Descent

We found it.

The center shaft.

It's...it's difficult to describe in words.

The Church- it's not a Church. It's the heart of the town. The living, breathing, beating heart of the town.

We came out of one of the tunnels into the shaft; there was a long sloping set of black stone stairs going down into darkness. I could still hear the helicopters overhead, the gunfire. I looked up, and I could see that above us the ground had been peeled open. Just like above, like a hand had just pulled it apart like it was nothing. We started heading down the sloping stairs.

The whole shaft was coated in every kind of bodily fluid you can imagine. Blood, mucus, shit, vomit. Huge swathes of the wall were made entirely of that pulsating, sickly pale flesh we found in the buildings above. The whole town is infested. That much is clear to me now. It'd been rotted to it's very core before I even came here. I think that's why Antlers drew me here, why there was such a surge in activity. If this had gone unimpeded...

I can't think about that. I can't think about much right now. The smell is so thick, and there's so much noise. The heart is beating so loud. I'm getting ahead of myself.

While we were descending, we heard something coming up from below. Virgil had us hug the walls, and just as we did, this bloated monstrosity clambered it's way up through the shaft and out the opening. It's hard to describe what it looked like. It was like an enormous, limbed maggot. I can't tell if I'm going insane or if my memory is failing me, but christ, I think I saw human faces on it. Wordlessly screaming human faces.

Every step I take deeper into this fresh hell, I regret taking this job. I'd switch positions with Dante himself if it meant not smelling caked human filth for a few minutes.

...the heart. Right. I'm getting to that.

After what felt like an eternity of walking down, dodging whatever freaks came out of the darkness, we ended up in total darkness. Even the sunlight didn't reach down this far. Everyone broke out the flashlights and we kept moving. Another hour or so, we were finally at the bottom. That was when we saw it.

At the bottom of the shaft was an even bigger chamber, probably a few miles across. In the center of it all was a human heart, suspended by tendrils of muscle in midair. I watched it thudding away, mesmerized before Deb broke me out of it. Nobody had to say anything; we knew what needed to be done.

The stairs fell apart right before we reached the floor, about ten or so feet up. We jumped down.

The ground was made of flesh, just like everything else in this godforsaken town. Not just flesh, though. The floor of the chamber was composed of hundreds, probably thousands of different organs. Human and animal alike. All were connected between one another under a layer of translucent skin, where you could sometimes see completely through. We spotted some of the freaks up ahead and hid behind a pile of strung-together stomachs.

Whitewall was there, I think.

It was hard to tell. Most of them didn't look like they'd ever been human. Just this troupe of wretches that shrieked and moaned hymnals in languages I won't dare attempt to recreate. The strangest part was that they weren't all individuals. Some were halfway melted into one another, others were totally fluid, intermingling with the flesh of others like melted gelatin. Deb started to vomit. That was when the congregation looked right at us. Whitewall, or at least the one I think was Whitewall, stepped forward out of the crowd.

He was wearing priests robes, sure, but he wasn't any priest I'd ever seen. His head was malformed, too many angles in places that shouldn't have angles. It morphed and mutated right in front of me, just as fluid as the others in his flock. The only thing vaguely human about it was a mouthful of teeth that spoke to us.

"There is nothing to fear, children."

I stumbled back.

"There is nothing but fear."

I ran. I ran for my fucking life and I hid. I don't know where Deb or Virgil are, I don't know if they're alive, I don't know how long I'll be alive. I hid in a nest of intestines and I can hear them fucking looking for me.

I want to go home. I want to go home. I wan-

Wait. Hold on. Something's happening.

Something just came down the shaft.

What is that? Is that metal?

Wait.

oh shit oh shit

it's a fucking bom-

Broken Masquerade Part 5

I'm not even sure how long we've been walking. This whole place is just enormous. The tunnels spiral off into more tunnels that spiral off into more. The roof shakes sometimes, no doubt from the battle going on above us.

The whole place has this organic feel to it. If I put my hands on the walls, they feel warm and moist to the touch. There's a heartbeat down here too. The closer we get to the center shaft, the louder it's getting. There are sounds behind the walls too. The smell is getting worse down here too. Everything reeks of meat and rot.

It feels like I'm walking through a corpse.

We started finding side rooms on the way, too. Filled with provisions and such. Lots of medical equipment down here too. Some of the rooms've been carved out and had decent, if crude, electrical lighting installed. One of the rooms was a storage room just filled to the rim with jarred food. At first we were excited. With everything going on,  I hadn't thought to each much, and from the look on Deb's face, neither had she.

