End of the Journal

…. This can’t be real. None of the things I’m reading could have happened. It’s not possible. None of it.
….
The handwriting for this entry is new. Very neat and orderly; each letter has been formed with precision. Which means Samuel isn’t the one transcribing anymore….

Suppose I should go ahead and post it….



This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Everyone… I’m so sorry.

Mid-afternoon, Thomas Baker arrived at the front door of Samuel’s inn. He didn’t bring anyone with him, not even cronies to guard him. It’s not every day that the Mayor of Albuquerque, whose brother just died because of you, shows up like that. It was curious enough that I, the poor crippled girl, got out of bed and went down to see him.

Dorian was already there, and both men were glaring at each other with equal contempt. I asked Thomas why he’d come here. Without breaking his glare from Dorian, he said to us, “The time has come for you to embrace the Archangel.”
“And what if we’d rather not embrace any Archangels?”
“Then everyone here shall embrace Him.”

That was the extent of the conversation, as he left as soon as he said that. Didn’t know what he meant then. Thought it was just some vague, generic threat.

Course, we weren’t complete idiots. We knew that something was up, and that we should prepare for it. Dorian made sure he had plenty of ammo, and I reapplied bandages to my hand…. I can kinda shoot with my off hand. Better than most can. Still not near as good as right handed shooting. But good enough to keep bullets in the air.

The day was quiet. Paranoid, but quiet. Kept jumping at noises, thinking something was about to go on. Looking out the windows, didn’t see it anywhere…. Nor did I see Thomas Baker, or anyone who looked like they may have been working for him.

Dorian was around me most of the day, trying to take care of my injury. Kept telling me that everything would be alright; I think, at the time, he actually believed it. Sweet, but somewhat overbearing. Getting an actual medical practitioner may have been better. And his attention on me was making him focus less attention on being paranoid. And at that moment, being paranoid was the smartest thing we could be doing.

The sun set without anything happening. That we had gone for so long without any payoff to Thomas’s threat did not alleviate our concerns. If anything, it only made them worse. If someone gives you a vague threat, you don’t want to have that threat be played out in the middle of the night.

Didn’t even try to sleep. Dorian was by my bed for most of the night, and Samuel was watching the bar. Still weren’t sure what we to be expecting. “Embrace the Archangel” isn’t very specific, honestly.

Heard the first screams just after midnight. Dorian and I ran out of my room and towards the source; another room in Samuel’s inn. When we got inside, we found a man, his head crushed in and his blood spread across the walls. Didn’t get a chance to investigate, as there was another scream from a different room. Ran there and saw the same scene: the occupant’s head had been bashed in.

The screams were waking up the others in the building, who came out of their rooms and looked around in their sleepy confusion. A few were awake enough to ask what was going on. Just as I opened my mouth to warn them that something was killing people, a figure in black just…. Stepped out of a shadow. He…. Had the same build and clothes as Pastor Gabriel…. But the pastor was dead…. I saw his corpse…. He couldn’t….
He was wearing something like a mask on his head. It looked like bronze, or copper, and covered the entire head, except for the eyes, which were covered by fogged glass. He grabbed the closest man to him by the neck, and started strangling him. Dorian opened fire. The bullets hit the pastor’s body, and I saw the blood from their impacts…. But it didn’t stop him. He just kept tightening his grip on the man’s neck, until it snapped. More people screamed, and everything dissolved into panic. Everyone screaming and running, and in the middle of it, Pastor Gabriel vanished.

Heard more gunshots coming from outside, so we ran out to look. Didn’t quite expect what we saw. There was another body on the ground, throat torn out, and a building burning further into the town. Of course, Dorian and I went running to the burning building. It’s the sort of thing we do.

A small audience had gathered around the fire. Some people were forming a bucket chain from the well, others just watching. As we arrived, a gunshot went through the head of one of the men in the bucket chain. I looked at the source to briefly see the face of Sheriff Baker, then it disappeared. The people around the fire started to panic…. Then two more shots were fired, striking two more people in the head, and everything went to hell. Some tried shooting back, and hit others. With the flames distorting the shadows, and the sound of gunshots surrounding everyone, it was impossible to tell who was shooting at who. Soon there was a full firefight breaking out, one without sides or logic. Just a bunch of scared men firing bullets at each other.

I wanted to try and stop them, but it didn’t look like there was anything I could do…. With no one left trying to stop it, the fire was spreading rapidly, destroying everything around it. Nothing I could do to stop it. Dorian and I started to run back to Samuel’s place. I tried to ignore the screams….

We say a woman, fleeing the fire with her son. A man…. Stepped out of the shadows, and began to brutally strike the woman’s face, over and over and over, until he had crushed her skull. The child was crying, gripped by fear so great he couldn’t run away when the man reached over to him and snapped his neck.

