Tom Cutway's Character sheet

TOM CUTWAY'S CHARACTER SHEET

Tom Cutway

Tom (Thomas) Cutway

Age:40 (Born 1894)

Tom had always been a studious type, and had been able to secure a job at the small New York office of an LA newspaper, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, in 1910 when he was 16.

The editor, Henry Wilkins, a British ex-pat, saw something in him, and took him under his wing, teaching him all the tricks of the trade. When war broke out in 1914, Henry pulled some strings and asked a favour to his friend, Walter Winston. This man was able to  send Tom overseas as a military correspondent to Europe.

This was an invaluable experience for Tom. It showed him the utter madness humanity was capable of, but at the same time shaped his career and helped him to establish a reputation as a solid and reputable reporter, even though it didn’t put him in the good books with the military establishment, and eventually got him fired after reporting on the inhumane executions of ‘deserters’ in 1917.

He contacted the main office, and was told that since he was in Europe, he could as well stay there for now, as an overseas correspondent. He stayed in Paris for a while, as well as in London and Edinburgh. At the end of the war he was transferred to Egypt, where he stayed throughout 1919 to report on the Egyptian uprising against the British. Again he made himself unpopular with the powers that be by reporting on corruption within the government.

In 1920 he was sent to South East Asia, where he mainly worked from Bangkok. He took a year off, travelling the region, and in 1922 he returned to the States.
Henry welcomed him back with open arms, and organized for Tom to work at the head office of the newspaper in LA, allowing him to specialize into any case in the LA region that smelled of corruption.

Late 1921 he met a girl, XXXXX, they hit it off straight away and 6 months later got they got engaged. Things were looking up for Tom.
In 1922 he bumped into something that at first he wanted to throw on the desk of the society gossip go-to guy, but after a few more details and reports came to his attention, he gathered the information and started to look into a few things himself.

Apparently, a local rich playboy, Ramon Echavarria, is throwing parties. In LA that shouldn’t set of any alarm bells, but here and there whispers were heard that these events were totally decadent and depraved, and that quite a few celebrities, as well as academics were involved in this. Odds were politicians and judicial and police officials would also be involved, which would have thrown these people wide open to blackmail and corruption.

One night, he was woken up by someone ringing his doorbell. An older gentleman introduced himself as Walter Winston, and said he needed to have a talk to Tom. He had been reading a few of Tom’s articles, and needed him to know there was indeed more than met the eye to this case. There would be an occult angle even. Though Tom was skeptical, he listened to what the guy had to say, and once Walter started to hand over some papers and photographs, Tom was hooked.

Some real nasty stuff was going on there, and although he wasn’t sure on the occult angle, he knew this was big. Very big.
He started to collect evidence, working together with Walter and his associates, especially Vince Stack and Catherine Clark, who would join him on his stealthy fact-finding and photography escapades. They booked a room in a small hotel for an undefined period.
Room 225 of the Long Beach hotel would always be burned in Tom’s mind as the high point of his investigative career. The walls were full of Catherine’s photographs, covered in his notes, the floors full of paper that Kuhlman and Walter were going through.

Late 1922 he decided he had enough material, and wrote his article. When he spoke to Walter about this, they had a massive fight. Walter told him that this was too big to be published, that it would ruin their investigation, that it would alert the cultists. FC Kuhlman
supported Walter in this, and even Catherine and Vince disagreed with Tom. They all said that what they were working on was bigger than his article. Tom dug his heels in, which resulted in Walter calling him quite a few choice names, “Narcissistic bastard” probably one of the nicer ones. Tom stomped out, barely able to stop himself from striking the man.

At night, and after a few stiff drinks, he decided he was well within his rights to use the material, and he made his way back to the hotelroom. He took everything, leaving only a note saying “the people have a right to know!”.
Tom left, and contacted Henry, sending him a copy of his research. While Henry was taking time to reviewing the material and check on a number of facts, Tom received a phone call, the voice on the other side telling him to drop the matter immediately. Tom suspected
Walter to be behind this, trying to put him of in a last ditch, petty attempt. He laughed it off, and continued with his work. Over the next few days, he kept getting the increasingly more
threatening calls.

When Henry finally finished checking up on everything and agreed to support Tom in getting this past head office, Tom could already smell the accolades. A Pulitzer didn’t seem to be an
impossibility.
The next day, his fiancée didn’t come home from work. After a few hours Tom reported this to the police. For a few days, there was no sign of her, until her mutilated body was found in an abandoned warehouse in San Gabriel, east of LA. She had been found on a makeshift altar, surrounded by black candles, skulls and pentagrams, carved up in a gruesome way.

Tom’s world fell apart.

Two days later the cops burst through his door. A witness had seen Tom’s and his car in the neighbourhood of the warehouse. He had seen him leave the building, covered in blood.
Justice is swift and Tom was put locked up. His former colleagues smell blood in the water, and tear his reputation to shreds in the newspapers. His article never was published, and he was locked up, pending his trial.

