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Good eeeeevening creepers and crawlies! Tonight is another perfectly putrid night to bring you another terrifyingly terrible story! ...or is that a terrible, terrifying story?
Let us once again join Lamberta Gunneholm as she has another run-in with the forces of darkness! Or rather, with a curious little statue. Bric-a-brac can be so decorative, don't you think? But you ought to be careful with what you collect and what you keep on your shelf. Sometimes you just don't know WHERE all those little statues and figurines come from... ...or WHAT they truly are.
Maybe Lamberta would have been best just throwing it away the moment she saw it! I think she'd admit that would have been the best course, by the time she finishes recounting the tale of...
The Horrible Carven Figure
Part 1: The Statuette
By Fenris49
At the time of the incident I defended Leonard Bradley from the accusations made against him, and have continued to do so throughout the years. Alas, my opinion did not count for much in exonerating the supposed perpetrator of the "San Brannagh Museum Massacre".
Fantastic though the picture may be that his account paints, there is enough evidence to convince me of the legitimacy of his story. Aside from this evidence, and my opinion of Bradley's character as a man of gentle nature, one would think that the way in which the five victims were killed would seem to preclude any human assailant... for what man or woman could ever have the strength to do such things as were done to the unfortunates?
My name is Lamberta Gunneholm, though within the time that this story takes place, the only Gunneholm of any import was my uncle, Roderick. Like everyone else, I worshipped him for his achievements in the world of science and knowledge, and on a more personal basis, for the good favor he showed me throughout my life. Reflecting back, I cannot point to anything I have achieved in one way or another that hasn't been a result of his influence upon me. Even this story is his doing, in that it was his aid that granted me access to my job at the California San Brannagh Museum of Science.
At the time of the massacre I was separated from my graduation from Brannagh University by only three year, though my time there had been supplemented with enough field research and laboratory work to make me the equal of many professors. I became a staff member of the museum one year after graduation, starting as an archivist, then not too long after as assistant curator to Warren Yeats, head of the anthropology department. My true aspiration had originally been to work with Oliver Plursen in the small but much esteemed Mythology department, but under Yeats I was given authority over two Conservation Scientists, Rodney Stachtbrect and Leonard Bradley.
Though at first I took Bradley to be little more than a man woefully out of his league, going through the motions in a field that required passion and initiative, I soon found him to be an engaging colleague, if annoyingly conservative at times.
Mayhap it was my own combative nature, but I never took a liking to Stachtbrect. Though not an immoral or indecent person, we clashed over his lab results enough and to such degrees that if his and Bradley’s roles in the dreadful affair to come had been switched I might not have been so very swift to stand to his defense.
Before I begin the account in earnest, there is one more thing I feel I must relate, a point that puts mine and Bradley’s defense under further scrutiny. Though dissimilar in most ways, our mutual interest was in matters that most people would have confined to the areas of fiction, but we at least paused to consider as being based in some degree of fact. Where Bradley’s interest originated from I do not know, but mine was doubtlessly inspired by my uncle’s own curiosity for the unknown. Though his work in physics and metaphysics will be forever beyond me, his research into the occult and spiritualism were the stepping stones from which I based my own fascinations.
Though believing in such wild and outlandish notions as pre-human civilizations and accounts of practical mysticism may discredit me in the eyes of some, I am not without support or peer in such beliefs. Bradley was one, and many a conversation was had between us two in our spare time. I must note that our interest was purely speculative; we were scientists first, and while willing to entertain belief in the unknown, I find accusations that I have participated in ritual ceremonies, voodoo rites and attempted to manifest demons to be insulting. Bradley's accusers will continue to discredit my testimony based on my willingness to entertain such ideas. They will claim that indulging in flights of fantasy caused us to conspire together for an alibi that we assumed, because of our immersion in fantastic lore, would be believed.
Once more will I state that though I did not personally witness any remarkable events throughout the course of this matter, I will continue to protest in favor of Bradley’s innocence. In the years that have followed after the incident I have personally witnessed things that have been trying upon my perception of reality, and therefore increase my conviction that Bradley’s account is the truth. Yet what stands on record to this day is the story given by the police who say that Leonard Bradley, on April the 14, suffered a lapse of sanity from work-induced and personal stress and brutally attacked and killed two of his colleagues, another museum employee, and two innocent bystanders who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
On March 2nd a package was given to me, unmarked by return address. It had filtered down from the museum mail-room through one channel after another, delivered to Yeats’ desk, and then eventually to mine.
Within the package, carefully wrapped in a plain white dish-cloth and further padded by crumpled newspaper, was a statuette composed of a polished, though by then slightly nicked and smudged, black material, heavy and approximately 11 cm in height. It was immediately apparent as a carving of a woman in a state of exaggerated pregnancy, limbs undefined at the ends and head bearing circular, horizontal bands. The most significant detail however was a collection of curling protrusions on the sides and back of the head which I at first took to be a rendering of hair put into buns, but combined with the jutting length of the blank face I later revised my assessment and decided to describe the spirals as horns, thus revealing the statuette to be goat-headed in the anthropomorphic fashion of most animal-headed deities.
Curious though it was, there was little to initially suggest it was valuable in any way. The museum would occasionally receive items crafted by individuals naively hoping to fool expert minds into believing they were being given an unusual, ancient artifact. The expertly polished state of the statuette and my casual observations of the material it was crafted from led me to believe thusly of the item, and that perhaps a half-hearted attempt had been made to age it by kicking it through the dirt.
To my own embarrassed admission the statuette served as a paper-weight on my desk for a month. Though I took it to be a work of modern craftsmanship, and thus lacking any fascination from an anthropological standpoint, I couldn’t help taking an interest in it from the mere viewpoint of an appreciator of art, and thus was willing to let it linger about in my personal workspace. The crafter who had made it was not unskilled, for the lack of details seemed to betray not a lack of talent but rather a taste for artifacts of a similar theme. History did not readily bring to mind any goat-headed goddesses, horn-bearing deities typically being male, though certain descriptions within the Necronomicon recalled Shub Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods. It was clearly an idol of fertility, an important and powerful theme in all pantheons excepting many modern, or monotheistic spiritualities. If it was not anthropologically significant, it was at least personally interesting.
