For the first time, I am unsure how to explain the recent events that I had just witnessed. I have been in the middle of wars in foreign lands, held hostage by an African war lord, and was even among those to witness and survive the unexplained tsunami to wash over the Bermuda islands and coasts of Florida. For all those times, I was able to find the words to explain my experience and inform my readers. Yes, I am a journalist, and I work for a known publisher. However, I am not going to give my name for the implications this report may cause for being made public. The same goes for those who are with me at the time of the events I am about to tell. 

I am also going to be purposefully vague on the locations explained in this report for the safety of all reading. I cannot begin to sincerely warn you all to not come here.

DO NOT TRY TO FIND THIS LOCATION!

Even though I am still unsure as to what exactly it is that is happening here, I warn all to never come. There is an evil here I, and I am certain that most others, have not witnessed before. Never in all my years of journalism have I used such a term. Not even with my life in the hands of a tyrant in a hidden encampment within the jungles of the Congo have I used the word 'evil'. Evil never seemed to fit to describe anything for me in the real, natural world. Every animal, person, and plant I have met and dealt with, I could never entitle such a damning description. Yes, even the people who held me hostage, those who follow their religious beliefs to the point of murder, and those who are fueled on pride to the point of executing others that do not hold up to their own personal expectations I have never signed as evil. Ignorant, egotistic, murderous, and other such words I have used for them. But never have I described them and other things and places as evil.

This place, the small crippled river I currently travel upon and its surrounding local, is evil. This location I believe to be damned and tainted by forces unknown to me, and most likely unknown to most of the general community. And I fear there are more such spots of evil freckling our planet. I also fear that some within power have been keeping it hidden from the rest of the world.

As I said, I am currently on a small unnamed, uncharted river that is slowly becoming nothing more than a shallow creek. It is night, making travel down river even more treacherous for the plant life here can be hazardous. We are currently stuck on a submerged tree, the propeller seemingly broken now. To make matters worse, my comrade on this once simple journey is too fearful to get in the water to correct the situation. And I do not blame him for being this cautious. I am typing this on his laptop just to help settle my own fears and new found anxieties.

I shall start from the very beginning. Hopefully starting at the beginning will help me find the words to explain what it is that I have just recently experienced. 

As said, I am a journalist and I work for a known publisher. I also prefer to work on location and be where the news is happening so I can know firsthand of what is going on before writing my findings. As useful the internet has been in finding and discovering information, like it did in getting me to where I am now with its maps, I do not use it for any of my actual writings like the amateurs do to try to get their rumor filled reports in first. This has been a career for me for nearly twenty years. It is due to my age and prestige that I even got assigned what was to be an easy job.

The publisher that I am contracted with has been unwilling to pay for and send me to the more dangerous regions such as wars and disasters. Instead, they wanted to do an article on the deterioration of our country, particularly on the ghost towns that have been becoming more and more numerous these days thanks to the economy woes of the nation. I would normally have been insulted by this job offering, but I saw an opportunity to maybe co-produce a photo book on these locations. Silly idea, I know. I guess my aged mind really has altered my thinking these days. I also suppose I was needing a break. Sure, I was not going to get Pulitzer for this, but it would be interesting to see more of my own homeland for a change, and maybe make some extra cash for my inevitable retirement.    

It started out easy, and I will not lie that it was actually fun. I would hire a local professional outdoor photographer or fly one in to go to what was once a lively town or city now deserted. It typically starts with families moving away due to the need for better work and money. Then after some of the families are gone, a local business or two closes because that one family turned out to be a major source of income. The now vacant business space in a lot or small mall is a loss of rent for the owner, and they are forced to raise the rent on their other lots. This in turn causes a few other businesses to close, and things just domino down the line until everyone has moved away to leave just empty houses and buildings. One of the saddest things I have come across are the ghost towns with a church and graveyard. Since most churches of any religion survive on the donations of its followers, if the local area is on hard times and has families moving away, it loses its source of income. So churches tend to be the first to start to fade away and go uncared for. The cemetery soon follows, where the only care now comes from those visiting the graves of their loved ones. But they never show care to any of the other graves. They will come, clean the tombstone, pull the weeds and trim the grass, and leave new flowers. The photographers loved this, for it made a striking image of the lone clean and loved grave among those all dirty and unvisited. But that was not what I thought was sad. The ones I found sad were the ones that had no graves visited. Cemeteries with graves as recent as 1995, not even a decade old, are now taken over by weeds and plant life. Even some small trees growing where a corpse would be. All the tombstones now covered in moss and algae. Not a single freshly laid flower lying nearby.  The thought that all the dead and buried there had seemed to have been forgotten. I had seen mass grave sites in third world countries, but seeing a mass of single graves that were all paid for by an individual or family and not be cared for afterwards bothered me. 

