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A Tangled Web

December 28th, 188x

 

Wright opened the hospital doors on the snowy night, grumbling to himself. He had just returned from England and had been hoping to meet with Dr Jekyll to hear the news, only to be informed by the nurse on duty that the Dr was in the middle of an autopsy, that news alone sugested to the wolf that something was indeed going on, he just didn’t know what.
He stopped just outside the doors, there, in the streetlight sat the familiar figure of Beryl. the cat nodded to him and gestured up the road with their head before taking off.

“I think I’m meant to follow.” Wright thought to himself before taking off after the cat who now had a good head start.

The Pair dashed wordlessly through the snowy night, past taverns and shops, over bridges and through alleys. Beryl turned when they reached the tracks that crossed abney parkway, deftly ducking between two oncoming trolleys. Unfortunately for wright the gap between had become too small when he rached the vehicles.

With only a few feet between and nowhere to go the wolf dug his heels into the snow, finding one of the wooden braces that held the tracks together and pushed off, vaulting onto the open upper deck of the tram with ease, he took a run down the open aisle and lept from the rear railing, his supernatural strenghth propelling him almost twenty feet before he landed in the snow and took off, vaulting over the station railings and running through empty platforms and out the other side into the rail yard.

At last he saw Beryl again, sitting in front of a boxcar.
“It’s right over here, Mr. Wright” Beryl called to the approaching wolf.

Wright cautiously approached the rail car, he reached into his coat and drew a pistol.

“I don’t think the gun will be necessary” Beryl said, noticing the glint of steel in th gaslight.

Wright quickly put the gun away, beryl was usually right in their assesment of what each situation needed, and if they said a gun was uneccesarry…

“I assume you have a good reason for dragging me up here, also one never knows.”

“Well if you want to investigate…That’s the cart the boys disappeard from” This was the first Wright had heard about vanishing people, but he wasn’t about to let this news stun him.

“where did it come from?”

“I don’t know…”

The pair looked at the reattached doors that rather ominously said “Do Not Open”.

“It might be somewhere written on the car…Do they number these?”

Wright grabbed a nearby lantern and lit it. “sometimes” He said looking around the outside.
Near the bottom of the car he found writing “Aquilla VI” A clue, poetentially where the car was coming from, or at least who owned it. The wolf thought for a moment, he had heard that word in the city before.

“Aquilla, I’ve heard that name before.”

“You…should have, Aquilla station XIII is the power station here. Avariel runs it”

“And this, by the look of it is From Station Six.”

“Station six?” The cat asked somewhat quizically

“You’d…have to ask Avariel…I’ve only been to station III and XIII”

Wright shone the light around the door as beryl spoke, the lamp illuminating several deep gouges in the wood at the door’s edge. “Signs of a struggle.”

“Someone really didn’t want to go back inside.” Beryl said, shaking their head sadly.

Wright  Shone the light over into the car “Webbing…it smells odd almost….God in heaven.” He exclaimed, quickly making what appeared to be the sign of the cross with his free hand.

“What?”

“Two bodies, barely adolescent, entangled in the webbing, only bones are left., one figure above, encased totally in webbing.”

Beryl sighed loudly “Yes…I don’t think they wanted to cut them down till they could do it safely…I had heard about them.”

“those unfortunate children.”

Beryl shook their head again

“There are scratches on the other side…moved objects…heavy ones. But that could be old.”

Wright nodded. “The trick is to look for fresh splintering, if the scratches are still jagged then it was left recently”

“That looks jagged to me… “

“And the wood is still light in the groove, not weathered and grey like the other ones”

“So the monster…took its furniture with it. I would say it must have had a good reason for that”

“what sort of monster travels with equipment?”

“But I can’t guess what. Maybe it smuggled important things in it. Something it needed. Then again maybe it just thinks good furniture is hard to find”

 

“Maybe.” He said before pausing “Any other Incidents since I’ve been away?”

“….there’s a lot of rats in the Brunel” Beryl said giggling openly, Wright stood there and rolled his eyes.

“That’s about it…though Victor is suspecting the Gangplank did that…and is rumbling about the Bar Wars come again.”

“That was going on since before i left for London.”

“Yes, but they sprayed his bar with soap to try to get rid of them and they attacked the Christmas tree, It was chaos last night”

Wright presses his fingers against hise eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose with a sigh “And it’s not even new years.”

“Well don’t worry about the rats. Victor ‘is’ the city rat catcher, He’ll manage”

“I reckon he will.”

“In any case, you might be able to use some of this information to track down some answers”

Wright Nodded in agreement “I’ll check out the Aquilla Station here in town and see what i can get out of them.”

“Avariel is the only one that might know anything, the other clockworks generally just perform their designed functions. Unit 6 can as well.”

“Avariel, that the big unicorn?”

“That’s the one. She used to be a clockwork rabbit, then she got it into her programming one day she’d be a unicorn. So they built her a body.” Beryl said with a shrug. “When you’re a clockwork things like that seem to be normal enough”

“That’s a clockwork?” Wright exclaimed in astonishment

“Yes, with a fake skin over it. If you look into her eyes though you can tell. They’re clearly mechanical” Beryl paused and turned and slowly started to walk away. “Have a good evening Mr. Wright, and stay safe.”

Wright shook his head. “well, no matter, I’ll have to talk with her tomorrow. stay safe out there.” He said as the cat moved disappeared into the swirling snow.

Wright stood there a few moments more, examining the rail car with his lantern when a sudden spasm hit his arm, he dropped the lamp, the metal crashing against the flatcar he stood on and the glass shattering on the edge before tumbling into the snow.

“Damnit.” Wright spat, His investigation would have to wait until after his change had passed. The wolf turned and ran, past houses and mansions, through the gates and out of the city, cursing his luck all the way to his hiding spot in the fells.

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One Comment

  1. Loki Gearhead Loki Gearhead January 7, 2016

    Daaaaaamn, poor Mister Wright. I hope he figures this out

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