Mid-West Campaign
Session Forty-Nine

Monday, 2 April 2001 (continued)

Jane wraps her coat around the shivering Drake. He has been there since dawn, and has no memory of anything that happened after entering the chamber beneath the Irongates Military Cemetery. She contacts Benedict who is on his way to the office. Although Drake seems himself, the fact that the last time anyone saw him he was both possessed and dead necessitates some caution.

Jane fires her gun into the air disturbing a flock of birds roosting near-by. The birds take to the air and fly wildly around the railway yard. When none of them crap on Drake, Jane assumes that his stunning unluck is in remission.

Benedict soon arrives and parks his car in the new underground carpark. Walking around the outside of the building he meets up with Jane and Drake. As no-one really knows what to do with Drake (including Drake himself) they decide to enter the building. Jane enters the new code - cunningly reversed to 4321 - and they enter the shiny and new Mid-West HQ!

[Editorial Note: at this point the narrative jumped to the Monday 9 April and the mid-west team eventually realised an entire week had passed without their knowledge. For dramatic effect jump straight to 9 April and start reading from there. However, as the Timeline tries to be a chronological list of events I will now proceed to fill in the details of those missing days.]

Jane, Drake and Ben enter the new headquarters and have a good look around. They head down to the new Blackcave and investigate all its ins and outs [Editorial Note: a full description of this exploration is provided when the agents did it for a second time on 9 April]. The agents check their messages and discover that the APB against Josephine McKenna was rescinded yesterday. McKenna has been arrested and is currently being held at Langley, Virginia.

Before they can leave, Jane receives a call from Mrs Miggins who reports that Bobby isn't very well. Jane rushes Harlow's dog to the vets, and gets a shocking bill for injections of $324. With that out of the way, the agents get a flight to Norfolk and arrive at Langley around 3:00pm. Benedict meets fellow accountant, Special Agent Richard Coleman. Like Ben, Coleman is a member of the FBI Chartered Accountants Society. Coleman speaks about the Dynamicorp cases and reminds Ben that it is time for him to do the annual accounts of their society. He volunteers to fax the figures to Wichita, and gives Ben his card in case anything goes wrong.

The agents then interview McKenna as part of the ongoing case DL1034. They are unaware that the spirit of Veronica Cunningham is currently in control of McKenna's body. The agents work from the assumption that it was Josephine McKenna who placed the petrification spell on Joshua Blackthorne and not Veronica Cunningham. "Josephine McKenna" tells the agents that she can restore Josh to the flesh, but in return she wants her freedom. After much soul-searching the agents agree.

"McKenna" gives the agents a shopping list of the items required for the ritual to restore Josh: essential darkness, the heart of a fawn and the earth Josh was standing on when he was petrified. It sounds like a list of ingredients for a magic spell.

Before they can leave, Jane gets a call from Artemis Black. Black is in Washington meeting with the new president and asks Jane to join him at his lunch with President Bush the following day. Jane flies to Washington leaving Drake and Benedict to research where they can go to get the ingredients for the magic spells.

Tuesday, 3 April 2001

Jane shops for a new outfit in Washington. However, she will need to buy a pair of new shoes that are extremely expensive. The bill for Bobby's injections has left Jane short of cash this month. She telephones Todd who lends her the money. Jane meets Artemis and the President for lunch. In the evening she flies back to Langley.

In Langley, Benedict and Drake continue to research the list of spell ingredients. They conclude that essential darkness cold well be the black goo from the bottom of the mine in Winterset. The same goo that Richard Quail covered himself in last November (case WNT075)

Wednesday, 4 April 2001

Benedict, Alex and Jane fly from Langley to Winterset. They hire a 4×4 form a local dealer and return to the barn where Jane participated in a shoot out with cultists of the Westwood Charity in case WNT075. They follow a mine tunnel to the chamber containing the pool of black ichor. Drake ruins his trainers in the pool, but the agents gain the "essential darkness" they need.

Reasoning that this chamber is dangerous and they should stop anyone else from using it, the agents hatch a cunning plan. Above the pool of dark goo is an airshaft leading to the surface. The agents deliberate reverse the 4×4 into the airshaft. It falls into the pool completely demolishing the surrounding mine and hopefully sealing this area for good.

Thursday, 5 April 2001

The agents go hunting for a fawn and after a long day's searching eventually find one that Jane shoots and kills. They have the carcass butchered and sent back to their Wichita HQ where they hope it will make a few good meals. The heart is removed and put on ice in preparation for the ritual.

