"What Madness Is This?" Volume II: Prophecies in the Dark

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Napoleon53

Napoleon53

For my non-American readers, Clark Gable (TTL's face for Johnny Gamble) played Rhett Butler in the classic movie Gone with the Wind. So it's just a weird meta-joke in itself.

Ladies and germs, we are approaching...


The Steele Finale


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2:00 timestamp into that song is absolutely how I imagine Steele's funeral would sound. The organ really adds something slightly sinister and ominous that's perfect.
 
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Napoleon53

Napoleon53

Cakebear said:
Is it going to take place in 1947 or 1946? I remember Steele killing the John Wayne Expy actor in 1945. If he does die in 1944 or late 1943, then that would create a timeline error.
Click to expand...

It's all part of the plan. It's not the very next chapter, but I'm hyped for us to enter Oswaldia. The 40s are going to be very interesting.

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES:
THE PHILADELPHIA REAPER CASE
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RUMP officers led by Chief Detective Arthur God-Fear Wallace (derby hat) strike a pose in Philadelphia​
 
Napoleon53

Napoleon53

So, I was doing a lil research and wanting to introduce Leslie King from 1.0 finally as a RUMP officer working on the Philadelphia Reaper case. I was distraught he was born in Omaha.

His family came from Pennsylvania!

Man, that's smooth. I have also decided to change his first name into something stupidly cool. I present...

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Saxon King, Philly Military Police.
 
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SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES: THE PHILADELPHIA REAPER CASE
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    • Napoleon53

    Napoleon53

    SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES:
    THE PHILADELPHIA REAPER CASE
    popo.jpg

    Philly RUMP officers pose outside the location of yet another victim of the Philadelphia Reaper
    Chief Arthur God-Fear Wallace stands in the foreground in fur coat    ​

    By far one of the most famous and prolific serial killers in the history of America is the being known as the Philadelphia Reaper. The Reaper was also sometimes known as the Wormist Slayer, the Ritual Ripper, and more, but the Reaper was by far the most popular nickname used by the press to cover the perpetrator of a string of killings in the greater Philadelphia area in the mid- to late-1940s. To understand this saga of blood and guts in the shadows, we need to start at the beginning, when the Reaper struck his first victim.

    The date was July 3, 1942, a day before America was to test and announce the creation of its first atomic bomb--a story which conveniently relegated this first known victim to the back pages of the papers. Julia Rogers, a 23 year-old brunette who spent her days working for the Hampton Forge Company's central office. Hampton Forge was one of the largest suppliers of landship treads, gasoline canisters, and similar items to the American war machine, and its giant smokestacks and chimneys dominated the skyline of West Philadelphia's Factory District. Rogers was last seen alive at around 5:50 pm, when she purchased a hot dog and a Sweet Victory on her way home from work, just about two blocks north from the Forge. The vendor of the hot dog cart reported no suspicious activity or any red flags and said the girl was polite and went about her day like anyone else.

    At 7:23 pm, a local sanitation worker made the call to RUMP to report that he had found a corpse behind the Winchester Apartment Building. RUMP officers arrived at 7:49 pm and took photographs of the crime scene. A nude woman was lying with her arms and legs out in the midst of a bizarre occult symbol that was drawn on the pavement with chalk. Her eyes had been removed. As a crowd began to gather around the grim spectacle, RUMP officers formed a human shield to keep the bystanders at bay. One Sergeant Saxon "Sax" King--a Custer Youth All-American and a graduate of Benjamin Franklin Memorial University's Law Enforcement Program--took charge of the case, telling the frantic reporters that he would soon have the criminal in the bag. The blonde, broad-shouldered mammoth of a man was the brightest rising star in the entire Pennsylvania RUMP.

