There are things that exist outside the range of human perceptions; things known only to those terrible beings who dwell between the stars and beneath the earth. We have always passed by them without notice. They have always extended us the same courtesy. And those unfortunate few who have seen, and have been seen? We call them mad.
But they have merely awakened a higher form of sight.
It is the Spring of 1928 in Arkham. And people all over Southside are waking up, setting the stage for the rise of an ancient power.
"Yes, Miss," says Henry to the woman. He has to crane his neck back to look her in the eyes. "I'm Professor Henry WItherspoon from the Physics Department. That's this building right here. I heard the pounding on the window when I was inside, as well as a scream. I saw something red on the outside of the window, but I came running out here rather than examine it further because it sounded like someone needed help."
"Send an ambulance? This man was running away from one." The lead policeman shakes his head. "It was taking him to the Sanitarium from St. Mary's."
"St. Mary's Hospital? Why wasn't he treated there?" The doctor brushes past the crowd and crouches next to the straitjacketed man.
"Don't ask me."
Brewster,The window glass is smeared with blood, some of it resembling handprints. Past the gore, there is nothing but an empty lecture theater.
I'm a smooth criminal and a neurotic lawyer with a crush on a pretty-boy author, and I'm being controlled by my creepy older brother (twice!) while I worry about not having a can opener.
"Pleased to meet you, Miss Ross," says Henry. "It's just as well I didn't take a closer look, then. If he did that to himself, it's no wonder he was being taken to the Sanitarium." He suppresses a shudder.
"I've studied some chemistry myself, but primarily how it involves physics - the composition of the atom, molecular and ionic bonds, that sort of thing. I don't know for certain if he put out his own eyes out, but it seems the most likely explanation."
Peter stand by, hearing the conversations of the people around. He is not going back to the library. The incident around here is far more interesting then arranging and placing back books.
Now than Eliza is gone, he cannot avoid looking at the eyeless man. The look of the man is not troubling him but on the contrary, it's fascinated him. He tries to understand what happened to him and how he took his eyes off, where are is his eyes and what troubled the man so much or what he witnessed that made him take out his eyes.
He tries to get closer to the man that is treated and ask. What have you seen that made you do that thing.
"The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."
For Brewster, this is all just way too weird. Lunatics that have scratched their own eyes out and then run onto his campus? Someone needs to give him a good explanation and soon, so that he can get back to his maintenance.
Brewster absent mindedly picks up a few pieces of litter, scanning the area for eyeballs. Something didn't add up. He leans back and stretches before speaking to the police.
"Running away from an ambulance you say? Did he have his eyes at the time? How does a man in a straitjacket, with no eyes, get out of a moving ambulance and run straight on to my university?"
Brewster hacks up an enormous lump of phlegm and launches it at the bushes while he waits for an answer. He scowls around at the crowd, just for the sake of appearances really.
Quinch wrote:"Running away from an ambulance you say? Did he have his eyes at the time? How does a man in a straitjacket, with no eyes, get out of a moving ambulance and run straight on to my university?"
Brewster hacks up an enormous lump of phlegm and launches it at the bushes while he waits for an answer. He scowls around at the crowd, just for the sake of appearances really.
Jean watches the flight of Brewster's phlegm; her nose is slightly wrinkled.
"Um, Sir, maybe the straight jacket was put on to the lunatic afterwards--after he escaped from the ambulance?"
Dutch pockets the notepad and turns to Sgt. Willem. "Do you mind keeping an eye on the patient? I want to go check something out," the detective says to the cop before making his way along the path the eyeless man ran. There was something in the garbage can, he remembered. Was it blood and ... shards? He had abandoned it to pursue the man, but now that the situation was under control, Dutch wanted to make sure he had time to examine it before the onlookers or passersby started mucking up any possible evidence.
Brewster regards the woman for a few seconds, mulling over her suggestion.
"Seems a bit ass before tit, so to speak, to me, putting the restraints on after the guy has escaped. And then letting him go again? Nah, that makes even less sense. The guy must've broken his restraints and bolted out of the ambulance. Like I said, it's his eyes worrying me. Did he do it himself? Is that why he was at the hospital? If so, how did he escape with no way of seeing where he was going? And if'n someone else took 'em, are they still around?"
Brewster alarms himself sufficiently such that he decides to pick up one of the sharpened bits of debris from the ground.
