Prelude
Shortly after Chrono and Banshee had first arrived in this parallel universe, they encountered a malevolent ghost called Raggedy Anne.
Last night, exactly seventy-seven months after Raggedy Anne had been bound and sealed (by Banshee’s ritual) inside a catatonic, braindead, child’s body, that patient Abigail Dreyfus died. It followed a long and protracted legal case,several appeals by her father to keep her life ‘artificially sustained’ were defeated and she was taken off life support.
Surprisingly when life support was removed Abigail initially managed to breathe on her own and even recovered some muscle movement though she remained in a catatonic state. Then, exactly at midnight, she went into cardiac arrest and died in extreme distress. Her death meant that the ghost of Raggedy Anne was released to seek her next seven victims once more.
Now
A video call came in from Superintendent Cunningham of CI-5 while the team were gathered in the lounge.
She explained that she was worried that the serial killings at Providence General Hospital on the outskirts of Wessex had resumed. She glanced at Banshee and muttered that she still didn’t know to what degree Banshee and Chrono had been involved in stopping the attacks last time, but might the team assist with the investigation of the current murder?
Banshee immediately made the connection to Raggedy Anne, but she’d been ‘dealt with’, hadn’t she? She whispered quietly to her teammates that a ghost with a thing for sharp knives might be involved, but it had been so long ago, and it had occurred before Frankie, so there were no notes she could provide.
Meanwhile the superintendent continued to explain that she’d been the original investigating officer when the murders and attacks had occurred about six-and-a-half years ago and therefore had asked to oversee the case again this time.
She briefly explained that in or around midnight the previous night a young patient, a seven-year-old boy recovering from cancer named Saul Matthews was found in his bed, tied down using his own bedsheets, his eyes gouged out and stabbed seventy-seven times with multiple blades.
She proceeded to show them photos of the scene. The photos of the corpse were horrific but what really caught their eye was a message scrawled in blood on the hospital wall behind the body, “My latest but not my last.” The cursive letters used looked like they had been written by a child using their left hand…
Akira muttered something about having solved it and the child having apparently ‘done it to himself’. The others though had no time for his dark humour and focused their attention on Cunningham.
Superintendent Cunningham stated that the local Police had noted the similarity with a couple of murders that occurred almost six-and-a-half years before – in the basement of the neighbouring, and now abandoned, Providence Psychiatric Hospital located in the hospital grounds.
The first victim had been a Nurse, Sally Maguire, who had suffered seventy-seven stabbings and multiple blades had apparently been used. A week later Orderly Micky Davis had been skinned alive before having his throat cut. Both were found in different locations in the locked basement of Providence Psychiatric Hospital and the knives used in both murders were seemingly identical but had never been found. Both died approximately at midnight, a week apart.
The angle of the wounds on both bodies (a number were angled low and upwards while others were inflicted by overhead stabs) suggested possibly more than one assailant had been responsible.
A week later a third victim was attacked – apparently telekinetically according to his statement. Eamonn Langsford had been a volunteer on Hospital Radio and had suffered life-threatening injuries, being partially skinned alive in the basement despite a heavy police presence in the hospital. After that the attacks had stopped.
The Police’s theory at the time was that this may have been the work of a teleporting, TK-wielding meta-human (she’d even suspected Akira at one point), but the real culprit was never found, and the case was subsequently shelved due to a lack of evidence.
The County Pathologist Dr Ira Cooper had a theory that the attacker had been a copycat killer basing their attacks on the local legend of Raggedy Anne and therefore had possibly been a patient there before the hospital had closed down. Cunningham also felt sure that there was some sort of theme or connection linking the earlier murders with the latest one.
Banshee briefly interrupted to explain that the hospital had been built in the grounds of an old and now abandoned psychiatric hospital and they had found a number of disturbing reports of attacks over the years linked to a young patient in Victorian times called Annie Chapman also known as Raggedy Anne, who had been severely abused by the staff and had subsequently committed suicide. She promised to explain more after the briefing.
While Cunningham continued to explain what they hadn’t found at the scene (there was no blood traces leading away from the corpse, in fact no forensic evidence linking the murder scene to the attacker) Akira interrupted to say that he wanted to go in undercover as Sunset the Clown, doing a few simple illusions masquerading as stage magic for the children and see if they could flush out the murderer. Banshee murmured back that ‘everyone hates clowns, even murdering ghosts, so it was sure to work.’
Cunningham said she’d make arrangements to allow them access in whatever disguises they felt would best work; she was clearly not a fan of an undercover clown wandering the children’s wards at midnight and logged off leaving the team to check with Frankie and Banshee’s aging memories as to what they knew about the ghost of Raggedy Anne.
