The evening sky was a mass of ochre hues staining the  landscape with it's beauty. The rattling of the car beneath  Sepp Elias shook his his vision ever so slightly as his gaze drifted from the carriage window. Beside him Fritz his travelling companion exhaled a sharp breath whilst in the midst of sleep probably reacting to some dream born stimuli.

Sepp pondered for a few seconds what was going through the mind of his canine cohort before dismissing it as pointless. The human mind may be able to fathom what went on in the mind of a regular dog but Fritz's being was infused with the spectral traces of a Shaboth, one of the many entities that were stored in the dimension known as the Cloister of Pascal.

The fact that Sepp was by profession an infuser and had bestowed this taint upon the hapless canine mattered little. Infusers by nature played with dangerous forces that were perhaps incomprehensible by virtue of their very existence. Cruel as experimenting on an unknowing animal was it was nothing that Sepp had not attempted on himself.

Rummaging through his shoulder bag Sepp produced several volumes of reading material in order to alleviate the boredom that inevitably descended on such
excursions. He had with him several hefty volumes on biology and botany which he hurriedly shoved aside in favour of a lurid penny dreadful that he had purchased at the station.  

The books narrative centred around a killer who used a pair of spring laden boots in order to break in second story apartments and slaughter their maiden inhabitants. As the first scene began to play out in his mind made worse by the authors fascination of the inner workings of young women's entrails Sepp closed the book. The book had been a poor choice for the last thing he wanted on his mind at the moment was bloodshed.

Unbidden images of his final meeting with his employer lady Rhiannon came to his minds eye. Three hours ago at 5 o'clock sharp he had come to her office to report his progress in person as he did every afternoon. However what he had found left him cold to the very marrow of his bones. The entire room was painted red with blood and clumps of organs and veins were plastered to the walls and ceiling. Whatever had killed her had done so in a display of unmatched ferocity. To make things even more grotesque none of it had been eaten but simply torn into shreds of gore. The smell of her now open bowels had made him gag and thus he staggered his eyes watering and vision blurring.


Several hasty telegraphs both sent and received and Sepp was on his way out of the Siodem city on the first train he could catch. It was not only his employer that was dead but according to his contacts almost all of the cities other movers and shakers. Sepp knew that he wanted no part in what was to come and thus fled with his tail between his legs.

Running his hand through his light blonde hair Sepp began to study the passengers that shared the compartment with him. First was an old soldier muttering to himself in a low voice. The man had what looked to be a bayonet scar running up right side of his face and he was missing an eye. His uniform was filthy and the medals that were pinned to it looked like they had been run over by a horse and cart. Sepp suspected that the only reason he bothered to wear the army get up these days was that he probably didn't have any other clothing. That and sometimes rail workers showed pity towards veterans and gave them free rides.

Next was a little girl whose sky blue eyes mirrored Sepp's own. She sat playing with a toy horse while her governess - a stern looking brunette woman in her late twenties glared at both the Soldier and Sepp with  unmasked disapproval. Since he was both dressed in a relativity well to do manner and was not speaking to himself as was the soldier Sepp chalked this up to the fact that he had brought his animal on the train.

Through it all the sensation of dread gnawed at the pit of his stomach. Something was not right with the world and Sepp knew instinctively that the murders in Siodem were only the beginning of what was to come. The question was however - would he be able to outrun it ?