    As King attempted to put the pieces of the puzzle together, he was fearful of the potential meaning of the occult art found at the scene. He immediately associated the symbols with the diabolical Worm Cult infamously exposed on May Day by President Steele's execution of Patton. There had been a national panic about the "Wormists within" and Sax King didn't want to fan the flames of the national hysteria, so he tried to keep a lid on the investigation. Alas, much to his and the Philly Military Police's dismay, a letter was given to the Philadelphia Examiner on July 7 that read:

    "Hello, Philadelphia. Hello, America. Hello from the deepest, wickedest ghetto in this society from which I slither forth. The Great Worm thirsts for blood and hungers for eyes. I shall give The Worm what it wants and have fun doing it. The government tells you that Armitage and Jennings, their imprisoned monkey-men, are the leaders of the cult!. Lies! Lies! I shall rule all in the coming Age of Blood. I shall start with harlots and tramps and wage-slaves, and I shall work my way up the food chain of Union society. I already have many notches on my belt, but you haven't found them yet. Look for stinking carcasses on 23rd and Main and behind Easy Pete's Chop Shop on 33rd Street. I implore you. I don't want my masterpieces to go undiscovered."​

    Police quickly found the bodies of Jed Horton, a 39 year-old homeless Boogie-addict, in an alleyway behind a pool hall on 23rd and Main. His naked body had been savagely beaten and stabbed over twenty times and his blood used to draw daemonic runes onto the ground, much like the chalk around Julia Rogers. Much like Rogers again, his eyes were nowhere to be found. 33rd Street turned up an even grimmer sight. A young prostitute named Eliza Hughes, 28, was found, again, naked and beaten, but this time she was crucified upside down and the wall around her was again covered in runes. Her head was found several feet away, once again eyeless.

    The public flew into absolute mayhem. Gun stores, already struggling with supply chain issues thanks to Manifest Climax, sold out overnight. Mobs formed outside the locales where the bodies were found to take photos and pose with the blood-stained places where the bodies had been found. And in the midst of this, Sergeant King was trying to do actual detective work. No fingerprints had been found at the scenes of the crime. The reference to the "deepest and wickedest ghetto" in the killer's letter to the Examiner turned up nothing, as the Greater Philadelphia Metro Area was home to no Inferior ghettos since the Cleansing Month decades earlier, leading King to think the "ghetto" was simply referring to Philadelphia itself. While city authorities put up posters warning citizens of "daemonic Infee serial murderers," a frustrated King lamented the fact that no one seemed to even question as to if a Better of Society could be perpetrating the crimes.

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    Sergeant Saxon "Sax" King    ​

    Chief among those clinging desperately to the "Infee Theory" was Arthur God-Fear Wallace, Chief of the Philadelphia RUMP and a hardline MDP lifer that had served under Custer himself. Despite having been in RUMP since the last century, he was less than "hip" in modern forensics and his finger was far from the pulse of what made modern criminals tick. He was from the old Custer school of criminals being Inferior boogiemen with slant eyes and papist crucifix's dangling around their necks, and he refused to start a manhunt among the Betters of Society despite King's protests and reminders that even Patton himself fell to the charms of The Worm. Police presence was ratcheted up all over the Greater Metro Area and Wallace announced that he would find the culprit within the week.

    But a week came and went, and no new breaks were made in the case. To top it off, a frantic populace of stressed and panicked citizenry gave all sorts of false and sometimes outright fantastical claims. King took it upon himself to interrogate those who came forward with information, but not much luck was to be had. This can be illustrated with the following transcript dated July 20, 1942, as archived on tape in the Philadelphia City Police Archive:

    King: "Alright, Miss... Sherman--can I call you Angela? Please tell me about what you saw on the night of July 3."

    Sherman: "Yes... Yes... I saw a man in a trenchcoat and hat walking away from where they found that poor girl's body in the Factory District."

    King: "A man? What size was the man? Any distinguishing characteristics?"

    Sherman: "He was around five feet four, I'd say. Short little man. He limped."

    King: "Excellent! Now, Angela, did you get a look at his face?"

    Sherman: "Yes! Yes! I did!"

    King: "Great! You're doing great, Angela! Can you tell me what this man looked like. No pressure! Just please try to remember whatever you can as accurately as possible."