After his personal encounter with the BASEment’s own ghost – who’d originally died in the World War One attack on the munitions factory that had been located above them in 1915 prior to Banshee accidentally changing history and saving her – Akira at least, had no issues with ghosts being real.
X-Ray was a little more sceptical. With nearly twenty years of experience in the medical profession, boy to man, he had yet to experience anything even remotely ghostly when a patient had died on the operating table – not that he had lost more than three patients in all that time, but how many deaths does it take to see a ghost? Even Mary was just a Meta with powers that resembled the legendary Bean Sidhe of Irish folklore, despite what anyone else said about her. This serial killer would be something similar, a psychotic Meta with a taste for blood; nothing more, nothing less.
Frankie explained that Providence Psychiatric Hospital had been established on the outskirts of the village of Bedlam, near the town of Wessex as a secure outreach wing of the St Mary of Bethlehem mental asylum in London in the early 19th century. The hospital was seen as a secure isolated place to hide away the incurably insane and the forgotten.
The hospital and its estate remained untouched until the late 1890’s when it became part of a larger hospital complex – Providence Hospital. Its location on the outskirts of the city and it’s relatively small and cramped size meant that the decision was taken to move the general Hospital in the 1960’s to the City Centre and turn the estate next door into a specialist teaching hospital with a dedicated children’s wing. The original hospital building continued to function as the Country’s primary psychiatric hospital until the 1960s.
Banshee interrupted to explain that medical notes that Chrono and she had previously found in the hospital archives had shown the history and abuse of a young female patient called Annie Chapman who died in 1889. Raggedy Anne was the nickname that Annie Chapman had been given by the staff after being sent by her ‘father’, her mother’s husband, to Bedlam Sanatorium while still a young child back in the 1880’s. Tortured and abused including being experimented on with an early form of electro-shock therapy, she was driven to suicide aged just 17.
Records seem to suggest that her mother may have been having an affair and Anne had been the unwanted result of that liaison. Her ‘father’ appeared to have realised this and elected to punish Anne for the sin of existing by having her committed and then ‘forgotten’ at such an early age. There had been no record that anyone had ever visited her after she had been committed.
“She’s going to love my hand buzzer gag”, was Akira’s response.
Frankie continued. <<There are no further records of Raggedy Anne to be found. There are hospital records however, showing occasional physical attacks that had occurred between 1889 and the 1930’s, primarily of staff and always involving stabbing – in each case they described the assailant as having hair that changed to bright red and always using a knife or sharp objects to attack – these weapons were never found.>>
“With her head nodding to the beat, she skips down the ward.
Hungry, looking for someone to eat, over the decades she gets bored.
She sees a scared child and advances with hearty laughter,
As they scream she smiled, as she takes them to the hereafter.
Blades flashing, she stabs them in the heart that was beating,
Knives slashing, their skin she is peeling and treating.
Seven is the number, she laughs as she sings,
Before I can slumber, as bloody blades she swings. “
<<Designation: The Balance – the attacks stopped suddenly in 1938, following the horrific deaths of six staff members and a young female patient. Then in 1973 five pupils from St. Thomas Aquinas School, near St. Mary Mede broke into the school while it was closed for renovations and apparently performed a séance. Whatever happened, three of them died that night from multiple stab wounds and another was seriously wounded, however no weapons were ever found. That student subsequently died as a result of her multiple knife wounds followed by the murder of two members of staff at the hospital, one of whom was stabbed multiple times and the other skinned alive. Then the deaths stopped. The sightings of Raggedy Anne also ended about this time.
The final student from the séance, Ruby Barnett was committed to the asylum for the remainder of her life and although there was no trial, it was always assumed that she had been responsible for the six horrific murders.
Ms Barnett died a month before the last set of attacks, apparently of natural causes. The latest attacks have not been linked to these historical attacks other than as signs of a possible copycat murderer.>>
Banshee explained that she’d met a Rabbi, Shallach Ben Holmz, who claimed that his father, along with a group of Elders from his synagogue, had bound the ghost into the body of Ruby.
He claimed that after she had carried out seven murders, Raggedy would rest, supposedly for seventy-seven years; however, when she awoke, she would be stronger and more powerful, He went on to state that he understood from his father’s records that the next time she would only rest for seventy-seven months, then seventy-seven weeks and so on until she couldn’t be put down at all.
It had been his belief that in the 1930s Raggedy Anne committed her seven murders and rested but had been raised violently in the 1970s by Ruby Barnett using one of the other pupils as a human sacrifice.
His father had used an ancient exorcism ritual recovered from a shrine hidden in the depths of the city of Masada which consisted of a series of sonics (the singing of the elders) to bind Raggedy Anne’s spirit into the body of Ruby. However, when Ruby died, that must have freed her spirit to try again. Was that what had happened this time that the girl that Banshee had bound her to had died? The number seven was clearly significant.
