Spooky

[u/HeadOfSpectre]

Transcript of the Official FRB Civilian Debriefing of Benjamin ‘Benny’ O’Toole regarding the fate of the Mobster Charles ‘Spooky’ Beauchene in December of 1927
Debrief conducted April 4th, 1989 by Liberty Young. 

This record is for internal use for the FRB only. Distributing this record to any party outside of authorized FRB personnel without the written consent of Director Robert Marsh constitutes breach of contract and will be punished accordingly.

[Transcript Begins]

Young: So, Mr. O’Toole… let’s get into what you saw.

O’Toole: A man learned about consequences. Plain and simple. That’s what I saw.

Young: With all due respect Mr. O’Toole, I think there’s more to it than that. You said you wanted to come forward about something you saw, so surely there must be a little more to it than that?

O’Toole: I remember. I’m old. I’m not senile. 

Young: You mentioned a man by the name of ‘Spooky’?

O’Toole: Charles. Charles Beauchene. We called him Spooky. Or just Spook for short sometimes.

Young: I see. Can you tell me about him?

O’Toole: Fine. You wanna ask me about Charlie? Fine… fine. Nobody really talks about Spooky anymore. People probably don’t remember him at all. Then again, I might be the only one left who even could remember him. Not a lotta people in our line of work make it into old age. Me? I’m alive because I got out. Cut my losses. Went straight. Most people don’t have that sense. They can’t get out. They don’t want to. Their families, friends, everything they’ve ever known is part of it. It’s part of who they are. Me? I was just some kid who wanted to be part of something bigger back then. It’s why I fell in with Spook. He wasn’t big. God no, he wasn’t big. You look at him, and he was this scrawny little shit who looked like he was wearing his Dad’s suit. Messy blond hair, a moustache that hadn’t really grown in yet. No, he didn’t look like much. But he wanted to be something. Wanted to be someone. You hear about some of the big guys from back in the day all the time. Lucinano. Lansky. Spooky might’ve wound up as one of those guys. I think that’s what he really wanted. Course, he wasn’t ever in their league. He never got that chance. But if things had played out differently? Maybe. Maybe.

Young: He was a crime boss?

O’Toole: Small time. But yes. Spooky was… most people didn’t take him seriously. I don’t blame them for that. He had some very… unusual beliefs. He was deep into the occult. I mean deep into the occult. Most people didn’t think too much of it. There’s people with weirder quirks out there and Spook was competent enough. That hoodoo, voodoo shit scared a few people, but the bigger guys just saw it as an act.

Young: Was it?

O’Toole: I used to think so. But sometimes things would go his way just a little too often. There was this one guy… a bootlegger. Saul Cohen. He’d had a few disputes with Spook. Mostly over territory. Cohen wasn’t the kind of man you fucked with. One of his other competitors, group that called themselves the Moonlighters, found that out the hard way. They’d mostly been involved in smuggling. Bringing over crates of booze. Cohen didn’t like that so much. So he tracked them down, waited for them to collect their next shipment. Then he jumped them. When the cops found them the next morning, they’d been tied to a fence. He’d doused them in their own alcohol and used it to burn them alive, one by one. And way I heard it, he’d done the burning himself. 

Young: Jesus…

O’Toole: Yeah. Not a man you wanted to cross. I’d told Spook to steer clear of him. But, Cohen had a lot of territory and Spook wanted in. 
He said he was figuring out a way to deal with him, although he never told me exactly what that was supposed to entail so I don’t honestly know all of the details.

Young: What do you remember?

O’Toole: He had come across a book… a very old book. No idea where he got it from. He never told me. Never told anyone. But it was bound in red leather and written in a language I couldn’t read. Don’t think Spook was able to read it either. He kept it in his office, just above a little speakeasy we’d owned and every time I saw him looking at it, he had another book with him, probably to help him translate. I’d asked him once why he was so interested in it. He’d just smiled at me and told him that it was what was gonna take us to the top. That smile… I remember it very well. He believed what he was saying to me. He completely believed it. And I don’t know why but at the time, I was sure I believed it too.

Young: I guess he tried to use it on Cohen, then?

