Pre-game Session 00 - Carter Sloane

October 10^th, 1934

A pile of bills and creditor memos

The envelope lay, unopened, atop a pile of bills and creditor memos, for the better part of a fortnight. It was on my to-do-list to open, but these days my to-do-list is pretty hectic. You know, eat, sleep, breathe.

Betty couldn’t take it any longer and opened it for me; it was her last day in for the week and she knew she’d find the envelope in the same place come Monday or lost in the jumble. It wasn’t another bill, it was a job opportunity.

The letter was from a, Janet Winston-Rogers, appealing for my professional help in a case she was only willing to discuss further in person. She had gotten my name from Sherman Billingsley, which was totally probable, considering that man’s contacts. Mrs Winston-Rogers was obviously very wealthy, having a 5^th Avenue address, and offering a substantial amount of money for a retainer. It had been a while since a potential client had offered me anything, let alone a retainer. Betty was over the moon, “We need this”, she said. I knew she was right.

Luckily, the meeting was scheduled for three-weeks time, at the Floyd Bennett airfield of all places. This came across as a little odd, but I’ve known rich folk to suggest weirder things. Betty was already getting together something for me to wear from my cupboard in the office. She reckoned they’d need dry-cleaning though.

I was still a little hesitant – this all seemed too good to be true. There were a million big name firms out there, with good reputations and packs of investigators. Why me? I had the time to check up on a few things before the meeting, I just had to tie up a few loose ends on the Dixon case. I wouldn’t bother Billingsley with questions, the man had done enough already, and he was so busy these days, but I needed some information on my potential employer; her name hadn’t rung any immediate bells.

Let’s just say it was going to be a very interesting meeting…

October 23^rd, 1934

Nearly two-weeks passed before I laid the Dixon case to rest. In the end I found Meridith Dixon’s husband, or what was left of him, bound and gagged in a shallow grave behind Cox’s Junkyard in Flushing, two neat .38 holes in his back. I’d bet a Jackson it was those Ferriola brothers, but I had nothing concrete. I handed over everything to Dunn, but I felt I could have - should have, done more.

My thoughts finally turned to the appointment with Mrs Winston-Rogers and I started, as always, down at the civil registry. The skirt was born in 1907, making her the ripe old age of 27; had married in 1928, a Horatio Rogers. Her father’s name was Walter Winston. Not much to go on, but I slipped my usual guy a fiver to keep him happy.

NYC Public Library

My time at the Public Library was a little more productive and I whiled away the afternoon pouring over old newspapers. Turned out Walter Winston, was, the, Walter Winston, of Winston Pharmaceuticals, a company that had made its wealth during the war. Walter seemed the decent sort and spent some of the money on hospitals, especially after 1924. He wasn’t much of a public figure, but did show his face for charity events and such, until around 1926, after which he slowly faded from the public eye, eventually disappearing from print altogether by 1930. The old man had died in July of this year, making Janet the sole heiress to the Winston fortune, her mother having already passed away in 32. Mrs Winston-Rogers was rich, filthy rich.

But it got better. Apparently, Janet was already rich, having inherited the fortunes of her late husband, Horatio Rogers, who'd been killed in an automobile accident in February 1933. Rogers was Old Money turned Industrialist, with his fingers in many pies all over the world. Rogers Consolidated, her husband's company, owned now by Mrs Winston-Rogers, was in the process of absorbing Winston Pharmaceuticals. 

970 Fifth Avenue

I was beginning to think Mrs Winston-Rogers might give the Black Widow a run for her money, what with two deaths within as many years, coincidentally resulting in the amassing of a vast fortune. To make matters worse, from her pictures in the papers, lets just say Janet was easy on the eyes too.

A few days later, Dunn, set my mind at ease, confirming that both deaths seemed legitimate enough and neither bore any evidence of foul play. Rogers had been killed by a truck, while Wilson died of a heart attack. Still, Dunn told me to watch my back.

Like I needed any further convincing, that evening I drove along 5^th Avenue stopping by the address in the letter. Number 970 was as large and opulent a building as ever I had seen, and Mrs Winston-Rogers owned at least an entire floor of it. I hadn’t learnt much about my prospective employer, but I did know one thing. Mrs Winston-Rogers was rich, filthy rich.

