SCP-6380 — The Irish Problem

2/6380 LEVEL 2/6380

CLASSIFIED

Item #: SCP-6380

Richard Chappell, circa 1904

SPECIAL CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES: Case closed in 1940 with the dissolution of GoI-001; remains and associated evidence safely disposed of.

DESCRIPTION: The anomaly is the collective designation for forty-three hominoid remains discovered in various locations in Chicago, United States of America, through the winter of 1925. Forty-one corpses were of the same species of before, while the remaining two were an elderly human man and woman.

The corpses suffer from a unique nomenclatural anomaly, restricting the terms and names to which they can be referred, including in this written documentation. In addition, none of the corpses can be identified; they do not lack identifiable traits, but none of these traits can be used to differentiate any of the corpses from the others or to assign any a particular or unique identity. The exact nature and bounds of this anomaly are currently under investigation, but are consistent with other nomenclatural hazards in anomalies associated with the good forest folk.

INTERVIEWER: Agent Solomon Shelby

SUBJECT: Birken 'Bloodhound' Nowakowski, former associate with GoI-001 ("The Chicago Spirit").

«BEGIN EXCERPT»

Birken Nowakowski

NOWAKOWSKI: You're not getting fucking nothing out of me.

SHELBY: You don't even know what we want.

NOWAKOWSKI: Whatever it is, copper. Fuck that. Nothing.

SHELBY: Come now. You know what happens when you don't cooperate.

NOWAKOWSKI: Nah, 'cuz it's, you don't fuckin' understand, do you? I can't, Chappell got his own magic. He knows when someone rats to the cops, somehow, and he takes care of them.

SHELBY: He's in fuckin' jail, Birk, he can't get to nobody anymore. And not no Sing-Sing, either. I'm not a copper. We've locked him up good and deep and thrown away the key. He might as well be dead - but so will you, if you don't answer the fucking questions.

NOWAKOWSKI: What the grinning fuck do you even want to know about?

SHELBY: Bout… thirteen years ago, 1925, there was a string of gangland executions across the winter in the city. We found bodies that you and I both know aren't human. We're not coppers, but we wanna know what happened, and how they got here.

NOWAKOWSKI: Ah, fuck. That was ugly business, copper. Very ugly. And if you know what they were, you know you're better off not investigating.

SHELBY: Start talking.

NOWAKOWSKI: Smoke?

SHELBY: Feel free.

[Pause.]

NOWAKOWSKI: Where you from?

SHELBY: Chicago, born and bred.

NOWAKOWSKI: Yeah, whatever that means. This city was built on immigrants, you know. We paved the streets you walk on.

SHELBY: You've never done an honest day's work in your life.

NOWAKOWSKI: And we didn't just build the city. We did all the dirty jobs nobody else wanted. And for it we got thrown pittances, sent to live in tin shacks by the river and wallow in our filth.

SHELBY: Shame.

NOWAKOWSKI: And we built the culture too. Me, I'm Polish on me dad's side. We brought our culture here in boats and in carriages and held it in tenements.

SHELBY: Not exactly many options, seeing as what'd gone on in Europe prior.

NOWAKOWSKI: That's the thing, though. I might be a Pole from my dad, but I'm Irish from me mum's. That's why Chappell had me doing the work. And- I'm no pussy, but Chappell is fucking terrifying. Ruthless fucker, and I barely knew him. The kind of guy who makes everyone stand as soon as he walks in. He looked me in the eyes, knees shaking and my guts screaming at me to fucking run away from this devil-man, and told me he needed a man with Irish blood.

SHELBY: Irish blood to do what?

[Pause.]

NOWAKOWSKI: Poles saved our culture from the war by bringing it to America, but the Irish? They brought something else entirely.

«END EXCERPT»

The cadavers resemble bipedal humanoids with six limbs (a dominant pair of arms above a smaller secondary pair, accompanied by two digitigrade legs). All were dressed in suits and dresses appropriate to the era, modified to fit their unique physical structures. Skin was furred and soft to the touch, while the face contained six eyes in an equidistant arch. An elongated facial structure and large bone spurs on the back completed the largest external differences from baseline humans (internal skeletal and organ structure was significantly different, such as several unique organs).

INTERVIEWER: Agent Solomon Shelby

SUBJECT: Cillian O'Malley, member of Chicago's North Side Gang1

«BEGIN EXCERPT»

Cillian O'Malley

O'MALLEY: What, just because I'm Irish I'm a drunkard? That's what it is?