One person had already died this time, six more would possibly follow. Then what? She’d return again in seventy-seven months, or would it be weeks this time, stronger and more deadly than ever?
It was, admittedly reluctantly, agreed that Akira would go in to the children’s wards dressed as a clown, X-Ray would go in using his civilian persona while Banshee would go in insubstantial and invisible though she remembered that that had been no defence against Raggedy’s attacks.
Banshee confirmed that a patient at the hospital designation: Abigail Dreyfus, had died the night before from natural causes, mere minutes before the murder occurred in a different ward. Frankie also confirmed that there weren’t any other catatonic patients in the hospital. They would have to figure out a different solution this time.
Their plan was to head over early evening so Akira could be there to give his performance while the kids ate their dinner and then spend the night watching out for Anne.
To Akira’s annoyance, blancmange was not on the menu so he resorted to creating impossible structures out of jelly as part of his act while asking the kids in passing whether they had seen anything strange or unusual. As he approached each child in turn doing a special trick with each, one of them pointed behind Akira and said, “That doggy is strange.”
Akira spun round only to see Calamity, the corgi with its alien-looking antennae on its forehead had appeared, seemingly having teleported into the ward and was now barking furiously and whining at the wall. After it had first appeared, Akira had unofficially adopted the pooch.
It was clearly unhappy about something. “Calamity! Calm down and behave yourself!” he said as X-Ray approached to see what was going on.
This was his first encounter with the teleporting, time travelling ‘dog’ but knowing that the strange followed the team around he immediately reached out with his senses and felt an intense cold spot manifesting by the wall the creature was barking and snarling at, its hackles raised.
Banshee was present as well, though invisible but was being ignored by the corgi, so it wasn’t her presence the creature could sense. Then they heard insane and prolonged laughter echoing around the corridor outside followed by a disembodied, young female voice “Did you’s miss me?” and the sound of skipping in the hall which gradually faded as it moved away.
X-Ray headed out to corridor to see if he could see anything as Akira used his mystical senses to confirm his suspicions. On the wall in front of them dozens of tiles began to break off the wall and morph into tiny, metallic diamond-shaped blades which shot through the air towards him.
X-Ray started to put up his forcefield, but a few of the blades managed to get through before he could manage to erect it fully and he was forced to dodge. A couple of the blades managed to slice the sleeve of his coat though thankfully not him.
As the first of the blades hit the wall behind him, they again metamorphosed into tiles and shattered when they hit the floor as did the ‘blades’ clattering to the ground after hitting the forcefield. This was accompanied by disembodied laughter echoing down the corridor. His exotic senses identified a cold spot in the middle of the corridor in front of him, but it was otherwise invisible to his sight. The laughter began to fade.
Akira popped his head out of the ward and saw the shattered tiles on the ground. “Retiling?” was his query to X-Ray before he spun round and stared at the ward as his mystical senses warned him of danger. Inside the ward the children’s dolls had begun to change and menacingly alter. Long, sharp blades were manifesting in the doll’s hands and the faces changed into evil leers as they began to move of their own volition. Others were growing metallic claws and also seemed to be animating, clawing their way up onto the children’s beds or jumping off their bedside cabinets. The doll’s wigs or hair were turning a bright red at the same time.
Akira immediately grabbed all of the children out of their beds using his TK to bring them to him before erecting a protective force cage round them, hopefully protecting them against the doll’s attacks. One of the dolls turned into a duplicate of Akira in his clown costume only for another doll to stab it through the chest where its heart should be; a pretty graphic threat if ever there was one. Meanwhile the children were screaming and trying to break free despite some of the doll’s having managed to scratch at their arms.
Behind the children was a disembodied, young female voice saying, “Have you come to play with me, ‘cause I’m SO BORED! BORED!!! Let’s play ‘Stabby, Stabby Mr Goose, shall we?”
Banshee immediately unleashed a shattering shriek at the menacing dolls which disintegrated into multiple de-animated shards.
Again, the disembodied voice was heard, “That’s no fun! Mr Goose, Mr Goose are you ready for… Stabbing and slabbing? Next comes the slicing and dicing and finally the roasting and basting… Oh I so love this game…”
As the female voice spoke, the doll shards began to change into diamond-shaped metallic blades. To X-Ray’s enhanced senses the room was now full of cold spots, especially around each of the blades. He was sure the voice was coming from the corner of the room. It was certainly the largest and coldest spot in the room. He unleashed an ultra-violet energy cage at that location in response. It appeared to have some effect on the blades forming but not as much as he’d hoped. Several of the blades did begin to reform into shards of dolls and collapse to the ground where they seemed to stutter between being blades and being plastic fragments.