It was only after we'd cracked open a few jars that we realized that it wasn't food. Er, it was. In a manner of speaking. Jars and jars stacked neatly on the walls, each filled with individually pickled and sorted human body parts. I think I understand what was happening now. They were turning people into those things and slaughtering them. For what, I can only hazard a guess. Frankly, I'd rather not given what I saw at the diner.

We found more of the things locked up in cages. Virgil put them down. I know I should feel better, I mean, they were begging us to do it, but I just don't. I just don't.

I just want to go home. That's the real truth here. I don't want to fucking know anything anymore. All this cult bullshit, the monsters, the conspiracies, it's just so much.

...

I can't stop now, though. I'm in too deep. The center chamber must be close.

We took stock of everything. Maybe a few dozen bullets, a handful of shotgun shells, and whatever we could scrape together out of the storage rooms. Looks like the altar boys didn't think to stock up on guns before they started this whole thing.

Or they did. And we're walking into a trap.

...

Fuck.

Broken Masquerade Part 4

There's a lot of unpacking that needs to be done, so I'll be blunt.

We were hiding out in the gas station when things started going south. Monsters, like the thing in the diner and Anne, bigger than anything I've ever seen, were moving throughout the town. There were black helicopters (unmarked of course) taking potshots at them, all the while I could hear jets going overhead. We kept our heads down. Soldiers were going through the town too, fighting with the things. They were using uniforms I've never seen before; big, bulky suits with face-masks and carrying flamethrowers. The things were all over the place, though.

I saw floating masses of organs that were hovering over the town. I saw a bodiless circulatory system climbing across buildings like a spider. It was fucking chaos.

Then, an antique shop across the street was hit. Grenade, or missile. I'm not really sure. Either way the whole building went up. The ground started shaking and I could see, in the fire and rubble, that the ground around the building was bleeding.

The road started to peel open, like god himself just unzipped it. I couldn't see the bottom.

Something was coming out of the ground.

I didn't get a chance to see what it was. Before anyone could react, Antlers was in the middle of us all. We all paused, and it felt like time did too. Next thing I know, I'm in a cave. It took me a long time to get my bearings. I had a flashlight in my bag, so naturally I turned it on and looked around. There was a little daylight from a few big holes in the ceiling. That was when I realized where I was. I was beneath the town. As far as I can tell, at least where I am, these tunnels were old mineshafts or something. The whole place looks, feels, and smells like a corpse. Where the walls aren't covered in stone, they're covered in rotted flesh.

I'm basically in the guts of the fucking town now. Literally. Fuck my life.

Found Deb and Virgil after a while. Virgil said that he figured Antlers didn't want us dead in an airstrike. I said that I might have preferred it, the way things were going. Based on the few signs left, we're nearing some kind of center shaft. Everything leads into it, like a big spider web. I'm going to take a shot in the dark and guess that the center is where we're going to find our church.

Updates as they come.

Also, no, I don't know why the last post was in the future. At this point, that's a benign kind of weird that I can live with. And no, I'm not really sure how I'm still getting signal in a mineshaft.

If I'm totally honest, I stopped asking questions quite some time ago.

interlude

the rest of the court is occupied for now, and thus I now have a moment of lucidity with which to speak. The others are safe. i have taken them to where the church cannot reach. the town is alive and it reeks with the stench of a hundred years of rotting flesh. the faithful have retreated to their hovels, so assured that the might of the flesh-smiths will protect the town, as they have protected it before.

how wrong they are.

the masked traveler was correct. even as these words are transcribed, men with guns and black masks pepper the town. they are delayed, for now, by the flesh-smiths, but even their arcane ability cannot stop them, for the men bring their own esoteric tools. it was as the most devout of our court feared; esoteric weapons in the hands of feeble men. 

i can feel the chains of my prison closing back in once again. the judge can sense my freedom. 

this shall not be my coda, nor shall it be theirs. 

i fear that i may not have a free tongue again, and it is in this time that i must hope they can forgive my transgressions. my actions have not been my own. 

if i had known the true nature of my oath when i had taken it, i would have killed myself while i had the chance. 

i am sorry for what i am. 

Broken Masquerade Part 3

Deb here, again. Gittes is stuck with the shotgun right now, so I'm going to type this out to keep track of what's going on. 

