Rotten Comics: Flynn's Diary

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Rotten: The Lost Diary of John J. Flynn, U.S. Agent, as transcribed by Robert Horton.

The diary of John J. Flynn has recently been discovered at the National Archives. It is being reprinted here because of the interest generated by the newly-uncovered and disturbing events concerning the United States Special Agents William Wade and Mr. Flynn in the late 1870s. Subsequent entries will be reprinted regularly, as they become available.

An exerpt:

April 19, 1877

Miller of the Pinkertons (he has no Christian name, it seems, or that is his Christian name), saw me off at the train two days ago in St. Joseph after we had been out the previous night, drinking our way through a few of the town's more respectable saloons. At the station, he shook my hand gravely. "If it ever seems like there's a mortal choice to be made," he said, "get out. Get out for yourself." I asked whether this was an official policy of the Pinkertons, but he didn't take to my jest. "I like you, John," he said, "and would hate to see you get chewed up in this mess." He looked downright mournful as a boarded the train. Rain fell for most of the day and night.

This diary is about to leave my hands, and my mission is still officially a secret one. I am bedded down now in a small inn; tomorrow I will take a horse from the town stable and set off for Shimmer, a three-day ride from here. Everything was arranged, including the map waiting for me here. Rutherford B. Hayes and his minions have some purpose to all of this.

If I believed in augurs of foreboding, the air would be full of portents. A storm across the plains yesterday, while en route; a lone fiddler standing along the train tracks, scratching out a sorrowful tune for absolutely no one within a hundred miles; a family of Indians, standing at the small station here, peddling trinkets as the patriarch told anybody within earshot of their tribe's destruction at the hands of the Federals. I listened to the man because sometimes people have earned the right to be heard out, and I had little reason to doubt his story. And I bought a beaded necklace and a turned and walked away because I could not think of what else to do. I will send the necklace to X. before I ride out in the morning.

Perhaps I am still under the influence of the dime novels I have lately looked at, but a sense of dread does seem to attend this mission. A fortune-teller might say I am about to lose my innocence somehow, yet I know I have already lost that during the War. The pieces of this assignment inspire dread: the allusions to cannibalism, the strange accounts of insanity and murder and mutilated corpses. To say nothing of the complete inability of anyone to tie any of it together, or even suggest the nature of the problem under investigation. I will ride into Shimmer without knowing, exactly, what it is I will do there. Hang it, that is enough to inspire dread already, even without the cannibals.

As always happens when I feel far away from home, I am inclined to wool-gathering. I wonder when I will be back in Washington City. I wonder whether my restless ways will subside and allow me to study science in a concentrated method. I wonder under what circumstances I will meet William Wade again, and when he might arrive in Shimmer. Here is the way I would imagine the scene, for my own serenity's sake: we sit for a quiet bowl of onion soup at the hotel restaurant, repairing to the poker table for cigars after dinner. He will surely not be difficult to miss, if he is still wearing the same unfortunate hat he acquired many years ago, and of which he is inordinately proud. I look forward to the earliest opportunity to badger him about it. With any luck, the meeting will be under circumstances calm enough to learn more about the details of the mission.

Speaking of cigars, mine is now at an end, and I have a long ride coming tomorrow.

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