[MIHellboy]

Session 3: (Continued)
Their first stop was the Mayor's office wherein the mayor directed the group to the saloon, where they would assuredly find both the sheriff and the Marshall, Solomon. Their search proved the mayor correct as they found Solomon in deep and heated conversation with the local lawman amidst the busy chatter of dinnertime custom at the town's one public eatery/tavern/inn/brothel/livery.

Solomon motioned them over and delivered the news that he had sent his report down the line and received a reply. The group was to proceed to Hayes, Kansas to investigate yet another collection of disappearances. As it was getting rather late in the day, the group spent the night in Solomon, as guests of the town, given their remarkable success at defeating a murderous madman.

The next morning the group set out for Hayes and arrived at the rough collection of ramshackle buildings while the excitement of the day was still at a low boil. Declan decided to get a drink and play some cards while the rest of the party sought the local law. Declan entered a low, smoky room, as much opium and meth den as tavern, just as one man dove over a table and stabbed another man to death, allegedly for cheating at cards. Ignoring the scuffle, Declan approached the bar and ordered a drink then made his way over to the now empty chair at the poker table and bought into the game.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party sought out and found the local law man, sitting outside a sidewalk tienda, smells of fresh tortillas and grilling meat wafting from the stand. Solomon introduced himself and his party, which prompted the sheriff to tell his tale of the troubles of the local farms. Reports of disappearances from the surrounding farmsteads have been trickling in for months, but the reports are strange and inconsistent. The sheriff asked for help getting to the root of the problem and suggested starting at the Smith Ranch just southeast of town. The team agreed and made their way to find Declan.

Just as the team entered the dark and filthy den of iniquity, Declan caught the man who stabbed the other man at the beginning of the scene cheating. When Declan called him on it, and the man protested, Declan drew and blew both the man's hands off. This prompted the newly amputated cheater to fly out the door, spraying blood all over the walls and floor of the already biologically unclean tavern. He burst through the door and collapsed onto the street, succumbing to shock and eventually blood loss. The others at the table casually divided the cheater's stake and Declan bid them goodnight. Think Tank took the opportunity to harvest the cheater's organs, remembering Declan's objections to Zombie parts as spares.

The party made their way south east, making good time despite Declan's period transport (a horse). Eventually, they came upon a well maintained fence line and proceeded down the track to the ranch. They passed amber wheat fields, but Debbie detected an anomaly, an unexpected break in the field to the west. Booker went to investigate and discovered a perfectly shaped patch of missing grain. As he explored he discovered it had some surprisingly regular geometry to it, almost as if by design. Think Tank reoriented his perspective to get a bird's eye view of the field and discovered a series of shapes burned into the crop, three rectangles and two circles, one rectangle facing south, two circles in line to the north and a rectangle to the rear 45 degree of the north most circle. Not gleaning any more information, the party proceeded on.

They arrived at a well kept farm, complete with a number of busy hands and a pretty if aging farmwife. The team, in all their oddness, approached the woman and offered their services with the mystery. The woman, Mrs. Smith described how just about everyone on the ranches in about a forty mile area have been taken by mysterious abductors in their sleep but returned by morning in each case. That, taken with all the poor dead cattle, it made for quite the disruption. The team asked to have a look around and found an odd set of fingerprints on a bedroom window (several parallel lines instead of the expected swirls), several dead, presumably vivisected cows, and a whole farm full of upset people. Think Tank took a sample of the DNA at every opportunity.

The team promised they would get to the bottom of the mystery and set off to explore other farms. At each they found much the same conditions, odd symbols in the grain, dead cattle and muddy memories of nocturnal visitors. The team determined a pattern of the abductions and planned an ambush for the perpetrators. Debbie revealed the pattern to the team, expressed as two dots on a line north to south, a single dot between and to the east of the two dots, and a curved line running generally north to south with the end points parallel with the first tow dots and the mid point further east.


The team made their way to the ranch they suspected was next on the list and after making arrangements with the farmer, setup for their vigil. Just after midnight Booker, using his handmade night vision goggles, spotted a slightly darker shape against the dark night sky. Booker alerted Victor who stepped out into the ranch's front yard. The descending shape paused briefly then shot out into the night sky, Debbie estimating (roughly) at 3500 miles per hour.

The team mounted up and headed south for about half and hour coming upon a ranch with the strange crop disturbances. The ranch turned out to be the Branson ranch, the rancher himself showing up to the door in boxers and a wife beater, his spouse draped in a bed-sheet. When questioned, the ranch hands confirmed that one of their members, Bill, was missing from his bunk. The team decided to conceal themselves and see if the abductors returned the unfortunate hand.

The team members who could melted into the shadows while Debbie and Think Tank pretended to be a wagon. At 05:03:43, the team observed a dark shape descend onto the wheat field, exactly upon the odd shapes in the wheat. The team studied what they presumed to be a craft, but only barely discernible as a dark outline against the night sky, and that only detectable by those with advanced vision like Debbie or Booker. Booker, using the x-ray feature of his night vision goggles, saw inside the skin of the ship and observed wondrous technology, on par with his own. Think Tank tried to broadcast a universal message, which should have been received by any thinking being, but received only mental silence in return.

In a blinding flash of light, Booker observed a dark, vaguely humanoid shape descending from the shadowed vessel. No sooner had the shape disappeared from sight, obscured by the grain, than the light cut off and the vessel shot off into the dark.

The team advanced on the broken spot in the grain and discovered a naked man curled on the ground and emitting a vapor from his rapidly cooling skin. Victor examined the man, presumably the missing "Bill" was completely devoid of the normal mites and microbes which infest a human body, especially a man who works with his hands. Clark, seeing his distress, handed him a potion, hoping to cure his wounds.

Booker passed on a poncho and woke the man as the team began questioning the rest of the ranch's employees.

(...to be continued)