Apologies for length and inaccuracies…
Having done their research from a pair of spooky old books and having grilled Boston’s Stage Magician community, the crew thought it was time to go back to Memphis the Great’s mansion and put an end to this malarkey one way or another.
Memphis, they suspected, had been successful in his quest to to “traverse the dimensions as a spider traverses a web” or whaetever it was he’d scribbled in his book. But it did seem like that traversing seemed to lead to the house being haunted by something. Memphis? Something worse? Time would tell, because the snappily named Puritan-era magic ritual Call Forth Ye Form Beyonde would presumably, hopefully, pull whatever was lurking in the dimensions around the house into the more traditional dimensions we inhabit.
Terrance and Wilbur were the only one who wanted to brush up on their spells, everyone else leaving them well enough alone. But armed with these (and Shea’s shotgun) they ventured back into the house to get set up.
Everyone had a part to play in the incantation and set up, with the exception of Terrance who stood by as they got on with their focused mumblings, with his Barrier of Naach-Tith at the ready. As they were led through the chant, the candles blazed and then got a curious kind of focus to them as they found the rhythm and started making rolls to do magic in the base of the tower-like structure at the rough center of Memphis’ bizarrely renovated house.
I should say here that the rolls for the ritual were very good. The participants really found their calling. It went by quickly, much faster than it could have been: but it was not without incident. namely things coming alive and attacking the participants.
The stage sabres for the Boxed Girl trick whirred through the air trying to find new marks, the noose slithered out of the prop room to come and strangle and the hand-chopper came out… well, the clue is in the name. They weathered these attacks, in no small part to Terrance’s excellent casting of the Barrier of Naach-Tith, and some hurled Bhutanese Reality Globes which stopped those pesky skewers and associated kitchen knives in their tracks.
The ritual reached its conclusion and I can’t remember if it was a pushed roll or not: as the consequences of failure of this spell are already pretty grim. But what happened instead was a tremendously satisfying culmination that drew the disembodied, insane, non-corporeal being that was Axel ‘Memphis the Great’ Schwartz back into the real world… and with no body there to receive him, he instead was pulled into the fabric of his house.
This didn’t go over well at all. The wall above them split, cracked and reformed into the unmistakable saturnine features of Mr. The Great contorted in fear and impotent fury. Being a house in these dimensions is not the freewheeling dimension-crawling to which he had been accustomed and absolutely nothing like he had hoped. Pretty much the exact opposite, to be honest. The Venn diagram of Things Interdimensional Spiders Can Do and Things Houses With Badly Placed Kitchens Can Do doesn’t seem like it would show much overlap.
His rage started to tear the very real fabric of the house apart though, as he reacted poorly to his new prison-body and accidentally tore it apart. Floors rippled, masonry fell, windows shattered and all the humans-with-traditional-flesh-prisons fled to the safety of outside. Memphis, meanwhile, crumbled in on himself.
I would not be in a rush to reuse any of those building materials, but outside it became clear that the danger had passed. And there was nothing left but to go home and forget it all. Except, there were still a few loose ends…
…for a start, the spell they had found that tore someone’s soul apart and sent it into different dimensions seemed like a good explanation of how Memphis found himself in that pickle. And that book had been in the possession of his former apprentice.
Visiting Hawkings again, they found him much improved, finally having fallen asleep and relieved of his punishing headaches. He confessed, it had been him, he’d used the Claws of Eternity, but maybe hadn’t pronounced the last few syllables quite as crisply as he should and blew Memphis out of this existence but not into enough dimensions to shatter his soul. Just enough to keep him lurking evilly around his house. And, yes, then Hawkings had stolen his best tricks and tried to make a go of it on his own.
It was all pretty pathetic and while there was no doubt that it was attempted murder, robbery and maybe witchcraft, if that was still on the books… what could be done. What clear-eyed Boston detective would take them seriously if they turned him in. Schwartz was a dick and would likely have done bad things with his arcane knowledge. Hawkings was an dope, but scared off real magic for good. So they let him off with it and wished he and Ingrid all the best. The insurance money from the mansion should be a nice nest egg whenever that came through.
