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Thursday, October 2

Last Rites: Part 4 – The Showdown

The place looked as if it had been hit by an earthquake. A marble pillar was collapsed on one side of the room, and cracked statuary was everywhere. A rumpled red carpet was splayed out the length of the hallway into the room. Oil lamps flickered up and down the length of the upper level.

“Something very bad went down here,” said Jim-Bean. “And I don’t think it was Henry.”

“You’re right,” said a young woman’s voice from atop the balcony. “It was me.”

Lucy Ennis, her long dark hair covering much of her face, leaned over the banister.

“Lucy?” asked Jim-Bean. “Lucy Ennis?”

The door slammed shut behind them. Then the multiple deadlocks and bolts locked the door, seemingly of their own volition.

“He won’t stop,” whispered Lucy. “I can’t stop him. No one can.”

“Who?” asked Jim-Bean. He started making his way up the steps along the left side of the stairwell. “Henry? Your father?”

She slowly nodded.

“What happened to Bernadette Springer?” asked Hammer. “This is her place…”

Lucy pointed up at the ceiling.

An old woman hung from the chandelier, a cord tied around her throat. Her tongue stuck out from her mouth, her face purple.

“She killed herself?” asked Guppy.

Lucy shook her head. There was no way the woman could have hung herself from that height without assistance; the chandelier was over twenty feet off the floor.

“Lucy,” said Jim-Bean, almost close enough to touch her. “I understand your pain. I’ve been there. I was a patient of Dr. Ettringer’s—“

WHAM! The door shuddered off its hinges.

“He’s here,” said Lucy. [MORE]

Labels: d20 modern

posted by talien at 8:58 AM

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