Part 37: Day Three- Page 37

Before we get started, I replayed back up to the same point on a different save to answer some of your questions.


>look at Mike's feet
You can't see any such thing.

Oh yeah. Forgot that this game likes things in a certain order.

>look at mike
Michael still looks half asleep; his hair is unkempt, his skin blotchy and pale, his eyes bloodshot and red. Every so often he grimaces and raises a shaky hand to his forehead, as though afflicted by a painful headache.

You notice something odd about Michael's feet. They are covered with dried mud.

>ask mike about feet
Michael stops and looks down at his feet. For a moment he looks genuinely dumbfounded. "I... I, uh... I don't know. I have no idea how that got there."

He spreads his hands and looks the other way. Suddenly you realize: he is frightened. He is hiding something from you, certainly, but he's hiding it because he is frightened of it. Maybe he doesn't himself understand what happened to him last night... or where it happened to him.



>look at eyes
You can't see any such thing.

Not sure why it doesn't register that. His eyes are clearly important.

>ask mike about dream
"I'd rather not talk about it," Michael mutters, turning away. "Besides, I hardly remember any of it anyway."

Michael wanders off to the east, looking around aimlessly, as though searching for something without even knowing what it is that is lost.

So, that was that. After a while, he just gets pissed off.

Fast Forward back to the Study.

There are only two points, I think, where timing is an issue in Anchorhead, and this is one of them.
Michael Carter's about to disappear, so we won't get another chance to do this.

>enter fireplace

Narrow Corridor
The walls are bare wooden slats, patched with crumbling plaster and spiked with bent, rusted nails. The passage, no more than two feet wide at its widest point, bends and twist at confusing angles, making it hard to tell which direction you're heading in.

This is one of those twisty little passageways, all the same type mazes. I won't make you guess, because I know my way very well already and we're on a scheduled.

>west

Narrow Corridor
The walls are bare wooden slats, patched with crumbling plaster and spiked with bent, rusted nails. The passage, no more than two feet wide at its widest point, bends and twist at confusing angles, making it hard to tell which direction you're heading in.

A thin beam of light slants through the dusty air, coming from a small hole half way up one wall.

No time to look at the walls or stuff.

>look into hole
(the small hole)
Standing on tiptoe and placing your eye up to the hole, you see the children's bedroom. Through some strange trick of the angle, you appear to be looking straight down at the bed from the middle of the ceiling.

Suddenly Michael walks into the bedroom. He moves slowly, looking around and lightly touching things, as if visiting old memories. He walks over to the crib and spends some minutes staring down into its empty blankets, after which he sighs. Then he turns and adjusts the coverlet on the child's bed.

He walks over to the vanity, and brushes his hand across it as if he had expected to find something there. He frowns, makes a small noise of frustration, and walks out of the room.

If we hurry, we can catch him in the next room.

>east

Narrow Corridor
The walls are bare wooden slats, patched with crumbling plaster and spiked with bent, rusted nails. The passage, no more than two feet wide at its widest point, bends and twist at confusing angles, making it hard to tell which direction you're heading in.

A thin beam of light slants through the dusty air, coming from a small hole half way up one wall.

Somewhere in the house you hear a door open.

Suddenly you hear a deep grinding noise that seems to vibrate up through the floor from beneath the house. A moment later there is a terrible, wailing howl as of some subterranean wind shrieking through unlit passages. Then the grinding again, and all is silent.

Timidly, you call out Michael's name. There is no answer. You are alone in the house.

CRAP! He got away!

>restore
Ok.

>enter fireplace

Narrow Corridor
The walls are bare wooden slats, patched with crumbling plaster and spiked with bent, rusted nails. The passage, no more than two feet wide at its widest point, bends and twist at confusing angles, making it hard to tell which direction you're heading in.

It's semi random the way Michael Moves. He move much faster once you enter the secret passages.

>Southwest

Narrow Corridor
The walls are bare wooden slats, patched with crumbling plaster and spiked with bent, rusted nails. The passage, no more than two feet wide at its widest point, bends and twist at confusing angles, making it hard to tell which direction you're heading in.

A thin beam of light slants through the dusty air, coming from a small hole half way up one wall.

