It had been a month since Amicia came home. She was ready for her next mission. Her leg had long since healed. Her shoulder no longer made her wince every time she rotated it. The bruises on her back had cleared up. A miraculous recovery by the standards of modern medicine. A recovery that would’ve been considered outright occult in the olden days of Salem. Luckily, Amicia lived in the modern age.
A modern age that included Araña’s network. Amicia had finally gotten a ping on her phone from the network. There were two pieces of information waiting for her. One was a recording. The other was a recent article published by a newspaper based out of Walland, Tennessee. The network played the recording. It was an interview with someone named Daphne Wright. The quality of sound led Amicia to believe the interview was recorded on something very old.
“This is Doctor Jebediah Singleton of the Eastern State Hospital. Today’s date is August 13th, 1973. I am recording today’s session at the orders of a senate committee, inquiring about the quality of care given to patients here.”
The Eastern State Hospital, as it was known in 1973, was discovered to be providing inadequate care to its patients just 2 years prior. In 1971, Representative Richard Kriegs led an unannounced post-midnight visit into the hospital. There, he discovered patients being kept in inhumane conditions in an aged building. The building itself had aged considerably since its founding in 1886. Back then, it was known as The East Tennessee Hospital for the Insane.
A committee would be called at the orders of Governor Winfield Dunn after Krieg’s discovery in 1971. In the following years, the committee would find many problems in the hospital. It was understaffed for one. The staff they had were often untrained and overworked. In addition, patients would be found living in squalor. It was an embarrassment for the hospital. An embarrassment that was an echo of what another governor had found at this exact same hospital in 1956. Governor Frank Clements toured the facility almost 20 years prior and found more than 900 patients sleeping on floor pallets due to a lack of beds. A finding he would call sad, but not surprising.
Doctor Singleton’s voice played on.“The patient I am interviewing here is Mrs. Daphne Wright. Mrs. Wright was left in our care by court order. She was found not guilty of first degree murder of her husband. Instead, the court found her guilty of manslaughter in 1967. We have been providing treatment for her for 6 years now. The woman has delusions about what happened during that fateful night her husband died.”
There was a flicker on the recording. A sound of a door opening and closing played on Amicia’s phone. There were sounds of shuffling before the doctor’s voice came again.
“Good Afternoon Mrs. Wright. How are you today?”
A soft voice answered his question. She sounded tired and resigned. “I’m the same as I am everyday here. What do you want, doctor? It’s been years since my last session.”
The doctor made a nervous clearing of his throat. “Ahem, Now as you know Mrs. Wright, we offer weekly sessions here.” There was a click. Another click sounded before their voices played again. It was if the doctor stopped the recording for some reason.
Daphne’s voice spoke when the recording came back, “Yes. I must be mistaken. The days just blur in here you know. It’s been exactly one week since our last session, doctor.” Her voice sounded much more contrite with a hint of anger.
“Very good Mrs. Wright. I know you’ve stated for the record your own version of events for the night your husband died. I think it would be good for your treatment if we went over it again.”
“Why? What’s the point? Nobody believed me back then. Nobodies gonna believe me now.”
“Please Mrs. Wright. Humor me.” the doctor said. The doctor’s voice made it clear his request wasn’t one she could refuse.
Daphne sighed an annoyed sigh, “Fine. What do you want to know.”
“The police said you called them that night Daphne. Is that true?”
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
“Yes.”
“Why would you do that if you murdered your husband?” the doctor callously asked.
Through gritted teeth, Daphne said, “I did not, murder Greg.”
“They found you that night, covered in blood. On your bed, the police found the skin of your husband. No body, just his skin. Hair and all. If you didn’t kill him, then what happened?”
“I don’t know. I remember we went to bed. Then I woke up cause it was cold. When I turned on my lamp, I noticed our window was open. I saw something outside our window. I was gonna get up from bed and look out. Then I realized that thing was on me.”
“What thing Daphne?”
“It was Greg’s..” Daphne didn’t finish her sentence.
“It was Greg’s what, Mrs. Wright?” the doctor pushed. She didn’t respond. “Answer the question Mrs Wright.” He demanded. He ordered her to give an answer, but Daphne couldn’t finish her sentence. Instead all Amicia heard was small sniffling sounds. Eventually the doctor continued on.
“As you can see, while the committee might make claims about our effectiveness, the patients here can be difficult to treat. Daphne Wright has yet to admit her guilt about the death of her husband. Without a certain amount of truth, the excellent and caring staff here can do little. At the end of the day, it is the responsibility of the patient to treat themselves. At least to a certain degree.”
Amicia felt sympathy for the poor woman. She had been clearly distressed and the doctor was just so cold. So callous. He treated Daphne as if she was just an annoyance. An afterthought when she should’ve been his priority as a patient. Amicia waited to see if anything more would play on the recording, but nothing.
The other piece of information was the article. It was written by a man named Jeff Lennart. His article claimed that people around Walland had started seeing someone lurking outside their windows at night. It started off as just one or two people in the community. Someone would make a post online about how their security camera had been set off with no one around. Then someone else would say that their dog had started barking at night.
Yet others in the community had experienced something much more harrowing. One man had his car windshield smashed into as he was leaving for work one morning. He claims that someone tried to pull him out of his car. They almost succeeded until one of his neighbors came over after hearing the noise. A woman said she had seen someone rummaging in her bedroom one day after she’d come home from work. She ran outside and called the police. By the time they had arrived, there was no one in the house.
What started as one offs had begun to escalate. People started to look over their shoulders. They all knew someone was creeping around their homes. No one knew what this person’s intentions were. Was he after money? Was he a murderer? Who knows. Then it stopped for a little bit. Just as everyone seemed to relax, a series of photos began to spread.
A couple of teenagers were in front of their school. They were members of some club taking pictures for the school’s yearbook. A couple of members of the football team and some cheerleaders were standing in front of the school in the photo. But in the background, you could make out something hung on top of the flagpole. Lennart had convinced one of the kids to send him a copy of the photo. He blew up this image and posted it along with his article. The enhanced image looked like someone had attached themselves to the flagpole. Except it wasn’t someone. It was someone’s skin, waving along with the wind.
The article had people in a frenzy the day after it was posted. Soon after, the article was retracted by publishers. Lennart was forced to make a public apology. He admitted that it was photoshopped and he had made it all up. The police had stated they weren’t making charges against Lennart, but had hoped that the public would make more responsible choices. Lennart’s name was disgraced, but the paper didn’t fire him for this behavior.
Many people in the community had commented their own opinions on the article. Many claimed they knew it was fake. Others said Lennart was being silenced. Some had even claimed the teenagers had doctored the photo before sending it to Lennart. One single lonely comment was made under a wave of criticisms. It asked, “Has anyone seen the principal of Lambert High lately?”
Amicia felt her spine tingle as she read through everything. Variants were often created based on certain traumas. They could be uniquely horrifying in their creation and their existence. That wasn’t always the case though. While Pocatello got their own unique kind of monster, some variants could take up the identity of another that had failed in its purpose. Araña had detailed this kind of variant in the files he had left her. He called them The Carrions. They would feed off the remnant fears caused by a variant that had come through a town before. The carrion types would go after victims of the original variant first. After they had grown strong enough, they’d start to put their own spin on their identity.
A Carrion would grow faster than normal. They walked on a path that was already paved for them. There was some good news though. If she could find the original victims. She could get a head start on locating the variant. With some luck, she’d be able to kill it while it was still weak. Amicia knew just where to start. Daphne Wright.