I cannot begin to guess what might have happened had it remained in my office indefinitely. Perhaps things would have played out the same, their hand forced by some other event which would have called the statuette’s true significance into question. However, beginning on April 10, I became obstructed from my duties at the museum by recurring cases of insomnia. At first I attempted to weather through it, but as the weariness built I would retire home for a few days. Such time off would quickly revitalize me, but no sooner would I return to work than I would begin to experience building unease and restlessness that would once again begin to impair my duties.
Throughout the entire ordeal to follow I would place only the smallest significance upon this period of illness that I suffered, and I never thought to record or recall the dreams I experienced upon the brief occasions when I would sleep. Now, many years later with the entire affair put into perspective, the onset of my ill-health so close in proximity to receiving the statuette is impossible to ignore. When I was home away from it I would swiftly recover, but upon returning to my office where the statuette resided, I would begin to suffer once again. I have since counseled with a family doctor who performed hypnosis upon me in order to aid in recovering any memory of the dreams I experienced while I was ill. The sessions were for the most part unrevealing, though it did bring to light that the statuette had been held in my mind and obsessed upon far more than any interest I recall having taken in it, or that I should have taken for such an unremarkable item.
Whatever the cause of my illness might or might not have been, it was indirectly because of my time spent at home that I was able to finally uncover the possible value of the statuette. Advised not to pursue anything work-related whenever I was resting, I took the opportunity to invest in my personal interest in the study of a recently acquired, first-printing edition of select volumes of the Livre de Yvessre set, books one, three and seven, acquired for an extravagant amount by my friend Eliza Gercieska at an antiquities auction in France, whom I had reimbursed for the purchase. The books I obtained, though far from a complete set of what was a ten-book series written by the French sorcerer Yvessre Thibault Toussaint, still proved to be a subject of great fascination which I had been anticipating the time to properly study and translate. Not only written in a combination of French, Romanian and Greek, a first-edition such as this was also printed in code, requiring the use of the cipher which was fortunately widely distributed through journals written on the subject. The Livre de Yvessre had of course been translated before and reprinted in english, but the purpose of my own studies was in part to compare my own translations to the published versions, on the off-chance of errors or translations subject to opinion on their meaning.
I was in the middle of my third sick-leave brought on by the troubling insomnia, and had paused from my translations to flip ahead and take account of the etchings when a particular illustration caught my attention. There was no mention of it in any of the text, and it was untitled. I quickly ran through the index of the etchings, diagrams and illustrations once more, but was unable to locate it at all, that small little sketch in the upper left hand corner of page 298.
As I said, the text seemed to bear no reference whatsoever to the illustration that I could currently find, as if it had been a mere doodle on the author's part inserted on a whim; but, to my ultimate fascination and shock, the illustration was clearly and without a doubt a rendering of the goat-headed statuette I had received weeks earlier.
My illness pushed from my mind by this revelation and diminished by the weekend spent at home I returned to the museum the next day ready to pursue this discovery.
Examining the statuette with renewed interest I was thankful of the unkempt state of my office that had kept the statuette’s packaging from being disposed of in the garbage. The dish-towel it had been wrapped in was plain, stained from prior use. The newspaper was dated not too long before the package had initially arrived at the museum. These facts I made a note of for later when I would begin my investigation into its origin.
The statuette itself, even under my discerning eye, yielded no additional clues. Suspicion warned me that perhaps it was yet of unremarkable modern craft, made by someone who had noticed the same illustration I had seen, or discovered its likeness from some other source unknown to me, some secret wealth of myth that the Livre de Yvessre had been based upon, or that had been extrapolated upon from the book’s own example.
At this point I finally brought the statuette to Bradley and Stachtbrect for analyzation. I related to them my discovery and the story of its origins, which I had gathered from talking to all the persons who had taken a hand in passing it along through the museum. Though inwardly I was fascinated, I maintained an attitude of mild curiosity, stating that I wanted them to study it on the off-chance there was anything unusual to be gleaned, or that it should actually prove to be dated originating from long ago.
Immediately my interest was validated, as Bradley and Stachtbrect both showed instant bafflement over what the material it was composed of was. When they were unable to identify it by sight, though they hazarded several guesses, they began serious study, careful that something so curious should not be damaged by any processes they might employ.
It was shortly around this point that I began my investigation into the statuette’s origin, leaving it in Stachtbrect and Bradley’s care, still technically ordered away on sick leave. I would not return to the museum again until after the terrible event had already occurred. Though details of the research that would take place in my absence were not lacking when related to me by Bradley at a later date, and from notes kept on the computer and in raw form at the museum laboratory, I regret not keeping a more consistent flow of communications between my staff and myself.
I now consider the final details given to me before I left on my investigation frighteningly ominous; before proceeding to more complex examinations, a simple submersion test was made to examine the volume of the statuette. Its weight compared to its overall size was incredibly high, indicating a material density unlike any that could be reckoned.
The problem I first faced was of course the lack of a return address. Gaining the aid of the postal employees however, against all odds I was able to talk to a man who not only remembered who had brought the package into the office, but knew his home address, having previously been a carrier on that very route.
From what I was told, the sender was possibly an eighteen year old boy named Alex Falstrode just on the edge of the suburban neighborhoods outside the Farm Valley area on the east of San Brannagh. I confirmed by calling the house and setting up an appointment with the boy’s mother, preparing to carry myself as an authority of ambiguous nature, should I be questioned.
In meeting with the young man he first denied knowledge of the package. I quickly came to sense that he was afraid of law involvement for one reason or another, which I bluffed and threatened him with, though I was unaware of just why he was afraid that they should take interest.
The confession eventually came that he had obtained the statuette from a friend named Hal Ubaldi. With this came a revelation of fair importance. Six months prior, in a case that had gone unsolved, the museum had faced a minor break-in which resulted in the loss of a number of items from the gift-shop and several fairly inexpensive specimens from an exhibit on natives local to the area prior to English colonization. The culprits had not been found, through several of the exhibit pieces began to turn up in pawn shops. Ubaldi, I was told, had been the culprit, along with another boy whom Falstrode was unaware of the identity of.
Falstrode himself denied direct involvement in the crime, though he admitted that Ubaldi told him of it afterwards, and that he had long known of his friend’s criminal ventures. Falstrode went on to say that he had discovered the statuette among Ubaldi’s possessions, and assuming it to be the last of the stolen museum items, the others already sold off, had decided to return it, albeit anonymously to avoid being implicated in any crime his friend had committed.