The law firm of Palmer and Pickering were not particularly satisfied. They’d wanted their paying customer found, alive preferably, but dead was something with which they could work. They compensated the investigators for their time and seemed to take seriously their “bro, trust me” insistence that Memphis was dead, even if they couldn’t produce a body. They would at least fast-track the upgrade from legally-missing-presumed-dead to legally dead. Ingrid, after all, might continue the account…
The investigators meanwhile went their separate ways, back to their everyday lives… which started to go awry a little. They experienced what we’d now call glitches in the flow of time. But glitch didn’t come into parlance until the 1940s to describe an error made by a radio announcer. Other words for the same thing were muff, fluff and bust, which I think are charming.
Anyway, the flow of time was all fluffed up that summer:
Shea delivered flowers to Mrs Frazer’s grave, only to find the exact same bouquet already there. Terrance fully autopsied the same person twice in a row. Bradford’s tennis tournament at The Club (ironically partnered with Muffy Bustington) was a fiasco! Nothing terrible happened to Tom: he locked up the Flop and headed South for a spell of honest work and the journey must have done him good because he came back looking… a bit younger, tbh.
There’s nothing like Boston for the winter though… so Tom returned, opened up, aired out and swept the Flop back into it’s usual welcoming shape. He was just noticing that he hadn’t seen much of young Larry when two unusual pieces of mail arrived for him.
The first, the mailman explained, didn’t have the right postage, or any postage for that matter and was, in fact, just some folded paper with an address on one side. Tom fished out a penny to pay for it and took it in hand, along with a perfectly good envelope with proper postage paid and whatnot.
The first, crumpled piece of mail was a plea from Larry Crosswell, who had checked into Danvers State Hospital to mentally recuperate and now deeply regretted his decision, but they wouldn’t let him leave. Could they come and get him plz?
The second (typed and more formal) piece of mail was from Lawrence Crosswell, just letting them know that actually he was fine, don’t worry, everything is fine, don’t come and get him, thxbye.
In conference with the other investigators, they all agreed that only one of those letters was likely true and the other deeply suspicious. The next day, they left for Danvers.
Taking the train, they arrived at Asylum Station, which absolutely sounds like a terrible 90s small concert venue in a college town. I’m not sure anyone has committed to owning a car, so they all rode in comfort and then schlepped the last few miles to the gates of Danvers State Hospital on just about the dreariest day they’d every known. After being allowed into the grounds by the gatekeeper, their day was about to get considerably drearier.
Danvers State Hospital was an oppressively dreary place. All colour seemed sucked from the place and a persistent feeling of being watched by the tall dark windows of the hospital’s massive wings was pervasive as they approached under a leaden sky.
To fool the Hospital Administrator they’d come up with a clever cover story about how Bradford was keen to have a family member committed and was shopping around. They were shown in to meet Dr Berger, who somewhat politely showed them around the nearby, least secure wings. Oh sure, the facility was grand, but it was clear that some of the treatments here were fucking wild. Not made-up-wild, but actually just a list of stupid shitty things we used to do to people in institutions. Trepanning, lobotomies, ice baths in restraints, dosing people up with insulin, random use of not-particularly controlled electric shocks. Berger obviously thought of these as the cutting edge of modern psychiatric treatment. All of that must happen somewhere else however because in the wings they observed, it was all plenty of natural light, low-impact activities and people shuffling away from Dr Berger and the orderlies that passed.
The feeling of hopelessness never really left the visitors however, and they were unnerved by the behaviours of the staff and patients as well as some carefully hidden injuries on the staff. A nurse with half an ear, orderlies with deep scratches on their neck and arms. Dr Berger seemed fine and the patients had scars that could be explained away by their tics and occasional need for restraints.
Tom slunk off to go snoop and Ernst asked if (while he was here) he could check on his bud, Larry Crosswell. Dr Berger originally rebuffed the idea, but with the application of some persuasive arguments, he relented.
Ernst was led by two of the thuggish orderlies (there seems to be a massive hiring pool of knuckledragging bouncers for this hospital and a very small pool of medically trained nurses) through increasingly strict wings to J Wing, where they keep the most dangerous male patients, like – apparently – mild-mannered, confirmed-bachelor folklorist Larry Crosswell. Crosswell seemed anxious, but healthy enough, which was somewhat amazing because as he had descended the alphabet of Wings, Ernst had observed more and more patient injuries, and by the time he got to J Wing, he’d seen recent amputees, the eyeless and the fingerless; sobbing, screaming and staring from their padded cells.