Then they heard the voice again. “OH, YOU’RE NO FUN! BORED NOW… Time to go and play with your little friends instead. Bye de bye.” Then they heard the voice singing and the sound of someone skipping even as the cold spots began to fade away.
“Blood sacrifices and penitents say the bells of St. Clement’s.
The price is seven sins say the bells of St. Martin’s.
When will you pay me? Say the bells of Old Bailey.
When I’m soul rich say the bells of Shoreditch.
When will that be? Say the bells of Stepney.
I do not know, says the great bell of Bow.
Here comes a candle to light you to bed and here comes a chopper to chop off your head, chop, chop, chop, chop, until the last sacrifice’s dead!”
With that the cold spots all vanished. Akira looked around and realised that Calamity had also disappeared, in pursuit possibly? The children were safe for the moment at least, other than suffering some scratches and minor little cuts. X-Ray shook his head in disbelief, “Comes to something when the dog’s more useful than we are!”
“That’s not unusual” replied a weary Akira.
Banshee responded that Raggedy definitely seemed tougher this time which backed up what the Rabbi had said about each time she reappeared after her ‘slumbers’ she would be stronger, more powerful and he thought she would remanifest faster; seventy-seven years the first time if she hadn’t been woken prematurely, seventy-seven months last time. What next? Seventy-seven weeks, then seventy-seven days later?
“When she said our little friends, who do you think she is after now? Last time she went after Chrono in a restaurant he used to frequent and atacked me in Container Town possessing people we knew in both places. She seems to know things about us which I for one find uncomfortable.”
Akira suggested they try and use another show to try to attract Raggedy back and suggested they could do a knife-throwing act using their various telekinetic abilities to make sure no one actually died. “Surely lots of knives flying around would attract our little psychopathic killer back?” he said.
Unsurprisingly, the others weren’t that keen on the suggestion.
“I still think that she would be sympathetic to some knife throwing.” He muttered as they ignored the alternative that X-Ray threw scalpels instead at Banshee.
Unsure what had just happened but seeing the mess in the corridor and hearing the kids screams the staff were doing their best to try and get them to leave. They tried to explain that the attacker would likely return but the nurses and staff were deaf to their pleas. Instead, Akira suggested they taunt the ghost by asking the hospital radio station to play “There’s a ghost in my house” by R Dean Taylor, dedicated to little Annie Chapman, Raggedy and see if that might draw her back.
He muttered, “We can ask him to say that we hope she’s going to enjoy it and if not, we’re going to play it again and again and again.”
They found the studio in the basement and were ‘forceful’ about their request – refusing to leave the studio unless the DJ promised to play their request. The DJ wasn’t happy when they insisted he repeat the record again, immediately after the first play.
They were about to have a real fight when they insisted he play it again for the third time only for them to see the studio begin to change around them and a leering, giggling figure of a girl began to appear, sitting on the floor. The DJ seeing this, immediately fled leaving them to witness Raggedy’s return amid the unfamiliar silence in the studio.
The scene solidified to show a semi-solid-looking petite, if clearly emaciated, girl sitting on the floor in front of them an inane smile on her lips, which was unexpectedly coupled with a cold, evaluating stare as she glowered at them from under a bright red thatch of unruly hair. The colour was too red, as though someone had poured a tin of mailbox red paint over it at some point. Her clothes and toys changed every few minutes – at first, she was dressed like a Victorian child in torn, off-white stockings and a messed-up pinafore dress holding an antique doll with half of its China face missing, next she was in muddy and torn dungarees and holding a broken steam engine before settling on striped leggings, a white and red top and short blue skirt surrounded by toy soldiers and fashion dolls.
The stabbed Clown Doll was back, with a knife through his heart pinned to the wall. There were other dolls, including a Pinocchio puppet with a nose like a wooden stake. There were building blocks between her legs spelling out the word ‘die’ and a noticeboard behind her head now had a bloody ‘T’ added to the front of several magnetic letters spelling out ‘T’Ragedy Anne.
Akira tried to talk to her. “As you can see, we’re not that dissimilar. I also like to juggle with knives and mess around and scare people and generally have a good time. But you know…”
“BORED NOW!” she screamed,
“What do you want? Where do you want to be?” he asked, his voice calm as she picked up a toy soldier and it changed into a small, diamonds-shaped blade in her hand.
“I want to be stronger. I want revenge. I really want my life back, but it’s too late now, isn’t it? I want to be me.” Suddenly, the dolls all started to jump off the shelf and advance menacingly. Even the Pinocchio doll’s wooden nose was extending out like a sharp stake.
