2, Greeenapple Acre Cottage

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"We better get inside," Dorothy says to Judith. "Stick close to me, and watch your step."

[Rooter]

Judith follows the reporter but her gaze is drawn back to the abandoned crowbar in puzzlement. "Iron," she murmurs thoughtfully. "That could be a lightning rod in this weather."

[evil_scientist]

Alister Sergeant

Alister takes note of the peculiar tree, but doesn't point it out to the others just yet. He follows them into the house.

[Priest]

Sean carefully steps inside along the dark hall to the first of the doors. It is open and being swung gently back and forth by the wind from outside, each tiny swing accompanied by the whine of unoiled hinges. No light shines from within, the room is as dark as the hallway. Gripping the flashlight tightly in readiness for any sudden attack, he slowly, nervously, pushes the door open. Behind him he hears a sharp intake of breath from Keiffer, showing that he is not alone.

With a longer, protracted, creak of hinges the paneled door opens…

Outside, still assaulted by the storm, the others move toward the cottage, aware that Sean and Keiffer have already entered. Emilia, once more in the company of Mary Laker, waits nervously on the porch.
No noise apart from the sound of protesting hinges issues from the dark, cold building. As you reach her Emilia’s eyes send a plea, no doubt for concern of her grandfather, but Mary slowly shakes her head, as if recommending caution. Again there is something at odds in her manner, something that just doesn’t ring true.

The light from the flashlights that Sean and Keiffer carry seem to converge as they shine them into the room whose door Sean has pushed open…

OOC:   At this stage Sean and Keiffer should roll Sanity (1/1d4 loss)

[HoneyDog]

Kieffer’s nerves are keyed up as he follows Sean down the hall. Of course, it was too much to expect a normal welcome here too, wasn’t it? But Sean is a brave man, and Kieffer doesn’t want to abandon him. He steels himself as the door is pushed open…

Sanity,SAN 40: [url=http://orokos.com/roll/492695]SAN[/url]: [u]1d100[/u] [b]34[/b]

[Cearlan]

Maynard heads on towards the house after deciding that the metal object is just an agricultural implement.

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"You fellas find anything?" Dorothy says softly. The hair is starting to rise on the back of her neck.

[Mr. Handy]

Sean is taken aback with sheer horror.

OOC,Sanity roll (current level 50) looking through the door: [dice]0[/dice] Sanity loss: [dice]1[/dice]

[Priest]

The room, obviously a living room of some sort, is in darkness, and the contents are thrown into sharp relief by the harsh yellow light of the flashlights. Before you a long ‘L’ shaped room is a scene of death. The first thing you see are the two bodies, one a thin faced man of advancing years is slumped hands on knees one arm entwined around an antique chair, head thrown back and mouth wide in a silent scream. In the light you can easily see that his right shoulder is a mess of blood and bone. The second body, or part body, is of a younger man who from the position of his limbs, those that remain, died in extreme agony. Joints look as if they had been dislocated by struggle and his face holds an expression of pure fear, although his eyes seem to be nothing more than two bloody pools. As you look lower you see that his lower extremities have been reduced to ash as if he had been subjected to an enormous heat from the ground upward. The exposed flesh of his face and arms look as if every vein and blood vessel in his body had exploded, leaving his features crisscrossed by long black lines.

OOC:   Keiffer loses 1 san point for a success. Feel the bile rise in your throat. Sean loses 4 san points. The room spins, vision darkens momentarily, but that quickly passes.

Swallowing dryly you move the light around taking in the rest of the room. Lying on the floor between the bodies is a sawn off shotgun; an open and empty metal box, from which a small trail of white powdery substance leads to a larger pile; and, next to the partially burned young man, a sacking hood.



From behind them in the front doorway comes Dorothy’s whispered query….

[HoneyDog]

Fighting not to throw up, Kieffer chokes back the bile in his throat. He witnessed the results of a boiler explosion in his navy days, and the burns that boiling steam can cause, but the sheer brutality of these injuries shocks him. What the hell could have happened here?

“Stay there!” he barks, hearing the voice of Dorothy behind the door. “No-one comes in!”

“What caused those burns”? he thinks. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

He notices that Sean seems about ready to black out.

“Hey you!” he says sternly. “I don’t know your name! What’s your name?” He wants the taxi driver to think about something else apart from the bodies on the floor. As he says this, he steps around the corpse of the burned man and picks up the shotgun, breaking open the breech to see if it is loaded.

