plainly and is not up with the current trends. He sees clothes more as a burden to wash later on after blood and sinew of bodies dry. This is why he wears his unflattering large laboratory coat when he knows he is going to work. Though the most prominent aspect of his garb are the goggles which he hears to help magnify objects and his black, stained, aged, heirloom handbag which he carries all the essentials for finding clues. Though, the goggles hang on a wall with other tools of his trade and his bag sits on a disorganized desk where he jots down his findings.
Unlike his cohorts, Oswald Von Grimmelhausen takes advantage of the sunshine and walks outside. Though his merry little jaunt lasts only for moments as he enters The Wicker Tooth, a lively bar which most refer to as a smoke-house because of the cloud which plumes inside the main hall. Drinking, gambling, and women are all hiding within the inconspicuous frame which houses The Wicker Tooth.
Oswald Von Grimmelhausen is slick, handsome, and an active man who has a shadowy past which he hopes he can reform or he faces a bleak future. He is the trio's man amongst the people and connection which helps them troll through murky waters of the crime world. He uses his power of persuasion and tactics of manipulation to win over the hearts and minds of people his other cohorts cannot.
Oswald is the most dapper of the three; a neatly trimmed mustache which is paired with a sharply angled goatee. His suits are usually matching and new. In his inner pocket he carries a small cigarette tin which is decorate ornately by a leaf, Gravon Weed, which he chooses to smoke despite its infamous legality. He also has a pair of light wired-framed glasses with shaded lenses which helps distract his fans from his blood-shot eyes.
The morning for all three proceeds almost without event until Morgan gets a knock on the door. He makes a noise which indicates that he didn't want to disturbed but he has nothing else better to do other than sit in the morning light and read the newsprint. A woman comes in quietly and shuts the door behind her. The woman, Miss Tarlo, is not only the landlady but a willing participant in Morgan's business as it helps the men pay their rent on time.
"Good Morning Mr. Romenov," she says politely with a small bow. Even though Morgan has told her that he's been under her house long enough she doesn't have to take the extra effort, Miss Tarlo still insists on showing all the proper mannerisms of a proper landlady and a secretary. "You have a gentleman in the foyer waiting for you. He's a finely dressed man who seems only slightly distress. He doesn't look like he could pose much of a challenge, but perhaps this is a chance to do something mundane for some good Pres."
Miss Tarlo and Morgan both exchange looks and laugh. Morgan starts to fold up the paper and puts his feet down. "You can show our guest in whenever you are ready."
The door stays slightly ajar and Morgan can hear Miss Tarlo and the man talking. By voice alone the man seems to be older and from how he talks and stresses syllables Morgan can tell he was raised outside of Feegan. The man comes in, as Miss Tarlo said, he is finely dressed. He is also very tall and built well for a man his age. He wears a pair of glasses which are connected to his vest pocket with a golden chain. He also has a thick mustache which most elite business men wear. His hair is well cut and parted.
The man stays standing in an alert stiff manner and looks at the office. The parlor is a good sized room. Behind Morgan a window which looks out into the well maintained garden, the nice but slightly skewed messy desk sits in front of him. Soft comfortable arm chairs sit in front of the desk for guests to sit at and talk to Morgan. On the northern wall a large wall clock ticks away as hoops and dials spin to show the moon phases and star movements. On the south wall is a nice plain couch with a coffee table. Then in the far corner by the door is the coat rack.
"How may I help you?" Morgan says as he puts his hands on his desk.
"I have come because you are the best detectives in the region," the man says as he remains standing. "And you have helped several friends and colleagues in the past. So, I was wondering if you were for hire to help me with a very simple case that has unfortunately happened at my house."
"Oh," Morgan says as he mentally rolls his eyes, "and what would that be?"
"This is something which my servants and my wife are greatly concerned about. A man, who was a servant of mine, died on my estate sometime last night. He was found in the woods on my property." He pauses for a moment and looks slightly unsure for a moment then his face snaps back into a neutral position again, "Though, it looked like an animal had killed the poor man. The servants, on the other hand, are talking about ghost. Frankly, I find it all poppycock! I want you to get to the bottom of this and put my servants and my wife at ease."
Morgan thinks for a moment and nods, "Please sit and tell me about the servant who met an unfortunate end."
The man sits down. "Perhaps I should introduce myself before we get too deep in this. I am Lord Bennet Travult and I live in the Fretten Grove Manor. My servant was the grounds keeper to my estate."
