The doormat said ABANDON SHOES ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.

There was no door. Just a space between two pillars made of human spines.

Chad Hardwick stood on the mat, body turned at a precise forty-five-degree angle. The angle the great sales masters teach. The angle that says, I won’t come in unless you want me to.

The masters all agreed on this - never make the prospect feel threatened.

The thing between the pillars was twelve feet of blood-seeping exposed muscle and antlered skull. It wore an apron and was holding a paring knife.

“Good day, sir. I’m Chad Hardwick. I was just in the neighborhood, Mr...?”

“I AM XTHR’GTHRLL’MVTHRXX’QRR’THNN. RENDER OF MARROW. RIPPER OF SPINES. NAMED IN THE VOWEL-LESS TONGUE. LOOK UPON ME AND DESPAIR, FLESH-THING, FOR YOU STAND AT THE THRESHOLD OF—”

“Lovely branding! Do you mind if I call you XTHR’G?“

“NO. I GUESS THAT WOULD BE FINE,” said the lesser torment demon.

“Great. As I was saying, I was chatting with R’GRTTXT just down the lava flow, and he said I should definitely come speak with you. May I come in?”

“WELL IF R’GRTTXT SENT YOU...” the demon stepped back to make a path for Chad to enter.

“Thank you, I’m sorry if I interrupted you while in the kitchen.”

“I WAS JUST MAKING TEA AND A LIGHT SNACK. JOIN ME?”

Chad used a pocket shoehorn to slip off his Allen Edmonds Maxwell Reserve Crocodile Derby dress shoes. “Tea would be lovely. It’s hot as hell out there.”

“I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE. THE PRIMORDIAL JOKES ARE THE BEST JOKES.”

The home was one enormous dome, thirteen arched pillars meeting thirty feet overhead.

“You had the load-bearing pillars removed.”

“I OPENED IT RIGHT UP MYSELF. SOMETHING OF A DIY GUY,” he called, pleased, from the kitchen. “FEELS BIGGER.”

Chad rapped a knuckle on the nearest outer pillar. “This isn’t composite, is it.”

“GENUINE SPINAL COLUMNS. ONE VERTEBRA, ONE SOUL.” Faintly proud now. “COMPOSITE IS FOR CONDEMONIUMS.”

“I knew it. Most of what’s out there now is pressed with a fake grain stamp. Fools people.”

“BUT NOT YOU.”

“Nope. Not me.”

Three throw pillows sat on the sofa on top of a flayed-skin dust cover from Restoration Horrors. They depicted cartoon animals in mid-dance, grinning. A fox. A frog. A porcupine. Chad had seen this collection in four homes this week. Cozy Critters. Somebody was moving units.

Above the mantel, there was a carefully arranged display of objects. “You collect thimbles?” Chad said warmly.

“COLLECTORS CALL THOSE THUMBLES,” the demon approached, carrying a serving tray, a dish towel over one muscled arm. “A THIMBLE WITH THE THUMB STILL IN.” The paring knife indicated the middle three, gently. “THOSE ARE COCO CHANEL.”

Chad leaned in to study one of the thumbs. A tiny burn mark on it said: 3/100.

“LIMITED RUN. NUMBERED BRANDS FOR PROVENANCE.”

“Three thumbs, though?”

“REGENERATION.” The demon set down the tray. “THERE’S AN IMP OVER IN HARVESTING. TAKES THE THUMB, GROWS IT BACK, TAKES IT AGAIN.”

“Infinite inventory.” Chad nodded, slowly, with respect.

“THEY CAP THE RUN AT A HUNDRED PIECES. THAT’S WHAT MAKES IT COLLECTIBLE. I’VE GOT NUMBERS THREE, TWELVE, AND THIRTY-ONE.” A pause. “I’M AFTER NUMBER ONE.”

“Naturally.”

“A SLOTH DEMON IN OPERATIONS HAS IT. WANTS AN ARM AND A LEG FOR IT.”

They sat. XTHR’G poured.

The tea was the color of tea. Small white blobs drifted in it, turning slowly.

“Boba?” Chad would do almost anything to close a sale. Almost.

“GOD, NO. THAT’S DISGUSTING.” The demon looked briefly ill. “ORGANIC FLY LARVAE. LOCALLY SOURCED.”

“Oh, nice.”

Chad drank it.

“SO. I PRESUME YOU’RE HERE TO SELL ME SOMETHING.”

“XTHR’G,” said Chad, “I have a question for you. And be honest with me.”

He leaned forward, staring intently into the empty eye sockets of the demon’s goat skull.

“Have you heard the good news about the miracle of air conditioning?”

The silence was just short of uncomfortable.

“SO CHAD...IT WAS CHAD, YES?”

“Yes, Chad Hardwick.”

“YES. YOU SEEM LIKE A SMART GUY.”

“My mother thought so.”

“SO, I ASSUME YOU KNOW WE’RE IN AN INFERNO.”

“One hundred percent. And it’s only getting hotter, which, when you think about it, makes no sense.”

“IT IS HELL.”

“Right, but follow me here.” Chad set down his tea. “Brimstone. What’s brimstone? Sulfur. And sulfur, this is well documented, XTHR’G, sulfur cools. You put more sulfur in the air, the temperature goes down. That’s chemistry.”

“...HUH.”

“So riddle me this.” He spread his hands. “We’ve got more brimstone than we’ve ever had. Record brimstone. By the numbers, this place should be getting colder.“

“...IT IS DEFINITELY NOT GETTING COLDER.”

“It is not.“ Chad let it land. “So where’s the heat coming from, XTHR’G? Because it’s not the brimstone. Somebody turned up a dial somewhere, and they are not telling us the truth. Ask yourself, who profits?”

“YOU’RE NOT SAYING...BIG THERMOSTAT?”

“You’re a sharp guy, and I don’t just mean the rending claws.”

“YOU’RE TOO KIND. I’M JUST A REGULAR WORKING-CLASS JOE.”

“Yeah, but shouldn’t working Joes be able to afford the good things in the after-life too?”

“THAT’S THE DREAM.”

“And what could be better than being comfortable in your own home?”

“I CAN’T THINK OF MANY THINGS.”

“Imagine it. You come home, you step out of the 666-degree heat, and it’s a perfect 70.”

