Pip's Hellsborough Diary
Welcome to my journal. Here you will find diarised entries of my field notes and research when I spend time in Hellsborough. I write diary entries frequently, but if I haven't for a while, I'm either not in Hellsborough, my work in the off-world has had to take prescendence, or something tragic has happened.
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Pinned Diary Entry Collections:
- Stranger in a Strange Land
- The Origin of Semagrams & the First Crossing of The Hinge
- The Seven Guardians of The Hinge
The Legend of Loxley Bottom (The Gabbleratchets of Sophie Hinchcliffe) Chapter two: Naval.
They dumped her body in the Loxley pond. She was pecked and bitten, her eyes rendered to sockets, her body stripped.
These man headed beasts, the flying dogs known as the gabbleratchets -- gabriel ratchets, angels of evil -- did heinous things to what was left of Sophie.
They are the most bitter of all Dunlockslyn's creatures: Bloody scars on the faces of the great one, the deity: D'divi.
Those Gabblratchets sucked her soul right out through them empty stares.
Naval was just a boy, as Sophie was just a girl. They were both fourteen. That is the age of consent in Hellsborough -- does that seem weird? It's the same in Italy, or so I'm told, anyway.
Ordinarily, Sophie would have been home and in Naval's arms a few hours ago.
Naval was an impatient young man. He paced about, wondering where is girlfriend might be -- who she was with.
To be fair to her, this was unusual, but Naval was nothing if not the jealous type. All sorts of scenarios flooded through his immature mind. But never in a million years could he imagine the real truth of what had happened.
Livid with rage and with the passion of the green-eyed monster that he was, he set out from their home in Winn Gardens, heading back through the murk and drizzle down the Middlewood road towards Hellsborough centre.
All the way, he ranted.
How he would punish Sophie when he found her in the company of her friends, enjoying herself an laughing at him behind his back. He wanted to punish her, he was angry.
He went into the park, knowing that his mood was vile and he needed to chill himself down for a while.
He sat on a bench and inhaled deeply on a vape-pipe, muddling his brain with intoxicating fumes and letting the bliss reach him, if only for a short while.
It dispelled his anger, temporarily at least.
Again he was filled with a sense on concern for his late and missing girlfriend, and he let this drive him now, allowed his concern to displace the jealousy that raged within him -- but if he did find her in the company of others, and she hadn't let him know, then D'divi forgive him, he didn't know how he'd react.
#### HMM::IN('Struggling with your mental health? Doctor Farantees can help!')
hits:: 347196 // [this]2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:9b7a:1422:bb2a [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//73]__ // now:: 79.rain-rooter.4.14.19.3.5
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Pffft, nowt wrong with my mental health! Naval left the bench and park behind, heading towards the nearest bar on the Middlewood Road.
Sophie wasn't there. He asked the bar keep, not being able to help his passive-aggressiveness, but the bar keep hadn't seen her she said.
He had a beer anyway. He liked his beer. This place had a very pleasant sour on offer, which caught him in the gills.
He asked more folk -- customers -- whether they had seen Sophie. They hadn't, but they knew her, they knew who he was talking about. She was the lovely little lass that worked in Farantees supermarket. Many of them would make a bee-line for her checkout, she was such a pleasant lass, they said -- always ready with her lovely smile -- and she had a wicked sense of humour too!
Pleased on the outside, but his jealousy raging on the inside, Naval crossed across the Middlewood road to the next bar along.
He asked the same question to the bar keep and received the same answer. He drank more beer. He asked the other customers the same questions he had asked in the first bar, and got the same fondness for Sophie that he had found before. They loved his Sophie. They all knew her from Farantees supermarket.
Naval fumed into his beer. And so this theme continued as he visited each and ever bar on the Middlewood road. The same on Bradfield road. The same on Langsett. In each bar another beer.
Then, full of ale, he moved on to shorts -- knocking back rhum like it was going out of fashion. He started to forget why he was here. He started to enjoy himself, but something inside of him knew that that wasn't the point -- that wasn't why he was here at all.
#### HMM::IN('Hexikid! Hexikid! Hexikid!')
hits:: 196 // [this]2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:9b7a:1422:bb2a [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//73]__ // now:: 79.rain-rooter.4.14.23.13.19
Hexikid! Hexikid! Hexikid! Hexikid!
