A FILM · FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA · WHAT SOLOMON SEALED, WAS UNSEALED
"For three thousand years it was bound beneath the valley floor.
On the seventh day of the outbreak, no one knew why."
Origin · The Arcane Record
In the 72nd chapter of the Ars Goetia, the spirits bound by Solomon's seal are listed — each imprisoned within a vessel of brass, submerged in the waters of the earth at his command. History recorded the Euphrates. History was incomplete.
The Rappahannock River runs through a valley of unusual geological composition — a fault line that the indigenous Rappahannock people called Rappahannock: "where the tide ebbs and flows." The colonists who built on its banks noticed the water tasted different near what is now Caroline Street. They built a church on that spot. Then an apothecary.
In the summer of 2025, a University of Mary Washington geology survey team conducting seismic mapping discovered a subterranean fissure beneath the campus. The survey was classified within 48 hours. Four days later, the first student presented at the campus clinic with symptoms no physician recognized. By Thursday, I-95 was a parking lot and Chatham Bridge was on fire.
Sarah never made it off campus. Mark never made it to his meeting in Richmond. In the Hugh Mercer Apothecary — built in 1771 on a foundation that no one alive has ever mapped below eight feet — two strangers hold a door shut against something three thousand years old, armed with an iron poker and nothing else. Somewhere in the building, if the old medical records are to be believed, there is a recipe for a binding.
"Solomon sealed 72 spirits. The 73rd was too dangerous to name.
He put it in the ground at the edge of the western world
and never wrote down where."
— Attributed to the Testament of Solomon, apocryphal fragment, provenance unknown
38.3032° N · 77.4605° W · DAY SEVEN
Sealed Ground · Population: Unknown
The Story
It began on a Thursday, the way all catastrophes begin — quietly, with a report that seemed manageable. A cluster of students at Mary Washington University presenting with symptoms no physician recognized. Within 48 hours, I-95 was a graveyard of abandoned vehicles. The bridges into Stafford were burning. Whatever the university geology team had drilled into beneath campus, it had answered.
Sarah — a UMW junior who had been studying in the library when the emergency sirens fired — barricaded the Hugh Mercer Apothecary Museum on Caroline Street with everything she could move. The apothecary, built in 1771 directly over the fault line, has a basement no one has opened in forty years. She has not opened it. She does not intend to. Mark — a Washington lobbyist whose rental car died on Route 3 — arrived at the apothecary door three hours later. He was carrying a briefcase. He is still carrying it.
The Rappahannock Strain is the story of what happens in the hours between nightfall and the river. Two strangers. One building built on a three-thousand-year-old secret. And outside the windows — wearing the costumes of ghost tour guides, wearing the uniforms of Stafford County Sheriff's deputies, wearing everything the living used to wear — something that Solomon put underground for a reason.
Scene One
— SCENE 1 · THE RAPPAHANNOCK STRAIN —
The Survivors
A UMW geology junior who was reviewing seismic data in the library when the sirens fired. She knows about the survey. She knows about the fissure. She hasn't told Mark yet. She carries an iron fire poker and a student thesis draft titled "Anomalous Subterranean Resonance in the Rappahannock Basin." She finished writing it the night before the outbreak began.
A Washington lobbyist in Fredericksburg to attend a private meeting with a defense contractor whose firm won a federal contract for — he never quite understood what. Geophysical survey work, he was told. His contact never showed. His rental car died on Route 3. He has been carrying his briefcase for six days. He has not opened it since Tuesday, when he found out what was inside.
Origin Unknown · Evidence Classified
"The river knows what it carries. It has always known.
The question was never whether the seal would break.
The question was whether someone built an apothecary on top of it." — Sarah's thesis, final page, written the night before the outbreak
CLASSIFIED · EYES ONLY · STAFFORD COUNTY EMERGENCY MGMT
He put it in the ground at the edge of the western world
and never wrote down where.
We found it.
The Script Is Just the Beginning
Casting. Location scouting on Caroline Street. The basement of Hugh Mercer Apothecary. Updates as The Rappahannock Strain moves from page to screen.