SHELBY: Relax. I'm not a copper.

O'MALLEY: Yeah, ain't that what the coppers say before they break down the door to your fuckin' speakeasy?

SHELBY: I don't give a fuck, okay? I don't give a fuck if you're brewing moonshine in your bathtub or running rackets. That's not what I'm here for.

O'MALLEY: Then what the fuck do you want?

SHELBY: Tell me why you came to America, O'Malley.

O'MALLEY: What?

SHELBY: You heard me. You served in the war, didn't you?

O'MALLEY: Yeah. Royal Irish Regiment. Then I got shot and they told me to fuck off back home.

SHELBY: Which you did, naturally. And then you got into some trouble.

O'MALLEY: Trouble, fuck trouble. Standing up with my fucking countrymen, that's what. Englishman have been fucking us since as long as they can remember and then they want t-

SHELBY: I get it. You were big during Easter and took up arms with the IRA. Fenian through and through.

O'MALLEY: How the fuck do you know all this?

SHELBY: You got some help, didn't you? During the Revolution.

O'MALLEY: The Germans, you mean?

SHELBY: No. An older, more natural people.

[Pause.]

SHELBY: I know about the bodies, O'Malley. And Hy-Brasil has floated past the Cliffs of Moher every seven years for the better part of three centuries. The emerald tribes are inextricably tied with Ireland - so how did they get to Chicago?

O'MALLEY: I…

SHELBY: Be honest with me.

O'MALLEY: We made a deal with them. A group of them, not the main ones on the island. Seditionists. They don't like humans at the best of times, but the war was hard on them too. Lots died. They wanted to leave, and they gave us the magic we needed. We didn't win the war 'cause of no fucking charms, mind you. It didn't swing it one way or the other - it just let me and other good men survive where we otherwise would have bled out in the mud. Saved our lives.

SHELBY: And then you chose the wrong side after the treaty was offered.

O'MALLEY: Yeah. They were going to have me shot, but I have friends on the docks, and we snuck onto a boat to New York harbor. Right there on the docks, the fuckers appeared out of thin air. Said it was time for me to pay. So there we set out - hundred-odd men and two score honorable creatures of the hills hiding below deck.

SHELBY: Okay, New York then. But how do you get to Chicago with 40 people of the mound that can't touch iron?

O'MALLEY: I have cousins that settled there right after the Great War ended. Cowards, but they knew when to get out. Called in a few favors, had them packed into crates like fish and taken by boat over the St. Lawrence and the Lakes to Chicago.

SHELBY: What year was that?

O'MALLEY: 1924, must've been.

SHELBY: Right, and after they arrived in Chicago?

O'MALLEY: After that, I don't fuckin' know. I just brought them here. I didn't proper join the North Siders until three years after that, and that business was long since over by then. Good fuckin' thing, too.

SHELBY: Why's that?

O'MALLEY: There's a reason the Outfit refuses to deal with magic shit like the Spirit did. I mean, look at what happened to Chappell, yeah? You ever met Chappell?

SHELBY: No, but I'm familiar with him.

O'MALLEY: I did, once. He had a meeting with Duggan, discussing whiskey bootlegging or something. He walked in, and- in this business, everybody who's anybody has a little blood on their hands. This guy walked in, filled the doorframe, and he wasn't carrying a piece, he wasn't smiling, nothing. But I could tell this guy had done some heinous shit. This guy didn't have the blood of some men on his hands, this guy was drenched in cities worth of blood and he'd do it again in an instant. You just know it by looking at him.

[Pause.]

O'MALLEY: He won our little war, and look what still happened to him. The wild business is cursed business.

«END EXCERPT»

In the winter prior to the discovery of the bodies across Chicago, a minor turf war had broken out between the Chicago Spirit and the North Side Gang for control of the Chicago Docks. As the Irish-American majority of the North Side Gang had roots reaching back to Ireland, it is theorized that the wild ones had been in their association, offering their unique magical services in return for work and protection from the authorities.

INTERVIEWER: Agent Solomon Shelby

SUBJECT: SCP-032-ARC: Charles Derringer, former lieutenant of GoI-001 ("The Chicago Spirit")

«BEGIN EXCERPT»

SCP-032-ARC

DERRINGER: The war with the North Side Gang, eh? That was over a decade ago, why do you care now?

SHELBY: No reason important to you, shitheel. And I'm the one asking the questions here.

DERRINGER: Sure, sure. But just remember, I'm the guy who can break your bones from the inside.

