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Topic: Journal: G. Spinella 1928-1935 (Read 18 times)

FelicityBane
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Journal: G. Spinella 1928-1935
« Thread Started on Oct 20, 2008, 9:43pm »

JOURNAL: G. SPINELLA, 1928-1935

November 11th, 1928

Rituals continue apace, though they have taken on a darker tone. Were I not witness to them myself, I wouldn’t think that possible.

There is a new centerpiece to the rituals. It is a book, two feet on the side, visibly ancient. I do not know the book’s significance, as the textured and leathery binding bears no markings. The Tall Negro is the one who carries the book; Roberts once tried to take it from his hands to assist in carrying ritual implements and was soundly rebuked. No one else has repeated the mistake.

I am no longer allowed to witness the rituals. Roberts is now the only man who acknowledges my existence, though most often he takes to mocking my disrepair. It is true that I have not visited the hotel barber or tailor in over a year. There are wiser ways to spend my time.

I digress.

Roberts ensures that I witness no more rituals. He sets me off to menial tasks within the hotel’s vast basement rooms. He knows as well as I that I will not obey, that I will instead wait near the Zorian room’s entrance to hear what I can. I will not risk being seen, but I must witness as much as I can. Long ago I acknowledged my own impotence in this series of events; the Eye assures me that testament is enough. I shall take its word.

Yet I confess I do not know what I hear inside that room. Words that are most certainly Latin; I will have to see if the Zorian room’s library can help me in translation. I know for certain the nausea that accompanies each ritual, and I know I am not alone. Many of the hotel’s staff have taken ill in the past weeks. I can only describe the nausea as severe disorientation; one moment, north becomes south and then rights itself. Up becomes down. Where I am standing is not where I am actually standing, if only for a second.

The shifting of one’s internal compass, where what is visibly evident becomes false while remaining true, is subtle and yet profound. I am told one of the maids, a dusky-skinned woman of questionable Eastern European stock, is now given to night terrors.

And, unless I am mistaken, the nausea spells are growing longer with repetition. Last night I was unable to keep my balance for perhaps five minutes.

Of the surface world I cannot report. I am no longer a citizen of it.

[Entries from that day until mid-March are increasingly more successful attempts at transcribing the rituals within the Zorian room. At first there’s only scraps of what’s probably Latin, spelled by someone who obviously doesn’t know the language.

As the months march on, the transcriptions become better, and eventually the Latin is written double-spaced, as Spinella tries his hand at translating on the lines between.

What is hinted at in the scraps transcribed are magical workings on a profound, primal level; the literal reorientation of a whole landscape of magically potent land into something else. Astoria, a potent crossing of ley lines, is being transformed from a relatively “immature” (that is, undeveloped and untapped) font of power into a gateway. There isn’t enough in the journal to duplicate the process or even extrapolate enough to do it oneself; there’s only enough to give an idea of what happened.

Those familiar with geomancy have likely never seen anything quite so ambitious; the transformation of a powerful node has a ripple effect that could potentially alter the state of the entire world and the spiritual realms surrounding it, if only in subtle ways. And they would know of only one book that lives up to its claims to do just that.]

March 13th, 1929

The Eye speaks to me only furtively now, so preoccupied is it with the state of the hotel, and Astoria beyond it. It tells me that the staff is little more than a skeleton crew, now that the “troubles” have chiseled away at their ranks. The nausea that accompanied the rituals is now omnipresent, whether or not the Tall Negro and his men are within the Zorian room. Doctors, the Eye tells me, have been unable to find a physical source for all this discomfort. Nor will they ever.

Similar problems plague larger Astoria, its financial district in particular. Several of the new skyscrapers on Market Street have reported structural problems rooted in unexplainable shifts in their buildings’ foundations. The architects do not fear collapse, but it is not uncommon for a workday to be interrupted by a building’s 50 floors shaking for twenty minutes, accompanied by a most horrible grinding sound.

Though no one’s been harmed, the psychological effects are lasting. The Eye tells me there are larger troubles on Market Street, related to unwise stock market practices, and the instability of those steel towers is only further shaking people already on edge.

The Golden Astoria itself is mostly empty. Roberts informed me only yesterday that Frost has moved to a newly-constructed mansion in Eastgate, and until then I didn’t realize I had not seen Frost in several months.

The hotel, then, belongs to the Tall Negro in everything but title. This comes as no surprise to me, but the Eye grows ever more worried.

The Eye is peculiar. I do not pretend to comprehend what it is, only that it is perhaps the life of hotel; or, likely, the life of what the hotel sits on. Perhaps a red Indian graveyard?

But that, too, is unlikely. Its manner is that of a precocious child, eager to show its power for approval, scared of rebuke, frightened to be left alone. For those reasons I do not fear it. I feel it needs me and, now realizing I have not seen the sun in perhaps a year or more, I need it. If only because the Eye is the only thing left that makes sense to me.

September 3rd, 1929

The Golden Astoria is a hotel in name only. The last of the old staff has departed, and the facilities are now run entirely by Roberts and his men, coloreds all. While this would be financial suicide in other parts of the city, here it no longer matters. Our “guests” are all confederates of the Tall Negro, and of no more reputable stock than any of his underlings. Some, when they see me, call me the “white ghost” in jest.

