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The titles say: Part 3 - All The Easy Speeches that Comfort Cruel Men

The black behind the titles fades into grainy footage, lower resolution, clearly an older camera, of a town in the desert. Lake in the distance behind it, mountains beyond that, it looks uncomfortably small in the grey-brown basin under the mesas. Occasionally there's the sound of tires rushing by on weathered asphalt, or the very distant horn of a train. The footage shakes a little, as it begins to zoom out, as if guided by an inexperienced hand.

"Echo first began as a settlement in 1852," says a young voice, tinny through half a decade of digital compression, as an otter walks into frame. He speaks like someone trying to sound like they have a voice for this, not like someone who has a voice for this. "The town grew quickly in size and, once it began to serve as a junction along Prescott Railway, it reached a peak population of 6500 in 1877. It was at this point in time that a peculiar phenomenon of mass hysteria took over." He's turned to face the camera now, one hand in his pocket, the other gesturing at the town behind him, apropos of nothing, merely because this is part of the report where you gesture. "Many say the reason this occurred was due to the discovery of a body within the gold mine and the circumstances surrounding that discovery. While not much is known about this event, what is known is that once it ended a large portion of the population left Echo. Most of those who left settled in the nearby town of Payton. However the town still managed to prosper well enough into the forties. That's when the government stepped in to shut down the mine as it became a federal law to divert all mining resources to the war effort. The town's population sharply declined shortly thereafter and, by the 1950s, it had dwindled to approximately two thousand people." A gust buffets the microphone, momentarily drowns out the history report in the roar. "-shutdown of the Prescott railway in the 1960s, followed by the bypassing of Route 63 by I-40 in 1986 was the final nail in the coffin for the town. By the nineties the population had dwindled to just 150 people." The young otter crosses his arms, fixes the camera with a steely gaze. He must think, the way only a naive college kid can, that he looks so cool. "My goal, however, is to investigate the first event which led to this town's decline, and possible demise. What happened in that mine almost 150 years ago?"

The footage darkens, gets jagged, there's a distinct echo to the voice now. "I've come to Echo to try and find out what information, if any, can be gleaned from the events of the past." He blinks, and as the old footage begins to flicker to a halt he glances away from the camera, toward something behind it. "That good?"

"Uh yeah," says another voice, lower, distinct accent, closer to the microphone but out of position. The image disappears entirely, leaving only the voice. "Don't know how to stop this, though."

"It's a fair question." Jacob looks quizzically into the camera, on footage that now looks eerily sharp in contrast. "What did happen in that mine almost 150 years ago, well, closer to 160, now? What made Echo the way it is? Why the pattern of repeating hysterias, and were the past ones also Black Hole incidents, in that people were unable to leave? Where do you even start looking for answers?"

"Well, uh," the ram in the flannel says, "My family was in Echo as long as it was Echo, I guess. The lake was supposedly named after some... great great great aunt or something, I think? Apparently there were records in the basement the whole time I was a kid."

"When I started digging through them, after, I found things. Kinda things that make you go, oh, so that's why the house is haunted. Kinda things that meant I wasn't surprised when Mom tried to tell me I couldn't show em to you. Or to anybody."

He smiles grimly. "But it's a lot harder for her to talk down to me after I've lived through the end of the world and she hasn't. Plus, it's not like she can do anything, I got a smart husband, he did some kinda... bank thing, I dunno, where even if Mom wanted to cut us off, she can't."

"I found a few things, when I used to do some work in City Hall. Old newspapers and photos and things." The gila taps a restless claw on the arm of the couch. "It'd [bleep]ing happened before, is what kills me. They should've known. They probably did know. Whatever hit us all in 2015, it'd happened before, and nobody even warned us it was possible!"

"Well, the Mesata Nation archives aren't as complete as they ought to be," the fox says, icily, "That'll happen after a genocide. But there are some things. I've seen a map, for example. Compiled by a historian, back in the day, of known Meseta work sites, firepits, and farmlands. There's a very clear gap on it. Almost a perfect circle where my people never made camp. Wouldn't even stay a single night there, for generations, maybe centuries, before settlers arrived. And almost exactly in the middle of that circle?" She jabs a finger at the empty air. "Is Echo."

"What did they know about the place? How did they know it?" She shakes her head. "All I know is there used to be a blank circle of land they refused to enter. Till the colonizers came, and things got forgotten, and by the time it got to my parents, nobody remembered that you weren't supposed to live there."

"We were able to find evidence of three separate hysterias." Jacob folds his hands atop the stack of files on his desk. "One in either 1875 or 1876, one in 1915, and the Black Hole incident of 2015. While many on the... conspiratorial end of the paranormal investigative community will claim there was one in the late fifties, we've not been able to find actual evidence of that one. You cannot assemble a handful of unrelated paranormal sightings, tragedies, and the collapse of the railroad into an unorganized pile, and then act as if that adds up to hysteria."