>look into hole
(the small hole)
Standing on tiptoe and placing your eye up to the hole, you see the sitting room, from a vantage high up on the wall. It occurs to you that you might well be looking directly through the eyes of the man in the portrait hanging over the fireplace.

At that moment, Michael wanders into the sitting room, muttering something incoherent. He looks around blankly, lost, as if he had come into the room in order to do something only in the next instant to forget what it was. Then his eyes fall on you, and he smiles.

You nearly jerk away from the spyhole, heart pounding wildly, when it suddenly occurs to you that he's not looking at you at all; he's looking at the portrait through which you are peering.

Michael regards the portrait with a strange air of familiarity. He gazes into its eyes (and also, unbeknownst to him, your own eyes) the way one might appraise an old friend one hasn't seen for some time. His expression is deferential, admiring, and... something else; you can't quite put your finger on at first, but as your husband continues to gaze rhapsodically at the terrible portrait, a sickening realization strikes you.

The expression is vanity. Ugly, self-absorbed vanity. Your husband is staring at this portrait the way he might preen himself in a mirror.

Michael brushes his fingers back through his hair and walks out of the room, chuckling softly to himself.

That's a left side of creepy.
If luck is a lady, then Mike won't leave yet.

>Northwest

Narrow Corridor
The walls are bare wooden slats, patched with crumbling plaster and spiked with bent, rusted nails. The passage, no more than two feet wide at its widest point, bends and twist at confusing angles, making it hard to tell which direction you're heading in.

There is a small hole in one of the slats, about halfway up the wall.

Somewhere in the house you hear a door open.

Suddenly you hear a deep grinding noise that seems to vibrate up through the floor from beneath the house. A moment later there is a terrible, wailing howl as of some subterranean wind shrieking through unlit passages. Then the grinding again, and all is silent.

Timidly, you call out Michael's name. There is no answer. You are alone in the house.

Crud. Well, there's only the one other place to catch him in, so...

>restore
Ok.

>enter fireplace

Narrow Corridor
The walls are bare wooden slats, patched with crumbling plaster and spiked with bent, rusted nails. The passage, no more than two feet wide at its widest point, bends and twist at confusing angles, making it hard to tell which direction you're heading in.

>Northeast

Narrow Corridor
The walls are bare wooden slats, patched with crumbling plaster and spiked with bent, rusted nails. The passage, no more than two feet wide at its widest point, bends and twist at confusing angles, making it hard to tell which direction you're heading in.

There is a small hole in one of the slats, about halfway up the wall.


>look into hole
(the small hole)
Standing on tiptoe and placing your eye up to the hole, you see only darkness.

Just as you are about to move away from the spyhole, you hear footsteps on a stone floor. A light shines in through a doorway, and a moment later Michael skulks into the room, which you now realize is the wine cellar, seen from down low in a corner, near the floor.

Halfway across the room he stops, darts a suspicious glance over his shoulder, and shines his light into every corner, as though searching for potential spies. At one point he looks straight at you, and you nearly recoil, alarmed at the sight of his crazed, red-rimmed eyes. He does not spot you, however, and in a moment he moves on.

He walks over to the rack at the north end of the room, and does something with the bottles -- you can't quite see, because his back is toward you. Then there is a click and a heavy grinding sound, and the entire northern wall swings back, revealing a hidden passage!

The room is filled for a moment with a wild, wretched keening, like a cold wind blowing through an empty chasm. With one last, wary look behind him, Michael steps through the portal. The light disappears, the wall swings back with another grinding sound, and then all is quiet.

Your score has just gone up by two points.

>save
Ok.

Alright, now that I have time, let me explain. There are 5 Narrow Corridors, three of which have peep holes. As far as I can tell, Michael moves around the house generally being creepy and moving on, but he moves so quickly that I've never really been able to catch him in two places durring one game, so this time I mapped out the maze hoping to get him. No such luck, by the way.

But I was able to annoy him earlier. Remember the other save file?

Cellar

One largish bundle of wires leads down to a rusty old fuse cabinet bolted to the far wall.

>e

Wine Cellar
This wing of the cellar is even older than the rest, with walls of piled, unmortared stone. The entire room is filled with wine racks. They cover every wall except for one spot to the west, where an exit leads back to the main cellar.

