Chapter 6: The House

[Mr. Handy]

OOC,That sounds good to me.

[HoneyDog]

2pm
The Desolate Highway Cafe

The companions meet in the afternoon at the Desolate Highway Café, the scene of their memorable meeting with Asenath Derby. That worthy individual is luckily not present – indeed there are only a few individuals at this hour, mainly solitary students perusing books while they drink coffee.

The friends gather around and begin to go through Margaret’s diary. It is mostly banal – observations about daily life and her relationships with family and friends, but in the last three months the entries begin to grow increasingly strange. These entries are preceded by several weeks of short and quite depressing entries which occur just after the birth of Tabitha, and show that Margaret was blaming herself for not having energy, and guilt for her lack of feeling toward Tabitha, and her own inability to be happy.

These entries change after her husband instructed her to rest. The diary now begins to describe her experiences in the house. Detailed are phantom sounds and strange images and pictures, leading to glimpses of something moving in the pattern of the master bedroom wallpaper.

“It is silly I know, but I am sure I saw something moving behind the pattern of that horrible wallpaper when I woke. I know it cannot be true, but it would be the making of a wonderful story. I can’t get the idea out of my head, but I also cannot really write. Perhaps if I talk to Thomas, he’ll let me get up and work properly.”

At first these descriptions are dispassionate, and she admonishes herself not to start accepting these sounds and images as real and existent. She expresses the desire that writing more will give her an outlet, but her husband’s insistence on mental rest stifles this, and she can only write in her diary.

"I do not know what use Thomas thinks it will be to have me secluded here, unable to work, and unable to have good and stimulating company. Nevertheless, Thomas is my husband, and a doctor too; an expert in matters of medicine, so there really is no arguing with him on this. I have managed to ensure that I shall be able to keep on maintaining my diary. It may exhaust me to do so, but I have not let Thomas know that, so he feels no need to stop me. This new house is lovely, beautiful even in some ways, but it feels so lonely, like it has never been a home. That feeling isn’t helped by my current circumstances. When I am better, I really must do something about this wallpaper".

However, after a few weeks of these experiences it is clear that Margaret is starting to believe that the strange experiences are very real.

“I must not give into fancy; how I wish I could write properly. Dr. Dwight always said the things I sometimes see are just my imagination, and truly I had forgotten how hard it is to be sure what is real, and what is not once an idea takes hold of me like this. However, I should be okay, after all, all reason and logic tells me that a creeping woman can’t be real.”

By the time of the murder, she is describing a woman creeping within the wallpaper, and discovering impossibly large and bizarre extensions to the house during midnight wanderings; narrow streets, strange houses with unreal architecture, and encountering hooded, shuffling figures.

Everyone,Roll SAN. Everyone loses 1 point regardless of success. If you fail, roll 1d3 for loss.

Isadora,Gain 1 point for Cthulhu Mythos.

[Starspawn338]

OOC,Sanity 79 [dice]0[/dice]

"That is what I suspected, but the mystery is why is it happening? Were you aware of any presence in there Isadora?" Harrison asks. "It came over you so quickly."

[Mr. Handy]

Alice shivers. "There must be something in there, and for some reason it has latched onto you, Isadora," she says. "Perhaps it's because you're sensitive to these things. If you can see them, maybe they're more likely to see you."

OOC,Sanity roll (current level 67) for reading the diary: [dice]0[/dice]

[HoneyDog]

OOC,Please remember that everyone still loses one SAN point, even if you rolled successfully.

[evil_scientist]

Isadora Carmichael

SAN 63,Rolling [dice]0[/dice]

After reading the diary, Isadora just sits there, with a blank expression.

A terrible realization dawns on her.

Finally, she gathers herself enough to engage Alice and the rest of the gang in conversation.

Alice shivers. "There must be something in there, and for some reason it has latched onto you, Isadora," she says. "Perhaps it's because you're sensitive to these things. If you can see them, maybe they're more likely to see you."

"Yes, yes, it might just be so... But what are these things? Are they something haunting, invading the house from the outside? Or were they birthed by some peculiarity of the building itself? Or maybe Margaret's mind, overwrought by the seclusion, bordering on obsession, brought them into this world?

"So far, from what we've gathered, these things, this... force, it seems to be anchored to the house..."

Isadora pauses, as she thinks back to that other house, the one that went up in flames. Her instinct is to torch this building as well - but then the police would surely be at her door the next morning. And she doesn't want to be secluded in a prison cell.

"I'd rather not go back to the house now. We must gain new information. And then perhaps we can risk going back in. I can be your eyes, a beacon receiving the terrible messages from the occulted world.

"We talk to the doctor tomorrow, learn what he has to say. And then we can do some more research. Perhaps there have been similar accidents, studies but misunderstood by modern psychology."

[Mr. Handy]

"All right," says Alice. "Are you sure you want to go back in there, even after we talk to the doctor? The rest of us could go without you. If you do want to go back inside, we'll make sure you're never alone in there."

[innsmouth]

Henry Glynn

"I'm in no great hurry to go back there. I didn't mention it at the time but It didn't feel right to me either. I felt quite alone there ... even though I was with you dear Alice. Of course I'll go if we have to ..."

Spoiler:

Henry SAN 74 [dice]0[/dice]

[Mr. Handy]

Alice smiles and squeezes Henry's hand. "You don't have to go back in there either if you don't want to," says Alice, "but if you do, I'll be with you the whole time. I couldn't sense anything in the house myself, but I've no doubt it's there."

[evil_scientist]

Isadora Carmichael

Observing the interaction between Alice and Henry, Isadora feels warmth, but also a slight pang of envy. Her relationship with her husband is quite close and amicable, but she knows that he wouldn't let her continue these dangerous escapades. And now, when she understands that she isn't only getting into this out of curiosity, but perhaps there is a higher mission, she won't be deterred.

"Let's go and get some rest today. Tomorrow our meeting with Dr. Dwight is at 1 pm. Do you think we can visit the University library before the meeting?"

[Mr. Handy]

"I'm sure I can get us access," says Alice. "There's enough time left today that we could start our research now, but what are we trying to find? We could look for news articles about the Bosworth House in the periodicals section, but I can't imagine anything as newsworthy as the murder has happened there in the past. We might want to find out what was on the site before the house was built, and we could try to find out just who this Bosworth was."

[HoneyDog]

OOC,You already checked the university library - there wasn't anything.

[evil_scientist]

Isadora Carmichael

"No, no, I want to look for something else. Not information about the house, but rather similar occurrences. Hauntings, distortions of space, moving patterns... Does the university library hold any such books, about the uncanny, the weird? Or are they deemed unscientific?"

[HoneyDog]

OOC,Tomorrow I will move the action to - tomorrow.

[Mr. Handy]

"Oh, there are books like that," says Alice. "This is Arkham, after all. Perhaps we can consult with Dr. Armitage again. He seemed to know about this sort of thing when we first met him."

[HoneyDog]

OOC:   I'll move the action to Sunday.

[evil_scientist]

Isadora Carmichael

Keeper,SAN 62 [dice]0[/dice] SAN loss [dice]1[/dice]