Case 30: Entry 3

One down, God only knows how many to go.

Yesterday I made sure to chat with each of the other experts to see if anyone else had been threatened. I figure all the security I can arrange won't matter if one of them gets bullied into tossing a match on Los Susurros. Fortunately, it's not easy to find someone to threaten into being an asset, especially if you're from the spooky side. You have to find someone who isn't likely to go into denial or freak out in a way that runs counter to your goal. It's a difficult balance to strike, and I only found one person who seemed like he had been shaken up. It was one of the linguists, and he had some very interesting things to tell me. Well, actually when I got him to open up most of what he said was gibberish. He kept repeating "the knife can't cut" among other things, but that was still plenty for me to work with.

One of the earliest stories in Los Susurros tells of a trickster who protected his tribe against the Aztecs through deception and cunning. Infuriated over their numerous defeats, the Aztecs called upon three fiends to go out and slay him. The first was a snake that could slide into and animate the bodies of the dead, and it went to him in the form of a young woman pleading for aid and protection against her murderous brother. The serpent hoped to kill the trickster once it knew he had lowered his guard, but he smelled rotting flesh on the woman's breath and he led it into a ditch where he tested it to learn its true nature and then killed it. The next fiend was an imp with red feathers for hair and six fingers on each hand. The imp had mastered the skill of finding exactly the right words to strike at a person's heart, and when he set out to kill he would speak a single phrase to his target which sounded like nonsense but which would wear away at their mind until the mental torment was too great for them to put up a real fight. The imp came for the trickster and said, "The bird flies for five days straight," but in an instant the trickster replied, "And drops two eggs along the way." The imp tried a different phrase, but once more the trickster dismissed it with a nonsensical retort, and the two went back and forth for hours until the imp began stomping its feet and pulling out its feathers and all sense was gone from it. The final fiend was an Aztec warrior who had been transformed with dark magic. He had been turned into a demon such as they would craft only in times of great peril and then to complete a single task before going out into the wilderness forever. This demon could run and climb with the grace of a jaguar, and it had the power both to throw its voice and to imitate others with it. The demon would use roars and cries for help and other sounds to lead its prey on a run through the foliage until the prey was exhausted and perhaps injured and then it would kill the prey and eat its heart. But when the demon came for the trickster he noticed that when he slowed down the noises that drove him did not catch up. He soon knew he was being herded, and so the trickster veered very slightly off the demon's course while at the same time stumbling and panting to avoid suspicion. He knew the land, and he slowly changed the path until it led to a point he knew was a perfect place to ambush prey. Being familiar with the spot, he knew the direction from which the demon would strike, and so when he reached it he made sure to appear ripe for the taking until the moment when he swung around and held his spear firmly before him as the demon lunged. The next night he left trophies from each of the fiends where the Aztecs would find them, and for as long as he lived his tribe was never threatened again.

Mind you, that was a shortened version. The story as recorded in Los Susurros is much better. But the important thing is that the other expert's frantic mutters match up exactly with the modus operandi of a certain imp. I put out word to all nearby agents and other contacts of what to look out for and how to beat it, and then arranged to have a therapist specializing in the paranormal visit the disturbed expert that night while an agent stood watch. This morning I got a call saying that the imp had been taken care of.

Now to see what else is lurking about.

Case 30: Entry 2

Well, I'm pretty sure the books are authentic. I haven't done enough work on them to give an official answer yet, but everything about them that I've looked at so far is just so completely right. It's like if an English professor read a lost Shakespearean play: it wouldn't take them more than a few lines to recognize the bard's literary fingerprints. I've read plenty of old literature, and when I got the call for this job I made sure to read the few stories that are believed to have come from Los Susurros. So that's the good news. The bad news is that something just explained to me precisely what it would do with my entrails unless the books are either discredited or destroyed. That was kind of a bummer.

Honestly, I was an idiot not to see this coming. The whole reason Los Susurros is such a big deal is because most of the stories either faded from memory or were lost as the people who told them were wiped out, which means that there's probably a good handful of nasties who are safer without the books being found. For all I know, there could be a hundred different fiends all heading straight to this city. In fact, if any of the things described in Los Susurros can pass for human, it's possible I could have the head of a cartel gunning for me. A lot of the stories are from the right region, and it wouldn't be the first time human and supernatural evil joined up. I'm glad I have such a pleasant imagination to come up with such lovely scenarios. Anyway, the point is that this job is a lot more dangerous than I was expecting.

