One day another of my friends followed us into the basement. He's probably just as weird as I am, so when he saw the microfilms he agreed to come with me and we would look up each other's birthdays.
My birthday had nothing significant, I can't even remember what was written even though this all happened recently. But my friend's search turned up very odd results. In the first paper we used, his birthday was simply skipped. It went from the day before to the day after. We assumed this was just an isolated case, maybe he was born on a day the paper didn't deliver. But when we looked up the date in other papers, we found similar results. Occasionally there would be a single scarred, marred, or page otherwise too damaged to read that was the only entry for his birthday before it continued. Mostly, the papers simply skipped that day.
Eventually, when we had looked through all the other papers, the last one proved to contain useful information. Although much of the entries for his birthday were damaged and non-readable, there were scrapes of headlines and some pictures that we gobbled up. Most of the readable articles were about serial killings and rapings. The first legible image (we almost missed it as my friend was screening through the entries believing this paper to be just a lengthy version of the blank papers before) was quite shocking.
At first we weren't sure what we were looking at and I assumed that the photo was simply damaged, but when we zoomed in, we saw what appeared to be a bandaged man with the words "Who is Darkman?" written beneath.
[Image: http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g206/whyrainfalls/Darkman.jpg]
Like I said, we weren't sure what we were looking at, and assumed that the paper had merely been damaged. Then an elderly man wearing a western style hat and trench coat came up to the two of us. Apparently he was a library proctor to help people find their way about, and he saw our scans and thought, as we did, that the paper was damaged. He then told us, "They sometimes have the original papers in the far back." Then he left as abruptly as he appeared.
We put away our films and powered down the scanner before asking a receptionist where they keep the original papers. "The what?" apparently she was new, "Oh, those. You'll want to go down that hall and there's a door at the end that leads to the bottom sub-basement level." I had already thought that we were on the bottom floor, but sure enough there was an oddly shaped door that led even further down. This floor was hardly lit and even less used. It took us some time to find the newspaper originals, and by the time we did, my friend told me that he needed to head to his next class, and that he wanted to see what my search turned up.
The original paper seemed to have been recovered from a fire, or even purposefully incinerated. I found the passage containing the picture we saw and it turned out to truly show the dark image of a man with the words "Who is Darkman?" The passage underneath was legible in this copy however.
[Image: http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g206/whyrainfalls/Darkman02.jpg]
It detailed the work of a serial killer who cops were not able to catch no matter what. Even when they supposedly trapped him inside a building with no other exits (as this particular article detailed) he wound up missing as policemen searched the inside of the building. I scoured the library for other sources of information on this person, but any and all papers from that day were either damaged or missing. I managed to find one single image in a paper from New York with the headline, "Darkman Finally Captured. Escapes Shortly After."
The next day I spent more time in the bottom sub-basement. I managed to piece this story together. But what happened to all the articles in the first place? Why were they missing or damaged? I assume it was a massive cover-up. Thankfully, I was able to glean this much information.
Darkman, born Alexander Wolfe, was found guilty of rape and murder of the first degree at age 20. He was sentenced to life in a Montana prison where he lived under constant ridicule by the public for 3 years. At the beginning of the fourth year, there was a fire in the prison that killed many of the people inside. Wolfe, however, survived. Most of the hospitals were full with other prisoners, Wolfe was flown to a hospital in New York, barely even alive. As doctors tried to tend and bandage his wounds and burns, his condition became more and more critical. The doctors turned away for just a few moments to see in another patient, a prisoner from the same fire, and heard the pulse monitor flat line. When the doctors rushed to see his condition however, they found Wolfe was gone.
The city of New York, as well as major cities in the surrounding states were hit with a string of murders, with the few available witnesses describing the murderer as a tall man covered in bandages. Eventually, thanks to a policewoman named Cheryl Wolfe (ironically, Darkman's younger sister) Darkman was brought to justice, but not before taking over 237 lives with him and committing more than 30 rapes. When Cheryl went to see her brother after his death sentence was announced, she found him dead in his cell, hanging from medical gauze bandages. The body went missing before it was even able to be processed.
The Darkman murders did not stop after his death. There was one more person cited to have been murdered by a tall man in a coat wearing bandages. This last murder occurred in broad daylight on the day of my friend's birthday. The victim: Cheryl Wolfe.