Falstrode became nervous at this point as he described the statuette, expressing that he had been overcome with a temporary desire to possess it. He said that he was puzzled by the curious hold the statuette held over him. The desire had ultimately turned to a strange revulsion. This, combined with his moral nature, led him to send it back to the museum.
Eventually when I thought I’d learned all I could from him, (even, I noted, a general air of unrest about him, indicative of a lack of sleep) I inquired after Ubaldi. I was then told that the boy was currently in custody; not by police officials, but secured at a mental institution.
Being neither a friend or contact of Ubaldi it took a small degree of finagling on my part in order to gain an interview with him. Gaining an account of the reasons for his incarceration from his doctor, Anton Svago (who was intrigued to learn of Ubaldi’s previously unknown criminal record), I was told that he had been admitted by his own father, a man named Houston Ubaldi. Hal, it was reported by Houston, had attempted to seriously injure him with a pocket-knife after Houston had innocently enough (by his account) gone into his son’s room to borrow some spare change, and inadvertently surprised the boy in a peculiar state. As Houston’s record went on to say, Hal had become strangely private over a small course of time. Though never a terribly sociable boy, he’d taken to locking himself in his room all day, foregoing usual trips outside and denying visitors. Houston had harbored suspicions that Hal had begun to talk to himself in the privacy of his room, but had made nothing of it, excusing it as the radio or a phone conversation even though Hal, when he did show himself in the rest of the house, would display the habit of muttering indiscernibly. On the day of the incident, when Houston entered his son’s room, he had found Hal kneeling naked on the floor muttering fervently to himself. At first apologetic and slightly amused by what he took to be nothing more than an embarrassing infringement, Houston had quickly become terrified as Hal had leapt to his feet screaming, frothing at the mouth, and brandishing a switch-blade. He had been pursued downstairs where he had sustained a single minor injury to his arm before he’d subdued his son, holding him inside a closet until the police could arrive.
“I couldn’t be sure, it was all so quick,” Houston had told the doctors. “But now that I think of it, I’m not so sure he was talking to himself, so much as talking at something he was holding in his hands.”
Eventually I was permitted to see Ubaldi himself. As I had been told, he was a young man, younger than Falstrode, but mental turmoil had taken a notable physical toll upon him, combined perhaps with signs of insomnia. I was fortunate enough to catch him in what appeared to be one of his saner moments. When I broached the topic of the statuette to him, I was afraid that he would immediately become useless, an expression of insane outrage seeming to consume him. Quickly he restrained himself, replacing it with a smug, canny air, though obviously for the sake of those who were watching. He repeatedly made excuses for his moments of attempted murder, against his father and any institution staff, blaming others for provoking him, saying that anyone in his position would have done the same but how he was learning to control himself and would never do it again. Of all those he blamed, the greatest, yet calmest accusations were laid on his father. His father, he said, was the cleverest provoker of all, at all times pretending to be stupid, pretending to know nothing, but all the while watching and waiting for the right moment he could take her away. ‘Her’ he would speak of without explanation, though I soon came to realize by ‘her’ he was referring to the statuette. He explained how his father was jealous, and how he wanted what was shared between Hal and it.
I wisely steered the conversation away from any inquiry Ubaldi made concerning the statuette’s current whereabouts, as I sensed that any interrogation would immediately end should he discover I was the latest owner of his precious possession. Slowly, tempting him by playing upon his pride in his criminal acts, I dragged from him where he had obtained the statuette in the first place.
Again, laying blame upon all but himself while simultaneously apologizing and feigning repentance, he described a break-in he had performed some three months ago. On a whim, without any apparent reason for targeting this location specifically, he had broken into a pawn-shop. At first pillaging all the floor items, Ubaldi had become interested in a heavy safe. Having a knack for safe-cracking, he had broken into it and discovered a single item only. At first disappointed with the lack of obvious valuables, he had none the less decided to take for his own the small, black statuette he had found within.
Though Ubaldi would not named the pawn shop in question, I made a list of all pawn brokers in the Farm Valley area, resolving to expand my search if nothing turned up there. Such a course was eventually required, as nothing came of my investigations until my search finally came to include a pawn-shop in the upper quarter of San Brannagh near the wharfs, just when I was beginning to entertain the notion that I had been deceived.
As I had with every other pawn-broker, I approached the man behind the counter under the pretense of being an official of some manner or other, perhaps a journalist at the least. I inquired about recent break-ins he might or might not have suffered.
The wharf-side pawn broker answered yes, he had suffered a distressing break-in and theft. I gave him a description of the statuette, to which he immediately underwent a change of character, his mild disinterest and annoyance at my presence changing to an ominous calm that reminded me disturbingly of the calculating tone that Ubaldi had assumed. I attempted to inquire from whom he had acquired the statuette, but no answer would he give until he knew what had become of it. Eventually, under his stubborn questioning, I foolishly revealed that I was an employee of the Museum where the statuette was currently undergoing study.
Instantly the man set upon me violently, shouting indistinguishable words. Though the intensity of his madness caught me fully by surprise and seemed to lend him an inhuman strength and speed, in the long run I was lucky for it, for if he had been of a sane enough mind to coolly perpetrate my murder, I would have been done for, shot by the pistol I would later realize he kept behind the counter where he’d been standing when he became unexpectedly violent.
Though his aggression first caught me by surprise, sending me fleeing back through the shop and frantically over-turning shelves to slow his attack, I regained my composure quickly enough to reply to the situation effectively.
On any given day, I was usually armed with a Glock 17 concealed in a holster under my coat, a can of pepper spray in the left pocket of my pants and a taser in my hand-bag. The situation not being so dire as to require the gun, and the madness of my attacker too zealous to be stopped by its threat or hindered by the spray, I employed the taser to perfect effect, stunning him long enough to secure him in a caged back room of the store.
Realizing that no answers would be forthcoming from my prisoner, I held off on immediately summoning the police in order to take my time to rifle through his papers, searching for a record of the statuette and who had brought it in. I eventually located such a paper hidden apart from the others, as if the pawn broker had wanted to cover up the statuette’s existence within his shop but unwilling to completely destroy the paper on the off-chance it should be needed. Copying down all the notes I required, I then replaced the paper and phoned for the police, who held me up for the rest of the day and late into the night questioning me on the details of what had transpired.
