The following is a chapter from the follow-up to Hunting For Witches — Salem’s Burning
“Ashton! Dude, it’s Tyler!”
“Dammit, Tyler. I told you not to call me.”
“Dude, hear me out! There are some seriously messed up shenanigans going on! Like, I’m talking colossal ‘something is rotten in Denmark’ messed up! Like final season of Breaking Bad messed up!”
“Will you just spit it out already?”
“OK, OK! Remember that thing we saw back in Little Salem? The seal of the Scarlet Council? Leon found this book, and inside, there was this photo of some old-time Hollywood big shot from the 1940s. The seal was hanging on the wall behind him! You know what happened to Leon after he found this? They killed him! Leon saw the photo, and they killed him! Now I don’t mean to freak you out, but you know what this means, right? Cuz if these guys are out there murdering people who know they’re out there... Holy merciful God, Ashton! What are we going to do? What are we…? Hello? Hello?”
Tyler frowned at his phone after realizing Ashton had hung up on him. He had no idea that his former BFF was currently undergoing his initiation to join the Scarlet Council—this was the first time they had spoken since parting ways. All he knew was that Leon’s death suggested that anyone who came into contact with the Council’s seal was a target, which meant they were sitting ducks.
While promoting their video of the Mysterious Ones, the Ghost Bros had discussed their experiences in Little Salem in detail. They spoke about how they learned that the Mysterious Ones were entities summoned into existence as part of a botched alchemical ritual performed with a powerful grimoire. They also revealed that they learned that the original witches of Salem had gained special powers through their encounters with these entities and that a secret society known as the Scarlet Council had used the Salem witch trials to eradicate them. What they didn’t mention were all the clues that suggested that the Council was operating in the modern-day. Tyler never described the framed seal he saw at the Godfrey mansion, and Ashton never discussed the dinner party he attended where Ada put several Council members on trial and used her magic to execute them. The Ghost Bros’ casual reference to the Scarlet Council simply remained a curiosity that most of the public only scratched their heads about, and several journalists and historians published papers and articles denying any evidence for the existence of such a thing.
Once the Mysterious Ones video had been online for several months, the bizarre supernatural encounter Tyler recorded began to be viewed as a curiosity as well. Only rabid paranormal fanatics and conspiracy theorists attached any weight to the legend of these beings. Some members of the occult and witchcraft communities viewed the encounter as legitimate but rarely spoke about such matters outside of their own circles. Over time, the public at large began to discredit the boys’ findings, assuming the video was part of a marketing ploy to drive up interest in the Ghost Bros TV show. The disinformation campaign that was waged following the video’s release only added to the prevailing skepticism, and it wasn’t until Leon’s death that Tyler started suspecting that this had been orchestrated by the Council to bury any mention of them in the public imagination.
Tyler still had no idea how much influence the Council had or how many people were in their ranks. If their seal was hanging in the office of a famous movie producer, this would suggest that their standing was fairly substantial. To figure out how much he had to worry about whether he would be next on the list of figures to be wiped from history, he knew he had to locate more information on this Ozzy Octavius guy. He had to figure out who this man was and why he would have any connection to the Council to begin with.
The first destination he chose to begin his investigation was the used bookstore Leon had visited. He displayed the receipt for the book his friend had purchased to the curmudgeonly book clerk. When no one was looking, he had managed to pilfer it while exploring the crime scene at Leon’s apartment.
“Yeah, he was here,” the clerk confirmed. “And that was the book he bought. He bought the only copy.”
Tyler pocketed the crumpled receipt with irritation. “Great. So where am I supposed to find another copy of a super-rare and super-hard-to-find used book?”
“Have you tried your local library?” the clerk asked humorlessly.
The young ghost hunter cocked his head with interest.
“We still have those?”
Tyler had never visited the Boston Public Library, entering the doors like a tourist. At the front counter was a messy-haired hipster with a nametag identifying him as “Walden.” He didn’t get the reference but was at least bright enough to suspect this was an alias.
After presenting the details for what he was looking for, the offbeat librarian entered the data into his computer. “Huh. Looks like we have it,” the librarian confirmed. “The book was removed from the stacks a while ago…”
Moments later, Tyler was led to a crowded storage room with books piled up to the ceiling. The librarian nodded at the massive collection while he stared blankly at his surroundings.
