It’s a rainy cool morning so You decide to brew a pot of pumpkin spice tea and relax with a good book. But just as water in the kettle reaches the boiling point your peaceful morning is interrupted.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
You open your door and find Special Agent Jones of the CIA at your stoop. Uh oh. The CIA only stops by when they have an especially difficult code to crack. That’s when they turn to You. You are the finest cryptologist in the land.
You greet your friend Jones and invite him inside. Soon both Jones and You are seated with a cup of hot tea. After an exchange of pleasantries, Jones tells You the reason for his visit.
A CIA agent has been found murdered in the most gruesome manner. The body of Agent Floyd Cutter was discovered earlier this week. The unfortunate man had been butchered in a remote cemetery located in Northwestern North Carolina near the town of Boone.
A couple of weeks ago Cutter had called headquarters saying he might have a lead on a new spy caper. He did not reveal any details, but said he would keep in touch. Then came the government shutdown, and in the confusion no one noticed that Cutter had not reported for some time.
On Monday October 14th, a visitor to this old and rarely used graveyard in the North Carolina backwoods came upon Cutter’s body. The man had been chopped up, most likely with an ax, according to the medical examiner. Cutter’s remains lay at the base of an old mausoleum. The body had been there some days. Investigators believe Cutter was killed at this spot. Heavy rain over the past days seems to have washed away any significant clues.
It is not known how or why Cutter was in this area. It was determined Cutter was registered in a Boone Motel and was last seen on Friday October 11th. Cutter had breakfast at the motel cafeteria that Friday morning. A worker there remembers Cutter working feverishly on some notes. She also recalls Cutter receiving a call on his cell phone. As the worker refreshed Cutter’s coffee, she remembers hearing Cutter say:* “I’ll meet you there.” *Then Cutter ended his call and left the restaurant.
Jones pauses for a moment and both of you take a sip of tea. Poor Cutter. You remember having once met the man at a CIA picnic a few months ago. A loner. A secretive and pensive man, or so he seemed to You.
Jones continues his tale. No clues were recovered in Cutter’s motel room. His company car, found parked by the road about a mile from the cemetery, was clean. The CIA discovered that Cutter had stayed at a hotel in Abington Virginia earlier last week. No clues turned up at that location. Cutter’s movements over most of this period are a mystery. However a search of the grounds around the remote graveyard did yield a clue. A tiny camera of the type used by CIA agents was removed from the bushes just inside the iron gates of the cemetery. Only four pictures were in the camera.
“Let me show You those snapshots,” says Jones grimly. He hands You the four pictures. You take a quick look and your blood runs cold.
In the first picture You see what appears to be a room in some abandoned house. Cobwebs are everywhere, and a weird portrait of a man with ghoulish staring eyes hangs on the far wall. You can clearly see an object resting against the wall. It is an ax.
The next shot is fuzzy and dark— taken at night in a wooded area. A glowing figure can be seen in the distance between two trees. The figure appears to be carrying something.
A third shot shows the gates of the cemetery where Cutter was found. This shot is taken from outside those gates. The glowing figure is there, now large and menacing in the foreground. Though the figure is shrouded completely in a black robe, it is somehow still giving off an eerie light. And in its glowing bony white hand the thing is carrying a large ax.
You look at the fourth picture. It is different from the others. This is a close-up shot of a page of paper spread out on a tabletop. The photo appears to be of a coded message.
Jones has been watching You as You examine the photographs. “We don’t know where the picture inside the house was taken. We don’t know the identity of the glowing figure. Our experts have come up with nothing regarding the coded message. So now we turn to You. This case has a very disturbing feel. We only hope You can decipher the code and make some sense of what is going on.”
Can You crack the code before the forces of darkness gain the upper hand?
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