After asking for some privacy from the orderlies, Larry confided that he feared for his safety. Berger had threatened him with some terrible fate come the new moon and moved him to J Wing because he had started to look into why Danvers State Hospital sucked so much. Apparently a guy on a previous wing that had been a friend to him knew what was going on: he recommended that they find Andrew McBride, because he knew the truth.
As this was going on, the rest of them got a tour of the grounds, but a half-hearted one. Berger pretty much stood at the top of the hill, pointed out stuff and then went back inside. Lawn, shrubbery, forest, reservoir, amphitheatre, paths for walking, good day.
They were glad to see the back of the State Hospital and set off back to Danvers proper to go to their lodgings. Misty Danvers was not exactly alive with life though, the town was not abandoned, but very very quiet.
They split up to hit the historical society, the library and the town hall for information, while Tom did what he does best and sidled up to people to talk and listen.
The historical society was focused on Danvers’ major role in the “Salem” witch trials, particularly the unrepentant presiding magistrate Judge John Hathorne, who purchased Hathorne hill upon which was later built Danvers State Hospital.
Tom found out that the Hospital once had a better reputation and that the turn for the worst was somewhat more recent. The previous administrator, Dr Shine, had run the hospital in happier, more caring times. Shine was well loved by the town and the old man remembered his amazing tales of travels across the world and the peoples that he met. Shine apparently held the “primitive” societies he encountered in high regard and believed that the civilized world ignored their wisdom at their peril. Shine handed the hospital over to Dr Berger, retired, and died within a year.
Dr Shine’s papers also gave tantalizing insight into his understanding of a wrongness on Hathorne Hill and his steps to solve it.
Berger kept the recuperative tradition of Dr Shine, but after a few years, that changed. Over at the Library, they read up on the local newspapers and got an inkling as to why that be. Despite Dr Shine’s instructions, Berger removed a large stone disk from the grounds during the construction of the hospital’s hillside amphitheatre. The attached photograph showed the works foreman, Andrew MacBride, busting up the disk upon which was engraved a star-like design.
Things slowly went downhill for the hospital (and by extension, its inhabitants and the populace of Danvers) from there. They started hiring the aforementioned knuckledraggers from around New England and even… gasp… Ohio and replaced care and recuperation with punitive, restrictive measures and experimentation.
Shea leaned on her contacts in the things-what-fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck-legitimate-salvage-business industry and asked them to look into the deliveries made to the hospital. It took them a day, but eventually a contact got in touch with the tale of a delivery driver who noticed that the hospital didn’t take deliveries around the new moon (a noticeable benefit on those unlit roads) and when he DID try to deliver something around the darkest part of the month, he found the gatehouse deserted and a distinct lack of activity.
As well as research, they were also party to some weird events. On their first day they were warned off by shadowy figures, investigated by the local sheriff (although that may have been became Ernst came across as a Bolshevik agent to the lady at the Library. Or an anarchist. Or a spy for the old Kaiser.
That night, cosy in the antiquated inn, Terrance was awoken by a person in his room: Andrew MacBride had been released to “take care” of Terrance, but instead he was going to deliver a warning and live with the consequences. Things were bad at the hospital, there was something terrible permeating the building and grounds and Larry was in legit danger from a vengeful Dr Berger. Andy put a timeline on that danger, with the new moon in two night’s time. He then fled the out the window, leaving Terrance unmurdered.
The following day they researched more stuff and the gun Ernst had asked for arrived by train. Bolstered by this he went to scout the woods around the hospital but ended up lost and disoriented. He did find a culvert that seemed to lead to the hospital grounds but got weirded out by some glowing lizard eyes that appeared in the darkness and I think accidentally fired his gun. Inside a culvert. Reeling, he retreated and eventually found his way to the road and back into town.
Terrance wanted to try to find a smooth stone onto which he could engrave the same symbol that he had seen on Dr Shine’s disk. Every time he did the mist would make things spooky and the endeavour seemed creepily dangerous. It wasn’t really. Probably. He eventually got a stone and then ran into the problem of how to scratch the symbol into stone.
To end things, the late edition of the local paper carried the notice of Andrew MacBride’s suicide at the state hospital. A cynical person might think that it was remarkable that the newspaper rushed to publish that news so quickly.
The investigators were going to have to pull of a heist. A Larry Heist.