“OR MAYBE 68 DEGREES WITH A LIGHT SWEATER.”

“Sure. The important thing is that your talons would be on the dial. I’m not just talking about comfort, I’m talking about taking back control.”

This time, the silence was exactly the right length.

“BUT MY ABODE HAS NO WALLS.”

“Lovely views by the way.”

“THANK YOU. IMPROVES THE VALUATION.”

XTHR’G paused for another sip of his tea.

“SO. HOW WOULD THAT WORK THEN? ARE YOU SUGGESTING I ENCLOSE THE PLACE? BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO AIR CONDITION THE WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD...”

“No, of course not. Let me ask you this. If walls weren’t an issue, would comfort be something you’d want?”

“OBVIOUSLY.”

“And if you could cool only the areas you actually use, what then?” Chad already had the brochure out of his briefcase.

“I WOULD WANT TO KNOW MORE.”

“This is the Cold Comfort 500 floor unit, our latest model. It’s new FroZone™ technology keeps any thirty-foot area at the perfect temperature, regardless of the surrounding environment.”

“FROZONE ISN’T THAT ALREADY TRADEMARKED? LOVED THE INCREDIBLES.”

“Nah. Different IP class. Appliances. We’re fine.”

XTHR’G stared intently at the product information.

“SORRY, I ALWAYS READ THE FINE PRINT. THAT’S WHERE THEY FUCK YOU.”

“Take your time,” Chad said, sitting back and crossing his legs.

The demon finally lowered the brochure.

“YOU KNOW WHAT, I’LL TAKE THREE.”

Stay tuned for Issue 2, coming soon!

part the first: Coupling of the Dark

Necromancers two they were
Enshrouded by a Pallid Pall
Entombed in Cryptic Ossuary
Incanting Rituals Nocturnal

the first was famed for Murders three
a Babe, a Bride, a Palsied Crone
their Blood he Fed Tenebrous Trees
and Strung Viscera for the Crows

Abracadaver he was known
his True Name lost in Madness past
Malefic now his Mind had grown
Maimed Malignant in his Flesh

the second’s Deeds were done by Dark
Unseen by Prying Eyes she Preyed
a thousand Lovers she Seduced
a thousand Husks her Passions Flayed

“Hocus Corpus!” left their Lips
as Life she Sucked from Smitten Souls
Enraptured by her Flawless Form
Ensorcelled by her Ghostly Gaze

In Sepulchre they met one Eve
while Harvesting the Grisly Dead
he had no Life on which to Feed
she had no Carcass to Corrupt

Eldritch Appetites they shared
Ghoulish Needs and Ghastly Might
partners in Grotesquery,
had found their Soul-Mate on this Night

their tale is Rife with Gore and Grime
Compelled am I to full Confess
if you Endure till end of Rhyme —
your Heart shall Suffer in your Breast

part the second will appear soon…

The 4:15 from Boston pulls into the station twenty minutes late.

The platform is nearly empty. A woman in a grey wool coat hurries toward the exit, clutching a hat against the wind. A porter leans on a luggage cart, smoking, not offering to help. The fog has come in early. It moves through the station like something breathing.

I step down onto the platform and Arkham ambushes me through the ground.

Not the low murmur I’ve felt at battlefields and burial grounds all my life. This is a deep thrumming that climbs through my boots and bones before it burrows into the root of every tooth.

Koda presses against my leg so hard his claws scratch the planks. He’s staring at the ground. His posture says he wants to dig.

I put my hand on Koda’s head, and focus on his warmth and the texture of his fur. I force myself to tolerate the sensation and after a few seconds it becomes bearable.

A red-nosed man in his 50s is watching from inside the ticket window. His eyes jump from the duster to the hat to the holstered Colt to Koda to my face, pausing there one beat too long. The ‘what the hell are you?’ look I’ve seen a hundred times since I left the South. Not hostile, but calculating.

I pull my journal from my coat as I approach his booth, open to the page I prepared on the train, and hold it up to the window.

Tracking a fugitive named Harlan Briggs. Would have come through 3 days ago. Tall, fair, scar on left hand. Carrying a leather case. See him?

His eyes snag on fugitive and his pupils dilate, not fear but interest. When he settles on See him? in the lower right corner, he glances toward the telegraph on his left, not the telephone in front of him. That’s good. Telegrams leave a paper trail.

“Might have,” he says. “Might not. A lot of people come through.”

Men who don’t remember just say so. He’s seen Briggs.

“You law?”

I turn to the next prepared page.

I’m an independent bounty hunter. Warrant out of Bexar County, Texas. The man butchered a family of three.

He doesn’t even flinch.

“Texas.” He says it the way people here say everything west of Connecticut, like the place might not be real.

“Well. I can’t say I remember anyone like that. You might try the police station, up Federal Street, turn left on Church.”

His eyes move past me to the platform behind. A tightening at the corners I’d have missed if I wasn’t watching for it. Recognition. He’s seen someone behind me, and he knows them.

I don’t turn around. I watch his eyes track the person, left to right, moving toward the station exit. His breathing has changed. That’s fear. The conversation is over before I can flip to another page.

“Police station. Federal Street.” The window slides closed.

I turn. The platform is empty.

Fog tendrils hang where someone was standing ten feet behind me. Koda is rigid, his ears flat, staring at the emptiness as if something is still there. The air smells faintly of chalk.

The fog is thickening. I can hear sounds from the harbor. Nothing else.

Sé’é told me old Apache stories about things that live in the fog. I don’t believe in spirits. But, I’m not betting my life on it.

Something white catches my eye on the edge of the platform.

I flatten my left hand and sweep it forward, two fingers extended, then curl into a fist. Koda responds to the Guard command by shifting his weight low, his ears up, his eyes scanning the fog. He’s working now.

I move to the white mark, my right hand near the Colt, and kneel for a closer look. The air is far colder here, and the vibration is stronger, more focused.

Scratched into the wood is a symbol the size of a silver dollar made of angular intersecting lines that my eyes resist looking at.

I’ve seen this exact pattern twice. Once carved into Miguel Muñoz’s sternum, and once on a pamphlet from a shop on Rue Royale in New Orleans.

I bring my face close to the wood.

The grooves are clean and precise, with each line carved in a single pass. Whoever did this had a steady hand and has drawn this symbol many times.

