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A-hem… statement of ‘Ranse Truman’, regarding his involvement in a ‘Monster invasion’ of Baltimore, Maryland. Original statement given march 15th, 2009. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London… Statement begins…
There is a sickness among humanity.
Unfortunately, this is a sickness that cannot be cured with a medicine, or a doctor. The sickness is of human make, and human will. Look at any city on earth, and you see it. They’ve all been built upon the broken bodies of those who toiled… but I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself.
I did see the look on your face when I walked in. I get that a lot…when I’m around people. Every city on earth has its fair share of bloodshed, but Baltimore? Baltimore is drowning in it. Cruelty in the prison system, cruelty in the city, cruelty below the streets, on the streets, and violence of every stripe… how do I play into it?
My name is Ranse Truman. I was first put into prison for Grievous Bodily Harm. The specifics? Hard to say. The claim was that I nearly killed some guy in a fight. I remember the bar, the noise, the lights…and I remember the guy, talking big. Usual egotism, the kind you see everywhere there’s a guy with muscles bigger than his brains. The funny thing is…I don’t exactly recall much after that. I remember the insult that started it. Something about my arms, and sexual inadequacy… but I can’t remember the fight. I just remember the insult…then him on the floor, blood all over his face, and three people holding me against a wall. Apparently, I almost killed him. As a result, I was given a life sentence at Abbott State Penitentiary.
I’ll admit, I’ve never really left the US until now, so I can’t say for certain what prisons are like in England, but in America? It’s a growth industry. Every state, there are dozens of petri dishes of human misery. Some people have just been wronged by the system, and others do actually pose a threat…not like it matters in the end. The only thing separating a small-time offender from a Short-Timer on the Row is one bit of bad luck. Mine was…something like that.
Abbott is like most prisons in the US, in that it is a kind of hell that can only be shaped by human hands. Wake up, get yelled at by a C.O. eat breakfast, get threatened by a C.O., exercise yard, yelled at, and so and so forth. I’m a bit of an inquisitive fellow, so I tended to go to the library, do research on Abbott and Carnate, just to learn about it. The more I learned, the more I felt…sick. The tragedies of Carnate are manifold, and all of them nurtured by human hands. Slaves left to die, men and women burned at the stake due to rank suspicion, rogue military commanders executing their own men, and of course, the nastiness that goes on in a regular old prison. I took notes. Little observations and isms that popped into my head, little things I found myself wanting to say. As I did my research, I began to…see things. Sometimes, it was a quick flash, like a camera going off. Images of claws, teeth, blood, corpses, needles… a carnival of horrors. Other times, they were hallucinations in much more vivid detail. Visions of past butchery, present tragedy, and sometimes, things that would never have been able to happen. I could hear the torture when I tried to sleep. It’s the reason these are here. none of it took, clearly. But when I tried that trick with the sharpened spoon, they sent me back to Baltimore’s mainland, figuring they’d be able to keep me more secure there, more readily available medical staff. At that point, I carried no expectation that it would change anything… and then It followed me to Baltimore…or maybe It was already there, and I just woke It up…either way, the city went to hell.
I remember it like it was yesterday. It was about to be lights out, and some of the other inmates were shouting at each other. gang conflicts, like they were old noble families, who’d been fighting for centuries… in the modern world, I suppose they are. Around the time the C.O.s were settling things with threats of deprivation or beatings, the earth started rumbling. it was so violent that people were screaming about the Rapture, if you can believe it. Others were worried that the prison would collapse. It wasn’t severe enough to actually break anything serious, but it is still enough to make everyone freak out. My cellblock was on the smaller side, so when things quieted down, it got quieter than most. And then the guys in the other cells started going. One of them was cut off mid-word, sounding like he’d been shivved. He didn’t have a cell mate at the moment, so no one could have touched him. Then another voice cut off…then another, then another… finally, I was alone, until a C.O. opened the cell doors. When I got out, I managed to gather what weapons I could from lockers, supply closets, and the dead. As I ventured out, I heard the sounds, saw the sights, and smelt the scent. Screams, fire, blood, gunpowder, everything. Some of it was simple prison riots, the inmates letting their anger out, the C.O.s doing the same, ostensibly to maintain order, when in reality, they were just as happy to start the blooding. Some of it was…very different.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen something that doesn’t make sense in your time here, the Magnus Institute, from what research I did makes it seem more like a cataloging place… the things I saw were…monsters. Plain and simple. Walking refutations of nature, morality, and sense. I’d seen a few people referring to them as ‘demons’…it’s a bit inaccurate. Demons, hell, and all that…they make sense. These things... they came alive in a pageant of death… mankind's sins coming alive… literally, I’m afraid to admit. The first one I saw set the tone: an insane creature intent on wiping out everything alive it came across…thankfully, physical violence and enough bullets seemed to dissuade them
I ran, and fought, and ran, and fought, and dropped an unacceptable amount of my papers, such was my hurry… sadness all around I suppose… eventually, I rested in a bombed out building… I had decided to stop running, hiding or fighting… so I just sat there, licking my wounds, content to wait for salvation or perdition… then one of their holes opened up. They seem to come from the very earth itself. Like the suffering and cruelty that we’ve inflicted upon each other has been planting vile seeds, and this is the harvest. Creatures popped up from that hole. The first one was a common beast, blades and skittering. Like a ballet dancer and a swordsman went mad together. It looked at me for what felt like an eternity… and, despite their kind having no mercy for any living thing, it scuttled past me. The next one did the same…and the next…and the next… it almost became a routine. None of them even said a simple ‘hello’…very rude of them, isn’t it? I’d heard that someone with a case similar to mine had been sent to Abbot around the same time as Carnate becoming a death zone…so maybe these things are made manifest through someone particularly defined by the cruelty of other humans…yes, maybe that’s it…hm? Oh, yes.
