Champions Game

Wed 3/10/90

14.45 - Got the burgulary story in with twenty minutes to spare before going to press. It will make today's edition after all.
Good.
Off for a long lunch now. I need a break.

17.12 - I can't believe it.

Poor John.

Detective Sergeant Mitchell from Severn Valley Constabulary telephoned and started asking about John Huang. At first I thought he must be in some sort of trouble with the police but then the sergeant said he was dead.

He'd gone to investigate a ghost story on Monday, somewhere near Gloucester. I checked his desk and according to his notes he was meeting a Jacob Black to talk about a 16th Century curse on Black's family.

There's no next of kin listed in his personnel file so we've got to go and identify the body.
Jane said she'd do it.

20.34 - Oh God.... I called the Brichester Herald and spoke to one of their reporters...

The police are still sitting on the story, and they don't have many facts yet, but the rumour is that poor John was ripped to bits and spread over quite an area of woodland at Oakwood, near Beck Green.

I dug up the standard stuff on the local area - nothing much of note.
Apparently the chap to talk to for local history and background stuff is a Mr George Chapel who keeps the church records.

This can't be happening. It just CAN'T!!!

Thurs 4/10/90

4.24 - Can't sleep any more.
I've got a monster hangover from all the whiskey Jane gave me yesterday, but I've had some paracetamol and orange juice so hopefully it'll clear soon.
I still can't believe this is really happening.

John. Dead.

Our train is at 9.15.
I'd better start packing. We've booked a hire car from Gloucester and we've got ourselves rooms in the same hotel that John was staying in, which is a bit creepy but maybe we can find something out by being there.

21.58 - Got to the hotel an hour and half an hour ago. I hope we can persuade Drongo to let one of us drive tomorrow. The journey from the station was terrible.

Stroke of good luck. The police haven't been here yet.
Jane managed to pick the lock on John's room and got his notebooks. Looks like he was writing a book about the supernatural, which makes sense, I suppose. It's not the sort of thing the reputable papers would publish, so a book would be the best way to present that sort of stuff.

Apparently the curse started in 1584 when Sir Edward Black sentenced Annie Wilcox (a twenty year old orphan from Cornwall, who had lived in Beck Green for about four years) to be burned at the stake as a witch. She said "and ye shall suffer the curse of Black Annie. Blood shall flow, the dead shall walk and you shall be the last of your line".
The Black family home, Oakwood Manor was destroyed by fire shortly afterwards, killing the whole family except for one son who was abroad at the time.

Mr Jacob Black (a pillar of the community by all accounts) had a strange dream about three weeks ago. He dreamed that he was in the courtroom seeing Annie sentenced and that he woke up in a strange bed with flames coming in under the door.
Obviously he dismissed it at the time, but since then his uncle has died in a riding accident, his wife has had miscarriage and he says blood has seeped from the walls of his house (John sent some stuff away for analysis).

Fri 5/10/90

11.27 - Jane's back from identifying the body. She says they showed her just a head, on it's own, and that part of the face was missing.
I still feel ghastly, but I seem to have stopped retching now all my breakfast has gone. Should probably accept Bob's offer to get me a black coffee - it might help clear my head.

We have three leads to follow. Bob will be going to see Jacob Black and Jane will be going to see George Chapel. I'll wait a while to see what they find then go and ask Major Jeremy Northrup, the current owner, for permission to look around in the woods and the manor at Oakwood.

14.08 - Jane found out that Black Annie was buried outside somewhere called St Michael's Chapel, but the only church in Beck Green is St Martin's.
Puzzling.

Bob got us an invitation to stay with Mr Black at his house so we'll be driving over in a little while after I've talked to Major Northrup.

I found a curious little 16th Century letter in an antique shop in town, it was about looking for "her burial" (possibly Black Annie's?) in Oakwood. Apparently it was found in a desk bought from Major Northrup who lives in the hunting lodge of the old estate.

17.47 - We have permission to look around at Oakwood.
I asked Major Northrup if he knew where St Michael's was and he said he didn't. Drongo thought he was lying. We found a picture labelled as St Michael's in the Major's hallway.
Odd that he'd lie about it.

Anyway, Jane found a 1950s map with the chapel marked on it and it's in the middle of the woods.