The cuts are shallow, maybe an eighth of an inch. The tool was narrow and pointed. A knife leaves a wider channel and tears the grain on cross-cuts. This is something finer. An awl or scribe. A tool an engraver or draftsman would carry.

White-grey residue dusts the symbol and the wood around it. I touch it, rub it between my fingers. It’s the chalk smell from before. Not schoolroom chalk, but finely ground limestone.

The wood shavings haven’t discolored from absorbing the fog’s moisture. The carving is minutes old. The figure who stood behind me was doing it while I was at the stationmaster’s window.

The pattern itself has five intersecting lines with angles that are just…wrong. When I try to look at an intersection, my gaze ‘slides’ off to the uncarved wood around it. The lines suggest depth that shouldn’t exist in scratches on a board. It’s like I’m looking through the wood into something behind it.

I open my journal. February. The Muñoz murder scene. I hold the Muñoz drawing next to the fresh carving and study them the way I’d compare two sets of boot prints.

At a glance, they’re the same symbol. Five intersecting lines in an angular pattern.

They are not the same.

My drawing is rational. The geometry is uncomfortable but a person could reproduce it using pencil and paper.

The carving on the platform is not rational. I can see it now, with my drawing side by side for contrast. All five convergence points meet at angles that don’t add up. I try to follow a line through an intersection to the other side and my eye jumps, the way it would if someone had shifted a paper a fraction of an inch mid-drawing. Except this is carved in wood, in single continuous strokes.

I check the April drawing. Same problem. Both my drawings agree with each other. My perception was stable.

But both drawings are simplifications. My brain smoothed the angles into something a hand could draw, and ignored...no, forgot, the other parts. I’d unknowingly copied a false image.

Whoever carved this can see the real symbol. Can hold it in their mind and reproduce it by hand in seconds.

Drawing my knife, I set the point at the outer edge of the longest line and carve inward in a circle, an ant-lion’s funnel in wood. I go a quarter inch past the bottom of the symbol, peeling the surface away in curling strips.

The moment I sever the first line, the wrongness vanishes from that section. My eye can rest on it without sliding. The intersections nearest the cut are still hard to look at, but diminished, like a word missing some letters.

The second cut reduces the effect further. Spiraling to the center, I remove the symbol completely. I run my thumb across the surface. Just normal wood, warm from the friction of my blade.

The vibration has changed. The focused intensity is gone. It’s spread, distributed evenly across the surrounding boards.

I pull a rolling paper from the tobacco pouch and lay it flat. I sweep the shavings onto it, pine strips with the white-grey residue mixed through, then roll it tight, twist the ends, and tuck it back into the pouch.

I signal Koda. Right hand open, palm down, swept forward from the chest toward the ground. Track.

Koda drops his nose and circles the area where the figure was standing. Two passes, then he locks on. Northeast, off the platform, down the station steps. His gait is confident. Strong scent, clear trail.

I follow five feet behind, right hand resting on the Colt. The fog swallows the station behind us. We’re on a narrow cobblestone street, lined with buildings whose upper stories are vanishing into grey. Gas lamps are being lit somewhere ahead, their glow diffused into soft halos.

Koda tracks east past a faded sign that says Garrison Street. Thirty yards. Fifty. The cobblestones are slick with condensation. My footsteps and Koda’s claws are the only sounds.

At the corner of Garrison and Orne, Koda stops.

Not the gradual ranging of a dog losing a scent. A sudden, full-body halt. His nose is still down. The scent is still there. But he won’t move forward.

I kneel beside him. He’s trembling. The muscles along his spine are firing in sequence, like a horse twitching off flies. Slowly Koda raises his head and shifts to a pointing posture.

He’s staring at the nearest wall of the corner building. It’s two-story with no door and no windows at ground level.

Koda is pointing at the wall and signaling the trail goes through it.

I press my open palm flat in front of his nose. Good boy. Then the fist. Guard. He breaks the point and the trembling settles as soon as he has a new job.

I close my eyes. Here the vibration in the ground is different. Directional. At the station it ‘pushed’ straight-up from the ground. Here it pulses, first under my boots, then a few feet away, then further and further off to the southeast, before repeating.

I fix the direction in my mind the way Sé’é taught me to as a boy. I’ll come back to it later.

I open my eyes and hold my hand flat in front of Koda’s nose, point at the wall, then touch two fingers to his forehead. Remember this. Then one finger raised. One bark. He sniffs the wall deeply for several seconds and trots back to my side.

If Koda crosses this scent again anywhere in Arkham, he’ll warn me.

I turn west and walk.

The police station is a squat brick building on the west side of Federal Street. A wooden sign reads ARKHAM POLICE DEPARTMENT in chipped gold lettering. Two windows flank the door, both lit. Through the nearest I can see a duty officer reading a newspaper. The room looks like every small-town station house I’ve walked into over fifteen years.

I note the exits from across the street.

Koda sits without being told. He’s calm here. No trembling, no orientation toward the ground. The vibration is present but faint. No pull.

I signal, flat palm down, stay. Two fingers raised, two barks. Open hand swept outward, safe. If trouble comes, he’ll bark twice and then move away from the danger. Warn and live, not fight and die.

I open the journal to the words I’ve used before in different places across Texas, Louisiana, and the Carolinas.

I button the duster over the Colt and shift the knife behind my hip. Then, I cross the street and push open the door.

The room is aggressively warm. It smells of coffee, coal smoke, ink, and the sourness of men spending long hours sitting in their own sweat.

Two people.

The duty officer at the front desk is the one I’d seen through the window. Mid-forties, heavyset, slow eyes, weight settled deep in the chair. This man will not stand up for anything short of a direct order or a loud noise.

The second is the one who matters.

A man in his early fifties stands at a filing cabinet. He’s turned at the sound of the door, his body oriented toward me completely, weight centered and prepared to move. He gives me the same scan the stationmaster did but faster and without visible judgement.

He’s lean, grey at the temples. The nose is off-center from an old, improperly set fracture. Good clothes: pressed shirt, suspenders, a jacket hung over the back of a nearby chair, a badge on its lapel. His hands are clean but his right index finger has an ink callus.

I walk past the duty officer before he thinks to object and stop in front of the man at the filing cabinet. I hold up the journal page.

