Delta Green - All Part of the Job

[Audrik]

Music From A Darkened Room - Session 3a

Having decided she most likely wouldn’t be able to make her meeting with Dr. Yarrow due to the incident at the house, Agent ROSE gave him a call to let him know to look for Agents SETH and SID instead. He didn’t answer, but she left a voicemail.

SETH and SID were up early, and so they decided to take a look around the yard of the house on Spooner Avenue. They wanted to find where Anton Turé had been buried originally so they could rebury him, and something about this Operation led them to believe the house was a better bet than any of the four cemeteries in town.

They walked around the house searching the yard for disturbed soil, but they found nothing that looked like a lead. They then made another lap around checking the foundation for a hidden cellar entrance or crawlspace. Again, they found nothing until Agent SETH shined his flashlight under the back deck.

The deck extended about 25 feet or so from the house, and beneath it was nothing but dirt, rocks, and scattered animal bones. This got SETH thinking about the lack of pets or other animals in the area. No cats, dogs, birds, or squirrels. There weren’t even many children to be seen. This made the neighborhood eerily silent.

All the way past the dirt and bones, Agent SETH noticed a grate which indicated a crawlspace beneath the house. SID wanted nothing to do with the underside of the house, but he was perfectly willing to go inside and look around. SETH, on the other hand, wanted everyone to stay clear of the inside of the house for the time being, but the crawlspace intrigued him.

Agent SETH crawled beneath the deck and over to the crawlspace. He removed the grate and looked inside. The whole underside of the house was dirt littered with rocks and animal bones. There was maybe a foot and a half or two feet of clearance; not terribly cramped, but not exactly inviting. SETH thought he could hear a cat mewing somewhere in the darkness, but he couldn’t catch it with his light. He decided to leave the grate off for now and poured out the contents of his canteen to muddy the ground in hopes of capturing the prints of anything going in or coming out. He then crawled back out from underneath the deck.

No visibly disturbed earth on the lot, so the agents decided to check the local cemeteries. They picked the nearest one to walk about while calling the others to ask if they had a record of Anton Turé. The answer was the same from all of them: “We don’t have those records available, but you are welcome to visit and have a look for yourself. Our hours are …”

Two hours of methodical searching turned up nothing at the first cemetery, so they decided to break for lunch. A short while into their search of the second cemetery, they spotted the grave they sought. The earth looked to have been disturbed sometime in the past month or so, but the groundskeeper knew nothing of it when questioned.

Agent SETH flashed a badge and related a story of a prank played on one of the newer soldiers under his command. The child’s grave had been dug up, and now he would like to put it back. The groundskeeper told him that if what he said was true, the police would need to be notified, and the soldiers responsible would need to be found.

SETH assured the man that nothing of the sort was going to happen. This was a military investigation, and if the groundskeeper refused to cooperate, he would be the one standing trial. It was probably the drinks he’d had with his lunch, but the groundskeeper refused to be bullied. If he wanted to rebury a body, SETH was going to need a court order, and the person or persons responsible were going to have to answer for it. The agents stormed off.

Agent ROSE couldn’t do much from her hospital bed, so she passed the time researching the house, its owners, and anyone else who might have ever been involved with it courtesy of the hospital wi-fi. It was nearly two hours later before she found anything at all that they didn’t already know. She found an article identifying an old Italian woman who lived with Isabelle Wheeler as Adele DiVettelo, or as some of the locals called her, the Crone.

The small and well-hidden article mentioned that DiVettelo had been hired to mend curtains in the house around June of 1926, and it was apparently very soon after that Isabelle Wheeler was said to have made a miraculous recovery.

Another brief mention was made in an earlier article that a woman named Adele DiVettelo had been dismissed from the Laconia Sanatorium a month before arriving at the Wheeler house. Her dismissal was due to “improper behavior”. Several other employees reported seeing DiVettelo kill a cat and drink its blood. The article concluded that this was evidence of witchcraft.

 

[Audrik]

Music From A Darkened Room - Session 3b

SETH and SID did a little shopping before their meeting with Dr. Yarrow. SETH wanted a pair of mesh gloves of the sort used by prep cooks. He also bought a large quantity of steel wool. If he was going to be attacked by a disembodied razor, he wanted some protection.

