Operation HANDLEBAR APRICOT – Google Docs
Operation HANDLEBAR APRICOT
On Wednesday, August 2, 2017, a National Parks Service worker at the Saugus Iron Works Historical Site in Saugus, Massachusetts discovered the violently murdered corpse of an older woman. As per NPS policy in Special Metaphysical Enforcement Areas (which includes the Saugus site), the site was immediately secured until an emergency containment team could be dispatched. Fortunately, the immediate crime scene could be isolated from outside view while containment protocols were followed; the area was judged sanitized by the early morning of Thursday, August 3.
The corpse was autopsied by local forensic personnel cleared by the Department. The deceased was a woman, aged 45-55 years; her height was 5’1” and her weight 96 pounds. The skeleton showed signs of rickets and other dietary diseases, as well as several separate instances of damaged and healed ribs. The deceased had only 17 teeth; the remainder could be found in a bag tied around her neck. The eyes were brown, hair grey. There was significant scarring of the skin, both from trauma and fire; most of the deceased’s toenails were missing. The deceased was dressed in shapeless woolen shirt and trousers, wore no underwear, and had wooden shoes. There were no tattoos or jewelry.
The cause of death was exsanguination from a cut lumbar artery; the cut was made by a long, double-edged bladed weapon with a stabbing tip. The condition of the wound suggests that an anticoagulant agent was smeared on the blade; blood work suggests that the subject was in some pain when she died. The deceased had no identification: fingerprints and DNA record matches no known individuals in the United States.
Found with the body was a shapeless burlack handled bag containing a paperback book titled Dancing Under a Crimson Moon: A Dread Book of Incantations. The book (written by a “Indigo Spiderkiss” and published by Ballantine Books in 1983) is a puerile and ineffectual ripoff of various legitimate magical traditions, expressly designed to distract ‘evil magicians’ by encouraging them down esoterically vapid and meaningless paths of research. This book should have all the metaphysical power of an uninteresting rock — but it has been rebound with a magically-radiating, protective metal cover. It has also been ripped, annotated, slightly singed, sprayed by a variety of liquids, and imbued with a smell reminiscent of grave mould. Lastly: carbon dating of the pages reveal that the book is apparently three hundred years old.
The current working hypothesis is that this book — which does has an underlying aetherial resonance that matches that of our universe’s — has spent some time in a dimension where its grandiose and unworkable magic spells are considerably less unworkable. In that context, the fact that a repeatedly tortured woman literally crawled in her own life’s blood in order to return the book here suggests that said dimension is not a pleasant place to visit. The team’s task: find the hole that the woman came through. Secure that hole. Wait for higher-ups to decide whether the more humane thing is to intervene on the other side, or else to simply throw a hydrogen bomb through the hole in order to seal it.
One last note: there are reports of strange, slightly muffled figures wandering through Saugus, looking for a certain item that they choose not to describe. Find those figures. Determine what their status is, and what it should become in the very near future.