Morgan nods and starts to think about the place which is called Fretten Grove. A large house surrounded by a thick wooded area where many cliffs, gullies, and other areas to fall in or down from exist. Those who know the woods well try to avoid them because the terrain in most of the area is treacherous and full of vicious animals. Also there are rumors which there are Cizinec and Gravon clans who live in the woods.
The danger of the woods is not the thing which terrifies people; it is the old tales of the area. Before there was a manor at Fretten Grove, there was a hospital called Fretten Heights. This large hospital was for those who were deemed "mentally weary" or "mentally incompetent." This is where both the physically sick and the mentally sick came to be housed out of the eye of many normal functioning Hepian Citizens. The Doctors at Fretten Heights preformed horrifying experiments on the patients which either drove the patients further into insanity or killed them.
Feegan once housed many of these hospitals and also prisons because the old empires deemed Feegan's land useless. Then after several decades of housing the dredges of society, the captives of the facilities lashed out and revolted. This came to be known as the Mad Man Revolt. Thousands of directors, doctors, and innocent people died. Since then only the relatives and the tales of the facilities survive. The buildings themselves have either been destroyed and turned into new useful buildings or the ruins are left about.
"I personally don't know many stories about this area," Lord Travult says with a slight shrug as he runs his fingers over his mustaches, "but it has given my staff who are local a scare. This also worries my wife, not the stories, the fact a man died on our property."
"Understandable," Morgan says with a nod.
"Though, I have my doubts that he was murdered by apparitions." Lord Travul glares off into the distance for a moment, but his cool demeanor pulls back on his face. "Doug Timbule, the servant who died, was disappearing for days. I also heard from the staff that he had been drunk while on duty. Before he died, he disappeared for three days without even a word of warning. From what I have heard his wife saying, after he reappeared he started to get very drunk. So, only one can conclude that he was drunk that night he died."
He adjusts his clothes slightly and looks toward Morgan. Silence falls between the two as Morgan thinks about what he just heard.
"I will pay you a fine fee if you find out what happened," Lord Travult says as he breaks the silence. "Especially if it helps my wife and staff become at ease and helps us get back to a normal routine."
"This sounds interesting enough," Morgan says with a slight smile appearing across his face. "Especially since I have never seen a ghost or murderous ones at that. I think we will definitely look into this."
"What are your fees?" Lord Travult gets out his pocket book from within his jacket.
"I have a flat fee plus labor." Morgan says as he watches the pocket book carefully. "For you, I would say a flat fee of 5,000 Pres with an additional 200 per day for labor."
Lord Travult thinks for a moment and nods. He pulls out five One-Thousand-Pres-Notes and puts them on Morgan's Desk. "Five Thousand is a small price to pay to put everyone at ease and have some normality back into my life."
Morgan carefully takes the money. "Shall we meet at your Manor in the early afternoon?"
"That will suffice."
"Oh, and about the body, is it still on your property?"
He looks nervously for the moment as he thinks about the body, "What was left of the body we have kept on the grounds, though we had to move it for risk of it being carried off by a lion."
"And when did you find the body?"
"Very early this morning," Lord Travult says as he looks at a pocket watch, "Perhaps not even fours hours ago."
"And where precisely is the body now?"
"In our private graveyard in a mausoleum."
"That's all, Lord Travult. My staff and I will meet you at your Manor in a few hours."
Lord travult nods and gets up and walks up out of the room. Morgan can hear Miss Tarlo wish him a good day, but the Lord does not respond back. Morgan presses a button on a shiny metal box which sits on his desk, he can hear a distant buzz from the other part of the house. Miss Tarlo comes within a minute of the buzzard.
"Yes, Mr. Romenov?" She says with a polite bow as she enters the room.
"Could you go fetch Dr. Butcher? I believe he might be down in the basement."
Miss Tarlo bows but she looks slightly unhappy, "Yes, I will."
Mis Tarlo leaves the parlor, goes into the kitchen area from the foyer and then opens the door to the basement. She climbs down a set of narrow stairs and enters into the basement. The basement has been outfitted to equip the needs of Dr. Butcher, but had previously been used as a preparation and embalming room by past owners of the house.
Maxwell is standing over his examine table, and as Miss Tarlo approaches she can see it is a cat that Maxwell is disecting. The body is opened and some internal organs of the cat are placed near it. Her stomach starts to turn.
"Dr Butcher..." She says meekly.
"This animal died in the most fascinating way!" Maxwell says as he turns around. His white gloved hands covered in cat guts.
"Hopefully that wasn't a neighbor's cat."
