Log:This Spooky Old House: Exploration Edition, Part 5

This Spooky Old House 2020/07/27 	 Felix Blockbuster Kid Tengu Bran Blink Phantom

5

Summary: After besting the attempts of Damon Harrington, ghost and all around not nice guy, to attack them with knives and ping pong tables, our intrepid teens sought to find out other secrets of the basement of This Spooky Old House. One of them, Kid Tengu, opened the papers found in the destroyed paino and found them to be two contracts: one between Damon Harrington and someone called the Gentleman and the other between harringotn and someting cvalled the Verminax Collective.

The teems investigated the basement and found a secret door where a normal understairs door would be located. Blink popped inside to find a cobwebbed landing and a set of stairs leading down further from the basement.

After she openend the door, the teens pondered what do. While they did, a skeleton from outside, possessed by the sprit of Chalmers Hornbeck waves a white handerkjercheif to get their pecaseful attnetion. While he explained various things to the teens, Felix was mind controlled by Harrington and Felix tried to go down the stairs. Blinks topped him and was later assisted by KT in holding Felix aloft so he cou;dnt go ;jion the Master;. Harringont took this opportunity to attack again and was driven off by the combined mental powers of Bran and Phantom.

When last we left our intrepid and spunky band of youths, they'd just been told that tney could go down the stairs to reach the thrid floor or up the stairs upstaris to reach it.

The skeleton says over the Code Dark mental link <>

"Is this one of those, like, M. C. Escher posters in house form?" inquires a bamboozled Blockbuster.

At which point the skeleton answers her question. Blinking owlishly, Blockbuster asides to KT, "I think that, like, checks out, right? Aren't TARDISes those, like, microscopic bears that can eat up to ten times their own body weight?"

Felix stops wiggling like a wired weasel in KT's grip. Instead, he swears like a sailor. "That #$)*(&@$ @#-1 ARGUMENT OUT OF RANGEing F)(*@#$!!"

<< Huh?>> Phantom is also clueless on the reference. But he understands bigger on the inside. "Those are tardigrades."

Blockbuster looks over at Phantom.

"That is so, like, rude! You can't just call them obsolete words like that just because they're microscopic, Phantom!"

"W-what? That's what they're -called-. And yeah, I actually paid attention go science class," Phantom insists on his innocence.

"KT, put me down! I've got a ghost's ass to kick!" grumbles Felix at the now-multilimbed alien. He swears quietly under his breath in multiple languages.

"Oh right. Tardigrades were my favorite Earth-based Lifeform when..." KT pauses. "... when I was younger." He leaves it at that, avoiding bringing up life on a spacetower of doom hurtling toward a world they'd had never seen but found ripe for conquering.

He turns into a cartoonish version of the noble taridgrade... but its clear from what few details their are that he did not pay attention in science class.

He looks surprised at Felix's return.

"Aww hey puddin'! Welcome back to the Sane Party." He says bringing Felix around to mockingly try to bring Felix in for tarigrade kisses. Instead of smootchy faces he gives the sound of mandible snapping shut. He pulls him in until the very last second and drops him before laughing.

Felix keeps his head reared back as it approaches KT's maw. He sighs softly as he drops to the ground, landing lightly in a crouch before rising again. "Ech, I need brain bleach..." His gaze turns to the closed door no one's opened then to the open door to the basement. "OK, now I understand why I'm covered in cobwebs."

His attnetion turns to the rest of you. "So, we going down to kick Harring ectoplasmic nether regions in the joint?"

Blockbuster folds her arms across her chest and harumpfs. The noble TARDIS deserves better than to be maligned by being called a tardigrade. Just because they're microscopic doesn't mean that they deserved to be held back a grade.

"So, we're going downstairs now, right?" Blink checks. First. Just in case! She's not geeky enough in science nor science fiction to catch the references. They may as well be speaking Greek, and she doesn't know that, either. She -did- ask first, though. Before going downstairs. To get to the attic.

BLAMF!

Bran nods. "Downstairs sounds like the shorter walk. So...let's go that way.

