A Real Life Guide to Magic. Pt. 3

FIELD REPORT: Lucille Jennings

In 1971 Lucille Jennings was 26 years old, unmarried, and miserable living with her moderately wealthy parents in Milford, Connecticut.

The 1960’s had seen the decline of many Finishing Schools, and her secretarial position at a paper factory had not landed her the husband she (and her parents) had been hoping for.

Although, unbeknownst to her parents, Lucille was desperately in love (her words according to the report) with the factory’s CFO, Frederick Paxton.

Lucille volunteered much information about her attempts to attract the attention of Paxton.

These included more and more obvious attempts to wrangle ‘alone-time’ with him. She brought him lunch, and many times cooked it herself. In her own words, Lucille admitted that she wore more and more risqué clothing in order to accentuate her figure with the hope of enticing Paxton.

When this also failed she described finding excuses to initiate physical contact with Paxton. ‘I practically flattened my breasts against him and still nothing!’, she exclaimed to our interviewer.

[unprofessional commentary from field reporter regarding Jennings’ appearance removed]

Instead, her indiscreet behavior merely attracted attention from the wrong men. Namely the common, working men on the factory floor that she felt were beneath her.

Finally, in an all-out frontal assault, Lucille told Paxton how she felt about him and demanded to know how he felt about her.

The report notes that Lucille appeared disgusted as she recounted that Paxton kindly, but firmly, told her that nothing would ever happen between them, as he was happily married, and had been for 12 years. He had two children, an eight year old boy and a 5 year old girl, with a third on the way in 2 months.

Lucille told him that she could also have his children, at which point Paxton shut the conversation down and told her to go back to work.

[unprofessional commentary from field reporter regarding Jennings’ behavior removed]

What happened next set a terrible chain of events in motion:

Paxton told his wife about Lucille’s advances.

No doubt he believed in total honestly within his marriage, and such a concept is admirable, but in this case it resulted in tragedy.

[unprofessional commentary from field reporter regarding Paxton’s manhood removed]

The next day, Miriam Paxton, 7 months pregnant, arrived at the factory. She physically attacked Lucille, screaming and cursing the entire time.

Frederick attempted to intervene, but Lucille reports that Miriam ‘was a madwoman who could not be contained’, and so she balled herself up on the floor in fetal position while Miriam kicked at her, spat at her, and recounted Lucille’s advances toward her husband to all who would listen, which was everyone, as work on the factory floor had stopped due to the attack.

Miriam was eventually taken away to calm down, and the management in charge of the factory summarily dismissed Lucille with no severance or hope of a reference.

Lucille described walking past all the men she had rejected in the past, trying not to see the satisfied smirks on their faces.

[unprofessional commentary from field reporter regarding Jennings’ removed]

Unfortunately, she kept seeing them in her mind, along with Miriam’s rage-twisted face as the pregnant woman attacked her. Lucille lay curled up in bed for the next 2 days. Crying constantly while her parents scoured the employment ads for another position for her.

It was on that second night that she saw the book.

She told our interviewers that she was still crying, and that when she wiped away the tears the book was there, in her room, on the floor and propped up against the wall near her bedroom door.

Lucille reports being immediately struck by the size of it. It was so large, she knew she had never seen it before. She had slept only poorly so she doubted that her parents had brought it in… yet that was the only answer.

She dragged herself out of bed and approached the book. She reported seeing strange markings, but then felt what she called a ‘dizzying mental wrenching’, and suddenly realized she was wrong. It wasn’t strange markings, it was English. It read:

‘A Real-Life Guide to Magic’.

Lucille picked up the book and placed it on her bed. Flipping through the pages she saw what she called ‘recipes’ for magic spells.

Immediately she slammed the book closed, picked it up and hauled it up to her chest.

Lucille claims she instinctively knew the book was real. She knew she could use the book to get the things she wanted. She reports feeling as if ‘understanding was flowing into her’.

At this point Lucille did not hesitate. She paged through the book looking for one of the pages she knew must be there - a love spell.

She found it, or one of them in any case. At this point she claims to have paused for just a moment, but the thought of the beating and public humiliation she suffered at the hands of Miriam Paxton angered her and drove away any reservations. She opened her mouth and began reading out the spell, which Lucille said was like some sort of dry, joyless poem.

She told the interviewers that even though she was seeing English, she was sure somehow that she was not speaking English aloud.

