Visions from a future

It's been almost a year since I last wrote in here, and I think this may be because I have been too shaken up by what happened.
Whoever would like to relive the Black Heart mystery should be able to do so by following the clues scattered around town, but the conclusions drawn by those events are that the monks of Malkuth resuscitated to fight the Beast have been destroying all of the Van Creed places around town, and that the Beast itself is at last gone. Well, those are the good points... In truth, I hate having to admit that I have been used by this creepy insane man to "fix" the Beast and call back to life the most dangerous Evil that Babbage has ever known.
I have trouble to sleep at night since Jason Moriarty came back. I wake up from my nightmares and see shadows creeping around me. I do not only fear for myself, but also for all of my friends.

I guess he stayed quiet and hidden during the last months, because there was not more trouble than usual in the city. He had been spotted a few times though, at the Oiling festival, and more recently in the Port, where he had an apparently courteous conversation with two other gentlemen, although anyone knowing him would get shivers running down their spines listening to what he said.

A few days ago, a coded message came to the attention of Mr Tenk, and many citizen gathered at the Town Hall yesterday to find out what would be happening.
Gadget thought it was all a trap, but we just were all too curious to stay away.
Suddenly, the vision of a door flickered right in the middle of the meeting room before vanishing. It was like a ghost door, appearing for just a few seconds in our world and then going back to limbo.
I looked up to see if someone was playing a trick on us. I heard you could make a big image appear in the air, with some light and a smaller image. Just like making animal shadows on a wall with your fingers maybe. But there was nobody in the gallery, and soon we heard Tepic screaming outside.
We all ran out of the Hall to see a big shiny twirly sphere of light right up in the sky in front of the City Hall's stairs.
I s'pose it was a kind of a gate because a huge airship came through it and landed at the bottom of the stairs in a roaring noise. A very old looking man got off from the vessel and walked up to us with difficulty. He asked for the Mayor and as Mr Tenk stepped forward, he gave him a little box.
We were all quite puzzled, but we couldn't ask many questions as he seemed to be in a hurry. He just said "Do not believe him." and then went back into his ship, speaking to himself, hoping he would be able to make it.
We just watched him flying back up and disappearing behind the City Hall when suddenly a loud BANG noise resonated in the air. Loki rushed towards the corner of the City Hall and we followed him to see the wreckage pieces of the strange airship cluttering the cobblestones, smoke billowing from the burning metal.
We looked amongst the pieces, but no body was to be found... He must have desintegrated completely, or burnt to ashes...
Back at the bottom of the stairs, Mr Tenk somehow opened the box the old old man gave him, which liberated a kind of bot. With an open book in front of it.

Mister Tenk transported it into the Hall of exposition, or Hall of Inventions, I don't remember how it's called... There we examined it better, and after the Mayor triggered it, its mechanical arm started to move and write signs on the book in front of it.
Miste Tenk was in awe at the details of the mechanics and I'm afraid he is planning on taking it all apart to see how it works... But we still managed to take a look at what the bot was writing and I have to say that I didn't really like that story...
In the meantime, a newcomer arrived, and introduced himself as the new supervisor for the Van Creed society. He said he was sent as a replacement for his predescessor. I guess he was talking about Jasper Renfold, who ended burnt by Willard Steamweaver in the middle of the City Hall.
That new Van Creed guy was interested in the Writing Bot and I think he wanted to take it with him, or maybe just to read what it was writing, but we were all around and not looking particularly friendly. He didn't seem to mind though, and said he'd just come back later.
By now, we have learnt not to trust the Van Creed bunch, even though they can be quite informative sometimes. We thought they had all been destroyed by the monks of Malkuth, but I suppose some of them had survived, or maybe they are all over the world anyway and the Malkuth couldn't find every of their little hideout... The presence of that new Van Creed supervisor does mean that they are coming back to Babbage though, so something big is certainly going to happen soon... Big and not actually pleasant.

