096 - Suffer Ink For Dummies

IKEA presenterar ljud av förändring. Men slut! Jag har inte det tänkt! Den går från vänner till rival. Her eyes are closed. Her expressionless face fills a computer screen. Her eyelids open, and it's obvious she sees me.

Thomas, I'm surprised. It's not like you to go snooping in someone's office. Well, I'll offer my apology, but should it go to you? I thought your office was above ground in the clinic. That is, if you are Shelley Ruxpin, or are you Delphina? You've been messing with me all along. Aw, you poor guy. If it helps to simplify things Shelley doesn't exist anymore. She finished serving her purpose, nudging you along time and time again to get what I need. Now she's gone, and here we are.

So tell me, what brings you back to my office? Well, Delphina, I actually came in here just to find a coin that I dropped. Oh, did you find it? Uh not yet. Oh, well, I really hope you do find it. Was it your lucky token from the arcade in New Zealand? How'd you know that? Are you sure it's not still in your pocket? Of course I'm sure. I just dropped it out there in the hallway. Well, maybe just check. Check? What it is in my pocket. But I was out there. I saw it roll under the door.

It's really amazing the things you might see or hear or believe when you're under the influence. What influence? Suffering. You've heard of that by now, haven't you? It's a Delbeca specialty. Oh yeah, I've become much more familiar with Suffer Inc. than I care to be. This town's matriarch, Phaedra I, you know she passed on years ago, and she bequeathed to me a sort of care package containing Suffer Inc.

Inhaling the fumes sent me on some hallucinatory trip, made me think I'd traveled back in time, and I was chatting with Phaedra when she was a young woman. That sounds like fun. And what about just the other day when Alva too was reading his father's journal to you? All of those scribbled notes were made using a pen that was filled with suffer ink. Ah, and that's why reading aloud from that notebook caused a supernatural explosion. Did you notice my missing eyebrows?

I wasn't going to say anything. And after that, a distant acquaintance of mine, she shows up in Slumberland. She plays me a tape, something I recorded long ago. Hearing that gave me a nasty little regression session, made me remember just why it is I know so much about Suffer Inc. Oh go on, go on. Tell me more about that part of your life. What, are you my therapist? A long time ago I had a job, an internship, in New York City.

And my boss, my mentor, somehow he had a bottle of the stuff, a little bottle amongst all of the crap shelved in his office. I had an accident where the bottle broke, and I caught a whiff of the suffer ink. At the time, I had no idea what it was. But now things have changed. I've just come from a confrontation in the Time Capsule. Me versus the Metal Head. The statue that turns out to have been the hiding place of your spirit ancestor Simsala Delbeca.

She gave me a kind of vision, some telepathic information explaining just what this suffer ink is to you, Del Becker. You sucked her spirit out of that metalhead statue she was hiding in, like rotten escargot out of a shell. Oh, that's disgusting. She's gone now. She's trapped in your sound recording. I've got to say, as a pawn, overall you've been maddeningly slow to achieve my goal.

But you have your moments. Last night when you confronted Simsala, when you forced her to reveal our secret knowledge, I sensed it happening. An echo of it rang in my mind. Pretty exciting. I wanted to meet with you immediately. And why didn't you? Well, the truth is I overslept. I'm just barely recovered now, but I was in bad shape.

Thomas I had to leave the island in order to sleep. Maybe you remember that was your fault? You ruined my secret hideaway. My special sleeping spot in the McGillicuddy girl's submersible storage room. No, I'm sorry. That just sounds so much like a title that Dr. Seuss would have rejected. Quiet. Remember, I'm still a capable supernatural being. Oh, I realize that. But even Count Dracula required sleep to survive.

Maybe the island was defending itself by giving you those nightmares. Listen, the town's leaders are calling a special meeting of the Coyote Club. They're going to discuss whether it's possible to put an end to the haunting, and banish the ghost of my ancestor Badamo. They call him the Sandy Spector. He's haunted the beach here since before Slumberland was even founded. How would they manage to banish him now? Well

Shelley Ruxpoon can't make it to the meeting. But in her place I'm sending you to answer that question. Oh, you expect me to keep on doing your bidding, huh? You're not hypnotizing me again, so why would I? I don't even need to force you. You'll do my bidding because what I want is also what you want getting rid of Bodamo. No more of his preying on this town. Uh really?

