Chapter Six

WARNING: This story hour contains spoilers for the scenario "Spirits over Arkham" available for download at yog-sothoth.com.

Our team consisted of Wesley from the Boston Globe, and Omar the Egyptian doctor, and myself-Samuel from the New York Sun.

Friday September 10th-Thursday September 23rd, 1920

I received a call from Wesley, whom I had met the summer before when I was following up on a story about some gangsters and some strange tales about a man who was presumed dead but turned out to be alive. He called me asking if I would like a chance to help him investigate something for Mr. Walker, a lawyer from New York. Walker was also the man that had contacted Wesley to do the Corbitt house investigation. I told Wesley that I would enjoy helping him with the investigation and we arranged to meet Mr. Walker together in New York. When I went to New York I met Wesley and he had an Egyptian doctor named Omar with him. Speaking with Omar was difficult due to his thick accent, and I wondered why he had been brought into this strange business.

The three of us met with Walker and he asked us if we could investigate the suicide of Jeremy Lombard who leaped from the 4th floor of his apartment a week ago. Jeremy's uncle would pay us a flat rate for the job, since the Corbitt pay-per-day debacle had cost Walker a fortune. Jeremy was a reporter for the Arkham Newspaper which intrigued Wesley and me that one of our fellow newsman may have met with foul play. We rushed to Arkham to talk to his editor and found that he was working on a big story on the East side of Arkham farm country. No one at the newspaper knew what the hot story was about so we drove to his apartment to search for more clues.

At Jeremy's apartment we found nothing out of the ordinary on the outside. No windows were broken on the fourth floor and there were no signs outside of a police investigation. Going inside we decided to talk to the landlady first to see if we could get the key to Jeremy's place. She was very worried until we greased her palms a little bit. Even then she said that the police had closed the apartment and said that it wasn't to be disturbed. While Wesley busied her making tea I looked the place over a little but found nothing. Omar sweet-talked her with his Egyptian ways, and some money, and we left her apartment with Jeremy's key in hand.

Heading up to Jeremy's place we searched the place top to bottom and found some good leads. We found a diary, a date book, and an expensive cigar butt resting in an ash tray. The cigar butt captured my attention because of dad's tobacco factory. The wrapper and filler smelled sweet and expensive and the rolling looked good. I didn't pay much attention to dad when he was explaining the cigar biz to me, but this didn't look like the cheap cigar of a small town reporter. Flipping through the diary we saw some interesting entries:

"Monday August 16th Isaiah Turnbull loss of cow, blood in field

Wed Sept 1st 2 chickens -blood

Friday Sept 3rd truck goes past the house once a week

Monday Sept 6th Hoesynth place"

The page for Friday 10th and Saturday 11th, the day of the suicide, was torn out. I used a pencil to rub the page underneath and found the words "Liquor" and "New York City". I found myself wondering how deep this mystery was, and what I was getting myself into.

We took the cigar butt to David Goodnow, the local tobacconist, for examination. He knew of my father's factory and told us that it was an expensive cigar as I had suspected. He said that Mr. Verducci who owned the Hoesynth house was the only one in town who smoked such expensive cigars. Mr. Verducci became our prime suspect.

Heading back to the Arkham newspaper morgue, we found that Jeremy had recently done some work following local Arkham legends about the "Burning Man" and the Arkham Gargoyle. Both of these legends centered around the Hoesynth house, and we knew that eventually our investigation would lead there.

Our research on the house revealed that Captain Norris, a local militia leader in 1712, burnt the house that was there to drive out a hive of gargoyles and witches. These creatures were called 6' tall demons with blood spattered maws and that fire drove them out.

The legend of the burning man was started in 1826 when the house was burnt down by the figure of a burning man came out of the house and drove off some vagrants. The house as it stands today was built by Hoesynth in 1846.

With that information we decided to talk Isaiah Turnbull in order to see what Jeremy's last story was about. When we got there we were worried that we may be shot at for trespassing by the irate farmer, but he turned out to be very calm although angry for the loss of some cows and chickens. He offered us the generous sum of $25 for their return and we gladly accepted looking forward to the money and a good reason to poke around the area. We turned our attention to the other nearby farmhouses and found mostly good farmer folk who complained of bonfires at the Denbigh's deserted farm, strange lights from the tower near the Hoesynth house, and frequent trips of a car every Thursday morning to the Hoesynth house.