After he left, we talked about what had happened, and what was written in the book. Zaida said that the very old man who came through the gate smelled like Jimmy, but Jimmy answered he didn't smell (which is true, except when he's been running in the sewers).
Then we started to question what was written in the book. Why was it talking about us? Why was there Mr Tenk, Miss Kaylee, Mister Cleanslate in it? Why Victor Mornington and why Jimmy, Triky and I? How did that old man know about us? And why that story talking about us described such an apocalyptic chaos in Babbage...?
Mister Mornington told us about the time gates... That would be just like the gate between worlds that Moriarty opened with the Professor Eliot's device, but it would link two different times instead of two different worlds... That is quite hard to believe really, but some details are very troubling :
1) The airship the very old man was flying looked a lot like the one Jimmy built for the AetherCorp. Except fancier, with more stuff on it.
2) In the book written by the Bot, Jimmy is sent back by Victor, in a kind of time travel capsule.
3) Zaida thinks the old man smelled like Jimmy.
So could that old man be Jimmy from the future sent back to us? And maybe the time travel makes you grow very older..? Or maybe he travelled a lot towards other times before finding the right one?
The idea of this old man being him upset Jimmy a little I think, but he's tough, he should get over it, and the Professor Kristos Sonnerstein said he could come to see him whenever he wanted if he needed to.

If we believe that time travel can exist, then the future described in the book written by the Bot is not nice at all... All of my friends dead, except Jimmy, who is gone somewhere in his capsule, Piermont Landing in flames, the whole of Babbage covered in crabby things that sound quite nasty, and a man, who appears to have triggered all of that. A man who can flash electrical energy from his fingers.
I know of a man whom I think would be able to generate this future world of chaos. That same man who already once brought Old Gods swirling like Doom over New Babbage with their huge tentacles. This man who was still thought to be dead last year, before being brought back to life in a new body, a new potentially invincible body...
Jason Moriarty.

If this is true, then we need to do something to stop him. The urchins will be having a secret urgent meeting tonight in the hideout, and hopefully, Gadget can tell us about this new society they have been planning with Nat, and the devices he has been working on.

While sitting in the hideout, waiting for the meeting to start, two questions keep circling in my head.
Who is this person that the old man told us not to believe?
And why, in the book, my character regrets not to have listened to Triky?

I guess the time is not yet to come when I will get some nightmare-free sleep...

The Beast takes a Bite...

 I have not been around the streets of Babbage much lately, and of course everything seems to happen while I'm not there...

Gadget's "Beest Trap" has been tested by the beast itself, but sadly it has been defeated... And Nat got injured in the process, victim of the beast's ferocious appetite. Gadget managed to photograph the Beast, and Nat explains it all better than me in his journal.

He also told me about that hooded man Gadget and him met and who warned them about the beast. He seemed to know it very well and try to protect us urchins from it.

I questionned Nat about that man and he answered he looked like a monk, but able to fight, and that he had a huge belt, with a symbol on it. And that symbol, we already saw it last year on a stone behind Loki's shops in the cobblestone houses, and on the tombs in the crypt of Malkuth...

 Those tombs are the ones of three grand worshippers of Malkuth, according to the letter found on the table in the room Arthur Celtington was renting above Loki's shops in the cobblestone houses, across the canal from the Absinthe cafe.

When I asked Mister Underby about Old Gods last year, he told me that Malkuth was the God of our world, the material plane, and that there were ten worlds in total, all ruled by a different god, and that our world was the "lowest" one, where Malkuth was all powerful, but that in the nine other worlds, the other gods would beat him up. Also, the letter about the Worshippers of Malkuth says something about Malkuth being a kind of connection between our world and the others, which strangely reminds me of the gate opened by Jason Moriarty above the Old Imperial Theatre, three years ago... Maybe the gate has never been properly closed and some influences from the other worlds still manage to reach ours, "waking up" the beast inside the statue, or even letting it slip into our world whereas it wasn't there before?

About at the same time, or soon after, Mr Cleanslate intercepted a radio message from the Van Creed, stating that their headquarters were being attacked by hooded robed men... Seems too much of a coincidence to me. Those men must be Worshippers of Malkuth. Why attacking the Van Creed headquarters though? Do they have something to do with the Beast that the Worshippers of Malkuth are looking for? Did they bring it here? Or do they just have useful informations about it? Could be. The Van Creed seem to have files about everything and everyone..

