Strange and Hollow
The guests jumped into action, and began plowing through doors upstairs in the bedroom section of the house, but found almost nothing but slips of papers with Elva and Dr. Willikars names and mysterious numbers on them. They found what they believed to be Dr. Brewer’s bedroom, but no Dr. Brewer. Finally, they found the living room, where a nurse was lying in a pool of blood, with a pair of scissors protruding from her left eye. Doctor Brewer ascertained that she had been severely beaten before stabbed, and Agent Griffon determined that the struggled hadn’t lasted long, but had been terribly violent judging by the status of the room.
This heightened the sense of urgency, and the four of them continued searching the house for signs of the doctor. They asked Blanche to help them in their search, and she did her best, but it became clear to them that she was in shock, and couldn’t recall facts with any amount of accuracy. They led her to her room and sat her down to rest. She did, however, give them a good idea of who was in the asylum on the main level.
“The Colonel and the young man,” a woman named Carla that Blanche obviously disliked, and herself. She knew the young woman from the library, her name was Darlene. And then, of course, Leonard, whom they’d met earlier, and someone she described as “The Poet.” All three of them stayed in the basement, she seemed to recall. The four of them were able to account for the young man, who was asleep in his room, the Colonel, who was obviously in need of a change of pants in his wheelchair, and Carla. Carla was shouting wildly about bats outside her window, and how she was afraid they might want in to take up residence in her room. It was her room, she’d had it for years now. They were able to calm her enough to quiet her.
While searching the rest of the main level, Elva came across a maid propped up against the industrial washing machine inside the laundry room. She was alive and seemed fine, until Elva got closer and realized that the lower half of the girl’s body had been withered away into splitting leathered husks. This pushed Elva over the edge and she began babbling out of control, which brought Dr. Willikars Mickey and Helga to the room. Attempting to help the maid on the ground, the young woman became conscious and began screaming about “It!” She went into cardiac arrest, but there was nothing Willikars could do but watch as the woman died in his arms. He then turned his attention to Elva, calming her and assuring her that everything was okay. Even though he was sure it was not.
When agent Griffon examined the room, she noted that it had burned out markings on the wall and floor. The laundry room’s backdoor was burst wide into the outside grounds, and the stairs leading into the basement also showed the same markings, but couldn’t ascertain any more information than that.
At this point, the group became pretty rattled. Splitting into two groups the Doctor and Helga headed to the dock to find out if Ebenezer could get them off the island.
Meanwhile, Elva and Mickey searched the upper level of the sanatorium. There, in Dr. Brewer’s study, they found the doctor drawn, quartered, and disemboweled on the floor ritualistically. They also found some information regarding the special patients mentioned in the article, and mentioned a book called “The Castro Manuscript.” Evidently Dr. Brewer had been able to draw out multiple personalities of some of his patients that seemed to be interconnected in some way.
Down at the dock, Helga and Dr. Willikars find the ferry-boat that they had ridden to the island set adrift in the ocean, a few miles off the island, smoke billowing from its frame. Investigating the dockworker shack near the moor, they found Ebenezer, head crushed face-first into his bedpost, dead. Being exceedingly observant, Helga found a small necklace with a carving on it, and felt strange about it, so she took it with her.
After Helga and Dr. Willikars and returned to the asylum from the dock. The group began trying to account for all the patients. They found Carla shrieking about sounds under the floorboards. That there was a pounding downstairs. Mickey went to investigate, as the coal burners were directly below her room, but as far as he was able to tell they were in tip top condition.
The Colonel was sound asleep in his chair, gathering bedsores. Henry was found wandering about the house in a party dress calling himself Henrietta, and trying without any success at all to flirt with big Mickey O’Malley.
In the basement, the cells had a man whose hands were clawed to pieces, and had a large symbol drawn in blood on the wall of his room and determined his name was Allen. They also found the girl, named Darlene in a separate cell, still reading her book like nothing had been happening. When she was spoken to, she exhibited a very different personality than before, and seemed to slip between them. Mickey found a large bale of wire, and not only locked, but wired these rooms closed.
The group found Leonard running around the house at top speed raving about the dirty loose women inside the house. After convincing him that all the women were gone from the house, they were able to pull him into his cell in the basement.
Carla again began complaining , but this time about a man outside, and when asked if it was when Leonard she felt insulted and refused to cooperate, but said ,”If it were Leonard, wouldn’t I have said it was Leonard?”
Blanche, chattering about how Elva reminded her of her daughter, offered to make dinner for the “starving” Carla and the rest of the patients, and the group agreed that was best. She and Elva began preparations while Mickey patrolled the grounds, and Dr. Willikars and Helga poured through records in the Brewer’s study.