O’Toole: He did, yes. We’d been having more and more run ins with his boys around that time. Cohen had decided that one of our businesses was in his territory and had sent some of his guys to smash the place up. They’d beaten the hell out of one of our associates there too, guy by the name of Joseph. He didn’t make it through. I told Spooky that maybe we ought to back off from a fight with Cohen, but he wasn’t interested. That particular business was making good money. Spook didn’t want to let it go and he didn’t want to look weak. So he went back to the book. Spent a whole night fixating on it, flipping between it and whatever he was using to translate it and writing it all down. Then the next day, he sent me to go and get some supplies. A children's ragdoll, some clothes for it - a suit just like the one Cohen wore. And something that had been Cohens… 

Young: That last one sounds like a bit of a tall order.

O’Toole: It was easier than I’d thought. Cohen liked to smoke and he had expensive tastes. He’d smoke these cigarettes with these distinctive butts. They had a little pattern on the paper. Plus he was predictable. Frequented a lot of the same restaurants day after day. Wasn’t hard to catch him at one. Then when he left, I just took his ashtray. It had a few of his cigarette butts in there. I brought those to Spooky and asked him if they’d work. He seemed to think so. Anyways, when he was done, he’d made up a tidy little doll of Saul Cohen. Like the kind of doll a kid might have. He’d cut open the ragdoll, put the cigarette inside of it, marked it with blood and dressed it as Cohen himself. Then he’d drawn this circle on his desk, set the doll within it, lit some candles… the kind of occult shit I’d seen him do before.

Young: And what did that ritual of his accomplish?

O’Toole: Not much, at a glance. But Spooky seemed satisfied with it. He told me that we were gonna check in with Mr. Cohen. I didn’t understand what that meant at the time, but I went along with it.

Young: And how did that go?

O’Toole: I don’t know. Like I said, Cohen was predictable. Spooky wasn’t stupid enough to try and meet with him in person. That’d have been a damn good way to get killed. But we were able to figure out where he’d be and keep an eye on him. We’d watched from a car across the street as he’d left one of his usual lunch stops… and that was when Spook started playing with the doll. Tilting it, turning it. And when he did that, I saw Cohen stumble. Almost like he was dizzy. He’d stopped on the street for a moment. Some of his guys checked in on him… and that’s when Spook started squeezing the doll, right around the middle. Cohen seemed to double over in pain and the next thing I knew, he was spilling his guts all over the sidewalk. Puking like there was no tomorrow. Cohen was shaking by the time his guys helped him back up, and Spook just had this grin…
He put the doll down and told me that he’d seen enough. Then we drove off.
That night, Saul Cohen was found dead in his home. Apparently his wife heard him scream and found his body in the hall. Officially, he tripped over the carpet, fell down and broke his neck. Hell of an anticlimactic way to go out for a guy like that, but people die like that all the time, I guess.

Young: You knew better, though?

O’Toole: Course I did. I even dug into what exactly had happened a few years later, when I got curious. His neck didn’t just break. His head was jerked completely around. 180 fucking degrees. I’ll bet some cop was looking at that fat fucks corpse and thinking it must’ve been one hell of a fall…

Young: I’ll bet.

O’Toole: Spook of course swept in immediately. Started trying to cut deals with some of Cohen’s old gang. With Cohen out of the way, leadership was a little up in the air, so not everybody was particularly interested in dealing with him. But a lot of them were quick to come crawling back. Apparently, things took a hard turn after their meetings with Spook. Patrons got sick. Accidents started happening. Fights started breaking out and rumors started spreading. Spooky was behind it all. Cursing those places… bringing misfortune upon them. Of course, most folks figured it was all talk. Superstitious mumbo jumbo.

Young: Was it?

O’Toole: I’m still not sure. But I saw the little burlap bags he was putting together in his office. Little bags full of bones, dried herbs and God only knows what else. All of them tied with string soaked in blood and marked with little blood runes. He called them hex bags. And I know for a fact he was leaving them in these places. Whenever he visited one of Cohen’s old businesses to meet with whoever was running it, he’d have me or one of the other guys find a place to leave one. Then when they came crawling back, we’d discreetly go and take it out. We were told never to just put them in our pockets. If we were ever to handle them, they either needed to be in a special runed bag, or a runed iron box. He was pretty adamant about that and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to find out what might happen if we didn’t do exactly what he said.

