The Faiworth Collection - Ghost Threads

My name is Roger, I am or was a journalist for a publishing company. I made a mistake of tugging on the thread that should not have been pulled, what I found was something worse that I imagined and wished I stayed in the dark. Just for context I was originally just a gossip column writer talking about restaurants opening and closing, talking about local pageants and the like. I was introduced to the whole thing by a friend who lurks in the deep web forums, he asked me if I have ever heard about the Muzhurod Ritual. I told him I have never heard and decided to investigate it for him and my curiosity.

The initial research did not yield much information as I quickly found that the name was a bastardised name for another ritual that was common for elite at the turn of the century. An excuse for untamed debauchery by people in power, what I did not expect was a name I have never seen before. Francis Locklear, he seemed to have popped up when searching for the ritual directly. I used the same hidden forums to research but unlike my friend I dove much deeper using deep searches in the web, I had a friend who showed me how to do this. Locklear was like searching for a shadow online, the only photo I could find was one with Howard Hughes. That photo was just a run of the mill party photo, but I could see it was taken from while the pair were unaware. Howard was laughing at a joke or something while Locklear was talking, he looked like everyone of the time. Thin, athletic while sporting a pencil moustache and his suit looked the part, everything about him was unassuming and could have easily been part of the crow except that he wore a broch that I have never seen before.

Taking a closer look at the it I could not make out the details as the photo was of low quality and since it was a scan of a newspaper print the quality would not have been any help. Trying to see if I could trace the original newspaper it was printed on was also a bust as it went out of print during the second world war. While researching the paper I then came upon another thread, it was again one of those that would been lost had someone not dumped all their old records online. It had references for the actual Muzhurod ritual but this time it was referred to as a ritual but a sort of calling card to a club in Boston.

Moving me search to that city I hit brick wall as there wasn’t much in terms of high society that I could find. I then widened the net and tried the usual places like New York and other prominent cities and came across a photo of 5 men posing for a photo. The photo was not remarkable at first sight but the face in the background was, it was Francis, but he looked like he was caught off guard and wore an expression of annoyance. He was in the background holding a bottle entering the room or hall (I couldn’t exactly tell from the shot) and he was wearing his usual suit but the broch was not there. I checked the five men in the shot and saw that they were the who’s who of that time which now gave me a pathway forward. Looking for the club they belonged to proved to be another red herring but I knew there was something I was missing here.

Being frustrated by all the dead ends I was coming up to I decided to reach out to a friend, Sam, who introduced me to the conspiracy forums. I called him up and as usual he was deep into his game when he picked the call, between talking to me and playing his game I asked him to find out anything he could about the photo I sent him and also I gave him a rough picture of what I found and where I found it. He listened while he played and did not speak, finally when I finished he stopped his game and then turned to me.

“Bro, I hope you fucking used a condom when you visited the sites you talked about.”

“I used the Tor network to do all my research just like you showed me Sam, also since when did you know anything about how to use a condom. Seeing that the last time you might have needed one was when man discovered fire.”

Sam burst out laughing and told me he will look into the photo and if he managed to dig anything up he will call me. We then ended up spending another couple of hours talking and abusing each other over everything and anything. I then dropped the call and continued with my work, writing about the mundane paid the bills and for some reason people still wanted to read what happened at a pageant and who won.

The next few days were the same and finally when the weekend came I took the opportunity to visit the library to see if I could dig something up in the archives. New York had a very storied past and I was lucky as the library kept all sorts of records and old newspapers for me to look through. I managed to find some more information on clubs that were operating within the city during the 1930’s and most were just gossip based articles. Nothing too revealing or believable as much what was written were affairs and cheating scandals, the mob was quite active in those circles and power attracted the power hungry.

It after 8 days when Sam finally called me, he asked me join him on a private video chat as what had could not be just spoken alone. I waited for a link and joined him on the call, he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. “Fuck man, what the hell did you just find. I mean I thought it would have just been an off shoot of the skull and bone society or something but this, man this is deeper than that. Whatever you stuck your foot in is even deeper than the freaking church.”

I sat back and frowned at him, he did not smile but rubbed his eyes and continued, “Look Roger, when I checked for the 5 guys I could not find anything that connected them directly but when I looked at their daddies well, that’s when I found myself looking into abyss. Their grandfathers were all connected and so were their grandfathers and beyond. I decided to look up family trees and man let me tell you these guys bloodline runs deep into this country. They may not be the founding fathers but honestly they could have been if they decided to step out of the shadows.”

“What do you mean?”

He held up a sheet of paper and just as I was about to say the name he told me to shut up, “fucking shut up, do not and I repeat DO NOT say that name aloud. Even searching for it brings trouble. Look I was I trawling through the deep web forums looking for more information on the 5 families and for some reason could not get anywhere. I then tried to trace the old world names they were based from and bingo! I found something. They were families that were among the few to establish towns way back when. I then tried to find more info on what businesses they started and saw it was the usual skins and other things. See, they wanted people to think they were just normal traders but when I searched for the ship that brought them here I hit a dead end. The ship was called the Northen Mayflower, no relation to “The Mayflower” these guys landed much later. Your Locklear fellow had an ancestor connected to them but its not what you think. Her name was Mary Flockworth, I think she was a widow or something but from what records I could find it seemed she married someone who worked for the 5 families.”

He took a drink and then took a deep breath before continuing, “this is where things go sideways. See they had a good trade going but after like 20 years all records stopped and I could not find any records. The families were either killed in some sort of raid or changed their names, I decided on the latter and found that they popped up in Boston as traders again. All this info was dumped by someone in a repository that I stumbled upon by someone looking for your ritual also, that OP disappeared like a week after the dump so I could not reach out to them. So here is where the cult shit begins, they started an exclusive club that catered to the who’s who of Boston then moved north following the money and again their trail ends. Who was part of that club I cannot tell but it was important enough to scrub their name from the face of the planet. The town they first established no longer exists because they wiped it from existence before moving and the same for the club, I have no idea what they were up to or into but man this pile of shit gets deeper the more you dig.”

I asked him if he could send me the files and he told me he already did and I saw my personal email ping me to that. I decided to look at it after the call. “So you managed to find out the original town name but cannot talk about it, how is that possible?”

Sam was rubbing his forehead and then laid back and looked up then at the camera, “that’s the thing, when I found the name I did not exactly realise but I was being tracked. After an hour I noticed that my connection was becoming slow and the links I was trying to access were glitching out. I checked my connection and that’s when I saw an address trying to access my system. I cut my net and shut my VM before deleting it from the system. I had to stay dark for 24 hours before I finally started up again and man let me tell you staying dark for so long felt like withdrawal for me. I ended up taking a long walk to reflect on my life choices.”

I was stunned by this and asked if he was ok, he replied that he was better the 24 hours of no connection to the wider net helped him reflect on his life. Instead of just working at home he now goes to the office to work. This was why he took so long to get back, adjusting to being normal again.

“So I booted up again and decided not to look for that name and look elsewhere to see what else I could find and let me tell you, Locklear is just a red herring. He was just a broker of sorts, think of him as the bridge to the cult island. The five families basically faded into the background as they were also the same, the cult or society was the real show here. The ritual is just a smoke screen also, what I found that this thing has roots much further than Boston, in fact the roots of this thing is in Europe somewhere. I could not find the exact location but honestly I will not risk it. Look the rest is for you to look through but promise me this that name I showed you does not leave your lips no matter what, understand?”

I nodded and we both logged off. I just sat back and stared at the blank screen trying to digest what I just heard. This is worse than just a rabbit hole, this was a black hole for all I could say.