The story goes that Jack managed to put one over on the Devil. Hell relinquishes all claim on his soul in exchange for something, and Jack came out on top. He used his immunity to turn his soul into the blackest ball of hatred and evil the world had ever seen. The Devil always gets the last laugh though, because when it came time for Jack to face the music Hell wouldn't take him and Heaven didn't want him. Jack was forced to wander between the winds for all eternity, spreading his fury and malice across the world while occasionally amusing himself by luring travelers to their deaths by causing his hatred to glow in the real world. Apparently, that suited Jack just fine, because he's still doing it, and the wisps in the swamp were proof.
I never put much stock in Jack's story, because I'd seen the wisps in the swamps, and they were of this world. I figured if the wisp part was false, the rest smelled funny too. The Devil always wins, and Heaven would have banished him to Purgatory for a few millenia to purge the evil. Nope, I always figured Jack wasn't real.
Was I wrong.
As it turns out, the story is a bunch of crap, I called that one right, but the monster is very real.
One of the locals told me about an incident about fifteen years ago. Teenage girls started dying during the summer, torn to bits. The city pinned it on a farmhand, and life went on. Normally I'd have put it down to the reminiscing of an old lady, but something niggled at me about the details of the case. I'd heard stories of unsolved murders all the way up and down New England. Teenage girls being ripped to bits. I'd have said serial killer, but they only happened every ten or fifteen years, almost never in the same place twice, and they'd been happening for almost a hundred years now.
The newspaper clippings matched the other stories I'd heard. Questioning the Sheriff and reading the case file resulted in more similarities, not to mention the inconsistencies in Checkon's story. "Ask my ghost," he told Sheriff Bannerman. So I did just that.
Are you a Bee? Then don't tell me I can't talk to ghosts.
He was pretty reticent, part and parcel of being dead, but the inscription he was staring at...
No idea what it meant. Until I ghosted outside and saw a white raven sitting on a police cruiser. Nevermore jokes aside, it pecked at me until I followed, and found a line of ravens, singing that old nursery rhyme.
One for sorrow, two for joy
Three for a girl, four for a boy
Five for silver, six for gold
Seven for a secret, never to be told
Four of them summoned another ghost, but he was more than a ghost. He pulled me out of the spirit world. I didn't think that was possible! Then he cackled his name. Jack the Lad.
 |
| King of the Patch |
I don't think he expected anybody to find him, because he tried to gut me before running off. He jumped into a hole in a pumpkin patch and that was that. Dick Sonnac gave me a little background on the man that became a monster before chastising me for being "willing to go to such lengths to uncover" him. As it turns out, the real story is that Jack was an Irish immigrant working as a farm hand for a mage, he got caught with the mage's daughter and cursed for his wandering jollies. And of course the mage was working for the Illuminati at the time. Is there anything on this island that isn't connected to the Illuminati? For decades Jack has been the King Ghoulie on that island, only leaving to get his killer kicks. King of the Pumpkin Patch, which is what allowed him to leave Solomon Island at all. Not anymore though. The fog has brought bigger problems, Jack doesn't even rate a 5 on the scale anymore, and the only reason I care about his fate is because he tried to kill me. That makes me mad.
Run while you can, Jack the Lad. Next time we meet, I'm turning you into a pie.
No comments:
Post a Comment