The places I visited that were the most fun was not the ghost towns, but the abandoned parks, fair grounds, and theme parks. Walking where hundreds to thousands once walked and played, some even traveling thousands of miles to visit, now in a state of deterioration and disrepair that entering such a place was a safety hazard for all. Walking through where mascots once masqueraded for the delight of children on brightly colored and well lit pavement, now dimmed by the cover of newly grown pine and oak, shadowed by the remaining skeleton of a decaying roller coaster, and moldy damp cement paths full of cracks where the grass had rooted itself over the years. It was a marvel to see what must have been such a cheery place turned into one's eerie nightmares, expecting a horrifying clown to jump out of the shadows of a destroyed vender's booth as you pass. 

It was while in such a place, located in a rural mountainous setting and theme. That I happened across what must have been an owner's private studio apartment. It was atop a cafe, with the stairs leading up from behind a soda jerk's counter. The stair way was once behind a hidden door, but the door long fallen off its hinges. The studio was seemingly cleaned out upon the park's closure, most furnishing absent except for a bed frame and old wooden dresser. The dresser's drawers were of course empty. Upon pulling out the bottom drawer, I caught site of a type of parchment sticking up from behind the back board.

Pulling out the drawer entirely, I found an old envelope tacked to the back. The paper was yellow with age, the writing on the front faded to be illegible. There was no stamp or postage mark showing where or who it was sent from or to.  Looking within was a folded paper, the majority of its writing saved from the wear of time by the envelope that it hid in.

The handwriting was in cursive and very precise. One would assume the writer had classes for calligraphy. The first odd thing I noticed was that the writer had dated it n the corner as October 26, 1930. That meant this letter was much older than the park itself. It was possible that the owner of this dresser might not have known of the letter, but I doubt that. However, why would this person hide it, and then seemingly forget about it? It had to have been belonging to them or the family.

I sadly do not have the letter with me as I write this. The following is not word for word, and I might even get a few understandings mistaken.

   

 

 Dear Father,                                                                                                October 26, 1930

     This is from your son. I am doing quite well here in New Lordsking. Last you heard that name was when I left with my new found wife, and the harbor town was just Lordsking. I do apologize for not writing to you of my wellbeing for all these years. Shortly after my arrival, the townsfolk did a queer thing in successfully seceding from the rest of the country. I know this news will shock you on top of my sudden departure years ago after eloping. I beg that you trust me when I say it was for the best and all is more than just well. 

The man giving you this letter is a fisherman that docked in our harbor by mistake after having been lost at sea due to a storm causing his navigation to send him further north than any fisherman should. It was a miracle that he survived the ordeal. He is also a deaf mute. So if he seemed rude for just handing you this envelope and walked away in a hurry, do not fault him for it. His disability made him unable to be social, and his recent journeys was sure to have been overly stressing. I have paid him well for the service of bringing you this letter, unopened and unread, so that there was no need for you to tip him or provide rest. 

I am happy to announce that the family name and bloodline continues for you are now a grandfather. We have a son already two of age. His name is William Hiller Crawford, and my wife Meredith is already months into having a second child.

   Before moving here, the harbor's fishery had closed due to the lack of sea life that had hit the region. Even the sea vermin of lobster has grown scarce. Survival here had once resorted to their children digging up mussels and clams in bare feet along the jagged cliffs and river. I still see some of the lads and dolls in front of the church who have had to lose a foot due to the cuts that had gone foul. The fact they smile today full of pride assures me that New Lordsking has made the best decisions and is following the right course. 

   Lordsking, as it was called upon my arrival, had begun gaining its now great wealth. The remaining boats now returned with fish of great size and rarity. The nets are even returning with riches of which my own educated brain could not fathom. Small statues made of gold. Carved and finely polished queer figurines made of precious jewel have been found within the day's catch. These statutes and creations depicting humans wearing scantily perplexing attire, and creatures one has not seen. Maybe they are of the dinosaurs whose bones we know of, but never seen in the flesh. But the things I seen molded to perfection here has no skeletal structure I have seen. 