Session 01 - Carter Sloane

October 31^st, 1934

I arrived at Floyd Bennett Airfield just before 9, surprised when my name alone got me waved through the security gates. I was directed to hangar number 15, a huge nondescript building, one of many within the compound. When I pulled up in front of the large closed door I could see a dim light coming from within, but I was early, so lit up a cigarette and waited.

FLOYD BENNETT AIRFIELD

Shortly I was rewarded when head lights appeared on the road leading in. I put out my smoke and straightened myself up, but I needn’t had bothered. It was only a cab and I knew Janet Winston-Rogers didn’t slum it.

Out of the cab stepped a priest, marked clearly by his white clerical collar. As the taxi cab left, the priest walked over and introduced himself as Father Marcus Black. I shook his hand and introduced myself, admitting that I was a little confused. I checked the hangar number again. Yup, number 15. The Father said he was here to see Mrs Winston-Rogers too.

Suddenly the large hangar door slid noisily open and light spilled

THE HANGAR

onto the ground before us both. The sight puzzled me. The light was coming from green shaded lamps, distributed around a small area, which I could only describe as a plush library, ripped right out of some rich folk’s parlor, and dumped here in this huge hangar space. There was a small single propped aircraft in the background of the scene as well, with a mechanic working on it. I paid none of it much more attention since my eyes had caught sight of Mrs Winston-Rogers. She moved towards us in a long elegant dress that cost God knows how much, but was worth every Nickel. Her photos in the papers didn’t do her justice. She was a dish.

She welcomed us both in and shook our hands, invited us to take a seat and offered us drinks from a well-stocked bar. I accepted a whiskey and took a moment to look over the shelves of books that surrounded me. There were some poetry books, stuff on folklore and the occult, but most of it was road maps, atlases and such.

The Father and me sat, and Winston-Rogers talked. She talked a lot, said a lot, mostly about her old man, Walter Winston. She told us how he had travelled the world studying folklore, which had led him to develop an interest in the occult. “When my father wasn’t traveling, he was having meetings — secret meetings — with people he wasn’t in business with” she told us. “Other dabblers in the occult, I think. My mother didn’t like them. That was when she started drinking.”

She said her father was bent on battling something, but Walter wouldn’t tell them exactly what it was. In ‘24 he spent most of the year away from home, where, nobody knew, but he said he was on the trail of some “bad people”, as he called them.

She went on, “Something happened in August of 1924. Something that sent him back to us rattled and unravelling. He didn’t have any more secret meetings after that. He stopped traveling. But he wasn’t well. He saw a psychiatrist for a few years. He burned his books. He hardly ate. He jumped at shadows, insisted he was being watched. He was… never the same. He forbade us from asking about his travels and said more than once that ‘nothing mattered anymore.’ When mother died, in ‘32, he hardly grieved. After that, he became only more paranoid and frustrated, until he finally passed away, earlier this year, as a shadow of himself.”

She was saying things that made me feel uneasy, things I wasn’t sure I quite understood. The Father seemed to know just what she was hinting at. He was here because of what the old man was into; the occult, the supernatural. A lot of humbo jumbo, if you asked me, or so I told myself. I wanted her to cut to the chase, tell us what she wanted, but she had a story to tell, a story she had held on to for a long time.

She had found a stack of letters from a man called Douglas Henslowe, who had apparently worked for Walter Winston up until ’24. She thought Henslowe must have been one of the people her father met with at the house, time and again. He wrote a few times, always asking Walter to write down what had happened, what he had seen, but the old man never did, never answered the letters. He kept them though, and it looked to me like he studied them carefully and had scribbled on a couple, having circled some words and letters, and listed a set of random numbers.

She finally came out with it, the reason she had summoned both me and the priest. “I want to know what my father was mixed up in” she said, “and whether I should be apologising for him or defending him. Whether he left work unfinished. Whether I’m in any danger. I think this Henslowe must know what happened to my father in 1924.”

