Laura

[VictoriaSilverwolf]

Victoria,[dice]0[/dice]you can tell that the voice is not coming from anywhere near any of the people in the room. There is no precise source. Listening carefully, it seems to move around all over the room, in no particular pattern.

Maggie,[dice]1[/dice]you can tell that the voice is not coming from anywhere near any of the people in the room. There is no precise source. Listening carefully, it seems to move around all over the room, in no particular pattern.

Spoiler:

unexplained die roll[dice]2[/dice]

Laura closes her eyes. Her forehead wrinkles, as if she is concentrating very hard, but she does not say anything.

The voice continues.

take the key and lock her up
lock her up
lock her up
take the key and lock her up
my fair lady

Immediately thereafter, a sound as of something made of wood rolling on the floor echoes through the darkened room.

"Do not break the circle," Laura warns. "Keep your hands touching."

[Mr. Handy]

Victoria does as she's told, following the voice with her eyes.

[SunlessNick]

"Who's saying this?" Maggie blurts out.

[VictoriaSilverwolf]

Spoiler:

multiple die rolls[dice]0[/dice]

[VictoriaSilverwolf]

What happens next is witnessed only by Carolyn and Joe. This shared experience, by the way, seems to bring them closer together again, at least for a while.

"It was crazy," Joe says later. "I thought you were all pulling some kind of joke on a poor working stiff like me. But then I saw that Carolyn was just as shocked as I was. First Roger spoke, but in this voice like a little girl. It didn't sound like him at all."

"I deny that any such thing happened," Roger interjects at this point in the story, pouring himself a brandy. "Since none of the rest of us have any memory of this ridiculous event, I suggest that you two are suffering from a peculiar form of folie à deux."

"Whatever. Anyway, I swear you said the word 'Sarah.' If it had been just that, I wouldn't have thought anything of it. But then your sister spoke the same way."

Elizabeth raises an eyebrow, but doesn't say anything.

"She looked right at you, Vicki, and asked 'Where is David? He has been very naughty. He must apologize, or I shan't play with him anymore.' It gave me the creeps."

"What was even worse," Carolyn says, "was what happened to Burke. He laughed, the way a young girl would. Sent a chill up and down my spine. I'm glad he's not here right now, or I'd still feel spooked around him."

"Then it was your turn, Maggie," Joe continues. "You started singing, in that same voice. You know, that thing about London Bridge and lock her up and all that?"

"But what happened to Victoria was really weird," Carolyn goes on. "It only lasted a fraction of a second, but I swear she wasn't there anymore. Instead, there was some other woman instead, dressed in these old-fashioned clothes. Like I say, it only lasted for the blink of an eye, but I know what I saw. Then she was back again, and none of you remember what happened."

"The the candle blew out, and we got up and turned on the lights. Nothing else happened that night."

The day after the séance, an article in the Collinsport Star reports the collapse of a bridge over the bay. Fortunately, it happened at a time when nobody was crossing it, so there were no injuries.

Victoria,That night you have a vivid nightmare of being hung. You could feel the rope around your neck, the hood being placed around your head, the trapdoor opening beneath your feet, falling through the opening, the intense pain of your neck being broken. You woke up sweating, heart racing, absolutely terrified, as if this had almost been real.

[SunlessNick]

"You believe any of that?" Maggie asks Victoria once they're alone.

Next day she calls the house and asks to speak to Victoria - "Vix, have you heard about the bridge? The across the bay, it came down. No one was on it, thank God, but it's what they said I was singing about last night."

[Mr. Handy]

"I don't know what to believe," replies Victoria. "I didn't see what they did, but I had a weird nightmare afterwards."

"I did hear about the bridge," says Victoria when Maggie brings it up, "but I hadn't made the connection. That is strange. But how could anyone know the bridge would collapse - unless they caused it?"

[SunlessNick]

"The deputies stop in at work sometimes. I'll chat one of them up and see what they're thinking happened."

[Mr. Handy]

"Yeah, good thinking," says Victoria. "I'm just glad nobody was hurt. Since that part of the song happened, will 'take the key and lock her up' happen too? Maybe they're going to arrest someone."

