The Axe Man
First mentioned in: 601: The Big Easy
First appeared in: 603: The Disembodied Artist
The Axe Man is a killer who terrorized New Orleans in 1918 and 1919 and was never caught. In Bloodhorn Blues his killings begin again in December 1925, and the investigators come face to face with him. The Keeper notes that the Axe Man of New Orleans was a real, never-caught killer, and that his letter "from Hell" was real as well.
Bloodhorn Blues
601: The Big Easy
A New York Times article of December 30, 1925 reports that the Axe Man, whose killings in 1918 and 1919 were never solved, appears to have returned after seven years. Since early December he has committed brutal slayings whose victims include voodoo practitioners, a prominent university professor and a police inspector killed in his own home. Witnesses speak of wild jazz music in the mist before the screams. One of Goodman Gray's men spots a man matching Corbitt's description among the onlookers at the latest Axe Man killing, and Major Bakersfield suspects a connection between the two.
602: What's in the Box?
From the roof of the Hotel Couronne Creuse, Grant Jameson glimpses through the mist a huge figure in the alley. It has a head too tall and too thick at the neck, almost with a snout, and something like a pole or spike above it.
603: The Disembodied Artist
In the lobby of the Couronne Creuse he kills the night clerk, Michelle Casey, splitting her long ways with a chipped axe. He is a hulking, muscular man more than six and a half feet tall in a torn white shirt. In place of a head he has a real horse's head, sewn onto his shoulders with thick leather twine, with a long spike in its forehead, "like some kind of demonic unicorn." He paints an elaborate symbol on the wall in Casey's blood, the sign of Amduceus, a demon general of hell from the Ars Goetia. He wounds Necronomidog and severs Devin Black's right hand at the wrist. The investigators shoot him repeatedly, and Jameson splits the horse head open to reveal a human head inside. Dr. Shrimp Puerto Rico finds that his flesh is dead and rotting and that his blood is an old, brown sludge, and he judges the work crude compared with Corbitt's. Each time the investigators think he is dead, he begins to move again. The spike turns out to be a broken piece of wrought-iron fence, and the name "Otis" is carved into the axe handle. After his hand catches the axe handle in midair as the Major tries to dismember him, and he sits up and tries to reattach his severed hand, the investigators flee.
604: The Safe House
Dr. Isaiah Calhoun tells the investigators that the Axe Man first appeared seven or eight years earlier, killed a number of people, was never caught and then vanished, until he reappeared a few weeks ago. A Times-Picayune of November 1919 lists the original attacks of 1918-1919 and reprints his letter "from Hell" of March 13, 1919, which promises to spare any home with a jazz band in full swing. Calhoun lists the new victims: the Doucet twins at the cemetery, a university professor named Armand, and a detective killed in his home around December 15 or 16. Devin explains the bloody symbol as the sign of Amduceus, which the party thinks fits the letter's claim to be a demon and the creature's regeneration.
605: The Green Wave
Brigitte Girouge believes the Doucet twins' ritual at the Orialis tomb woke him from years of sleep, and that he has killed more people than anyone knows. Professor Armand, it emerges, was killed outside a liquor store on Bourbon Street.
606: Clever Girl Cali
The investigators connect his 1918 victim Nathaniel Vane Orialis to the Brotherhood of Orion.
607: Astronomy Lessons
A lexicon entry on Amducius, whose seal matches the symbol drawn in Michelle Casey's blood, describes a towering being who stirs music where he passes, pauses to listen to living rhythm, and when defied becomes a force of absolute wrath. The investigators conclude that the Axe Man is Amducius. Clara Dupree reveals that her cousin Stephen's 1918 "attack" was invented.
608: Jazz Hands
At St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 his symbol is painted in blood inside the Orialis tomb, and a 1918 clipping describes "a great shadow with a horn" fleeing Orialis's murder. The groundskeeper reveals that the tomb of Big Benny Benoit, rumored to have been involved in the first killings and dead since November 6, 1919, burst open the same night as the Doucet twins' ritual. The investigators suspect Benoit was the original Axe Man.
609: Meridian
At Detective Russo's house the investigators find a bloody chair with rope marks and a crude, copied version of his sigil. Nathaniel Vane Orialis's letter describes him as possessed, "ridden by something older and far more dangerous."
610: Observatory
He splits the vagrant Hibbidoe in half at the Meridian House.
611: The Bonnaroo House
He breaks into the Meridian House office, healed, with a different horse head sewn on. Shotgun blasts from Jameson drop him, but as the investigators flee, his sludgy flesh begins knitting back together, and the doors of the Meridian House burst open behind their cab.
612: Russo's Tale
Inspector LaGrasse believes he finally caught up with LaGrasse's old partner, Russo.
613: The Gear Up
He attacks the New Orleans police station, killing many officers, and the investigators suspect he can track them. His blows cannot pierce Tallahassee's diamond skin, and the Major's net hauls him up into a ceiling fan while the investigators escape with the Cthulhu idol.