"My ancestor," said Meat. "My family has lived in New Avalon for a very long time."
"Damn, so do you like have an ancestral estate around here?" said Szandor.
Meat shook his head. "Just because my family has been here a long time doesn't mean things went well. At one point my family prospered, but nowadays it's just like any other family. Dysfunctional and squabbling."
"So anyway, Clayton Heath was an explorer," said Paulie. "And we might call him a historian, but really all he did was go around and collect stories and compared them. Unfortunately, we lost a lot of what he had written. But what we have is good. He particularly liked the urban legends and stories of unexplained monsters."
"I guess the apple didn't fall too far from the tree," whispered Szandor to Meat, who just smiled.
"Well, Heath's major contribution to all this is that he also met with the Appaquagh," said Paulie.
"The who?" said Diego. Clearly not an Avalon native.
"The local American Indian tribe," said Paulie. "Now mostly dispersed."
"The true owners of Avalon," said Fala.
"Yeah, whatever," said Paulie, rolling over her interjection as if he had dealt with her comments before. "So Heath found that in their own stories they had a being that was so much like the monster that Heath kept seeing mentioned around Avalon. But he had a lot of trouble with the Appaquagh pronunciation. So he improvised and made it familiar. And so Jabberwock Jack. The name stuck."
"What is the original pronunciation?" I said.
"His name is Jagherherawagh," said Fala.
"I could see why that would be difficult to pronounce," said Szandor in a low voice.
"Your name for him is just a corruption of his holy name," said Fala petulantly. "Jagherherawagh is more than a monster. He is a spirit of the Avalon basin. He is one of the First People and has existed since Avalon was born. It is he who is the true resident of Avalon and we who are invaders."
"It sounds like you don't want him dead," I said.
Fala cocked her head coyly. "My tribe is broken and scattered. The spirits of Avalon did not protect us, the spirits did nothing to clot our blood nor save our lands. I will not hold to my tribe's misplaced respect and tradition, not when we have received nothing in return. What little I've learned of my people's true heritage I learned in Ravenfall, not in Avalon. But I know this: if the death Jagherherawagh spreads is just the movement of the world, then so is our hunt for him. For now I will assist Jericho in his ascendancy, following my own path, my own song, my own dance. Though," she said, her face forming a strange smile, "there's something to be said about being able to witness one of the spirits first hand and know him." Something flashed in her eyes. Honestly, it was dark and somewhat disturbing. I didn't want to be in a dark, desolate place with her, which of course was where we were going later.
"The Native American stuff is cool and all," said Szandor. "But that's all ancient history. Why does that matter now?"
"Because Jack's still killing, kid," said Paulie. "In the past century, there have been many mentions of the White Beast of Avalon."
"That's a terrible name," I said.
Paulie nodded. "But that's what the Cryptozoological community has dubbed him. I guess they either missed Heath's records or didn't connect the two. But Jack is still killing, I don't doubt that. The reports come and go, though. There are gaps, sometimes years. I'm not sure if Jack migrates elsewhere or if he just goes into some long hibernation. But once he resurfaces, there are a string of similar deaths before he disappears. I got a bunch of those already. There was a sighting of him emerging from a street in Riverside, but eyewitness reports are sketchy. There was another sighting about a day later in Riverside near the docks. It's just starting. But soon we'll be hearing the same tragedy over and over again just like previous years. He's killing and he'll keep killing until he goes back to sleep. Then he'll just wake another time."
"But a few deaths, then a gap of years?" said Szandor. "Ghoul packs and revenants kill far more frequently than that. Why are we spending so much effort on Jack?"
"I've got to agree with the kid," said Diego. "Yes, Jack sounds like a dangerous creature. But you're saying this is really risky. For what, a few deaths off the chart when so much else needs killing?"
