Case MO70

Marshal: Hello again, Allan. We can reuse your initial statement from your first testimony. Are you prepared to discuss the day of the hanging.

Witness: I’m…prepared, yes. Naturally the later events will be difficult to…it’s, well…

Marshal: The effect on the memory, yes. Do your best.

Witness: So, the day came. Thorn and Steelheel’s boys had set up the gallows in a main street, covering it in tarp. Freestone was dragged there overnight - gagged after what had happened earlier - and left tied to a post. I think that was Thorn’s petty revenge, forcing him to brave the elements in what was left of his clothes.

Marshal: Considering how we found him in January, I have to wonder if he was even affected. He spent weeks in that rickety old shack.

Witness: Spite’s spite, Marshal. Eventually, sun came up, the time came, Thorn got the crowd’s attention while Steelheel took position on the gallows. They argued about who would get to actually kill him, but Steelheel put his foot down on account of him having actually caught him. Thorn excelled in starting a crowd anyways. Made up a song to draw people, “come and see the great injustice, cleansed from our unholy land”.

Marshal: Hm. If I may pivot for a moment, I don’t suppose she ever mentioned anything about Marvin Williamson, did she?

Witness: When she needed a baseline for idiocy or incompetence. I don’t believe he made contact with the League after Steelheel and Thorn were captured; either of them would probably turn him out of spite.

Marshal: Just curious. He technically doesn’t fall under our jurisdiction since he himself didn’t use magic, but I can’t stand knowing that he’s still running around somewhere. Continue.

Witness: Steelheel had a whole speech planned. Return to a better age, destruction of the current age of indignity. Blamed you for not catching him earlier, the Union as a whole for allowing Freestone to even be a freedman. Shouted down a couple of Union veterans, said that he caught the villain of the hour so they had no right to deny his achievement. And then he pulled the switch, Victor fell and…lived.

Marshal: Right, I did want your confirmation on that point. I know death by the rope can often take minutes if done-

Witness: It was not the first time I’ve seen someone hung. If it’s not instant, there’s still signs; the eyes bulge; the face goes dark. He looked at me from that rope the same way he did on my first night there and I knew he wasn’t struggling at all. I heard people gasping, people laughing. The mind…rejects it after a while because it just can’t be real. Steelheel was apoplectic.

[Laughter]

Marshal: Some trick of his fleshwork, perhaps? Rebuilt his neck so it couldn’t break? Or maybe-

Witness: Sir, I implore you, please don’t oblige me to dwell on this.

[Silence]

Marshal: Fine. I know there’s worse coming. Please continue.

Witness: Steelheel went to his guns next, emptied a revolver directly into his head. It was like shooting a cannonball; they barely scratched his skin. The bullets ricochet in any which direction. One grazed my leg, three went into the crowd, one would have hit Thorn if she hadn’t left during the speech. At least one tore through the man’s gag, and he looked directly at Steelheel and asked “perhaps we can reschedule?“.

Marshal: My God, man. Was he ever even human?

[Silence]

Witness: I want to believe he was. Just stubborn enough to cheat. The crowd was losing its mind, people were bleeding out, the two Union veterans were ready to rush the gallows, so Steelheel gave the signal to release the new homunculi. We had a few dozen rudimentary ones hidden in houses and buildings we…acquired. Right when they started clawing through the crowd…

[Silence]

Witness: I’m…not sure if I can do this.

Marshal: Our thaumatologists are confident that they’ve secured the room from the effect. Try.

Witness: There were…h…hors…they…they were…

[The audio’s messy here but accounting for corruption, it sounds like glass shattering]

The horses came and they were spiders and from every stable and every treeline across the river and out of it they came they spun webs like gold tresses and ensnared memory and meaning and we lost wedding rings under floorboards and ambition in the graves of our fathers and we panicked and ran and stood still in horror as we were bound to bear

WITNESS

and at the front and in the midst was the crippled man, ever-living, tar-marked, spear-shaker, peach-eater, prince and brother and king and FATHER and prince and brother and KING and father and a thousand lives and none of them and God alive there were words crawling from beneath the houses and ladies’ skirts and out of mouths and men’s ears telling of some great disgrace chipped out of the skies and stars and shores by a thousand hands over and over again-

Marshal: Gilmore, you can stop. You need to stop, you’re going to burn out the-

[Audio skips heavily for next minute]

Witness: Fox. Fox faux fauci faltering fallacy fantastic fantasy failure forlorn font fair facil, he rode forth with gleaming brow and his arm bled myths mysteries massive mossy malworn mostworn meatworm mallacy myrmidons tangled themselves up trying to fight something that denied thought and word and a sight sigh sin silly billy willy walked up to Steelheel and asked him who told him he could kill his son sol sacrament savoir faire killing said Steelheel as he had killed his daughters but the fox prince looked him in the ay ee eye ou yew and said he left graves and graves of red daughters out north east West West WEST south and wicked thought always slips its leash lash low light love love love love LOVE LOVE LOVE HELP

[More glass shattering]

Marshal: Okese, too many gauges have broken! Just try to hold it closed, I’ll grab him!

Witness: H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H Gggget out of the way you c**n bastard or I’ll shoot you and your sonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnNatter natter natter talk talk talk all whine and no action no wonder you couldn’t save your homuncudaughters you sillyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[Thud]

[Silence]

Marshal: Mr…Gilmore?

Witness: And he loved his son and resented the sea…

Marshal: Mr. Gilmore? Are you with us?

Witness: I don’t…remember what happened after I got to the crawling words, but my mouth feels dry. Skin too. But I don’t feel hungry so can’t have been more than a few hours.

Marshal: A few minutes. We weren’t able to contain it entirely but you stayed on topic at least. Can you talk about how Steelheel ended or is that too close to the trigger event?

Witness: Should be able to. Wasn’t as bad as the first time. Just…stop me if it happens again.

Marshal: Alright. You ended at the confrontation between Steelheel and…well, him.

Witness: Steelheel tried to shoot…that person…but he already ran out of bullets earlier, so he tried to pistol whip him. The very moment of the impact, he, Freestone and all of the…things in the streets disappeared, and soft tar effigies left in their place. Steelheel hit the one replacing ‘that person’ so hard that he got stuck. I…don’t know exactly what happened after that, but before I fled, I saw the crowd climbing onto the gallows where he was stuck.

Marshal: I’ll spare you the details of his autopsy. I’ve also seen the ones for the two casualties he shot in the crowd. With that level of damage, I’m not surprised that they attacked him once he was defenseless but…

Witness: It doesn’t look like what happened to him was human. I’ve heard the rumors.

Marshal: I…yes. Yes. This was very helpful, Mr. Gilmore. A fascinating view of the legendary Prince Remus.

Witness: It was…humbling. I grew up seeing the strength of wizards. To see someone creating such a madhouse without wizardry - and a Negro no less…

[Silence]

Marshal: Do you think of Negros as having spite?

Witness: Marshal?

Marshal: The last time we spoke, you said that you kept to this cause for so long out of spite. The Negro had been enslaved for over a hundred years when Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. How much spite do you think they had, the ones in chains and the ones who escaped?

[Silence]

Witness: I’m not going to say he deserved it.

Marshal: Nobody deserves to die, not by my reckoning. But sometimes it happens as a natural consequence of things. You put a bushel of wheat up high and then knock it down, might just fall on your head.

[Silence]

Witness: I will not dismiss the weight of it.

Marshal: And I’ll add that to my recommendations for your judge. That’ll be all, thank you.

PRINTOUT COMPLETE 223807092026