Mrs Winston-Rogers was offering us money, good money, along with a retainer up front, even access to a bank account and the use of her plane. Frank Kearns, the pilot was there for us to employ; he’d take us anywhere we needed to be. She mentioned my boy Carl, and how she would see him through University. University. That meant a lot to me.

Of course, we both agreed to take on the job and to see it through to the end, and although I was over the moon about what she promised, of how this job would change my life, I think I would have done it either way. Just like the dozen other cases I’ve taken on for nought but a kick in the button and a splitting migraine.

THE SILVER SABER

Marcus, the priest, wanted a minute to speak with Mrs Winston-Rogers, alone, and something told me I didn’t really want to hear what he had to say to her. Frank thankfully offered to show me the plane. Not the one I’d seen when we had first entered but a sleek and silver Douglas DC-2, some twin prop prototype called the Silver Saber, which was parked in the darkness of the hangar. He showed me on board and it was fantastic. I’d never been on a plane before.

We left the airfield, Marcus in the seat beside me. It appeared that we were to be an unlikely pair of partners in all this. I pushed him about his role in the case and he started talking about things that “normal people” didn’t know about, things that were out there in the dark, things that he did know something about. I let him talk, but tried to ignore what he was saying. I had heard enough strange things that night.

We ended up at Joe’s and he let us use one of the back rooms, so we could get some privacy. I needed a drink and to my surprise so did Marcus. We both poured through Douglas Henslowe’s letters to old man Winston. There was a stack of them. He had written to him intermittently for the ten years that had separated the incident in ’24 up until Winston’s death earlier this year. To me they were the thoughts of a man slowly consumed by insanity, shot through with brief moments of clarity. They hinted at the “event” that had occurred in 1924, like it was some distant dream, and of the deaths of people, maybe their mutual friends. Henslowe had begged Winston to confirm the details of the event, but the old man had not replied. In a torn up letter, Henslowe mentioned that he had written his account of the events in a book, that he had secreted away somewhere. We tried to decipher the scribblings on two of the missives, but even Marcus couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it and we decided to call it a night. I offered Marcus the couch in my office and he accepted, but was less than impressed. 

November 1^st, 1934

Marcus left early to attend to some matters and I took the opportunity to get some shut eye on the couch, as I had spent the night in my chair. When I eventually got up and out, I used my usual sources to check what I could find on Douglas Henslowe. He had no public record and definitely wasn’t a celebrity like Winston – a bit of a dead end. We had two addresses to follow up on in Savannah, Georgia, from where Douglas had sent the letters. The first address was 23 Old Hope Road. Douglas had sent only two letters from this address, one of which when he had written about secreting a book of the events as he remembered them. The address pointed to a private estate about 13 miles southeast of Savannah. The second address, 513 West Henry Street, where Douglas had sent the majority of his letters from, was not a house at all, but an asylum, the Joy Grove Sanatorium.

Marcus was waiting for me when I returned to the office. He had a duffle bag with him and had been copying Douglas’ letters out. He told me he had spoken to his mentor, some Father Gregory, who believed that a man Marcus knew, a Cormac Kullman, had been present with Winston and Henslowe in ’24. That stood out as a pretty strange coincident to me.

We both agreed that our first move had to be Savannah, and so we phoned Frank Kearns and arranged for the plane to be ready. I got my stuff together and rang Betty and Dunn, to let them both know what was happening. Betty would continue to take care of things at the office, while I was away and I promised to check in with Dunn now and again.

We left New York that afternoon and Kearns let me sit in the cockpit for both the take-off and landing. That plane was amazing, but I’m not actually sure whether I liked flying. We landed in Savannah, Georgia, well after dark. Stepping onto the tarmac, the warmth and humidity surprised me. I’d never been this far south of anywhere.

THE HOTEL ROOM

We took a cab to a modest hotel in the centre of town. Everything was big here and a little rundown. Savannah was a waning city, it seemed, that was losing her industry. Well everything except the cotton trade. The hotel was opulent and spacious, sparsely dressed, with heavy furnishings. I’d never slept in a place like that my whole life, but I was dead tired.