Dr. Yarrow arrived at the diner right on time, and he joined SETH and SID at their table. Yarrow was a large and not very athletic man in his early 40s. He seemed quite eager to investigate the house. When asked why he’d never been inside if he was so interested, his response was simply that in its long string of ownership, the house was rarely unoccupied.

Agent SID was almost immediately skeptical of the man simply due to his demeanor and the New Age psychic feel of his words. SETH was much more inclined to accept Yarrow at face value. The agents explained that they believed the house may have at least two entities inside; one of which was confirmed to be murderously violent.

Dr. Yarrow said that there were a couple ways they could go about the investigation. They could set up cameras, thermal and magnetic detectors, and audio recorders around the house hoping to capture evidence of a haunting, or they could hold a séance if they wanted to contact a specific spirit.

Agent SID rolled his eyes and wordlessly indicated to SETH that he wasn’t believing this for a minute. For his part, SETH stated flatly that there wasn’t going to be a séance. Cameras, audio recorders, night-vision … those were fine, but no holding hands to summon a spirit, and none of that Ouija board stuff.

Dr. Yarrow said that he had his equipment out in the car, and they could get set up right away, but by far the best chance of making contact would be to wait until midnight. A dark house at midnight gave them the thinnest barrier to the spirit world, and thus better odds of making a connection. Also, reflective surfaces would aid immensely. SETH mentioned the floor-to-ceiling mirrors in the master bedroom, but he cautioned against using that room. Yarrow said that may be exactly what they should do.

SID asked if Dr. Yarrow’s equipment included a box that could open up to capture a ghost, and the doctor laughed. He said that ghost traps were a thing of fiction. That did it for SID. Everything the doctor said sounded to him like complete garbage, and the one time he mentioned something he absolutely knew to be real, the man laughed it off as obvious fantasy. Agent SID excused himself and left. He sent SETH a text with his opinion on their Friendly, and he waited patiently until it was time to head to the house.

Agent RUBY stopped by the hospital to sit with ROSE. She informed her cell leader that she had made contact with the other Friendly, antique dealer Elizabeth Tucker. Tucker had knowledge of a few of the pieces from the Wheeler estate sale, and if given a few days, she should be able to track it all down.

Upon reaching the house, Dr. Yarrow entered and began to set up his equipment. SETH indicated that he would like to set up a camera in the crawlspace under the house, and Yarrow handed him one equipped with a wireless transmitter. The rest of the cameras in the house would be wired directly to one of three laptops. The whole thing felt like bad ghost-hunting reality television to Agent SID, and so he stepped outside with SETH.

Agent SID tested the garage while SETH went around back to check beneath the deck. The garage door resisted SID’s attempt to lift it, but he flexed his recently replaced (and if his fever-dreams were to be believed, alien-crafted) right arm. With the sound of grinding gears, the door slowly lifted, and SID scanned the room.

It was an empty two-car garage with a cement floor, a 1970’s era refrigerator next to the door to the house, and some scattered and rusted gardening equipment. The door closed behind him as he crossed the garage to find something with which to prop open the door.

Agent SID grabbed a hoe and returned to the garage door, but before he could lift it, he heard the sound of a door opening behind him, and a dim light shined. He turned to see a shadowy figure looking in the empty refrigerator. The figure closed the refrigerator, and when SID lifted the garage door, he turned to see that we was alone in the room.

 

[Audrik]

Music From A Darkened Room - Session 3c

Propping the garage door open with the hoe, SID then went around back where SETH was waiting for him. SID refused to crawl under the deck, but he would do his best to shine light in through the hole. SETH crawled through the hole and under the house with his night-vision goggles on and his flashlight ready just in case.

He found a spot to set up the camera that seemed like it had a decent view of the crawlspace, and he set it up. As soon as he turned the camera on, his night-vision scrambled and went black. As he slid the goggles to the top of his head, he could hear feral animal sounds from somewhere near his feet and getting closer. He pointed his flashlight and hit the button, but nothing happened. In the darkness, the animal sounds got closer. Agent SETH pointed his gun and fired two shots in the direction of the sound. The shots produced very little light, but in pure darkness, very little light can still make a difference.

SETH didn’t see an animal, but he did see the hole through which he’d crawled. Rolling to his hands and knees, he crawled that direction until he hit the wall. At some point, the snarling animal was right on his heels, literally. It had managed to get a brief grip on his boot, but it was easily shaken off.