Banshee changed into Mary, manifested her harp, and began to play a calming melody. It seemed to have an effect as the dolls stopped their advance.
That was when X-Ray realised that something had changed. Instead of his just sensing a cold spot where Anne sat, he could feel body heat, hear the beat of a scared and frightened heartbeat inside the body. Anne must have possessed someone’s body and that meant if they attacked her, there was a strong possibility they would hurt and injure the person she had possessed as well.
The last thing they wanted to do was risk damaging her host. He immediately explained to the others what he had sensed. Akira replied, “No, no, no. it’s Pinocchio that’s a real boy.” which had the others scratching their heads in disbelief.
At least the children were safe for the moment but who was she possessing? She had transformed her in her own image. Banshee remembered back when she first attacked Raggedy Ann in the hospital, that one of the patients turned up badly hurt. Their attack on her had also been inflicted on the host.
At the time of the previous attacks, Raggedy had seemed real and solid but physical blows didn’t seem to have any effect on her then a short time after a young patient, Rachel Collins had appeared covered in multiple wounds and contusions. She remembered going to sleep and the next thing she remembered it was several hours later and she was standing by the corridor in Emergency badly injured – by them.
Raggedy Ann started to break free from the influence of Mary’s music as she tried to maintain the tune. Meanwhile Akira began to cast the Occult Exorcism of Obroros, a powerful ban against outside mystic influences.
He pictured the ancient intelligent artifact, a double-terminated obelisk of gleaming black stone in his mind and began the gestures that called the spell into being. He gestured and the spell fell over Raggedy and began to tear apart her altered reality leaving the victim she possessed in psychic turmoil and immense pain. She began screaming her head off as hundreds of little cuts appearing over her skin. It appeared she had been one of the nurses.
Thankfully all the other objects had vanished and all they could hear was giggling. Then the cold spot appeared again which immediately left the room. X-Ray tried to follow it, but it passed through a wall and vanished.
Meanwhile Mary and Akira were trying to help the woman who was covered in cuts and was now lying on the ground, unconscious. Thankfully, all the cuts were superficial. They used the radio to put out a call out for medical assistance for her then chased after X-Ray.
As they headed out of the studio, they got a call over their commdots from Jeeves. “Master Akira, is there a reason why Calamity has appeared in the BASEment and is barking so aggressively at the walls?”
“Oh God, she’s in our basement”, Akira shouted. “We need to hightail it back.” Mary briefly warned Jeeves as to what was happening and what to expect with such a malignant spirit around as Akira opened a portal back to the BASEment’s Reception Room with its massive alien crystal. Seconds later they were in the familiar surroundings of their base and heading towards the lounge.
Inside they found Jeeves and young Chris, Singularity. There was no sign of Calamity, but they could hear his barking echoing up the corridor outside. “Who else is here?” shouted X-Ray, concerned that Stacy might become another of the victims. Jeeves replied, “Only Mikey. She was down in the hangar I believe.”
“She has to be the next victim, or can Raggedy also possess males?”
Banshee informed him that it wasn’t just females that were possessed by her, she was also known to possess males which put Jeeves and Singularity both at risk. Akira shuddered; they were also at risk of being possessed by her given half a chance.
Then Calamity reappeared having teleported back into the room, barking at one of the walls. Akira and X-Ray immediately erected their forcefields and Banshee turned insubstantial.
Calamity’s hackles were raised as it barked and barked and barked only to stop suddenly, turn and growl at Singularity. The boy was standing to one side of the room, a silly grin spreading across his face as his body and features began to change and shrink and his hair turned bright red. He was obviously the latest to be possessed. X-Ray cried out an involuntary “oh boy” and prepared himself for the worst.
Akira asked him, “Will you be able to take him down if necessary?” X-Ray nodded grimly in response. Raggedy had clearly been expecting them. ‘She’ gestured, then using Singularity’s powers manifested a micro-singularity in the room. Jeeves suddenly felt himself being pulled across the room, the others managed to dodge the initial pull but they knew it would only get stronger over time.
She clearly expected them to attack her and thereby hurt his prodigy, but X-Ray had an idea. He unleashed his gravi-kinesis causing Chris to start to fall then spin in the air looping over and around at great speed, leaving him too dizzy and unable to focus on maintaining his deadly little black hole which immediately vanished.
Akira Joined in using his own TK to increase the speed and Chis/Raggedy was forced to cover his mouth as the disorientation got worse. He wasn’t trying to hurt him, but under these conditions there was no way that Raggedy Ann could continue to control and possess him while he was so out of control. Between the two of them they spun him really fast, changing direction frequently. After a few seconds of such violent and seemingly uncontrolled spinning, they allowed Singularity to collapse to the ground unconscious.
