A rain of gray-blue blood fell from the ceiling and ran down the walls. The oily gray-blue ichor spattered my diminutive body ruining my crisp white straitjacket.

I stepped outside myself to observe myself and found that I didn’t like what I saw. So I used my telekinesis and hydrokinesis to remove the stain. Returning myself to a state of perfect cleanliness.

“Yo, Monty...I-...I uh, I think that was the last of the orderlies.” said my new little buddy. Thomas Yu. A boy I’d met in the asylum, who had moxy, and a useful superpower.

“Oh? A pity. I was just starting to have some fun.” I said. Frowning. My head turning a full one hundred and eighty degrees so I could meet the gaze of the young boy at my back.

“Well...Look at it this way, if we’re not wrong about this town there are probably more monsterfied, fake, people outside.” said Tommy.

“Ah, that’s true. Way to get my spirits back up, Tommy boy.”

“Er...Right. Anything to help...I guess.” said Tommy. Laughing nervously. Letting the blades of light he was holding, fade to nothing.

For the last three hours, Thomas and I had been fighting our way out of the St.Isodel Hospital for the Mentally Infirm. We originally intended to try and sneak out stealthily, but the intelligence that controlled the town of Andante had gotten wise to us and it became impossible to escape unnoticed.

Now I, Tommy, and when I eventually got around to finding her, Margot, would be forced to go the genocide route. Killing everything thing we saw to keep them from killing us and the other “children” who were being held captive in the town.

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The sad tale of the town of Andante started in the year 1941. Long before the ENE event, a certain family of Italian immigrants came to the town when it was still part of a larger agricultural community. Rupert Adesso, the head of the family was a famous musician and composer whose talented descendants would eventually build the music conservatory, but this tale is not about him.

Rather, the tale’s origin starts with the man’s third daughter and every other third daughter that would be born to the family.

The family had been present in the musical field for centuries. The Adesso name was known in the musical world as far back as the early renaissance even if they wouldn’t truly become famous till the late 1980s.

One of the many stories and rumors that would eventually be told about the family would be one that was often told concerning great musicians. A rumor that alleged that the family’s talents and success was due to ties or bargains with infernal forces.

In the case of the Adesso family, there was some truth to the rumors. While the family’s success was not born from any deals with any of the devils that trucked in such business, the family did have ties to dark forces. Adversarial ties.

Way back in the 1300s, more accurately around 1347 or so, the black plague hit Italy. The Adesso family who were based in Sicily at the time, were naturally also affected. They managed to avoid being decimated due to the interference of a certain angel who happened to be in the area. This aid didn’t come free though.

The angel wasn’t in the area to fight the plague, or usher dead souls into the afterlife. He, she, it...was an angel of war sent to defend this earth’s dimensional boundaries against the myriad invaders that had been drawn by all the death that was taking place during that period.

Back then, segment of the angelic host assigned to this particular earth was very short handed putting out various fires so they were recruiting other supernaturals, and even a few mortals to help shore things up. The Adesso family was part of this movement.

The deal between the Angel and the Adesso’s was that they would be responsible for keeping a certain pernicious alien entity from breaking its way into this reality and the angelic host would ensure that no matter how bad things got the family never died out.

The counterpoint to this deal, the stick in this carrot and stick arrangement, was that the family would be marked. Existing as living beacons for the alien entity to keep it from finding some more secretive way of breaking into this world.

This was done for the sake of some the Angels’ other plans concerning the creature, as well as a means of assuring the Adesso’s kept their end of the deal because if they didn’t the first ones to be struck by the calamitous entity would be them.

Fast forward to 1941, where Rupert Adesso youngest daughter would gain a reputation for being strange in the head. Compulsively playing a particular tune, over, and over, and over again. Playing even without instruments. Playing even if her fingers bled.

By this point in time, the family had long forgotten about their agreement with the angel. All they knew was that their family was a musical family and couldn’t get away from being a musical family even if they tried.

They also knew that for whatever reason this occasionally manifested itself as a mental illness that affected the women in the family. Where even if they’d never learned to play an instrument these women would be compelled to play a song that according to them, and the rapturous voices that sang to them, were meant to keep ‘evil’ away from the family.

