The Stillwell Case

An impossible crime scene in the chapel of an abandoned hospital in Stillwell, Indiana. Verone and Jon Smiles meet there.

Designation: The Stillwell case
Class: Impossible crime scene
First seen: Stillwell

An abandoned hospital chapel in Stillwell, Indiana.

"A central corpse that should not exist."

The heading

The case is filed under "Death Day and the Space In-Between."

The site

All five jurisdictions touch in the chapel, a vertical intersection, and The Vertical Structure lists them.

A hospital is a thin-veil place, and a dead one is the worst version of the type. Every crime scene Verone works is a site of violent crime, and the site's magickal resonance is how he gets in.

Sites of violent crime carry the Dark Dead, vengeance current and unresolved energy. Abandoned structures carry ghost-current, past-persistence and haunted infrastructure. The chapel is both kinds of place, and under the town lies Stillwell Below.

The scene

Verone and Jon Smiles meet in Stillwell. Smiles is the witness, the conscience, the procedural mind. Investigating jurisdictional crimes is the first item on Verone's job, and this is one.

In the chapel, the Whisper says one word.

"Kneel."