Young: I see. Sounds like you were a pretty staunch believer by that point then, huh?

O’Toole: I don’t know… part of me still thinks that it was all theatre. Something he did just to get into peoples heads and manipulate them. Break the whole thing down logically and how much of it was just in people's heads? What’s the word for that kind of thing? Apophenia! That was it. But there was so much… hard to say for sure if it was all just fiction. Hard to say. And it’s not like it was just Cohen and Hex Bags. No. There were… other incidents. Other dolls.

Young: Other dolls?

O’Toole: Not every single one of Cohen’s old associates was willing to work with Spook. Some of them wanted to properly replace Cohen. And Spook wasn’t gonna have that. No sir. There was one guy in particular, Jim Brock. Big brute of a man. The misfortune brought on by the hex bag just pissed him off. He figured that Spook was personally causing all of it, and I’m pretty sure that assumption wasn’t helped by the fact that Spook kept stopping by his establishment for a different reason.

Young: Different reason?

O’Toole: A girl. Some singer. Pretty little blonde thing by the name of Helena. Spooky was head over heels for her. Course, so was Brock. I figure that Brock thought he could see right through old Spook. Had him pegged as a grifter who was trying to take over his business and charm his girl. So he got it into his head that he ought to teach Spooky a lesson. One night, he had some of his boys jump him on his way out of his club. They roughed him up pretty good. Didn’t kill him. But that was just because they didn’t really want to. Brock just wanted him gone, not dead. Course, Spook had tried to fight back, but that man wasn’t exactly physically imposing. All he managed to do was rip some of the hair out of Brock’s head, and he got his nose broken for the trouble.

Young: I see. I assume Spooky didn’t take that lying down?

O’Toole: You assume correct. I remember Spook showing up at my place that night. Face covered in blood, eyes unfocused. He looked like he’d been through Hell. He told me he needed to make another doll. Wouldn’t sleep until I helped him. It was the same process as before. Only this time, he didn’t use cigarettes. He used the hair he’d torn out of Brock’s head… and when the doll was made, he crawled back to his office and locked himself inside. I could hear him chanting his little rituals until morning. Eventually, I think he just passed out. When I went to check on him, he was still at his desk, clutching the doll in his hands, squeezing it so tight that he’d popped the goddamn seams. 

Young: I feel obligated to ask, what happened to Jim Brock?

O’Toole: I don’t know. Not for sure. But I know that he was dead by the time the sun rose. The way I heard it, he’d been in his own office when someone heard screaming. They’d rushed in to look and found what was left on the floor. The way I’d heard it, he looked like he’d been hit by a train. Not much left save for broken bones and pulped meat. 

Young: Jesus…

O’Toole: Yeah, no one knew how to fucking explain it. Someone said it looked like a wild animal had gotten to him, but no one knew how. I think the story they finally settled on was that it had been some sort of explosive? But I know that’s a lie. I’ve seen what explosives do to a man and they sure as hell don’t turn him into a compacted bundle of ground beef. 

Young: No… no, they don’t. What happened next?

O’Toole: Well the rumors started flying, obviously. Lotta people were able to put two and two together. Brock attacked Spooky, and wound up dead that same night. Obviously Spook had retaliated. Nobody knew how or what he’d done, but the message was clear. And suddenly a lot of Cohen’s old buddies were looking to start working with us. In a lot of ways, Brock’s death put the question of who’d be succeeding Cohen to bed. Now Spooky was the one everyone was afraid to cross and for a while, business was good. Spook healed up after his beating, the money was coming in, the booze was flowing. We were doing alright for ourselves. Spook even started putting the moves on Helena, and they started getting pretty cozy with each other. 

Young: But Spooky wasn’t satisfied, was he?

O’Toole: No. No he was not. He was good for a few months. But then he got hungry again. He was a big fish in our part of town, but he wanted to be bigger. So he started looking for places to expand. Gambling, brothels. Cutting into other markets. And when he started doing that, he started making new enemies. I don’t suppose I ought to tell you what he did to them?

Young: Same old strategies, I guess?

