Don’t Open That Trapdoor

The second one-shot RPG I played at Glasgow WorldCon was a Call of Cthulhu scenario set in the modern day (well, 2011). It was another fun game, aided by a great set of players. Normally with these games, when I write them up I try to do so from the perspective of my character (so not everything that happens will be included, unless my character is aware of it).

This time it’s rather hard for my character to have written anything after the events of what happened, given how things ended. It is a one-shot Call of Cthulhu game after all.

I very possibly mangled some of the names of the characters, and possibly my hastily scribbled notes during the game miss out or get the order of some things wrong. But here is my account of what I think happened.

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Everything hurts, and I can’t remember why. For that matter, I can’t remember me. Who am I? Where am I? Upside down in a van, buried under a pile of boxes seems to be the answer to the latter question. As to the first, I don’t have an answer.

There are voices outside, and some hands pull me out into a ditch. The van seems to be here as well, just off the side of a dirt road. It’s dark and chilly, but I can’t remember where I am.

There are five others with me. All of us seem to have been part of the car accident that sent the van into the ditch, and all claim to be unable to remember who they are. There is what appears to be a dirt road, and there are some lights on in what look like farm houses some distance off. We seem to be in the middle of nowhere.

Some are wearing black t-shirts with “Paranormal Files” printed on them. The boxes seem to be for filming equipment, but the equipment itself is not there. Did we pack up the boxes and leave the equipment behind? Why did we crash? There are no signs of an accident other than that we have a van in a ditch.

One of them pulls out a wallet, and finds a name – Richard Trandy. Some of us have what appears to be identification on us, others even have mobile phones.

• Richard Trandy
• Rosemund Kian
• Thomas Woodhouse
• Morgan Spencer
• Larry

Myself, I seem to be Ione Pak, though I have no memory of that name. Rosemund is able to bring up Google Maps on her phone, and we appear to be somewhere in Vienna County in Michigan. Our van though has California plates. Did we drive all the way here?

Richard makes a call to emergency services to call for help, and a police car is dispatched to our position. In the meantime, we try to piece together what happened, but we are all as clueless as each other. Morgan seems to have some cocaine on their person, hidden in a pen, so they quickly throw it away as the flashing lights of a police car come into view.

The officer who gets out seems to be aware of us – apparently we had an interviewed booked with the sheriff later on. We explain that there seems to have been an accident, but none of us can remember why, or who we are. The officer seems to take this reasonably well, and gives a call for a mechanic to come out with a tow truck to get our van back to the town.

He suggests that we check in with the local Doc Cowy, and we are bundled into the police car for a drive back into the town of Cleo.

The town of Cleo seems to be a small two street town, with a run down motel and a small medical center attached to a police station and fire station. The Doc is there waiting for us when we arrive (the officer called ahead, there wasn’t anything suspiciously organized going on). Our cuts and bruises are tended to, and we are given a quick examination. The fact that we are all suffering amnesia is apparently a good sign – it is possibly caused by emotional stress rather than physical trauma.

Neither the Doc nor the officer really know who we are, except that we’ve come into town to film something to do with the Old Cooper residence up near where we crashed. There’s some local stories about strangeness happening there, after Cooper murdered his wife and kid decades ago. Apparently kids will dare each other to go into the house and ‘touch Cooper’s bed’. It’s just kid’s tales about the place being scary though.

So, to recap for my own sanity – we seem to be a team of ‘paranormal’ TV investigators, making some low quality programs about ghosts and things that go bump in the night. We’re here to look into so called hauntings at an old farm house, which is probably nothing more than drafts and creaking floorboards. I still don’t know who the Iona Pak who is me is, but I don’t seem to have made great career choices.

Rosemund has the idea to try and Google herself. She finds references to Facebook pages and other material which confirm that she’s some presenter on a paranormal investigation team. Looking through phone photos, there is also a seventh person involved with us – some red head with a clip board who is possibly organizing things? Hoping that we have rooms booked in the motel, we head there to try and get some rest and maybe pick up more clues as to our identities.

The motel is a complete dive – I think we’d be better off staying in the abandoned farm house. The guy on the desk confirms that there are seven rooms booked under a company name – but not under our names so can’t give us access. Apparently someone named Lynn booked them?

Rosemund starts to seem unwell, and suddenly begins to suffer a panic attack, screaming about spiders being all around and inside people. Thomas tries to calm her down – he seems really good at doing this, so possibly has done it before? Rosemund finally calms down, and after some persuasion we manage to get the room keys.