"I say we kick ecto-hindquarters." KT says in agreement, bringing two fists into two waiting palms.

He heads downstairs, assuming that's where Blink popped off too.

"Blink!"

Blockbuster kicks off of the air and goes sailing toward the stairs downward in hot pursuit of the teleporter. Time to chase the teenage light source?

Felix makes certain Phantom and Bran precede him down the stairs. He keeps glancing behind to where the skeleton stands at the top of the stairs.

 Felix says, "Good luck!//Kick his ass!"

Phantom follows the others. << Thanks, Chalmers! Night Hound! If we don't come back, uhhh. Send help?>>

Bran heads down the stairs, and he keeps the flashlight he was given earlier turned on.

The staircase starts to make a turn then comes out of the roof of a cavernous room. It makes a grand curve down about 20 feet to reach the floor of this unreasonable large room. This hall is unreasonably large (26 feet by 38 feet by 20 feet). Four comfortable chairs and a coffee table make it look slighlty less empty. The room is very cool, well above freezing, but probably around 50 F. And it is spotless: no dust, no cobwebs, no debris. The air, however, reeks of death and decay.

There is another set of stairs leading down from the landing in this hall.

The stairs are in the southeast corner of the room. On the south wall is a single door. On the west wall are two doors. On the northe wall near the western wall is another door. And there's a set of large double doors on the east wall.

A dim light permeates the room from what seems like a luminescent fog bank hanging at the level of the roof.

Blink looks over as Busty the Bright just lights up the room when she walks in. "Yeah?" She sniffs, scowls, and notes to everyone else coming down, and for posterity, "That wasn't me."

Phantom glances in Bran's direction. "Are you able to sense anything of Harrington still?"

Blockbuster floats into the room and lets out an ecstatic sigh at the bath of fresh - albeit dim - light provided by the chamber. She spreads her arms and looks up toward the fog bank, soaking in the ambient lighting.

"It's probably just the stink of Phantom's nasty old vocabulary," Blockbuster assures Blink.

KT snickers, avoiding clinging to the ceiling- if only to avoid the unnatural fog.

Bran shakes his head, "Not currently, no."

Phantom nods to Bran and shoots a look Blockbuster's way. "Seriously? That's the actual name--okay, you know what? Google it," he chuckles nervously, trying not to think of the creepy house. "I think the double doors look ominous...maybe that way?"

"OK, which way now then?" murmurs Felix, tapping his now baseball bat sized power rod against his lower leg.

"I mean, the fluorescent fog overhead is pretty creepy too," mumbles Blockbuster. She frowns a little bit, but starts floating toward the double doors while her orbiting balls of light slowly strengthen in luminosity.

"GET OUT! GET OUT! MINE! GET OUT!!!!!

"MAKE ME, BUTT-FACE," yells Blockbuster, jerking backward in the air at the sudden screeching of their "host".

Apparently Harrington takes that as an invitation as the furniture all lifts off the ground, swirls around in a tornaodo-like spiral and starts pleting towards you all.

"Oh no! He might float around in a sheet at us!" Blink attempts to make her best ZOINKS! face. She points at the double doors than Phanny may have suggested. "Looks good to me!"

Yep, behind those double doors. Seems they may be no limit to him up/down here

Phantom sprints towards the double doors. "I can feel his mind behind these doors," he warns the others. He skids to the door and tries to open them up, looking to Bran. "If I can get these open, get ready to give that guy a headache," he gives him the headsup and tries the door.

It turns out that the double doors are locked. Phantom tries to open them but they just rattle under his attempts.

Phantom's shoulders sag. "Okay. Maybe someone stronger can break these open?"

Phantom shakes off his hands and breathes on them to warm them up. "C-cold..."

Blink guessed right... after Phantom guessed the same. And now Phanny's proven it. "Maybe someone faster can just unlock them?!" Her tongue sticks out briefly at Busty before it vanishes along with the rest of her. BLAMF.

You attempt to teleport to the other side of the double doors, Blink. And you succeed.

