Authors: Unknown
The iron beast is on its hind limbs, one of the great cannons on the ground slightly behind it. The other cannon appears to be held by its muzzle in the giant’s enormous hands; apparently it cannot fire the thing, so seems to use the weapon as a makeshift club. It emitted another ear shattering banshee wail as it charged its foe, weapon swishing through the air wildly. Its entire posture and how it moves has changed, as if I were watching a wholly different creature. Where its movements were slow and methodical prior were now smooth, graceful in the same way a seasoned pugilist’s movements can be graceful and brutal all in the same instance.
I've no thought or notion on how this is possible, for anyone even remotely near to the creature when it was struck should have died from the experience. Maybe the men served to restrain the beast in some fashion, to yoke its rage for their wishes. If this is true, now that they are dead, it has nothing restraining its actions. I've never heard of such a thing, I've never seen anything remotely like this, and I have no clue whatsoever if my reasoning is sound, but somehow it fits what I've seen and what I'm likely to see in my nightmares the rest of my days.
It is the only idea I have at this moment, and like everything else that has happened within the past evening it fills me with a sense of dread and loathing like I've scarcely felt before. I hope this thought is wrong and that the men I saw climb into the iron beast still control its movements. However what kind of men would wish to go about in such a creation? I hope they are moral men and that they wield the beast's power for the greater good rather than personal greed or glory.
There is a great shrieking from all about, but was centered on the two combatants. At first I thought it came from the iron gholem, but then I realized it was coming from somewhere above the fighting. It is then that I heard Bell's screams insisting that we had to leave. I barely heard him though, as my mind was running through every prayer for shelter and salvation I could recall.
The shrieking grew in volume and lowered in pitch as the funnel cloud formed and descended. The twister was bigger than any I'd seen before; it was easily as thick as five men from my perspective, and surely the actual thickness was enough to lift a home in its entirety. The horses screamed, broke the ropes and managed to render much of our camp site into ruins before we could get them under control. I couldn't blame their wanting to be anywhere but here. However what use would running be? We wouldn't be able to outrun it if it came our way, and I agree with Bell in that it surely was something the bird had summoned up as a final attempt to stave off its attacker.
What happened after this I cannot say because the tornado obscured what is happening. However at one point I saw something that surely was the cannon the giant was carrying being thrown followed soon by the bird exiting the funnel from a different direction only to dart into the maelstrom as soon as it could regain its foreword momentum. Minutes passed with nothing visible save for the roaring and whirling Finger of God not moving, not lessening in intensity, just hovering there.
What caused the funnel to dissipate I'm unsure, but I saw the iron giant fall to earth, one massive hand clinching the bird by one of its legs, preventing its escape. It then began beating its opponent about the neck and chest with its free hand till impact. Even with its body partway sunken into the ground the giant refused to lessen its grip and, even as it made efforts to rise, swung the bird about. For its part the great bird could only squawk and shriek as it was slammed and slung against the earth.
Eventually the iron beast had to release its grip on the bird in order to pry itself loose from the ground. I saw that the great bird lay broken, crying out plaintively as its body, clearly broken with its limbs laying at odd angles, lay out there unable to rise. My companions as well as myself feel pity, even if this creature would have devoured us if it had the chance nothing and no one should have to suffer enough to make the sounds that come from this broken creature. It seems that its adversary feels much the same, for, after it somehow re-attached both guns to its back lifted the bird again and, with a force that is surely
unequaled by anything Man or Nature can produce, slammed it against the ground such that we felt the tremors even from where our the remnants of pitiful camp had been made.
May 9th
The sunrise after the storm broke is one that I will treasure above all others as long as I live. We've all survived the ordeal intact physically, though I suspect each of my companions will suffer nightmares, as I surely will for years to come. Camp, what little of it hasn't been ripped to pieces by the horse's panic and the intensity of the storm, has been packed away. We didn’t see the giant beast's departure, but neither it nor its foe were anywhere to be seen; the only evidence that the events of last night had actually taken place was to be found in the land itself.
It's entirely possible we're doing this to reassure ourselves that it was no hallucination, possibly out of misplaced curiosity, we've agreed to ride out to where the iron beast fought hoping to find... I can not say, conformation that we aren’t mad and that what we saw actually happened, or do we seek conformation that things that things such as these do not, and I hope to God above cannot, exist? God help me I don't know which will be worse. If giants such as these inhabit the west in great numbers, then perhaps it is in our best interests that we remain east of these plains.
This raises the obvious and inevitable question, which Bell voiced to Yuri and myself when he asked, and I quote, 'Why haven't we heard of these beasts before?' I have an idea on that, but right now I must put my pen aside till after we've inspected the battlefield. Perhaps such things are common out here, but due to their unusual nature and the fact nothing that comes close to this happens anywhere else causes everyone who's witnessed such events to remain silent, lest they be considered mad.
It could also be that events such as these provide the inspirations for dime novels and the origins of hearsay and legend the world over. Maybe these things truly aren’t as uncommon as I believe them to be. It could be that events such as we've witnessed lay at the heart of old stories of pagan deities, giants, dragons, and other such creatures of myth. Should I feel more, or less, reassured by this thought?
My thoughts will remain on this question while we ride out to inspect where we think the two giants fought. God have mercy on your poor foolish servants, for that will be the only way we shall survive if we somehow encounter either of these hellish beasts.