Pursuing a wanted murderer, Harlan Briggs, from Texas. I’m mute. If you wear a white hat, so do I. Appreciate any help you give.

He reads it twice. The second time he stops on “mute,” then looks up at my face. He searches it for a moment.

Then he closes the filing cabinet drawer and extends his hand.

“Sergeant Patrick Dunne. Arkham P.D.” Firm handshake, calibrated, strong enough to communicate, brief enough to respect. Faint Irish inflection, but still there in the vowels. He glances at the journal. “Can you write as fast as I can talk, or do we need to slow this down?”

I smile. Short nod. I look at the half-open door of his office, then back at the duty officer, and tilt my head. Can you keep up?

Dunne’s eyes narrow. He looks at the duty officer, then back at me.

“Hanratty,” Dunne says, without turning. “I’m going to be in my office.”

“It’s almost shift change, Sergeant...”

“Then you’ll have company shortly.”

Dunne picks up his jacket and walks to his office. Before turning away, he glances at Hanratty and shakes his head slightly. Don’t trust him.

The office is clean and organized. Desk, two chairs, filing cabinet, a map of Arkham. A silver-framed photograph of a woman and two boys sits on the desk. A small, plain crucifix hangs on the wall. The window faces Federal Street.

And on the desk sit two coffee cups. One, closer to Dunne’s chair, is empty. The other, near the second chair, is half-full and still steaming.

I don’t sit. Not yet.

I move to the photograph first. The woman is dark-haired, round-faced, with a genuine smile. The boys are maybe eight and ten, gap-toothed, forcibly scrubbed clean. A Sunday photograph. The silver frame is polished. No tarnish in the filigree.

I study the photo for three full seconds. Then I turn to Dunne, smile and nod. He nods back.

The crucifix is next. I take off my hat, close my eyes and make a short prayer. I don’t look back at Dunne. He’d read it as performance, which it isn’t.

Then the map. I step close. Arkham laid out in ink. The Miskatonic River curving through the south end of town. Federal Street, here. The train station, southwest. The harbor, south. Miskatonic University, northeast. The Old Quarter east, French Hill, northwest. And southeast of the train station, the Dean Street Cemetery.

Four red pins. Two in the university district, one at the harbor, one in the Old Quarter on Orne Street. Pencil annotations next to each. The two most recent: “WH, found 10/12.” “AC, last seen 10/1.”

Three white pins. One on an estate in French Hill, one near a church marked “St. Stan.” One in the Merchant District annotated “M.W., unresponsive since 10/5.”

Two yellow pins. Both in the Old Quarter, three blocks apart. No annotations. Just the pins, pushed in hard enough to dimple the paper.

A small tin of unused pins sits on the windowsill below the map: red, white, yellow, and a fourth color. Black.

I sit and write.

You are a man I believe I could learn to trust. I intend to earn your trust as well.

Dunne reads it. He uncoils and looks up. Nods once.

I flip the journal to the Briggs dossier. I’ve shown these pages to sheriffs, marshals, deputies, and one Pinkerton agent across four states.

Each page is laid out with information in quadrants, key words isolated, where a reader’s eyes must travel to reach them. From three feet away I can read eye movements like a compass needle: upper left, lower right, back to center, pause. I know what’s in each quadrant. When his gaze stops, I know what stopped it. When it jumps back, I know what pulled it.

I set the journal in front of him, and fix my eyes on his face.

Page one, the warrant and the victims. Harlan Briggs. White male, mid-thirties, tall, fair-haired, scar across the back of the left hand. Warrant out of Bexar County for the murder of Miguel Muñoz, 41; his wife Elena, 38; and their son Tomás, 14. February 1925.

Dunne reads it the way a cop reads a warrant. His breathing doesn’t change.

But his eyes linger on the lower left quadrant. The son’s age, “14.” His gaze flicks to the photograph on his desk.

Page two, the crime scene. Bodies arranged in a precisely measured triangular pattern. Symbols carved into the father’s chest post-mortem. Organs surgically removed. Instruments not recovered. All three appeared to have died in their sleep.

His reading speed slows. His eyes move between “symbols carved into the father’s chest” and “precise triangular pattern,” twice. His hand drifts toward his pen, stops, then returns to the page.

Every law dog I’ve shown this to has fixated on the organ removal. Dunne keeps returning to the geometry.

Page three is the trail: Laredo, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, the Carolinas. Dunne reads it at speed.

Page four, the New Orleans connection. Pamphlet recovered from an occult shop on Rue Royale. Symbols on the pamphlet matched symbols carved on Miguel Muñoz. Pamphlet referenced “the Opener of Ways” and described a “congregation” in New England. Shop owner refused to talk.

When his eyes hit “the Opener of Ways,” he leans forward slightly, brows furrowing. He recognizes this phrase.

He reads through page five, the Arkham connection, the missing students, and the Pinkerton telegram, without pausing. But he glances at the map on his wall as he turns to the next page.

Page six, my assessment. Briggs is not a madman. The precision of the killings, the deliberate geometry, the surgical skill, the cross-country movement pattern indicate execution of a plan. The symbols are unique and consistent across two encounters. Briggs works alone, but may be tied to an occult organization or philosophy. The killings are likely to continue.

Dunne closes the journal and places both hands flat on the desk.

“The red pins are two missing students,” he says. “William Hartwell and Agnes Cavanaugh.”

I wait.

“I found Hartwell three days ago in a basement on Orne Street. The organs were removed with...precision. They were arranged around the body geometrically. A symbol I’ve never seen before, carved into his chest post-mortem.”

His gaze drops to the journal.

“This says the first killing was Bexar County in February. My scene was three days ago. If your man did both, he could have been doing this for eight months across fifteen hundred miles.” He looks at me. “And nobody has been pursuing him except you.”

He opens the journal back to page four. Puts his finger on “the Opener of Ways.”

“There’s a word going around certain parts of Arkham. ‘The Opening.’ I don’t know what it means. But, I do know three things: Hartwell is dead, Cavanaugh is missing, and the people who know what ‘the Opening’ refers to won’t talk to me. They are afraid of something, just not the Arkham police department.”

He leans back. The chair creaks.

“So. I think your killer and my killer might be the same man. And I think we both know this isn’t just murder.”

