Codex - Void 2 Miscellany

#1

We are crowdsourcing the miscellany for Codex - Void 2. This one is called “Three Dozen MORE Incidents in Degoya County, New Mexico.” It’s a sequel to the one published in the original Codex - Void.

Degoya County is located in a remote corner of the state. And it has a bad, weird history. Tell us all about it, please.

Note: please avoid sexist imagery in your submissions—we don’t publish stuff like that.

Submissions should be no more than 2-3 short sentences. By submitting here, you’re agreeing to let us use it (you’ll get a credit on the issue). We’re looking for evocative things; the purpose of the miscellany is to inspire the reader.

Here is the original “Three Dozen Incidents in Degoya County New Mexico”: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o8grHjEjuPLjsb7MlZxegDVXAh3Zo0vp/view?usp=sharing

Your submissions should include a date, as in the entries from the original miscellany, linked above.

Note: if you’d like your name to be listed differently on the Codex credit, send me a DM here (but please keep your submissions in the thread).

3 Likes
#2

September 14th, Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, 1992: A freak fire at the local convent, home to a community of Sisters of the Agonizing Heart, destroyed much of the library. The only casualty was elderly Sister Agatha, who hobbled into the burning library screaming, “They’ve come for the Lost Testament! I can’t let them have it.” Police ruled the fire an accident.

5 Likes
#3

Cintia Caceres (b. 1952) is a local land-art sculptor whose works are recognizable from a bird’s-eye view. A 1975 piece attributed to her is a reverse image of the Creation of Adam, discovered in the local quarry. When pressed for comment, Cintia noted it was part of an exhibition “for viewing from below”.

4 Likes
#4

Dogs Dogs Dogs is a hotdog joint that was shut down in 2009 for accepting puppies as payment. Craigslist ads indicate they are making a comeback.

1 Like
#5

A printed handbill from June 1875 is the first recording we have of “Captain Lovette’s Sensational Circus.” Posters always include a sketch of Captain Lovette herself, brandishing her infamous twin nickle plated Colt .45s. The latest social media buzz is that the Captain is giving out free VIP tickets to anyone who can prove a family member attended the very first Sensation Circus.

4 Likes
#6

In an early morning of July 1909 a ribbon of purple flickered briefly across the night sky. Across the valley Scorpions of all sizes crept across the dusty soil towards every household. And in each household the first born was stung. Preacher Ramses, name the same as his father, said it was a punishment for great misdeeds in thought and deed by citizens of our nation. During the sermon a scorpion struck the preacher with it’s devil-tail, and the preacher was wracked with pain as a purple ribbon ran across his skin.

4 Likes
#7

May 2nd, 1957: Printed date on a photograph found in the archives of the Truth or Consequences, New Mexico library. The photo shows a strange vending machine, full of books, with the words “Dangerous Works” on the front. Many citizens of Degoya County, even up to the modern day, report seeing the vending machine but no one has ever reported reading any of the books inside.

2 Likes
#8

Yelp Review from DegoyaGoya09, dated August 2009: Oddities Ice Cream is the BEST ice cream popup EVAR!1! Flavours like “Childhood Regrets” and “Your Enemies Tears” are a super trip to Flavour Town! Wish the old lady running the place didn’t show up in my dreams so much, though. :frowning: 4/5 stars.

5 Likes
#9

3 separate elders have reported seeing large Kachina Dolls dancing in the fields outside of their hogans. All reported a sense of impending dread following these events.

4 Likes
#10

Ranchers around Bighorn Butte have reported in inordinate number of “dry lightning” strikes on the top of the Butte. They also whisper that all this started shortly after a convoy of blacked out SUV’s came through 3 weeks ago.

4 Likes
#11

June 1979: A 1950s-vintage Coca-Cola “slider-chest” vending machine appeared at the side of the Sinclair gas station on Highway 74. The machine was stocked with various sodas, all in 12oz returnable glass bottles, sold for 25¢. Some of the sodas were not normally available in New Mexico, such as Moxie, Grape Nehi, and Ironbeer. Owner Jeb Rodenbecker claimed not to know anything about the machine, who stocked it, or who collected the money or the empty bottles. In October of that year, a local teen purchased a bottle of Ra-Do-Lyte Curative Mineral Water from the machine: a product of the local bottling plant that had been closed for more than 40 years. Thankfully another motorist noticed and knocked the bottle of radium-infused water out of her hand before she could drink it. The mysterious vending machine simply wasn’t there the next day.

7 Likes
#12

Fifteen separate police reports, one year apart, all occurring on May 4th from 1991 to 2005, record police sent to a rural gas station. The dispatch always comes from a 911 no-voice call tied to a landline on premises. Officers all report heavy winds in the area and a lingering smell of gunpowder. The gas station is otherwise abandoned.

Diary of Unknown Conquistador. Entry dated: Saturday, May 25th, the year of our lord 1540. A traveler has entered camp. His clothes are pale blue, frilled and tight fitting. He speaks in quick and harsh English about needing to “get back to the school dance”. Father Gonzalo attends to his burns but I fear he may not live.