Prison life was hard for Tom. From the start, he feared that he just wouldn’t be able to take it. This only got worse after he was told he had a visitor. Glad that finally someone from the outside wanted to see him, he made his way to the visitor area, where he was met by a man he had never seen before. 
This man introduced himself as The Captain. He made it clear that things could be easy in jail, if Tom cooperated, or hard. Who knows, if he played ball, the charges could even be dropped. He wanted to know where Tom got the info from. Who else had been helping in
his research. taking the photographs. It was clear from what this guy said that he had seen Tom’s research and his article. Tom told the man to get lost.

The next day he almost got killed by two Mexicans. If it hadn’t been for Frank Gambino, Tom wouldn’t have made it. The Italian (small-time) mobster stepped in and shanked one of the Mexican, which was enough to send the other running. He was found later in the showers,
stabbed to death. It sent a signal to leave Tom alone. Frank thought Tom how to take careof himself.

The trial was repeatedly pushed back, until early September 1924, Tom suddenly get released. Little explanation is given, apart from the fact that the witness who had seen him somehow has disappeared and that without him, there isn’t much of a case against Tom.
No job and certainly no prospects as a reporter he struggles for awhile until he begins writing fiction novels under the pseudonym Daniel Strattman. In 1928 Frank was released and got back in touch with Tom, who now has moved to New York, where he also reconnected
with Henry, who never doubted his story. Frank also moves to NY, and starts a small gym.

From Henry, Tom got the impression that someone in the head office was on this group, or “The Captain’s” payroll. All of the material had disappeared, never to surface again.

Tom keeps having vivid nightmares, dreaming about his nightly trips to spy on Echavarria and his circle of degenerates, dreams about the parties he threw. Only this time Tom seems to see more… or remember more that his mind had suppressed… or are they just that, dreams? Here and there, on the lounges, or in corners or on walls, there seem to have been mouths. Actual mouth, moving and seemingly talking. With cracked lips, rotten teeth, elongated tongues. Filthy things. When he wakes up, he remembers these dreams clearly.
He starts to use part of his dreams in his works, which meet with (modest) commercial success.

Times went on. Tom/Daniel Strattman keeps a low profile and makes ends meet.

Fast forward to February 1934 
One night, on his way home, a man in a filthy greatcoat accosts Daniel.

“Hey… hey there, man. I have something for you.”

He holds open his coat, he seems to be holding a waterlogged book under his arm.

“This is for you. I brought this for you.”

He offered to sell the item to Daniel. Slightly amused, Daniel asks him how much he wants for it.

“That watch you got from your fiancée. I’ll trade you.”

Daniel shoved the guy back, making him trip and go flying into the muddy puddles of the NY street.

“He’ll be angry if I don’t give it to you! Just take it. Take it!”

Before Daniel could react (he was slightly drunk anyway, so his reflexes weren’t 100%) the man scuttles away and disappears among the NY traffic, screaming

“To hell with you! To the deepest pit! May you be chewed and swallowed and shat out like the rest!
I hope you piss pus and your mouths shrivel shut. May your hearts turn to coal and your eyes burst!
You’ll be lying together in blood and shit in the final days! Your lies will be known! They will bind you to his bosom!”

Daniel picked the book, or rather, tome, up and went home. When he flicked through the pages, he was disgusted and repulsed. He blacked out and found himself on the floor, his head in a puddle of vomit, the book next to him. He threw it in the bin, but somehow, he must have taken it out, because a few days later he found it on one of his bookshelves.

As the dreams continued, he kept thinking about the book. He steeled himself and sat down, going through the repulsive pages, that felt moist, and slightly sticky. He read… disgusted about the contents, yet at the same time excited.
Nameless and vile, this waterlogged volume contains page after page of woodcuts, etchings, photographs, and handwritten stories depicting depraved acts of torture, mutilation, incest,
bestiality, necrophilia and worse. The compiler appears to have possessed a disgustingly perverse oral fixation: It portrays mouths biting, mouths chewing, mouths sucking, mouths spitting, mouths
bleeding, mouths oozing.

The scope of the material is both vast and non-specific. It appears to collect imagery and handwritten accounts from the medieval era to the present, forming a kind of grotesque scrapbook remembering a variety of cults and individuals. It is to be hoped that much of the text is, in fact, inventive in its own right, as the contemplation that its explicit passages could be accurate recordings of historical fact is profoundly disturbing.

And it is wet to the touch, as if just drawn from some fetid cistern. As you fingers turn the stuck-together pages, they often encounter what seem to be pus and bile which seems to be oozing from
the volume.
Delving further into the book, you find that the purpose of this catalog is to explicate the acts that can get and hold the attention of an entity referred to only euphemistically as the Liar From Beyond.
There is also detailed a ritual which can contact and bind the Liar.
This was… this was something. This proved that filth was still going on.
Perhaps it was time to get some payback. Sure, he’d have to swallow his pride and somehow apologize to Walter, but… he might get a chance to get back at these guys. The next day he wrote a letter to Walter. But he never received an answer.

Until a few weeks ago. Not a letter from Walter, but from Janet Winston-Rogers.