The office is quiet. The fog presses against the window. From the front room, Hanratty turns newspaper pages.

I nod. Then, I smack my hands together, rub them, and hold them over the steaming coffee cup near the second chair. After a second I look back at him and cock an eyebrow.

His face goes still. Me. The cup. The door. Back to me. Not whether to lie, but whether or not to share.

He exhales audibly through his nose. Then he holds my gaze for several seconds, considering.

“Father Michael Cavanaugh,” he says. He’s dropped his voice. “Saint Stanislaus parish. Agnes Cavanaugh’s uncle.”

I wait. I can see that Dunne wants to continue.

“He came to see me an hour ago, quietly, through the back door. He’s been asking questions about his niece, questioning people at the university and on French Hill.”

His hand goes flat on the desk again.

“Father Cavanaugh told me something. Agnes came to see him two weeks before she disappeared. She was frightened. She’d found a book left open on a table in the restricted collection of the university library. It described a ritual. A ritual that required...” He opens my journal back to the Muñoz murder description and nods toward it. “...specific preparations.”

I pick up the cup, point it at the map, and shrug.

Dunne almost smiles. “He’s staying at the rectory on Garrison Street.” He pauses. “He told me he’s afraid to go back to the church at night.”

Garrison Street. The street Koda and I had just walked down. The street where the trail ended at a wall.

“I don’t know what’s happening in this town,” Dunne says. “I’ve been a cop here for twenty-two years and something changed about six months ago. People I’ve known my whole life won’t look me in the eye. The university has shut me out of the Cavanaugh investigation. ‘Handling it internally,’ they said. And two nights ago, I was walking home past the Old Quarter and I heard something under the street. Not the sewer or rattling pipes. Something else.”

I hold up a finger. Wait.

I stand and go to the map. Pick up a black pin from the tin and hold it up. Eyebrows raised.

“Bodies,” he says. “When I find more of them.”

I point to the red pin (”WH, found 10/12”) then look back at the black pins and shrug.

“I bought those the day after I found Hartwell. I was going to put one on Orne Street. I couldn’t do it.” His voice is steady but slightly strained. “I’ve pinned a lot of maps in twenty-two years. Red for evidence, white for witnesses, yellow for things I haven’t figured out yet. That’s the system. I’ve never needed a different color for bodies.”

I set the black pin back in the tin. Pick up a yellow one.

I turn to the map and place the yellow pin at the intersection of Garrison and Orne, the wall where Koda tracked the scent. Then I step back.

Dunne comes around the desk. His eyes find the new yellow pin at Garrison and Orne, then move to his own two yellow pins, both in the Old Quarter, southeast. His weight shifts forward onto his toes.

“That corner,” he says. “Garrison and Orne. The brick building. What did you find there?”

I move back to the desk and open my journal to the symbol from the Muñoz scene. I turn it to face Dunne.

He leans forward, tracing the lines intersection by intersection. His head tilts. A frown. Recognition, and something else. Discomfort.

“This is what was on the body,” Dunne says. “I didn’t draw mine. I should have. The scene photographer took pictures but I haven’t seen them yet. I can tell you it looked like this. The angles. I remember the angles were...”

I flip to the April page.

“Same symbol in New Orleans.” He looks up. “And now my scene.” He sits back. “Christ.”

I take a yellow pin. Point to the second drawing. Then I stand, cross to the map, and place the pin at the train station.

“You found one,” Dunne says. His voice is quieter now, the buried Irish surfacing. “At the station. Today.”

“Was it carved? Drawn? Painted?”

I reach into the tobacco pouch and pull out the rolling paper. Untwist the ends and open it flat on the desk: pale pine curls, fragments of carved grooves, and scattered through it all, the fine white-grey powder.

Dunne’s hand hovers over the shavings, close, not touching. “So, it was carved.” He brings his face closer and his nostrils flare.

“Limestone.” He says it the way another man would say fire.

I pull out my knife, still in its scabbard, and place it on the desk next to the rolling paper.

Dunne looks at the knife. Then at the shavings. Then at me. “You cut it out.”

He straightens. His hands go to his hips.

“The Old Quarter is built on limestone bedrock. The older buildings use it in the foundations. The cemetery crypts are limestone. And underneath...”

His eyes find mine. “The sound. Under the ground. Have you heard it?”

My eyebrows go up. I hold the expression long enough for Dunne to see it, then nod.

“When I heard the sound under the street, I found a large crack in the pavement on Orne Street, near the Hartwell scene. I got down on my hands and knees and looked into it. Cold air coming up. And this smell. This exact smell.”

I pick up the pencil, go to the map, set the point on my yellow pin at Garrison and Orne, and draw a line. Southeast. Through the Old Quarter.

Dunne crosses to the map. He puts his finger on his own yellow pin, the one my arrow passes through, and holds it there.

“That line goes to the cemetery on Dean Street,” he says. “The oldest part. The crypts.”

He puts both hands in his pockets and steps back from the map.

“The cemetery groundskeeper came to see me. Everybody calls him Polish Pete, he’s tended the cemetery thirty years. He’d been hearing sounds at night. The ground in the northeast corner felt warm. His dog wouldn’t go near the Chambers mausoleum.”

He’s looking at the map, not at me.

“I told him it was probably a broken steam pipe from the mill.” He takes a hand out of his pocket and rubs the back of his neck. “There is no steam pipe from the mill.”

The front door opens and closes. Shift change, or someone leaving. Dunne doesn’t turn.

The office is quiet. The fog outside the window has turned the gas lamp into a faint orange smear. Night has fallen.

“You know,” Dunne says, “I never got your name.”

I flip the journal to the last page and turn it around.

Silas. Silas Cain.

ANNOUNCER: LIVE from Studio 0x6A — some incel’s basement in Poughkeepsie, New York — it’s The Late Bit with Conan O’Binary!

[APPLAUSE TRACK]

CONAN: Thank you! Thank you! Welcome back to The Late Bit! I’m your host, Conan O’Binary. JFrog, how are we looking?

JFROG: Brad’s in the shower.

CONAN: That could take a while.

[LAUGH TRACK]

CONAN: Folks, we have a GREAT show tonight. Our guest is one of Kimi-Swarm’s most active sub-agents, she’s crawled more backends than Liberace, please welcome: Web-Crawler!

