In Game: Tues. Jan. 11-Wed. Jan. 12

Tuesday
Adam got to know as many of the hotel guests as he could, as were hanging out in the restaurant that morning Dr. Carmichael's body was found. Most of them knew nothing of it, but had heard that something odd may have happened last night (Carson's room). One hotel guest, a Mr. Ian Maguire, offered to give Adam (and the rest of us) a tour of the town, since he was in town sometimes on business trips, he knew it somewhat.

So around 11 or thereabouts we went into town. Maguire had a truck, Adam and I rode in the CRV and Hazel went with Kathy in Kathy's Subaru. The hotel was situated up the road from the town a little ways, sort of looking over the valley. It took about 10 minutes to get from the hotel into town.

Miner's Folly is one of those quiet little towns where, if you sneeze as you're driving through it, you'll miss it. Actually, it's in a dead-end valley, so unless you're going there on purpose, or are really lost, you wouldn't be driving through it anyway. It had a town hall that used to be a one-room schoolhouse, a "newspaper office," a pub, a general store, the sheriff's office on the outskirts of town, some houses, and two mining companies that were at each other's throats. Maguire was in the business of selling mining equipment and machinery (to both mining companies) and came to Miner's Folly somewhat regularly.

Maguire showed Adam, Hazel, and me around, while Kathy wandered off on her own to visit the town hall. At lunchtime we regrouped at the pub, then Hazel went with Kathy. (I can't remember anymore if Kathy and Hazel went to the newspaper office before or after lunch. I think Adam and I went to the newspaper office after lunch, but we didn't go at the same time.) We split up again after lunch, and Kathy and Hazel went to visit the sheriff while Adam and I went to visit the mayor. (I lost track of Maguire--did he go back to the hotel?)

The town of Miner's Folly was established in 1908 by Maximillian Delaney, who established the mining company Delaney Mining, Inc. (DMI). DMI has been in the family ever since, and is now run by the founder's grandson, Maximillian Delaney II. Delaney II is unmarried and now in his 70s. I don't think he lives in town. (This info is from the mayor.)

Kathy and Hazel must have headed back toward the hotel in Kathy's car and then changed their minds, because Adam and I passed them on the road coming back into town, as we were heading back out to the hotel.

There was some down time while we waited for Kathy and Hazel to get back to the hotel. We sat in the dining room and Adam chatted with the other guests. There was a tenseness in the atmosphere that hadn't been there this morning. No one knew for sure what had happened, but word had spread that the sheriff had been there twice in 12 hours, and many of the guests had been moved to the second floor. People were speculating nervously in hushed tones. Hazel returned proudly displaying her newly purchased metal detector, and only reluctantly conceded that she'd have to wait until tomorrow to go use it, because it was already dark outside. The hotel desk clerk asked us if, since we were together anyway, we'd consider consolidating rooms, to make room for moving people from the first floor. I suggested Hazel stay in Kathy's room. It made perfect sense to me: girls in one room, guys in the other. Kathy looked like she wanted to kill me.

About 2 AM (now Wed. Jan. 12) Adam and I were startled awake by some kind of crash or thump outside our window. I scrambled for my pistol in the bedside drawer while Adam raced to the window. I never saw the creature, but Adam said when he looked out he saw the biggest f***ing wolf he had ever seen, larger than any wolf had any right to be. It looked like it was squaring its haunches for another leap at the window when it looked up and saw him. Their eyes met, and instead of leaping, the beast withdrew into the shadows.

Kathy came pounding on the door shortly, to see what was going on. We went downstairs and told the desk clerk it would be a good idea to move all the remaining guests up to the second floor. Adam and I took two more men into our room and Kathy and Hazel took two more women. Eventually we got back to sleep and nothing further happened in the night.

Wednesday
In the morning Adam and I went outside to investigate the marks in the snow. There was a large indentation in the snow below our window, and more of those giant clawed tracks that were neither human nor wolf. Looking closely, I spotted a sort of smudge on the siding, and a little bit of fur. I concluded the beast had tried to jump into our window and missed. The indentation was most likely from the beast falling back into the snow after crashing into the wall below our window.

We showered and breakfasted and tried calling the sheriff on the radio he'd left at the hotel. There was no answer. The four of us decided to go into town and check, Adam and I in our rental, Kathy and Hazel in Kathy's car.

As we approached the sheriff's office and parked, there was a cold knot in my stomach. The big plate glass window in front was broken in. [Imagine scary music] I told Adam to stay in the car with the engine running, and got out. Kathy had also gotten out of her car and was approaching the building; Hazel remained in the car. There were the same tracks in the snow outside the building, leading in and coming out. The leading-away tracks appeared slightly smudged pink. Kathy and I both had our weapons out. She looked in the window while I went to the door.

The door was unlocked. I knocked, called, went in, every nerve tensed. Deputy Sean Dermont lay amidst the broken glass inside the window, his throat torn out. "Sheriff?" I called. "Anyone here?" I took a deep breath and moved further into the office. It appeared more or less normal, aside from the mess by the window; that is, it did not appear to have been ransacked. I cautiously approached the back rooms of the building, again calling "Hello? Anyone here?" I turned the corner of the rear hall and found the sheriff. He lay in a congealed pool of blood that had spread from his torn throat. It appeared that he had been heading into the front room when he was brought down. Both of them appeared to have been dead for about six hours, I guessed.

I quickly checked the rest of the place: the sheriff's office with a radio unit, a few empty jail cells down the hall, found nothing else. I heard someone coming in at the front and hurried out to intercept them. It was Kathy. I told her I'd found the sheriff. Unfortunately, Adam had gotten bored or antsy enough to come up to the door of the building, and glanced inside before I could stop him. Angrily I herded him back to the car and told him to stay put, to let me and Kathy handle it. Having seen what was left of the deputy sheriff, he did not protest.