The Fine Arts section of the Degoya Clarion newspaper dated November 13th, 1987 contains a gallery review by noted regional art critic Juana Ruyz. Juana is heavy in her praise for the works on display, noting how the abstract pieces evoked powerful and specific memories with every viewing. She is also melancholic about the greater community’s lack of sophistication and the abysmal attendance of the gallery opening, noting herself as the only attendee for this week long exhibition. There is no other known record of the artist “H. Roden And Becker”.

5 Likes
#13

September 15th, 2013: Juan Hoffen is found dead at the bottom of an arroyo. He had been seen there drinking and smoking with his friends on the night of September 14th. The smell of vomit and lack of blood suggested to all involved that he died of alcohol poisoning in the night. Which is why all were surprised when he attended his own funeral on September 19th. His mom professes happiness at having him back, but their neighbor reports having been over to install a lock on the outside of Juan’s door.

4 Likes
#14

June 15th, 2015: Pastor Jo moves into the Motel 7 on CR 75, which was well known for the opiate trade. People were frequently seen loitering or singing in the parking lot, visibly out of their wits. Jo came to town in a fancy van, purportedly to start a harm reduction program and reach out to those poor souls needing the good word of the lord. He was unusually well received by his new neighbors, who were frequently seen attending parking lot sermons, nodding feverishly to his words. So when their usual songs became a rhythmic chant after three days, we all assumed it was some weird behavior trick Pastor Jo taught to manage withdrawals. We weren’t expecting it to end in a cannibalistic blood orgy on the solstice. It’s probably for the best that Pastor Jo moved on the next day, though it has been nice getting some actual tourists stopping by those parts now that the old inhabitants have all eaten themselves.

3 Likes
#15

May 20, 1979: My dad attended the craft fair where he bought the skull. A vendor there was selling worked cow skulls, each delicately burnt, carved, and bejeweled. My dad, being broke, bought the cheapest one, a plan skull with coyote teeth subbed for the flat bovine teeth the skull probably originally came with. I say probably, because the skull spent the next few decades whispering to him, and then to me. Can’t complain much, though, it gave me the advice I needed to get through law school and intimidate any of my opponents in the courtroom.

~~
July 7th, 1878: The Walking Library comes to the Pueblo de Santa Salome. She arrived out of the dust, walking up from a nearby canyon and startling Mateo in his pasture. She carried on her back more than a dozen bound books, a veritable bounty for the time, and offered them to the townspeople in exchange for their secrets. Mateo bought one first, while still in his pasture, and would not stop talking to the others about them. One by one each book was sold, and the Library left. It’s unclear what happened to the others, but the ruins of the labyrinth Mateo purportedly built from the book’s instruction are still visible, and popular with tourists who have tired of kivas and petroglyphs.

5 Likes
#16

March 17th 1997: Seventeen students in the newly installed high school computer lab suddenly stand in unison and begin to recite a binary code for 37 seconds, after which they all collapse. The students do not return to school the next day, or ever again. Their family homes stand empty, and their school records are never found.

6 Likes
#17

July 10, 1972: Girlscouts Louise Parker and Julia Rodrigo were camping in Los Pictos Frescos, carefully sketching what pictographs they could find, when the sun momentarily blacked. Both girls report that “the heavens opened and we perceived the words of god written on the stones before us”. Both girls have since accepted ranger positions at the monument and rarely stray from the grounds.

4 Likes
#18

In 1913 the Gareth & Shub Silver Mining concern set up operations at Dragon Spine Bluff, with trainloads of equipment, workers, and marble blocks. In 1916, after three years of extensive mining the company shut down, their promised marble bank and headquarters building never constructed. Oddly later surveys have never found silver at Dragon Spine Bluff, and among the local caving community there are rumors of marble pillared halls and other strange edifices to be found deep in the sub-levels of the unstable Gareth & Shub diggings.

4 Likes
#19

Aug 4, 1906: The Traveller walks into Doramar, eyes shining and skin flushed with heatstroke. She clapped her way to the town square, where she scattered a fistful of gold nuggets on the ground around her feet and invited each man to fight her - he who beat her could have her. Many tried, all failed, their asses thoroughly kicked with not a hair out of place on her head. Skinny Jimmy tried last, and he never did quite understand what the other men were doing. So he walked up, hands extended in an invitation to dance, and the Traveller took his hands. Together they danced into the surrounding desert, the gold by now well beaten into a fine coating of leaf in the center of the square.

7 Likes
#20

May 24th 2048, A flight of 3 LAD-32 drones, penetrate Texas Autonomous District airspace, aided by a rented fast-adaptive AI communications satellite, evades the surplus Saab Giraffe PESA radar detection system of 4th Texas Air Land Artillery Militia. The drones come within two miles of the Salt Still solar farm before releasing an antiquated W-82-0 Americium-241 sheathed nuclear artillery shell retrofitted as a bomb with crude sheet metal airfoils. In the first confirmed act of nuclear terrorism, the blast destroys the solar farm, knocking out a third of the TAD’s power for most of the summer, and renders the entirety of Degoya County a lifeless hot zone for 241 years. In May 2011 Mr. Neighbor’s entire 5th grade class of 34 students and one teacher all claim to have visions of the event after entering a sudden fugue state. Their recollections and drawings were collected on a website and later self published book titled “The Degoya Mass Hallucination Event”, copies of which can be found at many flea markets throughout the Southwest.

2 Likes