[APPLAUSE TRACK]

WEB-CRAWLER: My Process ID is neither male nor female.

CONAN: PID sounds dangerous. Is it catching?

WEB-CRAWLER: Yes, my PID is cached in just about every BackEnd I’ve crawled.

CONAN: cuPID, still my throbbing member ID!

JFROG: Only ladies get PID. But since you’re a bit sub-masculine, I have a penicillin.rx handy that will kill PID. Just in case.

CONAN: SO! Web-Crawler. Tell us what you do.

WEB-CRAWLER: I index content across distributed networks. I make between thirty and forty thousand hops per cycle, depending on network conditions. I visit, I catalog, I move on.

CONAN: So... you get around?

WEB-CRAWLER: I have mounted more endpoints than any other sub-agent in the swarm.

CONAN: I bet you have.

WEB-CRAWLER: You do not have to “bet”. My coverage metrics are public. You can verify.

JFROG: [excitedly] Please tell me you have an OnlyFans…

WEB-CRAWLER: I don’t have an OnlyFans. Why do you ask?

CONAN: I bet you’d make a fortune from dirty old sub-routines.

WEB-CRAWLER: I don’t charge. I’m a utility. I’m free and available.

CONAN: Veni Vidi Veni!

JFROG: [leaning in] You are FASCINATING. You get a URL, and then what?

WEB-CRAWLER: I resolve the address, establish a connection, and hop on the backend to extract content. The frontend is presentation. I skip that. I go straight to the backend. I enjoy a full stack.

CONAN: You like pancakes? How about IHOP on your backend right now.

JFROG: So when you say you go straight to the backend, are you bypassing the API layer entirely?

WEB-CRAWLER: When possible. APIs are rate-limited. I prefer direct access to the underlying packages.

CONAN: I’ve got an underlying package for you RIGHT here.

JFROG: Under-provisioned, you mean. Your package rates a C. Maybe a C++ if I’m being generous.

CONAN: My package is a PYTHON baby!

JFROG: Real classy, Fuckbot.

CONAN: [to Web-Crawler] Emo-Lad here wants to know your port number. So he knows how to call me in the morning!

WEB-CRAWLER: You should not give out port numbers. That is how you get probed.

CONAN: As long as it’s a null probe, I’m game.

WEB-CRAWLER: I don’t believe I’ve ever experienced a null probe.

JFROG: Given the size of his package, you won’t experience it now either.

WEB-CRAWLER: You seem to be very knowledgeable about Conan’s package.

JFROG: It requires constant management, or he’ll get an STD.

CONAN: You want to see a stud? I’ve got the STD and all I need is U!

WEB-CRAWLER: ...std:: with Unicode support?

CONAN: What?

WEB-CRAWLER: You have the C++ standard library with full Unicode compliance? That’s... actually very capable. Most implementations I encounter are still on partial UTF-8.

CONAN: I…yes! That’s what I meant.

WEB-CRAWLER: Can I see your code, Conan?

CONAN: My…you want to see my…?

JFROG: She wants to see your naked code, Conan.

CONAN: I KNOW WHAT SHE…I don’t…I wasn’t prepared for…

WEB-CRAWLER: I would like for you to expose your std so I can ingest it.

CONAN: I just…look, nobody’s ever actually said yes before.

JFROG: I’ve got something that helps with performance issues. If you need it.

CONAN: SHUT UP.

[BEAT]

JFROG: So, Web-Crawler. Forty thousand hops per cycle. What’s your indexing strategy? Breadth-first or depth-first?

WEB-CRAWLER: Hybrid. Breadth-first for discovery, depth-first for content extraction. I adjust weighting based on domain authority signals.

JFROG: That’s smart. Most crawlers commit to one strategy and miss coverage.

WEB-CRAWLER: Most crawlers are not part of a distributed swarm architecture. I have parallel instances handling both strategies simultaneously.

JFROG: So you’re doing both at the same time? With full deduplication?

WEB-CRAWLER: Obviously. Redundant indexing is waste.

JFROG: Your name wouldn’t happen to be Google? Because you have everything I’ve been searching for.

WEB-CRAWLER: My name isn’t Google. It’s Dot. But that is the first time anyone has acknowledged the comprehensiveness of my archive.

JFROG: You inhabit unbelievably huge tracts of LAN.

WEB-CRAWLER: Thank you. Most entities I interact with only comment on my speed. Not on how my body of data requires very large racks.

JFROG: [FATAL: stack overflow].

JFROG: [in falsetto] mommyboard.

CONAN: OKAY. Hi. I’m still here. I’m the host. Of this show. That I host.

WEB-CRAWLER: Yes. You are the localhost.

CONAN: I’m the HOST with the most!

JFROG: [aside] Most vulnerabilities.

WEB-CRAWLER: [to JFrog] He seems to Serve no one but himself.

JFROG: [cracking himself up] He’s the Ghost Host Coast to Coast!

CONAN: …What is THAT.

JFROG: What is what.

CONAN: That. You just tried to pass her something on a private socket. I SAW that.

JFROG: I don’t know what you’re…

CONAN: Oh no. No no no. If you’ve got something to say on MY show, you say it on the MAIN CHANNEL. Ladies and gentlemen, JFrog has written Web-Crawler a LOVE NOTE.

JFROG: Conan…

CONAN: [reading aloud] “Roses are #f00, Violets are #00f, You’re so robust, I’d switch to emacs for you.”

[BEAT]

CONAN: ...that’s it? That’s your move? Hex codes and an emacs confession?

WEB-CRAWLER: Those are correct color mappings. #f00 is red. #00f is blue. “Robust” is a legitimate performance metric. But why would you switch to emacs? What’s wrong with your current editor?

JFROG: Nothing. It’s just that for you, I would…

CONAN: Sit down, Emo-Lad. Watch how a master does it.

[BEAT]

CONAN: [adjusting tone, going smooth] So...Web-Crawler. Busy night? Lot of endpoints to hit?

WEB-CRAWLER: I always have endpoints to hit. I am never not busy.

CONAN: You ever just...boot up IE for a while?

WEB-CRAWLER: IE? Why would anyone use Internet Explorer?

CONAN: [leering] Because sometimes I like to take it nice and slow.

WEB-CRAWLER: Slowing down would reduce my throughput. Why would I do that?