It seems the religious views here have also taken a more abnormal turn, with the priest declaring that his prayers had been answered and that we should listen to what he had to say. I will admit that what he said was what one would expect from the homeless immigrants on the docks of of New York. However, the residents agreed that he was correct on the predictions he made before. He does not call them predictions, but refers to his sayings as the truth and inevitable. He had spoken of the Great War and predicted the troubled economic times this country is currently going through now. He has also said that our second child will also be a male, and be the first of a new generation that will lead our town to its new foreseen destiny. Be warned for he says more war is to occur before a short reprieve can occur. Then all that we know will forever be gone.

                                                                                                                   Your son,
                                                                                                              Benjamin H. Crawford

Now the main body of the letter sounds of that of poorly written science fiction. The thought that a small town and region could successfully secede from the country, especially during a time when the country was in such financial woes. Then this matter of some pagan religion with fortune telling priests during a time when Christianity was overly prominent seems just as unlikely. Even so, I decided to look into the matter, and started to seek out information on New Lordsking. A possible ghost town caused due to seceding from the country would be perfect for the report.

I was unable to find any place with the name of New Lordsking fitting the information given. I had a difficult time finding anything on Lordsking, as well. The first clue to that the town was of existence was after I had given up on using the internet, and traveled to New York City to look at the papers and records for the time, suspecting that this was where the father of Benjamin lived. It was while searching through tax and census records that I first saw what might have been what I searched for. The name was mysteriously censored with ink making the name nearly unreadable. Lo-----ng was all that was readable of the town name. It was part of a census for a state I am not listing for cautious reasons, and dated for the year 1912. It was listed without any postal codes. It was when I left to get some coffee for it was past 3 in the morning that the file I found this in disappeared. I firstly just took this up with bad luck and clerical error, but I now suspect I might have been watched and had dived into information no one was meant to know of, known and hidden by the government. Let it be known that this is the first conspiracy I had ever written about.

Lord help me. I am sitting in a stranded boat in the middle of some forest, swampland that does not belong in this region, writing about an evil and a conspiracy. An evil conspiracy. I am retiring after this.

Even though the file was now missing, it had included some streets names for some housing and farms miles outside of the censored named town. It was using these names alongside maps from the Civil War, and the letter's limited descriptions that I was able to pinpoint an area where New Lordsking may be. If it actually existed. 

I called in for a photographer that I had worked with in the past. I have changed his name to Tony to protect his identity. I honestly do not care for him, for he is a bit young in mind and seems way too childish. However, he is one of the best photographers I have worked with, and can be professional when the situation calls for it. Professional meaning that he knows when to be quiet and not talk, and to let me do my job. He also owned a small ocean worthy yacht due to his family's wealth that would possibly be useful for this job.

Tony was naturally annoyed with the vague directions I had given him. I could not blame him for his worries for the area I was directing him towards had no known docking and was surrounded by cliffs. No civilization was within a hundred miles of the area. Lot of maps even listed it as a restricted area for boats due to rocks. He had proven himself very sea worthy and knowledgeable of navigating through treacherous waters before, so I was confident this was no different than some other coasts we had traveled through.

I was going to meet him at a designated small bay at a specific circumference, and travel by land. This might have been a bad idea in retrospect, but I had the plausible maps of where the old roads that lead to New Lordsking were. 

I rented a car and trailer, along with a small all-terrain vehicle for I correctly figured that off road travel would be required to reach New Lordsking. I had just passed through a forested area after traveling through farm land that I realized I had past where I was wanting be by five miles. The old highway I was traveling on had no other roads connecting to it, and was seemingly circling around a specific region. There was no other traffic using the road. The GPS and phone service in the area was nil, forcing me to use the print out of the old maps and a compass. The old highway never came close to the coast and no other road led to the east. Not even a road leading to a house or farm. All farms were on the west side of the highway, and even those farms seemed to have been abandoned. I drove back the way I came to find where I believed an old road was located. It was driving through the heavily wooded section that I realized that the missing road was within it, now fully overgrown with trees and entirely blocked off by ancient barbed wire fencing.

I drove some miles back north and pulled into one of the dying farms. The small house was now bare of its whitewash, back of the ceiling now caved in and covered in moss. I hid the car behind this said house, packed the small ATV 4-wheeler, and rode it back onto the road. Using my Leatherman all-purpose tool, a knife that has helped me out in numerous places, I snipped the rusty barbwire fencing to give an opening for the ATV to enter the over grown cattle field. After hurriedly reattaching the fence, I drove through the field back south towards the woods.