November 2^nd, 1934

I flipped through some local books on the area over breakfast, to see if the Henslowe name appeared anywhere. It didn’t. I was waiting for Marcus as he had headed out early to visit a local church. When he returned he had information about Douglas’ mother, Virginia Henslowe, who was in her 80’s and still alive, living at the Old Hope Road address.

SAVANNAH, GEORGIA

We opted to hire a car because the weather made walking too far, unpleasant, and headed for the asylum. It was warm out and men were getting around without jackets, so I chose to leave my piece in the glove box. The city looked even more decrepit in the daylight and the whole place seemed shrouded in that God forsaken hanging moss. We drove the short distance to Joy Grove Sanatorium, which squatted up on a hill, in the Victorian District.

Joy Grove Sanatorium was a hulking red-brick Victorian building with tall, narrow windows and Gothic features. It could have been anything really and didn’t shout asylum to me. Kudzu vines crawled over half the building, choking out windows and holding the place like a green fist, pulling it down into the earth. Before we went in we discussed how’d we tackle this and we decided to pose as agents of the Henslowe estate.

DOWNTOWN SAVANNAH

At the front desk we were greeted by a pretty nurse named Bethany Hampton. We asked about Douglas Henslowe and she was forthcoming enough. A bookish man quickly interrupted by sticking his head out from a room in back and introduced himself as Dr Keaton.

We told the doctor why we were here and that we wanted to speak with Douglas Henslowe. He agreed easily enough and said he’d arrange us to talk to him. He revealed that Douglas Henslowe had been a patient at Joy Grove since 1924, in one capacity or another. We asked to see Henslowe's records too, but Keaton said we'd need his mother's written authorization.

Dr Keaton was quick to reveal to us that Edgar Job, another survivor of “the incident with Henslowe in 1924” was also a patient at Joy Grove. “He was one of the ‘criminals’ that Henslowe and his people were after — part of the cult that was attacked that night. Mr Job suffers the exact same symptoms as Mr Henslowe, down to the elaborate stories. Edgar had been moved here so that I could treat both patients.” We asked if we could talk to this Edgar Job too, and Dr Keaton agreed, “But only for a little while,” he said. “I don’t want Mr. Job getting too excited.”

JOY GROVE INMATE

He offered to show us around the sanatorium while the interviews were arranged, and whilst Marcus agreed, I politely declined and excused myself to retrieve something from our car. As Marcus and the doctor departed, I could hear Keaton pointing out interesting features of the building. He appeared quite enthusiastic.

When they were out of sight I returned to the desk, a newspaper from the car tucked under my arm. Nurse Bethany was filing her nails and looking bored. I commented how pretty she looked and offered her a cigarette. “Dr Keaton said I should wait back there for him”, I said, motioning to the filing room that the doctor had come from. Bethany replied fairly calmly “Did he?” and she asked what it was worth to me. I handed her a ten dollar bill. She took it, smiled, and motioned to the room. “Help yourself”.

It didn’t take long for me to find Henslowe’s records. Everything was fairly well organized. I grabbed the stack of documents and placed them within my folded newspaper. At random I grabbed a wad of other documents and replaced them in Henslowe’s empty folder. I left the room, smiled at Bethany and went straight out to the car, where I quickly scanned the records. There was some interesting information about Henslowe's medication, primarily, the fact that his pills had been doubled in dosage since he was admitted in 1924. Another puzzling piece was a receipt for large payments made to Joy Grove by Virginia Henslowe, not for her son Douglas, but for Edgar Job. I put the records into the boot of the car to show Marcus.

I was waiting, smoking by the entrance, and it took some time for an orderly to fetch me. He said the doctor was ready to show us to Henslowe and I followed him through the administrative wing. It was clear that the building was under-maintained and had suffered some severe water-damage.  

I caught up to Marcus and Dr Keaton making their way to the interview room as well. When I looked at Marcus he seemed pale and a little shaken. “Are you OK Father?” I asked him quietly and he just turned to me and nodded slightly.

