The Fairfax Files
Graham Swanson
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| the Mugshot of Dr. L.P. Fairfax |
December 21st, 2015, the Angel City Occult department arrested Dr. L.P Fairfax on charges of interdimensional human trafficking, crimes against humanity, and violating local ordinance 141B which forbids secret lairs around or beneath city property. 13 arrests were made with one unidentified person. Fairfax was kept in a top security cell within the Angel City police department. It was created specifically for Occult criminals.
However shortly after his incarceration there was power flash in the city. Riots broke out, old churches that became crack houses went up in flames, Mayor Kunst ordered a state of emergency to protect the crack houses. Police trucks patrolled city streets. After the violence subsided, safety checks were made at the Police Station.
Without the cage door breaking open, without security measures getting tripped, security burst in the Occult holding with their weapons drawn. Fire suppressing foam melted on the floor. Bodies squirmed against the wall trying to hold their guts in. They kicked down the red door to the Occult cell.
Fairfax’s arm hung from the cell bar where he last gripped it. The melted steel clasped the flesh of his hand. It melted down to sharp ice cycles. Inside cell almost nothing remained of Fairfax. His head was found jammed into the tank of his toilet. The other pieces of his body has been slammed into the ceiling until it became meshed with the grain of the support beams.
Not a single magic circle had broken. Though the glowing circles within stars within circles did sputter sparks and belch clouds of yellow and green smoke. The light of the cell was still on. The mattress had been torn in half and hurled against the cell wall. The flooring of the cell was beat to rubble.
The mayor met with the police commissioner and they made a media address before the Occult Department filed a single report. They claimed that Fairfax committed suicide in his cell, and announced that the security guards who risked their lives to check his cell would be fired for incompetence. The Occult Department, who was responsible for the investigation, would be downsized. Not hard considering that in the attack, every member of the Occult Department was killed, except for its Detective, Arty Welch, who was reassigned to “internal misaffairs”.
He kept his real investigation secret from the authorities of Angel City. In his dungeon office deep beneath the police department he continued searching for links of Fairfax’s trafficking ring. He knew already because he’d been chasing this wizard for 15 years. Former child soldier and mystic, Ashgabat. It was his building that sheltered Fairfax. It was his criminal aparatus who managed the trafficking ring. He was the only one that did not get arrested that day.
Angel City is defined its gleaming towers in a district called “the Overgrowth” which is accessed by overpass freeways that cross over slums known as “the Undergrowth”. Those towers aren’t just the tallest and brightest in all of the State of Dagan. Those insurance companies, those architecture firms, those pharma companies, some the biggest in the world, are headquarted in this land.
Angel City. In the year 1900, the population was over 700,000. Now in 2026, it’s less than 100,000. The state stopped growing after 50,000 children vanished from their beds in one night. Every place has crime, but every week they apprehend another serial killer on accident. Routine patrol, found three bodies stuffed into garbage bags headed for the smoldering pit. The violence. The things Arty had to pull out of drains. The things he’s had to tell mothers. Despite it all, those silver towers never moved.
Before 9/11, they attacked these towers first. However the footage they gave Bin Laden was enough to make him order his men to stay OUT of Dagan. That footage is gone now but it was in the Occult Department files before the restructuring. Six planes each hit one building. They exploded. The outer walls of the towers burned. One after another they came in expecting to take the buildings down and be heroes. Yet not only did the buildings absorb the damage, in the smoke that lifted over the towers, one can see the face of a demon mocking them.
Arty kept his investigation going but he told no one that he was focusing on the people who live and work inside those towers. He never got too far without burying his head into his hands. Memories of the attack still fresh. Shadows of the evidence he once had broken to pieces. It seemed all was lost.
He knew because of Cassidy Dawnson. This young beautiful girl was imprisoned in one of those towers. Her husband was Leland Dawnson the III. He kept her in a nursing room where she gave birth to four of his monsters. Fairfax didn’t invent some revolutionary DNA combining machine. He used natural machines that already existed. He simply injected the DNA of a monster into her uterus.