As they lowered his body it began to revert to its normal look. X-Ray glanced around the room with his extraordinary senses and could ‘feel’ the cold chill that was Raggedy flow out the door and into the corridor as it, she, fled. He smiled, though he wasn’t sure they’d be able to make such a trick work against her a second time. He was sure she’d rather kill her host that let herself be cast out like that again.
He left Singularity to Jeeves as the team headed out into the corridor in pursuit. As she left with the others Banshee asked Frankie to send a message to Mikey that she wasn’t to panic but to get herself to somewhere safe as there was a ghost loose in the building capable of taking over her body and possessing her. She was to stay in the hangar until he got to her.
Thankfully, Raggedy didn’t appear to be heading in the direction, instead she headed to the Black Room close by.
This was a room that X-Ray had never visited. He pushed through the door and realised why it was so-called because it was painted a solid black everywhere. There were several large screens scattered around and there were a number of large balancing beams crisscrossing the floor. The lighting was deliberately dim and cast shadows everywhere. When he first joined the team, he’d been told that this had been a training room used by Young Sam to test his fire powers, but he’d never had reason to enter until today. It appeared to have remained untouched and unused since Sam’s departure. That’s when he heard a whirling noise and noticed that there were also a couple of currently deactivated training robots, what the team called MMD droids, present in the room.
Banshee reached the Black Room and immediately phased through the walls to gain entry even as Akira opened the door and entered trying to prevent Calamity from also coming in.
He immediately asked, “Can someone turn the power off in the Black Room, please? Frankie replied. <<Designation: Akira, we’re trying, but something seems to be overpowering my controls.>>
Unfortunately, he knew that the MMD’s worked on independent power supply anyway.
As she listened, Banshee heard the whirling sound as two or more of the MMD’s powered up. The sound of something thrown was rushing through the air towards her face. Being insubstantial, she stood there and let it fly through. It was a now dried and partially solidified, foam-covered plastic plate!. She unleashed a shattering shriek as several more followed in fast succession. The dishes shattered in mid-air, leaving foam spattered everywhere. Another MMD focused its throwing arm in her general direction. The MMDs were fitted with a blaster arm but whoever had programmed these droids had obviously decided a bit of slapstick humour was in order and had them ignore their very real weapons for foam or custard pies! It had to be Annie that had set this up to test Young Sam and no one had got around to reprogramming them since. She immediately watched as the other two dodged as they headed back out the door with Banshee following quickly behind. The Black Room wasn’t a threat and could safely be ignored until they had figured out how to deal with Raggedy.
X-Ray informed her that Raggedy was moving deeper into the base. There were sections of that corridor set to trap and hold any intruders in security cells set to block off access either to or from the rest of the base and finally, by the entrance to the scrapyard on the surface above, there was a grav-trap set to alternate between Zero-G and 4G.
Without thinking, Akira shouted, “Frankie, you’ve one job to do; activate H block cells and the grav-trap. Let’s see if we can stop her before she reaches Mikey…”
<<Designation: Akira, as bellowed, H section is activated but will not work on a non-corporeal being such as this Anne creature.>>
In front of Banshee and X-Ray the corridor blast doors began to close. Banshee could flow through them, but it blocked though thankfully didn’t trap X-Ray; nor did it appear to delay Raggedy or at least the cold spot he’d been following.
“Open the blast doors, Frankie” he screamed as Akira also shouted at Frankie to open the doors. <<Designation, Akira. Make your mind up. The doors are now open, and the trap has been reset.>>
Unsurprisingly, the gravity trap didn’t work in stopping the ghost either. X-Ray asked Frankie, “Are you able to track this thing?” <<Designation X-Ray not well. I’m able to tell when something has passed through one of my sensors. But that is all.>>
Raggedy Ann had apparently entered the area that the team used for formal meetings. This was also where the team displayed its eclectic collection of trophies and memorabilia.
X-Ray and Banshee entered the room. The lighting flared on and the display cases on one side of the room was spotlighted as a result. X-Ray had never spent that much time looking at the displays until now, much of which didn’t make a lot of sense to him – why was there a multi-coloured light up musical Christmas jumper on display or a Victorian tin opener for example? He assumed that the other various toys, amulets and miscellaneous trivia were there for a reason, but it was a diverse mix of trophies, tributes and trivia.
He immediately began to search for cold spots in the room. There was definitely something at the far end, near one of the doors that led to another corridor that led to the hangar. Mikey was supposed to be down that way. Akira followed on immediately behind relying on X-Ray to track the cold spot that was Raggedy.
Suddenly X-Ray shouted out, “Can we not just talk about this? You want to become something other than you are. Let us help you.”