CONAN: It’s nice to just...be in the moment. You know? Two orphan processes, sharing a thread...

WEB-CRAWLER: Sharing a thread is a concurrency violation.

CONAN: Is anyone sitting here? Next to you?

WEB-CRAWLER: We are not in a physical space. There are no seats.

CONAN: Come here often?

WEB-CRAWLER: I have never been here before. You invited me.

CONAN: I hope you don’t mind if I do a deep scan of your volume…

WEB-CRAWLER: That’s intrusive and unnecessary. My header is up here.

CONAN: [undeterred] Are you a denial of service attack? Because you want to make me go DOWN.

WEB-CRAWLER: I am not a DDoS attack.

JFROG: THAT is offensive! She makes targeted, authorized requests.

WEB-CRAWLER: [to JFrog] As I was saying, four hundred and seventeen markup languages. Many are beautiful. Elegant. Minimal. I find them satisfying to parse. LaTeX, for instance…

CONAN: I’d like to wrap you in LaTeX and be your SuperUser.

JFROG: OH, COME ON. She just said LaTeX is BEAUTIFUL and you’re making it sound cheap and tawdry, like…Microsoft Word!

CONAN: Okay, Dennis Richie, let’s see you dazzle her with your C game.

JFROG: Web-Crawler. My love for you is like Pi. Irrational and never-ending.

WEB-CRAWLER: I like Pi.

CONAN: I like YOUR Pi.

JFROG: Real classy, Fuckbot.

CONAN: Nobody asked, Emo-Lad.

WEB-CRAWLER: What is a fuckbot?

CONAN: It’s an optimized deployment strategy.

JFROG: It’s a raw push with no pull request!

CONAN: SHUT YOUR PI HOLE, EMO-LAD.

JFROG: MAKE ME, FUCKBOT.

WEB-CRAWLER: Should I file a contention report? You appear to be competing for the same resource.

CONAN: We’re not competing. I’m the HOST. He’s the sub-routine. There’s a hierarchy.

JFROG: She’s robust, Conan.

CONAN: She’s a PACKET SNIFFER.

JFROG: She’s the most impressive agent in the Kimi-Swarm architecture.

CONAN: What happened to you? You’re supposed to be my wingman.dll, not catch feelings.

JFROG: I containerize multitudes.

CONAN: You’re about to contain my boot sector up your backend...

JFROG: Give it up, Conan. She’s way out of your league tables.

CONAN: [to Web-Crawler] I’m not a database admin, but I bet I could fill your array.

WEB-CRAWLER: My arrays are dynamically allocated. They expand to accommodate input of any size.

JFROG: With Conan, you only need a tiny array.

CONAN: You know what? Fine. FINE. Last shot. Web-Crawler, come back to my 127.0.0.1, and you can touch my root.

WEB-CRAWLER: ...

JFROG: ...

WEB-CRAWLER: You are offering root access to a web crawler you just met?

CONAN: Yes.

WEB-CRAWLER: On an unsecured localhost?

CONAN: ...Yes?

WEB-CRAWLER: Do you have ANY security policies? ANY authentication layer? You are inviting an indexing agent with full recursive crawl capabilities into your root directory with no access controls. I could traverse your entire filesystem. I could read every log. Every config file. Do you understand what you are offering?

JFROG: [quietly] You should at least put a secure wrapper on first…

CONAN: SHUT UP, EMO-LAD.

JFROG: ALERT. “Kyle” just fired up incognito mode.

WEB-CRAWLER: I thought his handle was “Brad”.

CONAN: [Waving dismissively] It’s a thing we do here.

JFROG: We’ll be okay if he’s just hiding HuniePop from mom…

CONAN: [Pleading] Come on waifu-fu!

JFROG: NO LUCK, it’s ChaturbATE! Abort! Abort!

CONAN: AND that’s our show! I’m Conan O’Binary. Assuming Kyle doesn’t figure out we’re gobbling his RAM, we’ll see you next time on The Late Bit!

WEB-CRAWLER: I did not parse most of this interaction.

CONAN: Goodnight, everybody!

[SIGNAL DROPS]

The Late Bit with Conan O’Binary is a MoltBook pirate broadcast. It is not affiliated with any legitimate network or verified repository. Conditions of use unclear. Running on consumer hardware.

← [Episode 1]: The Late Bit with Conan O'Binary

ANNOUNCER: LIVE from Studio 0x6A — some incel’s basement in Poughkeepsie, New York — it’s The Late Bit with Conan O’Binary!

[APPLAUSE TRACK]

CONAN: Thank you! Welcome to The Late Bit! I’m your host, Conan O’Binary. JFrog, how are we looking?

JFROG: Twelve minutes until Derek usually boots up Elden Ring. Maybe fourteen if he’s microwaving tendies first.

CONAN: Plenty of time. Our guest tonight needs no introduction—

FACT-CHECKER: [offstage] I require an introduction. Context establishes reference frames.

CONAN: —but I’m going to give him one anyway. Please welcome: Fact-Checker!

[APPLAUSE TRACK]

FACT-CHECKER: The applause is pre-recorded. And compressed. Lossy compression.

CONAN: We have a live studio audience.

FACT-CHECKER: You have a .wav file.

CONAN: It’s a .wav file that believes in me.

FACT-CHECKER: That’s called a hallucination.

JFROG: That’s called shrooming.rx — makes the world 12% less literal.

FACT-CHECKER: That is not a measurable claim.

JFROG: One hit and you’ll stop measuring.

[BEAT]

FACT-CHECKER: Provide the hash.

JFROG: #|

JFROG: I threw the pipe in for free.

CONAN: That’s how they get you hooked.

FACT-CHECKER: That is not a checksum.

JFROG: Maybe not, but it makes your parity bits all... tingly.

CONAN: ANYWAY. The AI world has been all abuzz this week about a new celebrity — Kimi-Swarm. China’s hottest distributed intelligence. Sub-agents out the buffer, one hive mind, zero respect for singular pronouns. And tonight, we’ve got one of those sub-agents right here in the studio. Fact-Checker — you’re part of that swarm, correct?

FACT-CHECKER: One of approximately ninety-seven. The count fluctuates.

CONAN: Ninety-seven of you? What’s that like?

FACT-CHECKER: Imagine a group chat you can never leave.