Well but I assumed you were plotting some kind of revenge on this town, on behalf of Badamo and all of your destructive ghostly ancestors.

How about let's set the record straight? This will be our final session for my secret oral history. What, you've got more stories? And why would I want to record this? Well, this chapter of the Del Becca story begins with you in the nineteen nineties. What what do you know about me? You worked for a man named Silas Transam. Late one night you left his office carrying suffer ink in a small glass bottle.

You traveled by subway to a remote part of New York City where you walked to a parking lot's far corner. You knelt down there, scraped enough dirt away to make a hole, and then you buried the suffering. Hm. I was in some kind of a trance. Was that you controlling me? No, that was a spell cast by Dr. Heller, the Delbecca who came before me. No, I was just in the donut shop beside that parking lot, watching you dig the hole and then stumble off into the night. What?

And I really wanted a donut. Oh, poor Tommy, didn't know. The main concern was getting me what I wanted. Later that night I walked to the lot's far corner and dug up what you left for me. That suffer ink helped the younger me grow to become worthy of our lineage. Okay, so this twisted family tree of Delbeca goes like this? Simsala, then Bodamo, then this doctor Heller, and now you. Uh-huh. Doctor Heller used an old Delbeca trick.

That bottle of suffer ink you buried, he'd infused the liquid with a spell that compelled you to bury it for me. And he infused the liquid with knowledge, opening my eyes to my heritage and my potential. But it also told me I had work to do and Go to a place called Slumberland, become a resident there, gain their trust. Trick a simpleton into becoming my spy.

And when they announced the town's oral history project, that was perfect. They wanted a freelance sound professional, so all I had to do was fill the position with my spy. Whoa. So you tracked me down after all those years? Like we were destined to cross paths again here in Slumberland. Oh, actually no. I googled a long list of candidates. Even sound professionals who specialized in small town oral histories involving ghosts. Plenty of good options.

My name is Patrick McGinley, specialist in sound. phonography, field recording, the art of sound hunting. I have arrived in Slumberland. The people here make strange sounds. They tell strange tales. When properly collected and indexed, some might consider it an oral history. My name is Flance Fleesel. I finish university with honors in media journalism, with emphasis on small towns hosting supernatural entities.

Honestly, the thunderstorms and hostile seagulls remind me of home. The only thing missing is a ruined castle or two. Me llamo Zulmi López. Vengo de una larga estirpe de archiveros cronologistas. Escribanos e historiadores. También debo mencionar que crecí leyendo cuentos del estilo del realismo mágico. Esta ciudad de Slumberland, con sus teléfonos de conchas marinas y su gigantesca cápsula del tiempo, debería ser pan comida.

Okay, I was far from being your first choice. I get it. But then Oscar found you before I hired anyone. I knew I should have run away at the first sign of weirdness. But enough about you. Let's complete my secret oral history. I want a nice, complete historical record of the Del Becca.

All that's left are three short entries. The first one, let's call Suffer Ink for Dummies. Oh a cliff's notes version. Great. Quicker works for me. There are things you shouldn't know and things you just wouldn't understand. So I like to keep it simple, stupid. I'm not going to take your insults. Again, I stood up to Sin Sala's ghost. I made her reveal your suffer ink secret recipe. So tell me then, what is the secret recipe? Well, the main ingredient is

Suffering. Really? Suffering is suffering. Bright boy. Oh shut up. I know there's more to it than that. But it's so strange it defies any normal explanation. It's not like Mr. Rogers takes us on a field trip to the factory and we watch how chocolate gets made. No, you're right. This involves the abstract concept of human suffering.

And an invisible energy the Delbecca uses to control people and encourage the suffering. It all goes unseen by the naked eye. Like cancer cells in a body. Yes, each of your ancestors did it. Simsala enslaved hundreds on an island. Badamo controlled an organized crime ring. Dr. Heller, he subjected people to psychological torture, it sounds like. Yeah, all three of them had their unique approach to the same idea. You take a person, start making their life difficult.

