The Mission Is Never Over—The Glenridge Chiropractor

Art by Jenna Barton.

 

Home Pursuits

With the Valdez residence in ashes, the Agents left Alabama just in time to share Christmas with their loved ones. Wren and Malachi were glad to put the operation behind them, but Rex had become surprisingly attached to his teammates. He decided to track down MARCUS and make a friend of him too, meaning it fell to his intern Doug to do the tracking down while Rex occupied himself with his experiments and his bugs. Doug tried his best over the following weeks, but with so little to go on, he wasn't expecting to find much. He certainly wasn't expecting to find a burner phone sticky with soy sauce among the Chinese takeout he'd ordered for lunch, nor a single text on it saying, "Tell your boss to cut that shit out." But while Doug was shaken, Rex was thrilled: he was getting closer!

Malachi arrived back home with poinsettias. Ash cursed at him: bursting through the door had interrupted his killstreak in COD Warzone, but Malachi was too happy to be back with his own family to let that get to him. He pulled Claire in close, and they danced to Christmas music and video game explosions.

Later, after the holidays, Malachi went for a solo hike in the Cape Cod pine barrens. While walking, he found a dead tree and stopped. He watched it. Concentrated on it. And flames erupted from the peeling bark.

Wren spent time with her loved ones, sharing gifts with them all. Aaron got a copy of The Witch-Cult in Western Massachusetts from Bell & Shadow; Robin got a new canvas and paints; and her mom got a scented candle and coffee grinder. But once the holidays ended, she dove back into her research. Between a scan of various databases and a check-in with questionable contacts, Wren found records of a "Hope Schlafly" who had not existed until four years after Joy disappeared. Her CV described research in a similar vein to Joy's, but if this was her, she had shifted direction from pure psychology to psychopharmacology and left academia behind for corporate America.

 

April 22

Wren's job with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit 4 had taken her to Long Island, NY. Someone had mutilated and killed three people in the past month, and local police had requested the FBI's help in catching the "Glenridge Chiropractor," as the press had named the serial killer. Wren arrived at the FBI field office that same day and started reviewing evidence collected by the Glenridge PD, but there was surprisingly little... and what was there made no sense. The victims had no ties to each other. They had each had their spines violently pulled out from their backs, a feat that required superhuman strength. And the medical examiner's reports mentioned a gray sludge under each victim's fingernails that defied chemical analysis. It was on a call with Special Agent Grant Grayson, her boss and supervisor of the FBI advisory presence, that she learned two consultants would be joining her. The case had become Delta Green business.

 

April 23

Wren briefed Malachi and Rex on the case so far; the FBI was present to assist the locals and did not have jurisdiction, but the Program didn't care. They wanted the Glenridge Chiropractor stopped and a mundane narrative presented to the media. It was during this conversation that a burner phone supplied by the Program began to ring; MARCUS spoke to Malachi, asking for an in-person meeting under the cover of preparations for a birthday party. The indicated meeting place was a rest stop in Philadelphia, five hours away, and the longer they waited, the worse traffic would get. Malachi agreed to the meeting.

With the briefing concluded, Wren and Rex met with Dr. Stephen Santorini, the medical examiner for Suffolk County and a bit of an egoist. It turned out to be something of a reunion: Wren had worked with Dr. Santorini on previous FBI cases, while he and Rex were classmates in medical school. An old rivalry between them immediately flared up again. Dr. Santorini's lab coat was too white and pressed, his manners conveyed a sense of smugness, and he'd decorated his office in pictures of himself shaking hands with various bigwigs, including former president Barack Obama. Wren pressed through the veiled barbs, and Dr. Santorini admitted he found the condition of the bodies baffling: some wounds struck him as potentially signaling an animal attack, despite attributing them to a dull blade and concluding murder in his reports. Then there was the trauma to the skeleton and soft tissues, consistent with a great fall after death, which only made sense to him if the killer were throwing his victims out of a low-flying airplane. And then there was the sludge... at this point, Rex, eager to one-up his nemesis, insisted on studying a sample of the sludge for himself. Dr. Santorini was surprised: he'd sent samples to the FBI already, but he was happy to hear Rex's opinion. He rose from his chair, and Rex tried to secretly let a box of termites loose near the office's big wooden desk, but Dr. Santorini was ready with a can of Raid.