"And those theories always take a left turn into the Zodiac Killer, anyway" Adds Micha. "Doesn't help their credibility."

"The 1870s occurrence isn't well attested." Jacob's voice continues over an old daguerreotype of two men, a ram and a fox, seated across from eachother, "but then, in a mining town in the 1870s, what is? It was incited by the hanging of a man named John Begay, on charges of the murder of several children, which... while we can't exactly prove it, it seems that James Hendricks was responsible for that. They were co-owners of the claim on which the gold mine was founded, arguably co-founders of the town, and seem to have been lovers." The camera is now slowly panning over a collection of letters, telegrams, mining company documents, and typewritten notes. "But Begay was native and Hendricks was not, so despite the guilt being all James's, John went to the noose."

"Oh, I don't doubt it." the ram looks rueful. "I don't suppose you get as rich as some of my ancestors were, especially not off a gold mine in a place like that, without being a really [bleep]ed up kinda bastard."

"The most compelling evidence for what happened next is the sudden lack of evidence. Echo was a classic old west boom town, and then within a year of the hanging there are suddenly no records, of any kind, for a period of nearly four months. No newspapers. No legal documents. No tax records of the mining company. Not even the Donner Party leave a blank space like that on the historical record. So does that mean that someone's destroyed the records of what happened? That things were bad enough that nobody could be bothered to leave behind any notes? That things were bad enough that literally nobody was left? Some combination of the above? In any case, the next any trace of Hendricks can be found, he's relocated his family to California and never returns to Echo, leaves the management of the mine to his company for the rest of his life."

"About forty years later we have better luck. The gold mine is back in operation, under one of James's grandsons, as of 1915. Then the body of a miner is discovered, apparently murdered. The miners protest, since tensions were already high due to safety procedures being non-existent and the company refusing to either supply basic tools, or pay the miners enough that they could afford them themselves. So, while it's hard to see how a murder is a part of that, it's easy to see why a miner's death, in the mines, that the company doesn't even notice, touches things off."

"The sheriff enters a verdict of 'murder by unknown persons,' and the inquest papers mention several missing children. Stops short of claiming there's a connection, but I think I can read his suspicions between the lines. Maybe there would have turned out to be a connection if he'd had the time and resources to investigate, but he didn't."

"We next hear of the sheriff in the diary of a scholar visiting from a European university. An entry dated nine days later talks about what's clearly the 1915 hysteria." The camera lowers on an antique notebook, carefully preserved, plastic sleeves over each page, as Jacob opens it. The handwriting is neat, flowing, elegant, and completely illegible

"We have holed up in the jail," Jacob reads, "'The Sheriff, his Unionist friend, his Deputy, Samuel and Cynthia from the Hip, a gunman (a wolf whose name I know not, but the Sheriff seems to trust him,) and dear Murdoch and I. Sheriff Adler has ordered us to put out all the lights, but there is still enough evening sun to write by, and so I leave this in the hopes that it may survive this night of horrors even if I do not.'

'I was with Samuel and the Deputy when it began. At first he thought it another riot,'" --interesting that he uses the word 'another' there-- "'for the mine workers were never yet assured in the matter of their comrade's death, and have but little trust in Misters Hendricks or Briggs to see to their safety. I cannot say I blame them.'

'But no, this proved something quite otherwise than a mere riot. Men with guns firing at nothing at all. Old women screaming at the sky. I saw horses stampede blindly down the street, dragging an empty wagon, mad with fear, as an old man walked calmly into their path and smiled as they trampled him. A young wretch, naked and screaming, ran in circles in the town square till he collapsed of exhaustion.'

'The two brutes who so outraged me, they too are dead. The one--where his head may be I know not, but I saw the rest of him in an alley. The other hung above, from a noose he could not have hoisted so high himself. Of those whose horrific work this was, there was no sign.'

'When I saw Holly in her gown, striding down the street, laughing uproariously, and all the while her gloves and hem were soaked with fresh blood, my heart near to fell out of me. I feared the worst. No wonder Murdoch had asked me to stay away from the wedding!'

'Deputy Bronson was loath to make the attempt, but I vowed to go alone if he would not, so the three of us made for the church.'

'The building was in flames, even to the steeple, and then did I despair indeed. But Samuel, of all people, had somehow an instinct to look in the rude little churchyard. And there we found him. Slumped behind a tombstone. Soaking wet, but otherwise unharmed.'