Cassidy was younger than 25 but each monster she gave birth to added another ten years to her skin. Not only did they use her for this purpose, but they gave her no time to recover. They injected her with another monster just after 21 days.
She worked in secret with the Occult Department. Told him about who did this to her, and who he had been meeting.
“if you didn’t feel comfortable, why did you go through with it?”
“He seemed nice. He told me that he knew my husband.”
The detective worked hard to compile everything they learned. Names, locations, quality of meeting. Enduring, indelible relationships. Missing people. In cities across the world, Fairfax was putting out adds. Fly to Angel City for a dream job. 400,000$ a year all you have to do is live in an empty apartment and check in with Fairfax once a day on a laptop that can’t browse the internet, cant play games, and cant make calls, they only receive them from him.
Girls from Mexico, from Indonesia, from Germany, from Persia, from Japan, from Singapore. They ended up melting in a chemical bath brewed in a hot tub. Sure enough Buford Kunst knew him, been seen with him on numerous occasions. Fairfax knew everyone, even Arty Welch. He knew who would arrest him and when.
On the night of the attack Arty rushed Cassidy out of the city. He gave her a copy of the files and told her to publish them. However, the next day she was shot by men in black suits. Arty Welch never trusted the power of arcane. He had proven many times that magic can be an illusion to the supernatural, he had also proven to himself that magic was a real force in the world, and more often than not, it opened dark portals that fed on the innocent people of Dagan.
He called her every night at midnight from the privacy of his dungeon office. Using the relics that friendly homeless wizards let him have, they discussed their next move.
“...the Chasm.”
“I don’t want anything to do with that thing.”
The Chasm was something only the city’s elite were meant to know about. However Arty discovered it upon his adventures. In the times of indigenous people, it was believed to grant wishes. In truth, it was a deposit of water. The only deposit of its kind of Earth. The Black Glacier that once rode on this continent and flattened the grounds that would become Dagan melted, and it sank into the ground. That pool underground is all that’s left. It caused the supernatural outbreaks across Angel City, maybe even Dagan itself. The very presence of the Chasm is responsible for the divide between Dagan and the rest of the country. Where people slip away in the veil between the borders of Dagan.
It seemed hopeless so Arty went back to Ashgabat’s lair. A desolate building that once made costumes for theatre. When the railroads failed this entire part of the Undergrowth became worse than ever before. He had to stop his car to move through the street in this part of the slum. Fog, lurching shadows, flickering street lights, piles of trash packed into alley walls. Rats eating everything. Diapers. Pizza. Building Legos in dumpsters.
He found a door. CONDEMNED by ANGEL CITY OFFICE OF ORDINANCES. The sign lay on the ground at the bottom of a stair well that went under the sidewalk. He knocked on the door. A slot slid open. Eyeballs appeared.
“I need to see Ashgabat.”
The door opened. On the other side no one stood to open the door. Arty went in to a candlelit hall that opened to a drafty chamber full of smoke and hooded men shivering over tables. When Arty came down many of them shielded their faces from him. He crossed the smokey room, ignored the people, and came to an empty seat at a table. Jewels sat there on a scale along some bricks of heroin. Arty went to the far wall, and began knocking until he heard glass. A mirror. Behind the mirror he found a hand carved tunnel. Arty stepped on planks along the floor. He lowered his head so the cage around the hanging light bulbs didn’t smack his head. At the other side he discovered Ashgabat’s office.
Narrow. Shelves heavy with trophies. A heart in a jar. A skull with a candle in its mouth. On the desk at the end Arty saw Ashgabat’s most recent project. A web page glowed from the computer monitor. It was a page without many nuts and bolts. Mono color. Text heavy, no graphic. Looked like someone’s sad Buffy forum from the 90s.
Next to the computer sat a dish with a dissected rat. Next to that sat a cage of rats. The page was in a language that Arty had never seen before. Arty opened the cage door and let the rats out. They scurried through the tunnel and escape through a hole in he hole beneath a plank. Ashgabat appeared.
“For me, Detective?” Ashgabat smiled. The moon tattoos on his brows almost touched.
