Two Heads are Better than One

[st_clare]

The days in late January were just the slightest bit longer, but the weather was still crisp. The highway had been one long stretch of asphalt, only a few cars and the occasional semi sharing the road.

Julianna had taken the day off, leaving her teaching duties to Clarissa, so that she and Gerald could make the drive to Searchlight. They didn't have a town hall, but there was a library there, and she knew from experience that they had some of the town archives in a special section. She already had her reason prepared, that she was planning a lecture about local history of Clark County and needed to see surveyor's maps and census figures from when the township was first established.

She parked the BMW in the lot, killed the engine and got out. She'd worn a light jacket against the slight chill of the day, and she tugged it closed as she started towards the building that housed the library. If there was something to be found, surely two sets of eyes could find it.

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Re: Two Heads are Better than One

[ghargreaves]

Gerald accepted the pen and signed his name to the ledger, returning the pen to Julianna before turning to the librarian again and asking where they might find the restrooms. He thanked her when she pointed out the door at the other end of the desk, then looked around the library as she continued, pointing out the catalogue drawers and the general direction of the archives.

"Thank you, you've been most helpful," he told her as the two Watchers made their way toward the section they were seeking. "I do like the feel of a book, but sometimes I can appreciate the speed of having archives loaded into computers. It's times like this they do make searching a little more efficient," he murmured as it became clear to them that the years had not been kind to much of the material in this section. "Let's hope it's at least all been returned to the correct positions on the shelf," he muttered under his breath as he cast an eye across the journals and folders that were stacked, in some cases a little haphazardly, on shelves where the labeling was a little peeled and faded.

Re: Two Heads are Better than One

[st_clare]

"I have the feeling that computer use hasn't quite caught up around here," Julianna said in a murmur as she and Gerald stepped into the archives room. She could smell dust and old books, frowned with faint disapproval as she noticed the poor condition of the bindings and their cataloging system. Things on campus were in much better shape, but the university had more money to afford computers than a small local library would.

She plucked one book from the shelf, a faded tome with a grayish cover. It was stamped with the year nineteen-twelve. She held it up for the other Watcher's inspection. "Perhaps if we start at opposite ends of the room, one of us will find something useful."

Re: Two Heads are Better than One

[ghargreaves]

Nodding in agreement Gerald made his way to the other end of the room, eyeing the shelves and pulling out a pair of reading glasses. He started along the shelves, fingers lightly running along the spines of the books that were standing upright. He tugged one out, checked the cover and opened it, then returned it, continuing along the shelves till he had finished one side, then moved to the other.

He pulled yet another book from the shelf, checked the cover and then opened it, the handwriting on the inside of the front cover declaring it to be the 'Property of Sheriff Silas Montgomery'. He leafed through the pages, noticing there were handwritten notes in the margins of a number of pages. He turned and placed the book on the table, looking a little closer, and noticing that the handwriting was in fact from different people. One was clearly a male's handwritten words, the other possibly female. He couldn't be sure how many individuals might have been responsible for recording information in the margins and he carried it across to Julianna and showed it to her.

"What do you make of this?" he asked her showing her the different writing, then the title of the book, 'The Bible'. It was what had drawn his attention to it in the first place. "I'm not sure exactly why this would be here, in the archives of the library and not in one of the churches."

Re: Two Heads are Better than One

[st_clare]

She'd been studying the first-hand account of one of the prospectors from the year nineteen-ten, a man named Thomas Burns, and when Gerald spoke to her she marked her place with her thumb and turned her attention towards him. The difference in handwriting caught her eye first, then the notes in the margins.

"Possibly the sheriff's wife took over keeping this account after he passed away," she offered, noting the feminine slant to the script in later entries. She put down the first book she'd been perusing, gave the inscription inside the front cover a second look. There was no mention of a wife taking possession of the book, but Silas Montgomery would likely be mentioned somewhere in the town records. It would just depend on how long he'd served as sheriff.

"As for why it's here instead of a church, one of the churches was demolished early last year. Perhaps they found it among the rubble, or even before the building was razed. If it's historical in nature rather than religious, someone could have decided it was more appropriate here."

Re: Two Heads are Better than One

[ghargreaves]

"A church was demolished?" Gerald said, an eyebrow lifting and his curiosity piqued. "Why would they have demolished it, unless they were building a new one, and I am sure there are no new church buildings in this parish," he continued, looking around for a set of map drawers, seeing it and moving to it and opening a drawer, looking for a map of the town.

