Codex - Void Miscellany

#1

We are crowdsourcing the miscellany for Codex - Void. This one is called “Three Dozen Incidents in Degoya County, New Mexico.” Degoya County is located in a remote corner of the state. And it has a bad, bad 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.

Importantly: your submission needs to note the year of the incident, as in the examples below.

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).

Here are some examples:

“1956: Two men, Edgar Aguilar and Joey Mathers, enraged with each other about a business deal gone sour, have a standoff in the middle of La Fresca. They stare at each other for nearly three minutes—seething and snorting—before an unidentified woman approaches and gives them each a gun. The woman then walks back to wherever she came from, and the two men shoot each other dead in the street.”

“1933: The first known appearance of the Big Man—a tall, wide, jowly old man in a cowboy hat and pale yellow suit—at a community picnic, where he can be seen standing in the background of several photos that were taken. No one from that day can recall him, but many folks in Degoya County—right up to the present day—have a story about meeting him. He usually offers witnesses a cigarette and then tells them a little-known secret about the community… just before vanishing completely.”

“Approximately 690,000 BP: The Great Render of Flesh, pleased with the wanderers for making copious sacrifices of blood and bone before his impossible altar, gifts them with a titanic pillar made of screaming skin, infused with ancient magicks—a weapon they can use to destroy the fire cults once and for all.”

“1986: The La Fresca Senior High prom ends abruptly when a fire breaks out in the gymnasium the dance is being held in. Over 100 students and teachers lose their lives. Curiously, not all the victims die of burns or smoke inhalation. Several die from blunt force trauma, two from wounds that suggest an animal attack, and one is decapitated.”
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#3

1835 - Halley’s Comet streaks across the sky. That night during peak viewing time there were no less than 13 stabbings among the Spanish farmers in the area. While not all the stabbings are fatal, the pattern of the wounds is identical in each attack.

1910 - American ranchers tell of strange things as day turned to the night. Many saw Elk, Antelope and other herbivores attacked Wolf and Cougar, those would normally prey on them. Later that night some swear they heard laughter as a comet streaked across the sky.

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#4

August 6th, Feast of the Transfiguration, 1992: Carmen Montoya, an elderly widow, reported missing. No body was ever found, but her home was absolutely full of silvery moths and burnt-down votive candles. A number of puzzling manuscripts from her home, possibly records of vivid mystical experiences, were entrusted to the local convent of the Sisters of the Agonizing Heart for study or safekeeping.

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#5

July 7, 1976

The body of Silas Rodenbecker is discovered in his trailer, his head lodged completely inside the mouth and throat of Shelly Cruzado’s escaped 18’ Green Anaconda. Both were killed by multiple gunshot wounds to the head from the nickel-plated Colt .45 fired by Silas himself. Authorities are unsure whether he actually intended to shoot the snake, himself, or both.

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#6

July 7, 1952

The body of Hy Rodenbecker is discovered atop his trailer, a single gunshot wound to the head, apparently self-inflicted via his nickel-plated Colt .45. His body is significantly dehydrated and sunburned, as if he spent a full day or more atop the trailer before taking his own life. A wide, smooth round track worn in the dust around the trailer has baffled authorities since the incident, as have the whereabouts of Hy’s two hunting dogs.

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#7

July 7, 1812

Ezekiel Rodenbecker and a small but dedicated band of religious pilgrims embark on their crusade to ‘rid The Holy Degoya of Serpents and Make It Unto a New Eden’. They will eventually flush, kill, and publicly display 666 snakes over the course of the next seven years.

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#9

1938: The people of Rio Canyon had seen their share of dust storms, but when that gray color blew into town families sealed their doors and windows or hunkered down indoors wherever they were to avoid the pale dust. The kids at the time never forgot the screaming, begging, pleading of those caught outside to be let in. After the ash-colored dirt blew on to the next town, schoolchildren were avoiding their neighbors’ bodies in the streets for days before the clean-up was finished.

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#10

1892: What they later called “The Drunken Drought” lasted for almost five months and nearly broke the normally resilient farmers of Degoya County. In a fit of hopelessness, what started as a few sorrowful souls overindulging grew into a raucous mix of bacchanalia and riot that only ended two days later when some inebriated wanderers found the bloated, drowned corpses of the Namaporte family in the middle of a bone dry playa. The rain fell the next day.

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#11

The caves beneath ‘Tombstone Mesa’ are a constant attraction for kids wanting to party out of the public eye. On June 15th 2009 a mix of drugs, alcohol and a campfire cost the lives of 4 teenagers. Last week’s edition of the Degoya Clarion (dated 10th June 2019) included an editorial remembering the victims of the fire. Dave Donald, editor of the Clarion, hasn’t been home in the three days since, but his secretary has found an envelope with two cuttings from the Clarion dating from June 1909 and June 1919. The former is a celebration of the lives of 4 young men who disappeared ‘while on a fishing trip out towards Tombstone Mesa’, while the latter memorialises ‘four recently returned heroes of the Great War while setting out to climb Tombstone Mesa’. The dates of both tragedies have been highlighted by Dave … the 15th of the month … 2 days form today …

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#12

August 16, 1983, “The Great Cattle Burn”: Jackson Winkler, an aging local rancher of some renown, walked naked into his grazing pasture with some kind of improvised flamethrower strapped to his back and proceeded to set as much of his herd ablaze as he could, heedless of the dryness of the season and which direction the wind was blowing. It took fire crews from several surrounding counties days just to contain the blaze. Winkler’s blackened bones were finally discovered with breaks in nearly every one, presumably from stampeding cattle. But the truly curious thing is that Winkler’s left hip ball and socket were intact, when everyone knew he’d had that hip replaced the year before.