The first thing I did after I got back to my hotel room was call the Agency. They're still stretched thin, but it turns out they consider a collection of stories that could expose dozens of malevolent supernatural species to be a high priority. A small handful of agents is being dispatched, and they're pulling all the strings they have in the area to make sure the books as well as the other experts and I are protected. Of course, that kind of thing can be difficult to do when you don't know who or what you're defending against, and most of the people being protected don't know about you. Playing the defensive role while also moving openly about a large city is not exactly the tactical ideal. Especially when your enemy is something which (for all you know) can only be killed by being hung upside down and stabbed in the spleen with a copper dagger. Honestly, I'm much happier to have Nox on my side. A lot of monsters are afraid of certain domesticated animals, and cats always make excellent companions for supernatural work. Not to mention that Nox is a lot more clever than he has any right to be.

Anyway, I suppose I'd best get to work. I've got some copies and translations that I have permission to keep with me, and I'm hoping I can develop some profiles with them.

Case 30: Entry 1

I got a call this morning from the Huntington Library in San Marino. Apparently they've obtained several old books which might be Los Susurros de la Musa Perdida, and they want me to come in and help authenticate them. I may or may not have squealed and run around my home for several minutes after finishing the call. I mean, Los Susurros is kind of a legend. Or at least it is among the supernatural community and that portion of academia that specializes in folklore. Plenty of scholars tracing the history of fables, children's stories, and tall tales have been frustrated by references to this wealth of lost stories, and they have made much of the few stories that are supposed to have been given out from that trove. Not to mention that the few specific individuals mentioned as having at some point possessed and contributed to Los Susurros each had all kinds of rumors floating around them in their day.

The collection supposedly began with an explorer named Gabriel Esteban Salazar. He was there in the early days of colonization, and he was endlessly curious. He was basically a personification of all the whitewashed fancies of exploration and adventure that have been used to paint Christopher Columbus as a hero. Salazar arrived in the Americas eager to discover new lands, record strange customs, and sketch exotic flora and fauna, but somehow he was turned away from that vision. At first he stumbled onto stories as a way to relate to the Natives, but soon he became focused almost entirely on the fairy tales, ghost stories, and fables they had to tell. He recorded them with just as much thoroughness and care as other explorers put into maps and accounts of wildlife. He eventually became an advocate for the tribes, and some accounts indicate he was a close friend of Bartolome de las Casas. Of course, we all know how that battle went.

After a while the powers that be (or rather, the powers that were) found him more annoying than useful and arranged to have him sent back to Spain. Having come from a family of merchants, Salazar was not exactly impoverished on his return home, however the business was struggling and he spent nearly every spare coin he had expanding his collection. There was one man in particular whom he trusted to seek out stories from the New World and even some from the Old World as well on his behalf, though accounts of the man's identity tend to disagree. What is agreed on is that he inherited the collection upon Salazar's death. From there the trail of Los Susurros rambles through history, many of its owners and contributors completely unknown.

The next time the story really gets exciting is when the collection falls into the hands of a pirate. Supposedly, he was the first one to record the stories of African slaves. He was also the first Englishman to keep it, though that point could be debated. After something like twenty years of piracy he had amassed a small fortune, and he made a deal with the English crown for a new home in exchange for certain military secrets he had acquired over the years. He took the name of Jonas Goodspeed, and the crown quickly created an unofficial position for him. He rooted out spies, enforced a certain level of civility within the criminal underworld, and did any other dirty business that was handed off to him. And all the time he continued to collect stories. He collected children's rhymes, tales told only in certain remote towns and by certain people, urban legends, and any new lore he found coming from the colonies.

After Goodspeed passed away there's a handful of individuals known or suspected to have possessed Los Susurros, none of them quite as impressive as either he or Salazar. They each had at least one rumor attached to them, but most didn't have that same kind prolific life story. The first two were scholars, and after that there were three who regularly dealt with the Natives in some official capacity. The last person known to have kept the collection was a missionary who spent nearly half his life among the tribes. After that, the trail runs cold.

Until now, that is. I'm already checked in to my hotel room and I've been spending most of this afternoon looking through stories of various kinds from the same stretch of time in which Los Susurros was supposedly assembled, and from the same cultures. They've already got people sniffing the ink, sending samples to labs, and studying the linguistic fingerprints. My job is to look at the stories themselves, see if their styles fit with the alleged sources. And I intend to do my job right.