DOUGLAS HENSLOWE

The interview exam room was a simple, cold space with three chairs, a table, and a barred window looking out into the hallway. It smelled like chlorine in there, probably piss. We saw Douglas Henslowe from behind, a large man sitting in a chair. The doctor introduced us to Henslowe, and then took to standing at the rear of the room, within earshot of our interview.

Douglas was happy to talk about what happened in ’24, relieved almost. “We were travelling the country, hot on the trail of the cult that started all of this. We questioned people, gathered evidence, took pictures, travelled all over. We were like detectives, armed with our secret knowledge in the occult. It was an exciting time.”

He spoke with a bit of a Southern accent and used long, drawn-out sentences. “We’d followed the drugs all the way across the country until we got to Los Angeles. That’s where the bulk of our investigation took place. That’s where everything terrible happened.” He paused for a moment and picked at his cuticles.

He went on detailing the members of the group. “There was Walter Winston of course, he was our leader. It was he who gathered us together to battle the perversity in the world that this cult represented. He funded us, too. Good man. A good man.”

“Vince Stack was a tough fellow. Walter called him a “fixer.” Good with a gun, good with his hands, always down to business, always ready with a drink. He’s the one who waded right in there, that night, and brought hell to some of those cultists with his shotgun.”

“Katherine Clark, such a sharp girl. She was our archivist, camerawoman, and record keeper. She hated that something like that cult could operate in secret, that people would cover up something so vile instead of revealing it for what it was, I think. Yet she’s the one who got close enough to it all to get us photographs. And she’s the one who caught wind of what was happening that night in ‘24. She died that night.”

“And, of course, F.C. Kullman was Walter’s expert in the occult. Apparently he was known far and wide for his expertise, back in the day. Walter had to pay him quite a bit to come with us out to Los Angeles, as I recall. A bit of a stick in the mud, that fellow, but bright as can be. Stuck in a wheelchair, too, but a can-do attitude.”

“Walter was the brains of our little band. He and F.C. did the research into what that cult was planning — into the summoning — and determined that they were using drug monies to fund their operation. It was they who figured out that the cult was already in contact with that dreadful thing, the Thing With a Thousand Mouths, and were planning to summon it, or an incarnation of it, to that barn outside Los Angeles.”

He continued then, telling us the events of the night of ’24 and we could see it caused him some anguish. “We rushed out to the barn as soon as we got word that so many of the cultists were meeting up out there. Walter said that the stars were right that night, too. Whatever that means. So we rushed out there with guns and homemade firebombs to put a stop to it. To save the world.”

“And a lot of people died that night.” He paused, picking at his cuticles again. “It was a horrific fire. And there was a shootout. When that Thing began tearing people apart, people were running and screaming and throwing themselves into the fire and into our line of fire. I know I shot some people that night. Probably killed them. I…”

“Then the Thing came for us and I saw Walter panic — I’d never seen him panic — and then all I know is that I was bolting through the high grasses with the fire behind me. Like a coward. Like a damned coward.” We tried to console him, tell him he had done the right thing, but he wasn’t really listening to us.

“It was the cult’s fault. They were depraved. They were fornicating in the name of their wicked god, in groups. They did drugs I’ve never even heard of and hurt each other for sport. They were monsters.”

“I hid my notebook away with a secret key to understanding more of what was going on back then. And what is almost certainly still going on, since we failed. You want to know where it is? Ask Frank Hickering, back at my estate.”

He asked for a pen and tore a page from the Father’s notebook. “Take this note and give it to the groundskeeper at the house on Old Hope road. He’ll let you look around.”

We asked Henslowe why he thought they had failed that night to stop what ever had been going on. He said he knew they had for sure. He had seen the “mouths” here in the hospital, the Thing was here, and it was coming for him. To my shock and surprise, Marcus agreed that he had seen it too. A mouth in the wall!? I looked at Marcus and could see it in his face that he believed the words he was saying. I didn’t like what Douglas was telling us, not one bit. I could believe he was insane, but now that Marcus was agreeing with him, Hell was I insane?