Re: Two Heads are Better than One

[st_clare]

"I don't know the reasons," Julianna responded, continuing to study the Montgomery account. "It does seem odd, though. Churches are usually re-purposed if they're no longer used to hold services of host weddings. If the pastor leaves the area, someone replaces them, but they don't knock the building down."

The handwriting became spidery as the entries continued, and the Watcher adjusted her glasses. It seemed to be an account of every day life, and she squinted as the penmanship became difficult to read. She paused long enough to check Gerald's progress in looking for a map, then turned back.

"This was written in nineteen-fifteen," she noted, finding a date as she flipped pages. "I don't suppose this Montgomery fellow was prominent other than being in office, was he? If this is his wife's writing, she's quite detailed in her journaling,"

Re: Two Heads are Better than One

[ghargreaves]

The drawers were full of a range of different drawings, from blueprints for the library itself to some engineers' drawings of the diner and other commercial buildings, all buildings from the last millennium, which led Gerald to believe that the library was being used as a 'store' rather than an archive.

Finally, in a drawer toward the bottom, he came across some old divisional maps, one of them showing parishes, another mapping out the town's sewers and water lines. He pulled them out and carried them across to the table, pushing aside a couple of books he'd pulled out earlier. "Is there any mention of a parish in there, in her writings?" he asked, putting his glasses on as he started to try and make out the faded brown ink on the well-aged, yellowed paper.

Re: Two Heads are Better than One

[st_clare]

Julianna sat down and turned on a table lamp, because she needed better light than the overheads alone could offer. Did she have to get a stronger prescription for her reading glasses?

"It's mostly mentions of neighbors coming and going in town," she answered, using her finger to hold her place on the page as the writing became worse. "There is some talk of visiting church, but she doesn't say where specifically. I think..."

Her voice trailed off, and her finger paused between one sentence and another. Julianna squinted, read it again. Then re-read it. "Apparently, she saw a naked man on the outskirts of town near the end of the year. Said she saw him hiding near the entrance of the mines, but didn't confront him or even make an approach because she was frightened. 'He had the look of the devil about him. I ran home and locked myself in the house, for fear he would follow me..'"

She looked over at her colleague, lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug. "I'm not sure what to make of that, exactly. I don't know how old our unknown journaler was when she wrote this, but there's a chance that she imagined it. That might be too convenient an excuse, though."

Re: Two Heads are Better than One

[ghargreaves]

"Well, given that the original owner of the bible was a sheriff, I would suspect that the author of the notes you are reading is not the wife of the original owner, as she would surely have reported the sighting to her husband, and noted as such." He looked at Julianna, pondering the situation described. "She does write more after that, does she?" he asked, angling his head to see the writing she was indicating. "That wasn't her demise, was it?"

Re: Two Heads are Better than One

[st_clare]

Pages flipped, carefully so due to the aged condition of the paper. "No. There are notes after that, in the same handwriting. No other mentions of the man, though. Either he didn't see her or he was too frightened himself to venture closer to town. If he existed at all, that is."

Even as Julianna said it, the words sounded false. Supernatural phenomena often occurred in remote areas. The Council archives were full of sightings that had been reported and followed up on. Why an unknown person would lie, not even knowing if her notes would be read later on, was unknown to the Watcher.

"Let's say she was correct and she did see something." The Watcher had lowered her voice a bit, although the floor beyond the archive room was uncarpeted and therefore footsteps would have been noticeable. "A vampire would have followed her, even if it couldn't enter the house. It wouldn't have been cowering in the shadows, regardless. Could it have been a shape-shifter?"

Re: Two Heads are Better than One

[ghargreaves]

"Unless it was daytime. Though it is more likely a shape-shifter would be naked, having just shifted back, than a vampire, though the vampire would have a perfect lair in a disused mine," he mused, moving back to the plan-drawers to see if there were any maps of the mines. He found something in the bottom drawer, caught up in the back as if it had been pushed beyond the shallow back lip of the large flat drawer. He carried it over to the table.

"This is looking a little more useful. It's a geological survey, dated in 1917, so should, from all accounts, have most of the mines from back then displayed." He looked at it for a little longer then pointed out the section that was identifiable as the corner of the town. "Now we need to find where this woman saw the 'man', and where this church is." He looked at Julianna. "Rarely is there explanations for these things simple, in my experience, when there are oddities that don't add up. I'm sure you've experienced the same on occasion."