After finishing the brief enchantment. Lucille reported being disappointed that there was no sound, flash of light, or other signifier to prove the spell had worked. Absolutely nothing seemed changed.

Despair began to set in again, but she fought it off, and took the book downstairs to show it to her parents.

While they were happy she was out of bed and not crying, they were somewhat worried that their daughter was asking them about a large book with a blank cover and blank pages, and acting as if there were words in it.

Over the course of a long argument, Lucille realized that her parents could not see any of the writing in or on the book. Once again, some sort of acceptance flowed over her, as if to say ‘of course, that’s the way it should be’.

However, her parents strenuously denied gifting her the book. In fact, her father was considering calling the police, when there came frantic knocking at the door. Knocking, then furious smashing of the doorbell, followed by more knocking.

Lucille’s father went to the door, annoyed that someone would be turning up late at night like this. When he opened it, Lucille reported not being surprised at all that it was Frederick Paxton.

He immediately rushed in past Lucille’s father, straight to Lucille and began professing his love for her.

Her parents intervened, demanding to know about his wife and children, and what he said next Lucille remembers as words she should have heeded. He told her parents:

“I’ve left my wife. Her and the kids are nothing to me. Not anymore.”

After this there was a whirlwind courtship in which no expense was spared, and the two were hardly ever apart, which suited her fine.

Paxton’s pregnant wife received divorce papers, and a vicious divorce proceeding began, with Paxton again sparing no expense to essentially leave his wife and children beggared, as he felt that Lucille should be the recipient of all he had to offer her.

Eventually, within several weeks, the luster of Paxton’s unbridled affections began to fade. Lucille reports Paxton began ‘smothering her’. His intensity never wavered, and if she had not basically ordered him to go to work, to eat, to shave, to shower, he would do none of those things.

Lucille began to crave time to herself, and she admitted to our interviewers that Paxton’s complete and utter disregard for his wife and family did concern her.

[unprofessional commentary from field reporter regarding Jennings removed]

At first, after the embarrassment Lucille had suffered at the hands of Miriam, she had taken great pleasure in the woman’s anguish.

Miriam truly had no idea what had happened. According to Miriam’s statement to her lawyer, one night her and Frederick had been sitting together, watching television after the children had gone to bed, and suddenly Frederick had jumped up and ran out the door. That was the last she ever saw of the husband she had known.

In fact it was the last anyone ever saw of Frederick Paxton.

It soon became apparent to Lucille that the man she had doted on was gone. The clever japes, kind concern for others and confident, calm demeanor were all gone.

His fervent declarations of love were constant, and he had very little patience for anyone but Lucille. Friends and co-workers that were later interviewed remarked on this, and without exception concluded that Lucille had ‘done something to him’.

They could not know how true this was. Due to the power of The Guide, the man that had been Frederick Paxton had been erased. In his place was an automaton that desired only to please and be loved by Lucille Jennings.

Paxton had rented an expensive apartment for the two of them, and at Lucille’s command was sent to do grocery shopping for the pair. As Lucille waited, now dreading when Paxton would return, she was instead visited by a hysterical 9-months pregnant Miriam Paxton.

The two argued, and eventually fought. Lucille reports that she could not even feel the other woman’s blows, but in the struggle, Miriam lost her footing and struck her head on the corner of the coffee table.

(Unknown to Lucille, we obtained the Coroner’s report, and the finding was that Miriam was struck many times on the side of the head by a blunt object that has not been recovered.)

After this, the police got involved, and Lucille was worried that due to her dramatic decrease in popularity around the town that she would be unfairly accused of double-murder.

(According to our sources, the police were indeed about to arrest her for murder).

Her solution? The Guide.

It was ready at hand. Lucille told interviewers that she did not remember ever taking The Guide with her anywhere, it was always just there when she needed it. And so it was then.

Desperate to avoid a murder charge, Lucille used a spell in the book. The result of this spell was as such: Miriam Paxton disappeared.

Disappeared completely. No traces whatsoever. The body at the Coroner’s disappeared. The blood and urine samples on file at her obstetrician disappeared. There were no hairs on her hairbrush or any traces that she had actually lived in her home.

Without the body, the Police did not charge Lucille, and were too busy trying to figure out what actually happened to Miriam’s body, apparently abducted directly from the Coroner’s office.

Frederick Paxton had been expected to move back into his house to take care of his children, but declared that he did not want to. He claimed that he would have children with Lucille, but those ‘other children’ were dead to him.

