Grace woke up the next morning, trying to recall what had happened the night before.
She didn't remember drinking anything, and she hadn't accepted any food from anyone, so she hadn't been slipped something either.
But she was sore, and had woken up on cobblestone in an alleyway, and there had to be some explanation for that.
As she examined herself, the memory of the truth came to her: she had encountered a terrible attack after leaving the bar last night, tried to stop it, and ended up in this state instead.
Ah. Well.
First thing's first: clean up. Find a lodging. Then go from there.
Her legs aching, her chest not quite right, she picked herself up and headed off into the day.
The lodging she ultimately found was the Crow's Roast Inn, on Crowler Street, which was its own little nest shooting off the main thoroughfare through town. It was owned by an older man called Bertram Crawford, who wore a black suit so covered in cobwebs that it resembled feathers in its own right.
Her room was number 14, at the end of the hall, and almost as soon as Bertram got her settled in, she took to the bathroom to clean herself off and freshen up a bit. Looking herself in the mirror, her memory turned to the previous night, and what her plan for today was going to be, and it was simple: find the one who attacked her, and figure out why, and take action before he can do it again.
Luckily, he probably thinks I'm dead, Grace thought, with the state he left me in and everything.
It didn't take long for Grace to clean up after said state, and get back on track for the day.
Now, in all of her encounters in Inglenook, she had learned — or perhaps developed unhealthy coping mechanisms for dealing with them — not to trust figures of authority such as local law enforcement. She had certainly bumped up against plenty of different types of them in her travels, and had all kinds of different experiences with this type or that type.
This town wasn't part of Inglenook, though, at least as far as she knew, and she had been attacked and was looking for information. So — first thing's first — try whatever passes for local law enforcement or Royal Guard here.
That turned out to be the Town Watch, as the man at the front desk — who wasn't Bertram this time — told her. He directed her to a building just near the Town Square, an old brick building with an attached jailhouse that was called the Watchtower.
Here, she met with several officers of the Town Watch, dressed all in blue, and found one to report what had happened to. His name was Officer Stonewall, and this is what he had to say:
"So, you were attacked by a man in a metal mask?" he said. "Is that right?"
"Yes," Grace said. "And there was a girl there too."
"Young, blonde hair," Officer Stonewall replied. "You mentioned that. What were you doing in the vicinity at the time?"
"No comment," Grace said.
"Were you drinking last night?" Officer Stonewall said.
"No," Grace replied, with a noticeable grimace. "Are you going to write a report?"
"A report? For what?"
"Nevermind," Grace said, already hearing the rest of that conversation in her head. "If you have any idea who might have done this, would there be any information you could give me as to their identity or location?"
"There's no one like that here," Officer Stonewall said. "There's no young blonde girls either. We wish, though, huh."
"Right."
"Where you from, originally?"
"Down the street," Grace said.
"Down the street, so you grew up here?"
"I'm just here about this individual," she replied. "If you'd like to handle a matter affecting your citizens, I thought I should give you some information. Otherwise, I might just carry on about my day."
"You sure?" Officer Stonewall said. "There's more questions we'd love to ask you, it won't take too much time. We're just having a conversation, and all."
"No," Grace said. "Am I free to go?"
"Oh, hey, of course, any time," he said. "You need anything from us or wanna come back down and answer a few questions for us, just a few more to kind of orient us about you and all that, just let us know. Come down any time, you're welcome to stop by."
"Of course," Grace said, and took her leave.
She moved on to investigate the rest of the Town Square, which was a rectangle piece of park with several lines of storefronts, one on each side, and an auditorium on one of the short ends with a courthouse and what seemed to be another bar on the other. At each corner of the park itself, there was an archway that appeared to be made of stacked-up piles of bones and antlers, although she couldn't be sure, and wasn't keen on investigating too closely or else put herself on someone else's "watch a little too closely" list.
Down the street, she noticed there was a library, largeish and made of blackened stone and curved dome-topped modules, and decided that was possibly her next best shot instead, so she headed for its revolving doors and moved inside.
The interior of the library was as dull as one could imagine, with stacks upon stacks of books barely visible in flickering lights, and staffed by a librarian Grace would come to know as Miss Bailiwick. There were two levels — the ground floor, centered around Miss Bailiwick's desk in the center and the occasional research table along some of the walls, and the floor above that, which was primarily more stacks on a balcony that surrounded the higher edge of the lower floor — as well as a few corridors that looked as though they led to further sections, deeper into the building.
Grace was mostly concerned with information, so she headed for the librarian's desk, where her name — Miss Bailiwick — was engraved on a placard and the librarian herself was thumbing through a catalogue listing of new books in their collections.
* [Scene to be finished. — 6/17/2024]
Her final stop of the day was the office of the Witching Hour, Grimshaw's local news magazine, and it was here that she met a very old man named Talbot Parker, the current editor and apparently only writer. He was known in town for pumping out a variety of articles with strange headlines like Local Teens Vanish, Reappear After Black Hole Opens and Visitors From Other Worlds! Tall, Short, And Every Size Have Their Stories Told, and so on like that, apparently just to fill the space and continue justifying the magazine's existence in a town where nothing interesting ever happened.