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#13

April 3, 1987: A group of teenagers who thought of themselves as evil and Satanists decided to take peyote and have a bonfire on top of a nearby mesa. The medical examiner was still trying to figure out which part belonged to which body when the only survivor was found walking down Main Street, wearing nothing but obviously soiled pants. “We met the devil,” he was reported to have said. “And he didn’t like us very much.”

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#15

December 25, 1954: A light dusting of snow was blowing across Pine Avenue when residents looked out of their windows and saw a horse bearing a skeletal rider, clad in the cowboy styles of at least a century before, including a Colt pistol on each side and a Henry rifle in a scabbard on the saddle. Degoya County Museum Curator Chistine Hialeah later confirmed after extensive research that the clothes were not new, but were in fact VERY well-preserved. The horse died the next day.

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#16

February 15th, 1993 approximately 8:07pm MST. Mr. Rutkowski was “Walking down the street minding my own damn business when a vampire, I say again, a vampire crawled out of the sewer and began to attack me! If it wasn’t for Joni’s garlic pasta I’d a died that very night!” This story can be heard by anyone staying up late at Two Taps bar. It should be noted Mr. Rutkowski is seldom seen anywhere besides Two Taps bar, and never arrives before sundown.

May 4th 1863. The California 33rd Grenadier Regiment, enroute to central New Mexico under orders to establish a way station for future expeditions is waylaid by a brutal sand storm. Remnants of this failed expedition still exhume themselves during early summer storms: a desicated hand, a much chewed tibia, a dream filled with gold and blood and fear.

Although not mentioned by any of their authors to any other person, all diary entries in Degoya County on Saturday, November 21st, 1987 are an arresting variety of shapes, colors and figures. These scrawls fill the page depicting scenes at once alien, horrifying, and religious. If shown their own page, diary authors will stare blankly at the page for hours before vomiting and passing out.

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#17

The night of the 10,000th blood moon:

“Chak, mo pek’-ka lan tay she-kal’ ma xhen. Fos’ka nal’fo beeka ‘Jason Cordova’ vaas na trh mooun ki. CHAAAK! La fhen pha naa…”

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#18

^ that one’s kind of a joke entry, but I thought it was funny :smile:

#19

June 01, 2008

A traveler, John (full name withheld by request) was found stumbling into the Golden Spur Saloon after 10pm in Pie Town from the direction of Interstate 10 covered in dust, blood, and a sticky clear substance. They reported that upon reaching the bar, he looked at the bartender on duty and stated only, “That thing from the sinkhole is coming!” before passing out in dramatic fashion. Authorities later found John’s red Jeep Cherokee floating in water 15 feet below the surface of Interstate 10 where a sinkhole had opened up.

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#20

  • The old folxs of Degoya County remember the warnings of their forebearers, to never be out during the corn husk moon in June, when the little angels come down from the heavens to search for grain to take back to the little ones. They also remember what happened the year that there was no corn harvest, and why there is no Class of 1937.

  • Most folx forget it when they grow old, but among the kindergarten classes, the children trade stories of The Whisper. No one’s ever seen it, but late at night, if you stay up as late as you can, you can hear it repeat what your friends really think about you.

  • People forget that winter in the desert can be just as deadly as the snow in the North. When they found the campers of San Degoya River frozen to death, they figured it was hypothermia that caused them to be found each missing a left shoe, and no sock on the right.

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#21

Not for submission: this is true per my searches:

Actual reports on google of the worst crimes in New Mexico history researching for my entry included a cleaning lady that found a headless body of a hated land speculator over 120 years ago. The coroner recorded the death as natural causes. Apparently, too many people wanted him dead to ask for an investigation. Food for thought.

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#22

1952: Local papers couldn’t sing enough praises for Clay Gulch, the town without a single vermin, boasting a new pest control program unmatched in the state. Every year since, the mayor would personally go door-to-door to recruit each resident into the program, encouraging them to be proactive in eradicating any such unwelcome troublemakers. The most recent residents had always been the most resistant to the idea, but, as always, the town would collectively resolve such complications as per municipal regulations.

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#23

Oct. 7, 2009

Strange reports from witnesses claim a great beast tore apart one of the tourists at The Cowboy Skeet Club in the ghost town retreat of Gallop, New Mexico. According to witnesses, a regular at the club, Jeff Binsum, hit a huge beast just beyond the range with his shotgun shell. In response, the “monster” as one witness called it, instantly disappeared and reappeared in front of them, dragging off Jeff into the nearby desert where his body was later found.

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