Like he already said, the town is totally abandoned now. Sometimes it seems like I see people in corners and back alleys, but any time one of us goes to check, there's nobody there. We headed into the town hall to see if there was anyone around, and, of course, there wasn't. What's odd is that it seemed like everyone just up and disappeared. Like, one minute they're here. The next, poof. Gone. There was even food in the break room. Still warm. We didn't touch it, and after that thing at the diner, a ham sandwich just doesn't look right anymore. 

The whole place was pretty standard for government buildings I've seen. Kind of ornate. A lot of marble pillars and this whole "rustic" wood aesthetic going on. If things were different, I'd say it was kind of nice. The walls were mostly this old wood, and they had portraits of the town mayors over the years. I didn't notice it at first, but that same symbol kept showing up in the background. A hand in a triangle with three dots. Sometimes it was on a window, other times it was a partially obscured tattoo. You didn't see it at first, but it was always there in the later portraits. 

In the center of the room was a little help desk. It was a large, cylindrical room that peeled off into smaller offices and storage rooms. Nothing really that odd about it. The architecture seemed really specific, though. Just looking at the geometry of the place gave me a headache. It's hard to describe. The hallways seemed a little longer than they should've been, the walls seemed to get closer and closer as you walked down halls. We were all pretty quiet, and there were a couple times that I swore I heard someone breathing right behind me.

I heard a helicopter go over while we were inside. We went out to check, and Virgil spotted a couple of unmarked helicopters flying over the town. We heard fighter jets too and went back inside. 

Just a week ago, I thought this was just some weird town in the middle of nowhere. Now I know better. 

The town isn't just wrong. It's alive.

We stayed in the town hall until the helicopters left. They looked military, and nobody wanted to chance getting shot. I started hearing this creaking noise from the walls. I mean, not really creaking so much as a groaning. Like a house settling but more protracted and consistent. Gittes went up the wall, he'd heard it too, and smacked it with the butt of the shotgun. 

It crumpled easily, and inside there was flesh. Not dead, alive. Muscles and veins that quivered when the cold air hit them. We were all in shock. Or, at least, Gittes and I were. It's hard to tell what Virgil is thinking most of the time. 

Then, an eye grew out of the flesh. A human eye. It looked straight at me.

I almost screamed. Gittes tried to stop me, but I stumbled backwards and knocked one of the portraits off the wall. There was that symbol again, painted on the wall behind it. 

I still don't understand what the symbol means. We didn't have much time to look into it, though, because blood started pouring out of that hole in the wall. Just gushing everywhere. Then, intestines, like snakes, started worming out and lashing at us. 

We ran. 

Now, we're hiding out in a truck stop, and I can hear something stomping around the town. We heard a loud crashing a few minutes ago. I looked outside, and there's something moving. Something huge. I tried to see what it was, but it was hard to tell. It looked almost like a gigantic mass of flesh jutting out of the ground. 

There's more crashing. 

oh my god

the ground outside just peeled open

what is 

Broken Masquerade Part 2

Alright. I think we're getting somewhere. Kind of. Sort of. Maybe.

I'm not really sure.

After we torched the diner, we headed into the town proper. The first place we tried checking was the corner store Anne was running before, but someone had broken every single gas can in the entire store. Boy, were they thorough too. Even the ones in the back. The only thing we salvaged was the gun from behind the counter (A Ruger, according to Deb), and a single can of propane from the dumpster out back.

So, not a total loss.

I spotted one of the kids on our way out, though, running through the shelves. I can't say for sure, because I started shooting before I got a good look. I think I hit it, though. I say "it" because I swear to god that the little bastard didn't have a face. I don't mean that it didn't have eyes; I mean that it had a hole for a face. Just-just a whole. Nothing inside but darkness. There was black blood on the shelves. Really hoping that's because I hit the thing.

I asked Virgil if he'd seen this kind of thing before.

He waited a long time before he answered. He took a deep breath, and as we were standing in that dark corner store, he told me that he'd seen all this happen hundreds of times. Hundreds of towns across the world. Virgil said that the things that did this were old, really old. He said that he'd traveled other realities where "the Church" had manifested, and everywhere it had manifested, it brought unimaginable suffering.

It always started with little things, and it almost always started in small towns like this. Virgil said that he wasn't sure exactly why they did it, but he theorized that it was because it kept them under "their" radar.

"They" were what he called "The suits."

The "Initiative."

