Featuring stories from Eric Shanower, Troy Riser, Michael Tierney, and seventeen other masters of the form, FANTASTIC VOYAGES is all about doors --
Chasing the Cherokee Devil, Huck Takes a Cold Shower
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Submitted by RJ Carter on Wed, 11/06/2019 - 22:20
At the end of the previous episode, the AIMS Team had done something they had never done before: caught something in one of their elaborate traps. Granted, it wasn't a Bigfoot. In fact, it was just some guy in a black cloak, carrying a torch through the woods.
But the guy must have been David Copperfield, because by the time they got to the trap, all that was there was the torch. The cloaked figure had apparently tossed out some Floo Powder and apparated on them. They open the trap and test the floor, which crumbles at the slightest pressure, which tells them this cloaked figure doesn't touch the ground when he walks.
Confused, bewildered, and bumfuzzled, the team decides to get some advice from Merlin.. or rather, what we get is...
THE RETURN OF TRAPPER
Trapper drives out to meet the team, and they tell him about the Waya Woman, the Silver Giant, the Cherokee Death Cat... the bone yards, the thermal images... and, of course, the black cloaked figures.
To Trapper, this all sounds too familiar. He reminds the team they've run into black cloaked figures before, and that they need to go after the next two skinwalkers on their list -- the Raven Mocker and the Cherokee Devil. Of course, how those are the next two on the list is curious, seeing as they haven't checked any others off their list, as far as trapping or even finding them. But I digress...
So it's back to Ashe County, North Carolina, to come face to face once more with the Cherokee Devil. The last time they hunted him, Huckleberry went missing for hours, and they found him naked and holding up a totem pole. But ever since he saw the film in the Black Forest, bits of his memories have been coming back, triggered by the image of a rock overhang and the sound of falling water.
As the team enters Ashe County, Huck gets more and more withdrawn. He tells the team that the Devil knows they are there, and he tells them about his memories of a big rock overhang. He believes they need to go there, to find what they're missing. Unfortunately, he doesn't know where that rock is, so the team has to go hunting for it.
A giant rock, it turns out, is something they can actually find when they set out after it, and Huck remembers being there with two other people, participating in some bizarre ritual where two of them stood against a wall, while the third had to walk a path and sit under the freezing waterfall. He believes he has to do this again to remember. It's thirty-five degrees outside, but he won't be talked out of it. So the team builds a fire and lets him proceed. But they can't leave him there for long before he starts trembling. Fearing pneumonia, they force him away and to the fire, but he gets up again and heads elsewhere under the overhang. He recalls a rock -- he points it out. it's covered in leaves, and he says that those leaves weren't there before. This makes sense, since leaves have a tendency to fall in the autumn, and it's been over a year since they went after the Cherokee Devil.
They brush away the leaves and find a carving -- the letter F.
Perhaps Bigfoot has a chisel and was paying respects to a passed Bigfoot?
But Huckleberry remembers something else the rest of the team has forgotten (this seems to be the night they forget everything they've ever done). He remembers the last thing the Scarecrow said in the film they watched in the Black Forest:
"Six steps to the west from the rock with the F."
Sadly, there's not enough time left in this episode to walk that far, so we'll have to tune in next week to see what bizarre and/or utterly meaningless clue they find.
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