This, incidentally, is why I refuse to stay in London any longer than it would take to deliver this statement, then head somewhere else…although… it might not end up working like that… it always starts with an earthquake. A sudden, violent tremor within the earth, that itself, doesn’t do anything more than shake the foundations, give people enough scare to act like animals… and then the bodies start piling up. The creatures have some…common mentality amongst each other. they’ve eradicated every living creature they come across. Men, women, kids, dogs…even each other, when there was nothing else. They’ve come after me more times than I can count. Sometimes in enough numbers that I had to resort to…drastic measures.
They emerge from the earth, taking the form of the cities’ past sins, and the sins of people who lived in it. It seems to take a great pleasure in doing so. They make far more noise than any hunter or serial killer has, at least that I’m aware of. They arrive as loud as a cry from the devil himself, and set themselves upon the average folk. They reap sin upon sin upon sin. Bullets meet flesh, blades meet bone, and fires reach the sky. And fortunately, it will never be something you can cover up. Everything the survivors think they know will be proven wrong, and the suffering will be thrown into our greater faces once again.
Terrible things happen all the time, and humans are all that they have in common. That’s why they go after us first, before setting upon whatever’s left. They want to hurt us…except me.
Although, with all of this… they have yet to truly come after me again. They did once, although they did seem forced to do it. Like they wanted to be somewhere else, but were ordered to attack me… as illogical as that sounds. I suppose they’ve grown bored with me… they have other prey, and I understand why.
They see me, and see that I know the truth…they couldn’t exist without us, and our fundamental disregard for human life. In the end, there will be more Cataclysms, all around the world… everything we think we know will be proven wrong so we can all learn the truth
That this is all we are…and this is all we ever will be
Clears throat, um…statement ends.
This is…an unusual statement. For one thing, it’s made by an American, and the event in question takes place in America, so there’s little we can do in terms of investigations or any real form of verification. Tim was able to make a few phone calls, get in touch with some members of Baltimore’s government, to confirm the basics. Yes, Ranse Truman was arrested for viciously assaulting a man, along with a photograph to compare with the one presented in his file. When he arrived to give his statement, his throat and wrists covered with heavy bandages, that were stained with blood. Given his reference to them in the statement, it seems that those injuries are…self-inflicted. Sasha once again, proved invaluable to the research here, providing multiple insights as to his arrest record, and this ‘Cataclysm’ he refers to. He was arrested, and sent to Abbott State Penitentiary for Assault and Battery, although his temporary, and provable, lapse in consciousness and the survival of ‘Ethan Bennet’ is the main reason he was not imprisoned for Attempted Murder. There are similar reports of nightmares and night terrors causing disruption, and the suicide attempts that led to his transfer to Eastern Baltimore Correctional.
As for this ‘Cataclysm’, there is very little in terms of actual evidence that it even occurred. There was a period of mass lawlessness with a high casualty count, preceded by an earthquake with in the 5-6 scale. Once government agents entered, there were heavier casualties than there normally would be for an urban revolt, although considering the Earthquake would have caused a variety of complications, and in a city as ridden with urban violence and civil unrest as Baltimore has famously been, the number of injured and dead soldiers becomes that much more understandable. The notion of the deaths being caused by ‘monsters born of human sins’ would be more believable, were it not for two things: first of all, Sasha managed to uncover that Ranse Truman has been prescribed Xombium, a lesser-known, but well-distributed anti-psychotic medication within the United States. Secondly, there were never any conclusive sightings of anything supernatural during the 2005 Baltimore riots. All-in-all, a Statement I could write off fairly easily…were it not for one thing.
Tim managed to work with Sasha on gathering and corroborating information researching the data we obtained, while Martin was…also there, I suppose? Regardless, they did manage to find some CCTV footage of some streets and back-alleys. The footage was garbled and corrupted so intensely as to be unusable as reference material…but there were some vague impressions that we could manage to make out.
Some of the footage could have been separated into individual images that were more coherent, and while the individuals in said images were still garbled, there was enough definition to see outlines and shapes… there were some images that appeared to be people running away from or fighting…something. The image was poor enough quality that all we could say for certain… is that a normal person couldn’t have been that big…or in that kind of shape.
Recording ends…