FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

PREFACE

The story you're about to read is true.

Of course, I cannot guarantee that every word is completely factual, because I was not personally around to witness the events, and two of the people involved could not be here to make corrections. Therefore, I've had to make some assumptions and interpretations along the way.

However, I do believe that my report is, by and large, an accurate account of the events that led to the disappearance of my two friends; Tyler Brock and Therese Walker.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I'd like to thank the following people whose help and information has been invaluable to my research.

Dr. Ian Parks; Boise State Hospital

Lt. Rylan Higgins of the Denver police force

Rosalee Anderson (née Rosalee Baumann), Tom Perez, Reese Allen, Jim and Barbara Cole, Skyler Levy, Anita Wilson

The staff at The Oscars Lounge; The rangers at Bear Creek Park, Denver, Co.

Eden LeBlanc, Logan Talley and the rest of the staff at the Denver Herald.

AudeS, MattFoxwolf and Pierrot90 from the furry community, for friendship and support.

-and of course, Avery Mitchell, without whom this work could not have been realised.

PROLOGUE

I should probably begin by telling you about Avery.

She's a book-and-theatre reviewer for the Denver Herald. She's also a stage actress, which means that she gets better scripts and better pay than I do. She has vibrant red hair, amazing cheekbones and a great smile, and she was the one who rang my doorbell, half past eight on the night that made this story happen.

"I could hear your stomach rumbling all the way from my apartment," she said. "Whatcha doing tonight?"

The truthful but embarrassing answer was "nothing" -I was writing alone and I was drinking alone.

I'd been locked in a sound-studio all day, doing a voiceover of Shere Khan for local TV, but by now the great tiger had deflated and his voice had found willing prey in wine so cheap that the makers couldn't even afford a Chateau on the label.

Khan did not have a lot of spoken lines. His voice was mainly a bunch of pre-recorded growls on a portable hard-drive supplied by Disney. The best paid lines went to Mowgli and Bagheera.

"Oh, I was just considering succumbing to a fit of loneliness and depression." My voice slurred a bit more than I wanted it to.

"Oh dear, what's the matter? Money or love troubles?"

"Both! I'm being upstaged by a kid and a tenor! With the few lines they give me, I had actually forgotten what money looks like -until you reminded me".

Avery looked around and discovered the wine next to my laptop. The bottle was almost empty -and so was the page.

"How's your writing going, anyway?"

I shrugged, I'd been working on a fantasy novel for the better of seven months and I was running out of steam; I felt claustrophobic about being stuck in the same voice for months

-but now I was just plain stuck, period and mid-chapter.

"If I type Ted Arbinger ONCE more," I cried. "I'm going to puke -I'll vomit Cabernet into my keyboard and short some circuit."

Avery nodded. I could tell that she was sad or upset about something, and it was clear that she had not come around to listen to a wine-fuelled wail about writer's block.

"Therese has disappeared," she said.

"Again? But she just got back."

"It's different this time; Brock's missing too."

- - -

Tyler Brock is a childhood friend of mine. We were both into sci-fi, fantasy and RPG back in school. He went into journalism with his writing and has since become editor of the Denver Herald.

It was Brock who introduced me to Therese, some eight years ago. Therese is of Irish-Scottish descent, she has auburn hair and green eyes that sparkle when she laughs, which used to happen a lot. We were both twenty five, and I think that Brock had hopes that we'd become more than friends, but she met Tom Perez before anything sparked between us, and he made her laugh even more. I was then introduced to Avery, and we all started hanging out together.

Therese and Tom had a girl named Sophie the following year, but gradually the two drifted apart and Tom moved to Austin, Texas two years ago.

Then something terrible happened to Sophie, and we never saw Therese smiling again, after that day.

Now, Avery was in my hallway and crying her heart out.

"When did this happen?" I asked. "Shouldn't we call the police."

"They've been gone for three weeks", said Avery between sobs. "We thought that they were away on some assignment together, but then we found THIS".

Avery gave me a large shoebox that had contained a pair of size 6 ASOLO hiking boots.

"You found her boots?"

"Open it!"

The box was bursting with a clutter of handwritten notes, photos, drawings and some old newspapers.

"Therese cleared her desk at the Herald, and this is all she left in her cabinet. She'd never go off like this, not without leaving some kind of message or explanation behind."