SHELBY: Yeah, and I'm the guy who tells the warden how many hours of sunlight you deserve. Right now, that number is zero.

DERRINGER: [Laughter] I like you! So, the war. Well, I say war, it was more like a massacre. But they instigated it, remember that. The Spirit never attacked nobody who didn't have it coming.

SHELBY: Yeah, sure, honor among thieves or whatever. So what did they do?

DERRINGER: The micks? Oh, that was just business. They were holding up our trucks and lifting our whiskey at the docks. We couldn't exactly go to the cops - the Outfit still controlled the police, back then - so we sent a couple guys over with street sweepers and, well, took care of the problem.

SHELBY: You couldn't have expected that not to result in a revenge killing.

DERRINGER: We didn't. That's how these things work. They were testing us, probing us - probing Chappell - for weakness. Chappell's never been weak in his god-damned life, and he made sure they knew that by whacking a couple of their guys to send a message.

SHELBY: A message.

DERRINGER: "Don't fuck with the Spirit". And Spirit messages are like nothing you've ever seen - I handled that one personally. Let's just say that the funeral for those paddies was cheap - no need for a coffin when you can fit what's left of 'em into a pickle jar.

SHELBY: Jesus. So what was the problem?

DERRINGER: We didn't know they'd been working with the fucking ones of the brush. I mean, we'd heard of them, but we'd never seen one before, and we didn't exactly look before we started shooting. So we found five dead men and one of… those things. We didn't know what to make of it.

SHELBY: Did the North Siders back down?

DERRINGER: Oh, yeah. Like I said, it's business to them. It's how the game is played. For the creatures from a mythical-fucking-fantasy-land where honor is supreme? It was the start of a blood feud. They don't understand how we do business, and we sure as hell didn't understand how they did war. Wasn't long before we found the first body on our doorstep.

SHELBY: You're no strangers to revenge killings, though. What was different about this one?

DERRINGER: We didn't know who it was.

SHELBY: A stranger?

DERRINGER: No, one of our boys. Just none of us could say who.

[Pause.]

DERRINGER: They took his fucking name. All you have in this business is your life, your gun, and your name. They took his name, and then took his life with his own gun. After that, what do you have?

SHELBY: Nothing.

DERRINGER: That's right, nothing at all. There were two more bodies like that before Chappell called a meeting with the other lieutenants.

SHELBY: Who else was there?

DERRINGER: Me, Wheels, Sawteeth, Fitz. His oldest men. We'd all been working with him since we were kids, and we were fucking terrified of him.

SHELBY: I thought you respected him.

DERRINGER: I did. I do. But that doesn't stop me from fearing him. If you can sit down next to a man who can destroy you, utterly, from the inside-out like Richard Davis Chappell can without pissing yourself at least a little bit, you're either the bravest man alive or the craziest.

SHELBY: The meeting, Charles.

DERRINGER: Right. Well, it was clear what needed to be done. We needed to solve the Gaelic problem, once and for all

«END EXCERPT»

The corpses were discovered in various locations around Chicago, particularly concentrated into the North Side of the city near the waterfront. The full list of discovery locations is available here, but in general most were locations that were hidden enough not to alarm civilians or attract police attention, but would invariably be discovered by the destitute poor and the local criminal element. Three were found impaled through flagpoles, and one was crucified. Several were found in meat freezers and iceboxes in butchers' shops associated with the North Side Gang. Upon autopsy, it has been determined most died from internal injuries sustained as a result of their placements; that they had been left to die on display. This method of execution is consistent with several past instances of the Chicago Spirit using corpse placement to send a message to their enemies.

INTERVIEWER: Agent Solomon Shelby

SUBJECT: Mother Alessia Ricci, Aradian Witch residing in Chicago.

«BEGIN EXCERPT»

Alessia Ricci

RICCI: This is neutral ground. I do not ascribe myself to the squabbles of any of the street criminals.

SHELBY: But you do take jobs from them.

RICCI: [Pause] Yes. Hexes, rituals, charms.

SHELBY: They say you can steal souls. Sell them to the devil.

RICCI: You mustn't believe in rumours, Jailor.

SHELBY: Wha-

RICCI: I am a witch. What were you expecting?

SHELBY: … Fair enough. I thought witches operated in covens.

RICCI: That's a tradition of the mother country. But as you very well know, things are different in America. Whores walk in the streets, children work in the factories, and witches do not have covens.

SHELBY: Okay. Well, I wanted to ask you about a series of rituals you performed many years ago. In the service of Mr. Chappell of the Chicago Spirit.