Malachi called Claire to break up the monotonous drive. He claimed he was attending a wildfire management exercise on Long Island, and a friend supposed to be there was stranded outside Philly when his car broke down. They talked about stopping for cheesesteaks and seeing which of the "originals" was best, and Claire asked him if it would be possible to take Ash along on future trips. Malachi hesitated before answering, and Claire asked him to think about it.

Under a microscope, the gray sludge revealed itself to be a long chain of organic compounds. Notably, in certain places, it formed rings around molecules of toxic gas; Rex realized that while the lab samples were safe in such small quantities, a larger mass would release them in a deadly cloud if subjected to enough force. The overall makeup also reminded him of a paper he once read about the potential for life to evolve on a comet. Feeling smarter than Dr. Santorini with these findings, but recognizing the urgency of sharing them with Wren, he signaled to her they ought to leave. Dr. Santorini wished them well and invited them back at any point.

Malachi was pulling into the rest stop when Wren called to tell him the Chiropractor was almost certainly an alien. Malachi made to go into the rest stop when someone flashed their lights at him. MARCUS was sitting behind the wheels of a truly ancient Hyundai Pony, lacking any digital systems used in modern vehicles. It didn't even have a CD player: MARCUS inserted a cassette to play over their voices. Malachi relayed Rex's findings, causing MARCUS to wince when he realized the team had discussed it openly over the phone. He told Malachi that the Program's dossier had misled them as to the goals of the operation: the Program didn't just want them to stop the Chiropractor, but to recover him—it—for study. Malachi was shocked and resistant to the news, though he became slightly less skeptical when he realized they weren't expected to take the Chiropractor in alive. There were interests within the Program more concerned with profits than the public good, MARCUS explained. Another team was flying in to brief the Agents personally: they should agree to everything asked of them, but if the Chiropractor "just so happened" to be destroyed in the course of the operation, so be it.

Wren and Rex checked into the Dive Right Inn, the last motel around with rooms available after the national media had decscended on the area, and it did not take them long to see why. The soap dispenser in the bathroom was half-full of water, the tub's drain was clogged with hair, the carpet and the microwave were stained something awful, as well as... Wren refused to look, but Rex swept the room with a blacklight on his keychain...

Wren stepped outside to call Aaron to ask about alien sightings or UFOs over Long Island for a "book" she was writing; it became clear Aaron had no idea Wren worked for the FBI. He did know about a conspiracy theorist in the area, though, one who documented the "drones" still popping up over New York and New Jersey for Phenomen-X.com He sent a few pictures the guy had taken, dark and low-quality, with the first showing some kind of blob in the night sky. But the next showed the blob become misshapen, and by the third it had separated into two blobs. With each new picture the second blob fell towards the ground. The conspiracy theorist's name was Devon Malouf. He lived in Glenridge, and he'd taken the pictures the night Carl Maretti, the first victim, had died.

After 10 hours on the road, Malachi pulled in at the Dive Right Inn, and the team settled in for the night.

 

April 24

The team decided to visit the home of the third victim, Lauren Harrogate. Lauren, a teenager, had been abducted from her home in the middle of the night and found dead the next morning; Lauren's mother Sandra had witnessed the attack, but the shock had left her catatonic, and she had been taken to a mental health facility for treatment.

There was still a heavy police presence at the Harrogates' home, combing it over top to bottom, and the Agents met lead investigator Det. Hannah Gregson. Inside, She took them to Lauren's bedroom on the second floor, decorated with pictures of Lauren and Sandra on road trips together, along with a distinctive charm bracelet. Rex noticed subtle signs of occult practice: sage and different crystals had been placed not just in this room but around the house, as if someone had tried to form a protective barrier at its entrances. He also noticed a prescription pill bottle for headache medication with Sandra's name on it. Perhaps she, like all of them, was more sensitive to the Unnatural than most.

The Chiropractor had entered Lauren's bedroom on the second floor through a balcony, breaking down the doors, but there was no sign how they had reached the balcony in the first place. There were no fibers from a rope, nor impressions from a ladder in the lawn. Rex studied the broken doors and found spatters of more gray sludge: he joked about licking it, and Det. Gregson curtly told Wren to keep her people in line so they don't contaminate the crime scene. Malachi noticed claw marks in the walls and ceiling, written off by the police as wild swings of the murder weapon: whatever the Chiropractor was, it was big.

