1.1 Fine Rain Upon the Hotel

A rain so thin as to better be considered mist started up just after dawn in Swampscott, Massachusetts, and had not let up since. Dewed water collected on his jacket dripped off Trent's arm as he approached The New Ocean House hotel.



The Hotel appeared much like Lance had described in his last letter. Grand, expansive and bold. Though, with the off-season just begun, almost bereft of guests.

Lance's last letter came from here.

"Things are improving. I am beginning to understand. I decided to treat myself to a bit of luxury, so I am taking a sabbatical by the sea. I feel safe when I hear the salt-water waves call to me, each time they smash die to on the beach. " (Lance, Oct 11th, 1928)

That was almost three weeks ago.

As Trent approaches the main entrance, he spots someone that looks familiar exiting the building. Into the lobby, Trent makes his way to the desk.


"Good evening, sir. Welcome to the New Ocean House. How may I be of assistance?"

What does Trent Do?

The receptionist, upon second thought, pulls the form back and away from Trent, as if protecting it.


"Your brother left without settling his bill."

He looks at Trent with a growing sense of judgment.

"Are you going to cover for the damages?"

He reaches for the ledger and flicks to a page. Then starts to read in a staccato tone.

"He booked for two weeks, did not pay for the last week, damaged the entire room by coating it with mud."

He looks up and locks eyes with Trent.

"Mud that cause two of our facility staff to get terribly sick trying to clean it, I must say."

Then he looks back at the ledger.

"And, I see a note here that the hotel manager now has contracted with an outside cleaning crew. Who, not only need to clean the original room, but it seems the room below it as well."

What does Trent do?

"I see..." Trent mutters as he glances over at the ledger the receptionist covers so protectively.

Something doesn't add up. Lance was on vacation here, what could have made him do that to the room, if it even was him. Coat the room in mud? He was an archeologist, not a lunatic, for heaven's sake!

"By all means, I'll take care of my brother's bill. But first I'd like to have a look at the room myself, and also speak with the staff that was doing the cleaning."

"Excellent. With that be with check or cash."

He runs his finger down one of the columns, and gets the tally. He names a number equivalent to a month of Trent's wages.

Then he snaps the ledger shut like he's afraid something might leap from the pages.

During this, down near Trent's left foot, movement catches his eye. A grasshopper shuffles along the thin carpeted floor displaying an exoskeleton of a texture and color the likes Trent has never seen. What does Trent do?

Trent frowns at the insect-like creature... similar to a grasshopper with it's elongated body, but the color it's... wrong, that's the first word that comes to mind. He can't figure why, but... well, it's not green, nor grey nor brown. It's husk, almost, like a hardened elongated shell, it's no defined color. One that raises the hairs on the back of his neck.

He looks up at the receptionist and clears his throat. There's some uneasiness to his voice.

"Look, Mr..." he looks around before continuing, he isn't proud of what he's about to do but there is no other choice, "truth is we found Mr. Barrows, hence why I'm here. There's an investigation opened on him, and it leads here. I'm following on his whereabouts, and he's been connected to this establishment. I'm sure neither your employer nor you has had anything to do with him, but I have to make sure."

He pulls out his police detective badge quickly and VERY discreetly, and hides it again. It was a good thing Chief didn't ask to hand over his badge when he took his leave. "We would like to keep this under maximum secret, but you're collaboration on this delicate matter would be greatly appreciated... and I'm sure your employer also will be grateful that you helped us keep this establishment's name clean."

"Crespini." He gives his name. He looks at the badge. His brow furrows and he blinks as he tries to process this new information. "So, you're not his brother? And this balance . . . "

Then as Trent mentions discretion, he starts to piece it together. Even a rumor of a murder at a hotel can have lingering consequences.

"Yes. Yes."

He turns and fumbles at a wall of keys on hooks. Finds the right one and steps out from behind the counter.

"This way." Crespini starts to rapidly walk down the hall toward a set of stairs.

Trent senses more than hears a trill of ringing in his ears. He's certain only he can hear it. And with it he is filled with a compulsion to step on that bug, pick it up, and rub it's guts between his hands.

What does Trent do?

As Trent catches up, Crespini starts talking. He climbs two flights of stairs with the ease of one well practiced in managing a hotel.

"Owen and Denis, the two Irish boys that took ill, they live over on Franklin Avenue near the tracks."He steps to the door with the key in his hand and he pauses. Almost frozen.

"They are cousins, I think. Though they look like brothers. Their last names are Brady or Doyle or something like that. I can get it for you."

A sign posted on the door says: KEEP OUT.

Crespini moves to place the key into the lock, then -- changing his mind --- turns and hands the key to Trent.

"I'll just wait over there."

He walks back over to a hallway window about twenty feet away and watches ready to rabbit away. What does Trent do?

The door resists for a moment, then with a bit more effort it swings in.
Dust falls down around the door, clouding the air, and making the light pour through like milk in water. Murky, indistinct and hazy.

As the air clears it is obvious, a thick layer of mud coats every wall in this standard sized hotel room. Bits of straw and what looks like thin strings, are caked into the bright brown mud.

It smells like the bottom of a river.
A taste of organic rot fills Trent's mouth with his first breath in.

Yet, for the most brief of moments, Trent is sure, that he disrupted something. That the mud was moving. Was shifting, sliding and growing. And the opening of the door made it freeze, like a stalking tiger frozen in the tall grass, waiting for the prey to look the other way.

On the small table next to the window a one-foot squarish chunk of purple and blue glass sits, catching the weak light through the blinds, yet almost glowing, almost pulsing.