    Sherman: "He had squinty little eyes! Like a Chinaman! And red hair. He looked Irish sure as you're born."

    King: "Irish? Okay. Well, anything else?"

    Sherman: "Well, I think he had a big scar on his face. It was dreadful, officer! I could hardly look at him. And his crotch was bulged! No doubt from acting out some sick, depraved ritual with that poor girl's body. The things he probably did to that girl... I can only imagine."

    King: "Alright, I get the picture. Ma'am, respectfully... you do realize that no Inferiors have been allowed into Philadelphia in over fifteen years. In fact, there haven't even been any ghettos or labor facilities within thirty miles since the Cleansing Month riots. The likelihood of a short, squint-eyed, Sino-Irish serial killer with a scarred face slipping through our dragnets is... about as likely as Bruisin' Bob Sherwood losing the Bible Belt to a one-armed Sicilian spaghetti-slurper--in all honesty, Angela."

    Sherman: "I don't know much about fisticuffs but I know what I saw! He was a stunted little Infee who I bet you a shiny new dime is worshiping that Worm thing out there right now over some poor girl's violated, beautiful corpse! I would hate for him to do such horrible things to my delicate, lovely form. He could take any fair-haired beauty and I feel chills knowing someone might use my gorgeous, pale Anglo-Saxon corpse for some sort of sex magick on a heathen altar in the glistening moonlight. Not that I would even know what was going on, since I would likely be dead or at the very least eyeless."

    King: "Yeah... Okay. Um... All right. Do you think you could pick this... man... out of a line up?"

    Sherman: "Absolutely! I'll never forget that face as long as I live! You find me that face, and you'll find your killer!"

    *End of Interview*

    King: "Addendum and summary: Suspect matching Miss Sherman's description was found and picked up walking the streets of the Factory District on July 24. Miss Sherman picked him out of a line-up. Suspect was Signifer Elroy Boggs, a retired Scottish-American veteran of Lincoln's Hammer. 1st Maniple, 2nd Cohort, Legion I to be precise, and a recipient of over ten military decorations in the Great World War. Signifer Boggs was a victim of devastating facial wounds and underwent experimental cosmetic surgery some time ago. This poor man was accused by Miss Sherman of being an Infee serial killer. As for the bulge... The man     was hung like a horse, I'll give Miss Sherman much. We apologized to the man and rewarded him with food ration stamps for his troubles and dismissed Miss Sherman."    ​

    August 12 would be the next day a victim was found. Sally Wilson, a 30 year-old seamstress of Philadelphia's Burrtown suburb, was found eyeless and splayed atop a makeshift heathen altar by her neighbor and landlord, an elderly retiree named George Washington Whitehead. Instead of alerting the authorities immediately as he should have, he fell into hysterics which only drew attention from other neighbors. A crowd converged on the one-bedroom cottage and began to desecrate the crime scene, poking at the corpse and rifling through her belongings "for clues." By the time King and his squad of detectives arrived, they practically had to beat their way through the morass of looters, bystanders, and amateur investigators. Furious, King began hauling people off left and right for disturbing a crime scene and theft, telling a reporter from the Burrtown Herald, "This is a sickening moment for me. To see my fellow countrymen treat the death of this poor girl like some sort of tourist attraction is deeply troubling. The key perpetrators have been sentenced to reeducation camps."

    August 15 saw a new letter at the Examiner's doorstep:

    "Hello from the Shadows. Hello from the Pits of Sheol. Hello from the Reaper, as you call me. Miss Wilson's eyes tasted lovely with a glaze of Horton's. Detective King says he was deeply troubled by how his countrymen treated the death of Miss Wilson. Haha! Haha! This country is rotting from the inside out, and I'm just pushing it along with the edge of my knife. I moved to the suburbs. I warned you I will make my up the societal ladder! You will never catch me when The Worm blesses me with its divine foresight. Like Icarus, this nation shall fly too close to the sun. Foolish mortals worship the state rather than Jev. I just cut out all the middle men and worship The Crowned and Conquering King directly with my offerings. I'm honest. What about you, America? Till my knife drinks the blood of my next victim, I bid you farewell."​