Upon reaching where he thought the hole should be, Agent SETH felt nothing but cinderblocks. He fired two more shots in the direction of the snarling, and he saw the hole. It was on the other side of the crawlspace. SETH fished out his zippo from his pocket and was pleased to find that it lit. Now that he could see, he crawled carefully to the hole. Oddly, the animal sounds had stopped.

When SETH poked his head out of the hole, Agent SID asked just what had happened. He had heard four gun shots in rapid succession, like a machine gun, and a split second later, SETH had popped out. Dr. Yarrow confirmed that assessment a moment later when he came out on the deck.

SETH explained his story, and as the camera had been set up, they checked the recording. The camera made SETH look a little silly. He was crawling around in circles, pausing and looking around suspiciously when there was no sound to be heard, and firing his gun at nothing. The one part of SETH’s story the recording did confirm was the timing between shots and the fact that he was apparently under the house for nearly ten minutes even though SID could swear it was barely even two minutes.

Dr. Yarrow nodded in apparent understanding, and he explained that what they were dealing with under the house was a sort of localized time bubble. SID held his tongue. He didn’t have a better explanation, but his gut told him this guy was a fraud. SETH seemed to believe that Yarrow knew what he was talking about, and as SETH was a trained psychologist while SID was not, both agents knew better than to argue.

At any rate, the equipment was set up and ready to go, and Dr. Yarrow felt like getting a snack before it was time to get started. He took his leave, and the agents did the same. There was just one more thing SETH wanted to test before they left. He found an old, rusty hammer in the garage, and he used it to pry loose one of the wooden siding panels. The agents took it into the backyard along with the gasoline can from the Green Box. SETH poured out some of the gas onto the piece of siding and lit it.

There seemed to be some doubt concerning the combustibility of the house, and SETH felt this test would give him an answer. Well, it did. Sort of. The piece of siding did burn, but not in the way they expected. Only part of the board burned, and that part seemed to be spelling out three words: HELL IS ME. Then the paint began to peel, and the siding started to burn as expected.

Before it could burn much, SETH put the fire out and photographed the words with the camera on his phone. He then nailed the piece of siding back where he had found it, only he reversed it so that the words were on the inside. This left an obvious lack of paint, but that didn’t bother him.

It was time to get away from the house for a while. They had about three hours to kill before midnight.

 

[Audrik]

Music From A Darkened Room - Session 4a

SETH and SID stopped at Burger King for milkshakes on their way to visit ROSE in the hospital. ROSE and RUBY felt it was a little rude that the guys didn’t bring any for them. With S-Cell there, Agent RUBY excused herself and returned to the hotel for some rest.

ROSE said that she was bored with sitting in a hospital bed with nothing to do, but SETH reminded her why she was there. Running off on your own is usually a bad plan. ROSE decided not to argue. Instead, she suggested something that might still allow her to play a part in the Opera even while confined to a bed: Connect Dr. Yarrow’s laptops through a Wi-Fi hotspot, and she could connect to them remotely through hers. That would allow her to monitor the cameras while the other three investigated the house.

Once visiting hours were over, SETH and SID headed back to the house. Dr. Yarrow had already returned, and he was waiting outside in his car. The three went in through the front door and checked on the equipment in the den. Everything looked operational, and Dr. Yarrow changed some settings so that Agent ROSE could connect.

They still had a couple hours before midnight, but the agents were anxious to get started. The reasoning was that just because midnight is prime ghost hunting time, the hours before and after weren’t necessarily bad times. The agents discussed plans, and Dr. Yarrow commented as he saw fit. SETH thought breaking the mirrors would be a good idea since the entity or entities seemed to be able to pass through them, but Dr. Yarrow cautioned against that plan. An intact mirror would serve them much better as a focus than shards of a broken one, and if the entity could in fact use mirrors to affect the living world, breaking one would only give it that many more windows.

SETH really had a bad feeling about the mirrors in the master bedroom, so he thought they should try to find a mirror somewhere else that they might use. The cardboard boxes in the den were a good place to start looking, so everyone took a box and started digging. No mirrors turned up, but at the bottom of one box, Agent SID found a few pages of sheet music; Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”. As a child, Agent SID had sat through lesson after lesson as his piano instructor had him play many classical pieces, and this happened to be one he remembered well. He began humming the melody as his eyes scanned the notes on the pages, and as he did so, he thought he could actually hear it playing however softly. SETH made no indication that he heard anything but the humming, but Dr. Yarrow stopped and canted his head and appeared to listen. It was hard to tell where the music was coming from, but it seemed to be from under the floor. It only lasted as long as the humming, and that was cut short.

