Entry 2 - Part 2: The Sanatorium and the Lead into Masks

Patients locked in for the night, we barricade ourselves in the library dragging in the couch from the study. It’s a restless night of fitful sleep for Amanda but the whiskey proves a decent sleep medication. Come morning Dr. Teller checks in on the patients providing their meds per Dr. Brewers' records. Darlene seems willing and needing to be active so the doctor allows her to roam the floors doing the cleanup/maid chores she assumed yesterday. While Mic and the doctor delve deeper into Allen's state of mind, Dick and Eddie search outdoors for the gasoline to run the generators. Not at the boat dock as assumed, so they head to the back of the sanatorium and a shed. Sure enough, 24 full cans...a nice bomb if a match ever got too close! Best to keep the crazies locked up else they do something stupid. Two cans seem to fill the generator as Eddie estimates it will run for the day. We'll need to refill before sunset.

 
It's not long before Mic joins Dick and Eddie as they search a cabin set near the shed. The first room proves to be the maid's living quarters (the poor gal Mic found with shredded legs) per the pictures on the central fireplace mantel. From a porch opposite the first we enter another living quarter used by the now deceased boat captain (Ebenezer). Nothing to give clues what else might be going on inside the nut-house. Only a letter circa 1896 from a shipmate while they sailed the Pacific. Mention of a lucky charm necklace given from the natives of Kanaky's Island northeast of Australia. Obviously didn't prove to be lucky for Ebenezer...his throat cut almost clean thru.

Remembering the outdoor screams in the night, and having accounted for all nut-house residents and patients except the male nurse Charlie, we search for more clues. Dick directing us along a narrow path of recent dead vegetation ...something passed this way! Over a rise we spy the lighthouse and the mast of a grounded boat. Intrigued by the memory the lighthouse quit working weeks ago, we investigate. Thru the door and up winding inside stairs past windows we come to an overhead trapdoor. Dick and Eddie fail to force open the door locked or braced from the inside. Mic succeeds in shouldering it open. The space is filled with large bubbles as if someone spilled an entire box of soapy water. Yet these bubbles animate, collapse upon Mic's head, and LIFT HIM HIGH OFF THE GROUND! What the hell?! Holy shit!

With Mic's legs churning desperately as he struggles to escape, he draws his pistol near his face attempting to burst the bubbles. But the thick membranes reform a solid surface and squeeze even harder as the Irishman fights for breath and life. Eddie rushes in to attack the thing but the sight of Mic's face melting inside the bubble is too much for the Italian as he faints and tumbles down a few stairs causing Dick to jump else he too tumbles. With Dick grabbing Mic's legs and pulling to free him, and Mic fighting with his last breath, the Irishman breaks free.

It's now a rush to get the hell out. Dick dashes down the steps jumping over Eddie's body. Mic at least attempts to lift his prohibition partner, fails, sees the bubble blob flowing down the walls as if to block the front-door exit, and decides to save himself by climbing thru a window to escape. As Mic gives up on Eddie, the Italian's head hits the floor to jostle him awake. Enough comprehension to note the bubble-bath thing avoids sunlight steaming in thru the windows, Eddie too exits the window. Breathless outside the lighthouse the group takes stock of their situation, "Holy shit Mic, does it hurt? Your face is burned; you look hid...I mean it doesn't look that bad. Could be worse. The thing must spew some kind of acid."

Back at the sanatorium, Henry tends Mic's wounds. With a bandaged face, Mic looks like a mummy. Ignoring his pain, Mic pushes toward Allen's room trying to find answers to (what the hell is) the creature he faced. [What was that thing that de-faced him!] Allen seems in a trance as he babbles, "He's hungry, he's hungry" then his voice changes to a demonic tone as if possessed. Pure evil in its rants then a challenge to see if we have the guts to face it, "I have far reach and control. You doubt me? Then watch..." And that's when Allen's eyes turn to teeth then seem to melt out of his eye sockets, his stomach swells as if bloating, then his guts explode across the room. It's Dick who forms the plan, "It's time to kill that shit-bag-of-bubbles. Grab the whiskey bottles and let's make Molotov cocktails to burn that thing back to the 9-hells."