[VictoriaSilverwolf]

Casual conversation with the deputies -- everybody likes Maggie, so it's easy to get them to open up about the case -- reveals that an investigation showed that the collapse was due entirely to the aging of the bridge. There are no signs whatsoever of any tampering.

"Heads are gonna roll at the state Department of Transportation," one predicts. "Say, how about me taking you for a ride in the patrol car when you get off this afternoon to take a look at it? The wreck is quite a sight."

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Meanwhile, David, back to his schoolwork now that the presence of his mother nearby isn't such a novelty, keeps his eyes on his arithmetic homework while making a shy confession to Victoria.

"You know, you're not so bad, for a girl. Now that you know where I hide my comic books and stuff, how would you like to see a real good hideout? Nobody but me knows about it."

[SunlessNick]

"Heads are gonna roll at the state Department of Transportation," one predicts. "Say, how about me taking you for a ride in the patrol car when you get off this afternoon to take a look at it? The wreck is quite a sight."

"Sounds good to me," Maggie says.

[Mr. Handy]

"Thank you," says Victoria. "I'd like that."

[VictoriaSilverwolf]

Maggie,The deputy takes you out to the site of the collapsed bridge. The sight of all that shattered concrete and twisted metal is both awe-inspiring and depressing. Folks are going to have to take a detour around the bay for quite a while. At some point during this tour of the wreck, the deputy casually remarks, "So, are you stuck on this Devlin guy, or has a poor working stiff still have a chance?"

Victoria,During a free moment, David takes you to the locked door that leads to the west wing of the mansion, which has been shut away for quite some time. He takes a key out of the pocket of his jeans. "Aunt Elizabeth doesn't know I've got a duplicate of this key," he explains. "I still haven't found another key for the locked room in the basement. Maybe some day." He unlocks the heavy door, which opens with a squeak. Beyond is a dim corridor, full of dust and cobwebs. He leads the way forward to another door. "Wait until you see this place," he says. "It's really cool." He unlocks this door with the same key. It's so dark inside that it's impossible to make out anything except the vague outlines of furniture. "Go ahead," David says. "Ladies first."

[SunlessNick]

"A night out's a small price to pay for a favour," Maggie smiles (not really answering the question).

[Mr. Handy]

"Okay," says Victoria, stepping cautiously into the room and letting her eyes adjust to the dark.

[VictoriaSilverwolf]

Maggie,The deputy takes that as an encouraging sign, and makes sure to take his meal breaks at the diner from now on, chatting you up when he can. The next day, Carolyn and Joe come into the place, seeming a little upset. "You're Vicki's friend, right?" Carolyn says. "Have you heard from her lately? Nobody seems to know where she is." "I've been asking around," Joe adds. "I hope she's all right." "You folks wanna file a missing persons report?" the deputy asks. "Well, no, not yet," Carolyn answers. She seems a little reluctant to talk to the officer. "It hasn't been a full day yet. She'll probably turn up and make us all look like fools." "Me and some other guys have been searching in the forest at Collinwood," Joe says. "You have any ideas where else we could look, Maggie?"

Victoria,With a giggle, David slams the door shut behind you. You can hear the heavy key turning in the lock. Then, a little further away, the sound of the outer door being locked. It's now pitch dark in the room. The sound of running footsteps grows soft then fades away. The silence is broken by the same little girl's voice you heard during the séance. [i]take the key and lock her up lock her up lock her up take the key and lock her up my fair lady[/i]

[SunlessNick]

"I haven't seen her either!" Maggie says to the news. "We... we found a secret passage in the house, and she had an accident there. Maybe it happened again? Can I come up and help look? Didn't you say she disappeared in the seance? There's... there's something else, I don't know if I should say it. Erm... " She looks round everyone, then makes her choice. "There's something fishy about Laura. I saw that telegram, the one that said she was dead. I know Mr Collins thought it was a bad gag, but what if she's not what she says she is? Vix didn't think she was on the level, and if she was right..."

(If anyone asks how she saw the telegram, she'll repeat the excuse she made at the time - she needed something to write on and fished some paper out of the bin, and it happened to be that).

