Ghouls in Atlanta, Smuggling in the Appalachians. Double Trouble!

 

Research

Having gained in competence, confidence and developed a core team, we have started to also develop an awareness of the kinds of things that we are expected to be investigating and we spent some of the fallow time looking for unusual things that might be worth our time. 

Our research uncovered two leads. 

• Camilla found rumours among the Atlanta Police that there is a retired detective, Joe Dawant, who is on some sort of wild goose chase to find out something about a bunch of abductions and murders of black children that have been going on since the 70s and had been poking around rich white families with kids. Further investigation suggested that this may be indicative of some sort of cult activity.
• Harriet discovered that there had been a large weapons shipment along with some unusual books and items per the request of a very wealthy client whose name was to be kept anonymous. She talked directly to the courier and was able to get detailed directions to the compound located in the Appalachians in West Virginia. The courier mentioned that the compound was well guarded. This was confirmed by her subsequent observation with telescopic lens and camera from a distance. She sketched out basic map and details about guards.

After discussing it amongst ourselves we decided to try and tackle them both, the cult behind child abductions in Alabama first, then the smuggling in the Appalachians. 

Atlanta

Joe Dawalt

We worked with Delta Green to get fake FBI credentials. Helen Atkinson and Jane Doe ride again. We landed and set up base in the Hilton Atlanta and tried to make an appointment to see Joe. Tristan was with us, Hibiki joined us later, her flight was delayed. 

Joe was out, but called us back. We agreed to go to his office and see him about the information he's got about the disappearing children.

Joe Dawant was an African American retired detective who now works for a missing person's agency in Atlanta. His office was small but he invited us in and started to share his information.

The enclave of Druid's Hill is small, rich and white. The second born of families there have been disappearing over the last 75 years - they just don't complete school. No one ever raised a hue and cry, which is odd for rich, white kids. 

Black kids from neighbouring areas have been disappearing, but only over the last 20 years and turning up dead. Their families don't seem distressed either, which is odd. The black kids are not all second children.

Joe gave us the exact number of children who have gone (in the module it's not easily found). For the white kids, there's not a pattern based on time, like every year, it seems to be only when the second child reaches a certain age (12-15) (possibly when they reach puberty?). The black kids have a wider age range.

The most recent case is Henry Venables, from Druid Hills Middle School. His parents also both died in a car crash, basically immediately after Henry's death. He has been survived by an older sister, Abigail, who is 19. There has been a gap of a few years since the previous disappearance. All the other white kids who disappeared, their close families still live in Druid Hills. 

The black kid that went missing alongside Henry Venables was Raquawn Nelson, he disappeared from Euclid Avenue. His family live in Oakpoint Apartments, just off Euclid. Raquawn was abducted and his body found about a week later, behind the Candor Street Buildings off Euclid Avenue.

Staff at the school got transfer papers for all the white kids, but not the black ones. The parents had filled out the transfer forms for all the white kids.

There is usually a body for the black kids, and they're often cut up badly. Joe thinks it's a hate crime but he is not an expert. Ask the ME!

The black kids were mostly abducted after school, because they need to be out of school. Some were skiving though, over the years. The living kids were telling each other stories, the boogieman, illuminati doing experiments and the like. Nothing that Joe takes seriously. 

Joe's working theory was that the black kids, who only started going missing in the 70's, were being killed by one person. Given it was over a period of 20 years that seemed plausible. Joe was pretty convinced that this was linked to the longer period of disappearances of the white kids. He thought that it was a human trafficking circle and one of them developed a taste for killing black kids.

Atlanta overall has plenty of organised crime, but Druid Hills doesn't really have any, and the surrounding area are pretty low crime too.

Affected white familes:

• Venables
• McCleskey
• Chambless
• Paulk
• Grigsby
• Gatsy
• Milbrey
• Swain
• Sumner
• Holladay
• Deavers
• Millirons
• Pentecost

The Venables were community leaders, but Joe was not sure if Abigail had taken up that mantle. They lived in a house called Stonehenge. They were, for the US, old money, dating back to the 1850's and quarries. Stone from their quarries was used in the Lincoln memorial.

Joe warned Camilla that the KKK were still active in the area.

Stonehenge House

Hibiki's flight arrived and she joined us on the journey to the Stonehenge house.

Harriet was disappointed. It didn't look at all like Stonehenge. It was simply a stone-clad large house. 

We spent a few minutes observing the house and noticed a few cars parked outside but nothing really obviously out of place, then went in and knocked on the door. Druid's Hills was very obviously a rich, white people's neighbourhood: people hanging out in cars tend to attract attention and whilst we could have flashed our badges it seemed more sensible to avoid a confrontation.

