I Am Charlie

TO: J.Hannigan

SUBJECT: Source info on T79562

We haven’t been able to gather much info. Looks like this one was contained some years back and research dropped it for more serious work. Staff was able to pin a last known location in Scotland by the River Annan (55.170143,-3.414051). No luck on scene. We did a quick interview with Parles to see what he knew. I’ve included it here. I’ll be in contact once we hit London.

INTERVIEW 07-10-2013 2300 HOURS

L. PARLES- UNIT ED7 – PN 23879

[I]NTERVIEWER: Please identify yourself.

[P]arles: Parles, Euro-division 7.

[I]: Do you know the purpose of this interview?

[P]: Charlie’s loose and they need an informed summary.

[I]: Thank you. This session will be informal. Begin wherever you like.

[P]: Background, I suppose. We don’t know much about this one. We have some guesses, though. He aligns with vanity out of the seven, but is pretty low on the chart. We- well, I, think it’s the wrong scale to apply.

[I]: What do you mean?

[P]: I don’t think he’s been in his current state for more than a few hundred years, and I don’t think he is a D-class. Demons don’t tend to work like this. Whatever it was before Charlie was bad, certainly, but I think it was changed in the last few centuries. The earliest mark we have is Over the River Charlie.

[I]: I’m not familiar. Vietnam?

[P]: No, much earlier. A folk song. *Coughs* Charlie’s neat and Charlie’s sweet and Charlie is a dandy. Charlie is the very lad whole stole my stocking candy. Different versions, but most have to do with Charlie despoiling some young maiden. Older versions end with pretty horrific results for the maiden; when Charlie gets your stocking candy outside of marriage, he gets control of you completely.

[I]: Purity warning?

[P]: Yeah. Typical stuff. Slick new guy Charlie from over the river charms you, takes your innocence, and turns out to be evil. A little xenophobia in there, too. Typical village song.

[I}: What connects it to our Charlie?

[P]: Manson and Agnes.

[I]: Possession?

[P]: No. Charlie’s not a demon- he can take physical forms, can influence, but can’t do human possession. He was strong enough not to need it anyway.

[I]: Manson?

[P]: It’s part of the reason we align him with vanity. Manson was a young, impressionable, shitbag musician with a bad streak. A good target. I think Charlie picked him and gave him some ideas. Note the prostitution and some of the targets being young, beautiful women. And the Dennis Wilson tapes.

[I]: Beach Boys.

[P]: Right. I had listened to the recordings they made a few years before the Charlie project. Of course the hippies loved folk anything, so it wasn’t odd to hear Over the River Charlie in the recordings. I think Charlie was pushing for some recognition. When Wilson severed contact with the family, the tapes were turned over. Manson went his own way. That’s why none of his ramblings line up with one occult line; Charlie was gone and he was winging it. Or embellishing it, if you like. But the focus was gone.

[I]: Who is Agnes?

[P]: Agnes of God was a play and a film that came out in the seventies. The story is based off of events that happened in a Church outside Rochester, New York. A Nun gets pregnant, tells no one, throws the baby away. Literally tosses her in a trash can. The court finds her not guilty by reason of insanity in a very controlled trial courtesy of the Vatican. John Pielmeier, a local playwright, gets the inside story from someone and writes “Agnes of God.”

[I]: The leak?

[P]: Who knows? There was a lot of local involvement at the outset- somebody told Pielmeier what the Sister claims. She claims demonic intercourse, couldn’t stop it, is ashamed of her weakness. Pielmeier changes it up. He has his nun, Agnes, raped by a local man whom she believes to be an angel. But Pielmeier keeps one detail. The father sang a little folk tune as he approached Agnes.

[I]: The child?

[P]: Stillborn.

[I]: Okay. What next?

[P]: Charlie goes local. Heavily wooded areas, usually near rivers. One offs all the way down the Mississippi and across the Missouri. FBI labels them Manson copy cats at first; “Charlie” always mentioned somewhere on scene. At first it’s written on the walls with blood. A few spelled out with intestines. Then body parts, cut in ways you wouldn’t think possible to spell out a name. FBI tells us, we find the pattern. I start building the Charlie/ T79562 file. I collect the information I’ve shared with you, and start hitting towns that the girls come from. I talk to family and friends. Charlie’s upgraded his tactics- the next couple of victims are found out in the woods. They’re screaming, still alive. Just screaming “CHARLIE” until they’re throats give out. The last girl- Kansas City I think- ripped her vocal cords. Couldn’t speak. But she’d start whistling Over the River and sobbing.