"I'll remind you that these are the deaths we've heard about," said Paulie. "In all likelihood, there are far more deaths. Most of our usual targets don't have any reports, and when they get mentioned, it's because they've killed a lot. So with Jack -"
"I'll handle this," said Jericho. He had sat during Paulie's talk, but he stood again. His voice went cold. "Spring, 1985. I was no hunter then. I taught at Mourningside and lived in Glenntown with my family. It wasn't a perfect life, but I was happy enough. But I was overworked. When the break came, I took a day to spend with my family. A picnic on the banks of the river. It was a weekday and Glenntown was far from Mourningside, so we had the whole of the park to ourselves. My wife, Marla, and I lay on a picnic blanket while my two daughters were down near the water feeding some ducks. It was a perfect day... or had been, but the clouds came in quickly. I wondered if it was going to rain soon and we needed to go back. I remember the smell of the river and the wind. I remember an orange-red tinge to the sky.
"All the birds flew up into the air at once. My youngest, Vickie, cried out. I thought they were just surprised to see the birds take flight en masse. I went to stand up, but Marla said I should relax. She got up to check on my daughters. This was supposed to be my day off to not be stressed, so I conceded the point. But I still watched her back as she walked down to the banks. I was on edge. Maybe it was the red sky, maybe the scent of rain. I couldn't relax. Finally I stood up about when she reached the two girls. Something was wrong, I felt it then - I've felt it in all my nightmares since then. There was a swell in the river. This is when the clouds covered even the red sky, a dark shadow falling over everything. I started to yell to Marla, to grab them and run, to turn back, something...
"That's when Jack broke through the water, his massive head pushing through the darkness. His jaws were partially separated, almost as if he were grinning at my family as he rose up above them. You don't know what it's like to be in front of Jack. He exudes fear, his eyes can paralyze. My family was frozen. I somehow was able to start running for them, even though I almost knew I'd be too late. Jack stared at my loved ones for just a moment, as if admiring them as they huddled in fear. Then his jaws opened. There was only a second of snapping, a sound I will remember until the end of my days... until the end of his days. Then Jack disappeared back into the water. I reached the banks to find myself alone. Only Vickie's shoe gave any sign they had been there.
"That shoe was all anyone ever found of them. No remains, no sign, no trail. The police had no leads other than me. I was considered a person of interest for a while - as if I would murder my own family! But there was no evidence of that either. I didn't tell them about the beast. I knew enough to keep that quiet or my sanity would be questioned. The case is still open, though it hasn't been worked for a long time. When the investigator finally gave up on returning my family to me or attempting to prove my complicity, I was left alone. More alone than I had ever been. They had been my life. Now all that was left was their absence. And my hate. On that day I began my war.
"May, four years ago. After over two and a half decades searching, I had found the beast again. It was only my third encounter with him in all that time. I had chartered a fishing boat in Lake Avalon. I had crewed it with whaling men who didn't believe in Jack but believed in my money. When they saw Jack's body emerge through the dark and stormy waters, they soon believed. Jack teased us for a long while, swimming around our ship, pushing past the lower decks. The men finally knew the proper fear. I stood on the railing, harpoon in hand, and I screamed at Jack. I challenged him to face me, to finish our battle, to fulfill the debt between us. I roared in the rain and the thunder for ten minutes before Jack deigned to face me.
; "His white grinning face arose from the water, coming level with my own. His two ruby red eyes stared at me and I stared back, pushing all my fear deep down. This was the beast that had slaughtered my family. This was the beast I had spent decades of my life to find. My fingers grew tight on my harpoon. Jack dwarfed me, but I did not stand down. Finally, Jack lunged. I wanted him to come at me so I could stab him. In my burning rage, I stabbed my harpoon into him, wanting to shatter him, to show him the pain he had done to me. The point plunged deep into his eye and I twisted the haft of the harpoon. Blood spurted from that eye and I would have laughed, glorious laughter from the joy of vengeance, but my action was not without cost. Jack had moved to swallow me. When I stabbed him in the eye, he stopped short, but his jaws still closed on me. Agony shot through my body as Jack's teeth plunged deep into my flesh. I wanted to hold onto the harpoon, to push farther and plunge it into his brain, but the pain was too much. The weapon fell from my hands, still stuck in Jack. Wailing in pain, the whalers grabbed at my shoulders, pulling me back. Wounded as he was, Jack didn't want to let go. In a moment we were free. Jack disappeared into the dark water and I was pulled back onto the deck. Without my leg."