The house shook slightly and the windows rattled as a loud blast came from the direction of the kitchen. The air had a smell that indicated nearby gunfire. When they went to investigate, they found the kitchen dark and empty. In a reflection in the window, Agent SETH saw a man in an old suit holding a shotgun. The kitchen in the reflection was similar, but the style seemed older. As he watched, the man muttered something and put the barrel into his mouth before pulling the trigger with his thumb. That was the very same scene Agent ROSE had just witnessed through her video feed.

SID called Dr. Yarrow to the kitchen to see if he could contact the spirit they believed must be George Cruise who had killed his wife and then himself with a shotgun in 1959. Dr. Yarrow brought his microcassette recorder, and he began asking questions of the spirit. He would then allow a pause in an attempt to capture the spirit’s voice on the tape.

When they had asked everything they wanted to ask, the three returned to the den. Dr. Yarrow still felt they would be more successful if they split up, and SID was more than willing to let him go off on his own, but Agent SETH wanted everyone to stick together. He didn’t want another “suicide” on his hands. Dr. Yarrow said that he was only there as a consultant, and he was just happy to finally experience the house first hand.

 

[Audrik]

Music From A Darkened Room - Session 4b

The three stuck together, and they decided to investigate the house methodically. They would move clockwise starting opposite the master bedroom. They entered the hall just off the den and opened the first door on the left. It swung in to reveal an empty bedroom in the middle of redecorating. The wooden floor was bare except for a few sheets of plastic in a corner. There was a step ladder in the corner as well, and a few cans of light blue paint which had been open for quite some time. The paint was congealed. The white and brown striped wallpaper was only removed about halfway around the room, and underneath that could be seen a blue wallpaper with cartoon boats.

What Agent SID saw when he stepped in the room was a little different. Instead, he saw all four walls were papered with the cartoon boat wallpaper. Instead of paint cans and a step ladder, he saw a child’s bed and a dresser. This vision faded after a few moments, and as no one else seemed to see the same thing, SID decided to keep it to himself.

The group moved on to the next room which was also a bedroom. There was no closet door, but there were tracks to indicate a sliding door would go there. Like most of the other rooms in the house, the floor of this room was hard wood with a long-faded polish. It was unfurnished, but in the center of the room was an ugly, lime green shag rug.

Agent SETH stepped into the room and grabbed an end of the rug with one hand. As he gave it a tug, he felt resistance, and almost immediately, he noticed the rug was soaking wet. It began to emanate a horrible smell. The agents could identify it as the smell of a corpse rotting in stagnant water.

SETH pulled harder, and the center of the rug began to rise off the floor. He let go and stepped back. The green rug rose until its edges were barely touching the floor, and then it began to shake gently. The nasty, stagnant water splattered everything within a radius of about three feet. This included Agent SID who didn’t know quite how to react to all of this. His mind slipped ever so slightly, and his instincts took over. In this case, his instinct told him that Dr. Yarrow did this sort of thing for a living, and that his best chance of survival was to do what the doctor did.

Dr. Yarrow looked from the floating rug to Agent SETH as if for confirmation that he was seeing the same thing. So did Agent SID. Agent SETH nodded, and so Dr. Yarrow turned back to the rug. So did Agent SID. Dr. Yarrow crept closer and held his thermal imaging camera toward the rug. Agent SID crept closer as well, and he held out his audio recorder.

SETH decided this was a bad idea, and he grabbed ahold of SID’s arm, but SID easily pulled free. He was convinced that his survival and safety depended on mimicking the parapsychologist. Dr. Yarrow expressed his excitement at capturing a definite paranormal event. So did Agent SID. After a few moments, the rug slowly descended and eventually returned to its former state, though it was still wet and smelled of death.

SID’s senses returned, and he backed out of the room. Dr. Yarrow followed, and they proceeded down the hall. The next door was a linen closet. The door after that was all the way at the end of the hall. It opened into yet another bedroom much like the previous one, only this room had no rug. There were tack strips where a rug would go.

As the group entered, they were assaulted by overpowering stench. Dr. Yarrow smelled garbage, like a dump packed into one small room, and so he jumped back into the hall. Agent SETH smelled burning hair, and it was so strong that he had to step into the hall with the doctor just to keep his milkshake down. Agent SID smelled concentrated vomit, but he covered his mouth and nose, and he made his way across the room to open the window. That did nothing to disperse the smell, and as a result, he lost the contents of his stomach into the backyard. He then ran straight for the hall.

