Locating an affordable apartment in Fairfax, Virginia, had been a challenge that Henry had fully expected to take the majority of his first week in the area to be spent on. However, fortune smiled upon him, and a fellow freshman member of the House had recommended him to a small complex on the city’s north end that he could easily afford right away.
Fully furnished, the complex was known as a place where the recently divorced tended to end up in their early efforts to start over, as it were. Henry met a few of his neighbors in the building his first few days there, and their stories tended in the same general direction- they had come to the D.C. area for work, gotten too busy with said work, and their relationships had suffered as a result. The same refrain, with slightly different details, in each instance.
When his new neighbors asked what had brought him to the area, he simply replied that he’d taken a job up on Capitol Hill. One could never exercise too much caution, after all, he reasoned.
Diving headlong into the work of being a legislator, Henry found that his office at the Capitol Building was not only quite ‘snug’, to be polite about it, but that it had also not seen a great deal of use by his predecessor. A thin layer of dust covered every inch of the room, from the desk to the half-shelves for books on the walls.
Not that any of this really mattered; he had finally arrived, and was eager to get to the work of representing the people of Amelia. On his third day in the office, there came a knock at the door, and he responded as he always had when working in his offices back in Amelia City. “Door’s open, come,” he called out. When he looked up, there stood in the doorway a capitol policeman, holding a small brown package box.
“Mail call, Congressman,” the officer said. Henry raised an eyebrow at the officer, who stepped across the narrow space and set the box down.
“Is it normal practice for you guys to bring us our mail,” he asked.
“Just packages, and only after they’ve been scanned for contaminants or metals,” the officer replied. “And I hate to do this, Congressman, but I’m going to have to insist that you open it in front of me.” Henry felt his back stiffen a little.
“Why’s that?”
“Because the sniffer dogs were going haywire near it, every one of them tried bolting from the receiving station,” the officer said with a shake of his head. “Not the normal reaction for them if it was something we’d normally suspect.” Henry reached across the desk, drew the small box close, and noted the return address:
Sasha Kowen
13137 Mill Street
Amelia City, Iowa
Henry took a small letter opener out of his desk and slid it through the sealing tape, prying the flaps open carefully to reveal the box’s contents. Within the box lay a single slick black feather, and nothing more. Henry plucked the feather out, turning it this way and that, puzzled by the faint aroma of cinnamon wafting off of it. “Some kind of inside joke or something, sir?”
“I’m, not entirely sure,” Henry responded. He slid open his desk drawer once more, putting the letter opener back and slipping the feather in beside it. “Thank you, officer,” he said. The Capitol policeman gave him a nod, and turned on heel to leave the office.
Henry didn’t give the feather another thought through the remainder of the day.
**
The following morning, as he started out of his apartment into the commons hallway, his heart dropped into his stomach; scrawled on the wall a few yards down from his unit’s door was an all-too-familiar insignia, a set of four hooked blue claws joined along their curved tops by a thin black horizontal line. “No,” he heard himself rasp aloud at the sight of it. “No, no, not here.”
He immediately tried calling Sasha, quickly reminded that the number she had used with him before was no longer in service. “Something troubling you, friend,” someone asked nearby, and Henry cast a quick look around, eyes locking on a goblin-like face spread like a tapestry across the wallpaper of the hallway across from him. The eyes blinked wetly side-to-side at him, like a snake’s nictitating membranes. A pressure like a car being pressed down on his chest pushed all the wind out of him as he mutely stared at the apparition in the wall. “Keys should be allowed to walk free and vote for their interdependence,” the goblin face remarked before fading away, as if it had never been there to begin with.
It followed me, he thought, shakily making his way out to the parking lot of his building. “Whatever evil it is that makes Amelia what it is, it followed me here,” he muttered aloud to himself, clambering down into his car.
“’Evil’ isn’t precisely the right word,” a familiar voice croaked over the radio as he turned the engine over, hand halted in the process of reaching up for his seatbelt. It was the voice of the wizard-looking one, Marrick. “Tsk tsk, Henry. You never really did take any of the old stories seriously, did you?”
The doors locked, and without his physical input at all, the car began heading out of the parking lot, turning wildly onto the street and accelerating in a direction that was decidedly not toward D.C. Henry wanted to scream, to shout, to offer some sort of verbalized rebellion to whatever was happening to him. Yet, he couldn’t, even as the car turned in to the lot of some broad, abandoned structure, and a large white panel door slid open to admit his vehicle.
Just inside stood the old wizard, and in the unnatural shadows of the garage space, Henry could make out the shimmering eyes of things that should not be, slithering and crawling and stalking closer to the vehicle. “What do you want from me,” Henry managed to half-whisper as his car’s engine went dead.
“We want what we sent you here for, councilor; to be a true representative of Amelia City,” Marek said, as chains flew out like whips at the car, snaring the door handle and yanking the door free from the vehicle. Seeming to come from the sightless darkness overhead, another pair of chains snapped down, wrapping around Henry’s ankles, and with a breathless yelp, he was dragged out of the car.
**
Outlet: CNN.com
Headline: Freshman Congressman Snaps
Contributor: Allison Freedman
Washington, D.C.- Members of the House of Representatives and the media who cover the political beat are always on the lookout for a good scandal to cover at length, and yesterday offered up something that was simply too interesting to overlook or pass on. Freshman Representative Henry Townsend, an Independent representing Amelia County in Iowa, staged quite the scene yesterday in the House chambers, according to witnesses and cell phone video captured by several fellow Representatives and their staffers.