We've been warned that there are dangerous marshes in the woods.
And apparently in 1852 there were four months of attacks on sheep. Something was leaving mutilated carcasses around the place. Rumour has it there are still wolves in Oakwood. The locals hunted out all the local wild dogs in 1852 but that didn't solve the problem. It stopped on its own after a while.

21.00 - We've settled in to our rooms at Mr Black's house. He's very hospitable.

The analysis of the samples John sent off had been sent to Mr Black's address. We opened the letter and it said that the substance was human blood.

Sat 6/10/90

We had a look at the old Oakwood Manor today. There was a mural on one wall which originally looked like a battle scene with medieval knights, but Jane noticed that some of it had been painted over and when we pulled off the peeling paint it turned out to be a scene with dead men fighting. Some wizened old man was feeding them something in a cup to bring them back to life.
Looked like a scene from Excalibur, but it must have been older than the Tudor style painting that was on top of it.
It was vile.

Even worse was finding the area where John died. Quite a bit of the ground had been churned up and there was still blood and even some bits of flesh in the trees all around.
It makes no sense to me. How could he have got thrown over such a wide area? There were no burn marks or anything that looked like an explosion, and the trees in the area didn't seem to be damaged.

And Jane seemed to find climbing the trees far too easy. I asked her about it and she said that she has to spend quite a bit of time hiding in trees when she's stalking celebrities, it's just part of the job, but lately she's found it much easier to do. She thinks it just "clicked" one day.

Bob's taken some samples of the (ugh!) flesh from the trees for his laboratory friends. He'll be going there tomorrow.

Sun 7/10/90

3.57 - I wish hospitals didn't always smell of antiseptic and old dusty radiators. It's not very pleasant here.

At least Jane's going to be okay, well, more or less. Apparently she still needs to have surgery on her hand, but they'll do that tomorrow morning. Well, I mean later this morning, actually, given that it's nearly dawn now.

I woke up when I heard her screaming. Ran down to the library and she was on the floor with blood all over her. I got her over to a chair and called the ambulance.
She says that she disturbed some little stick man thing which was cutting five pointed stars in all Mr Black's furniture. She caught it and it stuck its pointy fingers in her hand to get her to let go.
Drongo said she must have been drunk and imaging things, but something cut her hand very badly and there seem to be a couple of splinters in the cuts. And something cut marks in the furniture and window frames and doors all round the house, including in my room and Drongo's.

17.00 - Jane's operation went fine. I felt a bit guilty about smuggling whiskey in to her in hospital, but I guess a serious attack of the DTs is the last thing she needs on top of everything else that's happened.

The version of events she told the police was that she surprised someone, a small person or possibly a child in the room, but that it was dark so she didn't get a look at them when she grabbed them and didn't see what they stabbed her with.

Drongo had a look round the garden today and found some odd marks in the soil, but no footprints near the library window.

I found a splinter of wood lodged in the edge of my window frame. Don't know what the police will make of it all. I haven't a clue what could have happened or why.

19.13 - Mr Black's dog has been killed. He found the poor creature's leg in the grounds.

Mon 8/10/90

21.15 - Nothing that happened today makes any sense to me at all.

I guess all I can do is write down what I think I saw and hope that somehow it'll make sense later on.

Drongo says he woke up in the middle of the night and heard barking at the door so he got the poker and went to investigate.
He says that Mr Black's dead dog was there and that it attacked him. He has bite marks on his boots, certainly. Anyway, he hit it with the poker until it stopped moving and then he says that he buried it in the grounds.
We checked the spot later on and there was a hole, apparently dug up from below, but no dog, dead or alive.

Okay, so Jane, Drongo and I headed out to St Michael's chapel in Oakwood. It was a much longer walk than we expected, given how big the wood looked on the map.
We came to a clearing where a big tree had been cut down. Not a nice clean cut like you usually get when the Forrestry people do clearing, but a jagged cut like it was done by someone who wasn't quite sure how to do it properly.
There was a cross carved on the tree trunk. I looked around the clearing and found two other trees with crosses carved on them. We guessed that they marked a path, and found more trees with marks on so we followed the route out through the woods to the chapel.
There was a body there. Horrible. The head was missing.
Also Drongo found something which looked a bit like a broken compass, but which he said was a witchfinder like in the movie, 'Warlock'.
I tried saying the words that were written around it and it pointed into the woods.