Then Malachi heard an odd noise stepped away, following it to Sandra's bedroom. He found a charm bracelet there matching the one Wren found in Lauren's room, but he also noticed Sandra's laptop was still plugged in after all this time, and it was getting Discord pings. Looking closer, Malachi saw that Sandra was part of a server called the Dream Syndicate whose members believed they could see real events through their dreams. A quick skim found Sandra had been posting heavily in a channel called #human-sacrifice. Multiple people recounted a dream in which they were tied up on some kind of altar while a man in a brown cape chanted over them. It was nighttime: a stone pillar lay nearby, with carvings of humans and animals and chimeras visible in the torchlight. Then something they couldn't see for the darkness raised the pillar, and the chanting reached a crescendo. The man repeated a word multiple times, something that sounded like "eye-up-uh." Then something attacked the dreamer from out of the darkness, falling out of the sky in total silence.

Malachi called the others over and showed it to them. Another channel labeled #sick-room caught their eye. It was a dream about Sidney Valdez, the one Wren had experienced in Vermont. People had been having it before Karen Valdez's attacks began. People were still having it now, even though Karen and Sidney couldn't hurt anyone anymore. And who was posting in this channel but Gina Bullock, known psychic and the focus of their last operation. All this was enough to convince the team the Dream Syndicate had stumbled on something real.

(Amusingly, the Dream Syndicate had a channel for #boring-dreams, which was exactly what it sounded like. The server apparently got so many people joining just to share boring, low-effort dreams they needed somewhere to corral them. These included gems like "can't find mustard," "killing werewolves w/ minigun," and "can't stop dreaming about male history teacher—implications? (not gay)")

Wren didn't mention to the others she had once been a member of the Dream Syndicate years ago, when it was an old-fashioned forum board. She logged into Discord on her phone and joined the new server, allowing her to keep tabs on it.

With more psychic phenomena potentially involved, the team resolved to visit Sandra Harrogate at Swansea Psychiatric Institute. But on the way there, Wren started getting DMs from someone named Dominator. He introduced himself as one of the Dream Syndicate's mods, welcomed her there, and tried to take credit for a dream Wren herself had helped contribute to: he was surprised to learn Wren was a former member, as he'd joined some time after she left. They talked a bit about the #human-sacrifice dream, with Dominator claiming one of the members interested in that dream had been a victim of the Glenridge Chiropractor. He asked Wren if she knew anything about archeology; after what happened to Sandra, though he didn't name her, the community was driven to learn more about it.

At Swansea Psychiatric Institute, Wren and Malachi sat with Sandra in her room while Rex waited in the hall: a nurse had said Sandra reacted badly to being touched, and they didn't trust Rex not to push buttons. The room was decorated to look like a beach house, with a nautical quilt and bowls of seashells and a tacky poster saying, "Life is better by the beach."

Wren tried to get through to Sandra, without success. However, she'd taken Lauren's charm bracelet with her before leaving the house, and she put it in Sandra's hands. Sandra began to whisper in a language neither of them recognized; Wren took out her phone and began to record it. Some of the words matched things people had written phonetically in #human-sacrifice, including "eye-up-uh." But Sandra became louder and louder, and soon she was screaming the unknown language with tears rolling down her cheeks. The nurses came in to tend to her, and Wren and Malachi took their leave.

As they were leaving, they found a young woman in trendy black clothes arguing with a receptionist: a member of the media was trying to get in to see Sandra too. Wren intervened, introducing herself as an FBI agent, and the woman—Lara Sanchez, host of the Small Town, Big Crime! podcast—immediately zeroed in on them. And Rex immediately zeroed in on her. When he heard she was with the media, he launched into a diatribe about a conspiracy in the medical examiner's office. Bodies were disappearing! Dr. Santorini was a crook! Former president Barack Obama was involved, somehow! Lara immediately shoved a release form in Rex's face, then before the ink was even dry, she had him repeat everything while recording it on her phone. Wren butted in to insist Lara leave without disturbing Sandra, but she didn't push back this was the juicy lead she'd been looking for. They dragged Rex away while Lara recorded overblown narration.