Whatever the Worshippers of Malkuth do to stop that Beast, it is not enough, and Miss Bookworm and Mister Baroque found an awful puddle of blood next to a child drawing of the Beast and a teddy bear right in front of the City Hall... We believe it is poor little Victor Wunderlich aka Ally Wunder who got snatched by the Beast... Searchings of the sewers and catacombs have been carried out and the Babbage Militia has been warned, but for the moment, no sign of Victor...

Last of all, Mister Blindside, the archaeologist hired by Loki, seems to have disappeared as well...

And it all begins...

The Black Heart.

Urchin Beest Trap!

When I arrived in Babbage Square this evening, to check on the statue, I saw Gadget with his puppy Socks, talking with a gentleman and a lady.

(photo credit : Gadget Starsider)

He told me that a beast had tried to eat his puppy and a man in a black coat ran after it, telling him to stay behind.

I asked Gadget what the beast was like, and he said it looked like a giant baby covered in blood and it was saying "Gobble... gobble..." and it wanted some flesh.

(photo credit : Gadget Starsider)

Poor Socks looked very shocked!

Gadget thought that the beast might have something to do with the open statue, and I agree, now remembering what Mister Blindside the archaeologist said about the scar in the statue looking like some frightening symbol of womanhood. Was that "baby" born from the statue?

Either way, Gadget decided that he wanted to take a picture of it, and he found a huge photographic equipement. He also decided that we should trap the beast, and he started to set up some wires across the street.

He's not called "Gadget" for nothing. He's got all kinds of things in his pockets and can build ingenious devices in no time. 

He soon finished to set up his trap and then we thought that would be better to add a sign for the citizen of Babbage who can read, so they don't trip on the wire and get caught too.

Soon, the sign was ready and placed near the trap, and Gadget triggered it to demonstrate how it would work. Whoever would pull the wire on the ground by tripping onto it would trigger the trap and get entangled and then hung upside down from the rope above inside a big rope net.

And we got another confirmation that the trap was working well when Miss Adele walked by and got caught too because she didn't read the sign...

Then Jimmy arrived and we decided to add a bait for the beast to be attracted there and walk into the trap. Jimmy made up a fake puppy and perched it onto the warning sign, but then Miss Adele pointed out that the beast could snatch the puppy without even triggering the trap and finally Jimmy attached the bait dangling from the upper rope right above the wire.

Gadget set up his photographic apparel in front of the whole, and everything was set and ready for the beast to be caught!!!

The Scar

 Yesterday night was the famous Bonfire and Fireworks night on the bridge between the Absinthe Cafe and the Old Imperial Theatre in Babbage Square.

Each year, Loki's celebration of the Fifth of November is attended by a major crowd of Babbagers, and this night was no exception.

The sky was set alight with rainbows of exploding rockets, and on its little raft on the canal, poor Guy Fawkes burnt to its death once more.

After that much applauded show, Jimmy decided to go back and see the Artifact, as it was just down the street from the bridge.

Soon, lots of other Babbagers followed him, and stumbled upon Mister Bernard Blindside, the archaeologist Loki had asked for help.

Mister Blindside was standing in front of the statue, staring at the bloody scar now ripping it open... He was gutted it got damaged like that, and even suspected it was a street urchin mischief night trick, but we swore we didn't do it. Which is true!

Then we asked lots of questions and Mister Blindside told us he estimated the artifact to be about seven to eight hundreds years old, according to his data, and that it was made of tough ceramic. A very well made ceramic too, suggesting that who ever had this made was of a high order. The blood though, if it was blood, appeared to be fresh.

And the heartbeat was gone.

Mister Holmes examined the scene, with his detective ways, and concluded the scar was made from the inside and not from the outside. He also said he would analyze the blood to find out if it was human, rat or something else.

Then everyone started to think aloud and give their hypothesis of what could have happened. Some wondered if something was inside the statue and broke free, or if someone opened it and released whatever was inside. Others shivered thinking the blood on the floor came from someone who was standing in front of the statue when it ripped open. There was a huge discussion about how on Earth it could have open from the inside, if the heat of the torch nearby could have helped the ceramic crack open, and if the thing was frozen inside and the blood flew out while unfreezing.