All of the racks are dust-covered and empty except for one against the north wall, which contains some forty or fifty dark bottles.

You are reminded of something Michael told you during the long drive up: about how when the police arrived after the shooting, they found the wine cellar in a shambles -- nearly every bottle thrown to the floor and shattered, and the whole place reeking of rotted grapes. All except the bottles in the north rack. None of those had been touched. No one could posit a motive for it.

You smile a bit, recalling your husband's ability to turn a piece of insignificant trivia into a compelling story. Still, though, now that you're actually standing here... it all seems very strange.

>turn off flashlight
You switch the flashlight off.

It is now pitch dark in here!

>wait
Time passes.

>g
Time passes.

>g
Time passes.

You can hear Michael moving around elsewhere in the house, the floorboards creaking uneasily with his footsteps.

Again, Mike moves randomly, so it took him a while. About 20 more "g"s.

>g
Time passes.

You hear footsteps on the cellar stairs, and Michael suddenly walks into the room, carrying a flashlight. He blinks at you as though startled to find you here; then, with a suspicious scowl, he turns and stomps back upstairs.

So, Mike was always heading to the basement in the wine cellar. We'll figure out more about that later.

Narrow Corridor

Let's get out of here.

>Southwest

Narrow Corridor
The walls are bare wooden slats, patched with crumbling plaster and spiked with bent, rusted nails. The passage, no more than two feet wide at its widest point, bends and twist at confusing angles, making it hard to tell which direction you're heading in.

>look at walls
It looks as though you are somehow actually inside the walls of the house, although they don't look this labyrinthine from the outside.

>Southeast

Observatory
You are in a small, enclosed cupola situated, by the look of the view through the dingy skylight over your head, on top of the roof of the house. The walls are covered with astrological and astronomical charts with equations and diagrams scribbled across them in crabbed, stilted handwriting. The only exit seems to be an oddly-angled corridor to the southeast.

Dominating the center of the room is a large mounted telescope, pointed almost straight up through the skylight.

Oh good lord, horay. We're finally out of the non-euclidean corridors.
And yes, I believe this is the dome we saw on the house WAY WAY back in Day One!

>look at charts
Most of the charts seem to be plotting the trajectory of some comet you've never heard of, as it gradually approaches the solar system over the course of several centuries. According to this, the comet is due to arrive...

Well, that's interesting. According to this, the comet is coming tonight.

It's possible to find this place during Day Two. When you do, this description says "Tomorrow!" so as to be consistent.

>look at skylight
You can see part of the hole in the sky through the skylight. The telescope seems to be aimed right at it.

>look at telescope
Constructed of some greenish metal, the telescope consists in the main of an unadorned cylinder about eight inches in diameter, with an eyepiece near the bottom. Near the top, about six inches down from the telescope's upper end, is a thin, rectangular slot, cut horizontally into the side of the cylinder.

Huh. It has a funny slot.

>look at slot
It looks as though it might be a receptacle of some kind, perhaps for a special lens.

Well, we'll be back here. Let's finish the tour.

>Southeast
As you make your way down the corridor, you begin to get dizzy, then nauseous. Lines seem to cross without bending, the ceiling becomes the walls and the floor becomes the ceiling. Half-blind, unsure even of which direction you were going in, you stagger forward and suddenly find yourself in a...

Crawlspace

>L

Crawlspace
The ceiling descends here to no more than three feet from the floor; you are forced to crawl through the cramped darkness on your hands and knees. To the east the attic becomes more spacious, while the northwest corner opens into an oddly-angled corridor.

Uh... Oh. We're back in the attic!

>e

Attic

An odd contraption resembling a complex stack of wooden slats sits in the middle of the floor.

>look at contraption
It appears to be a wooden ladder, folded against itself several times and firmly attached to the floor.

Makes sense.

Let's not forget the door.

>look at door
It's an ordinary wooden door, unremarkable except for the antique metal keyplate. Beneath the door, a thin line of faint light is barely visible.

>

Well, folks, we now have some option. For the most part, there's very little to explore without first figuring out some puzzles, so I'm open to suggestions.
Put your suggestions in Bold, please.

Items


In Trenchcoat