Once out of the room, the three could breathe easily. It seemed confined to the room itself. Agent ROSE texted SETH to ask just what was going on. She had been watching the video feed, and it was obvious something had happened.

SETH sent her a quick reply as the three made their way out to the cars. It was time to regroup, and SID needed a nice, long break. They still had thirty minutes until midnight.

 

[Audrik]

Music From A Darkened Room - Session 5a

Agent SID was still quite shaken up, and even SETH’s skill as a psychologist only gave minimal help. Agent SETH was going back into the house, but he told SID to stay in the car and calm down. SID nodded and seemed to shiver despite the fact that the night wasn’t particularly cold.

Dr. Yarrow headed back up to the house, and Agent SETH followed. As the men reached the front door, the car engine roared to life. SETH spun around hoping his eyes could deny what his ears had told him, and he felt his pocket for the car keys. He found them which meant that Agent SID had found another way to start the car.

SETH growled as he killed the engine with a press of a button on his key chain, and he stomped through the yard toward the car. SID only blinked at the steering wheel in disbelief and slow comprehension. Agent SETH opened the passenger door and leaned in. He demanded to know just what the other INSCOM agent was thinking, and why the ignition was broken.

“I just … I need to go,” was SID’s reply. “Need to go home.”

“Fine. I’ll call you a cab, and it’ll take you back to the hotel, but you don’t need to damage the rental car.”

SID just nodded again. He noticed a light come on in a house next to the one they were investigating, but he thought nothing of it. SETH called for a cab, and then he went back up to the house. As soon as he was inside, SID once again tried to start the car.

Agent SETH told Dr. Yarrow to start setting up for a séance on the dining room table. The doctor began to unpack one of his bags, but all the while he tried making a case for using the master bedroom. He said he could feel energy in that room, and he thought it was their best chance. This house was starting to get on SETH’s bad side, and he wanted to get this Opera finished soon, even if it meant séances or Ouija boards. He did not, however, want to go near the master bedroom.

Dr. Yarrow set up his silk table cloth, white candles and incense as Agent SETH watched for the cab. Rather than a taxi, he saw a Laconia police cruiser pull up behind his rental car. He quickly blew out the candles and told Dr. Yarrow to get down.

Agent SID didn’t notice the police cruiser because he was too intent on getting the car hotwired. There was a knock on the driver’s window, and he looked up to see a police officer holding a flashlight. The officer asked him to step out of the vehicle, but he replied that the door was locked. The officer wasn’t in the mood for games, but he could tell there was something off about SID.

He instructed the agent to unlock the door and step out slowly. SID did as he was told, and he provided his INSCOM badge when asked for identification.

The officer asked what SID was doing with the vehicle, and he replied that it was his rental car, and he needed to get home. He provided the name of the hotel and his room number when asked for his residence. SID showed the rental agreement and told the officer that his partner had the keys, but he was in the house.

After a few more brief questions, Agent SID had told the officer that his partner, another INSCOM agent, was in the house investigating a haunting and possible murder, and he had managed to secure a ride back to the hotel from the officer.

Agent SETH and Dr. Yarrow used the time to sneak out the back door, through yards, and over to the next street. He heard the officer say something into his radio about backup at 1206 Spooner Avenue for a possible Breaking and Entering or Trespassing, but he advised dispatch that a preliminary survey turned up only silence and darkness. A moment later, Agent SID was in the back of the police cruiser and being taken away.

A moment after that, a taxi pulled up and honked its horn. This caused lights to come on in the other houses in the neighborhood. SETH cursed under his breath and called the cab company to cancel the taxi. A moment later, the cab drove off with squealing tires.

 

[Audrik]

Music From A Darkened Room - Session 5b

Agent ROSE got sick of sitting in her hospital bed, and so she disconnected herself from the IV, and without bothering to change out of her hospital gown, she managed to sneak out. She called for a cab to meet her out front, and then she texted Agent SETH to let him know she was on her way to the house. He replied that he thought she needed to stay in the hospital, but if she felt up to it, he’d be glad to have another person around.