Which room belongs to who though? We go through them each in turn, and it turns out not to be too hard for us each to identify which is ‘ours’:

• There is a room of old suits and newpaper clippings.
• There is a room with black hair dye in the sink
• There is a room with audio cassettes.
• There is a room with a laptop and neatly stacked clothes.
• There is a room with a laptop and pant suits
• There is a room with a laptop where it looks like someone is living out of their suitcase
• There is a room with paper on the desk and neatly hung pant suits – which I claim.

Looking through the papers in my room, there are CV applications (from me, to other TV companies). Looks like I’m aiming for another job. There are also printed out emails from me to the producers, complaining about Rosemund’s and Lynn’s “indiscretions”. Looks like there’s more to their relationship than simple professionalism.

There is a commotion outside my room, what sounds like screaming coming from Morgan in the room with the sound equipment. They seem to have had a breakdown similar to Rosemund. They are screaming about Lynn having been got by “It”, whatever It is. They seem to be having a flashback to Lynn being locked in a room and killed. We eventually calm them down.

An audio recording that they found in their room (they seem to be our sound engineer) seems to have triggered their event. It is an interview with someone who as a child was dared to go into the house and touch the bed. They claim to have seen lots of white spiders, and some formless shadow at the top of the stairs. Right.

Richard, who seems to be our parapsychologist, has found some newspaper clippings from 1960, when Cooper murdered and disemboweled his wife and child. Also, earlier this year, a Canadian film crew came here, but quickly left after their cameraman went missing.

So it seems that something happened up at the house. We may have left Lynn there, and possibly our memories as well. We put a call through to the local deputy, telling him we may have a missing person. We have a plan to go back up to the house tonight, and he agrees to meet us there.

As we go back out to our van (which has been recovered for us), I am suddenly overcome with nausea. I vomit onto the ground – a white jelly like substance. WTF? As I watch, it sprouts eight legs and scuttles off in the undergrowth.

I scream out, pointing and shouting, until the others calm me down. What is wrong with me? Why don’t they understand what is happening? Why did I have a spider in me? Worse, why do I want to eat it back up? Whatever the fuck happened, the answers are back at the House. I want to go back there and find the answers. I have a strong urge to burn the place to the ground.

We all bundle into the van and head back out of town. As we get to the turn off back to the House, Morgan keeps on going. They have no intention of finding out what happened to us – I shout to them to stop and turn around, then Rosemund leans in from the back seat and pulls on the hand break. The van comes to a screeching stop, and she goes flying forward through the front windscreen.

Illuminated in the headlights, we watch her stagger back to her feet, and start running towards the House calling out for Lynn. Meanwhile, Morgan and Larry seem to be conspiring together about something – they want to leave without finding out what happened. Are they hiding something? Do they know something we don’t?

In the end, we persuade Morgan to head back towards the House after Rosemund. Richard is really behaving strangely – he seems to have a very high opinion of himself, and keeps on wanting to do a photo shoot centered on him.

We get to the house where there is a silver car parked outside. It is an old American style farmhouse, rundown and dark. I grab one of the torches and head up to the front door, which is unlocked. Inside, there is camera equipment set up, but switched off. There are sandwiches and cold coffees left laying around, some knocked over lights and a small generator. Morgan keeps on talking about wanting to find the basement, whilst Rosemund heads up the stairs. I shine the torch up to watch her progress, and she comes to three doors on the landing.

Listening, I hear some sounds coming from one of the rooms, so direct her towards that. She opens the door, and inside, on a bed, is what appears to be an old tramp. He is moaning in pain. “I hurt so much” he cries out. Morgan goes up and pushes past Rosemund, going into the room. There is a scream, and his chest erupts open with spiders.

Rosemund slams the door shut, holding it fast whilst Morgan screams inside and tries to get out. There is a smash of glass, and a thump outside – Morgan seems to have found another exit.

We need to burn the house down. There are no matches or lighters in this room, so I go looking for the kitchen. It’s not too difficult to find, and there is an oven in there. However, it’s not connected to the gas. What is also here is a trapdoor in the floor.

We remember.

We turned up to the House and met with Vanessa the estate agent. She showed us around the House, eventually drawing our attention to the trapdoor in the kitchen, telling us that the really creeping things were down there.