    What had been a hysteria before became madness now. Torch-wielding mobs roamed the street. Citizens formed neighborhood watches, taking turns standing guard over their neighborhoods. Paranoid freaks accused random bystanders of being the Reaper. August 24 saw a neighborhood watch accost a young man named Edgar Suffolk who a local girl accused of following her with menacing intent. After beating him severely, they used a rope to lynch and hang Suffolk from a nearby streetlight. The crowd continued to beat the twitching body like a Metropolis Birthday Basher even as RUMP patrol cars pulled up, sirens blaring. Several officers opened fire with revolvers on the small crowd, injuring five and killing one. The young man was discovered to have been the former boyfriend of the local girl, Petra Parke, who had singled him out. King gladly and personally made the arrest himself, picking her up for inciting a riot, false witness, and second degree murder. Parke would spend the next few years in a labor camp until her execution by electric chair in 1950.

    While all this was occurring, Chief Wallace kept insisting they were going to "nab their man any day now," and that, "The depraved villain must be part of some sort of Infee cult using the sewers to escape our dragnets," despite zero evidence of the ethnicity or heritage of the culprit. Even though many were calling for his resignation already, he refused to admit defeat and simply pressed on. He also persistently hassled Sergeant King in his duties and sent him off on wild goose chases. Desperate for any sort of breakthrough, Wallace ordered up the Pennsylvania RUMP Reserve and declared martial law in the Greater Metro Area.

    Now, with martial law underway, President Steele took notice. Furious that the whole situation was a total embarrassment to his administration and the country, he warned Wallace by phone on September 1:

    "My father admired you greatly, Chief Wallace. You have served this country--and my family--well over the past fifty years. But I warn you now, and I warn you once, that you better put an end to these killings and these lynch mobs immediately or there will be dire consequences. I hope to not have this discussion again. All hail."

    After the September 20 discovery of yet another ritual victim in the suburbs, this time in Lancelot Township, the most unlikely of things occurred. Richard Lionheart Nixon, the playboy King of Kissimmee and the heroic pilot that rescued Oswald from South America, publicly declared that he would take charge of the manhunt by his own power and find the Reaper with private investigators as a gift to the nation and to President Steele. Outraged that he thought his authority was being mocked, Chief Wallace stated that if Nixon found the killer he would retire and offer Dick the role of Chief, telling 177.6 Philadelphia Talkiebox News:

    "Quite frankly, while Com-Pat Nixon might be a great pilot and movie producer, I think he should leave the detective work to those who have spent their entire lives in Philadelphia law enforcement, not in gallivanting with film stars, running Nixolodeons, and gambling in Florida. If he wants to race, he's on. If he finds this disgusting murderer before I do, I'll retire and he can do my job if he wants to so badly."

    More victims were found on October 1 and on October 15. One of Nixon's first moves in opening his own investigation was to reach out to King for any info that might help. After an hour-long conversation by phone in which the two struck it off like old friends, King agreed to meet with Nixon and his team of private eyes. A transcript of one of their conversations shows an interesting moment in the case, and a moment in which King showed real daring to risk broaching a potentially disastrous angle he had been looking into:

    King: "You see, Mr. Nixon, and I mean this respectfully, but I have tracked an interesting vehicle on the night we found Ms. Gotthard's corpse behind that bowling alley, and I tracked it to Peppercorn Hill, where I lost sight of it."

    Nixon: "Peppercorn Hill is owned by Supreme-Chief Oswald's groupies. The Rat Pack, or whatever he calls them!"

    King: "Yessir, I am aware. Peppercorn Hill is home to over thirty cabins Oswald gives out to his friends and partners."

    Nixon: "What kind of vehicle was it? Has it been spotted again?"