“Ash, I need to know where the Chasm is.”
“Is the investigation not going well?”
“You killed him.”
“If you would’ve consulted me he’d have lived to testify. Instead you come to me once your avenues are dead ends. And you set loose my pets.”
“Time is running out.”
“To the contrary, Detective. You initiated something when you arrested Fairfax. Those he protected from the likes of you are now trying to flee the city. They will find there is no escape, only a banquet for the flies. You’ve got nothing but time.”
“I need to get to the Chasm. What do you want for it?
“The Files.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You intend on putting them into another magic cell? You saw how they deal with that problem. I will send them to Hell, Detective.”
“After they go to prison, you’re next.”
“Detective, you’ve broken my heart. I wish you could see the beauty of what I am trying to do. The merchandising is just means to an end. My real passions are here.”
“Magic isn’t real.”
“If that’s what you believe, maybe you are in the wrong city.” Ashgabat unscrolled some maps of the sewer. He pointed to a black spot on the map. Far beneath the oldest parts of the city. Parts so old that the streets and buildings sunk into the ground long ago.
Arty turned around to leave.
“Don’t worry about your vehicle. It’s gone.” He shoved over a book case and removed some plywood from a hole in the wall. “This is will lead you where you want to go.”
Cold wind echoed down a silty tunnel. It led Arty from dirt and darkness to brick and running water. He splashed down into the old sewer. This part of it was shut down in the 30s. It still smelled abd was coated in damp slime but it didn’t flow with water any longer. In the dark he heard a familiar voice. He couldn’t believe it.
“Billy? Is that you?”
“I’m cold, big brother. Where are you?”
“I’m coming.”
Arty followed the echoes of the voice through narrow pipes. Yellow eyes watched from holes in the brick. The closer he came the worse the heat got. He realized it wasn’t getting hot at all. Black specks flying in the air like gnats lande on his skin and tried to get into his mouth. They excreted a resin when they shit that left permanent scars on his face, lips, and eye lids. He felt them enter his lungs when he breathed . Yet he could hear the current of flame. He could hear his little brother’s voice echo from behind it.
He crawled under a portion of broken brick, and crawled until the ground was nothing but pale powder. Then he got up, the wind of black specks now the exhaust of a blast furnace. He covered his face as the black specks built on his on his teeth and hands. Yet he could hear the wonderful explosions burst into rainbows against the cave walls. Shimmering reflections of stars long extinct blazed from a smoking pit. At the bottom shined something so bright that it seemed to be moving when it really had been sitting still for thousands of years.
Wind and light wrapped around Arty like a cyclone. The voices of the Chasm called on him one after another as different shadows reached out of the fog for him.
“Jump in, Arty.”
He held the files out over the rim of the chasm. He climbed up the ridge and perched himself over its opening. Hot air singled the hairs on his face curl. He began to loose vision in both eyes so he reached is hand with the files over the edge when a gunshot echoed through the tunnel. Ashgabat walked out from the dark, his face masked, except for one eye.
Arty felt pinned against the rocky surface. He slid down at first, his body failing fast. He didn’t even believe it was a gunshot until he saw the blood pour from his chest onto the manila envelope. But in the corner of his eye he saw Ashgabat sweeping nearer. Arty had no choice. He reached up with the files one more time, and pulled himself up. Before Ash could take the files from him, he jumped into the Chasm with the files wrapped around his chest.
Arty awoke to a seaside view. A balcony that overlooked the grey coast. He had never seen the ocean before. Never smelled it. He looked down and saw birds eating dead creatures on the rocks below.
A man in a white robe appeared next to Arty. He recognized him right away.
“Billy, you’re still alive.”
“Now that you know where I am, will you ever leave?”
“I’m going to get you out of here. Get you away from these people. Get you back-”
“You would let us all go?”
“Yes, little brother. Everyone is getting out of here.” He felt around his chest and realized he no longer held the files.
“We can’t, Arty. We are sacrifices.”
“That’s bullshit, Billy. No one controls us.”
“You have made them very Angry, brother. Imagine what they would do, if everyone left at once.”
