SPOILERS BELOW - SPOILERS BELOW
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With some slight ammendments...
Tuesday, September 13: Sophie and Tom know they
want to get into the Chapel of Contemplation mausoleum in Laurel Hill Cemetery,
but are unsure when the best time would be. They decide to talk to Sarah and
Dr. Marsh and make up their minds later.
While Sophie and Sarah plan their day at a cafe,
Tom clears out of his small apartment and goes into the underworld. He comes
across some faces from the old days: Dicky & The Dumberer. Neither can tell
him anything about Patrick O’Hara. He has a bit more luck with a cop
connection: Duane Gordon who works in the property room. Duane knows that
O’Hara is cousin to police commissioner Jesse Cook.
Sarah and Sophie head over to the campus of St.
Ignatius, where an aged Father Kolvenbach lives at Campion House. Sophie charms
her way in with a story about wanting to interview the Father for a sorority
newspaper article. On their way to his room, they are passed by a young lad
delivering a bottle of booze to Kolvenbach’s room. Sophie takes the opportunity
to further ingratiate herself with the Father by picking up the delivery tab.
Drinks are handed around as the interview begins. Sarah slams hers down. Sophie
sips.
Sarah focuses in on an arcane text that
Kolvenbach has been studying, something like “Investigation into Myth Patterns
of Primitives with Reference to the R’lyeh Text.” Kolvenbach’s slurred response
points along the lines of, “You don’t want to know about that, little girl.
It’s horrible!” Sarah’s having none of it, and pushes back hard, challenging
the Father for willfully delving further into the pit of despair he’s so
clearly been descending for years. Her tough cross questioning makes an
impression, and the man confesses to a loss of faith, muttering about the
things he’s seen in this city. Sophie takes this opportunity to rush headlong
into a direct statement of the facts at hand, going so far as to produce
Patrick O’Hara’s Committee of Vigilance medallion. His final resistance broken,
Kolvenbach tells all.
The gist of it is that a young man named Eric Ralston
was inducted into the Chapel of Contemplation because of his significant
inheritance. He quickly found himself appalled at the goings on there and had
the fortitude to tell Leland Cort, who brought Captain Jesse Cook into the
matter. They resolved that the Chapel had to be ended and knew it could never
happen through official channels; it had to look like an accident. The
Reconstituted Committee of Vigilance was born. A young police officer
infiltrated the Chapel and the Vigilantes decided to conduct a raid before the
terrible Candlemass rituals, when they knew children would be sacrificed.
The raid turned into a bloodbath, with many
deaths. Compounding the tragedy, they were too late to save the children, who
lay dead on the altar. Two preternatural occurrences cemented Kolvenbach’s
conviction that the Chapel’s occult powers were far more than mere posturing: a
dagger flew through the air to impale one officer; another turned on his fellow
vigilantes with a shotgun as if possessed.
·
Father Kolvenbach also states that
he has, or perhaps, had, one of the bloodied stones from one or other of the
Chapel members at the Candlemass ritual. The stones had evidently been dipped
in the blood of the children, and were small, with the, now familiar triskelion/eye
symbol etched into them. Kolvenbach asserts that while he washed the stone with
holy water an performed a ceremony of exorcism upon it; the nagging sensation
and the troubling “afterimage” of the eye when sleeping or waking from sleep…never
lessened.
·
According to Kolvenbach the altar
and other symbols at the Chapel of Contemplation were broken up under his
direction.
Over in Oakland, Dr. Marsh gets word from his
phone service that the other investigators want to meet up at Coffee Dan’s and
he catches the ferry back to San Francisco. The four plan their meeting with
Leland Cort.
At the Woolworths off Union Square, Leland Cort
is curt and dismissive. He denies any ongoing threat from the Chapel of
Contemplation and gives only lukewarm indications of relief that the
investigators are not plotting an occult conspiracy of their own. At least the
heat from the Vigilantes seems to have subsided. As an afterthought, Sophie
phones Leland with the license plate of the stalker with the military haircut.