The hexikid street cleaner ploughed along the road, siphoning dirt and grease, spraying detergent into the gutterways. Gorging itself on detritus, cleansing the street with its bulk.
Naval watched as it passed, mesmerised by its impeccable sanitation.
Then, maybe, he was too far gone. But he kept asking his questions. He was like a rabbid grizzler with a dyapnid in its jaws. He was like a crazed ashpeep singing the song for all to hear, over and over and over.
But the answer everywhere was the same.
They all knew Sophie. They all loved Sophie.
Many of them knew Naval as well, he was no stranger here and hereabouts, so that made him feel better, but his jealousy raged within him, just as his concern for his girlfriend grew more intense.
The time approached midmurk.
Did you know the gabbleratchets were abroad tonight? Someone said.
So this will sound very strange, since I am here, and you are there. All of my communications pass through a middleman -- my trusted friend and associate in your world, who does my marketing and turns many of my ideas into a reality that you can see and touch.
I'm stuck here now, I've written about why that is, and I've also said that I am going to tell you how I not only survived in this place -- as an immigrant -- but how I have flourished. There are 2 sides to that story -- 1. is making ¢hits in this place (for ¢hits, read money), and 2. is making ¢hits in your world, by telling you about the way that things are here, and how you can experience something similar to what I have done -- eg. The Dark Peak -- without putting your life in danger, like I have and traversing The Hinge.
How does #2 help me, I hear you ask?
I have written before about how the murk crosses The Hinge. Of course it does -- and the Loxley river too. All air and water does.
And that got me thinking about communication. If humidity and water crosses The Hinge, couldn't data do so too?
The technology of The Dark Peak is far more advanced than yours, and it's all just atoms after all.
And I found a way to send my despatches to my contact in the off-world -- there's a way to connect from our networks here to your networks there -- don't ask me how it's done, I just requested it on the hivemind -- and it worked! -- I'm told you have these things called GPT's now: Generative Pre-Transformers, that are a rudimentary technology similar to the hivemind, so try asking that.
And there is this thing called the blockchain. The blockchain allows me to get paid on my side of The Hinge too, as well as send ¢hits back to your side. It's just data. It flows like a river or the murk, inter-dimensional portals are no blocker to data transmission via the blockchain.
You can make ¢hits too, in your world, by listening to what I tell you and getting involved from a distance. Trust me, it's safer that way.
I guess maybe this feels a bit like some sort of LitRPG type thing, and you can think of it like that if you want, although, any levelling up that I do is strictly on a needs must basis. But there are games coming that you can play my role, and then you can level up as if you were me.
This is life under an alien civilisation. This is what life is about in Hellsborough.
I haven't mentioned the seven for quite some time. It's as if as soon as I committed (resigned?) myself to living on this side of The Hinge, that they accepted me as who I am, and that I have some right to be here, and am no longer dangerous, and that is that. Which -- after the previous daily monitoring, and constant sightings and "bumping into's", is something of a relief, and yet, strangely, disquieting. I'm actually sat here, in the bar -- by myself for a change -- chewing my finger nails at the anxiety of it all -- am I still someone being monitored by the seven, or am I now accepted, because I am here, and the organic network can do its job and surveil me as much as is now required.
I think the latter must be true. No longer am I crossing The Hinge willy-nilly, and no longer am I bringing anything in from the off-world. I think this is what all that was about. I still don't think they know what I was bringing. So that's good. My service has not been wasted.
But enough of that. Back to the seven. It's been more than weeks in come cases, months even:
1. Seen twice since mid-Fecunder. Once running. Once with her barker and man. Not on usual schedule or route since.
2. Not seen in the months since I came here permanently. Before that, was always looking ill, maybe off sick. Or dead.
3. Still about on a weekly basis, the only one. I think I might love her. Caught her looking at me last weekend, the minx.
4. After "bumping" regularly, seen once since the nights turned dark (yes, they have daylight saving here too), nothing since, that was over a month ago now.
5. One "bumping into" several weeks ago, nothing since.
6. Two "over the other side of the road" sightings, but no pleasantries, and none of those wonderful smiles.
7. One brief wave a few weeks ago, since then, no sign.
I am in Hellsborough all the time, but the seven clearly have been given instructions to relax their observation of me. I guess that actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it. I mean, why would the nascenti waste resources on me now that I am here all the time and the organic network can do its job -- not that it's great in Hellsborough from what I understand, but it'll pick me up in The Dark Peak when I'm out that way, and they know that I'm not too-ing and fro-ing over The Hinge, so I'm not raising any alarms, and of course, they have my communications monitored via my psycmask.