"They come to me in visions, you know," Mr Parker said, as Grace examined some of the framed articles on the walls of his cluttered office. "I write them down because no one else will. Sometimes, they even happen, out there in the dark."
He moved around his desk and pointed to one article in particular, headlined Mass Acres Farmer Accused Of Witchcraft, Townsfolk Say Scarecrow Lives & Walks At Night. "This was a fun one. Old Man Hackett's living scarecrow. Well, it was haunted in the end. We put a stop to that one. That was back when I still had employees, of course, but Victoria and Constance left a long time ago and I think Callista was only using me for information, so these things happen. Now it's just me, I'm afraid, and I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to keep the Witching Hour alive at all. This town might run out of a good, reliable news source faster than a speeding comet going the wrong way, I just about bet."
"Do you know anything about the man in the metal mask?" Grace said; she had heard every word he said, but mostly wanted to get down to business about why she was there and what she was looking for, and help the old man focus up again on something that mattered to the streets today, in this world they were living in now.
"Hm? The metal mask?" Talbot said. "Well, that sounds like the Spring-Heeled Ripper, doesn't it? You aren't from here, are you?"
"The Spring-Heeled Ripper?" Grace said, tapping her fingers on a button on her shirt to help her focus.
"Oh, just a phantom," Talbot said, brushing it away with a hand in the air. "He's not real, but people have been talking about him for decades. He's some ghoulish specter with springs on his heels, who attacks girls at night if they stay out too long. That's all it is, just a cautionary tale. I would've written a lot more articles about him if I'd ever found solid evidence that he existed. But he doesn't, that I know. I've certainly never encountered him, so there's no reason to believe there's any truth to those silly stories."
"Right," Grace said. "Well, your stories that have no truth to them were what attacked me in the alley last night. Something did, anyway. If they're not the Spring-Heeled Ripper, then it was something. Now I'm left to get to the bottom of it, no matter what it was."
"Well, and then?" Talbot asked.
Grace glanced at him. "What?"
"What are you going to do if you find out what it was?"
"I'm going to track down whoever it was," Grace said, "and I'm going to have a very long, and very unpleasant discussion with him."
In an office somewhere in Grimshaw, as the human once known as Clotilde Dollanganger begins to encounter a horrifying, ancient transformation — and the wolf itself takes flight—!
The seams in Clotilde's dress burst as the hideous beast took hold, her chest and shoulders expanding, her bones stretching, her white hair transforming — thickening, lengthening, along with her snout — for, yes, she was gaining one of those as well, to replace the nose and mouth that had been there before.
Although this happened but once a month these days, the ache already tormented her and the soul within her flesh longed to be her normal self as her physical thoughts turned to the hunt, and the thirst, and the sudden need for the rending of her claws within the meat of another's existence, and the carving of her teeth through their wet, scarlet organs.
Her panted breaths became ragged growls, whining yowls, as her stature expanded. The kind of beast she became — the kind of wolf the moon rendered her to be — was not a four-legged one like standard beasts or canines, but a proud creation, stood high on its hind legs, with her normally incandescent forearms transformed into heaving, lean arms of pure thrill and unleashable chaos. Her fingers were no longer there for writing in books or toying with mannequin dresses, but instead for channeling her bestial sensations; for carving, as though the claws at the end of her now-fur-covered paws were themselves blades, her keratin as sturdy as stone, and the space between her fingerpads thirsty for red, and grey, and black, and blue.
Her wolf form was around the same height as her normal human self, panting with the thrill of existing again, and although the spirit inside her mind sought peace, the wolf without would not listen — most would say could not listen.
She stood in her study, glaring at the furniture that now seemed so delicate, so fragile, and most importantly, so devoid of life. She needed warmth now, the warmth of others, the warmth of flesh and fur and actual creation. Clotilde's spirit-self knew, in theory, there were none like her, but she needed to search, and hunt, and without another thought after that, she was out the window in a flash, hopping upon the roof, running to the edge, and jumping onto several other rooftops in an attempt to find the highest one she could find at that exact moment.
The others who lived near her, the humans and vampires and whoever else dwelled in the houses of Grimshaw that night, simply went on about their business. If they could have shut her up, they would have. But instead, they just listened — as the howl rang out, the mournful and thirsty cry below the moon, the begging that would go unanswered, before suddenly silencing itself — as Clotilde's wolf form sprang off into the night for another bestial, canine adventure in Grimshaw.
But Clotilde is not the only one taking flight for enjoyment that night. The Spring-Heeled Ripper, scourge of the women of the night and all girls who might become them, stalks also — watching from the shadows, springing from the rooftops, always waiting for the next flesh to sink himself into — or perhaps, indeed, the next wolf—!
In a suit crafted from leather and metallic embellishments cloaked in silver, his face equally masked, the Spring-Heeled Ripper bounded from the rooftops in search of his next thrill.
Just one night prior, he had made the mistake of attacking a witch — a newcomer to Grimshaw, a skilled opponent whose awareness of him would likely spell his doom — and he was looking now for an easier hunt, a less-challenging game, and preferably a bit of a snack to eat as well.
At once, the howl rang out, and the vampire inside the Ripper suit started, suddenly aware of the presence of another wild beast as he, and suddenly very interested as well.