When the cab arrived, she gave the address of the house, and the driver narrowed his eyes. He had apparently just been there on a call, but no one came out, and it was only after he’d arrived that the call came in to cancel the ride. ROSE offered to pay that fare also as well as tip generously if he could get her there in five minutes. The cabbie was all too happy to oblige.

SETH sent ROSE another quick text to ask her to get his rifle case from the car trunk on her way up to the house. After paying the cabbie and watching him leave, she retrieved the case and headed up to the front door. Almost as soon as the door shut behind her, two police cruisers pulled up, and four officers got out.

Agent SETH looked around for a place to hide, and his eyes settled up the stairs to the bonus room above the garage.

“Follow me. Up the stairs, quick!”

He led the way, but as he was about halfway up the stairs, he heard footsteps in the room above. The footsteps hurried down the stairs, but nothing seemed to be making the sound. A force shoved SETH into the wall as it flew downstairs, and a moment later, Dr. Yarrow was tumbling backwards into Agent ROSE. They both hit the ground pretty hard, but they hadn’t made it up more than a few steps, so no one was injured. SETH came back down to help them up, and the three hurried up the stairs. Dr. Yarrow closed and locked the door behind them.

The agents scanned the small, cramped room with sloped ceiling. There was a large, round window with wooden slats overlooking the street where the police cruisers were parked. A small bed sat only an inch or so off the floor almost wedged into the angle where the ceiling met the floor. A rocking chair sat opposite the bed. It rocked slowly on its own, but it gradually stopped.

The only other thing of interest was possibly the most important; definitely the most disturbing. Lying face down in the middle of the tiny room was a male body. It looked very much like Agent SID. It was dressed the same, and Agent SETH noticed it wore SID’s watch. He checked the body for identification without rolling it over, and he discovered an INSCOM badge.

He was sure the house was messing with them somehow because he’d just seen Agent SID taken away by the police only about ten minutes earlier, but this was a fact he failed to mention to the others.

They could hear footsteps downstairs but not much else. Dr. Yarrow paused with a puzzled look on his face, and he wrinkled his nose.

“Anybody else smell something?”

The agents realized they could smell gas. It was faint at first, but it got gradually stronger. Agent SETH opened the window and began removing the wooden slats as quickly and quietly as he could. As he worked, the three became aware of what sounded like a woman’s voice humming. It seemed to be coming from the body on the floor, and the tune was familiar. It was the tune Agent SID hummed earlier when he had found the sheet music; Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”.

Agent ROSE asked the body what it wanted, and the humming stopped momentarily. Agent SID’s voice seemed to come from the body, but it remained motionless.

“Rest now. We’re home.”

The voice went back to humming, and it got louder, and ROSE heard a voice downstairs directing attention toward the stairs. Footsteps came up the stairs, and the doorknob jiggled. Then the door and the whole room shook. Someone on the other side – presumably a police officer – was kicking or putting a shoulder into the door.

 

[Audrik]

Music From A Darkened Room - Session 5c

Stealth was still a concern for the agents, but it was quickly dropping down the priority list. Agent SETH waited for the next hit to the door, and he used it to cover the sound of his smashing the remaining wooden slats and climbing out onto the roof.

The angle of the roof was a little steeper than it looked from the ground, but SETH managed to keep his footing. Dr. Yarrow panicked and dove head-first out the window, and it was all SETH could do to catch him and keep them both from sliding off into the yard. Agent ROSE followed them out, and the three moved out of view of the window and higher up the roof just as they heard the door smash open.

They sat in silence for a few long minutes. No one peeked out the window. No one climbed out onto the roof. Eventually, they saw all four police officers return to their cars and drive off empty-handed. They hadn’t taken the body from the upstairs room, and they hadn’t taken any of the equipment from downstairs. They just left.

The agents and Dr. Yarrow waited a while longer just in case, and then Agent SETH climbed back down to the window. He nearly lost his footing when he looked inside and came face to face with Agent SID. The rocking chair was facing the window, and Agent SID was seated in it, rocking gently back and forth. His throat was cut, and his chest was covered in blood and gore, but there was still a smile on his face as he looked back into SETH’s startled eyes.

As he rocked back, SID’s head rolled sickeningly, and fresh torrents of blood would flow down his chest to pool on the floor. Agent SETH turned away for just a moment, looking up to make sure ROSE and Dr. Yarrow were okay. When he looked back, the rocking chair was back where it had been originally, the body was gone, and there was no blood. There was also no longer a smell of gas, and the door was still closed.