That was it. I drew my gun, and not even pausing to aim, fired it over and over at the man. Dorian was beside me, doing the same, both of us pulling the triggers until no more bullets came out. Round after round struck the man, tearing his skin apart, making him stagger, making him fall…. Then he stood back up. His body…. Changed. And suddenly he wasn’t the man we’d been shooting, but was the woman who had just been killed…. The woman whose body was lying on the ground next to it…. Then it stepped back into the shadows, and was gone.

Didn’t know what was happening. Didn’t have time to stop and figure it out. Started running again, back to Samuel’s. When we got there…. Maybe if we’d run a bit faster, maybe if we hadn’t wasted so much time…. The inn was burning when we reached it. A ring of bodies surrounded the burning building, and standing amongst them was the pastor. Motionless. Calm. Staring at us through those fogged lenses. Dorian ran at him and swung a fist at his face. The punch connected, and Dorian prepared for another, when the pastor’s body changed. Suddenly, Dorian wasn’t swinging at a masked preacher, but at Samuel. He hesitated, and in that hesitation, the thing which looked like Samuel grabbed him by the throat.

Hell no. Not him too. Tried to fire my gun, but it doesn’t work very well without bullets. Then I remembered another weapon which I had been neglecting. Pulled out the Doc’s grappling gun and shot it at that thing’s chest. Definitely not what I’d imagined it would be used for when I requested it be build, but it worked. The spike burrowed into the Samuel-Thing’s chest, and it let go of Dorian, who quickly stepped away.

Then it changed again. This time into…. No, it couldn’t have done that…. It couldn’t have turned into…. No, it isn’t possible…. Dad, you’re not dead yet, you haven’t even been born yet, how could it turn into you, you don’t die for another century, it can’t have….
….

Dorian got me to run away. If he hadn’t been there, I might have just stood and waited for that thing to kill me. Not that there was anyplace we could run to. The entire town was burning, and the streets were littered with bodies. It had become quiet, save for the sound of flames consuming wooden buildings.

We made it to the edge of town without seeing a single living person. Waiting for us there was Pastor Gabriel. Fuck, the flames reflecting off his metal mask…. Fuck. Not something I want to remember.

Nowhere for us to go. Weapons didn’t have any ammo left, and punching didn’t seem very effective. For once, it looked like I had run out of options. I…. Well, I…. Grabbed Dorian, shouted something stupid about in case we didn’t make it out of there, and kissed him.
MOVING ON MOVING ON MOVING ON.

And then, like a beam shining down from heaven itself, lights which were not from the fires suddenly lit up the area around us. Floating in the sky, glaring light down on us, was a large, metallic, oblong object. Haha! Finally finished that zeppelin I wanted, Doc!

And the look on Dorian’s face! I don’t know what scared him more, the madness we’d just gone through of the GIANT FLYING METAL OBJECT which was above us! Aha! That was great!

A ladder was thrown down, and I somehow managed to talk Dorian into climbing up it. And helping me climb up, because I kinda couldn’t use one of my hands. When we reached the top of the ladder and got inside, Doc was waiting for us. Don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see him than that moment.

Looked down, and saw the Pastor still standing in the same place. He hadn’t tried to stop us as we made our escape. Just watched us get away….

We’re in the air right now. Having something which flies actually makes my plans to investigate the desert feasible once more. Doc’s agreed to transcribe for me, though it took a while to convince him to write down everything I said accurately. Didn’t it, eh Doc?

As for Los Valle…. It’s… It’s gone. The whole city burned down. I don’t think there were any survivors.

…..

These things…. They’re going to pay for this. I promise that.



Yeah…. Interesting story, but…. I looked some things up. Zeppelins? Not invented for around a decade after this. Los Valle? No record of any such town. Mayor Thomas Baker? No record of him either. No record of anyone from the Baker or Gardner family living in Albuquerque. Nothing she talks about in her journal has any record of actually happening.

And that’s not even starting on the blatantly unrealistic things. At first I tried to ignore them… But this entry goes too far for me to ignore it.

This is the last entry. All the pages after it have been burned away. End of the notebook.

Feels really, really weird.

I’ve been obsessing over this for how long? Almost two months? And it’s over now? That’s it? No more?

I suppose there’s a few more things in the box which I haven’t looked at…. But I’m not sure I want to, now that I know how impossible this story is. I thought it was so cool, having someone like Elizabeth for an ancestor…. But it’s all a story. Much as I love stories…. For once I was hoping to find something real from this. But I guess the real world doesn’t have people like her in it.

Back to my fortress under the bed sheets, I guess. Don’t know when I’ll come out again.

-Lisa