[RICCI utters a quick chant]

RICCI: Now that is a devil I have had dealings with.

SHELBY: What did he do?

RICCI: I do not know, I do not read people's sins. But I can see souls, and his is twisted, gnarled black - like the root of a rotting tree. All contained in a well-dressed, tall and shaven package. The dissonance is frightening when you realize there is truly nothing behind those black eyes.

SHELBY: He hired you that winter for what, exactly?

RICCI: Lifting the magic of the Faefolk.

SHELBY: Wait, you can-

RICCI: Yes, I can speak their name. If I were not capable of lifting the charm for myself, I could not do it for others. But, Mother Aradia, did it take some doing.

SHELBY: I'm not too familiar with the mechanics of magic, so if you'll spare me the details…

RICCI: Of course. The long and short of it is that I worked for weeks to find a countercharm for the name-magick that runs through the blood of every single Fae. Something that would allow them to be identified; targeted.

SHELBY: It appears you did.

RICCI: Yes, in an old Tuscan grimoire from the 15th century. Written by a monk who had travelled to Ireland, then to a floating island that only appears once every decade.

SHELBY: Hy-Brasil.

RICCI: Indeed. He discovered ancient - predating Man, Faefolk, even the Children - secrets on how to defend against the Fae and returned from his journey with his name intact.

SHELBY: So how did you apply it, exactly?

RICCI: I had spent weeks building materials for a strong enough ritual to cast over the main area of downtown, but things changed at the last minute.

SHELBY: How?

RICCI: One of Signore Chappell's caporegimes burst through the door, whispering something into his ear. His face was utterly impassive. And then he walked over to me and told me that the plan had changed. By chance, they had all collected themselves into one building. I needed only cast the ritual over that building to strip them of their abilities, their powers - their identities.

«END EXCERPT»

The two human corpses suffer from the same nomenclature anomaly as the rest of the corpses, but are entirely human. Both are white and in their late 70s, one male and one female. Unlike the others, they were not displayed after execution; their bodies were simply sent to the morgue after reports of machine gun fire at a tenement apartment in northern Chicago prompted a police response, discovering the pair shot dead in a ruined apartment riddled with bullet holes.

INTERVIEWER: Agent Solomon Shelby

SUBJECT: SCP-046-ARC: Richard Davis Chappell, founder and former boss of the Chicago Spirit.

«BEGIN EXCERPT»

SHELBY: So I've gotten the rest of the story from the others, Mr. Chappell, but there's one thing nagging at me.

CHAPPELL: Do tell.

SHELBY: Why would the enchanted ones of the woods suddenly collect themselves in one spot, ripe for the taking?

CHAPPELL: Well, Charlie told you, didn't he?

SHELBY: How did you-

CHAPPELL: I might not be able to take action, Agent Shelby, but I still know when I'm being discussed. Anyway, it was because it was tactically advantageous for them. Or so they thought. Morons.

SHELBY: How would taking a random elderly couple hostage be advantageous?

CHAPPELL: If they weren't random.

SHELBY: Who, then? Someone you knew?

CHAPPELL: Those ones from Emerald Isle, you know. Fenian fucks. Care an awful lot about honor and family and clan. Well, they banked on that. They thought that if they couldn't get to me, they'd get to the next best thing.

SHELBY: What are you saying, Mr. Chappell?

CHAPPELL: I'm saying that even though they were stripped of their personhood just like the Fae, I can still tell you the names of the humans.

SHELB█: Who?

CHAPPELL: Arthur and Elizabeth Chappell.

[Silence.]

S█EL█Y: Are you-

CHAPPELL: Yes, Agent Shelby. Deadly. They tried to use my old man and woman. They didn't know who they were dealing with. Richard Chappell has no fucking weaknesses.

██E██Y: You're a monster.

CHAPPELL: No, Seras Makkalay Barrom, I'm much worse than that. I'm a human, you fucking fairy scum.

[Screaming]

██████: How… how did you…?

CHAPPELL: Was that your big fucking plan? Steal some agent's name, take on his appearance, figure out what happened to all your fucking paddy kin? Take your revenge on me, unarmed in jail?

██████: I…

CHAPPELL: Stupid fucking animal. I take your name, Seras Makkalay Barrom, and I damn you to hell.

[Screaming stops.]

[Silence]

CHAPPELL: Don't ever fuck with Richard Chappell.

«END LOG»

Footnotes

1. The largest Irish-American criminal organization in the country.

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