At Peter's approach, the doctor sighs and makes an angry gesture with a pair of scissors. "Please step away from him - excitement or fright won't do any good."
The straitjacketed man cocks his head at Peter, eliciting another sharp sigh from the doctor. "The star," he says. It's the loudest thing he's said so far, but he says nothing more as he tries to look back at the purple flowers. The doctor puts a stop to that, so he touches them with a bloodied finger instead.
Fortunately, there is no sign of the man's eyeballs anywhere. Sergeant Willem frowns at Brewster. "That's all I was told about the incident. I don't know anything about this man or his eyes."
"The blood on his fingers seems to suggest that it was self-inflicted," the doctor says. "I have no idea why he keeps trying to look at things, though - he can't possibly be capable of sight."
The Sergeant shrugs. "It's a mystery." He turns to Dutch. "Go wherever you like, Vrees. You're a detective. Go detect."
Dutch,Return to your own thread: [url=http://www.callofcthulhu.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=224&t=3184]The Runaway[/url]
Do not continue to read the posts in this thread.
I'm a smooth criminal and a neurotic lawyer with a crush on a pretty-boy author, and I'm being controlled by my creepy older brother (twice!) while I worry about not having a can opener.
Henry watches the trajectory of the spit too, though he feels more interest in watching the laws of physics at work than disgust. "It seems more likely that he removed his eyes after he escaped from the ambulance," he says. "That may be what I saw on the window." He looks around to try to figure out which window he had seen the man beating, using his knowledge of the building to pinpoint its location.
Are you all right? Peter asks Brewster. The librarian knows the man as he called him more than once to fix a broken shelf and to change a broken wheel in the books' carts.
*******
When the eyeless man nods to the purple flowers, Peter turns his look to this direction. The Star?
He says to himself and looks up to the sky, then back to the flowers Could be an item that he lost?
He thinks to himself and goes to search the group of purple flowers
"The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."
"That's right, he did mention a star," says Henry. "Perhaps it has something to do with astronomy, a subject I know a good deal about. But which star?"
Brewster looks over at Peter and nods slightly. "I'm fine," he mutters. "Don't know much about no star 'cept that there aren't any to be seen right now to get all upset about."
After poking around the area for a few minutes, Brewster decides to try and trace the lunatic's steps back and find out if there's any more mess. Unfortunately, even with both his eyes, he can't follow anything worth a damn. He sighs deeply. He should probably get back to his work but he needs to make sure this disturbance is all sorted first.
Brewster considers apologising to the lady he has so evidently offended but eventually decides he would probably only make things worse. He sighs and grunts slightly before carrying on with what he was doing.
"Speculation is really something that should be left to the sanitarium's staff," the doctor says, though there's a note of curiosity in his voice. He stands and straightens, shutting the clasp on his bag. "I think that's all that can be done here - where's that ambulance?"
"Should be arriving soon," one of the officers replies.
The eyeless man's visage is no longer so disturbing - a great deal of the blood has been cleaned away, and his empty eye sockets are covered with a bandage. His strange sight doesn't seem to have been impeded, however; his stare snaps right back to the flower patch.
Henry,The window the group is all gathered around is the one the man had been pounding at. As [b]Henry's[/b] gaze passes over it, he can plainly see smudges of what must be blood on the glass.
Peter,The moment [b]Peter[/b] steps closer to the flower patch, a little butterfly - a spot of white among the violet - takes flight. The straitjacketed man's bloody fingers clench into a fist, crushing several stems.
The Sergeant nods at the doctor, then turns to the crowd. "Deeply sorry for the disturbance, especially since it had to be at the University." He's about to say something else, but a whining moan interrupts him.
It comes from the man with no eyes, who has now ripped a cluster of the purple flowers out of the ground. Distress pulls at the corners of his mouth as he raises his head to look at something in the sky.
Everyone,Roll Spot Hidden.
Jean,The detective is leaning over a pile of garbage from an overturned trash can when [b]Jean[/b] catches up.
Please move to the following thread: [url=http://www.callofcthulhu.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=224&t=3184&p=128465#p128465]The Runaway[/url]
Do not continue to read the posts in this thread, and do not read any posts above the one you have been linked to.
You are no longer here, so do not make a Spot Hidden roll.
I'm a smooth criminal and a neurotic lawyer with a crush on a pretty-boy author, and I'm being controlled by my creepy older brother (twice!) while I worry about not having a can opener.