“Should be somewhere in here.”
“Thanks…”
The sheer number of books in the room was overwhelming. Tyler was in the room for hours, combing through the contents. He may have been a stubborn and tenacious bastard but was just about ready to give up when he found a dusty old book wedged into the corner of the room, pumping his arm in triumph.
“Yes!”
After checking the index, he flipped to the pages where Ozzy Ozarius was featured. There, he discovered the photo that Leon had described, showing a nervous-looking man with a pencil-thin mustache sitting at a desk. All the information seemed to match except for one jarring discrepancy: the wall behind the man where the seal of the Council should have been was bare.
“What?”
Someone had removed the Council seal from the picture.
Tyler was convinced of this, and that it had been deliberate.
While checking the publishing date, he noticed that the book he was holding was a second edition. The Scarlet Council must have taken some serious measures after the book was published to erase any connection they had to the famous producer.
It was easy to assume that the Council's tactics became more extreme in later years. Leon mentioned that back in Ozzy Ozarius’s day, he was well-known and successful—he had his own skyscraper for crying out loud. To figure out why the Council would be so desperate to scratch the man from history, Tyler knew he would have to learn everything he could about this figure. He'd also have to educate himself about all the different projects and activities the man was involved in when he was a titan of the industry.
The sun had long dipped below the horizon when Tyler found a seat at one of the long tables at the center of the library. He cracked open the dusty tome in his fingers, his laptop booted up beside it.
“‘Ozzy Ozarius. Born in 1904. Best known for the Fanta-Sea Comedies of the 1930s and 40s and his beloved animated character, Gorgy the Goat...’”
He glanced at the bottom of the page at a black and white drawing of a smiling cartoon goat concealed in a circle. It was a perfect match to the engraving on the cornerstone of the strange building; it had the initials, OOP, and everything.
“That’s the seal. It’s the—”
He heard a noise and glanced to where an older woman was sitting a few seats down from him. She was giving him the stink-eye while placing a finger to her lips.
“Sorry,” Tyler mumbled. He returned to his book and continued reading in a much more respectful tone. “‘Gorgy the Goat’s most celebrated appearance was in the 1933 cartoon short, Three Billy Goats Gruff...’”
He turned to his laptop and loaded a search page. “Three Billy Goats Gruff... 1933...” He hit return, bringing up an old black and white cartoon on YouTube. “Son of a—!” Glancing at the woman nearby, he noticed her watching him disapprovingly as she started gathering her things. “Sorry! Sorry, I’m—”
Slouching further into his seat, he returned to his laptop and clicked the link. The video was shorter than expected, showing only five seconds of three cartoon goats with big eyes and giant toothy grins marching down the road while swinging their arms. The content was pretty pedestrian but still gave him the creeps. The images were scratchy and corroded and the animation style was like Steamboat Willy on nightmare fuel.
When the video ended, Tyler felt more baffled than ever. He glanced at the book and flipped to a page featuring an image of a poster for an uncompleted production, along with a black and white photo of a pretty young actress named Daisy Underwood. He had a sneaking suspicion he was overlooking something. Glancing back at the video, he noted that a user named “Cadmus” had uploaded it, and in the description were the words, “Copyright OOP.”
After reading all he could on his subject, Tyler stiffly approached the front desk. The librarian looked up and grinned. “Found the book I see.”
“Yeah. Yeah,” Tyler mumbled. “I was wondering, do you have, like, old movies on file somewhere.”
“What are you looking for?” the librarian asked him.
“Shorts from the 1930s. Fanta-Sea Comedies and Three Billy Goats Gruff.”
The offbeat young man appeared skeptical but searched his computer regardless. A couple of hits later, he disappeared into the back and returned with two aging film canisters.
The librarian gestured to the canisters while dumping them on the front counter. “Three Billy Goats Gruff and the Fanta-Sea Comedies. Or what I could find of the Fanta-Sea Comedies. Seems to have been a series. The productions were done locally, which is why we have them in the collection.”
Tyler's mind was racing as he studied the canisters:
One was labeled, “BILLY GOATS GRUFF. Copyright: OOP.”
The other: “FANTA-SEA COMEDIES—OUTTAKES.”
“Is there a—?”