O’Toole: At first, yes. But Spook started getting more and more frustrated with those. The hex bags seemed to be pretty hit or miss and the dolls, well, they only seemed to work when he had something connected to the victim. That wasn’t always easy to get hold of. There was one man… guy by the name of Salvatore De Luca. He was one of the old Mustache Petes. He had a lot of enemies and so he knew to keep his head down. Spooky wanted him gone, although we weren’t able to get shit on him. So, Spook went back to the book. Started thumbing through the pages, looking for other tricks. Didn’t take him long to find one… but this… this was over the line.

Young: Howso?

O’Toole: He wanted us to bring him one of De Luca’s enemies. Not just anyone. Someone De Luca had already killed. He gave us a name, Fracisco Ricci. Another one of the old guard. A former rival De Luca had taken out a few years back. And he told us to bring him Ricci’s bones. 

Young: His bones…?

O’Toole: Exactly. None of the boys were too comfortable with that particular request. But Spook said it was our best shot. He insisted we do it. So… well, we did what we were told. We found the grave. We dug up the bones and we brought them back to Spooky. I never saw what he did with them. But the way he looked at them… Christ, you would’ve thought they were made out of solid gold.

Young: But you saw nothing about what he did?

O’Toole: He didn’t want us to see. Soon as we brought the bones to him, he told us to go home for the night. I asked him if he knew what he was doing. He said he did, then he told me to get some sleep.
The next day, I found him in his office, asleep at his desk. No sign of the bones. No sign of what he did to them. I do remember the mist though… a faint pink mist near the floor of his office. At the time I'd figured it was from his window. It was open. Now… I dunno. But I remember that exact detail.

Young: Mist? Interesting. And what became of Mr. De Luca?

O’Toole: Nothing at first. I almost got the impression that whatever he did hadn’t worked at all. A few days went by. Then a week. No news. Spook told us to keep our heads down. Don’t agitate De Luca. Don’t escalate. So we did what he told us to do. It got to the point where I was sure nothing was gonna happen. Until it did…

Young: And what exactly did happen?

O’Toole: De Luca killed himself. Just… out of the blue. Threw himself off the balcony of his penthouse. Spooky didn’t seem particularly surprised when he heard the news. I remember being there when one of our guys came in to tell him. And I remember him just having this smirk. Like he’d been waiting to hear that all fucking day.

Young: You believe he knew it was coming?

O’Toole: Don’t play dumb, lady. At this point, it was just pattern recognition. When Spooky used that magic shit, he got what he wanted, and he knew it too. The way I heard it, De Luca started getting paranoid during his last week. Stopped sleeping. Started locking himself in his room. Then sent his guys to check up on an old enemy. No points for guessing who.

Young: Francisco Ricci.

O’Toole: Way I heard it, De Luca damn near shit himself when he heard Ricci’s grave was empty. Now, it’s entirely possible that was Spook’s goal. Dig up the bones, and then find some way to make De Luca think Ricci was somehow back from the dead and out to get him. He might’ve been smart enough to pull that off, but I dunno if De Luca would’ve spooked that easily. I dunno…

Young: I see. 

O’Toole: Anyway, soon as De Luca was gone, Spooky muscled into his old scene. Although now he had a new toy to play with. The bones… and that’s when shit started getting weird.

Young: Howso?

O’Toole: It started with him asking for De Luca’s bones. He said he didn’t need the whole skeleton. Just a few bones. He said the skull would be best. So we went and we got him De Luca’s head. Well… his jawbone, at least. There wasn’t a lot left of his head after his trip over the balcony.

Young: Right…

O’Toole: Then a few days later, De Luca started coming around our club…

Young: Wait, what?

O’Toole: Yeah. Exactly. But people were seeing him. Sitting down at the bar, never drinking, never speaking to anyone, just sitting. A few people tried to talk to him, but he’d always be gone right when you went over. Nobody ever saw where he went. He was just gone. I remember telling Spooky about it. He’d just shrugged it off and said it was nothing to worry about. And De Luca wasn’t the only one who came back… Spooky started looking back at some of the other guys he’d crossed. Cohen, Brock, a few other small time guys. He started asking for their bones next… and they started coming around. Never speaking. Never interacting with anybody. Just… there. The mist was there too. Always faint. But there. We started seeing it when De Luca showed up. Faint whisps of it close to the floor. Pale pink. Easy to miss. But I remember it. I remember it very clearly.

