by stormbreath
One of their victims crashed their car. They're in this photo, too. The bastards are invisible.
Sandman and Bagman (although everybody just calls em Sand and Bag) are a pair of bogeymen that work for the Chicago Spirit. They don’t look like anything at first: you can only see them in certain ways. Myself, I've only seen them in the dim glow of a dying fire, and only on a couple of occasions. Late at night, it’s hard to make out any details about them, but they're shorties, a little under five feet tall. Skinny, too, like you'd think they haven't eaten anything in a long time. Fact, as best as we reckon, they don’t eat at all.
As I've been told by some of the Spirit more wise to the secrets of the world by myself, the way they feed is the same as the way they hunt and kill. See – and I don’t know how they do it – but they make their targets unable to sleep and follow them around. It doesn't croak you at first, but nobody can last that long. Eventually you take yourself out or run yourself ragged. Nothing works. Can’t even poison a chump that they’ve done their magic on.
Best as we can tell, that feeds them. Somehow.
Personally? They scare the shit out of me. You never know if they’re in the room with you, and they're not gees you want to cross. Odd pair of hatchetmen. Never hear them say anything or make a noise, either. 'Parently they can and do, but only when they’re on the hunt. Can't say I’m thrilled about ever hearing them.
This part I don’t know much about. I've heard a bunch of rumors from the rest of the crew about how they came to the Spirits. Some macs say that they just showed up one day and started taking out our targets, and then we figured out a way to give them assignments and they hung around. I've sold a lot of bridges to those guys.
The more reasonable members of the Spirit say that either Chappell or Cartwright or Mr. Night summoned them. Sold some bridges to the guys that say that last one, although not as many as the first group. Everybody knows that Night’s just a fairy tale. I hold with the first: Mr. Chappell must have made some infernal contracts, bound up nightmares into human form, and set them to work. I’ve seen him do far worse, you know.
I've never been clear on their payment. If Chappell got them involved, or somebody else summoned them, he paid them enough up front where they don’t care about getting their score. Either that, or they just like the work we have them do. Freaks me out, that idea, but it makes sense. Every predator loves the hunt.
They're hitmen. Good ones, too. You’ve never seen a job as clean as theirs. There's a new kind of mess with it all, but for the most part its not one you have to worry about. When they choose a victim and keep him awake, they don't leave a single trace on the poor sap. The actual murder is left up to the mark: he runs himself ragged, he tires himself out, he bites the dust for himself. When the coppers show up to the scene of the crime, they find a clean corpse with no sign of injury.
Make no mistake, though. There’s no coming back from what they do to you. No mercy to be given out. So you gotta be sure the target is somebody you actually want to take a nap with the fishies. There's been a few incidents where a guy was made a mark but then we realized we didn’t want him dead in the few days it took for him to knock it – but there was no coming back for him. Nothing can clear the sleep block, not even the best that Chappell has. So when you go to do the thing, and put a name down for them to take care of, make sure that they need to be taken out for good.
As for how you do it, write the names of the target and advice for Sand and Bag to find them on a scrap of paper. There’s a chip in the bricks in the alley of the Chicago Spirit (our namesake bar), about four and half feet off the ground. Eye level for Sand and Bag. Fold up the scrap, shove it in there, and they’ll have the process started before nightfall.
Christ, I can’t believe this is an update I gotta make to this one.
The economy ain't doing great right now, right? Huge turn down after Black Tuesday. Business is fine for us, of course (we exist well outside the regular structure of things), but it's not pretty in general. Plenty of good and honest fellas have lost their jobs. Pity the suckers: the system don’t take care of you unless you make it take care of you. Course some shit like this would happen to them.
But you know who else is doing fine throughout all this? Mr. Al Capone's Chicago Outfit, our old rivals. They’ve got more of a hold on this city than we do, but don’t doubt that we're the ones with the electricity. In any case, Capone has started up a new soup kitchen, for free. He’s kept his name out of the public eye, but those in the know (us) know who is behind that soup kitchen. Says that it’s just public charity, an attempt to do good by the community.
Well, when Chappell heard that, he flew into a rage. I happened to be in the room with him at the time. Unacceptable, he said, that Capone was starting up a better charity than him. He started going off about how he grew up on the streets of this city, poorer than Capone ever was, an orphan. If anybody was going to take care of this town, it was Chappell. He turned around and ordered us to get our own joint going. Now.
Nobody fucks with Richard Chappell. Nobody. When he says jump, you ask how high. We got right away to work.
I bet you’re wondering why that anecdote is stapled to Sand and Bag's write-up, huh.
Well, I wasn’t the only guy in the room with Chappell at the time. Apparently (although we can't be sure since nobody could see them), Sand and Bag were there too. And for whatever reason, they’ve decided to obey Mr. Chappell with this new operation. Why? Who can say. Nobody's got any fucking clue. Maybe it’s because they, like everybody else in the room, were just fucking terrified of Chappell and didn’t want to mess with him, and decided to help in any way they could. Maybe it’s because he's their master, he’s the one that summoned them, and somewhere in his instructions was a command. Or maybe those guys who told me they just showed up one day and started knocking guys off for us were right, and this is no different: they just like the work.
But if you walk into the kitchen of our soup kitchen, you’ll see pots and pans flying everywhere, all over the place. Sand and Bag are, somehow, the best fucking line cooks in the entire goddamn world. Why? How? What? Who can fucking say. But it is just the two of them, in there, running around like little goblins, feeding half the city of Chicago. Are they the best chefs? No. Are they good? Well, they make feasts every day. Counts for something, I guess.
Me? I’m still scared of them. They still work the assassination jobs we put them to, alongside all the cooking, and I've got no desire to even be in the same room as those two if I can help it.
At least we know where they are during the day now.