Andre Nfrede was the name of the man who had sold the statuette to the pawn broker. Immediately, he represented the anomaly of the of the statuette’s previous owners, excepting Alex Falstrode, in that Nfrede had given it up, while Ubaldi and the broker had both presented psychotic rage when confronted with the notion of losing possession of it.
Easily locating Nfrede through the phone-book, I came into contact with his wife who was at first unwilling to divulge Nfrede’s whereabouts. After prodding, I was told that he had checked himself into a mental hospital on the same day he had sold the statuette. This information I met with little surprise, for the pattern of the statuette’s ownership was starting to become predictable. Much to my annoyance, I discovered that Nfrede was a voluntary patient of the very same mental institution in which I had first interviewed Ubaldi.
Returning to the institution I was greeted warmly by Svago, who was happy to have gained the insights and knowledge my visit to Ubaldi had given him. This time I was more easily permitted the interview I sought with Nfrede, further inciting Svago’s interest in that the two men should share details of their cases.
The differences in Nfrede’s manner was instantly apparent. Though he had the same sleepless look, I found that although a similar madness filled Nfrede, the manner in which he played it out was almost entirely different; not of rage, but of sad loss.
Without a hint of deception he began answering my inquiries, telling me where he had gotten the statuette. He and a friend had broken into a shop belonging to a collector of rare items. The shop, he said, was Lindell Antiques and Collectibles. Though they had planned and marked out the items they intended to steal well in advance, the moment he’d spied the statuette, located on the upper floor in a study, he had been consumed with desire for it, pocketing it without telling his partner.
Having received the name of the statuette’s proper owner it seemed, there was no more reason for me to continue our conversation; but Nfrede had gone on without my prompting, as if needing to discuss it, and I had listened with morbid interest.
“She,” he began, referring to it as ‘she’ the same way Ubaldi had. “She had my heart from the first second. It was an unnatural attraction, the power of which I couldn’t combat. I kept her secret from my partner, and from my wife. Afraid that they might try to take her from me, afraid they wouldn’t understand. How could they, when even I didn’t understand at first? There was a beauty to her that captivated me; not only in her femininity, the depiction of such a proud state of womanhood... There was even allure in her bestial aspect, something deep and primal, something animal within me that was attracted to it in turn.
“At first I carried her with me wherever I went, but soon grew afraid that she might tumble from my pocket and become lost. I built a place for her in the basement... the basement, which I intimidated my wife into avoiding. There in the dark I gave her my heart, my soul- everything I had to give.”
Here Nfrede had looked at me with tears in his eyes, and given out a choking sob.
“But it wasn’t enough for her. No matter that I knew I could love her more than anyone else could, that no one else would want her as much as me. I gave my heart to her- but she would not give her’s to me, and rejected mine, throwing it back in my face. All because of my single flaw, that’s haunted me since I can remember. Even my wife hates me for it, though she won’t admit it except when she seeks for a way to truly hurt me. But she- she was remorseless, and in the end I had to give her up. If I‘d had my way, cruel as she was, I would have yet worshipped her forever- But she would not stay, and against my will I had to release her. For you see, I was born flawed. The doctor’s have always told me that nothing can be done for it; I’m sterile, and will never be able to give a woman a child to bear.”
Though I did not initially draw the conclusion from the shop’s name, upon meeting with Mr. Lindell the next day, owner of Lindell Antiques and Collectibles, I realized that I had met him some years prior, an elderly colleague of my uncle’s and a ranking member of an organization they were both members of.
Lindell did not remember me, but was affable as soon as he learned of my relation to his friend. Eager though I was to reach the conclusion to the statuette‘s mystery it was slow in the arriving, as we spent the better part of an afternoon in discussion about my uncle’s current project. I had been only peripherally aware of the details, but Lindell soon filled me in, that my uncle was busy garnering funding from a like-minded aristocrat who had expressed interest in his ideas pertaining to dimensional planes and claims that proof could be obtained of the existence of parallel realities. I laughed when Lindell spoke of my uncle’s designs for a portal that could breach the planes, taking him to be in jest.
Eventually I was able to bring up the statuette. Lindell’s interest, though intense, was refreshing in that he seemed neither frantic nor mad. He had held out little hope of ever seeing it again after it had been stolen from his shop fourteen months earlier; he felt especially bad as it had not been his in truth, but was the property of another colleague, a Professor Julius Grant, whom he had given assurances to that he would deal with the statuette with utmost care. Grant had given it to him initially under the hope that Lindell could shed more light upon the purportedly frightening circumstances it had been found under. It turned out Lindell had been able to find some precedent to it in writing. I interjected here by describing my encounter with it in the Livre de Yvessre, to which he showed great interest. He told me his knowledge of it had been based exclusively on a collection of notes he had made under circumstances he took a playful delight in remaining aloof about, telling me only that he had discovered persons who supplemented their rituals with a statuette much like the one he had obtained from Grant.
Lindell would not tell me of Grant‘s own ordeal in obtaining the statuette, insistent that I hear it from Grant himself who would tell it to best effect. Grant was currently out of state, but Lindell, upon phoning him, assured me that his eagerness to find out what my researchers might have uncovered, as well as wanting to hear from me the morbid odyssey the statuette had taken, was compelling him to abandon his current duties and fly in at the soonest possible interval.
Even with the curious haste Grant seemed to be taking to reach San Brannagh it was a full day before he would arrive. When he did, though it was already night, we all eschewed sleep, I eager to hear what Grant had to say, and he, though seeming haunted by his memories, bore a passion that would demand the story be told. Upon meeting him we again made small talk as we headed back to Lindell’s shop where we planned to take dinner. Through the meal minor discussion continued, again of my uncle’s current project, of my own researches and studies and of unrelated work at the museum. By dinner’s end, Grant fell silent and asked no more questions, giving Lindell a nod and receiving a smile and a wink in return, making me feel distinctly as if I had passed some manner of test.
Grant swore me to no secrecy concerning his story, but I would be foolish to have assumed that it was an account to be repeated at my leisure or for entertainment. It is now with reluctance that I tell it in the service of full disclosure concerning all events dealing with the wretched statuette.
TO BE CONCLUDED...
Part 2: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8261198/
Let us once again join Lamberta Gunneholm as she has another run-in with the forces of darkness! Or rather, with a curious little statue. Bric-a-brac can be so decorative, don't you think? But you ought to be careful with what you collect and what you keep on your shelf. Sometimes you just don't know WHERE all those little statues and figurines come from... ...or WHAT they truly are.