"And that message is...?"

"You're holding it," said Avery. "I think Therese wants us to piece all that together."

I poured the contents of the box onto my desk, and for the next minutes we probed the random jumble of objects and tried to comprehend the challenge in making sense of it all.

I singled out a yellowed page from the pile; it had been torn out of a 1907 issue of the Lewiston Evening Teller, a long suspended Idaho newspaper, but how was this supposed to be of any help? Avery was not much better off; she studied a receipt for one $12.99 bottle of OneHope sparkling wine from the Wine Cellar in Coeur D'alene. On the back, Therese had written:

"they all danced!".

Californian winemakers make great products, but it was difficult to imagine how a single bottle of bubbly could make "all of them" dance, or who all those dancing people could be. Still, we knew that Therese hadn't simply emptied her pockets into the box; all of these objects were somehow related to her work.

"I don't have the time for this," I objected. "I'm not some underpaid gumshoe detective

-I'm an underpaid voice actor."

"Exactly, so you've got plenty of time on your hands."

"Plus," she said cunningly, knowing that my stomach and wallet were both running on fumes.

"I'll cook you dinner."

And so, my investigation began with a torn newspaper and a full stomach.

As a journalist, Therese was used to jotting down observations and thoughts on the fly, so that everything could be assembled into a feature article later, when she was back in the office. She wrote everything down for her own needs, and not for others to read and it showed: some entries were dated and neatly written into a spiral-bound notebook, while other entries were written on whatever scrap of paper she had in her pocket at the time. This included grocery receipts, photos and pencil drawings.

I spent a couple of months going through all the material. I got in touch with people who were close to Therese and Brock, and also some of the people mentioned in the notes. Most have been very helpful with lengthy interviews, and I finally feel confident that I have managed to accurately chronicle the events as they happened.

Since my own journey began with a newspaper, It only seems fitting to kick off the resulting story with that very same, yellowed scrap of news.

• The 1907 newspaper that made Therese Walker and Tyler Brock lose themselves in a little known Idahoan ghost town, known as Cobbler's Dell.

You can't read the paper at this resolution, so

follow this link to view the page-scan in HD

https://www.sofurry.com/view/992558

DENVER, COLORADO; DECEMBER 26, 2015

Therese Walker tried to focus on the table in front of her, but her eyes put up resistance and her head spun - or was it the room?. With some effort she counted one...two...three...four...five...six...seven; there were exactly seven empty shot-glasses on the table -one for each year. She opened her purse and took out a small hand mirror. She wiped off the smear of mascara and put on a fresh layer, fixed up her hair, then her lipstick. Her eyes were still bloodshot from crying but there was little she could do about that.

I stayed up too late, working on an news-article -if anyone should care to ask.

Therese got on her feet and held on to the table for support while regaining her balance. Man, the shots had hit her hard today. Maybe it was because she'd skipped breakfast, but the fresh air would clear her mind. She'd grab a large latte-to-go from Tino's on the way and she'd be fine; just like she'd been fine every morning for the past six months.

It took thirty minutes to walk from The Oscars Lounge to the Denver Herald and by the time Therese arrived, the bloodshot was almost gone from her eyes. She took a deep breath before entering the building,

I'm alright, she convinced herself.

Therese took the elevator to the fifth floor, and felt her stomach complain as the elevator skidded to a halt. Going up was always worse than down - the sudden increase in gravity pressed on her head and made her eyes throb. Then the final twenty paces to her desk. Smiles at everyone, Good morning Eden, hi! Logan, and she was home safe. She sat down by the her desk and switched on her Macbook. There were mails to check and news to cover.

DENVER, COLORADO; JANUARY 11, 2016

Therese Walker browsed through the short pile of photos that the police had released to the press. The face of the deceased was visible on two of them, but the self inflicted gun-wound wasn't.

No need to show everything to the public.

Tommy Cole, a thirty-seven year old Denverite had lived alone in a rented apartment. His landlady, Ms Anita Wilson, 68 heard the gunshot at twenty past ten PM, then rushed to his apartment. The door was locked from the inside, but she let herself in with the maintenance key and found him lying in front of his computer.

"This is completely off the record, but his computer played some slide-show of all the porn on his PC.", Lt. Rylan Higgins confided when he brought the photos.

"What type of porn?", asked Therese.