We open up the trap door and head downstairs. There seem to be natural caverns beneath the house, and one wall has a false stone wall, which with some difficulty can be pushed open. Vanessa directs us down that way, and we head along the stone passage, shining our torches ahead.

From behind us the door slams shut – Vanessa has slammed it shut. We turn and try to force the door open, but are unable to. Then the spiders come. Millions of spiders, crawling along the floor, the walls, the ceiling. They are white and bulbous. Disgusting. Tasty. Tasty?

And then, another spider comes into view, far too big to see and remain sane. It’s legs are tentacles, one of which reaches out and grabs Lynn, pulling her towards it. She screams, then goes quiet with a wet squelch as she is smashed against the floor.

“DO WE WANT TO LIVE?”

The words come from the spider. We reply that we do. Who would want to die down here? We are held fast as spiders are forced into our mouths and down our throats.

We all remembered what happened. The scramble to leave the house. The accident in the Van. And now we are back here. Back to where we were so terribly violated. How dare this thing do this to us. I was looking for a way to burn down the House before. Now I know why. But I am overcome with a need to feast. I head upstairs to the spider infested room and slake my hunger on the multi-limbed creatures inside.

So the bitch Vanessa was responsible for some of this, we need to deal with her as well. I borrow a lighter from Morgan, whilst they and Richard go back to the van and head back into Cleo to find the estate agent.

Larry has managed to get the generator working again. We have lights, and we have fuel. We need a way to get the latter down into the basement. Rosemund though wants to go and find Lynn. She opens the trapdoor and heads downstairs.

“COME…”

There is the sound of the stone door being opened, and the light from her torch fades as she heads further down the passage.

“WHY HAVE YOU RETURNED? DO YOU NOT APPRECIATE YOUR GIFT?”

There is a scream, and a familiar sounding sickening thunk as Rosemund’s body is smashed against the walls of the passage.

Outside, I find some fallen drainpipe, and with help from Larry and Thomas we set up a pipe from the kitchen down into the passage. We siphon fuel from the generator and let it pour down into the passage. Then I throw in the lighter.

There is a blast of flame from below, and a inhuman scream. The entire House shakes. The floorboards buckle and break as tentacles burst out from below and try to grab us. We flee to the outside, as light from the flames and smoke billow out from the house.

The flashing blue lights of a police car can be seen coming up the dirt road towards us. Officer Kennedy arrives, and is aghast at the sight of the House burning down. He wants to call the fire brigade, and I try to dissuade him, arguing that it’s a mix of fuel and electrical fire and that it would be too dangerous for the fire brigade to deal with it. He’s not convinced, and puts through a call.

We watch as the smoke billows skyward, hoping that whatever is down there is destroyed forever. The sound and lights of a fire engine come up along the road, followed by the battered van.

There is a sudden noise from the House, and the front bursts open. A huge tentacle reaches out, slamming down on Officer Kennedy as he stands there in terror. The driver of the fire engine sees what has happened and slams on the breaks, trying to turn the truck around, but instead sending it into the ditch. There is a crunch from behind as the van goes into the back of the fire truck.

We all run, catching up with Richard and Morgan who were in the van. Richard seems to be trying to hide a book under his jacket. They had found Vanessa, and she was not entirely human. Exactly what she was, or what her plans were, can wait until later. Richard though thinks he has a ritual (really? given the shit that has happened tonight, I’m willing to believe anything) that can destroy this thing, which is called Eihort. It lives beneath the ground, and wants to infest everyone with its brood, before consuming the world.

We need a place of power – so I suggest a Church. We try to explain to the fire fighters, who are running away from the House with us, that we need access to the Church. Only from there can we summon the power we need to defeat the evil.

They lead us to the church, and help break open the doors, before running off into the night.

Richard gets out his book and begins the ritual to Scour the Brood. It involves summoning up a more powerful entity to invoke destruction upon the Thing. As his words of the incantation echo through the Church, and we feel our energy sapped from us. The alter cracks in two, lava bubbles up from the ground. A giant Hound crawls from the Earth, and bows before Richard, asking him what his bidding is.

I barely comprehend what is going on, as the last remaining fragments of my sanity fracture further. The Hound is commanded to destroy the Brood from the land. It raises, and spews forth fire, cleansing the Church of all of us that carry the brood, before reaching out to the land around. My last thoughts are of burning blissful agony as my body and mind is consumed in fire.