Maybe Lamberta would have been best just throwing it away the moment she saw it! I think she'd admit that would have been the best course, by the time she finishes recounting the tale of...
THE HORRIBLE CARVEN FIGUREThe Horrible Carven Figure
Part 1: The Statuette
By Fenris49
At the time of the incident I defended Leonard Bradley from the accusations made against him, and have continued to do so throughout the years. Alas, my opinion did not count for much in exonerating the supposed perpetrator of the "San Brannagh Museum Massacre".
Fantastic though the picture may be that his account paints, there is enough evidence to convince me of the legitimacy of his story. Aside from this evidence, and my opinion of Bradley's character as a man of gentle nature, one would think that the way in which the five victims were killed would seem to preclude any human assailant... for what man or woman could ever have the strength to do such things as were done to the unfortunates?
My name is Lamberta Gunneholm, though within the time that this story takes place, the only Gunneholm of any import was my uncle, Roderick. Like everyone else, I worshipped him for his achievements in the world of science and knowledge, and on a more personal basis, for the good favor he showed me throughout my life. Reflecting back, I cannot point to anything I have achieved in one way or another that hasn't been a result of his influence upon me. Even this story is his doing, in that it was his aid that granted me access to my job at the California San Brannagh Museum of Science.
At the time of the massacre I was separated from my graduation from Brannagh University by only three year, though my time there had been supplemented with enough field research and laboratory work to make me the equal of many professors. I became a staff member of the museum one year after graduation, starting as an archivist, then not too long after as assistant curator to Warren Yeats, head of the anthropology department. My true aspiration had originally been to work with Oliver Plursen in the small but much esteemed Mythology department, but under Yeats I was given authority over two Conservation Scientists, Rodney Stachtbrect and Leonard Bradley.
Though at first I took Bradley to be little more than a man woefully out of his league, going through the motions in a field that required passion and initiative, I soon found him to be an engaging colleague, if annoyingly conservative at times.
Mayhap it was my own combative nature, but I never took a liking to Stachtbrect. Though not an immoral or indecent person, we clashed over his lab results enough and to such degrees that if his and Bradley’s roles in the dreadful affair to come had been switched I might not have been so very swift to stand to his defense.
Before I begin the account in earnest, there is one more thing I feel I must relate, a point that puts mine and Bradley’s defense under further scrutiny. Though dissimilar in most ways, our mutual interest was in matters that most people would have confined to the areas of fiction, but we at least paused to consider as being based in some degree of fact. Where Bradley’s interest originated from I do not know, but mine was doubtlessly inspired by my uncle’s own curiosity for the unknown. Though his work in physics and metaphysics will be forever beyond me, his research into the occult and spiritualism were the stepping stones from which I based my own fascinations.
Though believing in such wild and outlandish notions as pre-human civilizations and accounts of practical mysticism may discredit me in the eyes of some, I am not without support or peer in such beliefs. Bradley was one, and many a conversation was had between us two in our spare time. I must note that our interest was purely speculative; we were scientists first, and while willing to entertain belief in the unknown, I find accusations that I have participated in ritual ceremonies, voodoo rites and attempted to manifest demons to be insulting. Bradley's accusers will continue to discredit my testimony based on my willingness to entertain such ideas. They will claim that indulging in flights of fantasy caused us to conspire together for an alibi that we assumed, because of our immersion in fantastic lore, would be believed.
Once more will I state that though I did not personally witness any remarkable events throughout the course of this matter, I will continue to protest in favor of Bradley’s innocence. In the years that have followed after the incident I have personally witnessed things that have been trying upon my perception of reality, and therefore increase my conviction that Bradley’s account is the truth. Yet what stands on record to this day is the story given by the police who say that Leonard Bradley, on April the 14, suffered a lapse of sanity from work-induced and personal stress and brutally attacked and killed two of his colleagues, another museum employee, and two innocent bystanders who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
On March 2nd a package was given to me, unmarked by return address. It had filtered down from the museum mail-room through one channel after another, delivered to Yeats’ desk, and then eventually to mine.
Within the package, carefully wrapped in a plain white dish-cloth and further padded by crumpled newspaper, was a statuette composed of a polished, though by then slightly nicked and smudged, black material, heavy and approximately 11 cm in height. It was immediately apparent as a carving of a woman in a state of exaggerated pregnancy, limbs undefined at the ends and head bearing circular, horizontal bands. The most significant detail however was a collection of curling protrusions on the sides and back of the head which I at first took to be a rendering of hair put into buns, but combined with the jutting length of the blank face I later revised my assessment and decided to describe the spirals as horns, thus revealing the statuette to be goat-headed in the anthropomorphic fashion of most animal-headed deities.
Curious though it was, there was little to initially suggest it was valuable in any way. The museum would occasionally receive items crafted by individuals naively hoping to fool expert minds into believing they were being given an unusual, ancient artifact. The expertly polished state of the statuette and my casual observations of the material it was crafted from led me to believe thusly of the item, and that perhaps a half-hearted attempt had been made to age it by kicking it through the dirt.
To my own embarrassed admission the statuette served as a paper-weight on my desk for a month. Though I took it to be a work of modern craftsmanship, and thus lacking any fascination from an anthropological standpoint, I couldn’t help taking an interest in it from the mere viewpoint of an appreciator of art, and thus was willing to let it linger about in my personal workspace. The crafter who had made it was not unskilled, for the lack of details seemed to betray not a lack of talent but rather a taste for artifacts of a similar theme. History did not readily bring to mind any goat-headed goddesses, horn-bearing deities typically being male, though certain descriptions within the Necronomicon recalled Shub Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods. It was clearly an idol of fertility, an important and powerful theme in all pantheons excepting many modern, or monotheistic spiritualities. If it was not anthropologically significant, it was at least personally interesting.
I cannot begin to guess what might have happened had it remained in my office indefinitely. Perhaps things would have played out the same, their hand forced by some other event which would have called the statuette’s true significance into question. However, beginning on April 10, I became obstructed from my duties at the museum by recurring cases of insomnia. At first I attempted to weather through it, but as the weariness built I would retire home for a few days. Such time off would quickly revitalize me, but no sooner would I return to work than I would begin to experience building unease and restlessness that would once again begin to impair my duties.