"Y'know, standard stuff. Some straight, some gay, some BDSM." Lt. Higgins shrugged. "Nothing unusual, but like I said -this one is off the record. Don't put it in your article!"

Therese studied the two photos showing a close-up of Tommy Cole. He had a round face, curly hair and receding hairline. His glasses had fallen off when he dropped to the floor, but the third photo showed him full figure with a pair of oval glasses lying next to the body. Their shape seemed mismatched to his face.

You had nobody to help you decide, when you bought them, did you?

He was in his underwear when he shot himself; boxershorts, white T-shirt with an off-camera chestwound and white sports-socks.

"Was it you?", she asked the guy on the photo.

Did YOU kill my baby girl, you sick fuck?

A wave of sick overtook her, she doubled over and puked into her wastebasket.

Dammit, I shouldn't have skipped breakfast again. If anyone asks, it was the eggs -they were bad or something.

She heard the unmistakable creaking of chief editor Tyler Brock's door being opened, and his steps came towards her.

"I'd like to see you in my office, Therese," he said while she rested her head on the edge of the desk and waited for the world to stop spinning.

"Now!"

- - -

"Coffee?" It was a rhetorical question. Tyler Brock poured coffee into two disposable plastic cups for Therese and himself, then he lit a Pall Mall and sat down.

_ He's buying time_; Therese had seen this conversation coming for months, and she knew what he was about to say.

Brock sucked hard on his cigarette, "For God's sake, Therese!" His voice was friendly but insistent. "Stop doing this to yourself. You've been with this paper for more than ten years and we all know that you're hurting, but you can't hide the fact that you've got a problem; you're killing yourself with the drinking."

"Damn you, Brock! If you had lost your child to some creep who got off on seven-year olds, you'd be a fucking alcoholic too."

"Coming in drunk every morning is not going to bring her back, Thesese. But if you keep it up you'll be the one to join her with a bum liver."

"They never caught him, Brock. They don't even know what he looks like -but I do.

I see him every day. He's the bus driver, he's the mailman, he's the oldtimer who feeds the pigeons down by the lake, he's a passing face in the crowd. I see him everywhere, every day

-the predator who took my child away."

"You need to get on with your life, and Denver is dragging you down." Brock stubbed out the cigarette in his coffee. "Listen, I've got friends in New Orleans. I could probably arrange a position for you with the Times-Picayune."

Therese looked at her shoes. They were beginning to wear out but right now, spending money on clothes took second priority. "Don't make that call", she said. "After Tom left... and after Sophie, You guys are the only family I have."

"You haven't written a single proper article in six months Therese, and I can't keep covering up for you. You need to kick that habit."

"You're not talking about detox, are you? Listen Brock, I'm not Amy fucking Winehouse."

"Alright, an assignment away from Denver then". He slushed the cold coffee around in the cup, then used it to water a flowering begonia in the window. The cigarette butt joined a few others in the soil, delivering nicotine and other, ill-defined types of nourishment to the plant.

"Begonias love coffee, and readers love stories about abandoned places where time stands still; ghost towns, Mesa Verde. Places like that make people dream about the old frontier days".

Brock was right; she needed to get away from the city and its temptations, the cocktail lounges, the 24h liquor stores and pot dispensaries. An all natural detox in the Rockies.

"Cisco!" she said. "I could do a feature on Cisco."

Brock shook his head. "Cisco was hot ten years ago but now it's a junkyard. What we need is virgin territory. A place with a history that hasn't been done to death, and buildings where you can shoot photos to conjure up dreams."

He walked to the window, and stood in silence for a long time, just looking at the traffic. "There's this place in the Idaho mountains."

"Ruby Ridge?"

"Looted! Nobody gave two fucks about Ruby Ridge for twenty years. Then FOX did a TV show on the shootout and suddenly every backpacker flocks to worship the place like it's a fucking shrine. Hey, look! I found Randy Weaver's pop bottle. No, there's this place called Cobbler's Dell; it's an abandoned mining town east of Coeur d'Alene. I'll give you a camera and three weeks. I want you back clean, and I want you back with a story."

"Thanks, Brock. I'll get you a story, I promise."

Follow this link to play "Therese's Theme" from the Hollow Silence Soundtrack

https://www.sofurry.com/view/982176

• CONTINUED IN PART 2 -