Cthulhu Supremus Est

Saturday June 12, 1926

May 15, 2010 22:59

Headline

Alistair Sinclair exits the elevator at the Hotel Belleclaire to find Ray Brannigan, Jonas Markham, and Ivy Morgan waiting in the lobby. Conspicuously absent is detective Connor O’Shea. The others, figuring that O’Shea is passed out in an alley somewhere, decide to sit down to breakfast.

Reading the morning Times, Alistair stumbles across a story concerning a Gashouse District fire that he, Jonas, and Ivy are intimately familiar with. It seems that no bodies were found at the scene, and that the police are working with Agent Daniels and his g-men under the assumption that the factory housed an illegal bootlegging operation. At least, that is what the investigators hope…

After nearly forty-five minutes of waiting, the investigators assume that O’Shea is not joining them. With both David Clark and Horace Baker dead, the group agrees that it is important to make contact with Andre Vollinchanski , Baker’s subordinate and Clark’s partner on the Red Hook renovation project. Ivy phones the Hamilton Construction Company’s home office in Jersey City, and finds out that Vollinchanski works out of a temporary office located in Red Hook. The foreman is Jerry Wells.

Remembering that Connor was supposed to meet with detective Donowitz about Thomas Malone, the lone survivor of the Red Hook Disaster of 1923, Ivy calls the Baker Street precinct. Dropping O’Shea’s name proves useful, and detective Donowitz agrees to meet with Ivy.

Alistair, perhaps leery of traveling through Red Hook in Jonas’ Packard, decides that he should purchase a truck. Ivy and Jonas, perhaps leery of traveling through Red Hook without a street howitzer, decide that they should purchase a shotgun. The group splits up for the remainder of the morning to do some shopping. When they return to the hotel at 12:30pm, they make their way to Baker Street precinct in Brooklyn in Alistair’s new Ford Model TT.

Detective Donowitz doesn’t know much about Thomas Malone. While he was his partner, Malone was part of a special task-force when the disaster occurred. He knows that Malone is on paid medical leave, but doesn’t know where he is. Ivy asks if she can meet with someone in the payroll department, and Donowitz calls down to let them know she’s coming. Dropping Connor O’Shea’s name and being rather fetching again proves useful for Ivy, and the payroll department gives her Malone’s current address in Amityville, Long Island.

With two potential leads to follow, but appropriately cautious of going back to Red Hook in the dark, the investigators decide to look for Andre Vollinchanski at the Hamilton Construction Company. The trip to Red Hook is easier by the light of day. The inhabitants of the neighborhood still seem suspicious, but are not blatantly aggressive. The group finds the temporary office at the corner of Bay Street and Steadmont Street. Ivy and Ray knock on the door, and a man answers, identifying himself as Jerry Wells.

Jerry Wells is a busy man and has very little time for questions. He is in charge of the renovation project, and is responsible for surveying the waterfront neighborhood to determine if buildings need to be demolished or if they can be salvaged. He’s just been informed by the police that Horace Baker is dead, and he knows about David Clark’s murder, but can add nothing more than what he read in the papers. He tells Ivy that Andre Vollinchanski did not show up for work. After searching his back office for a few moments, he is able to provide Vollinchanski’s Gashouse District address. When told that his life may be in danger, Wells tells Ivy and Ray that he has a responsibility to his employer and cannot worry about it.

Mindful of the potential danger Vollinchanski may be in, the investigators forgo the trip to Long Island and make their way to Gregorvich’s Manor in the Gashouse District. Alistair keeps watch outside, while the rest of the group enters the apartment complex. A rotund, dirty, smarmy man sits in an office behind sliding glass doors. When he sees Ivy enter, he introduces himself as Mikhail Gregorvich and turns on the charm (or smarm, rather). Ivy asks about Vollinchanski and Gregorvich comments that she is not the first person that has come to visit Andre. Using $20.00 to jog Gregorvich’s memory, the investigators find out that some bums came by to see Andre last night. They bribed Gregorvich and he told them that Andre lived in apartment 3E.

