Session Eight - 04/11/2021

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As the puzzle box opens and plays its awful tone, Vincent, who has just experienced a strange vision of a Dark Pharaoh, is overtaken by a vision of infinite blackness. Ophelia is swept up along with him, and they both come to their senses floating in the void. A white pinprick of light appears in front of them, and starts to grow bigger. They soon realize they are moving toward a galaxy. They enter it, stars and nebula passing them with no effect, and approach the bright galactic core. They soon find themselves overtaken by infinite whiteness, with a small black dimness noticeable in front of them, resolving into a large black shape with spiraling arms, like a photo negative of a minute ago when they were in the void and were approaching the galaxy. The black arms begin to move independently and reach for Vincent and Ophelia. Vincent begins to hear something as the spiral arms move, a low piping sound, almost like flutes. As the piping sound plays, the black thing's arms recede and return to their spiral shape.

Vincent and Ophelia awaken as the puzzle box stops playing its sounds. Vincent is able to rally himself and write the vision off as a bad waking dream, but Ophelia has a more visceral reaction, hyperventilating and starting to panic. She shouts that she was an astronaut, that her and Vincent traveled into the center of a galaxy and saw a black hole of some sort. Vincent shares a very crude drawing of the Dark Pharaoh he saw earlier, to the confusion of the others. Delia recognizes the concept not just from her astronomy studies but also from her occult studies as well. There's a name she knows is attached to that singularity, Sagittarius A.

They discuss what leads are still available to them, briefly trying to formulate a possible scenario and plan to catch Monte if he comes back. The eventually decide its unlikely at best that he'll ever return, and all reluctantly agree to go back to the Corbitt house and finish what they started there. They arrive at the house with less than an hour of daylight left, and waste no time entering. They decide to finish clearing the second floor, with McQuaid being especially cautious around the windows.

They start with the room adjacent to the master bedroom, the children's bedroom. Vincent looks for crayons but failing to find any, borrows McQuaid's pencil and draws a design on the wall. Its a Great War soldier, but with angel wings. He calls it a "paratrooper". McQuaid searches the dresser and finds a box of crayons just like Vincent was asking for. Vincent searches the closet and finds a toy soldier with wings, matching his drawing on the wall. Vincent then draws a red ball on the wall and checks to see if the ball appears in the closet. But there is only the winged soldier. Vincent grabs the soldier and pockets it.

They approach the next closed door, and Vincent knocks. His knock is repeated exactly from the other side. Ophelia draws her pistol while McQuaid shatters the door in with one solid kick. They look in on an empty spare bedroom. Ophelia knocks on the closet door, but there is no other knock. She tries to open the door, but it refuses to open. McQuaid uses the key provided by Mr. Knott and is able to open the closet door. They see not a closet, but instead a spiral shaped, stone stairwell leading down. McQuaid activates his electric torch and can see the stairs seem to go down several levels.

Before going down, they decide to check the last room on the floor. Leaving Vincent to keep an eye on the closet with the staircase, they open the door to the last room and find its a bathroom. Aside from pristine porcelain fixtures, they find nothing of interest in the bathroom. They return to the spare bedroom and head down the stone stairwell. They follow the staircase down for nearly five minutes before they see a dim light coming from the bottom. Ophelia mentions it may be better to come back tomorrow when there's plenty more daylight, which Delia agrees with. At this, they hear the sound of a bouncing ball and see that red ball bounce into view, coming to rest at their feet. Vincent hands over his toy soldier to Ophelia and grabs the red ball. They all take the opportunity to investigate the ball closely for the first time. Ophelia and McQuaid see a strange mark in the side of the ball, almost like a healed scar from a stab wound. Ophelia voices her intent to stab the ball again at a later time.

