Part 45: Day Three- Page 44

Teddy! Protect me!

>throw bear at townsfolk
(first taking the teddy bear)
It might not be a good idea to provoke them.

The townsfolk shuffle a bit closer, raising their weapons in anticipation of the kill.

Er... Okay, enough screwing around, let's get out of here.

>East
You dart past the men on your right, making a break for the church. The townsfolk hover around the entrance to the churchyard but do not follow you, confident that there is no way you can escape.

Churchyard

>look

Churchyard
A low, wrought-iron fence, its spike-tipped bars bent or leaning at crazy angles, surrounds the overgrown yard of this dark, abandoned church. A gap in the fence leads back west, while a bare path beaten through the groping weeds leads around the church to the southeast.

Alright, we've been here before. It may feel like a dead end, because it is, but damn it it's OUR dead end!

>Southeast
The path bends northeast, around the side of the church.

Behind the Church

>put all in coat
teddy bear: You slip the teddy bear into the pocket of your trenchcoat.

Last time Miranda was here, she had a problem.

>look at lock
The padlock, which is the size of your fist, is so thoroughly rusted that it looks like one huge homogeneous lump of corrosion. Although it's still quite strong, you might be able to break it if you had something heavy enough.

Well, now we have something.

>look at hook
The crossbar fits in your palm, leaving the hook part to stick out between the third and fourth fingers. It's a heavy sucker, nearly fifteen inches long from handle to point, made for hauling around carcasses with a minimum of ceremony. You wouldn't like to think what this could do to a living person.


>strike lock with hook
(first taking the meat hook)
You raise the meat hook high over your head and bring it squarely down onto the padlock. The rusted metal casing splits open, the hasp falls loose, and the padlock, now nothing but a broken shell, slides to the ground.

Your score has just gone up by one point.

>open door
You open the trap door.

>down
As you drop to the floor, the trap door suddenly slams shut above you. You hear noises outside -- something thumping against the door, and low voices. You hear someone muttering, and a brief round of unpleasant laughter. Then the voices drift away.

Awesome! Miranda has them right where she wants them.

Church Cellar
Centipedes and beetles scurry away across the rotten floorboards as you shine your light across the room. Over in the corner sits a hulking shape of black metal that was probably once a wood-burning furnace; aside from that, the cellar looks empty. A dark alcove, the shadows within too thick to see through, opens in the west wall, and a trap door in the ceiling leads back up to the outside.

At the very edge of your light's glow, you can just make out a horribly suggestive shape lying in the shadows behind the furnace.

>look at furnace
It's a big, pot-bellied iron furnace, blackened from years of use, with a hatch on one side and numerous twisting pipes which snake out of the top and grope their way up to the ceiling.

At least it'll be warm down here. Maybe Miranda can catch and eat something, too.

>open hatch
Your throat tightens as you slowly open the bloodstained hatch...

Slow horror washes over you. It's the real estate agent's severed head.

Annnd Miranda's appetite is gone.

>look at head
It's the gore-spattered head of the real estate agent -- you recognize her from the cover of a brochure she sent you in the mail several months ago. The eyes are still open and the mouth thrown wide in a silent scream.

>look at shape
It's the dead body of a woman. Her head has been raggedly hacked away, and her clothes above the waist are soaked through with blood. As you fight to control your rising gorge, you note that the body cannot have been here for very long; the decay, though bad, is not very far advanced. She must have been killed within the last couple of days at most.

This explains why the agent didn't show up to meet Miranda.
I guess she's off the suspect list, too.

>search shape
Gingerly, trying to avoid the worst of the blood, you lift the woman's lapel, hoping to find something -- identification, maybe. Her wallet is missing; however, you do find, tucked into the pocket of her blazer, a small, steel key.

>take steel key
You already have that.

Miranda is such a klepto, she takes things now without being told.
I guess in times of stress we all fall back on our vices.

>put steel key on keyring
The small steel key is now on the keyring.

>look at pipes
It's a big, pot-bellied iron furnace, blackened from years of use, with a hatch on one side and numerous twisting pipes which snake out of the top and grope their way up to the ceiling.

>West

Empty Stairwell
This alcove used to house a stairwell leading up and down; now it contains only a few rotted boards jutting from the walls and an empty shaft dropping down out of sight. Above you hang the broken-off remains of the stairs leading up to the ground floor, the last shattered riser only a couple of tantalizing feet out of reach.

>look at shaft
The walls of the shaft are rough stone, dropping down farther than you can see.

>look into shaft
The bottom is lost to darkness.