We knocked and Abigail answered the door herself. After we showed our badges she invited us in and led us into the library. There were sounds of a lot of children making noise in the living room, which was on the other side of the hall from the library. There were more than a dozen young children playing a game there. Abigail said it was the Druid's Hill Youth Association, which was run by a friend who is staying with her. She seemed to be properly dressed for a rich, heiress in the deep south, however she was not grieving despite the recent disappearance of her brother and the deaths of her parents. She was also not stressed about being interviewed by the FBI.

We asked about the situation. She told us that Henry had moved to Grey Malkin School in Michigan. But she was lying. She said that her parents' death was sudden and she tried to act more sad, but it was clearly an act. Harriet noted (and informed the others later) that Grey Malkin is one of the witch's cats in Macbeth.

Jeramiah Ashcot, the person who ran the DHYA was a close friend who was staying and helping her through it. He was a local funeral director, the YA normally met there. The Youth Association had been around for at least 100 years. Both Abigail and Henry had been in the Youth Association in their time.

Tristan challenged Abigail; he had gone out into the corridor and pretended to make some calls. He told her that her brother was not at the school. She pretended to be shocked, but was carrying on with the lies. She said she hadn't seen him since he went, but they've been trading letters, the last one arrived a couple of days ago. She said that she wasn't particularly keeping them.

Hibiki pushed "why are you lying?" and she replied that someone had kidnapped her little brother. She was trying to get the money together. She seemed to still be lying. We pushed harder and she pushed back. She made it clear that she knew something about organisations vaguely like Delta Green (possibly actually Delta Green) and asked what we had seen when she said that we wouldn't believe the truth and we said that we would. We're not supposed to tell the truth, but Harriet decided to tell a little bit. Whatever guided her that way, Harriet left out all the identifying details but decided to recount a little bit about the fight with Leland Schneider which turned out to be inspired.

This prompted Abigail to spill most of the truth. Henry was being prepared for a ritual so her father could move his spirit into Henry's body and take over. This was common in the area. She killed her parents to try and stop this, but she doesn't think it has worked.

Abigail thought that the possession route for immortality is profane and cruel. She thought that the "normal" route - becoming a ghoul, although she had a fancier name - was much more natural. 

Abigail told us Henry was being kept in the ghoul warrens, under the cemetery, but she was lying. He was actually upstairs. If he disappeared before the ritual, they would hunt us down. During the Heritage Homecoming event on Friday they were going conduct the ritual at the Stone Mountain.

Abigail told us that they have up to a year to complete the ritual, so if we run off with Henry, they will seriously hunt us for an extended period. Ghouls tend to be tough in combat, and can have strong powers on top but these vary by individual. She expected there to be fewer than 10 ghouls at the ritual on Friday, but she can't be sure of an exact number.

They require the brain of the deceased father for the ritual to work. We could destroy the brain, or substitute something else, and then the ritual would mysteriously fail to work. Whichever way we decided to go, Abigail was worried about the action being traced back to her.

The Ghoul Warrens were a network of tunnels, mostly under Druid Hill, but they extend under much of the city. The Chief of Police was part of the family. Not a ghoul or one of the recurring possessed people, but certainly in the know.

ME's Office

We went to the ME's Office and asked for all the records of the named black kids we had from Joe. We persuaded them that we really are FBI and took our time going through all the records in the ME's office to make sure we got them all, then we photocopied them all and took the copies back to the hotel. Hibiki and Harriet helped Camilla, our Forensics and Criminology expert, go through the files over the Monday night and through Tuesday. We ended up pretty sure it's not a ghoul. There's no sign of eating the flesh for example.

Harriet knew that ghouls technically don't need to eat flesh, but go insane if they don't. They also don't need to breathe, but fall into a coma if they don't. They are hard to kill, very resilient, but don't have specific vulnerabilities.

This basically took us all day Tuesday.

We planned to call Abigail and work out what was in the ritual containment fluid for the brain. If we could we would investigate the murders of the black kids as well. It's not strictly part of our remit, but we all felt strongly that we should put some effort into this if we could.

Wednesday

We called Abigail. She told us that there is no embalming fluid in the brain material, but also that there is none on the premises of the funeral home. It's against the religious beliefs of the director! (The ghouls want to be able to eat the bodies!)

We decided to try and get a sensor specialist and a Land Ground Penetrating Radar system, plus whatever else they recommend to map out the tunnels in the graveyard so we had a threat to take to the ghoul elders and could negotiate something with them.

Whilst we could go to the University of Atlanta, we'd have to gaslight whatever poor Post-Doc we get, so we decide to go to Delta Green. That will take a little while, so we needed to decide on our actions for the father's brain:

• burn down or otherwise generally vandalise the whole funeral home
• replace the brain with an alternative that Abigail can provide

Both of these seemed to be better done after working hours at least. This probably left most of the day open to investigating the murders of the black kids.