Dispatches from the Fringe
(Editor’s note: by way of a byzantine series of puzzles, coded messages, and dead-drops, I have come into possession of the writings of one “Morgan Monroe”. I will be presenting these communiques as a curiosity, but do not vouch for the credibility of the author. Indeed, it would be madness to believe a single word of this rambling journal.)
I did not want to be there, you understand. I was dressed for a temperature much cooler than an unusually warm day in March. I was too close to Portland and it made me itch. I couldn’t bring anything useful on the plane, the bastard security had stripped me to damn near my skin with the dull-eyed cruelty inherent to their work. They’d have put something in me if they’d had the chance. I’d told them I was a doctor, I’d described great woe upon a wealthy donor to local children’s charities should I not be there to mend a wound he’d suffered while hunting an ibex on his secretive compound. I’d explained what could happen to a man with a tip of ibex horn rotting in his thigh.
Forget it. I abandoned my bag and my things when someone in a suit began approaching. Scuttled onto the plane quietly, head down. I muttered something in an old tongue that was meant to keep me hidden. Then I started sweating. Hiding from a suit in a cramped plane as you sweat out your hangover is no place to be. I asked the attendant for cigarettes and she mocked me.
We are losing the point. There I was, hours later with a good deal of whisky still in my veins. I was swaying and pale when I met who I was to meet. Not a full day earlier, I’d met his cousin at a bar when I was already rather loose. He came right at me like a shark to blood. Knew me somehow, jabbered about it while I sneered. Big fellow, big smile, simple in a way I mean as a compliment. Tracts of time go missing, here. More drinks. Did the swine dose me? I remember telling him his cousin was full of shit. Or just an idiot. I remember him not flinching at that, despite being big enough to squeeze me into my glass if need be. I decided not to risk it more, got nice. It’s algae, I told him; it’s the goo frogs produce when mating. Disgusting, don’t think about it. Tell your cousin not to touch it. By last call he’d secured my word on the conditions that he’d foot the bill and handle travel arrangements.
The cousin looked more or less the same. No beard. Excitable. Kept shaking my hand, didn’t mind how clammy and limp it was. I asked him for a cigarette and he laughed. I asked if bars were open yet and he said something I didn’t hear, then we got in the SUV.
What the hell, I figured. This wasn’t the genuine article, but it felt like the sort of trip I should take. I was trapped by my word and clinging to a thin hope that something else would come of this. I squinted into the increasingly rural landscape we passed. Lots of sightings of things in these areas at this time of year. I wondered if the cousin had a tent. I’d never discussed payment. I realized with a new sheen of sweat that the ticket had been one way. A trap?
I was mentally tracking who I knew of in this area who’d want to put me in a basement cage and brutalize me with cattle prods when we arrived. Old farmhouse, fair shape. Most of the land wasn’t farmland anymore. Cousin told me they sold a bit off here and there to developers. The developers just sat on it and waited for a whale to turn the whole mess into shopping centers. Until then, former farmland turned into a half-wooded empty stretch. I asked if he had a tent and he described, in great detail, his many tents.
No time to meet his wife, I said. Better if I didn’t pick up stray vibes from his house or family. Coded talk that I wanted to get this over with. He bought it. We headed for the back yard. On the 12th, a Saturday night, bright lights had been vivid in the sky in this area. All the way up to Portland. The next day, while a churchgoer in Wisconsin shot half a dozen members of his congregation and then himself, my comrade the cousin had stepped outside to find strange clear jelly all over his yard. This happens often. Usually noted as a local curiosity, barely makes the news. Sometimes it’s fungus or algae or the mating froth of frogs. What it really is, when it isn’t those things, is up for debate. What it also is, when it isn’t those things, is valuable in the right places. Only an expert can tell when it is those things and it is not those things. Only an expert knows if the strange jelly came from a frog’s unmentionables or from an Other Place. If it’s real, Pwdre Ser can do strange things. So I’m told. It can connect you to other places. Attract strange things. Ensure the potency of ritual. So I’m told. More importantly, when it comes to what it’s worth, is that a bit the size of a breath-mint can do to you what a bag of mushrooms can only approach.
It was all gone. The yard was wet with dew but the jelly was gone. I gave him the show. I knelt and got my knees wet as I placed palms on the dirt. I closed my eyes, I furrowed my brow. I remember him asking a lot of questions; this usually means it’s working. I picked up a bit of dirt and let it fall out of my hand. You can do this very dramatically. I asked him how much he’d kept. Usually the stuff is gone in hours, but the Cousin had, for whatever reason, had the wherewithal to put some in jars. The headache was coming on now so I stood and nodded as he told me he had one big jar. I needed it, I said, and we’d have to spend the night out there. Far back, away from the house as we could get. Two of those tents, one each. That was for his protection; the stuff can get Weird at night and attract Weird Things. I’d call him if I needed him. I told him I needed a thermos of coffee, I told him I needed a few things from the store. I’d stay and work some things out, trace protective sigils in the dirt to get ready.
The rest doesn’t matter. Many hours later, I was in a small weathered tent putting a tentative finger-scoop of the jelly on my tongue. Two hours later, the lion’s share of whisky I’d insisted he drink made sure he didn’t notice me dismantle the little tent and leave. Two days later, I was at a payphone in the half-abandoned shopping mall closest to a patch of woods I’d chosen. In my hands was the first real sample of Star Rot I was aware of in a decade. I was about to be very popular.