So there you have it.
Do I miss the seven? Yes, is the answer to that. They were a distraction. Now I don't have that distraction, I almost feel more lonely now that I'm here all the time than I did when I was being watched.
But I guess that sounds weird.
What's the betting that as soon as I publish this, everything changes? Like I've put my head above the parapet.
Also known as "The Gabbleratchets of Sophie Hinchcliffe", this is work based on research that I have undertaken into the recent modern age of the history of Hellsborough under the rule of the nascenti. A local girl and simple shop worker, Sophie Hinchcliffe, who -- inexplicably -- becomes the first CEO of the DPDC -- that is the first Chief Executive Officer (the original boss, if you will) of the Dark Peak District Council, the local government that administers Hellsborough and The Dark Peak for the nascenti overlords.
Sophie is a major character in the forthcoming sequel to "Dark Peak -- Hellsborough Chronicles book one", so it is only right that I do the research to uncover her backstory, most of which I have gleaned from the local library in Hellsborough -- an awesome resource for research, because, as you would expect, those nascenti overlords want the populace here and hereabouts to understand the importance of local characters that have helped to define their rule.
The Legend of Loxley Bottom (The Gabbleratchets of Sophie Hinchcliffe) Chapter one: Sophie.
It came from above -- that sound. Piercing the squall and murk, a strangled yelping that chilled Sophie to the bone through her soaked overcoat.
She didn't have time to look up -- her scream caught in her throat as she fought for breath. She zoned out long before her comfortably closeted toes lost contact with the gritstone kerbside.
Always wear sensible shoes, her boss said, they'll see thee reyt. They didn't see her right this time -- one of those comfortable shoes was left behind on the pavement. Her limp body was carried, talons biting into her shoulder flesh, into the damp murknight.
Sophie left school at 14. No-one expected much, she certainly didn't. She'd flunked most of her exams, and she wasn't expected to achieve much. It was, what it was. She didn't much care, she was happy with her lot.
A job in retail seemed like plenty and she was content. She had a job on the shop floor, it paid her chits, she had a boyfriend, her world was complete. What more does a young lass need, eh?
#### HMM::IN('Have you had a fall? No win, no fee.')
hits:: 499722 // [this]2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:9b7a:111d:97d4 [loc::hellsborough//middlewood_road//1189]__ // now:: 79.rain-rooter.4.14.16.43.17
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Faranteeeeeees!!
That was the last thing that Sophie remembered -- that ad on the hivemind.
After that she felt nothing. She was nothing.
Faranteeeeeees!! That's the sound that opens all of their shops every morning. Farantees owns all sort of shops -- hair dressers and barber shops, take-out joints, gruizer showrooms, coffee shops, flower shops. They have insurance places, and book shops, off-licenses and places that sell art, and places that sell nick-knacks and local produce; gardening equipment and plants, pet food and ironmongery, haberdashery and homeware.
Farantees sells pretty much everything that you could ever need -- and all their shops open with the same refrain: Faranteeeeeees!!
If you are lucky enough to live on the Bradfield road or the Middlewood road between the junction and the park, or on Hawksley avenue, then you can get anything you would ever need, without ever having to cross the road. Farantees has it all.
Sophie always got to work fifteen minutes before opening, as she was supposed to do -- and she never missed a single day; she turned up seven days a week. Sophie did what she was asked, and that worked just fine for Farantees -- they trusted Sophie and they valued her as a solid member of the team. And that's the way it should be, isn't it?
That's the way that things work in Hellsborough: A place with no social security or health service, a place where you need to work hard to not just better yourself, but to provide for basic needs that your family might need.
We're not talking food, since that -- as a basic commodity -- if available freely from community feed points like those at Corner News on the Middlewood road or the Green shop on Wadsley lane -- these places are dotted about every two hundred paces or so -- you won't starve in Hellsborough. These days, if you desire more than basic nutrition -- and most do -- you have as many choices as you can think of, and Farantees will see thee reyt whatever it is tha fancies.