[evil_scientist]

Alister Sergeant

"Burns?" asks Alister, resisting the urge to take a look at the sight that almost sent two grown men into shock. "I saw traces of high-temperature burning on one of the trees outside. Where the trail of running footsteps enter the woods."

[Rooter]

"Is Emilia's grandfather here?" Judith asks uncertainly. "Shouldn't we, er, fetch the emergency services if there's been an accident?"

[Priest]

OOC:   So, we have Sean and Kieffer in the living room, with the others outside the room in the hallway. I am going to presume that Maynard is the last into the cottage. You can see two doorways ahead of you on the right-hand wall, the open one that Sean and Keiffer are in and another closed door just beyond it. There will of course be others, but for the moment those two doors are all you can see. Oh, and its dark too. The only light you have are the two flashlights of Sean and Keiffer and these are currently in the living room

As everyone presses into the hallway drawn by whatever the open living room door has revealed and Keiffer’s warning shout, Emilia waits patiently for news of her grandfather, though a glance at her pale face shows that she expects the worst. It is at this point that the last members of the group to enter the cottage, notice that Mary Laker seems to have disappeared. She could not have gone back outside for that would have meant passing Maynard, and she did not…

[Mr. Handy]

"Sean..." mutters Sean. "Sean O'Reilly." He turns away from the gruesome scene and returns to the hallway, shining his light around. "That waitress is gone. She's up to something, I know it! We've got to find her. I'm sorry, but even if emergency services could get out here in this weather, it's too late."

[HoneyDog]

Kieffer

"We should find her Sean" calls Kieffer. "But first we need to try and get the power back on. And there's something else which needs to be done".

He stays in the room, looking around for any photos which might show Emilia or the older victim on the floor. He wants to see if it's her grandfather, without her having to witness the carnage in the living room. He sweeps the flashlight around at likely places to find photographs.

OOC:   Is the shotgun loaded, Priest?

[Priest]

Keiffer recovering from the horror before him quickly, steps forward and picks up the shotgun, at the same time shouting a warning to Dorothy not to enter the room. The memory of the man killed by the boiler explosion floods your mind, that was bad, but what this young man had suffered looks a thousand times worse, and different.

Sean shakes his head as he says his name, realizing what Keiffer is trying to do. He, his eyes kept deliberately away from the horror, retreats to the hall, pushing aside Dorothy who stands just outside the door. Something is wrong, then he remembers…The waitress, Mary Laker, isn’t here.

Meanwhile, preferring to focus on the shotgun and not the mutilated remains before him, Keiffer breaks the shotgun. Both barrels are loaded but one has been fired, and fairly recently too by the strong smell of burnt powder. Keeping his eyes clear of the horror on the floor, he looks around the room, on the mantelpiece above the fire a silver framed photograph shows a middle aged man with his arm around a young girl. Although fairly old, you can see that the young woman is Emilia some years ago, while the smiling man bears a distinct likeness to the elderly man slumped by the armchair.

As you panned the flashlight around the room you notice that the brass light switch near the door is flicked to the on position…

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Dorothy realizes that things are much worse than she thought. Too late for an ambulance, if there was even a chance of contacting one or one making its way here. Two grown men, sickened and terrified by what they've seen. And a woman just disappearing into thin air. It all sounds like a real mystery, one that could make a reporter's career. For a moment she shudders at her own coldblooded thoughts and feels guilty about it.

"We've got to keep this poor woman out of that room," she whispers to the British lady. "Something very bad happened to her grandfather, I think."

It occurs to her that the waitress was with the woman the last time she saw her. "Do you know what happened to the woman from the cafe?" Dorothy hopes she can ease her away from the terrible scene of carnage that she can only imagine from the shocked reactions of the men.

[Cearlan]

Maynard steps into the house out of the wind and rain and straight away notices the commotion outside the door and hears someone exclaim that no-one should enter, so of course he is drawn towards that room by human nature.

[HoneyDog]

Kieffer

“Sean!” he calls out. “Try to find the fuse box.”

He surveys the room again. The Doctor, as that’s who it must be, must have been killed with the shotgun, perhaps by the dead young man. But what killed him? And in such a fashion?

Gradually overcoming his nausea, but still trying not to look too closely at the young man, he kneels down to look at the box, and the powder which is in it.

He has no idea what it could be. Perhaps one of the others could identify it.

Chemistry,Chemistry 01: [url=http://orokos.com/roll/493872]Chemistry[/url]: [u]1d100[/u] [b]33[/b] I thought I'd try.

[Mr. Handy]

"I'm on it," says Sean, already thinking along those lines. "Miss Webb, do you know where the fuse box is in this cottage?"