I knew for a long time that DARKNET and myself weren't the only ones with a stake in this game, but Virgil said that it went even deeper than that. He said that there was an agency that handled the supernatural; that they would exterminate or exploit anything they found. The Church wasn't the exception. There had been a secret war going on for centuries, millennia even. The groups had different names, different doctrines, but the paranormal had always been the constant. I asked him how he knew that. He laughed.

Simple, he said. He'd seen it himself.

Part of me is thinking that Virgil is more of an "it" than a "he." Shocking idea, I know, but I just assumed that the mask shtick was just a quirk. I wonder if there's actually anything underneath. I don't really think I want to know. I know too much now, and the Church still lives. Not for long, I hope.

Left the corner store behind. Headed towards the library. Going to keep sweeping the town until we find the Church. It's my turn to carry the shotgun now, so I'm handing off to Deb.

Wish me luck.

Broken Masquerade: Part 1

Whatever facade this town was maintaining, it's completely gone now.

The streets are completely abandoned. I haven't seen anyone for hours now. I mean, I've seen a few people, but they're always hiding out in the shadows. Haven't seen any of the kids yet, though. I don't know which is worse, this town when it's populated, or when it's abandoned. Reminds me of Centralia in a way. You can look it up yourself if you're interested, but it was this little town in Pennsylvania that had to be abandoned. Supposedly it was a coal fire, but when they sent me out that way, it sure as hell didn't seem like it.

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked.

I wanted to see if we could wrangle up any of the other folks in town. You know, ones that weren't drinking the Kool-Aid. Figured that Shirley, the gal from the Diner, might be able to help. Virgil told me not to count on it.

The diner was abandoned. Ransacked, really. Tables and chairs thrown about everywhere, pictures knocked off the walls. Nobody around, just like the rest of this godforsaken town. I did find something, though. On the door of the manager's office was a symbol, just like the one I'd seen on my hand. Written in red...paint, I hope. A triangle, a hand in the middle, and three circles. The back was similarly destroyed; there was food just thrown everywhere, the freezer was busted open, and the back door was knocked clean off it's hinges.

We were just about to leave when I heard one of the drains in the kitchen gurgling. We all stopped and just kind of looked at each other, not sure what to do. Virgil had the shotgun at the time (It was heavy when it was fully loaded, so we alternated), so he went to look. We stuck behind him; me with my handgun and Deb with a flashlight.

Virgil stepped closer to the drain. It was one of those big industrial sinks you usually see in restaurants, with a long spray nozzle suspended above a handful of washbasins. He didn't even have a moment to look. This thing burst out of the drain, throwing pureed garbage everywhere. It was hard to describe, but it was like a tentacle. Not like an octopus, though. It was made of what I can only guess was muscle tendon and fat. It whipped out, and before it reached any of us, Virgil shot it down.

My ears were ringing for a few seconds, but the disorientation wore off just long enough to see Virgil stuff the barrel of the shotgun down the drain and fire again. I heard a clanging, and a long protracted moan. Half pleasure and half pain is the best way I can describe it. I could hear this slapping noise, like if you threw ground chuck against a wall, coming from one of the freezers. I had Deb focus the light, and we saw this malformed thing dragging itself out of the darkness.

It had the upper body of a man, with arms and a torso and all that, but everything looked...melty. Like it's skin was barely holding on to the flesh. It was literally sloughing off as it crawled towards us. The rest of it's body was trailing off into the dark, like some kind of worm. It groaned, desperately trying to drag itself towards us. I could've sworn that it said "help me" before Virgil blew it's head off. I watched his head turn, and the shotgun nearly dropped out of his hands.

The freezer was full of bodies. Not corpses. Live, wriggling bodies, all meshed together. Just one enormous mass of flesh covered in arms and legs and faces. God, man, I barely even know how to properly describe it.  The whole thing reeked of blood and shit and vomit. Deb puked, then I puked, but Virgil just stood there watching. They were all still alive, and they were screaming and moaning and begging. They all wanted to die. Virgil took a lighter from the office and a propane tank, and we burned the whole place down.

I'm still not sure what I think. Part of me hopes that Shirley wasn't part of this, but those people had been back there for a long time, based on the smell. I mean, christ, they had bits of them sliced off. Like the fuckers had been harvesting them. How many people have come through here before me? How many people did these fuckers take?

I don't know. All I know is that I'm really glad I stuck to coffee when I ate there.