It was a Mard'y, the day after Splend'y -- and everyone loves Splend'y. The murk was heavy in Hellsborough, and the day had been drismal, something to do with the time of year: It was 79.rain-rooter.4.14 -- nothing special, just a regular Mard'y, and folk were staying at home in general, it weren't a pleasant day for shopping, so the only ones out were them that needed supplies after the weekend.
It had been a steady day for Sophie. She had been on the checkout, but she hadn't exactly been rushed off her feet. A couple of customers an hour was about it, so she had also been consigned to stacking shelves and stock-taking, which is what tended to happen on quiet days like these.
The rain continued to fall, and the roof continued to leak. Buckets had been positioned throughout the store to collect the incoming stream, but the squall poured in through those holes like Dunlocksyn had decreed an injustice on the holy trinity.
As the gloaming approached, the number of customers stifled from a trickle to nothing, and Sophie's manager gave he go-ahead to shut up shop.
Tha should all get 'ome, he said, get thasen away for the neet. I'll see thee all tomorrow.
And with that, they all did as they were bid.
Murkfall was upon them as they left the closed shop. Most lived local enough to walk, but Sophie was a trolley bus ride away at Winn Gardens -- just a couple of stops. Most of the time she would save chits and walk, but on a night like tonight, she opted to stay a little drier and wait for transport -- that rain were still siling down, and it were best to stay under the cover of the tram stop until something come along.
Sophie waited. Alone at the tram stop. The Middlewood road was deserted. The drizzle and mizzle continued.
The lights of the trolley bus shone dimly through the murk. The tram itself wasn't visible, just those searching lights that said that it might be on the way. Sophie waited for those lights to come closer.
Then the whining and whelping began. Sophie ignored it. She concentrated on the hivemind, on the messages, on the music, even on the advertisements. But that whining got louder and more persistent.
It infiltrated her mind, cutting through the hiveshout like a shard cutting out the throat of a xinian.
She couldn’t ignore it any longer. It was driving her insane. She ran from the cover of her shelter, into the rain and the murk. Her slender frame was soaked instantly, but still she ran, away from that piercingly shrill whining that sliced into her brain and drove her to the edge of madness.
The gabbleratchets saw her and swooped, pecking at her hair, making her swot them away. Flinging and flaying her arms about, she defended herself as best she could, but there was too many of them, they were too strong. They took her under the arms, two on each arm, their talons biting into her, squeezing, piercing her flesh, drawing thin streams of crimson blood. They lifted her into the sky. She screamed and shouted. She kicked and splayed her legs, trying to impede their ability to fly. She failed. They took her from the street and kicking and hollering, she was lifted into the air -- up, above the tram stop, up above the first and second floors of the nearby buildings, up above the roofs.
The gabbleratchets screeched and squabbled and carried Sophie away into the murknight.
Is this a new cryptid? The giant raptor of Worral...
We all know that the murk harbours unknown horrors, including a number of cryptids. But I had heard no word about this one that I spotted recently.
Likely a remnant of the saurian empire, since all birds are decedents of the dinosaurs -- as well as milting, who if you're interested in this world, you should learn about. Milting are the founding race, without milting, there would be no world here or hereabouts.
It was only the briefest of sightings -- just the glimmer of a wing.
But I knew from that small glimpse that this was a huge flapper. At the moment I saw that wing, it had arched out of the trees, just above and in front of the road that I was walking down, out the back of Worral on the slop down towards the Middlewood road.
The sun was in my eyes, it was just a fleeting moment. But I also heard its shriek -- shrill as a banshee, and distinct -- there aren't any other flappers in this neck of the woods that would make a sound anything like that.
I am positive it was not some random rooterwing or anything mundane like that. It had a distinct speckling, a plumage unlike anything that you would expect to see on a day-to-day basis. No, this was something different. The wing was primarily white, with brown speckling, and it was large -- a good foot and a half long, so that it must have belonged to some ripper flapper of some sort, not that there are that many around these parts.
I see many hoverwings, but it was too big for that, and not the same modus operandi either. This was more of a ripperwing, but the colouring was different -- usually I expect them to be grey, not brown. I have to say, it reminded me distinctly of a carrion eater in the off-world that I used to see around Oxford -- the red kite. Certainly it was about the right size (and massive), but again, the colouring wasn't right. And those creatures do not hunt like the ripperwing, they exist on carrion -- the dead, things that have died. They do not hunt live prey.