    King: "Himmler and Hess Econofuhrer. Black. Maybe dark blue. Few years old. No one who is currently staying at Peppercorn Hill has a vehicle matching that description. My boys have been keeping an eye on the area, and that car never left. Several witnesses of reliable stock have reported seeing a black Econofuhrer in the same area as the killings. Tracks left by the type of treads used on that model were even found on the curb by Wilson's house in Burrtown. We find that car, and I think we'll find the Reaper."

    Nixon: "How on earth are we supposed to search Peppercorn Hill, Sergeant? Chief Wallace will never sign off on that. I don't think he has a death wish, even if he's older than dirt. And I'm not going to dare to bring Chuck into this."

    King: "That man has his own head so far up his ass he couldn't find the Reaper if he was sharing a bathroom stall with him at the Precinct. But I have an idea. And you may not like it, but it's something that needs to be considered. If you give me enough money to hire some muscle, I'll personally do an extra-legal raid on Peppercorn Hill. If I get caught, then I take the fall."

    Nixon: "...Turn that tape recorder off."

    October 20, 1942, was a shocking moment in the Wormist Saga. Sergeant King and ten heavily-armed mercenaries on the payroll of Nixon executed a raid on Peppercorn Hill. With shotguns pumped and pistols loaded, they came crashing through the door of 216 Peppercorn Hill, currently occupied by Norman J. Wheeler, a family friend from college at B.A.U.B. and a fellow survivor of the sinking of the Cape Cod that stranded Oswald in South America. Wheeler, a young man with a mop of dark brown hair, a thin mustache, and piercing hazel eyes, was found to have a black H&H Econofuhrer covered by a tarp in the garage. The suspect reacted to the raid by pulling a revolver out of his nightstand and opening fire on the intruders. In a hail of lead, one mercenary was wounded and Wheeler fell to the floor, gut-shot.

    As King and his men scuttled around the house, they found a secret entrance to a hidden area of the basement, which acted as a sort of "trophy room." Articles of clothing and jewelry from all the victims were found in nicely organized cabinets and multiple copies of the Vermis Mysteriis itself were laying about the place. King ruthlessly kicked and beat the dying Wheeler, demanding he confess to the crimes. Within fifteen minutes, Wheeler was dead. It was just a matter of a few minutes before Chuck Oswald was on the scene, demanding to know why private eyes had raided his own property.

    When Chuck found out that Nixon was behind it, he quickly seemed to regain his composure and admitted, "Dick would never do anything underhanded unless it was for the good of the country." He admitted that Wheeler was a friend from college and shipmate who fought alongside him and Lazarus Hubbard in South America. "He always tried to ride my coattails, and he's been fucked in the head since Colombia. I guess in his own way, he thought worshiping The Worm would give him power like mine. Or maybe he just really liked theatrics and eating people's eyes. Good riddance, at any rate." Oswald then announced he would be doing a "sweeping internal review" of old war buddies and hangers-on. As for when he thought Wheeler could have been radicalized, Chuck replied simply, "No clue."

    The press and people rejoiced in the slaying of the Philadelphia Reaper. Parties raged on into the night as news spread of the raid. Chief Wallace submitted his resignation and offered it to Nixon, who promptly refused. Instead, Nixon offered the job to King, who became the youngest-ever Chief of the Philadelphia Military Police. A national hero, King was now one of the most famous lawmen in American history. His handsome face made a great front for propaganda posters and newsreels.

    Despite this success, he couldn't help but be troubled by the last words of a dying Norman J. Wheeler. As the young man clutched his gut, bleeding out on the wooden floor by his bed, he told King, "I... I laugh at you. You have no... no fucking idea what is going on. What has gone on. We'll keep killin'. You can't stop the Age of Blood and... the, the Feast of Eyes. The... Skelter is coming, come hell or high water, dammit. We're Legion... and we go all the way to the fucking top! We'll devour your eyes in the End of Days and this whole country will... burn... burn with the rest of this planet. Something wicked this way... comes. There's a fucking... prophecy for you."