This room is dimly lit by red lights coming from over one hundred large jars. Each jar seems to hold a silently beating heart that glows like a sullen coal.

This room is freezing cold and dominated by a frozen pool and fountain over 18 feet tall. The room itself seems to at last half the size of a football field with the pool being almost Olympic sized.

A setsof low steps rises in the southern part of the room to a large bed surrounded by standing skeletons with glowing jars in their chests. On the bed, lies a figure but you cannot make much about it.

YOu also see an old fashioned skeleton type key in the ornate lock on this side of the door.

The furniture in the hall flies at you all trying to knock yo down, about, injure and contuse you.

KT twists to dife for Phantom but sees the object heading for him going wide as he himself is struck. He rolls and gets in front of Bran with just enough time for the chair to break over his chitinous shoulder.

A sofa sails through the room and crashes into Blockbuster from behind. She stumbles forward, tip-toes landing on the floor for a split second before she recovers and bobs back up into the air. Turning around, Blockbuster frowns and shakes a fist (and several orbs of variously colored lights) at the sofa.

"I, for one, do not love this seat! YOU BRING ME NO JOY!"

Felix is knocked head over heels but the chair that collides with him but, somehow, manages to spin with it and land on his feet.

Bran's eyes go wide as he sees the furniture coming his way...and he tenses up, expecting the hit - only to have Kid Tengu jump in the way and take the hit for him. "Thank you!"

KT grunts and nods with his tardigrade head in response to Bran's thanks. His only regret is not being fast enough to protect Felix too.

"Everyone ok?" He asks, ignoring the angry house in favor of speaking to the living..

Felix runs over towards the door and positions himself to do, well, something, if it opens.

"Hang on, KT," calls Blockbuster, "I need to unleash my inner Marie Kondo!"

Phantom calls out, "I'm good." He freezes at Blockbuster's warning. "Oh man. Things are about to get real if she's doing that."

The group of skeletons in the fountain room turn as one and start to run towards Blink. These glowing-jars-inside-chests dead guys seems faster then the ones outside or on the stairs. Still, they won;t reach Blink quite yet.

Blink ewws. She can tell he's an old dead guy. Candles in the bedroom? Who even does that kind of garbage? And it isn't helping with the smell or warming the room, either. Hasn't he ever hear do Befreeze?! She turns the key on the doors so she can then, hopefully open them. "Party's in here!" she calls back.

Blockbuster floats by the door, charging up a big, white blast that she sends towards a sofa for good measure. "Only things that bring joy! Thank you!" she exclaims.

The sofa explides as the white blast of light engulfs it. The scent of burned cloth, foam padding, and aged wood now mixes with the scent of death and decay as stuffing rains away from you all.

Bran scans beyond the door...and hsi eyes gravitate toward the south end of the room. He concentrates...sending out a lance of mental energy toward what he believes is the mind that's resident in the house.

Hits!

Bran can sense that Harrington's protections are stronger up here/down here. Just like Chalmers and NIght Hound said they might be. But, Bran also know the attack did get through.

Felix looks into the room and sees the group of glwiong chest skeletons running towards Blink. As he reaches into his backpack, takes out, and tosses a crystalline sphere with faintly glwing runes on it he also shouts "B to the Z squared three, over the Pi and carry XY, Down the cosine and over the y"

There is a flash as the sphere darts around, blinking out of existence a few tomes them appreas in the midst of the running skeletons. It explodes, ripping micro fissures in space time as it does.

The skeletons stumbls for a moment but keep running. All of them are damaged by the fissures however.

Kid Tengu stretches his arms out and grabs two legs of a broken chair to use as impromptu weapons. That still leaves him two free hands now that he's not carting Felix around.

He moves on to back up and defend the others, letting Blockbuster's methodical elimination of clutter restore joy to this haunted home. He retracts his arms most of the way but gives himself a little length for added reach.

He leaps forward, attempting to intercede between Blink and the skeletons.