The three climbed back inside and discussed what to do. While they talked, SETH lifted the mattress of the bed revealing a small, leather bound journal. ROSE picked it up and flipped it open to find 50 pages or so of cramped, handwritten Arabic.

Agent SETH had been an interrogator in Afghanistan, and while his command of the written Arabic language wasn’t perfect, he managed to translate a significant portion of the journal. It had belonged to Yamilla Isari, the house’s most recent owner. It detailed her stay in the house from the day she moved in right up until a day or so before she died.

The journal described how she had fallen in love with the house, and how one day she had seen a young boy walking around. He had blue-white skin, and he dripped water everywhere he went. This unnerved her at first, but she apparently got used to it. She also wrote about how she got a very bad feeling from the master bedroom, and she refused to go in there. Near the end, she had taken to sleeping in the small upstairs room. The last entry said simply “I understand why I came here now. I’m home.”

Agent SETH had apparently had enough of this house. He told Dr. Yarrow to get his things and head to the master bedroom. They were going to have the séance in there, and they were going to finish this. He took the rocking chair downstairs with him and headed for the room full of mirrors. Dr. Yarrow got his bag and followed. Agent ROSE wasn’t too thrilled about returning to that room, and so she excused herself saying that she needed to visit the restroom first. SETH told her to be careful, and to yell if anything happened.

When the men stepped into the bedroom, the full effect of the mirrors and energy hit them. It felt almost as if they were under water. The doctor said he could feel a strong energy in the room, but he was getting a mild headache. SETH’s head hurt a little, too.

 

[Audrik]

Music From A Darkened Room - Session 5d

Dr. Yarrow helped SETH move a coffee table from the den, and they covered it with the silk table cloth. SETH set up candles and began lighting them while Dr. Yarrow said he’d set up the incense burners. After lighting the last candle, SETH got a bad feeling. He looked up and felt the disorientation of the mirrors, but he also saw Dr. Yarrow standing behind him with one arm raised. He held something in his hand, and he swung it down at SETH.

The INSCOM agent whirled around and attempted to grab the doctor’s arm, but he was unsuccessful. The doctor grinned wildly as the straight razor caught SETH in the collarbone and neck. ROSE turned the corner and appeared in the doorway just in time to see what looked like gallons of blood spray around the room as if SETH’s neck was a lawn sprinkler.

She took out her phone and dialed 911. She informed the dispatcher that a man with a razor was assaulting her friend at 1206 Spooner Avenue. The dispatcher asked why her phone was indicating the call was coming from the Dominican Republic, and ROSE yelled at her. Her friend had been cut on or around his neck, and blood was everywhere. She didn’t have time to discuss telephone call routing with someone whose job it was to send emergency services.

Dr. Yarrow laughed in an old woman’s voice, and he swung once more at Agent SETH. The razor missed, but the swing came so close that SETH felt he could almost taste it. ROSE took the opportunity to catch the doctor off balance and tackle him, but he spun quickly, and she missed.

The doctor grabbed her and shoved her into a mirror … literally. From Agent SETH’s perspective, ROSE seemed to be tossed through the mirror to land on the other side; no more physical representation, only what should be a reflection.

From Agent ROSE’s perspective, it was like falling through a hole in a frozen lake. She was surrounded by bone-chilling darkness, and she was enveloped by something thicker than water. Her first instinct was to simply freeze, but she managed to will herself into action. She was slowly sinking away from the blurry light that was the master bedroom, and she felt that if she didn’t get back to that light, she might be lost forever.

Agent SETH charged Dr. Yarrow and drove him across the room. He shoved the doctor through the window and out into the yard. Dr. Yarrow laid still in the glass and grass blinking up at the sky. SETH couldn’t find any trace of the straight-razor, but somehow he wasn’t surprised.

ROSE swam toward the light with all the strength she could muster. She ignored the pain in her shoulder, and with an almost heroic effort, she managed to spill herself back out into the room. She was covered in a thick, cold slime, but at least she was back. In the house. In the master bedroom of the house. She stood up quickly, and smashed every mirror in the room with the rocking chair.

The agents then quickly made their way outside, and Dr. Yarrow once more slipped through yards to reach the next street as the neighborhood was lit with blue and red lights, and echoing with sirens. The ambulance sped Agent SETH off toward the hospital, and ROSE followed as soon as her taxi arrived. It was the same driver as before, and she tipped him extra to ignore the slime. She managed to slip back into the hospital unnoticed, get cleaned up, and get back into her bed before the doctors made their next set of rounds.