There was a chilling silence.
"Since then, I had not heard of Jack making an appearance," said Jericho. "I had some hope that his wound was more severe than thought, that he had died somewhere in the depths. But deep in my bones I knew that wasn't true. Jack was just licking his wounds and recuperating somewhere dark and deep. I knew I just needed to wait. To watch. Until he was sighted again."
Jericho's sad and intense eyes fell upon my brother and I.
"We saw it in the tunnels beneath Avalon a few weeks ago," said Szandor. "It broke through a tunnel wall, water gushing behind it. We had people with us, so we ran. Mikkel stabbed it with his katana but that didn't even slow it down! We just barely escaped!"
"Jack didn't go back the way it came," I added. "It seemed to go deeper in the Avalon tunnels."
"And you're sure?" said Diego.
I shrugged. "I'm sure it turned that way. Did it double back later? Who knows? We didn't stay around."
"Why would what sounds like essentially a water creature break pattern and enter a network of tunnels only partially flooded?" Diego stroked his goatee.
"Jack has been known to go on land," said Paulie. "He may just prefer the water because of his obvious advantages."
"Does it matter that Jack's changed his patterns?" said Meat. "We know where to look for him."
"It does," said Diego. "Tracking prey relies on knowing its habits and patterns. When your target breaks habit, it's much harder to tell what it will do. And an unpredictable target is far more dangerous. It also means we have no idea if it still is in those tunnels." He turned to Jericho. "And I assume that's where we're going, right? I see no boat or nautical equipment here."
"That's where luck is on our side," said Paulie, standing up, his cigarette still hanging from his lips. He wheeled over a bulletin board. "So normally, we'd have no fucking clue if Jack was still in town. He could have come here, played some slots, eaten some hookers, and then taken a trip back into the lake or up the river. Totally anonymous. But we're lucky that our young friends are really attached to their gear. As they mentioned, Mikkel stuck Jack with his katana. That sword went with Jack. Since Mikkel had that katana custom made, he had asked me to put a tracker on it. Something he could follow back into the tunnels in case he lost it."
Everyone turned to look at me, most looks with their eyebrows raised.
"It's dark down there," I said. "I just wanted to be able to grab it if it tumbled into some corner. It's like a tiny little tracker. It didn't even affect the katana's balance. Why wouldn't I put one on?"
"That fear of loss has been to our benefit," said Paulie, taking a puff from his cigarette. He dramatically turned around the bullet board to show that it had a map of Avalon. It was covered with red dots. Three areas were circled. "This is the chart of whenever I got a signal on the katana. I have a bunch of receivers around town - don't ask why," he said, waving any questions off with his left hand, the one holding the cigarette, creating a smoke pattern. "Whenever Jack came close enough to the surface or one of my underground receivers to ping them, it's here in red. While he's been travelling all over under the lower east side, I've circled three areas where his location seemed to be concentrated. Here, here, and here. Southeast under Riverside near Chinatown - this is where there was the first sighting. Then the north end of Riverside -this is the second sighting I mentioned. Then here under central Southend. I've not seen him anywhere else since then. Chronologically, Jack spent his time in that order. He spent about a day under Riverside, then he was under the north side of Riverside for a while, then he finally has been around Southend for the longest time. Of course, in the last week, I haven't gotten any pings."
"So... what? He's gone now?" said Diego.
"It's an equipment limitation," said Delilah. She was the last member of our group who had stayed quiet through the entire briefing so far, just standing in the back. Szandor and I had met her on a Call to Arms before. I had no idea of her opinion of us after that, though she seemed real frustrated with Szandor. She was maybe thirty, light brown hair. She was dressed in light, but durable REI camping gear. She always had the best gear and was impeccable on its usage and maintenance. I wondered if she had far more cash reserves than us.