To the shed to fill the bottles with gasoline. A case of bottles, 2 cans of gas, we return to the lighthouse. As Eddie enters with the cans to drench the stairs, Mic and Dick ready with lighters and the bottles. When suddenly a large bloodied crazed man in nurse clothing charges those outside with an axe raised high.

The missing "Charlie". Weapons holstered, Mic scrambles inside to gain time to draw and ready, while Dick sidesteps the madman focused on the Irishman. Mic's panicked shot is wide as he then tries to wrestle/punch his attacker. Dick calmly draws, aims, and blasts Charlie's head, dropping the crazed nurse.

With the wooden stairs soaked in gas, Mic and Dick throw their Molotov bottles as we torch the lighthouse.

Screams from the upper room confirm the beast is still within. Till we see it oozing outside and flowing down the walls as it attempts to move into the forest for shadows and relief from the sun that seems to be burning it. 

Bubbles bursting as it crawls/flows towards the woods. About to escape, we each light one more bottle in desperate throws to kill it. Two bottles find their mark, flaring to burst more bubbles...the creature/being/beast...what the hell DO you call this thing...we call it dead. A satisfied walk back to the house.

"So we accounted for everyone...Charlie the missing nurse our axe attacker. Who was the source of the screams last night?" Suddenly Dick remembered the letter Dr. Teller showed him when hired, "Oh yeah, there was another researcher camping on the island. A student named James Carlit arrived on his own boat; the mast we saw."

The rising smoke from the lighthouse soon attracts a coastguard patrol that arrives to pick us up. Hours of interrogation and paperwork. To avoid being thrown in the nut-house ourselves, when asked why the lighthouse burned, instead of mentioning an unbelievable story of a monster, Mic shows his face and claims responsibility, "I was trying to restart the lighthouse and started the fire." On our sail back to the mainland, the naval crew listens to our story (less mention of any monster). "Carlit? I wonder if he's the son of that missing playboy years ago?" To which another sailor corrects, "You're thinking Roger Carlyle's missing expedition." We now listen to their story...a potential new adventure. I'm sure we each envision a monster involved in THIS case!

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April 1919: The wealthy playboy Roger funded the expedition with Sir Aubrey Penhew, famed Egyptologist, as his second. Started in London before setting sail for Egypt and the Nile valley in search of Egyptian tombs. Accompanied by the Freudian psychologist Dr. Robert Huston, photographer Miss Hypatia Masters, and Mr. Jack Brady acting as factotum ('Jack-of-all-Trades' to us un-edumacated).

Months later the group up-anchors and sails for Kenya (on the east Africa coast near the equator) amid rumors they may be on the trail of King Solomon's legendary lost mines. Claims of needed rest for the sunstroke playboy are easily scoffed. News of their arrival in Nairobi to then travel northwest into the "Great Rift Valley" (northeast of Lake Victoria) doesn't sound like any sunstroke respite. Camera safari...ha. Then months of silence, the expedition feared lost.

Nearly 11 months since the expedition began, now March 1920, Erica Carlyle sailed to Mombasa to search for her brother. Reports of white-men being massacred in the Aberdare Forest within the Great Rift Valley. Months later the massacre confirmed, graves and non-white bodies found, Nandi tribesmen blamed and later executed. Lips held tight refusing to divulge where the major white leaders of the expedition are buried.

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Just where were they searching in London? A museum or library? Maybe a curator has clues. What did they find that sent them to Egypt? And if Roger Carlyle's sunstroke looks anything like Mic's, did he encounter his own monster?

 

Maybe with a little research we can convince Lady Amanda to introduce us to her equal socialite Miss Erica. Maybe we can offer our services in our newest position as monster hunters. Well, we won't tell her that! We're "Problem Solvers."