The agents now return to Langley to discuss the final ingredient to restore Josh. He was standing on the stage in the auditorium in Dallas when he was petrified. The ground beneath him is therefore the stage.

Friday, 6 April 2001

The agents fly from Langley to Dallas and gain access to the auditorium after speaking to May Flachenbach the Dean of Drama. She is, however, horrified by their actions in ripping much of the stage, bundling it into a packing crate and having it shipped to Langley. Benedict assures her that the university with be compensated, and says the floor is essential to an ongoing investigation.

The agents return to Langley and inform Josephine McKenna that they have collected the ingredients. McKenna (who is still possessed by Veronica Cunningham at this time) calls the agents a bunch of idiots. The wood from the stage won't work. They need to work the ritual on the actual earth beneath the stage. If Josh is ever going to be restored they will have to take "McKenna" and the ingredients to Dallas and perform the ritual there.

Saturday, 7 April 2001

After a great deal of discussion, the agents agree to take "McKenna" to Dallas. Once the ritual is completed, they will release her as per their agreement. However, considering their current relationship with the Dean of Drama, Benedict suggests performing the ritual after hours. They head to Texas and hire a jackhammer.

The agents and the possessed Josephine McKenna arrive at the Dallas campus in the late evening. They encounter campus cop, David Hope, and convince him that they need to exhume the foundations of the auditorium. A rather garbled collection of excuses has the cop believing the foundations are filled with the radioactive corpses of multiple serial killer victims. However, he lets the agents in. By midnight they are ready to begin the ritual.

Sunday, 8 April 2001

Veronica Cunningham, occupying the body of Josephine McKenna, conducts the ritual that involves each agent biting a chunk from the raw heart of the fawn. Benedict baulks at this. However, the magic is successful and Joshua Blackthorne is returned to the flesh! Jane is particularly pleased that at least one member of he original team has been restored. The agents make good on their promise to "Josephine" and let her go.

Veronica Cunningham is still in control of Josephine's body. She decides to get the hell out of Dodge and goes to a student car park where she steals a car belonging to Newtridge Hardy (the only male member of her coven). However, inside the car is a complicated Celtic knot-work created by McKenna to enhance her personal power. It is enough for McKenna to shake off Veronica's control. She is herself once again.

Now Josephine is in a pickle. She is free, but she doesn't trust the FBI agents not to have her arrested again. She is far from the innocent in this that the mid-west team believe her to be. Josephine takes Newt's car and drives to Wichita, planning to be there before the agents and ambush them.

Meanwhile the agents leave the Dallas campus. They telephone Artemis Black and inform him that Josh has been restored. Artemis reinstates Josh as the Assistant Special Agent in Charge. Josh accepts this position, putting his original plan of retiring on hold for at least the time being. The agents also tell Black that Drake has returned from the dead (something they should have done last Monday). The agents fly back to Wichita, arriving at HQ in the early evening.

The agents enter the building and show Josh around. However, Josephine McKenna is ready for them. Using her magic she snares the minds of the agents and commands them to wipe all record of the past week from their databases. All email is deleted, all CCTV footage is destroyed. Even the post and their faxes are shredded and binned. When this is finished, she casts another spell that wipes the minds of Jane, Benedict, Josh and Alex. She commands them to return to their homes. When they wake up in the morning all memory of the past week will be gone. They will all think it is the morning of 2 April 2001.

All the agents depart for their homes except Alex Drake. Because the last week didn't happen for him, he takes off his clothes, wraps himself in a blanket and spends the night on the doorstep of headquarters.

Josephine McKenna rests for the night on one of the new beds in the cells of the Wichita HQ. She has to remove the plastic wrapping from it to get comfortable. Unbeknown to her, she leaves forensic evidence.

Monday, 9 April 2001

Josephine McKenna steps over the sleeping Drake, leaves Wichita and drives back to Dallas. She stops at a truck-stop near to her destination, but when she gets out of the car Veronica Cunningham regains control of her body. Now it is Veronica's turn to wonder what the hell is going on. She was trapped in McKenna's body by McKenna and it was an extremely unpleasant experience. Believing that answers (and possibly help for her condition) rests with the mid-west agents, she hitches a ride in a truck heading back to Wichita.

Meanwhile in Wichita, Joshua Blackthorne gets to work early. He heads into his office and starts writing up some paperwork. Jane and Benedict arrive for work and discover Alex on the doorstep. They have no memory have having discovered him one week previously. The three agents enter HQ.