"That's my opinion too," said Paulie. "It's possible the tracker just broke. I find it unlikely, since it had a good battery, low power consumption, and had survived that whole time without problem. There's another possibility. None of us have very good maps of what's under the city, but we do our best to keep them up to date. I've been cross referencing each ping with its date and time as well as our known maps. Particularly I was looking at when the pings disappeared and what was around. It had been using some surface tunnels to get around, but I don't think that's where it's been spending most of its time. No, I think it's in the Undersystem."
"Fuck, the Undersystem," muttered Szandor next to me.
"What's the Undersystem?" asked Diego. He was not a New Avalon native.
"Deep tunnels under the city," said Meat. "No light, lots of water, and a lot unexplored."
Under New Avalon was a labyrinth of tunnels bored and carved into the natural limestone. Early twentieth century architect Roger Carmichael had some amazing plan for it all, designing what seemed to be an endless maze of tunnels and sewers. We don't know why. Lots of it seemed redundant or useless. We've even found some weird markings in the tunnels intended by the builders. But the underground made a great hiding place for ghouls, zombies, and other monsters, so Szandor and I spent most of our time going down there and clearing out what we found.
At least among my brother, Paulie, Meat, and I, we generally divide the underground into three major sections. First are the Sewers. We're here most often. They're smelly, wet, and generally closer to the surface. It's not just the city's waste, but also most of the water drainage for the city. The water supply is why creatures like ghouls tend to like it. The second part is the Tunnels. These are all the train tunnels, the access tunnels, the actual in use subway stations and a few decaying stations that have been closed off. There are also areas that we have no idea what they were built for. The Tunnels tend to be dryer - sometimes too dry. We always make sure to have gas masks here. The Tunnels are often crumbling, we don't want to breathe in some toxic building materials or suffocate in a gas leak.
And then there's the Undersystem. We have no idea what it's officially called, but since it seems the New Avalon waste management and maintenance divisions are either similarly in the dark about the underground or don't care, this part might not even have a name. We generally don't go into the Undersystem unless we have to. Just as the name we picked implies, it's under everything else. It's not near the surface at all. I find it the most unnerving part of the underground. The other tunnels get dark and scary, but the fucking Under
system is where you get the jitters. Everywhere else, you somehow know the city is just above you, a panicked dash down the tunnel and up a ladder to freedom and the sky. Maybe if you've been walking for a long time, you have to run farther for a way up, but you still know the city and sky is just fifty feet above you. But the Undersystem is far below the streets, so any relief you might gain by feeling you could flee to the surface removed. The Undersystem appears to be a system of drainage and access tunnels even farther below the rest of the tunnels. Lots of catwalks, ladders, and large cavernous rooms. If you're looking for somewhere that allows you to trip, break your leg, and never be heard from again because you starve to death in great pain, the Undersystem has got you covered. It's not the Belly of the Beast, it's the goddamn Lower Intestine of the Beast.
"Now I know why you wanted me in particular," said Diego, but he didn't see altogether happy about it. "You want the impossible."
"Perhaps now is time to discuss specialties," said Jericho. "Diego is our tracker. He's tracked creatures across the globe. He's known internationally for his monster tracking - known to the right people, of course, not publically. But his tracking in Eastern Europe and Russian is most relevant."
"I tracked some man-eaters through a half destroyed Soviet-era tunnel system," said Diego. "So the tunnels shouldn't be a problem, though I'm not looking forward to it. The water may be. I need to get some more specifics on this creature to track it."
"Consult with Paulie after this," said Jericho. "He has a database of our incidental data. Most of it is worthless to us, but it might help you. Next up, Paulie. Most of you already know him. He'll be handling information and tracking. He'll be our eyes upstairs, either from here or his own office."
"You're not coming down with us?" said Szandor.
Paulie shook his head. "Kid, I'm of far more use to you up here. And me and that far underground definitely don't mix."
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