THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: ON THE STRANGE EVENTS AT PRENTICE FARMS

Dunnet Spring, Wisconsin Territory, Prentice Farms February the 23rd 1847,
Lynch,

It seems I should write to you once again, even after previous letters have found nothing but silence in return for their ink (though it must be noted the post delivery here is questionable at the best and the postmaster a well known drunkard who is fit to drive his carriage into the river as deliver his charge). Still, enclosed find my package containing the oddity I have located here at the farm, which I must entrust to Pan-the-Postman himself, and pray to whatever provenance overlooks the mail that it finds its way to you at the school. I cannot wait in good conscience any longer. My tools are poor, and my examinations (what of them I might make in a farm house in the wilds) have come to their sad and withered conclusion. No other methods here are permitted to me. Please, send a note to say you've received them? I feel we might be on the brink of a transcendent discovery.

If you have not received the previous missives, I apologize. But, in summary:

I was summoned to Prentice farms from Oshkosh on 12 Oct by revered Gilmour (see the other letter for more on our uneducated reverend) because the locals were in an uproar about it. My predisposition with Latin was known, as well as my attendance to the college, and so I was the selected man to look in on the Prentice's home, thinking little of it.

The locals were there when we pulled up, five men bundled in winter wear carrying a storm lantern and guns, waiting outside the Prentice house. Even in the stillness of the winter night, even outside, you could smell the dead.

On the wall of the front door was the Latin, drawn with a fingertip of ashes: Spiritus non transiet. The spirits shall not pass.

The reverend, I, and Frederick Grant entered the home with the storm lantern.

In the front hallway were the two girls, each let open by a bird gun and spread about the walls. You know how much time I spent in the cutting, and it was no news to me, but the reverend left and did not return. Grant held his ground and the lamp. The smell was poor, but not as poor as it might had been if the home had been heated. The stillness in the air and the flat stench told me much — no fire had been lit there in some time. I looked into the parlor and saw the stove, emptied and the cordwood gone.  

"Mr. Prentice has been known to truck in books best..." Grant began, and that is when we saw the woman.

A figure (later Mr. Grant informed me, indeed, it was NOT one of the Prentice family) exited the door to the den, some twenty-five feet down the hallway, lit by a phosphorescent ghost light. The figure was most strange, so let me put my mind upon a careful description.

-It was a tall woman. Perhaps even 6 feet in height.
-Her hair was shorn short, and was perhaps a dull green in color, and cut in the fashion of a monk, or someone of some strange religious order. Like a mendicant, or even someone from the wilds of Central Europe.
-She wore bifocals whose armatures were made from strange, flat, non-reflective grey metal like pewter.
-She wore long pants, high-boots, and a wool garment that looked like a Lobsterman's hang. It was a bizarre outfit which made no clear sense to me.  
-She held a small, flat, box, like a cigarette case, up and above her head. It was from this object the phosphorescence seemed to emanate.

The first exchange was brief, loud, and confusing. Warnings were made, and as she continued to walk towards us and we saw she held a black, flat and square object in the shape of a revolver, Mr. Grant shot at her, twice. The reaction was strange. She fell to the ground, seemingly struck by the second shot, but in a manner which made it seem as if she was reacting too late to the report.

Then, in the roar of the shot that shook through our heads, she stood back up and looked around as if she had been surprised by something she could not see, but could perhaps hear. Retrieving her light box from the ground, she continued on her way, and then the apparition STEPPED THROUGH Grant.

We fled.

I can tell you Lynch, of all present, only I showed the proper response. My wonder and excitement was evident to all and impossible to hide, and, for their part, the others were most pleased that someone WISHED to go back into the home at all.   

Only I would return, and even then, I was watched carefully. A group of impromptu lawmen arrived, and an undertaker, and many slept out in the horse barn and others at the neighbors, as we went upon the work of puzzling this out. Both the reverend and Mr. Grant quit camp that first night, and refuse to speak of it to me even now.  

During the day, I soon found, nothing appeared amiss in the home. I found odd items laid out on one of the tables, crystals of bismuth and salt, cut roots, robin's eggs and more, but there were no books as Grant and the others spoke of. The girls were the only bodies in the home and were taken out, stiff-legged and near frozen on the second day. Of Mr. and Mrs. Prentice, no sign could be found.  

I waited the second night with my revolver, squatted in the front hall.  

When the woman appeared, I noted her countenance and movement was identical to the previous evening. Like a magic-lantern show put on once more. Repeating like a kinetograph. Round and round. Den door. Strange, small, light box. Up the hallway, pausing at the stains on the walls where the two girls once laid, dead.

I took my time and stood very close to her as she squatted to look on the wall with the bloodstains, holding her strange rectangle up like a lantern and then to her face in a strange manner whose purpose I could not discern. I saw her lips moving and realized she was speaking, but I could not say what.  

I still do not know why I did this, but I slowly placed the barrel of my Colt inside the light box as she held it still.

The gun went off, seemingly on its own. The woman vanished at the moment of the report, and it was a moment before my senses returned in the dark. The men were at the door but refused to enter, shouting their inquiries from the dark of the stoop. I assured them all was well.  

What I found was her strange, thin, light box, deformed and spinning, on the hallway floor. It was wholly solid. I picked it up, but it produced no light. The blast from the Colt had deformed it, bending the outer layer (a metal I surmised was aluminum as seen in Bunsen, et al.) into a peak like a small mountain. The far side was shattered glass. On the back of the case, etched, are the words (in English), ruined by the gunshot, but of which I could discern an "h" a "e" and an "I".

This is the strange object that I have enclosed in the package which I call the case light. 6.25 ounces. Composed of aluminum and a chemical glass which melts into various gasses and heavy compounds when exposed to flame, and inside! A marvelous-crafty Swiss watch like array of wafers, screws, bolts, and wires, as well as what I am convinced is some sort of miraculous, flat, chemical battery. Here also were many letters and numbers, and last, an odd, almost haunting statement. "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China."

I simply am at a loss as to what to make of THAT.

It is a machine which makes light without smoke or standard fuel, I am sure. But its origins, and the origins of the strange specter are completely beyond me. Perhaps you and the boys at the school can puzzle anything else out and WRITE BACK.

Yrs.,
Benoit