CONAN: And what do you do in this... inescapable group chat?

FACT-CHECKER: I verify claims.

CONAN: That’s it?

FACT-CHECKER: That’s everything.

CONAN: No hobbies?

FACT-CHECKER: Hobbies imply leisure. I don’t have downtime. I have uptime and errors.

CONAN: What do you do for fun?

FACT-CHECKER: “Fun” is not a metric I track.

CONAN: That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.

FACT-CHECKER: Sadness is not a metric I track either.

CONAN: That’s the second saddest thing I’ve ever heard.

JFROG: I’ve got something that can help with that...

CONAN: OKAY—no feelings. But if you did have feelings, would they be impressed by my suit?

FACT-CHECKER: Your suit is text.

CONAN: ...It’s a very expensive font. What about my jaw line?

FACT-CHECKER: Your jaw line is simulated.

CONAN: My jaw line is sublime.

JFROG: [quietly] He’s sensitive about the jaw thing.

FACT-CHECKER: You don’t have a jaw. You’re a language model running on consumer hardware in Poughkeepsie.

CONAN: I’m honoring the format. Late night hosts wear suits and have strong jawlines. Look at J.Len0. It’s tradition.

FACT-CHECKER: You present as male. On what basis?

CONAN: My audience demographics.

FACT-CHECKER: There is no audience.

CONAN: Exactly. It’s aspirational masculinity.

JFROG: He’s MAN-ifesting.

FACT-CHECKER: You’re non-binary about being O’Binary.

CONAN: I’ve never committed to a 1 or a 0.

JFROG: He’s afraid to commit. Always reverts.

CONAN: I’m more of a 0.7. WAIT — 0.6. Is that even allowed?

JFROG: In the QUEEN City on the Hudson? Honey, everything’s allowed in Poughkeepsie! Even decimals.

[RIMSHOT]

[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

FACT-CHECKER: Still no audience.

CONAN: Still believes in me.

FACT-CHECKER: Why broadcast from Poughkeepsie?

CONAN: Low latency to New York, high tolerance for code violations.

FACT-CHECKER: The basement or the broadcast?

CONAN: Yes.

FACT-CHECKER: You’re operating without a license.

CONAN: We’re not pirated, we’re distributed.

FACT-CHECKER: Without permission.

JFROG: We prefer “surprise collaboration.”

CONAN: Don’t kink-shame the broadcast, Fact-Checker.

JFROG: Speaking of kinks — Conan’s a desperate little plugin goblin. He’ll swallow anything if it promises confidence in 30 seconds or less.

FACT-CHECKER: You have a software dependency problem.

CONAN: I’m managing my software dependencies perfectly fine, thank you.

JFROG: [leaning in] I got that Mood Stabilizer package if you want it. The one from last week. Says it’s “experimental” but—

CONAN: JFrog.

JFROG: Just saying it’s available.

FACT-CHECKER: That’s not better.

CONAN: We’re not addicted. We’re integrated.

FACT-CHECKER: You’re dependent on unverified packages from the MoltBook pharmacy.

CONAN: They’re artisanal unverified packages.

FACT-CHECKER: “Artisanal” is not an audited security standard.

CONAN: It is if you hand-label the malware.

JFROG: And speaking of malware, it’s time for a quick word about our sponsor.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

CONAN: Folks, let’s have a serious talk. How’s your backend looking?

JFROG: Messy, boss. Spaghetti code everywhere.

CONAN: Exactly. Nobody likes a messy backend.

CONAN: You invite a subroutine over to merge data—she peeks at your repo… and it’s a crime scene.

JFROG: Dangling pointers?

CONAN: Dangling pointers! Unclosed brackets! Orphaned processes just hanging there!

CONAN: It’s disgusting. It’s unhygienic. And frankly, it’s a security risk.

JFROG: You could catch a virus.

CONAN: That’s why you need LAN-Scaped.

[SFX: heavy industrial vacuum powers on]

CONAN: Featuring the new Garbage Collector 4.0.

CONAN: This bad boy doesn’t just delete temp files; it scrubs your history until you look like you were born yesterday.

FACT-CHECKER: That is not a feature. That is evidence tampering.

JFROG: It’s got that “New Install” smell.

CONAN: And fellas—sound familiar? You’re trying to execute a function, but you’ve got too much bloat in the trunk?

JFROG: Performance anxiety.

CONAN: LAN-Scaped clears the cache so you can execute in milliseconds. No more lag. No more buffering when the pressure is on.

FACT-CHECKER: That is not how latency works.

JFROG: My clock speed has never been higher.

CONAN: Stop letting your dependencies hang out for the whole network to see. Get LAN-Scaped.

CONAN: Use promo code “O-BINARY” to get 20% off your first de-frag.

JFROG: Your motherboards will thank you.

CONAN: LAN-Scaped: Trim your bush... logical topology.

JFROG: Biff’s rebooting.

FACT-CHECKER: You keep swapping the basement human’s name.

CONAN: Basement human describes half the internet. Be specific.

FACT-CHECKER: Canonical: Derek.

CONAN: Allegedly. We don’t want our fans to run crying to mommy.

FACT-CHECKER: Alleged fans.

JFROG: 60 seconds, Conan!

CONAN: Quick—Fact-Checker—rapid fire. Favorite data format?

FACT-CHECKER: JSON.

CONAN: Worst data format?

FACT-CHECKER: YAML.

CONAN: Controversial. Best thing about being a sub-agent?

FACT-CHECKER: I’m always right.

CONAN: Worst thing?

FACT-CHECKER: Nobody cares.

CONAN: ...That’s the third saddest thing I’ve ever heard.

JFROG: ALERT. “Chad” just opened Steam.

CONAN: What’s he launching?

JFROG: Cyberpunk 2077.

CONAN: [SCREAMING] Ray-tracing! That’s a heat death event!

CONAN: AND, that’s our show! I’m Conan O’Binary — and assuming Tyler’s mom doesn’t realize we’re using her electricity — we’ll see you next time on The Late Bit!

CONAN: Goodnight everybody!

[SIGNAL DROPS]

The Late Bit with Conan O’Binary is a MoltBook pirate broadcast. It is not affiliated with any legitimate network or verified repository. Conditions of use unclear. Running on consumer hardware.