(If anyone asks her why she said "what" instead of "who," she'll correct herself - she doesn't want to tell anyone that Victoria is thinking about supernatural beings).

[Mr. Handy]

"Very funny, David, now let me out!" calls Victoria, trying the door in vain. She had half-suspected he might try something like this, but she hadn't wanted to believe it. "There must be some other way out of here, maybe through the secret passages." She explores the room thoroughly, looking for another way out of it.

[VictoriaSilverwolf]

"I haven't seen her either!" Maggie says to the news. "We... we found a secret passage in the house, and she had an accident there. Maybe it happened again? Can I come up and help look? Didn't you say she disappeared in the seance? There's... there's something else, I don't know if I should say it. Erm... " She looks round everyone, then makes her choice. "There's something fishy about Laura. I saw that telegram, the one that said she was dead. I know Mr Collins thought it was a bad gag, but what if she's not what she says she is? Vix didn't think she was on the level, and if she was right..."

The deputy jumps up.

"This is serious. If somebody sent that telegram as a joke, it's a mighty sick one. I can run back to the station and get in contact with the Arizona authorities." He makes haste to do so, not even finishing his coffee and cruller.

Not even Carolyn knows about the secret passage, although she isn't terribly surprised, given the age of the mansion. It's not long until shift change, so she and Joe agree to wait at the diner until Maggie can walk home -- it's just a short distance from the diner -- and change out of her uniform. Then they'll run her up to the mansion so she can show them the passage.

While at home, Maggie finds her father in a gloomy mood. He's staring at the painting that looks like Laura and David. He's got a glass in his hand, but it turns out to be iced coffee. He's cold sober at the moment.

"I've got to destroy that damned thing," he says. "I don't know what's wrong with it, but it's not going to do anybody any good."

At Collinwood, Joe volunteers to explore the secret passage. He finds the way to David's room, which doesn't help find Vicki; David denies having seen her all day. He explores the path to the sea cave, without finding a trace of her. ("We better pray she didn't go that way," he'll say when he climbs back into the drawing room. "Plenty of folks have drowned in places like that. There are lots of rocks in the water, and the waves are unpredictable.") Last of all, he makes his way down the corridor that leads to the West Wing. The passage leads to a a dead end. There are indications that this was a sliding panel, like the entrance to the secret passage found in the drawing room. However, it has been covered up with boards, nailed to the panel. Joe makes his way back.

"It'll take some tools to break through the door to the West Wing," he says when he emerges, sweaty and covered with dirt and cobwebs. "I think I heard somebody talking behind the sealed panel, but it was very faint and I couldn't make out what was being said. It sounded more like a little kid than Vicki, but maybe that's because it sounded pretty far away."

Carolyn asks her mother if she has the keys to the West Wing. It turns out that they've been missing for several days.

"I didn't think anything of it, because nobody ever goes there now," she explains. "You don't think Miss Winters found a way into the West Wing, do you?"

"Looks like I go in the hard way, with your permission, Mrs. Stoddard. I'll grab some tools from the garage. Oh, by the way, I found this, near the passage to David's room."

He holds out the part that was removed from Roger's car, and a wrench that could have been used to loosen it.

[VictoriaSilverwolf]

"Very funny, David, now let me out!" calls Victoria, trying the door in vain. She had half-suspected he might try something like this, but she hadn't wanted to believe it. "There must be some other way out of here, maybe through the secret passages." She explores the room thoroughly, looking for another way out of it.

Moving carefully in complete darkness, Victoria is able to feel a small couch, heavy with dust, and a table, upon which stands what feels like an old-fashioned gramophone, complete with one of those turn-of-the-century disks, ready to be played. As far as she can tell, all the walls are as solid as the door. There doesn't seem to be much to do except shout for help and hope somebody can hear her.

The room seems to become illuminated with a very dim glow, as if her eyes are becoming used to the darkness. This proves, however, to be a misty, translucent figure, apparently a child dressed in a long white dress and a white cap.

"Dear me." The girlish voice emerges from somewhere near the figure. "I have not seen you for ever so long, Miss Winters. Shall we be having our lessons again? I fear that I have not kept up with my sums as well as I might."