Throughout the entire ordeal to follow I would place only the smallest significance upon this period of illness that I suffered, and I never thought to record or recall the dreams I experienced upon the brief occasions when I would sleep. Now, many years later with the entire affair put into perspective, the onset of my ill-health so close in proximity to receiving the statuette is impossible to ignore. When I was home away from it I would swiftly recover, but upon returning to my office where the statuette resided, I would begin to suffer once again. I have since counseled with a family doctor who performed hypnosis upon me in order to aid in recovering any memory of the dreams I experienced while I was ill. The sessions were for the most part unrevealing, though it did bring to light that the statuette had been held in my mind and obsessed upon far more than any interest I recall having taken in it, or that I should have taken for such an unremarkable item.
Whatever the cause of my illness might or might not have been, it was indirectly because of my time spent at home that I was able to finally uncover the possible value of the statuette. Advised not to pursue anything work-related whenever I was resting, I took the opportunity to invest in my personal interest in the study of a recently acquired, first-printing edition of select volumes of the Livre de Yvessre set, books one, three and seven, acquired for an extravagant amount by my friend Eliza Gercieska at an antiquities auction in France, whom I had reimbursed for the purchase. The books I obtained, though far from a complete set of what was a ten-book series written by the French sorcerer Yvessre Thibault Toussaint, still proved to be a subject of great fascination which I had been anticipating the time to properly study and translate. Not only written in a combination of French, Romanian and Greek, a first-edition such as this was also printed in code, requiring the use of the cipher which was fortunately widely distributed through journals written on the subject. The Livre de Yvessre had of course been translated before and reprinted in english, but the purpose of my own studies was in part to compare my own translations to the published versions, on the off-chance of errors or translations subject to opinion on their meaning.
I was in the middle of my third sick-leave brought on by the troubling insomnia, and had paused from my translations to flip ahead and take account of the etchings when a particular illustration caught my attention. There was no mention of it in any of the text, and it was untitled. I quickly ran through the index of the etchings, diagrams and illustrations once more, but was unable to locate it at all, that small little sketch in the upper left hand corner of page 298.
As I said, the text seemed to bear no reference whatsoever to the illustration that I could currently find, as if it had been a mere doodle on the author's part inserted on a whim; but, to my ultimate fascination and shock, the illustration was clearly and without a doubt a rendering of the goat-headed statuette I had received weeks earlier.
My illness pushed from my mind by this revelation and diminished by the weekend spent at home I returned to the museum the next day ready to pursue this discovery.
Examining the statuette with renewed interest I was thankful of the unkempt state of my office that had kept the statuette’s packaging from being disposed of in the garbage. The dish-towel it had been wrapped in was plain, stained from prior use. The newspaper was dated not too long before the package had initially arrived at the museum. These facts I made a note of for later when I would begin my investigation into its origin.
The statuette itself, even under my discerning eye, yielded no additional clues. Suspicion warned me that perhaps it was yet of unremarkable modern craft, made by someone who had noticed the same illustration I had seen, or discovered its likeness from some other source unknown to me, some secret wealth of myth that the Livre de Yvessre had been based upon, or that had been extrapolated upon from the book’s own example.
At this point I finally brought the statuette to Bradley and Stachtbrect for analyzation. I related to them my discovery and the story of its origins, which I had gathered from talking to all the persons who had taken a hand in passing it along through the museum. Though inwardly I was fascinated, I maintained an attitude of mild curiosity, stating that I wanted them to study it on the off-chance there was anything unusual to be gleaned, or that it should actually prove to be dated originating from long ago.
Immediately my interest was validated, as Bradley and Stachtbrect both showed instant bafflement over what the material it was composed of was. When they were unable to identify it by sight, though they hazarded several guesses, they began serious study, careful that something so curious should not be damaged by any processes they might employ.
It was shortly around this point that I began my investigation into the statuette’s origin, leaving it in Stachtbrect and Bradley’s care, still technically ordered away on sick leave. I would not return to the museum again until after the terrible event had already occurred. Though details of the research that would take place in my absence were not lacking when related to me by Bradley at a later date, and from notes kept on the computer and in raw form at the museum laboratory, I regret not keeping a more consistent flow of communications between my staff and myself.
I now consider the final details given to me before I left on my investigation frighteningly ominous; before proceeding to more complex examinations, a simple submersion test was made to examine the volume of the statuette. Its weight compared to its overall size was incredibly high, indicating a material density unlike any that could be reckoned.
The problem I first faced was of course the lack of a return address. Gaining the aid of the postal employees however, against all odds I was able to talk to a man who not only remembered who had brought the package into the office, but knew his home address, having previously been a carrier on that very route.
From what I was told, the sender was possibly an eighteen year old boy named Alex Falstrode just on the edge of the suburban neighborhoods outside the Farm Valley area on the east of San Brannagh. I confirmed by calling the house and setting up an appointment with the boy’s mother, preparing to carry myself as an authority of ambiguous nature, should I be questioned.
In meeting with the young man he first denied knowledge of the package. I quickly came to sense that he was afraid of law involvement for one reason or another, which I bluffed and threatened him with, though I was unaware of just why he was afraid that they should take interest.
The confession eventually came that he had obtained the statuette from a friend named Hal Ubaldi. With this came a revelation of fair importance. Six months prior, in a case that had gone unsolved, the museum had faced a minor break-in which resulted in the loss of a number of items from the gift-shop and several fairly inexpensive specimens from an exhibit on natives local to the area prior to English colonization. The culprits had not been found, through several of the exhibit pieces began to turn up in pawn shops. Ubaldi, I was told, had been the culprit, along with another boy whom Falstrode was unaware of the identity of.
Falstrode himself denied direct involvement in the crime, though he admitted that Ubaldi told him of it afterwards, and that he had long known of his friend’s criminal ventures. Falstrode went on to say that he had discovered the statuette among Ubaldi’s possessions, and assuming it to be the last of the stolen museum items, the others already sold off, had decided to return it, albeit anonymously to avoid being implicated in any crime his friend had committed.
Falstrode became nervous at this point as he described the statuette, expressing that he had been overcome with a temporary desire to possess it. He said that he was puzzled by the curious hold the statuette held over him. The desire had ultimately turned to a strange revulsion. This, combined with his moral nature, led him to send it back to the museum.
Eventually when I thought I’d learned all I could from him, (even, I noted, a general air of unrest about him, indicative of a lack of sleep) I inquired after Ubaldi. I was then told that the boy was currently in custody; not by police officials, but secured at a mental institution.