After inspecting the site of the battle, we've collectively decided that the great rents in the ground; some of these like the dents a man's boot would make in the ground on a scale, others remind me more of what happens when a heavy log or other massive weight impacts. The former having a deeper impression at one place, where the majority of the weight settles. The other being a more evenly deep impression where any variations in depth would be explained away by the object that fell being less dense in those places. Strange how observations made when you're a child come back later in life.
Though in this instance I'm grateful for the recollection as I'm not much at tracking or surviving outside of civilization, and neither of my companions are capable of tracking outside of keeping what they're after in their line of sight. Granted this is something of a handicap, but facts being what they are it isn't terribly difficult to spot or follow a herd of Buffalo. I realize I'm losing focus and wandering off track, but to be frank I'm unsure what to record beyond it looking like a giant had tumbled and flailed about, making great dents and tears in the prairie grasses. I wander about, book held in the crook of my left arm and wandering about the site aimlessly till I hear Bell's shouts.
He's found an Indian woman in a mass of flattened and bloodied grasses. On approaching her I at first think she is merely sleeping then realize, once I see how sharp an angle her neck is bent, that she's dead. She appeared quite young; she couldn't have been older than her early teens by my guess, and in the way of most Indian women quite lovely. Strange that she would be here, stranger still that if she had died as a result of the giants duel that she is even recognizable rather than being a great and bloody smear across the earth. We cannot leave her like this; Yuri became quite insistent on this; even going so far as to threaten to fire on us if we do not give her as decent a burial as possible.
Thankfully there's plenty of rents and loose soil about to cover her over with a mound of earth, hopefully deep enough to prevent the local scavengers from getting at the body. Before we covered her over each of us left her a token to take with her into the hereafter. It saddened Yuri we cannot find her family, but given the impracticalities and impossibility of this we've agreed this is the best that can be done for her.
We arranged her in one of the larger rips in the soil so that she would appear, if you didn't look too closely, that she was sleeping. After puzzling at the snapped and broken jewelry that had fallen away from her in the process of relocating the body we did what we gathered as much of it as we could then left it in a pile at the center of her chest, covered over with her hands.
Yuri placed his short brimmed cap and lain it over her face. Bell added his tobacco pouch to the pile of broken jewelry. I wracked my mind for something to add before finally recalling something that I had heard was supposedly a prayer from tribes that lived in these parts. I don't know if this is true, or if it came from her people if it is, but even though its only a fragment, I find it fitting so leave a folded note between the fingers of her left hand.
'Make me ever ready to come to you with straight eyes, So that when life fades as the fading sunset, May my spirit come to you without shame.'
After we did these things and Yuri said a prayer on her behalf we covered her over with dirt. At first we simply shoved, with the sides of our feet, the raised up portions of dirt around the body. When this dirt was exhausted, we took off
our shirts, begin filling them with dirt, and dumping these bundles over where the mound was taking shape until we felt that she was properly covered. Farewell lady of the plains. I do not know who you were or if there was any connection between you and what we saw last night, but I am sorry that you died as young as you did.
End Transcription
As a personal request I would like to investigate Eugene Smith's apparent connection with Kobayashi Saburo, otherwise known as Doctor Zeus. I feel that it isn't coincidence that this man was mixed up with Saburo. Unfortunately this journal ends August 1884 and, even though I feel more records exist, I have been blocked at every turn by Eugene's living relatives. Without further resources I fear we may lose out here.
Jason Frost
,
Investigator
3rd
class
To:
Jason Frost
From:
Samuel Crane
Subject:
Regarding Kobayashi Saburo
After much deliberation and debate between myself, my superiors, and other interested parties, I must decline your request to follow up on the Saburo case. All files and materials directly pertaining to him are currently classified Eyes Only. I regret this as I also wish a further investigation of the man's history and the possibility he survived events of 1899. However my hands are tied and neither of us are to bring the matter up again under pain of imprisonment, and by the heavy hinting I had been given, Death.
Samuel Crane,
Archivist
5th
division
How long had he been here? Subjectively it felt like hours, but every glance at his watch told him only a handful of minutes had passed since he had sought refuge in the bell tower of
Ludlow's First Baptist Ministry
The door leading to where he crouched was bolted and barred with two metal wedges.
Not that they'll be smart enough to try,
but might as well not take chances.
The thought was
directed at the shambling masses of undead that swarmed around the church, and likely now packed the inside.
He had several things working for him. He had food and water to last him for a week if need be. He had bullets by the box-load. It wasn't enough against the swarm that surrounded him, but he had to try anyway. Just as importantly were the ear plugs he had in place. Not everyone that had been found dead in the past week had been picked apart by the living dead. Their shrieking and moaning were enough, over time, to drive even the stoutest person mad.
For the first hour he had methodically worked through his first box of ammunition. The fighting hadn't been smooth or precise, not like what the books and instructors taught. He was tired, scared, and he knew help would be days away, if it came at all.
How had he come to this sorry predicament? He asked himself that often in that first day. These creatures, these Vouden creations Should Not Exist.
Of course
, he thought while he kept shooting at the seething masses howling and shrieking beneath him,
things don't politely
disappear if logic tells them they shouldn't have been there to begin with
. His hands shook when they weren't busy with his weapon. He had seen these things before, always near All Hallows Eve. Even though he had faced, and survived, these mindless creatures before it had never done anything to lessen the shakes he suffered.