'Oh my poor darling, would that you had listened and left your monstrous family to fend for themselves! We could be out of this hellish town, and away, and free, and I need never have learned how your sweet face looks at the uttermost depths of sorrow-'"

Jacob clears his throat. "Well, he goes on like that for a while."

He flips a page and continues. "'Sheriff Adler was returned ere we were, with that unionist and the gunman. I thought Cynthia had come with him, but no, she had come on her own, looking for Samuel. Brave girl! The Sheriff was none too pleased that we had left, but he was greatly relieved that Samuel was unhurt, and granted that saving any who could be saved was worthily enough done, provided we made no more attempts. He said this would get worse, before it got better. I know not how he knows, but I cannot gainsay him.'

'If God has not forsaken this place entirely, then I pray I live to write again.'"

The raccoon looks pensive. "Yeah, I guess... none of what he's describing would have looked out of place if I'd seen it that night. Maybe the horses. Maybe not."

"'It is some time after midnight, I think. I cannot be certain. Adler still will allow no lights. The sounds of carnage are less, but every now and again one hears another gunshot, another scream. There is enough moonlight to write by, and write I must, or else go as mad as the rest of the town with the impossibility of what I have seen.'

'The stouter of us were engaged in boarding up the doors and windows. Cynthia and I remained with dear Murdoch. A jail cell is a dour place for comfort, but I cannot begrudge iron bars between him and danger.'

'Cynthia proposed that something to eat might do him good, or something to drink if it could be found, as he had yet to speak to anyone since we found him. She felt sure the sheriff must have something about somewhere, and went in search.'

'But what healed his muteness was her absence. He looked up at me, heaved a great sigh, and a little of the smile I so quickly have learned to treasure came back into his eyes.'

"Thanks," he said, "for not asking how I got out."

"Why," I said, "are you thanking me for that?"

"Because you won't believe it," he said.'

'But I owe him an attempt, so I here set down the story he told: He does not know for certain that his sister set the place ablaze, but it must have been already done when she walked down the aisle alone, with gown and veil and bloody knife, for fire had covered all the exits. He says that in that moment he heard his brother's voice, telling him to follow, and quickly.'

"I did not meet your brother," I said.'

"Because he died, years ago," he answered.'

'According to Murdoch, his brother walked ahead of him, through the flames, and where he went they were extinguished in a great cloud of steam, just long enough for Murdoch to dash through to safety. This brother told him to wait in the churchyard, that someone was coming to find him.'

'I suppose, in this, he was proven right.'

'I would have said some words of comfort, but I suddenly realized that the whole place was eerily silent. There was no sound of hammering nails, or moving furniture. Perhaps they had finished with the doors and windows? But when I looked up, it was to see Cynthia framed in the jail doorway, looking not at me, but towards the window on the southern wall. Her face was a mask of unbelieving shock.'

'Before I had set a foot in the front room, the Sheriff had met my eyes, stopped me with a raised hand, hushed me with an urgent finger to his lips. Samuel held a board broken from the Sheriff's desk. The union man held a hammer, ready as a makeshift weapon. Deputy Bronson and the gunman had both drawn their sidearms. But none moved.'

'Outside the window stood-' And then there's several partial things, all heavily crossed out," Jacob says, over footage of a page of frantic cursive, blotted, crossed out angrily. "I think he must have tried a few descriptions and gave up in frustration, because he continues: "Outside the window stood I know not what. In form it was like a bull, or perhaps a bison, but too tall and too thin to be mistaken for any natural man. Skin it had none. Perhaps it was flayed, and its flesh beneath was all blackened with mummification in the desert wind, or perhaps it was not such a being as to have any need for skin. Where a face should have been, there was only a skull. Sun bleached, cruelly pointed horns, jagged teeth. Yet in the empty sockets burned an eldritch light, like a distant bonfire seen through a telescope, and I felt certain it could see us just as well as if it had yet had eyes.'

'It raised a hand, slowly, towards the window. I am sure that, whatever it intended, if it had not been interrupted, I would not now be drawing breath.'

'But another hand clapped upon its shoulder, equally hideous. This one was red, and raw, like a burnt cadaver. It was even taller and thinner than the bull-skull thing. I could have counted its every mismatched rib. It had no face, only blank sockets where the mouth and eyes ought to have been.'

'The two of them bent their heads together, as if conferring on some weighty matter. Then they both turned, towards the foothills I should think. They glided away, without a step, and the manner of their movement was deeply unnatural, I have no words to describe it. But I saw their silhouettes pass the boarded up windows, at the front of the office, and depart.

'The first sound I heard was Samuel saying "They're gone." Deputy Bronson staggered to the floor, choking back sobs, the gunman whispered an oath in what sounded like Hispanolian. Sheriff Adler gathered Samuel and the unionist in his arms for a long moment, before they hurried to finish boarding up the last window.'