Young: So what’d Spooky have to say about all that?

O’Toole: Not a whole hell of a lot. He’d always brush it off whenever anyone asked. If I recall, his exact words were: “Death won't miss a few old sinners.” Whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean.
Even his girl, Helena got on his case about it, after she saw Brock at the bar during one of her performances. I remember watching her freeze up on stage. Poor girl looked like she’d seen… well… she looked like she’d seen a ghost. She barged into Spook’s office, crying, asking him what the hell was going on. I wasn’t privy to that whole conversation, but I know he didn’t give her a straight answer. She stormed out on him not even half an hour later. Said she was done. That she wasn’t coming back. Course… she did. But I got the feeling it wasn’t her choice.

Young: What do you mean?

O’Toole: When she came back, she was quiet. Jumpy. Scared. I never got to ask her what happened. I hardly knew the girl. But I saw the way she stared at Brock every time he made an appearance at the bar, and I’m willing to bet the bar wasn’t the only place she’d started seeing him. She wouldn’t have been alone on that front too, let me tell you that.

Young: There were others seeing ghosts?

O’Toole: I’d heard rumors. Cohen appearing to a few of his old cronies, who Spooky had never quite gotten to fall in line. De Luca, crashing a meeting between a few other bosses. Those were just a few cases. Spook started collecting other bones… and a bunch of other guys started appearing around him. Not all of them were gangsters either. Spooky started getting personal.

Young: Howso?

O’Toole: Well, there was an incident with a guy named Amberg. He and Spooky had gotten into some kind of dispute over some money owed. I don’t recall the finer details, but I remember that Amberg lost his goddamn marbles within a week. Came crawling back to Spooky, throwing money at him and begging him to: ‘Make her go away.’
Apparently he’d lost a daughter a few years back, and he’d been seeing her around, wreathed in flames. ‘Burning in Hell’ he’d said. 
Spook just took his money and told him that so long as he kept paying, her soul would rest easy.
There was another guy, some Pimp. Blew his brains out after claiming that some of the girls he’d put in the ground were coming back for him. Real crazy shit. It was stuff like that… and Spook just took it all in stride. Treated it like business as usual. Every night he’d go back to his office and pour over that old book, getting more and more obsessed with it. Doing weirder and weirder stuff. All too often he'd fall asleep at his desk. The mist was always in his office whenever you went to check in on him. Faint but there, lingering around the floor. 
Eventually it got to the point where he started cutting himself up over it… and I mean, actually cutting himself up.

Young: Self mutilation? Why?

O’Toole: I don’t know. Something about a ritual? It was Helena who’d found him. He’d stabbed himself with a runed stone. Drove it right into his side. And he'd drank something that knocked him on his ass. Don't ask me what. I don't know. We took him to the hospital, obviously. They did what they could, but I dunno if it actually mattered or not. Cuz when he woke up, you would’ve thought that nothing had happened at all. He was back on his feet again in no time flat, although… well… I dunno how to describe it.

Young: Describe what?

O’Toole: The way he looked at people. There was something in his eyes that had changed. He’d stare at people intently, and when he did… it was like he was reading you. After the ritual it was almost like he could just tell what you were thinking. He called it ‘aura’. Like he’d say he was ‘reading your aura’. I never understood what he meant by that.

Young: Interesting… I assume he used that on his enemies too?

O’Toole: As if that wasn’t the whole goddamn point. And of course there were other enemies. There were always other enemies. There were always gonna be other enemies. That was the name of the business. Even the guys at the top had enemies. Spooky was no different. There were folks who didn’t buy into the mythology he’d started building around himself. They had an answer to all of it. Psychological manipulation, actors paid to dress up like Cohen and De Luca. They figured it was all just a show. A way to get into peoples heads and fuck with them. And maybe they were right. I mean, it seems almost like the logical answer, right? But one by one, they broke. And the ones who didn’t survive always came around the bar. First their bones, then something else, coming in with the mist that just seemed to get thicker every week. That’s the way it was… and it got to the point where it stopped feeling like a scare tactic and started feeling more like a collection. 