[Editorial Note: this is the point where we continued playing session 49. From the point of view of the agents, Jane and Benedict have just found the shivering Agent Drake on the doorstep to HQ for the first time. They believe it to be Monday 2 April 2001. If you have already read these events leap to 16 April.]

The layout of the mid-west HQ is exactly as the agents left it seven weeks ago. The porta-cabins where Benedict's office can now be found as well as the domiciles for male and female agents, the desks, the computers - it looks as though nothing has changed. Jane wonders how they actually get down to the Blackcave, no-one seems to have bothered to leave them any instructions.

Suddenly, Benedict hears sounds from his office. Benedict and Jane draw their weapons and approach the door. Benedict demands that the person inside identify himself. The person does just that: it is Joshua Blackthorne!

Benedict only met Blackstone very briefly on Kahoolawe before the island exploded, but Jane is very pleased to see Joshua returned from his extended petrified state. But how could this have happened? The statue of Josh was sent to the office last weekend (Saturday 31 March) although Jane didn't accompany it. Josh says that he remembers waking up this morning in his apartment and coming to work. This is very suspicious. There is certainly no sign of the statue itself in the front of the Wall of Weird.

Benedict calls Artemis Black to let him know that Blackthorne has returned. Artemis is in a meeting and they speak to his secretary. The secretary is not at all surprised by the news. She says that the agents reported the return of both Joshua Blackthorne and Alex Drake yesterday. Joshua Blackthorne has been returned to his position of Senior Special Agent in Charge.

This is screwy? How could Artemis know all this before the agents did? While they are discussing this Drake goes and gets dressed. Josh wants to know everything that has happened to the team since his petrification in December. When Jane tells him all about the Joker, and Apache Joe and the Brain Bugs he goes a little strange. The sight of Benedict turning himself into an armoured killing machine (purely as a visual aid) is almost enough to put him over the edge. However, it is the news of the rise and rise of Artemis Black that sends Blackthorne into fits. It is nice to see some things haven't changed.

Although Jane is still worried about Drake (and wants to drive him through Schult's barrier in Los Angeles, just to be sure about him) the agents decide to search their HQ for signs of the Blackcave. On a cursory inspection the only thing that seems to have changed is that there are no longer any cells on this level. They return to Blackthorne's office and notice something amiss.

There is a bust of Artemis Black on the desk. It is not far from a red phone. Tentatively Jane takes the head of the bust and pulls is back. The neck is hinged and inside is a button. After much muttering Jane presses the button. A bookcase in the corner of the room rolls back revealing five fire-poles. Behind each pole is a small plaque. The legend states Blackthorne, Oaxaca, Munroe, Drake and Johnson respectively. The fifth pole is some distance from the others, as if it has been designed to accommodate a much larger man.

The location of the Blackcave is therefore safe from anyone who didn't watch the 1960s Batman TV series. As the agents decide whether or not to slide down the poles into darkness, Drake approaches a full size oil painting of Artemis Black that is hanging in the room. He runs his fingers around the outside and finds a catch. Suddenly the painting swings away around a central pivot and sooner than you can say "Virgil Tracey" Drake has been propelled into a hole in the wall, and can be heard sliding off into the darkness.

Josh, Jane and Benedict slide down the poles and land safely on a neat collection of crash mats. Drake is sprawled languidly about twenty feet away. The room down here is enormous and dominated by the three vast supercomputers, that are underlit to make them appear unnecessarily sinister. The three towering machines surround the workstation. Jane can't help but thinking that Nathan would be at home here.

Also on this level is a new and impregnable vault, the armoury, the cells and even a gym! Jane is pleased to see a complete medical bay, MRI scanner and freezers for dead bodies. In addition to a second state-of-the-art coffee machine there is also two vending machines. One dispenses "Artemis Black Fitness Chocolate", and the other "Artemis Black Wonder Tonic". A comfortable seating area (that incorporates Lilith's couch) is in the corner. If it wasn't for the complete absence of natural light, this place would match the west coast HQ.

Joshua and Benedict boot up the computer system and between them they manage to crash unit two. Unbelievably they have managed to break a third of the supercomputer within the first three minutes of having it.

Jane discovers that the way back to the main floor. There is a flight of stairs concealed behind an unopenable filing cabinet that comes out behind a fire hose. There is also a freight elevator in a storage cupboard that comes out in the carpark, right by a parking space that has been put aside for Artemis Black.