Agents RUBY and SID were in no hurry to get back to the house, and so they took things easy at the hotel for a few days. In the meantime, the antique dealer called back with some information: Isabelle Wheeler’s piano was in her store, a coffee table from the original estate sale was in the possession of a woman right there in Laconia, and a wardrobe from that same estate sale was owned by a man about an hour south in Manchester. SID decided he’d probably get around to checking out those leads before long, but for now, he’d take a rest. He’d check things out before SETH and ROSE got out of the hospital, for sure. Probably.

 

[Audrik]

Music From A Darkened Room - Session 6a

A few days later, Agent SID managed to motivate himself to renew the investigation while his associates were still hospitalized. Agent RUBY indicated rather strongly that she had done her part by passing along the information from the antique dealer. SID could do what he wanted while the two cell leaders were out of commission, but she was staying put.

SID headed first to the antique shop to examine the piano. His parents had spent a lot of money making him take lessons, and though it had been a while, he felt this would be a good opportunity to see if he still had the same talent of which his teacher had bragged.

When he entered the shop, there were a few customers browsing, but it seemed like a quiet morning. SID immediately spotted the 1930s-era Baldwin Upright Piano with a mirrored backstop. He took a seat at the bench and laced his fingers together, pushing the palms out to stretch. He then began to play the one piece he knew for a fact Isabelle Wheeler had played on this very piano; Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”.

Though he hadn’t played it in many years, his fingers glided effortlessly over the keys with flawless confidence as if he’d played it every day of his life. The other customers took note initially, but then they returned to their browsing. Agent SID happened to glance at the mirrored backstop, and he was surprised to see not his reflection, but that of a woman in a white dressing gown. He paused for only a second or two, and he hardly noticed that the reflection as well as the piano itself continued to play the piece.

SID was so caught up in the moment that without really thinking, he resumed playing. He was so absorbed by the music that he ignored the sound of something dropping by his feet. So carried away was he, in fact, that he had no time to react when the woman in the reflection grinned maliciously and reached down. He found himself reaching down as well, mirroring the woman’s action.

He couldn’t stop himself as he picked up the object at his feet. His will was not his own as he watched his own hand draw the straight razor across his throat. He managed the slightest twitch which saved him momentarily as the razor only drew a trickle of blood. He was horrified however when whoever or whatever had taken possession of his body exerted a will so inhumanly strong that he couldn’t hope to resist.

Once more, and with the full strength of his alien-crafted right arm, he drew the razor back across his throat directly opposite the scar left by Toby the junkyard dog. The razor dug deeply, and SID felt his entire life force gush from his neck. He dropped from the bench and hit the ground hard, but he never felt it.

Agent SETH was awake in his hospital bed and recovering nicely. The local news had a reporter live on the scene of a grizzly suicide attempt at one of the many antique stores in Laconia. According to the account given by the shop owner, the unidentified man had entered and walked straight over to the piano against the store’s far wall. He sat down and played a beautiful piece which the shop owner believed to have been Beethoven, or maybe Bach; definitely classical, and definitely something she’d heard before.

The man had stopped abruptly, produced a knife of some sort, and cut his own throat. The shop owner said she screamed, and by the grace of God, one of the customers happened to be a paramedic who was able to give the man immediate medical attention while the ambulance was on its way. There was no word yet on the man’s identity, nor of his condition though he was still alive at the moment he was taken away by the ambulance.

SETH muttered an unflattering epithet under his breath. Oh, there was only one person stupid enough to do something like that; well, one person not already in a hospital bed. His suspicions were confirmed several hours later when Agent SID’s unconscious form was wheeled into the room.

All three agents got another week of rest before SETH and ROSE were well enough to leave the hospital. It was about that time when SID finally regained consciousness. The three shared a special moment there in the hospital room; SID bleary-eyed and pumped full of painkillers, SETH glaring with disapproval, and ROSE trying to find words to express her feelings. Fortunately for everyone within earshot, those words either didn’t exist, or they were too vile and profane to be uttered by a human tongue.

Instead, SETH and ROSE simply walked out of the room. Agent SETH headed to Manchester to meet up with Dr. Yarrow. The two were going to visit the owner of the wardrobe from the Wheeler estate sale. ROSE had paperwork to fill out, and then she planned to get real food.