>look at stairs
It looks as though it might bear your weight; unfortunately it's just a couple of feet beyond your reach.

This probably violates some safety and fire hazard codes.

>jump unto riser
I only understood you as far as wanting to jump.

>up
You can't quite reach the bottom riser of the stairs above you.

>jump on riser
You take a few steps back, draw in a deep breath, and make a dash for the edge. At the last possible second you jump, sailing out over the pit as you make a desperate grab for the bottom riser...


... and catch it.

Unfortunately, you lose your grip on the meat hook while trying to grab the riser, and it tumbles into the darkness below.

R.I.P. Meat hook.
Look, I even made an inventory icon for it.


On a side note, I'm pretty sure we were supposed to lose the flashlight, too. See, the light coming from Miranda's coat is a glitch (I think), which is why there's two light sources (The Flashlight and the Lamp).

The riser bends ominously under your weight but doesn't give. Panting, you haul yourself up onto the creaking stairs.

Broken Stairs
The stairs stop short about seven feet shy of the basement floor, the bottom-most steps hanging suspended over an empty shaft that descends beyond sight into the shadowy depths. What's left of the structure creaks and shifts uneasily under your feet. At the top of the stairs to the north, a doorway opens onto the ground floor of the church.

The creaking under your feet is getting louder.

Uh... I don't think I'll show this death off.
I'm personally very afraid of heights, and Miranda's died the last two updates already.

>up

Vestibule
A dim antechamber, opening onto the main chapel to the east. To the west, the main doors to the church have been solidly nailed shut, and through a shadowy doorway to the south you can see stairs leading down.

Piled in one dusty corner is a heap of old cloth.

Maybe this is where that bum was hanging out?

>look at cloth
It's a hooded robe, left in a rumpled heap on the floor.

From the stairwell behind you there is a sudden, painful shriek of nails ripping out of stone, a loud, protracted splintering, and finally a thunderous crash that seems to echo up the shaft from far below.

GAH!
What was that?!

>south

Broken Stairs
The stairs are completely gone, now. All that's left is a narrow ledge overlooking an empty shaft, and a fair portion of the railing still nailed to the wall.

From far below you hear the faint lapping of water.



>n

Vestibule

Piled in one dusty corner is a heap of old cloth.

>take cloth
Taken.

>put cloth in coat
No matter how tightly you roll up the heavy robe, it is still too big to fit in your pocket.

I guess we got something else for the China Cabinet, then.

>East

Chapel
Broken shards from the shattered the stained glass windows grits under your feet as you step around rows of overturned pews. The dust and cobwebs have been busy here, reclaiming another bit of this town's abandoned history. To the west lies the vestibule; to the east, a small doorway behind the pulpit leads to the back of the church.

The big wooden cross that once hung above the pulpit has fallen, split in half.

On the pulpit is a huge, black tome.

Awesome! I can finally use this smile!

>look at pew
The once orderly procession of benches is now a jackstraw jumble of broken wood

>look at cross
From the way it fell, it looks as though it must have been hung upside-down.

>look at tome
Which do you mean, the huge, black tome or The Compleat Manual of Wardes and Seales?

Oh yeah. That's still in Miranda Amazing Hammer Space Trenchcoat.

>black
It lies open atop the pulpit, thicker than an unabridged dictionary. Its thousands of yellowed, crinkly pages are bound in a strange black material that looks like some kind of hide but clearly isn't leather. Your first thought was that it might be a Bible, but a glance is sufficient to tell you otherwise. The text within is arranged in two columns, the first in what looks like Latin, the second a translation in English. There are illustrations, as well: horrible icons that make your skin crawl to look at.

>look at illustrations
The stained-glass windows are tame by comparison. At least the saints depicted there look remotely human.

As an artist, no comment.

>east

Behind the Chapel
This little room behind the chapel is hardly bigger than a broom closet. A ladder bolted to the wall leads up through a hatch, presumably up into the steeple.

>look at ladder
It's an ordinary wooden ladder.

There's no such thing, Game!
Anyway, it looks sturdy enough.

>up

Steeple
A tiny space inside the tip of the church's steeple, barely five feet across, the walls tapering to only two feet across some twelve feet above your head. There is a narrow window, but it seems to have been painted black at some point. The only exit seems to be the ladder from which you just emerged.

An old length of rope dangles down from a square hole cut in the ceiling.

>

Welp, it's time to figure a way out of here. We still need to get to the library. Maybe hunt down our hubby and knock him unconcious, then drag him to a saner place. Arkham, maybe? King's Port?
What do you guys think?
Think in Bold.

Items


In Trenchcoat