History
A ruthless reporter with a love for dark and gruesome columns, Nick Allen was never one to pass up a lead on a good story. When an anonymous tip came in to Allen about a string of disappearances in the waterfront district, Allen, against the warnings of his editor, agreed to meet the mystery source instead of taking the information to the police.
Taking a cab to the wharf, Allen met an elderly fisherman who was more than willing to share his information with the reporter. The fisherman sat with Allen and told him of a scientific voyage he was a part of 10 years prior. He told Allen that they were funded by a university to find a fabled island city named Axtepl, or the "City of the Heads". After a storm blew them off course, the crew spotted an unmapped island, and, believing it to be Axtepl, made landfall.
After climbing a mountain to reach the main section of the island, the group encounter a field of stone statues that one of the crew members, Morel, indicated were similar to those erected by cannibalistic tribes. The fisherman told Allen that the crew's scientist, Ronstedt, entered a temple that was guarded by a curse scrawled above the doorway, despite objections from the other crewmen. He said Ronstedt cried out from inside the temple, and when he returned, he had a stone head and razor-sharp teeth like the numerous statues around the island. The fisherman said that Ronstedt devoured the rest of the crew.
The fisherman ended his story there, telling Allen that he piloted the ship back to civilization. After mentioning payment for his information, Allen became unhappy, stating that the old man's story told him nothing about the disappearances, and that further more, the fisherman never explained what happened to Ronstedt. As the fisherman walked into the cabin of the ship, Allen was horrified to see the skeletons of numerous people that the fisherman has been storing, and as Allen questioned what the fisherman did to them, the fisherman assured Allen that "nothing happened to Ronstedt", at which point the fisherman pulled off his skin to reveal a stone face, and devoured Allen.[1]