Henslowe was looking pretty agitated by now and when the doctor began to approach him, he quickly got to his feet and turned to leave. He turned abruptly and said “I remember putting material in a safe deposit box in Los Angeles. I think it was the First Bank of Venice Beach. No, wait. Long Beach. First Bank of Long Beach. It was in my name. By that point, Winston had already left town. And the others…”

Mr Keaton cut him off and the orderlies escorted Henslowe out of the room. “I don’t know exactly what happened to Douglas out in Los Angeles,” he told us, “but whatever it was, it involved gunplay, murder and a fire, and it was too much for him to internalize. He’s concocted this elaborate story that externalizes his fear into some kind of terrible monster.” He told us that he would bring in Mr Job straight away.

We only had a moment before Edgar Job was led into the room. I lent over to Marcus, forgot what I really wanted to say and told him I had taken the files. I asked him again if he was OK. Maybe I needed someone to ask me the same.

EDGAR JOB

Edgar Job was a pathetic figure; skinny, with stubble all over his face and scalp. He reminded me of prisoners of war I had seen in France, but dressed in the white-scrubs uniform of a Joy Grove Sanatorium patient. His mouth stunk of mouthwash and he smoked throughout the entire interview.

We introduced ourselves and asked him about what happened in ’24 and he responded “Dr. Keaton doesn’t want me to relive those days or, uh, to, uh… externalize my fears. He don’t like me talking about monsters unless they’re me.” We reassured him and Keaton told him to go on. He told us he was just a mathematician, a good one, real smart. One of his professors at UCLA, a George Ayers, introduced him to a man called Echavarria.

“That Echavarria, if that was his real name, had a hell of a library. Creepy books. He gave us ideas for things to do, sex things and things to say, out of those books. He threw damn crazy parties. Sex. Drugs. I was basically high from 1923 through August of ‘24. So my memory is not good. I remember, you know, a lot of sex. And the drugs Echavarria got us. Potent stuff.” I didn’t like the way Edgar talked. He irked me and I felt an urge to punch him in the button.

“He promised us all. Promised me power. He said that: ‘power.’ Said we’d all get whatever we wanted in the new time, when Gol-Goroth was here. We called him the Fisher From Outside for some reason. This isn’t what I wanted. Echavarria put spells on us. Or on me, anyway. The night of the summoning. This spell, I guess it was kind of a big deal. He put it on me the night of the summoning, right before the Fisher, or, or, the Thing, showed up. I don’t know what it was supposed to do, but I survived, so… maybe that’s something.”

He kept looking over his shoulder at the doc, like at any moment they were gonna grab him and lock him up. He lowered his voice and leant in closer. Job told us how things went wrong, how these people arrived and started shooting everyone. “This one guy, with a shotgun, just blew Echavarria away. Shot him right down. I stabbed that guy with Echavarria’s knife, this big ugly knife, a few times. To get away. I was so sure he was going to kill me, too, and I had to get away from there. I know it was wrong. I see his face every night. I can’t undo it, so it’s best if I just move on. That’s what Dr. Keaton says.”

Then he told us about when the Thing arrived and it got even worse. “It had long, weird limbs and no head, but mouths, lots of mouths. I couldn’t really make it out, and I didn’t really try. I know I was screaming. Just screaming. And then I stabbed that guy, Vincent Stack, and ran the hell out of there into the fields. Whatever that thing was that we summoned… it wasn’t what we were promised. It wasn’t what he said it would be. And that thing is still out there.”

Marcus asked him about the Thing being here. Told him that it was here. I told him “we’d” seen it too, I’m not exactly sure why, I hoped it’d distress Edgar. He said he knew, and that’s why he put the symbols on the walls. He smiled and said “We both do that, Henslowe and me. I know he watches us, the thing we summoned. But maybe he can’t see us if we put up those marks. Echavarria used to have them in his library, showed them to me. That’s how I learned that it’s sometimes called ‘the Thing With a Thousand Mouths,’ too. These old things, they have a lot of names.”

My mind was reeling and I felt like I wanted to throw up. Thankfully Keaton interjected, saying that Edgar had had enough and told the orderlies to remove him from the room. We both sat there for a while a little dumbfounded. What the Hell was happening?