Then Mister Blindside observed it almost looked like a case casket for mummification and I jumped on the occasion to state that was my opinion too. I do think there was a mummy of some kind inside. With a beating heart. And blood obviously. And eight hundreds years old I guess.

But people wouldn't believe me and said mummies were dried up and organs removed and yadda yadda, and Mister Blindside added that it could not fit because the artifact was not Egyptian, and that early Medieval Dark Age did not have mummification.

Then Brother Riddler reiterated his hypothesis of the thing inside being frozen, and then they wondered how it could have survived the burning process of the kiln. And Miss Janus said the ceramic could have protected what was inside from the heat.

Mister Holmes said the scar was made from inside, and I believe him, because he must know. And Miss Aeon suggested that something or someone could have woken up the thing inside, even if they didn't rip the statue open themselves. And I agree with that too.

Mister Blindside then noticed we were refering to the big opening as a "scar" and found it interesting because it did look like one, and then he added something I'm not quite sure I understand : "or perhaps a terrifying symbol of womanhood". That remark got Miss Janus scowling so I guess it wasn't very nice.

Nat thinks that this is all related to Triky's death, as it happened at the same place. I told him the statue was eight hundreds years old and Triky died only last year... He replied that maybe he knew it was there, and maybe it gave him power joining his soul there. I'm not really sure, but thinking about it, Triky's death could be the trigger that slowly awakened the thing inside the statue.

Anyway, Mister Blindside is supposed to go to the library this morning and said he would report his findings to Mister Holmes and to Miss Janus I think.

In the meantime, we've got a monster of some kind wandering in the streets of Babbage... And maybe the one who woke it up?

Jason Moriarty's body was never found, was it...?

See also Miss Chernov's Journal !

Raising from the Dead

 Jimmy and I went back yesterday night to the place where the statue was half buried, to see how the work of Mister Blindside the archaeologist was progressing.

The statue had now been totally dug out and raised vertically as if it was standing.

Jimmy said that he thought the heartbeat we could hear was louder than the last time, and also even faster. I can't say if it was faster, but that is possible. Although it may be louder only because it was still half buried before and so the sound was harder to hear?

Rich joined us soon after and he too was creeped out by the statue. To me, it more and more looks like a coffin. Although the "hole" in place of the face intrigues me...

Maybe Jimmy is right and it is more like a medieval knight statue. It would explain the bump in the front, looking like he is holding a sword under his robe.

While exploring the rest of the site, I discovered a very little hole in a corner, beneath the broken floor.

Jimmy, Rich and I wriggled down the hole and soon found ourselves walking in a dark, damp narrow way, from which we could smell very strongly the nearby sewers.

 We reached a deadend, but as Jimmy stated, that looks like a good new hiding place!

The Living Statue

Yesterday night, Jimmy and I went to the site behind the Old Imperial Theatre where Loki's old factory exploded last year, and where Triky died...

Loki had told us about some kind of pottery he found there while cleaning it up, and he called an archaeologist named Bernard Blindside to tell him what it was and if it was worth some money.

 

 The rumbles were delimited by thin string lines and two little bottles had been left there, as well as digging trowels or something.

The "pottery" itself looked more like the emerged part of a stone-made statue of some kind. Like a hooded robed figure, a priest maybe. Jimmy said it looked like a medieval statue. Maybe a knight. I thought it could be a coffin too, with a skeleton inside.

We got closer to examine it better, and we started to hear a regular sound, definitely coming from under the statue, or maybe inside it...

The sound resembled a heartbeat.

Later, Caspian and Miss Sky and Mister Scottie joined us, and they too heard the heartbeat. Mr Scottie thought it might be a machinery inside the statue, and that it could have been triggered recently because nobody noticed the sound earlier.

I don't know. As Jimmy remarked, so many strange things happened in the last years, why not a statue with a beating heart?

Miss Sky looked at the statue and said the whole block could be the heart itself, as it was vaguely shaped like one.

Once again I don't know.

But I know I won't be sleeping in the hideout anytime soon. It's much too close to there and I don't want a live statue to come strangle me in my sleep!

I hope we can meet Mister Blindside soon. Maybe he can tell us how old that thing is, and WHAT on Earth it is.