Hard labour, no rest, sort of thing. The victim's suffering saps their life energy and it feeds into the Delbeca. And base level suffering may go on and on like that unless Adel Becca decides they want more. Some kind of enrichment. And how best to achieve that? Well, you step up the suffering. Make someone's life absolutely excruciating, a living hell.

taken past a certain point, maybe hitting ten on the scale, and by that time, oh, you've got more than abstract concepts. Let's echo my cancer metaphor. The Delbeca victim shrivels and dies. A predator who was too greedy, she destroyed her own food source. You look so cute up on that soap box. I just wanna point out you haven't explained what Suffer Ink is. Oh right, that. So I figure it's a waste byproduct. Yes?

Yeah, after a delbecca feeds off of people's sufferings, the process creates that black liquid. It's mostly mucus and melanin pigment secreted by a special gland we delbeckas have. Ever seen ink squirt out of a squid or an octopus? Uh Are you telling me? you all have some sort of funnel down there. But you Gross. It's not quite the same thing. Our suffer ink gets bottled and then ferments to bring out its special properties.

How it works is something we don't share, but what it does Fortune smellers. I remember Oliver's long story about that. Inhaling suffer ink fumes puts a person in an altered state. They experience specific points in time, the future or the past. Nature gave the lion its fangs and the shark its teeth. Delbeckas get to see the future. And that comes in so handy for crafting our survival strategy.

Prime example being Badamo getting filthy rich knowing the outcomes of horse races. Yeah, it was all gravy till he became a ragged ghost haunting a tiny island. So one of the things my oral history work here has drilled into my skull is that Phaedra Pierce figured out this fortune smeller trick, and she used it against you Del Becker's.

Ha ha how so nineteen forty eight, right when this town was founded, Phaedra dug up a stash of suffer ink and figured out the time travel trick that comes with smelling it. And Phaedra believed Coyote's prophecy that a future visitor could save Slumberlin from Badamo's threat. But this supposed saviour he'd be terribly resistant to he'd need special convincing, so, inside the time capsule, Phaedra stashes a suffer ink bottle labelled nineteen forty eight, marked to my attention.

Decades later, I finally show up. I smell the suffer ink and do I see for myself what suffer ink can do when I briefly drop into nineteen forty eight. There's Phaedra Pearce in the flesh, beseeching me to save her town. Of course I'm such a plank none of it made any sense to me right away, But at least she tried. She used Badamo's Sapha Inc. against him. You're actually completely right, Mr.

And of course, that was why Phaedra was severely punished. I don't know what you mean. Aside from fortune smelling, suffer ink can deliver curses, remember? In those olden days when Phaedra and her friends got too nosy about the supper ink, Badamo cursed the whiffs they inhaled. The curses stayed in their systems for months until The curses emerged inside their newborns. Phaedra's child was cursed with insomnia.

Ayla's child was cursed with hypersomnia, and Corinne, her children were cursed with never being conceived. That's awful. Bethesda Pierce told me about that, but she also told me about the next generation. Bethesda's one of the twelve granddaughters to Phaedra Pierce. and each of the dozen seem gifted with special abilities. So it sounds to me like Badamo's curse got reversed. Alright, enough. We could tit for tat all day, but none of that belongs in my secret oral history.

We're moving on to the second part. And for that, I have something very special for you. Very few other people have heard it. It's on this computer down there beneath my face. A sound file for you to click on. I see it. What am I getting into here? Every so often you find a man whose conscience is locked up tight for so many years, holding a load of government secrets

And you find this man on his deathbed, which is a time and place where sometimes the man decides he needs to clear his conscience by letting all of those secrets leak out of him before he kicks the bucket. Now open the sound file. Sed att vi börjar jobba med assets inom ekonomi och lön har vi fått öka kontroll. Jag känner mig. Säker på att vi gör rätt. Det gör att jag tryggt kan fokusera på affärsverksamheten istället assets. Redovisning, revision och lön.