He lashes out with his makeshift club and tries to shatter a skeleton

KT's makeshift club seems to be just the ticket- either that or having the normal strength of a teenaged Abraxxian his age. Whichever the case the Skeleton can hardly give its perspective as the club shatters his jaw & as it rips through his formerly stylish wedding day tuxedo his rips splinter before it falls to the ground in a tattered heap.

"Oh yeah! One Groom Down... and ... more... Grooms than I think is normal for a human wedding..." He says, sliding from celebratory to confused very easily.

All the glwing chest skeletons are dressed in either groom outfits or wedding dresses. Three of each. Well, now down to two grooms after KT's done.

Phantom senses Bran's attack seem to have no effect. "That should've been solid," he utters in shock. As the others charge forward, he thinks a moment. "He's supposed to be stronger here," he says as he looks down, while focusing on the others visual feedback of the jars. He reaches down to pick up a leg of a broken piece of furniture, runs a few steps, and chucks it at a cluster of jars. "Testing a theory!" says the jock.

Two of the jars break and the glowing hearts within stop glowing. As they do, two transulcent figures appear: one is young black man dressed in the heights of 1990's gang banger fashion, the other figure is a woman dressed in turn of the 21st century business clothing. Both of them turn their heads and raise a hand to point down the fountain room to the south.

Simultaneously, the furniture in the hall all falls to the ground as an enraged maon rattles the walls. "MINE!!!!"

From the remains of the groom skeleton KT just shatered, a translucent figure of a man dressed in an immaculate groom's outfit rises. This young Asian man also turns and points to the southern end of the room.

Bran can only try so many times before he gets tired...but he lashes out at the mind of the house again, hoping to at least distract it from what the others are doing.

The blow to Harrington's will is a strong one. You know he defintely felt that one as the house moans again in rage and pain.

"Yuck. Is this guy waiting for the perfect creepy woman or what? This isn't how you impress a girl!" Blockbuster floats quickly along her light pillar towards the southern side, following all the pointing.

The darkness in the southern end of the room defeats Blockbuster's attempts to see anything. Although she can kmake uut shallow steps leading up from the floor of the fountain room.

"NO! THIS IS MINE! ONLY I AM THE MASTER HERE!" The darkness as the southern end of the room deepens for a moment then there is a hideous screech.

A tattered looking, translucent version of the Damon Harrington floats out of the room at the end. His eyes are empty pits and his jaw hangs down in a rictus grin. Behind slowly stumps a body, his body it seems, freeze dried in appearance, a gaping tear in its neck and long dried blood coating his business suit coat from the cut throat. The athame in its right hand is coated in dried blood as well.

It seems the master of the house and his corpse are making an appearance.

"BRING THEM TO ME, MY BRIDES AND CUCKOLDS! BRING ME SO I CAN TAKE THEIR HEARTS!"

"MY APOETHEOSIS IS AT HAND!"

"Uh, no, don't think so," mutters Felix as he takes out the last of his space breaker grenades. As he tosses it in the air, he calls out, "Y to the Z power of inverse 3, over the sum of I divided by 9, equals the tangent of either side!" The slightly glowing grenade darts twaords the skeletonis, moves behind them as it shifts out of normal space time for a moment, then explodes, ripping more small fissures in Reality.

It's close, but the fissures stop just short of KT and Blink. The skeletal grooms and brides are fully engulfed in fissures. All five of them are ripped asunder. They patter to the ground in many pieces as hosts arise from each. A young white womans appareas next to the Asian groom from earlier. A young MIddle Eastern couple appear, hands linked. And last a middleaged white couple link apprears as well, the man's arm over the woman's shulder. All of them point at Harrington's spirit.

Blink isn't one to deny or forget the urgings and suggestions of friend and allies, living or dead. So... BLAMF. Probably not surprising. What might be surprising? She appears behind Stumpy McHarrington. And winds up a kick.

Blink kicks hard and true. Her blow catches Stumpy McHarrington right in the crotch from behind. Sadly, it seems like he's frozen through and through as it like kicking a frozen turkey.

It does, however, knock him off his feet. He sprawls gracelessly on the ground.