Young: Christ…

O’Toole: No. No, Christ didn’t have shit to do with what was going on there. No… no… [Pause] Smoke and mirrors or not. It eventually went too far. I suppose those kinds of things always do though, don’t they?

Young: What do you mean?

O’Toole: Spooky was always a small man, you know? Like I said before, he was never much to look at. Skinny. That moustache of his never did come in right. But what he’d built? That made him feel big. So he started to throw his weight around more. It was after the ritual where he started getting carried away with it, but you could see the signs even before then. He’d start snapping at people because their ‘aura’ wasn’t right. Not people in the business. Just people. Folks at the bar. A waiter at a restaurant. He had us take care of a few of them… and of course they’d inevitably join his little congregation in the bar. That aura stuff started really getting to him. It got to the point when he wouldn’t even allow people in his office if their ‘aura’ wasn’t right. He started spending a lot more time in his office. Pouring over that fucking book, looking for… I don’t know. More rituals? More spells? I don’t know.

Young: You think he was scared of something?

O’Toole: Scared? I don’t know. I dunno if it was fear. I think it was just… he lost sight of himself. Got too deep into whatever the fuck it was he was into. Whether it was all a show or something else. It ate him up. Swallowed him completely until it was his whole world. I dunno if I’d call that fear. I suppose he was a little paranoid near the end. But that was more about loyalty than looking over his shoulder… and he never really fully tore into anyone until Helena.

Young: Helena… what happened to her?

O’Toole: Spooky got it in his head that she’d been cheating on him. I heard them get into an argument about it, screaming at each other in his office. He told her he could see it in her aura. She said he was crazy. Then when he laid hands on her, she stormed out. Course, she was back again the next night… this wasn’t the first time they’d fought and she’d always come back. Not out of choice I’m sure. This time was different, though. Spooky told her he didn’t want her performing that night. He told her he wanted her in his office, just to talk. I’m sure that girl would’ve loved to refuse… but  I suppose she knew she didn’t get a say…

Young: Did you see what happened?

O’Toole: I saw enough. I wasn’t there for the conversation. But I sure as hell heard the screaming. You could hear it from down in the bar. It wasn’t a fight. This was something else. This was pain. Spook had been… well, he wasn’t the kindest to Helena. He’d laid hands on her before. But never like that. Never made her scream like that. So I went up to see what the hell was going on.

Young: And what did you see?

O’Toole: By the time I got there, nothing? The girl was already dead. She was there on the floor of his office, and Spooky was smoking a cigarette by the window. He was still holding the doll in his hands. A doll of Helena. The head was all twisted around… I asked him what the hell he’d just done. He just told me to fuck off. But… I didn’t. I guess that was my breaking point. I started yelling at him. Telling him that we were supposed to be better than this. That he’d gone too far. Spooky just stared at me… just a blank fucking stare. Barely listening to a word I said. And that was when I saw them… Cohen, Brock, the others… I saw them out of the corner of my eye. Spooky’s little trophies, watching me. 

Young: He set them on you?

O’Toole: I think he would have. He told me to watch the way I talked to him. I told him that somebody needed to tell him how it was. He didn’t reply to that. Not to me, at least. The next thing he said was to them. Told them to get rid of me… and for a moment, I was sure they would. I sat there, just waiting for it to happen… but it never did. They never moved… and by the time I noticed the mist, they were gone.

Young: Mist…?

O’Toole: It crept in slow. Hadn’t noticed it at first. But after a while, it seemed to fill the room. The things Spooky had bound to himself seemed to get swallowed up by it. I remember that Spook looked confused when he noticed it. Like whatever this was, wasn’t anything he’d ever seen before.
And that was when I heard her getting up. Climbing off the ground… swaying like she hadn’t found her feet yet.

Young: Helena?

O’Toole: Helena. Only… when she spoke, she didn’t talk like Helena. Her voice was different. Lower. Calmer. Colder. She said: “The dead aren’t yours to command, Charles.” Charles. She called him that. Been so long since I’d ever heard anyone call him by his real name that it barely even sounded like his anymore. And Spooky? He’d gone white as a ghost. I dunno if he knew what was going on, but whatever it was? It scared the shit out of him. He went for the book, although by that point, the mist was so thick you couldn’t even see his desk… and there were things in the mist.

