Play@YSDC

With the application of a bit of brute force, the legs came off the chair. A couple of old dish cloths on the kitchenette surface looked as if they might burn.

"We'll have to be careful not to light these near the gas," says William. "We don't want to blow this place up, and ourselves with it."

Thomas grabs a cloth and chair leg. He looks around the room for something to tie the two together.

William checks the windows to see if they have blinds with cords; the cords would be ideal for tying the cloth.

The windows were sash windows but at some point the sash cord had snapped and hadn’t been replaced. It was a matter of a moment’s work for William to lift the window and extract a length of cord from behind the access plate in the side jamb.

OOC,You have approximately 1.5m of cord, plus the sash weight, if that’s of use.

William hands Thomas the cord. "This should do," he says.

Thomas grabs a knife from the kitchenette and cuts off roughly 30cm of cord. He ties the cloth to the chair leg using the cord, wrapping it around multiple times to secure the cloth. Once done, he uses the gas burner to light the cloth and then takes a step backwards to test the brightness of the torch. "Here we go, now we'll be able to see what we're doing." he says to the others.

The improvised torch burned brightly enough so that Thomas could see the compacted earthen floor at the bottom of the short shaft below the trapdoor. It appeared that a wood-lined tunnel lead off in the direction of the guest rooms.

"I'll go first with the shotgun" says Howard. "Come behind me and light the way".

Without waiting for an answer, he climbs down into the hole.

Howard dropped into the hole and found the tunnel to be about a metre square; tall and wide enough to crawl comfortably. It lead off in a slight angle, in the direction of the lake.

As he looked down the tunnel, Howard could see a faint shaft of light coming down from the ceiling about 15 metres away.

"I'll bring up the rear," says William, waiting for the others to descend before following them down.

"Wait" says Howard. "I can see light coming down from the tunnel roof. There could be a light on in one of the rooms."

After a moment, Howard noticed that there was another faint shaft of light further beyond the first one and he realised it was daylight coming through the open trapdoors in the other bedrooms.

With his eyes adjusted to the restricted light, Howard could see that there was another tunnel branching off to the left, presumably under the rooms on the other side of the hotel.

OOC,Sorry for the delay in updating, I worked the elections on Thursday and I still don’t think I’ve caught up on sleep...

"I think some of the trapdoors are open on this side" calls Howard. "The tunnel branches off to the left, so I'll go that way. Are you ready?" he asks the others. "Let's go!"

He heads off.

William follows the others through the tunnel.

Thomas continues to follow behind Howard, keeping an open ear for anything other than the sounds of the group scuffling through the tunnels. "See anything interesting, Howard?" he asks.

The tunnels continued under both sides of the hotel, punctuated only by the trapdoors into the rooms above, all of which had been turned over, with mattresses slashed and other furniture broken.

It appeared that the previous visitors had followed the same trail as the investigators. In the two rooms nearest the lake, bootprints lead from the trapdoor towards the doors leading from the rooms.

"It looks like someone has already been through here" Howard responds. "Probably the police. Why don't we go and look in that shed again?"

He shudders involuntarily as he recalls what they had found there.