When I was fifteen, my father died at the hands of a headhunter Shaman in Gambia. Having stumbled upon an old burial site, my father brought down the rage of the local savages by beginning an excavation at the site. Although the events of that day are still unclear to me, I do remember the moment my father died. It was the moment I first saw true magic in the world. It is also the moment I lost my faith in God. My father and two of his servants were keeping the savages at bay with their rifles when the shaman stepped out of the crowd. With strange movements and an incantation, I watched as three balls of reddish light flew from the shaman's hands and struck my father in the chest. I remember retreating through the jungles for what seemed like hours. But in the end my father died my mother's arms.
After my father's death I learned that while I had always believed my father and mother to be married, for they had always said they were, I was mistaken. My father was married to another. A woman in England, who my mother said, would be getting all of his inheritance. We were destitute.
Angry at what I believed to be a betrayal, I packed my bags and ran away from my mother's care. The stories I could tell of these days on my own are both great and horrible but suffice it to say that by the age of 17 I had found myself in the company of a traveling stage magician named Geoffrey DeGrande. I was to quickly learn that Geoffrey was more than just a stage magician however. He was an actual wizard with knowledge of the arcane and the ability to bend the laws of nature to his will. I went to work for him as his magician's assistant in exchange for instruction in the magical arts.
Traveling with Geoffrey, I soon found myself in London. It was in this city that my life began to take a darker turn. Geoffrey informed me that we would be staying in the city for some time so I should get lodgings somewhere. I took a small apartment in XXXXX Square and quickly made friends with a few of the local chaps who were living in the area as well.
Dr. Basil Montgomery was living across the hall from me. He touted himself as an investigator in the line of Sherlock Holmes. He seemed a poor investigator to me but he was handsome and friendly so I did not dissuade his friendship. Perhaps I should have, as it is his work that dragged me into the dastardly tale I will soon relate. But first I should mention the others.
Julian is a kind man who worked a few doors down in the bakery. I would come to find out, however, that his true purpose was to protect me. He was also a wizard and a member of some strange occult organization. I have yet to decipher the true motive behind this group or his presence in it. But he has always been there for me so I trust him for now.
Cael is a horrible old bugger. He owns the store a few doors down named "Dead People's Stuff" which is, in my opinion, the most dreadful of shops. He is rude and coarse and has no redeeming aspects, except perhaps his good shooting with his shotgun. But spending time around him reminded me of my days amongst the savages so, in a way, I found his company pleasant.
Now to the tale. One evening I was awoken by gunshots out the back of my apartment window. Looking down upon the street I was surprised to see the old man, Cael, shooting his gun at some people running away. Apparently they had robbed his store. After a quick interrogation of a man he caught, we found that the robbers had come in specifically to steal a monkey's paw that Cael had recently purchased.
Being friends, and being very curious as to why this strange item had been stolen, the four of us took up the case to find the paw. The evening after the theft we discovered that the paw had been sold to an unknown man who we were able to follow to an abandoned building in London. Believing that the four of us would have no problem with this man, entered the building in an attempt to regain the paw. We were repelled by the appearance of what was nothing less than a walking corpse. The undead! That may seem normal to you now but I assure you it was not once.
We retreated and regained strength. Through our investigations we discovered that the paw seemingly had the power to grant its owner three wishes. However, while the wishes came true, they were always twisted into something horrible. Before the paw was sold to Cael, a father, who wished for his son to be famous, woke the next morning to find his son arrested for the horrible rape and murder of an entire family. After his son was shot while escaping, the father wished for his son to be alive again. The paw turned the son into a ghoul and it crawled out of its own grave.
We saved this family from its ill deeds and put the ghoul, which they were keeping in the basement and feeding large amounts of flesh to, back into the grave. We then decided to move against the holder of the paw again. So back to the warehouse we went. Through a number of battles with the living and the dead we came upon the holder of the paw. He had obviously made some horrible with about living forever because when we found him he was some horrible form of undead. Before we were able to stop him he took his second wish and asked for an army of the dead to rise up under his control. We were able to wrestle the paw from him and it came into the possession of Cael. It is to bad that he gained control of it, for a much more appropriate wish could have been made. But alas. Cael, in his fear, wished that the paw had never been created and everything went black.
This wish cause some strange changes upon the world. For every evil deed reversed by Cael's wish, a more dastardly event occurred in its place. And in stead of the army of dead rising in London, zombies are now commonplace and accepted as slave labor within the city limits. How all of this came about I am not quite sure. But now it appears as if the walking dead are forever among us. We all remember how things used to be and lament. But now we are bound by our actions and failures to search out the unnatural and strike it down wherever possible. It is our form of repentance.
I wake this day with an eerie feeling as I always do now and I wonder what will come next.