Townsend, (I-Iowa), was first spotted by pedestrians ascending the steps into the Capitol Building at twenty minutes past 8 in the morning in a manner that was eye-catching, to say the least. The Congressman appeared to have procured scores of bird feathers of various sorts, and had stabbed them into his arms, stomach, chest, and somehow, across a swathe of his back and shoulders.
According to witnesses on the scene, the newly minted Congressman performed some sort of dance to make his way up the steps fronting the Capitol Building, chanting in an unknown or gibberish language, smiling and shaking what appeared to be oversized baby rattles of some sort. When approached by Capitol Police, Townsend evaded their attempts to physically restrain him, making his way to the main House chamber.
Once inside the chamber, Mr. Townsend sprinted to the Speaker’s podium, shoving her roughly aside and yelling over the speaker system, “I AM AMELIA”, before producing a spoon from the back pocket of the frayed trousers he was wearing and proceeding to start gouging out his own left eye. He was ultimately subdued by security and Capitol officers, and taken to Bethesda Hospital, where he is currently recovering.
A spokesman for the Congressman, Mr. Jago Mortenson, told CNN that “Mr. Townsend seems to have tried to take on too much, too quickly, and will assuredly recover from this embarrassing incident post-haste.”
**
Outlet: Dailywire.com
Headline: A Very Ill Townsend Heads Home
Contributor: Kenny Dodge
Amelia City, Iowa- Residents of a Midwestern city are relieved to know that hometown ‘boy done good’ Henry Townsend will be returning to his birthplace today, after what will surely go down in American history as one of the shortest-lived careers in Congress ever recorded. Just eight weeks into his term as Representative of Amelia County, Iowa, the long-serving former District Attorney of that jurisdiction is being brought home again.
What should be cause for quiet celebration is deeply marred, however, as Mr. Townsend is not coming back entirely of his own personal will and volition. He is being transferred via medical order from Bethesda Medical Center in D.C. to Ravenwood Manor, just outside of North Perry, one of the suburbs of Amelia City proper. A cursory search online reveals that Ravenwood Manor was, until 2017, known as Ravenwood Asylum, a mental health crisis facility that has been in operation since April of 1982. Prior to that time, Ravenwood had been Ravenwood Institute, a medical research facility and clinic from 1948 through its demolition and reconstruction in 1980. The structure remained unoccupied until April of 1982 while its owners were trying to decide what specific field of medicine the new facility would focus upon.
Given the details surrounding the exciting incident which occurred just two weeks ago at the Capitol Building, it should come as no surprise that Mr. Townsend needs further treatment for a previously unidentified mental health concern. Friends and relatives of Mr. Townsend have commented that they knew full well that the District Attorney had often been given to stretches of being distant, detached and quiet, but they had always assumed this was due to the sensitive legal nature of his work on behalf of the People of Amelia County and the justice system. Now, however, folks in the area are being a little more fluid with their suspicions surrounding these ‘quiet times’ of Townsend’s. As a result of his inability to continue to serve, the runner-up from his election, the previous man to fill the seat, Craig Lewiston, will be returning to Washington to serve the county until a special election slated for three months from now. Lewiston will be squaring off against one Mary Williams, the Democratic candidate whose campaign had been cut short in the most recent race due to an unexpected and dramatic physical injury.
As for Henry Townsend, it would seem likely that his budding career in professional politics is likely at its end. There are many roads through Amelia, and Mr. Townsend’s journey ahead likely won’t see him taking any of them back out.
**
Outlet: Startribune.com
Headline: The Final Wishes of a Sick Man
Contributor: Lisa Connet
North Perry, Iowa- It is a sad day indeed for residents of Amelia County; Henry Townsend, long-serving District Attorney and briefly the sitting Congressman in the House of Representatives for the region, was found dead this morning by authorities. Townsend had been admitted to the Ravenwood Manor facility four weeks ago, and according to staff, had been making steady progress in dealing with his sudden onset condition. While being allowed to walk the grounds one day, he eluded staff, and disappeared into the nearby woods for three days.
An officer commenting on the condition of anonymity revealed to us that Townsend had fashioned his bathrobe, issued to all patients at Ravenwood, into a makeshift noose and hanged himself.
When asked if Townsend had left any kind of suicide note, officials responded that they could not comment at this time.
Update: After several days, and upon receiving consent from Townsend’s next-of-kin, it has been revealed that Townsend did indeed leave a suicide note, tucked under the mattress of his bed at Ravenwood Manor. The contents of the note are as follows:
‘You need to step them. You need to close the door on these people, these things! Craig Lewiston and the members of the Iowa State Legislature need to work out an arrangement to cease sending ANY representative from Amelia County! Don’t you see? It’s a work-around, it’ll let the bird and its little minions out into the wider world with better cover, and that can’t be allowed to happen! I know what I have to do now, to make the whispering stop, to keep from having conversations with elves and goblins in the walls. God forgive me, I have to end this. Tell Mary that the tree was Kowen’s, she sent it, I don’t know how, but I think she belongs to the bird, too.”
When asked about the contents of the letter, Dr. Manteau, the lead psychiatric counsel at Ravenwood, informed us that this ‘bird’ to which Townsend referred was one of many manifestations of the psychosis which had taken over Townsend’s life. “There is nothing more I can tell you at this time, except to say that it is a matter of some concern for us here that Mr. Townsend was able to slip the watchful eyes of our staff in the first place and bring himself to harm.”
-Fin