Bell, Book, and Candle

The Thing in the Cellar

2nd session

In which our heroes return to the Abandoned House in search of fortune and glory (and still make time to attend the Fall Formal, where strange and ominous portents are raised).

  • Florian rushes Delta Phi, Logan rushes Sigma Phi. Enid is out for the time being, hospitalized at St. Mary’s with a case of mononucleosis.
  • Florian, Logan, and Gladys go to the library to research who owned the house and what may have happened there. Florian finds out that there is rumored to be a treasure hidden in the house, and that the wife of the former owner said in the paper that the house is haunted by something that originated with her husband, Shaughnessy.
  • Gladys bumps into and then is confronted in the library by a madwoman who curses at her in Latin and appears to remove books or bound collections from the stacks at random.
  • Returning to the house, Florian grabs the half bottle of whiskey, vowing never to drink it, the painting of the veined man, which has been mysteriously removed from its frame, the book of folklore from the house study, and Frank’s Victrola and carries them all out to the lawn.
  • The group finds the bedsheet bag Florian had captured the small creature in had been chewed through, no creature inside.
  • The back door to the cellar has been blocked with we don’t know what. Time to investigate the Basement of the Abandoned House!
  • Entering the basement, we find that it is loaded to the brim with a huge amount of shiny debris and odds and ends. Frank’s watch is found here, hanging on a hook. Florian takes it.
  • Florian’s shoelaces get tied together, and he almost smacks his head on the way to the floor. Who did it? and HOW?
  • We also find that there is a hole in the wall of the basement, from which emits an earthy, unpleasant odor. We retreat for the time being and to attend the formal party.
  • The next morning, Florian and Logan awake stark naked under their blankets, all their clothes having been stolen in the night: from their dressers and their bodies. Florian sees the watch has disappeared again, but the Victrola, painting, and folklore book with its tintype are still in the room with them. Gladys has a similar unusual experience, when she attempts to leave her room someone has set a collection of her father’s heavier medical texts at the top of her slightly open door and she barely manages to evade them as this primitive trap is sprung.
  • While Florian returns the Victrola to Frank (and borrows some clothes), Logan sees that Frank has a lovely visitor in his room, someone we later learn is named Asenath Waite. She is nude. Florian informs Frank of the group’s resolve to return to the house on Church Street, and Frank agrees to join them the Sunday following the Fall Formal.
  • While attending the formal, Frank introduces Asenath and Logan has the strange sensation of seeing himself through her eyes.
  • Florian is the perfect gentleman and saves Lois from a dreadful evening of not dancing with the football captain, Horatio Marsh. She is reading a small book on Monoliths that she discovered in the Book Nook.
  • Horatio confronts Florian, who manages to deflect a conflict. Florian and Logan try to connect with an angry and unsocial student named Claude Owen and they cannot locate him later when they go to his room. He is up to something.
  • Gladys and Stanley break into the drugstore to enjoy some laughing gas and get some knockout drops of chloroform. Stanley tells Gladys that he has seen strange hoofed prints around a passage in the basement morgue area of the hospital. She tells Stanley of the strange creatures inhabiting the Abandoned House. Perhaps there is a common passage, or a shared history?
  • The next day, the group (Florian, Logan, Gladys, Lois, and Stanley, sans Enid, who was still confined to bed, and Frank, who was not in his room) returns to the Abandoned House basement, armed with nets, chloroform and sturdy courage. Stanley and Gladys descend into the hole.
  • Gladys feels something running around on the floor, and tries to catch it. She fails, just as Stanley trips over this invisible something and trips into yet another hole, cracking his head in a sewage river flowing below the sub basement.
  • Gladys captures an invisible creature in her net and knocks it out. She then accidently kills the creature with an overdose of chloroform and it becomes visible upon death.
  • Florian descends and saves Stanley, then Florian and Logan haul Stanley out of the basement. Before departing, Florian again takes Frank’s gold pocket watch from the basement, this time replacing it with some shiny costume jewelry he purchased in town earlier that day.
  • Stanley goes to the hospital for treatment with Florian to help him.
  • Gladys and Lois attempt to record the creature for science and take it to the lab for dissection. Gladys fails to draw the creature accurately. Logan, increasingly uncomfortable, tries to leave, and then…
  • The presence of creatures can be sensed coming through the ventilation shafts. They fall asleep again.
  • The janitor wakes them up. The creature is gone, the drawings are gone. All the work is lost.
  • Over the course of the next week Florian encounters Frank and returns the lost pocket watch.
  • Next Week! The Halloween Party and the death of Frank!

Comments

Okay, so as I mentioned last week, I’m just posting a tag line and leaving the rest up to you guys. I think any of you should be able to access and edit this post; if not, let me know. I’ve started things off with one bullet point, you take it from there as much or as little as you like.

The Thing in the Cellar
 

I’m just filling in things as they come to me, goof with this as any of you may.

The Thing in the Cellar
 

Worked in a few things as well myself.

The Thing in the Cellar
sirlarkins SimonBailey