IC -2 - Yesterday Upon the Stair - Everyone

[Mephistophilis]

Shirley gingerly pokes the wooden stairs, while they've certainly seen better days they seem sound enough. Shaking the handrail she's less convinced by that but apart from a little give it holds firm while she slowly climbs the stairs. Each step elicits a dissonant note from the boards, like a shriek, almost as if it is in pain.

The condition of the house on the top floor is possibly even worse than the ground floor, there is water trickling down the walls and great patches of staining across the peeling wallpaper and exposed plaster. There is extensive green mildew, and even patches of rot where some of the wooden floorboards are exposed. There's a damp, mildewy smell to match. But that's overpowered by something else, ammonia, strong, musty, and bitter - more than rat urine, something more, bat guano perhaps. And another smell, putrid and sweet, like rotting food.

At the top of the stairs, Shirley can see a number of door off the landing, and somewhere the sound of stomping about, Roger. Looking to the south the only visible window is boarded shut with the external shutters closed and little light penetrating through the cracks. Shirley can't make out much more in the dark.

Roll a Notice Stuff to make anything more out in the gloom.

[LiviaBlue]

Not wanting to step into something gross, Shirley continue to poke and prod with her metal stick.

"How are you even seeing anything in here?" she asks Roger though doesn't really expect an answer back.

She tries to look through the doorway closest to her, by the top of the stairs.

Notice Stuff (60%):
d%

[Mephistophilis]

Shirley reaches the top of the stairs at the southern end of the landing, opposite the window. Peering into the dense gloom she can just about make out the ceiling, where there are sagging patches of damp plaster and areas of bare wooden boards. The smell of guano or whatever it is reeks pretty strongly, overpowering any other odours. Immediately above her head she can see a ceiling hatch, it's closed and there no sign of any pull cord or ladder to reach it.

There are two doors off this end of the landing. From the one on her right, with the door slightly ajar to the west, she hears the sound of crashing and banging. There might even be the slightest glimmer of something coming through the thin gap between the door and the frame. On the south wall, just to the left of the window, to the east, is a full-length antique mirror in an elaborate metal frame. As Shirley stares into the tarnished glass, just about discerning her own reflection, something seems to pass behind her, at the top of the stairs, too quickly to discern anything about it other than the sense of movement. She whirls around but there's nothing there.

Then she hears the groaning of the stairs, and voices, as Darren, Ian, and Harry carefully make their way up. Harry's flashlight beam swinging up and down the stairs, illuminating green, mildewy wallpaper, rivulets of leaking rainwater, and sagging patches of plaster over rotten wood. Darren shouts up, 'We're coming up now Shirley can you see anything?'

Sorry, I should have made it clear, you're at the top of the stairs at the bottom of the map by the window. So you can peak into either of the rooms at the bottom of the map.

[Mr. Handy]

The map isn't displaying. It's giving a 503 error because the server is busy. I've tried multiple times.

[Mephistophilis]

Coming up for me. Have you tried refreshing the page?

[Mr. Handy]

I had, and was still doing it then, but the map is displaying now. The server must not be busy any more.

[LiviaBlue]

This house was definitely starting to give her the heebie-jeebies, but the movement was probably a rat, or another possum.

She decides to look in the room to her left. She didn't particularly care to get in Roger's and whatever he was destroying in the room on the right, and she was secretly glad the attic hatch was lacking it's opening string. She couldn't think of a worst place on this house than that moldy and rainy attic.

"Just more nastiness," she answers the boys.

Oops, no worries. It was actually clear enough from the map but my brain decided that the arrow meant up the stairs.

[BoyBlunder78]

Approaching Shirley "Right then, which room do you wanna take?"

[Mephistophilis]

The door to her left is closed but the knob turns easily and she opens the door without any difficulty or even the usual screech of rusted hinges. Inside is a small bathroom. The smell of damp and mould is overpowering. It is very difficult to make anything out in the darkness but she can just about see the outline of an old-fashioned claw-footed tub, porcelain toilet, and the reflection from a mirror mounted on the far wall, maybe on some kind of cabinet.

Although she can barely see her own reflection in the cracked mirror, after a few moments of peering through the dark Shirley notices a shadow behind her. As one of Harry's flashlight beams sweeps past and lights up the mirror for a second she can see that the shadow is a figure. An old woman. Stood directly behind her. There's something familiar about her. And her expression is odd. She's smiling. Smiling, but not in a good way.

OOC:   Hard POW roll please. And SAN roll, 0/1 loss for seeing this.

[Mr. Handy]

"Should we see what's in the medicine cabinet?" asks Harry, shining his flashlight around the room.

[BoyBlunder78]

Darren walks forward and uses the crowbar to open the medicine cabinet from a distance.

[Mr. Handy]

"It probably doesn't need that," says Harry. "You should be able to just open it by hand, and if not, then you can use the crowbar."

[BoyBlunder78]

"After rats chewing through wallpaper and dead raccoons falling out of fireplaces. Who knows what could be in there.Im taking no chances!" and proceeds to open the cabinet.

[LiviaBlue]

Hard POW (65% / 2 = 32%):
d%
SAN (63%):
d%

Shirley squeals loudly when the figure appears in the mirror, taking a few steps back and bumping into Darren as he tries to open the cabinet. "Sheesh! Did you see that?" she grabs Darren's arm shaking it vigorously. "I swear I saw someone in the mirror! Like an old woman!"

With a bewildered expression, she looks over her shoulder toward the spot where a person would need to be to cause a visible reflection.

[Mephistophilis]

Shirley sees the old woman immediately behind her, clearly in the mirror. She has a sense of familiarity but she can't put her finger on why. The old woman's mouth curls up in a semblance of a smile. But it looks cruel, leering. Darren and the others are stood behind the woman, in the doorway to the bathroom. Spinning around Shirley sees nobody behind her except Darren, Ian, and Harry.

As Shirley spins around, staring wildly at him, Darren leans forward with the crowbar and flicks open the mirrored cabinet which smashes into the wall in a shower of silvered-glass fragments. Inside the cabinet the shelves are mostly empty apart from a couple of plastic caps and lids, a few cracked jars and empty bottles. The little detritus that remains from the toiletries of the last residents.

The cabinet door rebounds off the wall and half closes again. The mirrored surface cracked and veined, great chunks of glass missing and now shattered in the grubby sink. With Harry's flashlight shining inside the bathroom they can see more clearly the claw-footed bath filled with rings and patches of unidentifiable stains. The toilet encrusted in all too identifiable muck, with a pungent stench to match.

In the glass of the half-closed cabinet, Shirley can only see herself, and her friends.

Kyle comes up stairs and stumbles on the four of them crowded around the small bathroom.

[BoyBlunder78]

" Woah! Woah! Shirley calm down I never saw anything!" Darren says.

[Mr. Handy]

"I didn't see anything in the mirror either," says Harry, "and now nobody ever will again. It's probably just some dumb trick by Roger. He must have put a picture of an old woman's face on the mirror beforehand to try to scare us."

[kabukiman]

"What are you doing in that place? Did you find anything interesting?"

[BoyBlunder78]

" Where's Louis?" Darren turns to Kyle "Wasnt he with you?"

[LiviaBlue]

"Uggh! This house is starting to give me the hibby-jibbies," Shirley says as a shiver runs down her back. She takes advantage of Harry's flashlight beam and looks around for any spots that might have been recently disturbed or where the key might be hidden. If she doesn't spot anything worth checking out she walks back out into the hallway.

Leaning over the staircase rail, she calls out for Louis. "Hey! Louis! Get up here!"