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    Chief King

    ***    ​

    October 31, 1945
    Office of Ryan Harvey Hendrick
    Kissimmee, Florida
    Republican Union

    Ryan Harvey Hendrick looked through the photographs of the mud-covered wreckage being fished out of an unnamed lake. It was rusting heavily but seemed to be mostly intact, or as much as could be hoped for. Hendrick's ORRA underlings moved the destroyed plane to the shoreline slowly but surely several days prior and had immediately informed him of their findings. They slowly had picked the muck off and gained access to the interior of the single-person fighter. Inside was the body of none other than Marcus Aurelius Arkham Custer-Steele, whose months-old bacteria eaten body was not even recognizable. Hendrick had received the request to dredge for Marcus's body from Richard Nixon, the media mogul and friend of the Steele family, in an effort to bring closure to a depressed Wyetta Oswald, Marcus's sister. What Hendrick now read left him deeply, deeply troubled.

    "Victim appears to have been shot multiple times from the rear with Union rounds. His parachute was also found sliced and the cord faulty. For whatever reason, we believe someone did not want Com-Pat Custer-Steele landing his craft alive that day. Standing by for your orders."

    Hendrick took a slow sip of coffee from his mug and contemplated like he had never contemplated before. There were only so many ways to look at this situation. He tried to steel his nerves and made the call to Nixon on a special direct line, the gravelly, jowly voice piped up on the other end with a quick "All Hail."

    "Dick?" Hendrick asked, still trying to calm himself and think of what to say.

    "Yes! Harv, right? Have yours boys had any luck dredging for that plane? It really means a lot to Wyetta that you're even looking."

    Hendrick almost choked on his own spit, for once overwhelmed by a situation and struggling to spin it in a way that didn't put himself in danger. "Yes... Yes, they found it. Dick... Dick... he was shot by one of ours. And they sabotaged his parachute."

    There was nothing but silence on the other end for probably at least thirty agonizing seconds. Finally, Nixon, said, "Only one man came back from that flight alive, Harv. I really hope this isn't going where I think it might be going. I really hope that's not the damn case, Harv, because that would be very Jev-damn unfortunate."

    "I'll send you a copy of the, ah, information, Dick. See what you make of it. Steady ahead. Good night. All hail."

    "Goodnight, Harv. Thank you. Uh... All Hail."

    ***​

    October 31, 1945
    Home of Richard Nixon
    Kissimmee, Florida
    Republican Union

    Nixon hung up the phone. His mind raced. It couldn't be. Chuck was a loose-canon sometimes but surely he wouldn't commit murder against his own wife's brother. But the fact it was a distinct possibility left his stomach soured and his heart racing.

    "What did he say?" Wyetta asked, rolling over in bed, moving so her chin rested on Nixon's hairy left shoulder, here doe eyes staring into him like red carpet spotlights.

    "Nothing, Sweetcheeks. They found... some wreckage. Bu-but it looks like a Neutie plane. I promise we'll find him yet."

    The First Lady of ORRA kissed his cheek. "Oh, Dick, it's so sweet of you to try so hard to find him for me. I just can't bare the thought of him out there, not resting on American soil. Oh, I know it's all all American soil now, but I want him buried at Arkham Manor where he belongs. He loved it there. So much better than dreadful Philly. I hate that place as much as he did."

    Dick gave her a soft kiss on the lips. "I know, Sweetcheeks. I know."

    ​
     
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    • John Spangler

    Damn, that was haunting. The Worm cult reminds me of Hydra from Marvel comics: cut off one head, and two more will take its place. As for the last scene...well, that's wonderful! Chuck and Wyetta have a very healthy marriage to look forward to.
     
    Cakebear

    Cakebear

    Napoleon53 said:
    What did he say?" Wyetta asked, rolling over in bed, moving so her chin rested on Nixon's hairy left shoulder, here doe eyes staring into him like red carpet spotlights.

    "Nothing, Sweetcheeks. They found... some wreckage. Bu-but it looks like a Neutie plane. I promise we'll find him yet."
    Click to expand...
    WYETTA CHEATED ON OSWALD LMAO
     
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