No matter what was done, this ailment could not be treated, and the only way to ease the sufferer’s affliction was to let them play the song.

Carrina Adesso, the youngest daughter of Rupert Adesso, would be the first amongst a long line of Adesso women who would be entered in what would later be known to the locals of Andante as St. Isodel’s Adesso Ward. A ward where all the Adesso women afflicted with “the song” were kept.

All the locals understood about this strange phenomena was that it was weird and not polite to talk about. They also understood that it was extremely unlucky for one to do anything that even looked like you were trying to take away the instruments of the Adesso women. Whenever someone broke this rule strange, often horrible, things started happening in the town.

Fast forward one more time to 2016, when St. Isodel’s was rebranded as a hospice and rehabilitation center and the town while dying was still a proper town. The last Adesso living in Andante was a young woman by the name Celestina Filomena Adesso. She was the first “third daughter” born into the family in decades and was as such a sufferer of the Adesso Curse.

The management of St. Isodel had naturally changed over the years and so had the doctors. The new doctor had studied a bit about the Adesso ward and its history had some grand ideas.

His theory was that by letting the patients play into their obsession it was actually hurting them. Ordinarily that might have been a fairly solid theory and it would be unfair to blame him completely for what would come.

After all, the record clearly showed that past victims of the ailment never truly recovered. Merely becoming more manageable and lucid so long as they were allowed to play their song. Our young hot shot wanted to be the first one to actually treat and cure this rare but famous mental illness.

Celestina was disallowed the use of instruments and was subscribed to a series of sensory deprivation treatments to try and help her get rid of her auditory delusions. She was also given heavy sleeping aids to keep her from resorting to self-harm in her attempts to play the song.

The plan was to try and reprogram her mind so that the compulsion would be weakened to the point that she could ignore it. A noble, good intentioned, goal.

The entire town was abandoned and utterly destroyed within two months of the doctor righting his orders. The doctor himself mysteriously ended up just...disappearing one day. Without any warning, a sudden EF-5 tornado ran through the town and just sort of stuck in place destroying everything.

Eventually things calmed down. Since the curtain, the great masquerade, was still in play back then, various authorities and groups quietly rebuilt the town. In time, life returned to the town of Andante. However things were never quite the same.

Accidents kept happening. Misfortune kept striking. There seemed to be a quiet war between the force that was trying to drive people away from the town and the force that was trying to draw people to the town. One example being the appearance and the quick drying out of the magic rich minerals in the mine near the town.

There were rumors that a few people could hear a certain song being played day and night. It was coming from the Addesso Conservatory. Most couldn’t hear it so it remained in the realm of rumor. However some people could hear it. Hearing its somber but energetic notes flowing through the air, sternly jolting their minds.

In some cases, there seemed to be a mutation of the Adesso curse where even people who weren’t related to the family found themselves compelled to play the song if they were at all musically inclined. These unrelated people could escape by moving away of course, but there were many who found themselves interred in the rebuilt Adesso ward.

The invisible war waged on, till eventually the presence trying to drive people from the town won, and in time Andante was abandoned. Becoming another empty site that you saw when you were passing by on the road. Another place that one drove past, but never drove through, and absolutely never stopped in.

Which brings us to today, it looked like the attracting presence had managed to get a come from behind victory.

If I had to guess, I’d say that a diet of animal life, drifters, squatters, and other folk whose disappearances didn’t make the news like Tommy’s did, likely were the cause. The creature had managed to grow stronger slowly but steadily until things came to a head.

If you hadn’t guessed already, the force that was trying to pull people into the town wasn’t doing so out of any good intentions.

I suspect the folks from Valkyrie tech were the straw that broke the camel’s back. Randall’s clearing of the road undoing much of the repulsing force’s hard work in keeping the number of victim’s down.

Now the repulsing presence could only do its best to protect those who were trapped in the town. Slowly losing ground as its immortal foe managed to grow in power with each life it took.

If Margot and I weren’t fast enough, the monster that pulled us and everyone else into this altered world would be able to shift out of its active hunting style. Which wasn’t something I really wanted to have to deal with.