Alert: Venture cautiously near Chateaugay Lake’s derelict clock tower, where the diabolical Spriggan flutters, its eerie, mechanized aria ensnaring wayward souls in a maddening spiral of absurdity and doomed futurism beyond all reason.
THE WICKED WORKS OF WHIMSYWISP SPRIGGAN
A Startling Account of Mechanical Sorcery and the Monstrous Crimes of a Madwoman!
By Your Most Humble and Unflinching Chronicler of Vice and Peculiarity
Chateaugay Lake, 1912— In the festering bog of human ingenuity, where the noble pursuit of knowledge is oft perverted by arrogance and unchecked ambition, there lurked one Dr. Cinatha Aubay, whose name shall be forever entwined with the most ghastly and unnatural mechanizations yet inflicted upon this trembling Earth.
Let it be known! The horrors that transpired upon this tranquil lake were not the misfortunes of happenstance, nor the result of some spectral affliction, but the deliberate and devilish design of a woman whose mind had long since been devoured by her own lunatic experiments. She played at godhood—and paid the price in blood and ruin!
Let us begin where all such dreadful tales must—at the scene of the crime.
THE LADY OF THE CLOCK TOWER AND HER UNHOLY ARTIFICE
Dr. Aubay had made her lair in the Seth Thomas Clock Tower, that imposing citadel of gears and pendulums looming over Chateaugay Lake like the idle grin of a corpse. Once a respected horologist and natural philosopher, she had turned her talents to more esoteric pursuits, fashioning infernal devices that mocked the laws of God and man alike.
Her most insidious creation? The Whimsywisp Spriggan.
Oh, reader! What treachery lay in its name! It was neither whimsical nor wispy, but a clockwork chimera of dread purpose—a fiend of polished brass and iridescent filigree, its delicate wings a deception, its delicate form a ruse! This mechanized mischief-maker, no taller than a bottle of absinthe, possessed a singular ability: it could sing. And not merely sing—but charm, ensnare, and lure the weak-minded into the abyss!
Eyewitnesses—some now conveniently vanished—described the infernal spectacle:
“I saw it with me own eyes, I swear to ya!” raved Pratt Hill, a man of questionable repute but unshakable conviction. “It flitted through the trees, hummin’ like a damned choirboy, and next thing I knew, my feet weren’t my own! Followed it right into the bog like a babe to slaughter!”
“It weren’t a bird, weren’t an insect—it was somethin’ else,” muttered old Everett Doane, clutching his brandy glass with knuckles white as tombstones. “It sang—like silver bells in a dream. I was lost an’ didn’t even know it, ’til the water was at my waist an’ somethin’ grabbed my leg.”
And what became of those poor souls who heeded the call of the Whimsywisp? Their bodies were never found—only their voices remained, echoing through the Adirondack woods in soft, mournful harmony.
But mark this well! The automaton was not the end—merely the beginning.
THE CHRONOPHAGE AND THE FATE OF DR. AUBAY
Dr. Aubay’s masterpiece of madness was the Chronophage—a device of uncertain function but undeniable menace. Some say it devoured time itself, others claim it was a bridge to somewhere else, where the natural order ceased to hold dominion. Whatever the case, one fateful evening, the doctor activated her machine.
The result? Catastrophe.
A great and unnatural wind shrieked through the tower, tearing stone from mortar, as the Whimsywisp Spriggan let forth a final, melancholy wail. The sky split. The lake convulsed. And in an instant—Dr. Aubay was gone.
Gone! Swallowed by the hungry void she herself had awakened.
The townsfolk who gathered at the site beheld ruin and terror—the shattered remains of the clock tower twisted beyond recognition, gears and cogs embedded in the soil like shrapnel from some otherworldly war. The ground pulsed with an eerie luminescence, and in the distance, floating just above the water’s surface, was a lone, flickering light.
The Whimsywisp Spriggan.
THE CURSE OF THE SPRIGGAN
Though Dr. Aubay was no more, her cursed creation remained.
To this very day, as the moon casts its cold and indifferent glow upon Chateaugay Lake, travelers report strange happenings—the tinkling of unseen chimes, the flicker of something small darting through the trees. And those who hear its song? They are never seen again.
But the most disturbing accounts come from those who have survived.
“It led me astray, it did, but I wrenched my ears shut an’ ran for my life!” gasped Marjorie Hatch, an old woman who once claimed to have heard the Spriggan’s melody near the ruins. “But when I got back to town, I looked at the clock… and two whole hours had vanished!”
“It’s still out there,” whispers Jeremiah Crowe, the only man to ever glimpse the thing up close and live to tell of it. “Waitin’. Singin’. And someday, mark me words—it’s gonna finish what it started.“
FINAL WARNING TO THE READER!
Should you find yourself upon the wooded trails of Chateaugay Lake on some mist-heavy eve—should you hear, faint and distant, the sound of delicate chimes and an eerie lullaby—do not tarry, do not follow, and for the love of all things holy, DO NOT LISTEN!
For the Whimsywisp Spriggan endures—and its song is but the prelude to your undoing.
What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?