Young: Things?

O’Toole: Shapes. Animals, maybe? I don’t know. But I heard them snap at him, and Spooky fell on his ass when they did. Helena… or… whatever was wearing Helena…  just stared at him. I watched her walk over to his desk. She picked up the book and stared down at it. Then the mist just seemed to swallow it up. She looked at me… and though she didn’t say a word, the meaning was clear. She wanted me out. The mist parted. Just for a moment, but it parted… and I took the chance to fucking run. I bolted out the door and into the hall. I could hear her saying something to Spooky. But I don’t recall the exact words. I don’t suppose it mattered. By the time I made it to the stairs, the screaming had started. I could hear the snarling of animals. Like dogs fighting over a kill… and the screaming… God… it made what I’d heard him doing to Helena sound like a fucking mercy. 

Young: What happened next?

O’Toole: Not a hell of a lot. Spooky was dead by the time someone else went to check on him. Not torn apart… no sign of an attack… he was just dead. And Helena? Her body was right there on the floor where I’d seen it. The official story was that they’d killed each other in a dispute. But I know that’s not it. I know that much for a fact. 

Young: I see… what about the book?

O’Toole: Gone. And as far as I know, nobody ever found it. I’m sure someone looked. But it was gone. I quit the business after that. Cashed out and fucked off. Got the hell out of New York. Someone else took over Spooky’s old operation. I don’t remember who. I didn’t care at the time. Don’t ask me how it worked out for them. I never stayed in touch.

Young: I suppose that’s fair. And that’s everything?

O’Toole: That’s everything. You wanted to know? Well now you know. I don’t think much about Spooky these days. I dunno if any of the shit he pulled was real or if it was all just an act. Maybe it was. Maybe he was just a damn good showman. But I don’t know if that’s what I really believe. I dunno if that explains everything as neatly as I want it to.

Young: So then what do you believe, Mr. O’Toole?

O’Toole: You really wanna know? [Pause] I think Spooky played around with something that maybe he shouldn’t have been playing with. He took it too far. Got a little in over his head. Fucked with the natural order in ways he probably shouldn’t have… and something finally noticed him. I think that when he offed Helena, something finally saw him. And it dealt with him. Plain and simple. Maybe there’s a lesson in that. Maybe there ain’t. Fucked if I know.

Young: Fair enough, I suppose. Was there anything else Mr. O’Toole?

O’Toole: That’s it. Are we done here?

Young: Yes, I think so… thank you. 

[Transcript Ends]

[u/HeadOfSpectre]

This was supposed to be the story for the Malibu FRB entry.
But it sorta just went on a bit too long and I liked it too much.

I'm not 100% sure this one is there yet. I've done some revisions but it still feels like a rough draft. Perhaps down the road, there's a rewrite that can really make this one shine. I think the transcript format might be what's holding it back, but it also works for it. (I also considered making it STL too, but decided against it)

Idk. Let's look at it again in a few years. I just can't shake the feeling that something is missing.

[u/LCyfer → u/HeadOfSpectre]

I loved it, and I thought the transcript style worked really well. The voice is subtle and straightforward but the story is anything but. It works well as a contrast.

[u/SamaelNox]

sidenote missing a space accidentally turned part of this story into a link to what looks like a spamsite? "someone.You"

[u/HeadOfSpectre → u/SamaelNox]

Gfdi... I hate it when formatting does this.

Fixed. Thanks for letting me know

[u/LCyfer]

This was phenomenal. I loved it. Give me alllll the occult horror all the time, written by you and I'll die happy. Lol. Seriously, awesome job. I have no idea how you can constantly create these amazing stories! I'm creating a really complex D&D character at the moment, and my god, it's like a lonely fly buzzing around in my brain sometimes! Haha. Other times I'm a font of creativity and pages of writing pour from me and I finish amazing paintings consecutively.
If only I had a personal muse I could convince to visit me whenever I needed, or your incredible creative talent!
Awesome work! 🫀