As the hour grows late, Dr. Marsh and Sarah
persuade the other two that waiting until the next morning to investigate the
mausoleum is the wisest course.
Wednesday, September 14: A bluff, a bribe, and
some fast talk get past the Laurel Hill Cemetery groundskeeper and into the
mausoleum. The mechanism for opening the inner door is quickly found, and the
group descends below. With dirt slowly seeping in from above, they enter a
ritual chamber with the familiar triskelion symbol on the floor and another
circle of strange glyphs on the wall. A trail of dirt connects the triskelion
to a door back near the mausoleum’s entrance. Three skulls rest inside the
symbol. Knocking these poor Yoricks aside, Dr. Marsh confirms that the symbol
has been broken.
·
Beneath the stack of
skulls was a torn vellum sheet. The tearing was described by one of the
investigators as looking like the work of a clawed hand… The vellum was folded
down the middle and was had written on each side of the fold.
·
On the Left Side: Pledged
- Our service when summoned solely for the providing of specified books and
artifacts such as are buried or entombed. --- A jagged symbol is at the bottom
as if in signature – This symbol, Sarah identifies as connected with the Arabic
conception of “Ghuls” or “Eaters of the Dead”.
·
On the Right Side:
Pledged – The flesh of any and all of our Brothers whenever and wherever they
die shall henceforth be thine. --- A triskelion/eye is at the bottom in
signature.
While
Sarah lays salt barricades, the others gather up various documents and books
strewn about. Sophie is eerily captivated and needs repeated admonitions to
save the reading of these materials for later.
Back inside the door near the stairs, the
investigators find a broken coffin (with headless skeleton) and an archway that
might once have lead to further chambers but is now choked with dirt. As they
plan their next move, they hear scrabbling and guttural croaking from beyond
the arch . Dr. Marsh appears ready to stand his ground and fight whatever beast
might emerge from the depths of the tomb, but his friends’ pleas persuade him
that there’s nothing to be gained here, and a general retreat begins.
The door to the chamber is easily resealed, but
now the earthen wall back towards the ritual chamber is bursting outward in a
torrent of rubble and debris. Everyone flees this foul and musty place before
they can learn what might crawl forth.
And what manner of eldritch lore was recovered
from the crypt? The details remain uncertain, but have much to do with the
procurement of dark powers, contracts with strange creatures with menacing
names, and the ability to compel these monstrosities to commit evil deeds at a
distance--even through walls. Some of the writing is in Drood’s hand, some
penned by one or more others who could be cohorts, disciples or rivals.
By now, Leland Cort has some information about
the man who has been tailing the investigators, but he won’t share it over the
phone. He wants the four chums to meet him at The White Shack, which Tom knows
to be a sort of distribution point for booze smuggled by sea into Half Moon
Bay.
Down south, the investigators find not only
Leland, but Patrick O’Hara and Commissioner Cook as well. It takes some
convincing to get Sarah over to the barn where these three want to discuss
details, but she eventually accepts that there aren’t many other choices.
Leland’s first bit of news is that the man with
the military haircut is Jake Luzinski, a private dick with United Services, a
dirty outfit that…
·
Has been employed by the
Gray brothers…
Dr. Marsh produces one of the documents from the
mausoleum, and the Vigilantes are greatly disturbed to recognize the
handwriting as that of George Gray. Both Gray brothers were suspected of being
involved in the Chapel, but this is the first hard evidence. But there’s more:
the investigators’ documents indicate members of the Chapel working towards a
momentous event to take place October 31 of this very year! This finally cracks
the Vigilantes’ conviction that troubles with the Chapel are in the past. They
indicate that surviving Gray brother Harry is the only person they know of who
had ties to the Chapel and is still around. Looking into his activities seems
like a good idea. Meanwhile, Leland and friends will make sure that the
mausoleum is dug up and investigated in its entirety, with nothing left behind
as a locus for ongoing Chapel activity.
Harry Gray lives in a posh Pacific Heights
mansion, and there’s the Gray Brothers yard that Tom found while following the
younger Gonzalez. Gray also has an office in the city. October 31 is less than
seven weeks away.
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