Not wanting to confront the Hoesynth house first, we stopped by the Denbeigh farm and found the bonfire site, Turnbull's dead livestock, and 3 dirty vagrants that were squatting at the Denbigh's. Wesley had a brief confrontation with the vagrants but they did not seem keen to coming any closer to us. The mystery of the missing livestock was solved, but we were more concerned with the Hoesynth house and did not bother to tell farmer Turnbull.

Researching more, and talking to anyone in town that would give us the time of day, we looked for more history and clues. We talked to the police station to get the suicide note of Jeremy and confirmed that it was not his handwriting. The local historical society told us that Jasmine Hoesynth had been murdered in the house and a police officer driven insane in the basement. I even interviewed the officer who had found Jasmine because the knife she was killed with had not been checked into evidence. The other members of the Hoesynth family were put in an asylum at that time but were now dead.

We finally decided to chance a look at the house. Sneaking up close so that I could see through the windows, I barely managed to avoid being seen. Spying four people in the house I returned to my companions and told them the news. We decided to wait and see when they left and on Friday the 17th they finally did. Omar and I crept up to the house and did not see anyone through the windows, but could hear someone's creaking footsteps. We entered through the unlocked garage and made our way through the kitchen. We heard a sound behind us. Turning, we saw a dark haired Italian man, badly shaken, with a shotgun leveled in our direction. Omar went for his tommy-gun, but didn't point it at the man. I backed up and raised my arms. We knew the man was Emilio from a description from one of the farm folk. Emilio told us to leave and Omar and I walked through the kitchen door with him following us. When we got through the door Omar tried to talk to Emilio and he opened fire with both barrels of his shotgun. Both shots missed Omar and he responded by firing several rounds into Emilio. Blood splattered everywhere and he fell to the floor dead. Aghast at this loss of life, I wished that we could have avoided this deadly confrontation. We carefully searched the house and found a shotgun, a key, a coded ledger and a wad of 10,000 dollars. Omar stuffed the money into his shirt and I worried about angering mobsters that had already murdered one meddling reporter.

We looked out the windows, hoping that the mobsters wouldn't return while we were in the house. We decided to search the basement, the source of most of the supernatural activity. Opening the old wooden door we saw just a coal pile and an old furnace. I cautiously went to the furnace and opened the door, and I peered into the sooty blackness. From behind me, Omar made a short scream and held his ears. I turned but didn't see anything to cause him pain. Then I heard it. A sharp piercing sound that reverberated in my brain. Omar and I took the stairs out of the basement and into the house. Again and again the noise hit us like an icy dagger in the brain. We burst out the side door and onto the lawn, Omar collapsed. The sound stopped and I looked at Omar. There was blood and a clear fluid intermingled coming out of his ears. My stomach felt filled with rocks. I tried what first aid I knew, though I had never seen anything like this. In sort of a panic I lit a cigar and fanned the smoke towards him, thinking maybe the smell would awaken him. After a few minutes I knew he was gone from this world. Acting quickly, I covered any tracks that would indicate more than one person being in the house. I threw the shotgun through the open window, put a pistol I took onto Omar's body, and left the wad of cash on him. The only things I kept were the key and the coded ledger, hoping that I could incriminate the mobsters and gain access to the tower.

Eager to make the most of my time before the mobsters returned, I headed off to the ominous black tower to the west of the house. The key opened the door, and I was able to search the entire structure. On its very top I found a giant slab of magnetite with metal shackles and dried blood on it. Disturbed, I left the top of the tower and checked the tower basement. I found a number of iron cages with bones inside that I attributed to the gargoyles destroyed by the militia. I felt tired and worn from my ordeal, and having found no solution to the screaming ghost I went to the hotel for the night to await the return of Wesley.

The next day Wesley returned and I met a strange man named Billy Bob that had apparently acquired the tommy gun and stash of money that I had left on Omar's body. I did not trust Billy Bob after that and it was an impression that would stay with me for a long time. In this situation, however, I felt it was best to bring him with us to face this difficult mystery. Returning to the Hoesynth house carefully we spied the gangsters had returned to the mansion. We ran into a man near the house and Wesley recognized him as his friend Aidan. Aidan apparently was working with the gangsters and was driving truck and doing guard work for them. We explained to him the death of Omar and Emilio and asked him to let us know when the gangsters would be out of the mansion.

