(SimonBooth)

TatianaAptekara returns to TheUnitySociety with disturbing news...

guest starring Rod Hull as MrFlanagan

Sunday, 29th June 1924

• TheCharacters were, once again, relaxing in the TeaRoom, discussing the recent werewolf attacks with RobertJohnson, who had been so curiously absent during the whole affair. DrJackson came in, haggard and visibly unhappy. The characters asked him why this should be, and he explained to them that, while he should have been worried about the recent deaths of the three goons who were committed after the warehouse explosion (see HereBeDragons), he found himself worryng about mundane matters, such as the blocked drains at the UnityAsylum. The characters did their best to reassure him that this didn't make him a bad person, and suggested he took a holiday. This was well-received, but nonetheless he drank himself into a stupor and had to be put into a taxi early in the evening.

  The rest of the evening passed quietly until, just as Alsoud was getting ready to leave, MrFlanagan announced that a foreign lady in distress was at the door. Robert went to see who it was, and found TatianaAptekara waiting for him.

  Robert brougt Tatiana down to the tea room to meet the others. There she explained that she had been working on translating the Serdtse Piyavka notes that night and had reached another passage of what seemed like gibberish. Wondering what it was, she read it out loud so she could best phrase it in . At that point, something blew her windows in and she heard a banging sound from upstairs. She climbed up the stairs, asking if anyone was there; but no-one replied. She tried her bedroom door, and something blocked the door from opening properly. Thinking something might have been knocked over, she pushed harder; there was a squealing noise. Next thing she knew, she was running down the street. She ran to TheUnitySociety for help, since it was they who'd given her the notes to translate.

  TheCharacters agreed to take her back to the house and deal with whoever or whatever was in her bedroom. While she powdered her nose, they loaded up Robert's car with salt shotgun shells, and the five of them drove over to her house in the Russian Quarter. When they got there, they could see that her windows had indeed been blown in, and the door was standing open, though the houses either side were untouched. Alexander stayed in the car with Tatiana, while the other three went inside. The downstairs room was full of glass bottles of various chemicals. At the end, there was an old sideboard which had been used as a counter on which there were three pine cones, glowing with an eerie light, pointing upwards and slowly rotating. This disturbed Robert somewhat, so he shot a large hole in the sideboard around where the pinecones were floating. This brought a loud banging sound from the ceiling above them. In the opposite corner of the room, Alsoud found the russian notes together with a partial translation into English. He took these out to the car, and then Robert, Lisa and Alsoud opened the door at the back of the room and started to creep up the narrow, rickety staircase.

  As they climbed, they could hear more bangs. Robert and Lisa squeezed into a narrow landing at the top of the stairs, and Robert blew a hole in the door with his shotgun. He peered through the splintered wood, and could just make out a circular set of teeth then the SerdtsePiyavka lunged at him. This was too much for Alsoud, who emptied his Shotgun into the stairs and ran out to the car, yelling "It's eating him! It's eating him! You summoned it and it's eating Robert!". Tatiana fainted, and Alexander ran inside.

  Menawhile, Robert found himself at his desk at Jenkin University. SuzannaJohnson appeared with a hulking brute of a man, and told Robert that as she was pregnant she would be marrying the man, so she would be taking her money with her. The Dean of Jenkin then appeared and told Robert he was fired due to the scandal. Robert's mother appeared to tell him how disappointed she was. At that point, Lisa shot the beast, and Robert started to come through. However, the sight of the beast's mouth attached to his chest caused him to pass out into a mercifully dreamless unconsciousness. Alexander came to the top of the stairs and, unfazed, shot what was left of the creature into little bits. He and Lisa (but mostly he) then dragged Robert down to the foot of the stairs, where Lisa noticed the pine cones were still glowing and floating. However, they were now pointing horizontally. Alex took Robert out to the car, while Lisa put the cones in a sack. Due to tugs from the sack, she noticed that the cones kept moving to point west.

  There then followed a long argument over whether they should take the cones between Alsoud who wanted to leave them, and Alex and Lisa who wanted to keep them. Robert was revived, and he wanted to destroy them. Nonetheless, they did in fact keep them. As they drove back to 122, they noticed that the cones were reorienting themselves in a more southerly direction, and as they passed the UnityAsylum they turned around completely. They did a circuit of the asylum and found that that was indeed where the cones pointed. They drove back to 122, where they revived Tatiana - but thanks to their bluntness she quickly passed out again. They discussed the implications of their findings, and while Alexander took Tatiana to a guest room the others began to read the notes. They learnt that Tatiana had indeed summoned the beast from "The domain of the Sloth"; that the creatures could be bound and possibly banished, although the banishment section was as yet untranslated; and they learnt that the creatures could reproduce by budding.

Monday, 30th June 1923

• Alexander brought bagels to the characters who had been reading all night in the TeaRoom. Robert pressed MrFlanagan for silver baking trays for use as breastplates, while Alsoud went to Jenkin to get some dynamite and some heavy canvas bags.

  Once they were ready, the characters took out the FloatingPineCones and drove towards the asylum. They observed that the creature was still there, and as they drew close they noticed that the cones were pointing underneath the asylum.

  Alexander spoke to the janitor, and bribed him to fetch some of the slime from the drains. Robert and Alsoud spoke to DrJackson, and persuaded him to let them talk to GilCobbett. They saw slime around a grating in one corner of the room, and saw puncture-marks in the bedding in the room.

  Alsoud showed Dr. Jackson the holes, and told him that they showed a parasite infection with which he was familiar. He explained that he could rid the asylum of the pests, but that he would have to come back at night. Dr. Jackson agreed. TheCharacters returned to 122. That night, they went back to the Asylum with petrol, matches, guns, and the floating pine cones. They sealed the exits to Cobbett's ward, and waited. A little after 2AM, the cones started to twitch, and the grating in the corner slowly opened as a long, slimy tentacle with a three-pincered mouth slithered through it. They tipped the contents of the petrol can down the grating and threw in a match. There was a loud, dull, "CRUMP" sort of noise, and the tentacle started screeching and flailing; then a column of bright-red flame shot up through the grating, scorching the walls and the ceiling. The pine cones dropped to the ground. The characters put out the fires and left.

Tuesday, 1st July 1923

• The next morning, Dr Jackson came to 122 to demand an explanation for the scorchmarks. The Characters explained about the slugs, and Dr Jackson made each of them a psychiatrist's appointment. He seemed happier; the characters asked why, and he said the drains had finally cleared, though he was going to have to see a builder about subsidence.

Next: TheGoodeLife