We went in the direction the witch finder pointed in and slogged through the hideous marsh to an old cottage under a big tree.
There was stuff hanging up outside the cottage, including a thing that looked like skin stretched on a rack.
Sort of brownish skin, about the colour of John's.
I don't like to think about it...

Then comes the really, really spooky and crazy bit.
There were sticks in the ground with dead birds' heads stuck on them and when we walked past they started making a lot of noise, even though they were dead.

Drongo hit them with a branch and knocked them over and they shut up, but then this thing... red and sort of scaly, but also sort of human-ish with huge ears and a pointed face... almost like a cartoon of a devil... crawled out of the cottage and started attacking Drongo.

He managed to kill it and we went into the cottage. There were things like cauldrons in there and it all looked really old.

Then another thing, this time like a badly burned old woman with hideous eyes, turned up. She shouted at us then waved her hand and all the sticks with bird heads on flew at me. Somehow they missed me as I dodged back inside and I got a knife out of the drawers in the cottage.

Some tree roots sort of grew incredibly fast, just swept out of the ground and grabbed Jane and Drongo. Drongo broke free but one of the roots got him in the shoulder. It looked like it went straight through, but now all you can see of it is scarring on both sides of his shoulder. And his leather jacket is torn on both sides of the shoulder so it must have gone through, but there's no hole through him anymore

When I came out, Jane was still trapped by the tree roots and Drongo was fighting with the old woman thing. I was going to help him, but he managed to kill her before I got there.
When she died the roots rotted away and Jane got free.

We weren't sure what to do next so we headed back to the village and phoned Bob. He said that to kill a witch you had to remove her from her place of power - so we trekked back through the woods and got the body.
Weren't sure how on Earth we were going to dispose of it, but it did a really hideous speeded up decomposition thing as soon as we left the woods. Saved us having to drive through Brichester with a mutilated corpse in the car boot, but I still wish I hadn't seen it.

Nothing makes sense at all.

I'm going to have a long bath now, and I just hope I can sleep after all this.

Tues 9/10/90

18.47 - Bob's back with all the lab results now. Confirmed what we knew already - that flesh was human, and therefore probably John's.

We reported the body in the chapel to the police and moved John's skin from the witch's cottage to the chapel so that it would be found at the same time. Hopefully that'll mean poor John can be buried all together.

I tried the witchfinder when we got back to the hotel, but it didn't work on Bob.

Sun 21/10/90

03.09 - Drongo and I took the witchfinder along to a place where all those kids who dress in black and wear pentagram necklaces go.
It's called The Mission.
Anyway, no signs from the witchfinder. Probably just as well. I don't know what I would have done if we had got a positive result.

Some drunk Drongo had been talking to came up to me and asked if I was a lesbian. I explained to him (the drunk) that the reason women didn't want to sleep with him was not because they were lesbians but because he was beneath contempt and utterly undesirable.
Very satisfying to see him slink off in humiliation and confusion, even though I suppose it was Drongo who put him up to it.

There were a couple of vaguely interesting looking men there, but I couldn't imagine being seen in public with any of them.

Wed 7/11/90

15.22 - If I catch that b****d Graham I'm going to b****y well confirm at least one of the rumours he's started about me by shoving his b****y notebook so far up his pompous a*** that he chokes on it!!!!

B****d!!!!

How could he do this to me????

B****d!!!!

23.47 - Long talk with Lizzy this evening. Thank God for my friends.

Have decided that the only thing to do is to say nothing. Denying it won't help now.
Must try to be dignified about it.
The Lily Langtree approach, Lizzy called it, which made us giggle...

It makes my skin crawl to think that I ever went to bed with a guy who can think of doing things like that.
Ugh!

Sat 10/11/90

10.44 - Why do these terrible things keep happening?

Neil Harris our receptionist is in hospital. He tried to kill himself today, shot himself in the head.
I found him when I came in to work.
I thought he was dead at first, but then he moved while I was calling the ambulance.

Just finished talking to the police about it.

Jane and I are going to the hospital now to see how he is and maybe talk to his parents to find out where he got the gun. He's only seventeen so he's too young to have a handgun certificate himself.
Phoned Drongo and he'll be meeting us there.