Ray, Jonas, and Ivy head up to the third floor while Alistair keeps watch in front. As they come to apartment 3E, they notice that the door is ajar and a twisted piece of metal that used to be the doorknob lies on the floor. Entering cautiously, Jonas looks in to the living room. There, on the floor, lie the disemboweled corpses of two young girls. Close by is a young woman, also dead. Tied to a chair is a corpse that looks as if it had aged a hundred years, a look of terror frozen on its face. Dried and coagulated pools of blood stain the entire room. The gore is too much for Jonas to bear and he begins to hallucinate. Whimpering and staring wildly, Jonas stumbles out of the apartment. Ivy tries to corral him while Ray enters Vollinchanski’s home. Unfortunately, the shocking scene proves too much for Ray Brannigan as well, and he suddenly becomes claustrophobic. As Ray flees the apartment, Jonas, thinking that the headless body of Leroy Turner is chasing him, stuns Ivy with a slap to the face, and makes his way to the stairwell. Not knowing who to follow, Ivy decides to run after Ray, and shoots past Jonas on the stairs. Ray finally makes his way out of the apartment complex, and starts to throw up as Alistair watches him, confused. Fearing the worst, Alistair grabs the shotgun from the truck and enters Gregorvich’s Manor with Ray.

Mikhail Gregorvich sees Alistair enter the building with a shotgun and immediately falls to the floor behind his desk. Alistair knocks Gregorvich out with the butt of the shotgun while Ray and Ivy look on aghast. Heading back up to the third floor, the group finds Jonas, who has only recently come to and is wondering what happened. They reenter Vollinchanski’s apartment cautiously – Ivy and Alistair being particularly careful not to view the carnage in the living room. Ray and Jonas find the courage to search the room and find a bloody clipboard on the floor. Fearing that Gregorvich will wake up shortly and call the police, Alistair runs down stairs and pulls his truck in to the alley while the others finish their search. Jonas wipes down everything that the investigators touched in the apartment, and then he, Ivy, and Ray head down the fire escape to meet Alistair.

Driving out of the Gashouse District, the investigators examine the bloody clipboard. They find a letter to Vollinchanski, written by Horace Baker, which outlines the buildings that Andre and David Clark were supposed to survey. Suddenly realizing that Jerry Wells is the only member of the renovation team that is still alive, the investigators hurry back to his Red Hook office.

Upon arrival, Ivy notices that the door is ajar, and a twisted piece of metal that was once the doorknob lies on the ground. Heavily armed, the group quietly enters the office and hears muffled voices. Ray shouts for Jerry Wells and the office goes silent. Jonas moves forward and finds three bums in a room at the back; armed with knives and an ax, they stand ready to attack.

Ivy runs around the building to cover the back exit, only to find that there isn’t one. Alistair moves to the doorway and shoots, severely injuring one of the bums. The bum moves forward and slices into Alistair’s shoulder with his knife . Ray blindly fires into the room, killing the bum who cut Alistair. Jonas shoots in to the room, but fails to hit his mark. Another knife-wielding bum comes forward and drives his knife in to Alistair’s side; the stab fails to hit a major organ, but Alistair begins to bleed out. Falling backwards, Alistair discharges his shotgun at point-blank range, and kills both the knife-wielding and axe-wielding bums.

Ivy comes back in to the office as Ray administers first aid on Alistair. Assessing the wound, Professor Sinclair determines that while serious, the wound is not life-threatening and the bleeding can be controlled with bandages. Using their shirts, Ray and Jonas cut off strips of fabric and dress Alistair’s wounds. Searching the office, Ivy and Jonas find a map of the waterfront neighborhood and determine that the bums were looking for information on Haight Street. Consulting the map, they decide to visit the Stone Church on Farnham Street.

The three-block drive is uneventful. In fact, none of the local inhabitants can be found (perhaps the sound of gunfire has driven them indoors?). Alistair stands watch while Ray, Ivy, and Jonas enter the church. There are no signs of squatters as they enter, and Ivy notices that the basement of the church seems to have been filled in with concrete. Venturing forward, the investigators cautiously move to the back of the church. Entering the apse of the church, they find a crudely dug hole in a closet – a ladder leading down into darkness. Ray scurries down the ladder and finds himself standing in an excavated chamber. Ivy, holding a candle she found in the church, enters the chamber and finds an odd-assortment of foul-smelling clothes and a makeshift book on a rickety table which reads, Holy Bible. Examining the room further, she finds a rotting corpse in a Catholic priest’s robes. Above its head, carved in the stone, is the phrase, Behold the power of a True God. The investigators also see that thousands of small holes mark the chamber. Ivy wraps the book in her jacket, and the group climbs up the ladder and leaves the church.