In the cells the agents find something suspicious. They have been used. One cell (not the one with the silver-reinforced door) has had the protective plastic wrap removed from the mattress. Someone stayed here. But who? And when did they get the chance? Joshua is unwilling to enter the cell, and it could be that he has developed terrible claustrophobia from his time as a statue. Benedict suggests a blood test and medical work-up might be a good idea on both Drake and Joshua. Jane agrees and wants to give them a full MRI scan. After all, they cannot rule out that one or both of them are possessed by brain bugs.

Drake is happy to undergo the process, but Joshua won't get into the MRI scanner without being anaesthetised. Jane runs every conceivable test she can think of on the pair and with the exception of noting severe external damage to Joshua's rectum can find nothing untoward. They put Josh on a stretcher and take him up in the lift and then around the building into the ground floor. They put him to bed in the domicile, and then return to check out the cell.

A forensic examination yields some success. The agents discover fibres from a pair of blue jeans and a blonde hair from a woman. Immediately, they begin to wonder if this has anything to do with Blackthorne's return to the land of the living. Could the blonde haired woman be the witch, Josephine McKenna? They send the hair off for analysis (under case number 0022-GCF) and return to their work upstairs.

As Josh continues to sleep off the anaesthetic the other agents consider their outstanding cases. They decide that since it has been on the books for almost as long as there has been a mid-west team it is finally time to investigate case ES174 - the body of civil rights activist Peter Ellis Dean, found after forty years in a Louisiana swamp.

A few hours later the group are at Wichita airport, sitting in a café and waiting for their flight to be called. It is here that they make a most alarming discover. The date on their tickets is Monday 9 April and not Monday 2 April. They query it and are told (with puzzled expressions) that today is the ninth! How can this be? Jane telephones her next-door neighbour Mrs Miggins who says it is the ninth. Jane's gun is fully loaded even though she discharged a shot this morning. Jane checks her box of cigars that she smokes as an offering to Ghede. A extra week's worth have been smoked. Today must be the ninth. So where did the last week go? The agents quickly return to headquarters abandoning case ES174 once again.

There is a record of them having logged into their machines on 2 April. The last file accessed was called "Jane's Shopping List". They conclude that Drake really was found on the doorstep on 2 April, but after that they lost a week. Checking the post and the CCTV logs show no record of the intervening time. Could it be that the agents themselves have erased the events of the last week? And if so, then why?

Jane telephones the west coast headquarters and talks to Schult. He confirms that they Jane phoned and talked to Todd on the second (a conversation Jane doesn't remember). But he is not forthcoming. Jane talks to Todd and discovers that Todd lent Jane money to buy new shoes after Bobby rang up an unexpectedly large bill at the vets.

Drake checks his foot locker and discovers that his favourite trainers are covered in an unknown black goo. How the hell did that happen?

Benedict discovers a card in his wallet bearing the legend "Special Agent Richard Coleman: Fraud Division". He phones Coleman who takes the call, thinking that Benedict is "getting back him" about an important matter. Coleman asks Ben whether he "got the figures". Benedict says that he didn't and asks Coleman to send them again. Coleman says that "the Society" is going quite well, and that he is waiting for our report on Dynamicorp. He reminds Benedict that he personally gave him more information on the Dynamicorp case while he was in Langley last Monday (the second). The figures from Coleman soon arrive by fax and turn out to be the accounts of the FBI Chartered Accountants Society of which Benedict is the treasurer. He is the accountant's accountant and it is time to the yearly books.

The agents reason that if they were in Langley then they must have flown there. They check the with the airline and discover that tickets were sold from Wichita to Norfolk, Virginia for agents Munroe, Oaxaca and Drake. So they flew there but Joshua didn't. The agents left Wichita at 12:00 CT and arrived in Norfolk at 14:00 EST. But there is no record of any return flight. So if they didn't come back, where did they go on to?

Jane checks with her vet. Bobby had injections costing $324 at 10:00am on the morning of the second. Paying that much might well mean Jane had to borrow money to buy shoes - she notices that she is wearing quite a fetching pair of Gucci shoes that she doesn't remember buying. But why would she had bought such an extravagant pair of shoes in the first place? She already has a pair similar to this she bought for when she went to see the president with Levin back in November. She telephones Dani to see if her sister can shed any light on this, but she cannot.

More clues of the missing week rear their heads. Benedict's handkerchief is filled with dried blood. There is a note in Jane's pocket written in Jane's hand that read: "Essential Darkness, Heart of a fawn, Earth stood upon." It sounds like a list of ingredients for a magic spell.