Being neither a friend or contact of Ubaldi it took a small degree of finagling on my part in order to gain an interview with him. Gaining an account of the reasons for his incarceration from his doctor, Anton Svago (who was intrigued to learn of Ubaldi’s previously unknown criminal record), I was told that he had been admitted by his own father, a man named Houston Ubaldi. Hal, it was reported by Houston, had attempted to seriously injure him with a pocket-knife after Houston had innocently enough (by his account) gone into his son’s room to borrow some spare change, and inadvertently surprised the boy in a peculiar state. As Houston’s record went on to say, Hal had become strangely private over a small course of time. Though never a terribly sociable boy, he’d taken to locking himself in his room all day, foregoing usual trips outside and denying visitors. Houston had harbored suspicions that Hal had begun to talk to himself in the privacy of his room, but had made nothing of it, excusing it as the radio or a phone conversation even though Hal, when he did show himself in the rest of the house, would display the habit of muttering indiscernibly. On the day of the incident, when Houston entered his son’s room, he had found Hal kneeling naked on the floor muttering fervently to himself. At first apologetic and slightly amused by what he took to be nothing more than an embarrassing infringement, Houston had quickly become terrified as Hal had leapt to his feet screaming, frothing at the mouth, and brandishing a switch-blade. He had been pursued downstairs where he had sustained a single minor injury to his arm before he’d subdued his son, holding him inside a closet until the police could arrive.
“I couldn’t be sure, it was all so quick,” Houston had told the doctors. “But now that I think of it, I’m not so sure he was talking to himself, so much as talking at something he was holding in his hands.”
Eventually I was permitted to see Ubaldi himself. As I had been told, he was a young man, younger than Falstrode, but mental turmoil had taken a notable physical toll upon him, combined perhaps with signs of insomnia. I was fortunate enough to catch him in what appeared to be one of his saner moments. When I broached the topic of the statuette to him, I was afraid that he would immediately become useless, an expression of insane outrage seeming to consume him. Quickly he restrained himself, replacing it with a smug, canny air, though obviously for the sake of those who were watching. He repeatedly made excuses for his moments of attempted murder, against his father and any institution staff, blaming others for provoking him, saying that anyone in his position would have done the same but how he was learning to control himself and would never do it again. Of all those he blamed, the greatest, yet calmest accusations were laid on his father. His father, he said, was the cleverest provoker of all, at all times pretending to be stupid, pretending to know nothing, but all the while watching and waiting for the right moment he could take her away. ‘Her’ he would speak of without explanation, though I soon came to realize by ‘her’ he was referring to the statuette. He explained how his father was jealous, and how he wanted what was shared between Hal and it.
I wisely steered the conversation away from any inquiry Ubaldi made concerning the statuette’s current whereabouts, as I sensed that any interrogation would immediately end should he discover I was the latest owner of his precious possession. Slowly, tempting him by playing upon his pride in his criminal acts, I dragged from him where he had obtained the statuette in the first place.
Again, laying blame upon all but himself while simultaneously apologizing and feigning repentance, he described a break-in he had performed some three months ago. On a whim, without any apparent reason for targeting this location specifically, he had broken into a pawn-shop. At first pillaging all the floor items, Ubaldi had become interested in a heavy safe. Having a knack for safe-cracking, he had broken into it and discovered a single item only. At first disappointed with the lack of obvious valuables, he had none the less decided to take for his own the small, black statuette he had found within.
Though Ubaldi would not named the pawn shop in question, I made a list of all pawn brokers in the Farm Valley area, resolving to expand my search if nothing turned up there. Such a course was eventually required, as nothing came of my investigations until my search finally came to include a pawn-shop in the upper quarter of San Brannagh near the wharfs, just when I was beginning to entertain the notion that I had been deceived.
As I had with every other pawn-broker, I approached the man behind the counter under the pretense of being an official of some manner or other, perhaps a journalist at the least. I inquired about recent break-ins he might or might not have suffered.
The wharf-side pawn broker answered yes, he had suffered a distressing break-in and theft. I gave him a description of the statuette, to which he immediately underwent a change of character, his mild disinterest and annoyance at my presence changing to an ominous calm that reminded me disturbingly of the calculating tone that Ubaldi had assumed. I attempted to inquire from whom he had acquired the statuette, but no answer would he give until he knew what had become of it. Eventually, under his stubborn questioning, I foolishly revealed that I was an employee of the Museum where the statuette was currently undergoing study.
Instantly the man set upon me violently, shouting indistinguishable words. Though the intensity of his madness caught me fully by surprise and seemed to lend him an inhuman strength and speed, in the long run I was lucky for it, for if he had been of a sane enough mind to coolly perpetrate my murder, I would have been done for, shot by the pistol I would later realize he kept behind the counter where he’d been standing when he became unexpectedly violent.
Though his aggression first caught me by surprise, sending me fleeing back through the shop and frantically over-turning shelves to slow his attack, I regained my composure quickly enough to reply to the situation effectively.
On any given day, I was usually armed with a Glock 17 concealed in a holster under my coat, a can of pepper spray in the left pocket of my pants and a taser in my hand-bag. The situation not being so dire as to require the gun, and the madness of my attacker too zealous to be stopped by its threat or hindered by the spray, I employed the taser to perfect effect, stunning him long enough to secure him in a caged back room of the store.
Realizing that no answers would be forthcoming from my prisoner, I held off on immediately summoning the police in order to take my time to rifle through his papers, searching for a record of the statuette and who had brought it in. I eventually located such a paper hidden apart from the others, as if the pawn broker had wanted to cover up the statuette’s existence within his shop but unwilling to completely destroy the paper on the off-chance it should be needed. Copying down all the notes I required, I then replaced the paper and phoned for the police, who held me up for the rest of the day and late into the night questioning me on the details of what had transpired.
Andre Nfrede was the name of the man who had sold the statuette to the pawn broker. Immediately, he represented the anomaly of the of the statuette’s previous owners, excepting Alex Falstrode, in that Nfrede had given it up, while Ubaldi and the broker had both presented psychotic rage when confronted with the notion of losing possession of it.
Easily locating Nfrede through the phone-book, I came into contact with his wife who was at first unwilling to divulge Nfrede’s whereabouts. After prodding, I was told that he had checked himself into a mental hospital on the same day he had sold the statuette. This information I met with little surprise, for the pattern of the statuette’s ownership was starting to become predictable. Much to my annoyance, I discovered that Nfrede was a voluntary patient of the very same mental institution in which I had first interviewed Ubaldi.