The ground shook. The walls and floor flexed. A huge glacier appeared from the fog across the sea. Covered in birds and grass and trees it slid nearer.
“Soon it will destroy this place. Soon, it will destroy Angel City. Then it will destroy Dagan. Then, who knows where it’s waters may reach.” He climbed over the rail and stood on it. “Arthur, I want you to push me.”
“No. You’re coming back.”
“I died a long time ago, brother.”
“I’ve been searching for decades…”
“What was born and dies will walk again in the City of Angels.”
“Not if it gets eaten by fish and distributed across the Ocean.”
Billy smiled and laughed. Then the birds below all rose to the sky at once as a his body plummeted to the bottom. It splashes against the rocks. Arty watched with both hands on the railing. The tide pulled the body in. Some of his robe was left on a rock The blood washed away with each slap of the waves. The body floated atop foam, then faded under the layer of the surface. Then the body tilted feet down, and it sunk to the depths.
Arty went back inside. It was cold, windy, grey out. A computer screen was on. It looked like the page Ashgabat was using. A pitcher of water sat nearby. It smelled bitter like the air of the Chasm. It tasted bitter too. Arty poured it over the computer. Still the screen stayed on. The files were on the computer. Digitized and ready to be uploaded to the internet.
When he clicked SHARE the glacier outside collided with the walls of the castle. Arty tried to hold onto the floor but it flipped over and he found himself pinned against cascading building blocks. He found himself up against the glacier itself. The freezing ice instantly turned the moisture on his hands to frost. His eyes turned yellow when he tasted the vapor exhausting from its surface.
Dagan was created by that very same glacier. It’s waters gave birth to a special race of monster that thrived in the glacial conditions until it melted. The DNA from those monsters exists to this very day. When it gets cold, icelets form from traces of that moisture from the black glacier. Arty stayed in Angel City because he shared the same eyes as those monsters. When exposed to it’s shards , those traits come back.
When the traits came back, Arty pulled himself from the Chasm. Covered in burns, contusions, fractures, he reached back over the top and slid down to the sand below. The specks no longer hurt him. He liked how it felt. Behind him he saw a thousand frightened shadows.
A ladder descended from the roof of the cave. Arty and took it up and the rest followed. A line of people stretched from the ladder to the chasm. A sewer lid opened, and Arty came out back to the rain of Angel City. Back to the street and its smells.
Back to the droves of furtive people moving swiftly around downtown. Some people recognized the street. Other, like the indigenous people’s, had no idea what to do and could not speak the language. But every in town saw those people emerge and flood the street, led by Detective Arthur Welch.
The elite people sat in a meeting room in their silver tower in the Overgrowth watching. Banners of pyramids, large eyeballs on computer monitors, Lelend Dawnson III among them. They all turned to Ashgabat who sat in the center of the room. A masked guard stood in each corer and two stood by the door. They had long tongues like a snake and assault rifles on their shoulders.
“How will we suppress this scandal?”
“The News is fake!”
“The people are paid off by billionaires!”
“They’re all AI.”
Ashgabat stood on the table, a sword in his hand. The Mayor tried to calm everyone down.
“They know about the Chasm now. There’s no place to hide.”
“You snake, you told us we’d be protected.”
“And you were. But now you’re time is up. It is time of the Mage.” Ashgabat said.
The men with guns began putting bags on people’s heads and tightening drawstrings around their necks.
“What are you planning on doing?” Leland wept.
“I’m going to bring the glacier back. And it will melt.”
“You don’t have the power to move a glacier let alone melt it.”
“No, it was 70 degrees in February in Omaha this year. Did you know that? I believe the glacier will melt. And when that happens its waters will reach the Gulf of Mexico.”
The gunmen walked the captives out of the room. Ashgabat took out a small seeing crystal. He used it to examine a field of yellow energy secreting from Arty Welch.
“Oh Detective, you are more interesting than you think you are.”
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| Detective Arthur Welch |
https://www.justice.gov/epstein
https://vault.fbi.gov/jeffrey-epstein
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4405