"Oh no," Dr. Butcher says with jubilation, "I found it dead in an alley a while ago. I was saving it for a slow day."
"You are needed upstairs," Miss Tarlo says with disapproval.
"I am not done!" He says with frustration. "I am close in finding out what poisoned this poor creature!"
Miss Tarlo looks at Maxwell the same way a mother would look at a child who is procrastinating. "You are needed up stairs, you have a job."
Miss Tralo leaves as she grumbles to herself. Maxwell sighs and takes his gloves and goggles off then he goes up stairs. He finds his way to the parlor.
Morgan hears the door open, "Well, looks like we have another case. We're to examine a body which was found at Fretten Grove."
"Oh," Maxwell as the jubilation from opening the cat carcass avalanches into fear.
The Butcher family has had a long history in the Hepian Empire as Doctors. In fact, Maxwell's Great-Grandfather was working in Feegan during the Mad Man Revolt but was spared because he actually helped and cured sick people unlike his colleagues. The stories passed down the Butchers were strange and horrible ones, for Maxwell's Great-Grandfather knew and disapproved of the people who conducted experiments on their patients.
The story of patients of Fretten Heights particularly frightened Maxwell as a child. Though, knowing of the murder in the woods brings up one name, Randolph. The story of Randolph begins with a man who should have been put to death for he killed half a town, but the head doctor at Fretten Heights insisted in sparring Randolph's life. The Doctor was going to show the medical community and the world that he had found a cure for pure homicidal rage and insanity. As the story goes, the "good" doctor had a machine which was called the Bombardment, a machine which challenged and over powered all the senses of the human body. It was a large metal chamber which colors, lights, pictures, and sounds would be randomly thrown at the person getting the treatment. If that was not enough, the chair which patients were strapped him both spun vertically and horizontally while emitting small shocks of electricity to the skin.
This method to cure people did not bode well for over half the patients put through it. Randolph, on the other hand, survived this treatment longer than any patient before. For years and hours on end, Randolph endured the Bombardment treatment. Then one day, in an unforeseen accident, Randolph killed the orderlies which were taking him out of the machine. From there, he killed everything from that machine, which happened to be in the sub basement level, to the entrance of Fretten Heights. Then he ran into the woods. For weeks they looked for Randolph, but he was never found until his dismembered body was found at the bottom of one of the many gullies.
The story says that now when anyone is in Fretten Grove on a dark moonless night the bloody ghost of Randolph rampages through the woods. If he finds anyone crossing his path he will dismember their body.
Maxwell fidgets with a piece of string inside his pocket as he thinks and what color is left in his pale face fades.
"Oh, that sounds really fascinating." He nervously says as he tries to put up a brave front, "This has nothing to do with the ghost tales, does it?"
"Lord Travult, our employer, doubts it but his servants are dead sure of it. In my opinion it is ludicrous. From the sounds of it, the body was found dismembered as if it was eaten by animals and I am sure that's what happened."
Maxwell becomes a little more fidgety and looks about, "Great... When do we go?"
"As soon as we get everyone on the same page and we get there." Morgan stands up and goes to his coat hanger and retrieves his hat and coat. He grabs his mobile talkie and spins the rotary.
"Let's see where Oswald is." Morgan waits as he hears the tones through the speaker of the mobile talkie.
Through the noise and the commotion of the Wicker Tooth, Oswald hears his mobile talkie ring. He takes from the holster on his belt and answers it with a charming smile despite the person on the other line not being able to see him, "Hello?"
"We have a job," Morgan says through his phone, "it is at Fretten Grove."
"Oh yeah?" Oswald says as he looks toward a woman he was previously in the company of before his mobile rand. "Why are we going up there?"
"There's been a murder, we'll fill you in as we go."
"Okay," Says Oswald as he motions a kiss toward his lady-friend. "I will be right over."
Oswald takes another jaunt through the blissful morning sun as he start to smoke another Gravon Weed ciggerette. He can feel what fear or shock from hearing he was going to Fretten Grove just fade away. His feet planted on the ground but he feels as though his head is detached and floating miles off. He finds himself at the door step of Miss Tarlo's house where the others are waiting on the porch. Oswald nervously fidgets with the splintering handle of his old heirloom bag and Morgan leans against a wall and waits.
"Are you ready?" Morgan says a little gruffly as he supports himself and starts to walk toward the shed where the autos are located.
"Prepared for anything," Oswald says as he puffs out a ring of smoke into the air as he opens the door and climbs into the passenger side of the auto.
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