the tempest files
MADGE PLUMBER - RITUAL AND SACRIFICE
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Madge Plumber, 1933:
Recorded by Susan Payne, a newspaper reporter for the Tempest Bay Observer, investigating rumors of unnatural occurrences in the town.
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It's all about the rituals, the sacrifice, the back and forth. We used to go down to the beach and offer things up. Felt like it had a rightness to it. A completion. Standing bare and honest before the earth and sky and sea.
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[Q: but people vanished. People died. There were murders.]
We give and we receive. That’s the only true rhythm of it.
Madge Plumber - 1933
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Last known:
Madge's tale was a dark one. She'd given birth to a boy named Philip Plumber Balthazar who was taken by the Wellington authorities. In 1956 Philip and his girlfriend Anna Bathory left a trail of blood all along the south coast, driving their famous canary yellow Morris Minor, before returning to Tempest Bay in search of his birth mother.
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