13.59 - No sign of the parents at the hospital, and no answer on their phone. We're going to go out and see if we can talk to the at home in Haddington.

17.13 - This just gets worse and worse.
The parents are dead. Saw the mother through the window lying in a pool of blood in the living room, all cut to pieces. We called the ambulance from a neighbour's house and they brought two bodies out.

I got some photos of stuff.
God, this is awful. What am I turning into? I took photos of a dead body through a window, took photos of an ambulance taking the dead people out, and I interviewed the neighbours about how they felt and what they remembered of the Harrises.
I know it's the job and that if I didn't do it someone else would, but right now I don't like myself very much.

22.31 - Just finished talking to the police again.
They say it's suspicious that I found Neil's body and then his parents' bodies as well as being around when the castle got bombed in August.

I didn't want to find the b****y bodies!!! I wish I'd never seen them!

I never wanted to see John's body either.
I suppose at least the police didn't try to blame me for that as well.

Jane says the gun Neil used was a WW2 Luger and that it was quite common for soldiers to bring them home as souvenirs from the war, so there are loads of unregistered ones about.

Sun 11/11/90

8.45 - Charles looks pretty tired this morning. He said he had a horrible nightmare last night about Neil's father beating him with a belt. When Charles tried to stop him, he pushed him through a window.

14.57 - According to Reuters a Politburo member was shot on the streets in Moscow yesterday.
Political situation in the Soviet Union was bad enough before this.

21.08 - We've got all the background information we can find on Neil and his family. Nothing obviously wrong. Father was ex-military and worked as a security consultant, whatever that is. Mother a housewife. Fifteen year old sister, poor kid, is still at school.

Mon 12/11/90

14.40 - Jane was right. I do feel better for having had lunch. I'm tired as Hell, but at least I can see to type now.

Last night I had the most awful nightmare. I saw a big powerful man, presumably Mr Harris, abusing Neil and a girl, who I guess must have been his sister.
God, I hope it was just a dream. My imagination running away with me after the shock.
I don't want to think about how life must have been for poor Neil if any of it really happened.

In my dream I tried to stop the man but he was too strong for me.
I feel awful today. Neck stiff and ribs aching, as if the fight was real, but there are no bruises on me.

When I woke up, around 3am, I called Jane and went over to her place.
She was very kind.

We drank far too much whiskey, but I'm sure that what I think I saw was real. I saw her walk up a wall to change a lightbulb after I dared her to in a drunken moment.
We'd been talking about how Drongo is bullet proof and Bob reads people's minds.

Is this real, or am I going insane?

Jane and I were still drunk when we got to the office. I hope Charles forgives us. I asked him what his superpower was and Jane tried to get into his bag to see what he had there.

Unprofessional of us, showing up at the office while drunk.
Nothing makes sense though. Maybe I am going crazy. Maybe me being crazy is better than this being real.

Visited Neil in hospital again. Apparently there's nobody else visiting him.
I don't suppose he's got much chance of recovering, the state he's in, but I did read somewhere that people in comas can sometimes still hear, so I talked to him for an hour or so anyway.

Susan Phillips - former fashion and beauty journalist, currently trying to move in to hard news stories (and not just as a way of annoying her ex-boyfriend).
Blonde, 6'2" tall in her stiletto heels and with a tendency to find herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Bob Fudge - cynical serious news reporter, unpopular with some important political figures. Interested in the occult.

Drongo, or, as he is known on more formal occasions, "The Accused", spends his time drinking; modifying, repairing and occasionally riding motorbikes; listening to loud rock music and getting in to fights. He's employed as a technician and bouncer by the news agency and various Fringe shows.
His mother calls him James Bell.

Jane Stuart - paparrazzi photographer, unpopular with many celebrities, has an alcohol problem.

John Huang (deceased) - reporter, known for his integrity, but also, unfortunately, for his belief in UFOs

Charles Reynauld - former reporter of international criminal affairs. Taking a break from chasing Columbian arms dealers in favour of a more peaceful life dealing with Glasgow gang wars.

Martin Farmer - industry and industrial relations journalist.

John Cassidy - anthropoligist, reporter and Renaissance man... Has travelled extensively in the Third World (mainly to avoid university funding authorities and his ex-wife).