Shrouded in darkness, our investigators had only a momentary glance of a floating knife before Dr. Earnest Callahan and Jack Little remembered that they had left the stove on, and bolted up the stairs and out onto the terrace of the house both feeling exhausted.

While the other two investigators were outside, Frank Ritter, Darcey Hedgeson, Blake Elliot, and Igor Grimsbane stood firm against the glint of rust coloured iron and the encroucing darkness.

The knife struck out against Blake grazing the side of his face, inflicting some superficial damage. While Frank moved himself to the furthest corner of the room and did his best to look busy opening the last remaining door downstairs.

Igor pressing his advangae with the knife seeking other quary, spied a metal bin lid on the ground, snatching it up, and with all the force he could muster, he charged the bedevilling knife and pinned it against the wall. Crashing into it with such force that he could determine that the wall itself, wasn’t entirely solid.

With the only visible threat neutralised, the investigators set about a closer inspection of their surrounds, after first engineering a makeshift prison for their would be attacker. When Frank and Darcey make a realisation that the knife was it’s most animated when it was near to the investigators, as if it was recoiling from their presence, afraid of their intentions.

I’ve got it! We can tie the knife to the sledgehammer and make it into a halberd!

— Blake Elliot

The search of the investigators of the room, yielded a few noteworthy items, a sledgehammer that Blake immediately claimed and began sizing up for a new suit. As well as some occult looking papers in the corner of the storage room. The storage room that the investigators were able to enter after Igor simply walked up to and pulled open, while Frank and Blake were pushing.

The papers themselves appeared, to be old and withered, bearing symbols and marks that none of the investigators could clearly make out, though Darcey and Igor both had recollections that these wer some form of documents, concering some sort of bargin, or deal, where there were promenant rust coloured marks, affixed to the pages.

I can hear them in the walls!

— Darcey Hedgeson

With the blood no longer pulsing in their ears, Darcey began to hear a scratching and skittering from within the walls, followed closely by the sound of, what could only be, every window shutter, window, and door in the house opening and closing with therous force.

You grab that side, and I’ll grab this side and we’ll yank it off the table like those magicians do.

— Igor Grimsbane to Darcey Hedgeson

Wanting to have as little contact as possible with the papers, Igor and Darcey began to formulate a plan on how to best move the papers for latter study. Coming to, what they saw as the simplest conclusion of using two wooden planks and Blake’s jacket to gently ease the papers into a transportable bundle. They soon scrapped this plan, and istead decided to use a table cloth from upstairs, where feeling that time was of the essence, they decided to not carefully romove the remants of the previous owners last dinner, but instead rip the table cloth at great speed out from underneath the table ware. Though, this didn’t have quite the effect they hoped as the smell of the, rank, uncovered food began to permeate the house.

“Why aren’t we touching the papers again?”

— Frank Ritter to Blake Elliot

Deaf to the commotion upstairs, Frank peered into the now vacant storage room and, deciding that a little peek couldn’t hurt, walked up to the papers and began to examine them more closely. Upon doing so, the brittle time weathered pages broke into illegibale fragments. As Igor and Darcey returned empty handed from upstairs.

Something not right is happening…

— Darcey Hedgeson

With all the investigators in the basement, Darcey once again heard the soft scraping from within the walls and deciding that now was the time Igor and Blake began using the sledge hammer to break through the wall revealing a crawlspace with the Contemplation scrawled in an all too familar rust coloured substance. Small patches of the other side of the wall had been knawed through, reveal a yet bigger space just outside of the investigators view.

Meanwhile, Jack feeling a renewed vigor, and recalling that his stove was in another city, made his way back into the house, carefully traversing the stairs, and descending into the basement.

Rounding the corner Jack had only a moments glace of Frank, Igor, and Blake recoilling from a newly opened cavity in the wall where a torrent of rats were pouring forth, heading straight for him.