They notice a blue glow emanating from inside the dim light at the bottom of stairs. They reach the bottom of the steps and look into a torch-lit cellar room. There's dirt floor, stone walls on 3 sides (with the far wall being wood), rotting wooden rafters, and standing in the center is the source of a blue glow, a specter in the shape of a man. Ophelia panics, backing away toward the exit. She fires her pistol at the entity, her shot going wide. However the deafening sound of the gunshot in the enclosed space causes some temporary hearing loss for everyone but herself. The ghost is unaffected, reaching toward the group and uttering "Help...". It ignores their attempts at conversation, simply repeating its plea like a recording. The specter briefly deviates from its repeated plea, stating "he's keeping me here, the Dark Man". After that the specter is unable to emit any further sounds. The torches on the walls begin to dim, the shadows deepening and growing longer. The door to the exit slams shut. McQuaid moves closer to the specter, shining his torchlight into the corners of the room. The ghost returns to its previous state, reaching and uttering "Help". Ophelia attempts to erect a protection circle, but in her nervousness spills all of the salt into a useless pile in front of her. The grains of salt start to blow away as a dark, towering shape with burning eyes appears in place of the specter.

The shadow coalesces and gains defining features, fleshing out. Ophelia and Vincent recognize the shape its taken, that of the Dark Pharaoh from their visions. They also notice that their escape route seems to have disappeared entirely, and they only see blank stone wall behind them. McQuaid fires two shots into the center of the shadowy figure, but seem to have no effect. The torches flare back up, and the shape finishes manifesting, definitely the Dark Pharaoh. Vincent points at his poor drawing of the Dark Pharaoh from earlier and tells McQuaid its the same thing. The Dark Pharaoh mocks Vincent's humble depiction. The figure's outfit morphs into a more modern-looking garb, something that wouldn't be out of place on Wall Street. He then locks eyes with Delia and remarks that she knows his name. She screams, he laughs and agrees that he has been called that. He then leans in tells Delia to say his name and despair. He offers them a choice - to leave and allow things to proceed, or to press on and attempt to stop things. He vows that he won't stop them either way, that watching them struggle is greatly amusing to him. McQuaid reloads his handgun and tells Vincent to get everyone out of there. The Dark Man remarks that the detective is going to need bigger guns. McQuaid fires directly into the being's face, putting a hole into its forehead. The Dark Man pokes his finger into the hole in his forehead and remarks how rude that response was. He grins and offers them a hint regarding the wooden wall, before remarking that Vincent isn't as "amusing as his cousin". The Dark Man then folds in on himself and disappears.

Vincent has an idea of how to get through the wooden wall, and grabs a torch off the wall. McQuaid and Ophelia wrestle him to the ground and wrench the torch away from him. As they discuss chopping through the wall, they hear scratching from behind it. Ophelia opens a hole in the wall with her dagger, which Vincent is able to open further with his bonesaw. They pull apart the wall, revealing a large, squirming ball of rats. The rats swarm over Vincent, ripping apart one of his pant legs and giving him a few bites and gashes. McQuaid scatters the rats with a torch. The waving fire light reveals a metallic glinting in one of the corners of the room. They find a ritual dagger, one with a blade made out of sharpened bony spine. Ophelia grabs it, and the group ventures into the revealed space.

They see a wooden doorway that had previously been hidden and approach it. McQuaid and Delia overhear a voice speaking from behind the door. Vincent is able to parse out actual words from the voice, "Klaatu Barada Nikto". Vincent shares the words with the others. They open the door into the new room. Inside is a robed figure standing with its back to them, facing a large stone altar with the body of the missing neighborhood child, Billy, lying atop its stony surface. McQuaid recognizes the stone altar as the one that had previously been beneath the Church of Contemplation. Surrounding this figures and altar are countless lit candles adorning every surface of the room, and ritualistic symbols painted all along the floor in dark red. The figure has one hand in the air, as if making an incantation. Its other hand is on top of an open book beside Billy. McQuaid and Ophelia have their guns out and pointing at the figure's back. McQuaid shouts at it to stop whatever its doing. Ophelia tries to fire, however nothing comes out since she hadn't reloaded from earlier. Ophelia quickly reloads while Delia flings her poison dagger at the figure, however she trips over Vincent's tattered pants and the thrown weapon goes wide. This gets the figure's attention. It straightens up, its neck contorting inhumanely. It begins to turn around, revealing the same face as the specter from the previous room, however sporting heavily warped features on its face, large gnashing teeth that force the mouth open, and blank white eyes.

The investigators prepare to fight.