Watching the calendar...

January, 1809: Spanish missionaries find the bodies of three dead girls on the side of a hill they name El Montana Diablo - the Devil's Mountain. The missionaries belive they have been 'dancing with demons' and report that the girls' clothes were never found. (Source: Vatican Archives, only just made public)

January, 1859: Prospectors in the newly-founded town of Antioch find three local girls dead on the hillside of Devil's Mountain. Two men are hanged for the crime. The town is almost wiped out by plague during the subsequent spring.

January, 1909: Federal Marshals are called to Antioch, California, when two girls are reported missing. A third girl later vanishes. All three girls are found on Devil's Mountain two days later. Two are dead, a third dies in hospital a day later. The case is never solved.

January, 1959: FBI agents are summoned to the town of Antioch after three girls disappear over two days. Kidnapping is feared but no note is found. A massive search involving lawmen from two counties locates the girls within 12 hours. They are wearing only scraps of clothing and suffering from exposure and frostbite. One of the girls dies from fever the next day. The other two make full recoveries, but none of them are able to recall any events of the previous 48 hours or explain their presence on Devil's Mountain.

January, 1978. New York crime writer Jason Peggs picks up on the story and tracks down the two surviving girls. He eventually uses it for a chapter of his book, Haunted America. A similar story about a Devil's Mountain (now relocated in Montana) is the basis of the horror novel Shall We Dance? by Dean Clinton. Peggs' story appears in several other horror and crime anthologies, changing as it goes.

Summer, 2003: The FOX network launches a show called The Real X-Files. One of its early episodes deals with the Devil's Mountain disappearances. Afterwards, California TV reporter Cyril Saunders tracks down the one surviving victim of the 1959 event (now 63) and the suriviving sister of one of the victims of the 1909 event (now 99). With a grant from the California Historical Society, he digs up the 1859 case and makes a small-budget documentary called Devil's Mountain.

Summer, 2006: Devil's Mountain is released to a wider audience with a more sensational angle (and "facts" from Shall We Dance), and retitled Town of Fear. As a result of Town of Fear, the Devil's Mountain events gain a small internet following. The town has a surge of tourism as a result. Stores in town sell memorabilia and copies of Town of Fear, Haunted America and Shall We Dance. Antioch appears in travel guides for goths and ghost chasers.

January, 2009: Approximately 40 backpackers, parapsychologists, ghost hunters and interested folk travel to Antioch from around the state, wondering if the events will be repeated. Local and state police increase security and add a town curfew just in case.

February 1, 2009: After no disappearances transpire, most of the visitors leave town.

February 14, 2006: Janice Waters, aged 15, is seen leaving Antioch Central High at 3.30pm. She never arrives home.

10:30 am, February 15, 2006: Daniella Capper, aged 16, is reported missing after she does not come home from an evening with friends. At 2:30 pm, the FBI is notified. At 4:00pm, Special Agent Filmore calls Greystride. At 4:45pm, FEAR agents board a plane in DC.

Well done

Code name Angel is fitting in well here. She should be a useful agent in a few years.

And please welcome our newest ex-agency liason officer, Special Agent James Filmore.

Beneath, he sits reading

Mark had never gotten used to the freaks around here.

Sure, he wasn't quite ... normal ... himself. But he was nothing, compared to some of the abominations that drew a paycheck from F.E.A.R. The higher-ups knew it, too - it's why he was a janitor now. No, sorry, "sanitation engineer". Too weird to let loose, not actually good enough at anything to make use of.

So he got to hang around and make a living from cleaning up after the monsters. Like the one looking up at him from a pile of books cluttering his desk, enormous frame barely fitting into the ridiculously inadequate cubicle he'd been assigned. He had no idea what this one was - he looked human enough, for all his size, though his skin was too pale. And Mark wasn't so sure it was actually skin - looked kinda rough the time he'd passed by close enough to sneak a look, almost earthen.

Whatever he was, he read a lot - never the same set of books scattered across his workspace each time Mark made his rounds. It made a convenient excuse to make conversation - that was important to Mark; if he could find something simple, mundane to talk to them about, they didn't scare him so much.

"Whatcha readin' today, Adam?" That was the only name Mark had ever heard for him. The man(?) had ... savoured the name when he told it to Mark, as if it held some deep, wonderful signifigance to him.

"Adam"'s voice was deep, sonorous, almost echoing. "I am acquainting myself with a new field of study, Mark." The creature never forgot to use his name. More effort than most of the regulars around here went to ... or maybe he just *couldn't* forget.

"Materials science. Man has come so far since potter's clay, don't you think?"

Mark, as usual, felt like there was a joke here he was missing - the creature certainly seemed amused. "Sure have, Adam." His agreement was perfunctory, just part of the ritual.

One book was set aside from the clutter of the desktop, and didn't look like a fancy science textbook to Mark. The cover was old and worn, the title in weird lettering Mark couldn't read. "What's that one? Don't recognise the writing."

Adam touched the book ... reverently, Mark thought. "It's Aramaic. It's a ... religious essay, I guess you'd say."

Mark chuckled. "Don't have much to do with one another, do they?"

Adam smiled - with his lips, anyway. His eyes were deadly serious. "I'm hoping they'll actually have a lot to offer one another."

prognostications

there are shadows in the water
there are shadows in the water
a house falls
a memory rises
a million soldiers burned to death
the child is father to the daughter of the son
there are shadows in the water
there are shadows in the water