So I am left with the impression that this flapper -- whatever is was -- was some new cryptid of the murk. The roc of Worral, or at least the giant raptor of Worral.
I hunted for it that day, I spent an age staring back at where I had seen it. But nothing. I traversed the steep path back from the bottom of Stockarth lane back up to the top of the ledge at Worral road, which affords an excellent view over this beasts hunting ground, but I saw no further sign of it -- which of course made me doubt my own sanity to begin with.
Did I see this thing, did I see this giant raptor? I know I did, and I'll prove it one way or another. I mean, there has to be other eye witnesses, surely?
Anyone?
On the serious case of the desolution of The Hinge...
You've all been asking me questions -- difficult ones.
The biggest query you have, is how I am able to communicate from another dimension -- or at least a parallel universe -- I'm no physicist, so I don't know the difference between one or the other to be honest, but I do get where you're coming from with your questions.
Back in the early days, when I first came here -- to Hellsborough -- that was 79.hail-ripperthroat. I didn't have a clue about much. I was flailing about this way and that, and I crossed The Hinge many times. I had to go back home many times. But I couldn't stay away either.
That was bad. Bad for me. Bad for the population of Hellsborough. And, I'm sorry to say, bad for you too -- if you are an inhabitant of Hillsborough, S6. That criss-crossing of The Hinge that I did, weakened it. That's why -- or at least, that's one reasons why, dark matter is leaving Hellsborough.
And from what I understand, dark matter leaving Hellsborough is not a good thing. In your world, when dark matter interacts with matter, the result is destruction -- complete annihilation. At the moment, I understand the leakage is minimal, but if I were to keep crossing The Hinge, it would get weaker and weaker, until finally it ceased to exist at all, and then all that dark matter would flow into your world and collide with the matter, and that would be that. That would be the destruction of the whole world -- not just Hillsborough/Hellsborough, not just The Dark Peak, not just Sheffield, not just the UK. Not just Europe -- the entire world.
I'm staying in Hellsborough now. That seems the sensible thing to do: D'divi! I don't want to cause the destruction of the world!
So I'm stuck here, but I'm not complaining. I have work to do, and one of the things on my agenda is telling you about my experiences as a fledgling in Hellsborough:
I had no ¢hits. I had not much of anything. But not only did I survive, I prospered. And I owe it to you to share my experiences and my learning -- and I'll do that. I'll let you know everything I know about surviving and strategies for making some ¢hits -- and I reckon you can use them in the off-world -- in your world too.
But I'm getting off my original topic. I wanted to tell you about how you are receiving this message.
I'm in Hellsborough. I have a contact in Hillsborough. He's my publicity guy. He's not a professional or anything, just some guy I met on the Middlewood road in a bar, and we got chatting, you know how it goes -- he offered to help me out.
Sorry mate, you know who you are, and you have my fullest gratitude.
Back in hail.ripperthroat, last year, I brought him hand-written notes and drawings and the like, and left it at that, that was fine for starters.
I'll not give you his name here, but he's not had to find, should you wish to. He's a proper fixture in a number of the bars on the Middlewood road.
But now that I am "stuck" over here, I had to find another way. This year is 79.squall.longleg, and I have been here long enough to understand and find another way to communicate -- I can't just call up Twitter or Facebook on my phone, because 1. I have no phone and 2. There is no Interweb.
What I do have is a psycmask which connects me to the hivemind, which is essentially the same a 1 & 2 -- but they don't connect back to your Twitter or Facebook.
Not directly at least, that is.
I have written before about how the murk crosses The Hinge. Of course it does -- and the Loxley river too. All air and water does.
and that got me thinking about communication. If humidity and water crosses The Hinge, couldn't data do so too?
The technology of The Dark Peak is far more advanced than yours, and it's all just atoms after all.
And I found a way to send my despatches to my contact in the off-world -- there's a way to connect from our networks here to your networks there -- don't ask me how it's done, I just requested it on the hivemind -- and it worked!
So there's your answer, if you were asking. I am here is Hellsborough. My publicist is the other side of The Hinge in Hillsborough, and he posts my communications on this website, on my email newsletter, on Twitter/X, or wherever I request. For more understanding about this world, you could do worse than reading my curated guide which helped me understand this place, and might help you understand it too :)