'So I believe your account, Murdoch. And I am grateful you did not witness mine.'"

"All I could think," the fox is staring holes through the carpet, "when I read that part? Was: Oh god. Oh god. Someone else has seen it. Someone else had seen it, almost a hundred years before I was born, someone else had already seen it."

"He sounds so scared." The lynx's voice is strangled, "But maybe that's just me... remembering how I felt. It sounds very familiar."

"'We have moved upstairs. The door to the Sheriff's flat has bars, and the stairs, he says, are quite defensible.'

'We have had a mouthful or two, each, to eat, and some water. It is still too risky to light the stove, or the lamps, and we do not know how long we must hold out up here. If need be, hopefully some of us can venture out for supplies come morning. If morning ever comes.'

'For now we sleep, and watch, in shifts. For one thing, the Sheriff has only one actual bed. There is a sofa, and a chair, and a quilt that may make a serviceable bedroll, but that is still not enough for all of us. So some may as well keep watch.'

'Just now we witnessed the Hendricks castle, up on the hill, go up in flames. This madness is by no means ended. I asked Sheriff Adler what we will do if someone sets this building alight, but he gave me an unsettling grin and revealed he had an uncommonly plentiful supply of rope for ladders on hand. The man is prepared for any eventuality, it seems.'"

"Like, [bleep]." breathes the ram. "I knew the house used to be bigger, but I didn't think it was cause it burned down at one point."

"'Murdoch is sleeping on the sofa. Peacefully, I hope. I confess I am more weary than I have ever been. I would that I too were asleep, with his arms around me, even if it meant death came upon me unawares.'

'So I close, and know not whether this be my final entry. If it so be, well, I vowed to seek the unknown, and see something of the true face of the world that civilization has not yet papered over. For my sins, I have done it. But I would not have it otherwise. If these be my last words, then let the following be my last words, and let them be under what must be my true name, for it is the one you knew me by:'

'Murdoch, I love you.'

'Signed, Clifford Tibbets.'"

"He did, in fact, survive." Jacob shuts the book carefully and peels off his protective gloves. "We were able to confirm the identities of several people this journal mentions. The author, under the name Professor Clifford Howlink, spent most of the rest of his life as the principal and head teacher of the Echo school, which declined somewhat after the episode he survived." The camera passes over a photo of a grizzled looking weasel in a neckerchief, a vest, a broad hiking hat, and a somewhat mischievous expression.

"Murdoch, I feel confident saying, is Murdoch Byrnes, who served two terms as Mayor." A photo of a comfortable-looking red fox, seated in front of a wall of photographs. "No official source contains any mention that they were lovers, but that's hardly surprising given the time. The rest of his family do seem to have perished during the incident, which fits this account."

"Sheriff Adler and Deputy Bronson are easy enough to place," a photo of a muscular coyote, with a no-nonsense expression, "They both appear in the public record. The 'Unionist friend' is more difficult, but the best guess is that this was one Feng Yaolin," it's succeeded by a photo of a tiger in overalls and a sensible shirt, seated at a table beside a wolverine and a badger, with an IWW banner hung behind them. "Served as president of the local miner's union when it was recognized in the wake of the incident, since he apparently had an unusually supportive relationship with Sheriff Adler's administration."

"Who 'Samuel and Cynthia from the Hip' are, well, that's less certain. The Saguaro's Hip was a local hotel and saloon, served as a social center for the better off elements of the town. Sunday brunches in the morning, tea and cakes in the afternoon, fine whiskey and cigars in the evening. Hendricks and other directors of the mining company were known patrons. So, did Samuel and Cynthia work in the bar, or the kitchen? Were they Guests? Locals whom Clifford merely happened to meet there? I don't think we're ever likely to know."

"You can see the pattern, though, if you're not stupid." The gila lizard shakes his head. "Someone gets accused of a killing, something wakes up, pressure builds, and then [bleep]. Don't need to be an expert to say, yeah, this shit and what we went though? That's the same shit."

"Ok, but why's it always happening to gay people, huh?" Micha frowns. "Why's that part of the pattern? Why's this on us?"

"What kinda town was I living in?" asks the raccoon. "I moved there because I thought there'd be less danger!"

"Really, what cements it for me," the fox raises her eyes, "Is that they all apparently saw it. At the same time. With no communication between them, with no prompting for suggestion or pareidolia, with no consensus or shared explanation after for what it was. There is such a thing as mass hallucination but it doesn't work like that. Or if it did, then that's just as outside the bounds of the possible as everyone really seeing, well, something like that."

The camera cuts closer, as if to force the audience to look her in the eyes as she says "Just like we did, at Leo's house that night."