They check the whereabouts of Artemis Black on the second with his secretary. On that day he was at the White House in a meeting with Eisenstein. The following day, there is a note in his diary for a social lunch with "Schmictim". So did Jane meet with Black on 3 April at the White House? That might explain why she needed to buy new shoes - if she was away from Wichita and couldn't get the pair she already owned.

If they went somewhere they probably hired a car. If they hired a car, Drake probably crashed it. And yes, their insurance premiums have increased. They check the accident report and discover that Drake drove their 4×4 into a mine shaft in Winterset.

The agents begin to put things together. If the hair found down in the cells really was Josephine McKenna, then what about the APB that Jane put out on McKenna back in December? They check and discover that the APB was taken off the system on 1 April by offices in Norfolk, Virginia.

Joshua speaks to Special Agent Huck Goldbloom - a military liaison in Norfolk. He says that McKenna was arrested and detained at Langley. The agents realise that they must have flown to Virginia to visit McKenna. They telephone Langley and learn that McKenna was signed over into their custody on 7 April 2001.

Did they go to this mine to collect the "essential darkness" mentioned in Jane's list? They check the freezer in their new morgue and discover the cut up body of a fawn. It has been killed with a single 9mm shot, probably from Jane's gun.

Benedict then takes a call from May Flachenbach, the Dean of Drama at Dallas University who accuses the team of vandalising the area under their stage with a jackhammer. Was this the third thing on Jane's list? The earth Joshua was standing upon when the spell to petrify him was cast.

So the agents gathered these components over the space of a few days and then went to Dallas with McKenna on 7 April to perform the ritual. By cross-referencing with various airlines the agents discover the enormous amount of toing and froing between Langley and Dallas. However, none of this answers the question of why McKenna was in Wichita at all, and what happened to her after the ritual was complete, and what happened to their memories? Did the team make a deal to free her if she restored Josh?

Believing they have exhausted their Wichita leads, the team heads to Dallas, arriving at about 4:00pm. They head to the university and speak to campus cop, David Hope. He tells the agents that they spent Saturday night and the early hours of Sunday morning in the auditorium digging into the foundations with a jackhammer. Opinion is divided as to whether we were looking for the bodies of more serial killer victims or checking for radiation.

The agents search the scene and find the heart of a fawn on the ground. Four bites have been taken out of it. As a good Catholic, Benedict cannot believe that he was a part of this. The agents check out the local CCTV footage and see something quite remarkable. The footage shows the agents entering the building with a woman, although they cannot make out who it is. Hours later the camera clearly shows the dark-haired (and apparently deceased) Veronica Cunningham leaving on her own!

Obviously, Veronica should be dead so what the hell is going on here? Did the witches somehow swap identities? Was it Josephine killed in the car crash and not Veronica? Were the agents duped into believing they were dealing with Josephine when they were actually dealing with Veronica? And if so why did Veronica help restore Josh in the first place? Was it part of a deal the agents made? One they can no longer remember?

Certainly, no autopsy was performed on Veronica's body, and it would be very difficult to perform one now as her widower, Paul Cunningham, would obviously resist. The agents return to Wichita and search their own homes for further clues (they find nothing) before retiring for the evening.

Tuesday, 10 April 2001

Jane checks the CCTV around her apartment building. She is seen returning to her apartment alone at 9:00pm on Sunday 8 April. Back at HQ the agents check their flight records again. On Saturday 8th, there were three named agents flying back from Dallas: Ben, Alex and Jane. The ticket also alluded to a "+1". If this +1 was Joshua then how did Veronica get back to Wichita?

The agents show their indecisiveness and return to Dallas to investigate Josephine McKenna. They go to the apartment she shared with two other students from Dallas University: Jonathan Hicks and Jeffrey Murray. The two tell the agents that Josephine disappeared about three months ago. Her mother (Sheila) had been asking after her. They have no clue where she may have gone.

They tell the agents that Josephine had a number of friends in the Pagan Society on campus, and occasionally she brought them back to the apartment. The pair are extremely disparaging about Josephine's friends and considered her "too hot" to be hanging out with such people. They don't know the names of any of her friends. There was a gangly youth they called Giraffe-Boy and a couple of "fat chicks" whose names may have begun with the letter M.

By checking the Pagan Society website the agents are able to identify "Giraffe Boy" as Newtridge Hardy. Meanwhile Benedict goes through Josephine's post but there is nothing noteworthy - letters from her mother, her uncle who lent her money and an invitation to her cousin Tiffany's barmitzvah. Then the room-mates say that they have heard of Veronica Cunningham. In fact, Veronica picked Josephine up from this apartment on more than one occasion.

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