[I]: Last girl?

[P]: I passed the info along, and your people came up with a plan. They went to the College nearby, and funded a production of Agnes of God. They knew Charlie had to be near- leaving his victims alive meant we found them faster. And he was slow moving; the murders stretched over about five or six years. With the vanity, we knew we’d catch his interest. The show was funded by one of your boys posing as a rich benefactor, an eccentric. Control of the production in exchange for a generous donation to the school. Cast in the role of Agnes the Nun was a young co-ed- single and innocent. The first thing the director taught her was the song.

[I]: Over the River.

[P]: Right. Closed rehearsals with no other cast members to start. Just the director, our rich eccentric, and the production crew- all your boys. It wasn’t a week into rehearsals before a young stage hand snuck into the theatre to watch the show.

[I]: A week?

[P]: Less than that. The boys jumped up and hard. They had painted the stage floor for a binding ritual, but the vessel hadn’t been flown in yet. They start anyway, and hold Charlie on the spot. The girl hears what’s going on, figures the boys need help. I don’t know how she figured it, but she knows they need a vessel. Charlie’s fighting hard- none of the boys can stop for a second or he’ll get free. She grabs a prop, the cat from Alice and Wonderland, and runs into the ring.

[I]: She went inside?

[P]: Yeah, and she payed for it. Years of her life drained away in a flash. Charlie’s feeding on her and fighting even harder. The boys have no choice but to bind Charlie to the cat puppet.

[I]: The girl?

[P]: Survived, but barely. 20 years old in a 50 year old body. Direct feeding was a new trick for Charlie; an experienced feeder would have dropped her in a second. The boys kept her and put her in Euro Division with me. Went sent the both of them, the puppet and the girl, over to a remote little Inn in Scotland. We figured cutting him off from the land he grew strong in would keep him weak and bound.

[I]: How did we lose him?

[P]: [Sighs] He figured out the damn puppet. After a few months the night staff at the Inn started noticing odd occurances. Doors opening when they should be closed. The puppet always falling out of the chair. The heads turned to the side. It’s Scotland; these people are used to creepy old buildings, so no action is taken. Then the whistling starts. The puppet is hollow, right? Add wind and the right angle, and it’s like your blowing on a bottle top. The boys come back to the Inn for a progress update. Half the staff is whistling Over the River while they work.

[I] Why wasn’t the puppet removed?

[P] Timing. Look, you have to stop looking at Charlie like a demon. He’s not. He was bound with a sealing ritual for demons. But he’s strong enough to make the goddamn thing move. On a progress check you guys only send out two. The first thing they do is go into town to get the girl. She’s fine, so they head back. It’s night and the thing is gone.

[I] So that’s where we are now.

[P] Not quite.

[I] Something else?

[P] Some kid found the puppet in the woods with a sign saying “I am Charlie.” The kid takes pictures, puts them online. Suddenly Charlie is getting a lot of attention. It takes two days for your lab boys to discover the hit- the NSA was monitoring the site where the pics were uploaded and sent the info over the second day out. They just wanted to know what the hell it was. The boys and the girl head out to the location where Charlie was spotted. [Coughs]

[I] Go on.

[P] They find the puppet just as the kid said, but Charlie isn’t in it. The kid came back, so they stashed the puppet and cleared. They burned the puppet.

[I] Anything else?

[P] Charlie’s not going away. People are talking about him now, and he feeds off of the attention.

[SOUND OF PHONE RINGING}

[I] Go ahead. [Silence] Will do.

[P] Everything alright?

[I] Pack your bags. Three bodies were just pulled out of the River Anna just south of Glasgow. Two males and a female.

[P] Males?

[I] The two males are ours. One had “I” carved into his chest. The second, “AM.” The third was an old woman. And across her back-

[P] Charlie.