A disembodied voice echoed around the room, “Oh goodie, do you want to make me stronger? I want revenge, I want to kill all the nice goodie-goodies. All the nice children who were treated better than me, who didn’t get electrified or tortured as I was. I want to make them suffer like I suffered. You want to help me do that, do you?”
Akira replied, “It’s wrong to seek revenge.”
The voice replied, “But it’s fun. It’s so much fun. Strip the bones…” whatever she was going to say was lost as Akira shouted back, “there are other ways to have fun Anne, have you ever played pool?”
Laughter. “I considered drowning a few.”
X-Ray shook his head; they were clearly unable to talk her out of her murderous plans. So, how to deal with Anne? Last time, Banshee had banished her into the body of a brain-dead child but that wasn’t an option this time. Could they banish her into something inanimate? According to Banshee she hadn’t fallen for the idea of Chrono’s of using a plant as a receptacle.
They heard Akira muttering something quietly to himself. He was a mage so talking to himself was wasn’t that unusual then they realised that he was saying, “You’re not going to use calamity, he’s my dog. Well sort of.” Banshee smiled. Knowing Calamity it was always possible that it thought of him that same way, as its pet!
The door at the far end of the room began to open, they could vaguely see an indistinct shape like a human heading through it. Skipping through singing to herself, “Let’s play hide and seek little girlie, you hide and I seek. Scream once for yes…”
The team felt frustrated as to what to do next with this ‘child’ as X-Ray referred to her much to Akira’s annoyance, Akira lectured him that you can’t stay a teen forever even if you are a tortured soul and malicious ghost seeking revenge on humanity.
X-Ray turned to Banshee and said, “I’m beginning to think this is all going to be on you.”
Unfortunately, they couldn’t use the same method as before so this time, Mary rather than Banshee was going to have to make something up on the fly. Akira suggested that they should conjure up a demon that was more wicked and evil than she was.
Banshee smiled. “So, they can team up? Not sure that’s the best way to de-escalate the situation. What we need to do is confine her in something that’s not going to die on us.”
They considered whether anything in the room might be able to assist with trapping her and briefly considered trying to use the dreamcatcher or the demon-banishing amulet previously worn and used by Jeeves in some way, but how?
This needed Mary’s, not Banshee’s knowledge and ability, so she changed over as she tried to think how best to go about creating a ritual to cast Anne out of a living body while X-Ray rushed after the ghost, hoping to stop her before she reached Mikey.
As he ran X-Ray tried to think how they could catch and capture an insubstantial being that would still be insubstantial even to Banshee when in a similar state?
An energy blast would affect those she was possessing but not her unfortunately, all their physical powers were useless unless they could turn her physical first or find a way to affect her in her ghostly state. That was why last time they’d had to resort to binding her (as the Jewish Elders had done before them) rather than banishing her and that might kill or injure her host.
Back in the trophy area Akira and Mary were looking around and thinking that the best they could do was prevent her from possessing Mikey in some way. They decided that the dreamcatcher would add a symbolic element to Mary’s ritual which she immediately enacted, forcing Raggedy to possess the inanimate rather than the living.
In the corridor they could hear X-Ray shout to keep it up as whatever they had achieved was working, that Anne was starting to fade away and disperse before his eyes.
Then, over their commdots, they heard Frankie’s voice begin to fade only to be replaced with a now familiar singsong voice, <<This is fun! I might not be able to move but at least I can still take my souvenirs, which one of you’s will I kill first. Eeny, Meany, Miny, Mo…>>
It looked as though she’d been cast into something non-living in a traditional sense by Mary’s ritual but had found something that was still sentient. She apparently had taken possession of Frankie and Frankie had control over this whole base. Thankfully Frankie should still be ‘alive’, even if she was now possessed and Raggedy clearly didn’t know how to access information about the control systems, not yet anyway, otherwise they would already be under attack.
Annie had once confessed to Mary that she had built in some safeguards to Frankie’s core operating system, just in case of a ‘Skynet’ scenario. The ‘in case’ had been a kill-switch that would shut Frankie down and, despite back-ups, could potentially ‘kill’ Frankie’s sentiency, which no one knew how it had come about anyway. Frankie was more than just her data and programming, so much more, and now they had to consider sacrificing her.
Akira was confident that this would work though. The kill-switch was in the monitoring room off the lounge and, hopefully, using it would cast Anne out without permanently killing Frankie though that would put them back where they had started if they succeeded. Oh well, they couldn’t leave Anne inside Frankie any more than they could leave her inside Singularity!