Our only recourse was to wait. We had only one clue left and that was to check out the site of the second witch burning in Chatham. Driving to Chatham we found a house and a tower that were a mirror image of the one in Arkham. Apparently Hobart and a group he lead called the Astral Church was burned and destroyed there in 1712. Hobart, however, was also seen as his house in Arkham 80 miles away on the same day when the Arkham towers were raided. Wesley also found an ornamental necklace, which he took, I have no idea what significance this necklace may have had to the Astral Church.

A week later the gangsters pulled out of the mansion and Aidan contacted us to tell us it was safe to return. We looked over the tower again and this time found a secret door. Opening it we saw two skeletons standing at attention on both sides of the hallway. Starting into the room we looked in horror as the skeletons began to move, and we saw that they both clutched rapiers as the bore down on us. Aidan slammed the secret door shut and we talked of what we would do next. I came up with a plan to trap one of the skeletons in the door. I opened the door a crack and waited for one of the skeletons arms to come through, then slammed the door on its vile appendage. My companions hacked the arm off. I tried the trick again but the skeleton with the missing arm snuck through and began to attack us. If any read this but myself you will not believe, but a skeleton that I could see right through was trying to skewer us with its rusty rapier! We managed to destroy both of them eventually using improvised clubs. Moving on we found a small laboratory full of chemicals and Wesley spotted a key inside a massive lizard-like skeleton. He stuck his hand inside to take the key and to my horror the skull bit into Wesley's arm. Wesley yelled in pain and I could see the teeth went deep into his arm. Aidan managed to pry the skull off of Wesley but his arm was badly damaged. Looking through a desk we found a few vials of red medicinal smelling liquid and a clear glass rectangle. Being curious whether this was some type of lens I looked into it.

My vision went dark. I felt I was floating through a dark starry void. I could hear a voice telling me things I did not want to know. I felt a deep stirring in my stomach as though I was falling and I could not get out. Terrible knowledge and visions filled my head during that time.

Then, when I became aware again, I was underneath the desk. Shameful as it is I am told by my companions that I acted like some sort of bug scuttling from the light. I drank some of the red fluid while I was in this state and later found my wounds healed.

The thing left for us to do was to return to the Hoesynth house. Aidan told us that he had received a terrible fright a few days earlier when a thing looking like a misty floating form of a burning man had passed through him and fled into the house. He also told us of a place in the basement that the gangsters used to store illegal alcohol. We asked him to show us this place and we found it behind a secret panel in the basement. We explored the basement and eventually came to a room with a blue glowing pentagram on the floor. I entered the room following Wesley and we saw an old desk with some papers on it. Wesley went to inspect the papers when a desk drawer flew out at him with great speed. Wesley was caught in the chest by the enraged furniture and took a solid blow. Wesley continued to fight the desk, trying to throw it into the blue pentagram. He also threw a book onto the pentagram and it disappeared suddenly without a trace. While being attacked by the desk I managed to scrub some of the pentagram off the floor and there was a blinding flash of blue light. The desk stopped moving, but the blue glow came back. Filled with curiosity, I felt compelled to see what standing on the blue pentagram would do. I'd like to say that I have become more cautious with experience, but really I am driven by my desire to know the truth. I attached a rope around my waist and tied myself off to the basement stairs. Walking onto the pentagram I found myself in another room that looked just like the one I was in with the rope around my waist severed after a few feet. Looking around I surmised that I was in the identical tower to the one near the Hoesynth house in Chatham, Massachusetts. Amazingly, I had traveled a few hundred miles in the blink of an eye. I returned back through the blue portal and thought for a moment about keeping the portal intact as a business opportunity to deliver goods. I thought the risk was not worth it, though, and we rubbed the pentagram completely off the floor.

After this there was no more supernatural activity around the house. We told Jeremy's uncle that the gangsters killed Jeremy and we left out any mention of the ghost of the burning man. We told the uncle the name of the gangster so that he could pursue justice on his own and I gave information out of a ledger I found to help in his search. He paid us for all that we had been through and seemed relieved to know the truth.

We told farmer Turnbull that vagrants killed his animals and that we drove them off. He was somewhat upset that the vagrants weren't arrested but the vagrants were friends of Billy Bob and it seemed the only agreeable thing to do.

I purchased the Hoesynth house as an investment opportunity since neither the gangsters nor anyone else in Arkham would want the building when it was considered haunted. I hope to eventually hide its tragic past and sell the building at a profit. At this writing three months later there has been no return of the ghost of the burning man.

 
 

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  Page last updated 30 August 2005