The Tall Negro has not come to the Zorian room in two weeks, and the Eye tells me he is not within Astoria at all.

The Eye tells me more. A few of the skyscrapers on Market Street have been deemed structurally unsound, and many of the investment firms within have relocated to Steel Canyon. But the majority stick it out, many (I’m told) because they no longer have the means to relocate.

The nausea is now so pervasive that I hardly notice it. Many of the buildings now groan nightly, not including this hotel. But I can hear them. That this cacophony rises while Roberts and his witch doctors carry on their rituals, all guided by that heretical book, cannot be coincidence. The steel girders that define Astoria’s skyline are screaming their protest.

The Eye, during these times, is not just silent but vacant. It is as if it has sunk entirely within itself to hide.

October 31st, 1929

Much has gone wrong. The situation, even in the Zorian room, is so disconnected from previous experience that I have taken to hiding in the labyrinth of crates in the Astoria’s many basement rooms.

The growing malaise in the outside world has, according to the furtive whisperings of the Eye, come to a head. Unwise stock practices finally resulted as they must, and those who became millionaires by luck have lost everything overnight. Instant fortunes became insurmountable debt. This happened just two days ago, on Friday. And, even in the bowels of the hotel, I could hear those affected the worst hitting the pavement from great heights.

The scream and grind of brick, steel, and mortar accompanied the sound of so many people ending their lives. The combination is not one I am likely to ever forget.

Roberts and everyone else in the hotel departed Friday night, taking their hateful book with them. As far as I know, I am the only living soul still within the Golden Astoria.

Early Saturday morning, the emergency services came to clean the streets of bodies. Dozens had taken their lives, with a few unfortunate souls killed when the suicides fell on them. More than that, people were storming the banks all over the city, but those on Market Street were hit the hardest. Thousands of people clogged Market, with smaller groups of people driving or walking to or from. I believe only shellshock kept the mobs from becoming riotous.

And that is when, finally, inevitably, the skyscrapers collapsed. The rending of steel went, in a span of minutes, from troublesome to unbearable, and in rapid succession seven skyscrapers, each 40 stories or more, collapsed onto the streets below. And those thousands of people there to grab what paper money was left, those emergency services going about the grim task of cleaning up bodies, were caught under the weight of hundreds of tons of building. I like to think they all died instantly.

But there was more. While the outlying buildings of Astoria did not fully collapse, most suffered severe structural damage, killing dozens more. And a previously unknown system of caves beneath Moth Cemetery likewise collapsed, cutting great chasms through that large swath of land. Elsewhere, the dramatic shift of Astoria’s earth ruptured gas lines, creating fires across much of the neighborhood nearest Talos Island. Hundreds burned to death, while others leapt from tall buildings to avoid that fate. The Eye tells me that over 7,500 people died in less than two days.

The screaming of buildings has finally stopped. Curiously, the screaming of the survivors has not. The Eye has withdrawn its presence entirely, and I find myself alone. If I am to witness, I must have the courage to see Astoria again, with my own eyes.

November 2nd, 1929

I have never wept as I weep now.

Not for the sake of the thousands dead, and the hellish reconfiguration of what was once Paragon’s crown jewel. But because with much trepidation I finally set foot in the open air for the first time in over a year.

And I could see nothing. Not the grocer across the street, not the newsstand at the corner, not the proud skyline of Astoria, or what’s left of it. There was only fog. Dust, as well, and in the distance many tall pillars of fire. But for me, only fog and rubble.

I retreated into the basement again, and here I am now. The Eye is dead or disappeared. The food it provides me is gone.

I shall gather my courage again tomorrow.

December 13th, 1929

Astoria remains chaotic. I have now ventured out into it several times since my last entry, and yet I feel I still do not grasp what has truly happened here.

There was evidently a war of some kind. The National Guard was ordered in to put out the fires and search for survivors, but all those young men with their rifles met only their own deaths by the hundred. Roberts and his men (I suspect, because I cannot confirm) have come fully into their own, painted in the visage of their heathen gods, commanding their own armies of

I am meant to write down what I witness, and so I will. But I still do not fully believe what I have seen. Roberts’s confederates were commanding armies of corpses, animated by some unseen and imprecise hand. I saw them overtake a pocket of National Guardsmen. They are unkind to their victims, and do not know fear.

Minutes after the Guardsmen were killed, the colored heathen in command, through methods I wish I had not seen, raised their corpses to join his ranks.

And so it has gone. I have seen the caped vigilantes Statesman and the Dream Doctor attempting to save people or fight these legions of corpses, to little effect. The cursed fog works against them; though it blinds the sight to myself and these vigilantes, Roberts’s heathens and corpses seem not at all affected by it.

The Eye no longer makes its presence felt, even though I still find sanctuary in the Golden Astoria’s depths.

Has the world ended, I wonder? Or just mine?

« Last Edit: Oct 20, 2008, 9:43pm by FelicityBane »

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