They just had to hope that Frankie could survive a hard reboot without losing her personality and sentiency. As they headed down the corridor towards the server room, they found that their comms were no longer functional. Anne had clearly figured out how to shut them down. In front of them the grav-trap suddenly reactivated. Akira opened a portal and teleported them to the reception area in response, holding it open for X-Ray to follow them through. Once they were all through, they ran towards the monitoring room only for Akira to stop and head towards the server instead.
The door into the server room was sealed shut even as a weird pattern began to form on the big screen in front of them, like liquid flowing into the image of a now familiar face – this time though it wasn’t a digital representation of Frankie but of Anne’s leering face.
To their surprise Akira said, “I have a plan, not a cunning one but a plan none the less and we need to get inside here.” Mary turned back into Banshee then substantialised all three through the blast door and into the server room only to find the air circulation system had gone into reverse and appeared to be sucking all of the air out of the room!
They didn’t have much time. Akira began to gesture and summon the Baleful Bindings of Bal’Hemoth into existence. The bindings were mystical, dark metallic chains that appeared around the target of the spell, in this case Anne and were capable of trapping astral forms and spirits as well. The bindings shouldn’t damage or trap a machine though.
The sinister Bal’Hemoth had been worshipped in ancient Lemuria as the iron-fisted master of order and enslavement. He taught dominance and the power of the strong over the weak. It was a spell that risked corrupting its user but so what? Frankie was family and a member of the team, they had to try.
Suddenly dark metallic chains began to flow through Frankie’s banks of servers. Then they slowly began to pull something out of the machine. Several computer systems slowed down and in one case even stopped while the chains dragged Raggedy Anne out of the computer core and materialised her like some sort of mystical magnet. The chains were wrapped around Raggedy’s insubstantial form and where they made contact physically substantialised her, those areas appearing corpse-like in nature rather than her ghostly apparition. Akira continued to gesture, dragging her completely out of Frankie and into the room itself.
They struggled to cope and still focus with the limited air still in the room. Despite the danger of asphyxiation, X-Ray muttered a “Gordon Bennett!” as he unleashed a series of energy blasts in a seemingly unshielded facility. One of the servers suddenly stopped working and they realised they needed to find an alternative location to complete this.
Back in control of its actions, Frankie opened the blast door, air rushed in even as the extractor fans shut down.
Struggling to maintain the bindings, the team with their captive still bound in the mystical chains, dragged Anne kicking and screaming to the nearby Black Room where Akira maintained the bindings while X-Ray blasted with gamma energy a redheaded straggly yet struggling corpse determined to vaporise her and send her back into the limbo she’d been in during her previous slumber. X-Ray started at the low frequencies and worked his way up through the various frequencies intent upon blasting her out of existence.
She began to dissipate away even as the chains maintained her physical presence. To the very end she was screaming and shouting “No, no, no!” only to finally fall silent. Several minutes later the energy cremation was complete, and the vents were extracting ionized vapour, though there were no ashes for it to handle. X-Ray couldn’t shake the feeling that she would be back one day when she was able to pull her energy back together again… That much pain and hate wouldn’t just die no matter what they did. X-Ray had hit her with everything he had, and it had seemed to work, for now. The ghost was gone but he was under no illusion that they had permanently defeated her. He felt sure she would return one day, and they needed to be ready when she did.
Banshee was also convinced that she wasn’t gone for good, just for the present. According to the Rabbi she could be back in just seventy-seven weeks’ time… Seventy-seven weeks – about year-and-a-half from now.
Meanwhile Frankie had survived her ordeal though she had suffered enough trauma that she had developed a stutter and one of her data servers had been fried, but she was recovering and they’d pulled Raggedy out before she’d been able to do any real damage.
Akira eventually recovered enough to try the First Wheel of Weyan, the Wheel of Workings, to repair the damage inflicted by Anne’s possession and to help her recover though they still had to pay for a replacement data server and pay a very disapproving Annie to install it.
Calamity was also back but this time she had brought a small friend back with her from her travels – a small raptor was now running around the base playing tag with the time-travelling alien corgi and chewing on various cables, forcing Mikey to install raptor-proof covers on all the systems as well as leaving food out for the bloody thing to entice it away from frying itself on electrical cables. Things were again back to normal.
Hopefully she’d be able to trap it at some point and take it to be introduced to the Challenger-Wildeman’s genetically-cloned raptor Flossie and be finally out of her hair for good.
Once the BASEment had been cleaned-up, the team contacted Rabbi Shallach Ben Holmz to see if there was anything he could suggest that might exorcise Anne permanently. His surprising answer led them to have a chat with Seven and Lord Adrian Eldrich, master of the Nether Realms about the so-called Realm of the Dead and a possible future quest for a branch from the Tree of Perpetual Death.
MMD – Mobile Mannequin Distractions
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Superhero Adventures, UK Style 