<hr/><div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/f/f2/Beardycox.jpg)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Avery Burnham<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>Law Dogs (1)<br/><strong>Date:</strong>May 18th, 1876<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Afternoon<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Dead Man’s Rest<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Charlie Flatbush; CLOSED<br/><hr/><br/>“That’s quite the pack of dogs Gomorra has collected isn’t it?” Avery had noted dryly at the litany of names Charlie provided him with.  It was not all bad news though.  Most of them were dismissible offhand and a few even seemed promising.  Bulldog Jones sounded like the sort man who could hack another gentleman to small bits without much trouble, and the sight of blood was not apt to disturb a professional pit fighter.  The fact he was a negro was also hard to dismiss.  There was a little doubt the public would find such a suspect especially enticing, the very sort they’d be likely to seize hold of and lynch before a trial ever got underway.<br/><br/>That would solve Dolores’s problem, which was his job, but the thought didn‘t sit well with him.  He’d really rather not.  Avery wasn’t always especially fussy when it came to right or wrong, not really, but some acts were vile any way you looked at them.  He would get her off without placing another man’s neck in the same noose,  not unless the neck was the right one.<br/><br/>Avery grew quiet as Charlie led them down into the asylum, the lantern swinging out in front of them.  The place smelt of blood and excrement and mildew.  Dark stains panted the floors and walls in haphazard patterns.  The Englishman had seen some ugly things in his time.  Homicides and the aftermaths of one-sided battles (he’d never seen any other kind, for the confrontations between the British army and Chinese dissidents were rarely anything like even fights) and industrial accidents, often the worst of the lot.  He’d once seen a fire at a textile factory leave a hallway so packed with curled and blackened bodies they could hardly break through them.  He suspected this might have been worse though.  A human carnal house by the looks of what remained.<br/><br/>He privately agreed with Charlie.  This was no place for man or beast.  He was not even sure it was fit to bury corpses in anymore.  Avery didn’t credit such superstitious notions as there being cursed or evil places but if he did this would surely be one.  Snooping around here was not a pleasant experience, but that didn’t deter him.  He took it all in slowly, examined every room and its remaining detritus, wondering at the inmates, most of them no doubt already forgotten by the world.  He scrapped the tip of his shoe over suspicious stains, tried to build a picture of what happened here, yet didn’t like the scene that unfolded in his mind.  Looking at the swathes of blood sprayed along the walls and slashing across the ceiling, he could not quite fit the patterns to a man, or even a young woman -- he had to at least see if it fit for himself -- hacking away at prone bodies with an axe.  It looked almost as though people, or in some cases parts of people, had been dragged and thrown around with a strength that would be hard to credit to any human being.<br/><br/>“What do you make of this Charlie?” he asked, examining the smashed in door.  “It looks as though something came from the other side.  Within the cell.  Rather curious, don’t you think?”  Could the staff have housed an animal in here, he asked himself.  A bear perhaps?  Or some kind of circus freak or something they were experimenting on?  It all sounded so very absurd but so did most anything else at this point.  Stepping over the threshold, Avery borrowed the lantern, having a closer look inside, to see if there was anything that could be learned about it’s former occupant.<br/>