Returning to the institution I was greeted warmly by Svago, who was happy to have gained the insights and knowledge my visit to Ubaldi had given him. This time I was more easily permitted the interview I sought with Nfrede, further inciting Svago’s interest in that the two men should share details of their cases.
The differences in Nfrede’s manner was instantly apparent. Though he had the same sleepless look, I found that although a similar madness filled Nfrede, the manner in which he played it out was almost entirely different; not of rage, but of sad loss.
Without a hint of deception he began answering my inquiries, telling me where he had gotten the statuette. He and a friend had broken into a shop belonging to a collector of rare items. The shop, he said, was Lindell Antiques and Collectibles. Though they had planned and marked out the items they intended to steal well in advance, the moment he’d spied the statuette, located on the upper floor in a study, he had been consumed with desire for it, pocketing it without telling his partner.
Having received the name of the statuette’s proper owner it seemed, there was no more reason for me to continue our conversation; but Nfrede had gone on without my prompting, as if needing to discuss it, and I had listened with morbid interest.
“She,” he began, referring to it as ‘she’ the same way Ubaldi had. “She had my heart from the first second. It was an unnatural attraction, the power of which I couldn’t combat. I kept her secret from my partner, and from my wife. Afraid that they might try to take her from me, afraid they wouldn’t understand. How could they, when even I didn’t understand at first? There was a beauty to her that captivated me; not only in her femininity, the depiction of such a proud state of womanhood... There was even allure in her bestial aspect, something deep and primal, something animal within me that was attracted to it in turn.
“At first I carried her with me wherever I went, but soon grew afraid that she might tumble from my pocket and become lost. I built a place for her in the basement... the basement, which I intimidated my wife into avoiding. There in the dark I gave her my heart, my soul- everything I had to give.”
Here Nfrede had looked at me with tears in his eyes, and given out a choking sob.
“But it wasn’t enough for her. No matter that I knew I could love her more than anyone else could, that no one else would want her as much as me. I gave my heart to her- but she would not give her’s to me, and rejected mine, throwing it back in my face. All because of my single flaw, that’s haunted me since I can remember. Even my wife hates me for it, though she won’t admit it except when she seeks for a way to truly hurt me. But she- she was remorseless, and in the end I had to give her up. If I‘d had my way, cruel as she was, I would have yet worshipped her forever- But she would not stay, and against my will I had to release her. For you see, I was born flawed. The doctor’s have always told me that nothing can be done for it; I’m sterile, and will never be able to give a woman a child to bear.”
Though I did not initially draw the conclusion from the shop’s name, upon meeting with Mr. Lindell the next day, owner of Lindell Antiques and Collectibles, I realized that I had met him some years prior, an elderly colleague of my uncle’s and a ranking member of an organization they were both members of.
Lindell did not remember me, but was affable as soon as he learned of my relation to his friend. Eager though I was to reach the conclusion to the statuette‘s mystery it was slow in the arriving, as we spent the better part of an afternoon in discussion about my uncle’s current project. I had been only peripherally aware of the details, but Lindell soon filled me in, that my uncle was busy garnering funding from a like-minded aristocrat who had expressed interest in his ideas pertaining to dimensional planes and claims that proof could be obtained of the existence of parallel realities. I laughed when Lindell spoke of my uncle’s designs for a portal that could breach the planes, taking him to be in jest.
Eventually I was able to bring up the statuette. Lindell’s interest, though intense, was refreshing in that he seemed neither frantic nor mad. He had held out little hope of ever seeing it again after it had been stolen from his shop fourteen months earlier; he felt especially bad as it had not been his in truth, but was the property of another colleague, a Professor Julius Grant, whom he had given assurances to that he would deal with the statuette with utmost care. Grant had given it to him initially under the hope that Lindell could shed more light upon the purportedly frightening circumstances it had been found under. It turned out Lindell had been able to find some precedent to it in writing. I interjected here by describing my encounter with it in the Livre de Yvessre, to which he showed great interest. He told me his knowledge of it had been based exclusively on a collection of notes he had made under circumstances he took a playful delight in remaining aloof about, telling me only that he had discovered persons who supplemented their rituals with a statuette much like the one he had obtained from Grant.
Lindell would not tell me of Grant‘s own ordeal in obtaining the statuette, insistent that I hear it from Grant himself who would tell it to best effect. Grant was currently out of state, but Lindell, upon phoning him, assured me that his eagerness to find out what my researchers might have uncovered, as well as wanting to hear from me the morbid odyssey the statuette had taken, was compelling him to abandon his current duties and fly in at the soonest possible interval.
Even with the curious haste Grant seemed to be taking to reach San Brannagh it was a full day before he would arrive. When he did, though it was already night, we all eschewed sleep, I eager to hear what Grant had to say, and he, though seeming haunted by his memories, bore a passion that would demand the story be told. Upon meeting him we again made small talk as we headed back to Lindell’s shop where we planned to take dinner. Through the meal minor discussion continued, again of my uncle’s current project, of my own researches and studies and of unrelated work at the museum. By dinner’s end, Grant fell silent and asked no more questions, giving Lindell a nod and receiving a smile and a wink in return, making me feel distinctly as if I had passed some manner of test.
Grant swore me to no secrecy concerning his story, but I would be foolish to have assumed that it was an account to be repeated at my leisure or for entertainment. It is now with reluctance that I tell it in the service of full disclosure concerning all events dealing with the wretched statuette.
TO BE CONCLUDED...
Part 2: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8261198/
Category Story / Fantasy
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 120 x 89px
File Size 56 kB
I am rather enjoying this so far, but if I might offer one piece of constructive criticism: twice you have your character approach someone under the pretense of being some vague authority figure. This is a little disruptive to the mostly specific descriptions of everything else in the story, and I'd recommend, if a fabrication is necessary to that part of the plot, at least making up some position to use as the cover story.
You could be right... I think I added one of the instances in a re-write, forgetting I'd already said it once, so it is a little repetitive at least. Though the vagueness isn't really so much a lack of description as just that's how she did it, not really pretending to be anything in particular in case she got caught in a lie, but just sort of IMPLYING she has the right to be asking questions and whatnot. ...but I'll make a note of it for further re-writes.
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