Flashback to 10/3/19
There is something to be said for the anger of the Elder Gods. While the younger Gods bluster and threaten, the Elder Gods whisper, and the world listens.
This is something Cross learned in September of 1938.
Some of the more forward-thinking members of the town decided it would be best to establish trolley service between Cross and towns and cities around us. I and other members of the historical society strongly cautioned against it. It was one thing to connect Cross to the world via the railroad, it was quite another to seek to place electrical lines across the borders of the some of the more vocal deities which called the outskirts of Cross home.
One of these Elder Gods, whom I shall not name for fear of retribution, sent a single, strong sign that it was a bad idea. Hundreds of songbirds fell dead from the sky, and a brief thunderstorm of blood ripped through the town.
Still, no one ‘important’ would listen.
The lines for the trolley were laid, and the first of the tracks connected.
Two days later, the storm struck us.
According to the meteorologists, we were struck with the tail end of a hurricane. I don’t know many hurricanes that cherry-pick their victims. A trolley carrying the entire committee had set out from Cross for a photo opportunity. They had with them several members of the press, with stringers working for the New York Times and the Boston Herald among them.
The trip was to be the crown jewel in the story of the trolley’s success.
Instead, it served as the death warrant for seventeen men and women.
No one on the trolley survived. Nor were their bodies immediately recovered. For seven days following their disappearance, the missing could be heard, begging for their lives as they were drowned and resurrected.
On the eighth day we found the corpses hanging bloated and inverted from a broad-limbed oak, a stark reminder of the power and brutality of an Elder God.