Not wanting to waste the remaining daylight, yet conscious of Alistair’s wounds, the investigators decide to drive the two blocks to search the Tullio Warehouse. They enter the warehouse unmolested and find a dirty, rat-ridden, abandoned space. Old pallets, oil drums, and boxes lie rotting in pools of water fed by a leaky roof. In the center of the room, Ray finds a hammer. Picking it up, Ivy recognizes the name David Clark written on a piece of white tape. Close by, they find an oil drum with a fire burning in it. There are strange characters scratched in to the drum, as well as the phrase, Iä! I Invoke the Glorious Flame. Next to the drum, Ray finds a burlap bag filled with gray ash; interspersed amongst the ash are pieces of glass and what appears to be bone. Taking the bag with them, the investigators leave the warehouse.

After discussing their options, everyone agrees that they should investigate the Simms Pharmacy and then take Alistair back to the hotel. As they drive up to the pharmacy, it is clear that the front door is barred, so they pull the truck in to the alley. Alistair stays in the truck, while Ivy, Ray, and Jonas enter the pharmacy through the back door. Slivers of daylight come through the boarded up windows in the back room. Moving into the front of the building, Ivy notices the shapes of five men huddled under newspapers and rubbish. Jonas notices that the men appear to be drug addicts. One of the men mutters, “This must be them…let’s get this over with,” and they stand up, drawing butcher knives, switchblades, and broken bottles.

Not wanting a repeat of the events at the Hamilton Construction Company, Jonas blows a hole in one of the junkies, killing him instantly. Ray follows suit, unloading his .38 in another. The remaining junkies, suffering from withdrawals and freaked out from watching their friends blown away like lint, make a break for the back door. Jonas blows off a junkie’s leg while he tries to flee, and he bleeds out profusely and dies. The other two junkies exit the building – one comes in contact with the sun and begins vomiting. The other junkie’s knees buckle and he stumbles out towards the street. Alistair throws open the rear doors of the truck and fires his shotgun. Ray grabs the vomiting junkie and Jonas grabs the other. Ivy comes out from inside and begins to question the junkies. The vomiting junkie says that they were offered drugs to attack the investigators. The other junkie bites through his tongue, spewing a stream of crimson from his mouth. Jonas throws the junkie to the ground and blows his head off. Ray shoots and kills the other.

The investigators fear that returning to the Hotel Belleclaire covered in blood is not the best idea, so they drive Alistair’s truck back to Ivy’s Morningside Heights home, where the investigators are able to clean up, and Jonas is able to disinfect and stitch up Alistair’s wounds.

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Comments

On May 16, 2010 at 02:48 PM GeekMasterFlash said:

All for the bonum commune hominis, I say. But, buggers, that knife sure hurt, what?

It reminds me of a time in France during that dark fall of 1914, at the Marne. Jonas, did I tell you this one? No? Well, let me start by painting a picture…

On May 17, 2010 at 02:35 PM FrankSirmarco said:

Somewhere from beyond the grave, the dead bum wishes he would have slashed Alistair across the mouth rather than stab him in the side…

On May 17, 2010 at 06:05 PM GeekMasterFlash said:

From somewhere across the room, Jonas wishes the bum would have slashed Alistair across the mouth…

On May 17, 2010 at 06:07 PM FrankSirmarco said:

That’s true, too…

On June 09, 2010 at 05:38 PM MichaelSchroeder said:

... Sitting with his revolvers in front of him, a leather-bound cleaning kit laid out before him, Rayford sips some aged Irish Whiskey, and contemplates the recent events. Mother’s neighbor … killed or somesuch – Never saw any murder like that, no! That slime… the bums… The fires… The violence he was drawn to recently keeps flashing in his mind’s eye. As he tries to focus, the quick flashes of his revolver as he fired.. Fired openly on a crowd!! That crowd fired at him first. They would’ve killed them all if given the chance or a bit worse driving on the part of that bumpkin Jonas. Those bums certainly had to know, with the size of the shotgun in that Sinclair fellow’s hands. But they kept coming! What would drive a man. Ah, the gore. He drains the dregs of his whiskey glass and pours another. To take his mind off what it wishes to follow, he closes all thought and begins disassembling his revolvers to care for them.

On June 15, 2010 at 07:51 PM clareparkinson said:

Ivy watches Ray cleaning his gun on her kitchen table, lights another cigarette, and wonders if she has enough booze in the house.

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