At this point, Lucille had had enough. She just wanted to get away from Paxton and what he had become, so she endeavored to ‘change him back’ using The Guide.

Except it was no longer there.

Lucille admits searching everywhere, and slowly feeling herself overcome with a sensation of dread as she realized that Paxton would be like this forever. There was no changing him back.

The book was gone.

After realizing her situation, she left Paxton and went back to her parents home. She told them everything, but they didn’t believe anything she said about The Guide.

They offered her a choice: be disowned and leave the house immediately, or get ‘help’ and learn to be the proper woman they had raised.

Unwilling to live without her parents (or someone’s) money, and no longer wanting to be with Paxton, she had no choice but to accept their offer.

Lucille’s parents placed her in a psychiatric treatment facility, with instructions to hold her “until she became sane again.” By all accounts, Lucille was a difficult patient.

This is where the Organization found her, approximately 14 months after The Guide disappeared.

Using their influence, they were able to gain access to her and hear her story.

The case file indicates that Lucille was released to the Organization, which had furnished documents establishing them as a special treatment center. After this transfer Lucille was never seen again.

My guess is that she was brought back to one of the Organization’s research facilities and underwent one or more of the barbaric experiments done on Holders at that time. These experiments were usually fatal, and there is no evidence to suggest that Lucille managed to avoid or survive this fate.

This was not the end of the tragedy, however.

The Organization also collected Frederick Paxton. This was a man directly influenced by the power of The Guide, so interest in him was high. Obtaining him was quite easy.

The report states that Paxton was being held at a similar facility, having made a nuisance of himself around town after Lucille was sent away. After being arrested, he was later sent to a mental health facility.

Later, The Organization again falsified documents to arrange his transfer into their custody. It is reported that in order to get him to come willingly they simply told him Lucille was asking for him, and he nearly leapt into their vehicle.

They did not perform physical experiments on him at first. They merely observed his behavior as they told him over and over that she was coming to see him, and then told him that they had been mistaken - she was not coming after all.

The man snapped from euphoric, to positively devastated. The only in-between was blinding rage when they informed him that someone was keeping Lucille from him. Paxton had to be restrained and sedated at this point.

Researchers finally gathered what they felt was enough data, and then told Paxton that Lucille was dead (which she likely was).

The team studying him reported that he became ‘deeply melancholic’ and simply stopped responding to stimuli.

Apparently they tried to ‘jump-start’ Paxton by telling him that Lucille was alive, but it was too late. It seemed his mind had somehow disengaged, and could not be recovered.

As he stopped eating and drinking, Paxton began to waste away. In less than 3 weeks he died, never having spoken another word from the moment he was told of Lucille’s death. The autopsy revealed nothing extraordinary about his body.

The official report ends there, as the Organization felt they learned what they could of the incident. However, I looked back at history of this sad affair, and found even more misfortune left in the wake of The Guide’s influence.

After finding her missing from the facility, Lucille’s parents assumed she had managed to escape and live her life with Paxton (who as far as they knew had also disappeared).

They did not call the authorities, or make any effort to find her. Instead, life continued on without their daughter with virtually no change. Twice-annual trips to Europe, long cruises and society events with the right people in attempts to improve their social standing.

Lucille’s attitude and actions were not surprising, given her role models.

Worse than this, however, was the apparent fact that Lucille and Paxton had not been careful in the early days of their (literally magical) whirlwind romance. Lucille had become pregnant, and had given birth to a boy while in the treatment center. The baby was placed for adoption, as Lucille’s parents thought best.

The boy grew up rough, going from one bad situation to the next, finding himself in juvenile detention, then graduating to prison for robbery, and finally life without parole for committing 2 murders.

Paxton’s first family, his two children with his wife Miriam, went to live with Miriam’s parents in upstate New York.

Although they had money, they had virtually no supervision, and Paxton’s son overdosed on cocaine in his late teens. His daughter survived, but was essentially ‘married off’ to a man she clearly did not love in order to shore up a shaky merger between the companies of her grandparents and her new husband.

She overdosed on pills again and again, but survived each time. Until she finally slit her wrists and had done with it in her early thirties.

A truly regrettable ending for Paxton’s family. And why? What was the cause of all this tragedy?

A shallow, immature person used the power of The Guide to get what she thought she wanted, without regard to the consequences, and without respect to the freedom that individual people are supposed to enjoy.

Consider what could be done by someone of more intelligence and will.

Truly terrifying.