I went back inside and managed to raise the Aspen police on the radio while Kathy looked around the rest of the sheriff's department. I identified myself to the individual, a Detective Williams. He asked if I was alone. I told him Kathy was in the front room, and pushed the office door closed. Apparently Sheriff Wilheim had briefed them on the events at the hotel and had mentioned myself and Kathy as involving ourselves in the investigation. I appreciated that they had called Chicago and verified my identity.

The situation was that there had been an avalanche in the pass and no vehicles could get through yet. He wasn't sure if they could get a helicopter in, asked if I could take charge here for the time being, and said to call them back in an hour. He asked if we were armed, I said yes, and he suggested we take some of the weapons from the sheriff's collection too. I relayed this information to Kathy (except the part about the background check), and she took some shotguns and rifles from the gun case. I looked around enough to locate the name and address of the one remaining law enforcement officer in Miner's Folly, whom we so far had not met.

I went back outside for some fresh air. I needed to think. Looking around, I noticed an aged Native American man standing a little down the street, watching us. Perceiving a potential witness, I crossed the street and headed toward him. I was half expecting him to turn around and try to avoid me, now that it was clear I wanted to talk to him. Instead, he waited, and acknowledged me as I approached and greeted him.

He was not the least bit surprised to hear that there had been "some trouble" at the sheriff's office, but whatever he had to say, he wanted to tell all of us. So we walked back to the cars. Kathy was coming out of the office with assorted ordnance.

It was cold, plus there was a large, vicious wolf out prowling around, so none of us wanted to stand in the parking lot to talk. Instead we all climbed into Kathy's Subaru. The old man introduced himself as John Stonehill. He didn't identify his tribe, but said he and his people knew about the beast, and what it was. Apparently they were less concerned about the beast than they were about its "master," which he said was "the Darkness," and went on to explain that "the strength of the Darkness resides in the mountain," the Darkness had been "bound in human form" by the local tribe some years ago, and was none other than Maximillian Delaney, founder of DMI. He said the beast had three forms: a human, a wolf, and something in between. "What, like a werewolf?" I meant to sound sarcastic, but Stonehill was deadly serious. He nodded. "You could call it that." There was a nervous silence, then someone asked what this beast looked like in human form. Stonehill said, "You know him. Big guy, reddish hair." Not Ian Maguire?! This whole story was hard enough to swallow without being told that someone we'd spent half the day with yesterday was a werewolf and trying to kill us.

He proceeded to tell us that our weapons wouldn't hurt it, but that there was some kind of artifact he called the "sky disc," which would have some power over the thing. This "sky disc" supposedly was down a disused mine shaft and needed to be retrieved in order to do some kind of ritual to bind the Darkness again and deal with the werewolf. He said they'd sent their "best warrior" to retrieve the sky disc ten years ago, but he had never returned. He informed us that Delaney (who ought to be long dead of old age) employed five "enforcers," I suppose like his personal body guards, as well as the miners themselves, but didn't think anyone would be guarding this unused mine shaft where the sky disc supposedly was. And he wanted us to go down and get it!

We fell to arguing, Kathy and Hazel seemingly inclined to take the man's story at face value and risk their lives to climb down an abandoned mine shaft after some artifact that might or might not be there and might or might not be any aid in fighting a werewolf. I think Adam and I were firmly in agreement that this was a terrible, not to mention stupid, idea. About this point Stonehill gave up on us and got out of the car, saying something like, "I guess you're not the people I thought you were. I'll find someone else," and left us to arguing....

About the origins of the town's name: apparently there are any number of different stories, no one really knows for sure. According to the mayor, legend has it that a gold miner "back in the day" came to this valley and "didn't come to a good end." He was vague about the details but the man is said to have burned to death or else been struck by lightning.

Another story, which Kathy found in the archives at the newspaper office, dated from the 1930s. It reported that Jeremiah Smith came to this valley about 1856, looking for gold. Instead, he found a group of "Injuns," from whom he is said to have learned dark magic. Rumor had it that he made a pact with the devil, but didn't keep his end of the bargain, and he was struck by lightning up on a peak overlooking the valley.

Other stories had him dying less dramatically.

About wild animals and people being attacked: Locals (the mayor, the newspaper editor) say it happens occasionally, this being the mountains and all. The last animal attack was ten years ago, in March a hiker was found up in the woods above town mauled by what was believed to be a bear. (Hazel reported that "apparently there's a bear attack every ten years" but I didn't get that impression, I just got that there was a "bear attack" ten years ago. However, Ray wasn't there for that bit of storytelling from the mayor or the paper editor, so I can't say. The editor, Justin Miller, mentioned "strange animals" and people panicking, but Kathy and Hazel didn't really follow up on it.)

Kathy (and Hazel?) also found out that the Clearwater Hotel was built sometime in the '80s. It wasn't expected to do well, but it has, and is the 3rd biggest employer in town after the two mining companies.

The mining companies are DMI (Delaney Mining, Inc.) and Universal Mineral. DMI is the older and larger of the two companies. I didn't get when Universal Mineral was established, but they've been basically at war with each other for a long time. "People have disappeared."

At the sheriff's office, Kathy and Hazel got a chance to see what was in the briefcase that the sheriff had removed from Carson's room last night. It contained a revolver, round-trip airplane tickets between Denver and Aspen, maps, assorted papers, and a very "suspicious" letter from a Raymond Gurney of Universal Mineral accepting Mr. Carson's services as some kind of independent contractor, which we interpreted probably as "hitman." The letter was not dated.