He didn’t have to finish his sentence; the scruffy librarian offered him a smile and guided him to a small reading room with a projector in the back. After loading one of the canisters and showing him how to operate the clunky machine, the librarian wished him well and left him alone to watch the selections in private.
Once the librarian had left, Tyler flipped on the projector and planted himself in a tiny chair that had been built for a child. The title for a scratchy, black and white cartoon appeared: “Three Billy Goats Gruff, an Ozzy Ozarius Production.” The short opened with the same sequence from the YouTube video, showing three cartoon goats walking down the road while some kooky old-timey circus music played on the soundtrack.
Initially, Tyler watched the film with disinterest. He had already gotten a taste of the strangely off-putting animation style, and the way the cartoon started wasn’t remarkable. The story of “Three Billy Goats Gruff” was a tale that was familiar to anyone who heard a lot of fairy tales growing up: three goats run out of grass to graze on and have to cross a bridge, but a hideous troll lives underneath. When the youngest goat is captured, he convinces the troll to set him free because his much larger and tastier brother will soon be trip trapping across the bridge—the same thing happens when the second goat is caught. When the third goat arrives, he beats up the troll and cuts his brothers loose. That’s how the story went for those familiar with it. But that wasn’t what happened in the cartoon at all.
Ozzy Ozarius seemed to have taken a lot of creative liberties and incorporated several additional characters into his work. A surly farmer and his dishy young wife were the most notable, chasing the goats off of their property after catching them grazing there. When the goats came across the troll, the story became less about overpowering the monster and more about teaming up to take care of those preventing the goats from grazing wherever they liked. A tale that started light-hearted despite the unnerving animation and eccentric music quickly culminated into a disturbing nightmare. When Tyler arrived at the bloody climax, he started dry heaving and turned away to fumble with the projector, flipping the switch from On to Off.
Tyler was astounded. This was the film that had launched Ozzy Ozarius’s career? And the film had been popular with audiences? Clearly, some of the more disturbing aspects of the film’s message had been buried in the subtext, and the cartoonish nature of the narrative may have made the production appear a lot more innocent. But this was no doubt the type of picture that would stay with audiences long after they had seen it—and not in a manner that was bound to have a positive effect.
Once Tyler regained his composure, he removed the film reel and loaded the one from the second canister. After the bizarre, stomach-churning horrors of Billy Goats Gruff, he did his best to ready himself for what Ozzy Ozarius had next for him, but was ultimately unprepared for what he would be viewing.
Similar to the last selection, the film began with a scratchy black and white title card announcing the project: “Fanta-Sea Studios presents the Fanta-Sea Comedies, an Ozzy Ozarius Production.” From the information on the canister, Tyler knew these were outtakes, and most of the clips were relatively innocent—just images of young girls acting in front of magical backdrops and interacting with crudely animated characters. He immediately recognized one of the actresses as Daisy Underwood and Gorgy the Goat as one of the regulars that the girls were paired off with. What was incredibly strange and disquieting about the footage was what happened in between these scenes—the parts in between takes showing the girls looking abnormally tense and nervous. The way they would paw at their clothes with agitation made it appear that what they were dealing with was more than just stage fright. The fact that they avoided making eye contact with anyone standing off-camera suggested that the sweat on their foreheads wasn’t just the result of nerves or of standing in front of blinding klieg lights.
As revolting and baffling as Billy Goats Gruff may have been, it was the Fanta-Sea Comedies Outtakes that disturbed Tyler most of all. He felt a pit in his stomach as his mind went into overdrive, considering all the horrible reasons for why all of the child actresses were so terrified. He started wondering where the Fanta-Sea Comedies had been filmed and if it had been at the building that sparked off the whole investigation to begin with. He checked the film canister that was closest to him, and his eyes narrowed at the discovery of a local address that was different from the building with the cornerstone marked with the letters, OOP.
Later that evening, he would find visit the docks in South Boston. From the other side of a rusty chain-link fence, he stared solemnly at the faded FANTA-SEA STUDIOS logo on the side of a decaying warehouse. He did some quick thinking: Climbing the fence would be easy, but he would need a blanket to help him over the barbwire and some meat from the supermarket to distract the dogs. Inside, he knew he would find evidence for why the memory of Ozzy Ozarius remained buried. What he didn’t expect to discover was the sound of muffled screams.