And quiet.
So quiet.
Just on the edge of perception.
Like that same trill that Trent heard before.

He catches (with just hints and waves) what he can only interpret as screams. Distant screams the sound of his brother's voice. They fade and rise, they echo and resonate in his head. They come from the glass, but they appear inside his mind: uninvited screams.

Then they stop suddenly.

What does Trent do?

The stench hits him instantly like a brick wall. A putrid mix of foul mud and the hint of something organic festering in it.

His stomach almost rushes to his mouth and he puts a handkerchief to his face to keep from vomiting.

Trent takes in the room from the doorway, unable to conciliate with his brother. He knows Lance had been a little unkempt the last time they spoke, but this... he pressea the handkerchief tight to his nose and mouth and steps in. His shoes make a squishy and disgusting sound as he threads the mud covered floor. Patches of straw crushing under the sole.

His eyes darting everywhere as he stands in the middle of the room. He can't shake the feeling that he's inside... something. A dreadful and disturbing feeling that it's not just a room. And on the edge of his perception... not gone, just dormant. The trill... that soft but piercing shrill. Like the one he got from the strange grasshopper at the lobby.

He approaches cautiously to the small table by the window and picks up the piece of glass with a dirty rag.

The moment he does it he feels the trill comes back, softly this time but persisting, like gentle but intruding waves on a shore. He steels himself against the eerie sensation that chews on his mind, that he shouldn't be there.

He swallows hard, his body tenses. No, he can't leave. The light is dim and stale. Trent holds the chunk of glass to his eyes and examines it.

At first glance it just looks like a piece of glass, but as he holds it up to the dirtied lamp its color shift. Blue and purple turning into a lighter hue of... magenta? Violet? He holds it closer against the lamp and squints his eyes. It changes again... an even lighter shade of blue, almost silvery. No. It's something else.

He feels a cold shudder down his spine and down his arms giving him goosebumps as the memory of the grasshopper comes back again.

As Trent gazes into the glass he hears the screams again, more distinct. Lifting the glass object reveals a field notebook below, protected from the mud. A classic brown cover, functional, academic. A field book for archeological notations.

On the cover it says: Mohenjo-Daro, Channel Path E, written in bold black lettering. Lance's expert handwriting.

That is when Trent feels the first, sharp pain in his left foot. From the straw-caked mud, smaller, string-thin hairs are woven in and through the mud. But these strings are like needles. One has managed to pierce its way through Trent's shoe.

As Trent moves, he feels some of these strings crack and shift. It isn't string. It is more like hair. Like glass shards akin to Pele's hair, the thin fibers of glass from volcanic activity.

What does Trent do?

As Trent leans on the edge of the table, a sharp pain rushes through his leg and fires up all his body, feeling the pele hair tugging at his nerves. He bites through the pain using all his strength to stay up.

His legs fail and he collapses on the table, slamming his hip on the edge and winces painfully; for some reason grasping tightly to the chunk of glass, as if a part of him wouldn't want to drop it.

Trent leans over for support as the screaming voices come back through the piercing pain. The voices rolling over his mind again, soft but persistent waves crashing on the side of a rocky cliff. No... it's not voices, any voices. He grimaces and swallows hard as his throat tightens.

It's Lance's. His voice. He's the one screaming. But not now. His brother screaming as they climbed up the highest tree in the park. It was just a dare. He remembers Lance slipping from the branch and falling down. Trent barely reaches to grab him and hold his hand. The pull of the fall tugs on his shoulder but he didn't drop, or Lance would have died. His shoulder still hurts on bad days, but Lance lived.

No, he's still alive! He pushes against the screams and the grim thoughts they entail.

Trent remembers he's still holding the glass and notebook, and pushes with one arm away from the table, his body shaking from the sharp pain shooting from his foot and through all of him and limps closer to the window to examine it's pages.

The weak light through rain and cloud illuminates the notebook with a diffuse, dead effort.
The pain from his foot fades as he opens to the first page.

Title: Notation of Channel Path E.

The lead page has a scrawled note in Lance's handwriting.

"Marshall would not speak to the man. So I here have taken it upon myself to document my interactions, for history. "

A quick skim through the book gives the impression that, during Lance's time at the excavations at Mohenjo-Daro, that he, in his private time, worked with a "tall man, wrapped in cloaks and linen, his face a shadow inside shadows."

Lance called him The Contact or, his Connection. Never naming him.

The book starts out organized, and methodical. Noting various locations near the main Mohenjo-Daro site. But as the notes continue, they become more disjointed, handwriting scrawled. The last few pages a mishmash of sketches and errant thoughts. A puzzle of notes and implications.

Then Trent looks down.
Blood, streams from his foot. His head swoons, his vision tilts. He has lost so much blood. The Pele-hair, so sharp as to cut in a way he didn't even realize he was bleeding out.

The room grows even more dim and then darkness seems to boil over his vision. His hands grow weak. The book slips from his fingers.

What does Trent do?

Trent stumbles as his body feels weak from the sharp pain and bleeding, shoving the notebook in his pocket. He grabs to the curtains by the window, tearing them off the rail and almost falling.

He has to gather all his strength to stay upright and on his legs as they feel on fire and about to give in. He limps and winces as every step is like stepping on scorching glass, a sharp throbbing pain shooting up his consciousness, trying to get to the door.Barely holding on to his last shreds of strength he crawls out of the room, grabbing on to the walls that peels under his fingers in flakes of mud and something like wet straw. He collapses on the corridor, dragging his legs behind him and leaving a red trail from his foot all the way from inside the room and through the door.

Something else too, pulsating behind the pain but it's too faint to catch his attention. (From the insight roll)