And so, Christmas was ruined...

Holidays seem to mean extra activity for paranormal investigators.

As the intrepid investigators were finishing off dinner, the doorbell rang, and Mrs. O’Flaherty opened the door, perhaps anticipating the Miskatonic University carolers. Instead she faced two cold Arkham police officers and a bewildered-looking individual wearing a winter coat over a lab coat, and galoshes over slippers. This was Dr. Emmett Brown of the Miskatonic University Physics Department, and as he tried the famous Jules Pollack eggnog, he burst out in a loud “Great Scott!” He was not visiting to try the eggnog, though, and Dr. Brown proceeded to ask the investigators of the whereabouts of Dr. Ralph Maynard. Yes, the investigators had travelled back from New Hampshire together with Dr. Maynard, but no, they had not spoken to Dr. Maynard after returning to Arkham. Dr. Brown proceeded to sit down and explain recent events to the investigators, while Mrs. O’Flaherty took the police officers to the kitchen for a late night snack.

Dr. Emmett Brown

Dr. Brown had been friendly with Dr. Maynard for a good twenty years, and according to Dr. Brown, Ralph Maynard had kept busy after returning to Arkham. Maynard had managed to secure the book that Biron was carrying out of the house before Biron fell to his death, and he soon realized that this was not Biron’s diary/notebook, but Silva Sasso’s, the wife of Biron who had been committed to the Arkham Sanitarium after the Thanksgiving horror. Sasso had indeed been quite interested in the occult, and this book dated back to January 1, 1924. Ralph Maynard read the book, and he became convinced that Sasso and Biron were looking for something, perhaps a powerful object of ritual significance, up in the mountains. The Livermore Mountains, where Moose Manor was located, were apparently hinted at in the Comte D’Erlette’s Cultes Des Goules. Maynard spent as many hours as possible between December 10 and the late evening of Friday, December 19, figuring out what Sasso and Biron actually were up to. After consulting with Dr. Brown on December 13, they together reached the conclusion that the object mentioned in the diary emits something Dr. Brown called “C-beams”. Dr. Brown had done some research on C-beams, and he had assembled a “C-beam transceiver” for lab experiments. The apparatus could see C-beams, like using a telescope, and it can also supposedly emit C-beams as well. 

Meanwhile, Maynard continued reading. He spent many hours with the Cultes des Goules as well as von Junzt’s Unaussprächligen Kulten at the Miskatonic Library. The library staff were a bit concerned, but Dr. Maynard was a respected faculty member, so there was no intervention. Dr. Brown, on the other hand, was getting quite concerned. The C-beams seemed to be dangerous radiation from another plane or dimension, and he realized that the consequences of channeling C-beams in our dimension may be unfathomable!

After the end of classes and when the winter break starts on the afternoon of Thursday, December 18, Maynard raided the Department of Archaeology and Geology for excavation equipment. He was determined to find what Sasso was looking for, and he would not be stopped! Very late that Friday night, he confronted Dr. Brown, demanding to borrow or buy the C-beam transceiver. Maynard acted quite irrationally, and Dr. Brown refused. Maynard hit Brown over the head, and disappeared with the C-beam transceiver.

Pollack and McNamara were quite happy to remain in the comfort of Pollack’s house, but Chester, Baker, Dr. Brown and Lake took a brisk walk through wintry Arkham to Dr. Maynard’s small apartment on campus. Dr. Brown secured a set of keys, and the intrepid investigators entered a Maynard’s apartment, where they found a cluttered desk, but nothing else of any particular interest, except the lack of winter clothing. The volumes on the desk were mainly reference books on New Hampshire geography and geology, and the occult. Sasso’s notebook was lying prominently on the desk, with several bookmarked pages and Maynard’s annotations. 

Moira Baker, Howard Lake and Henry Chester spent the night going over Sasso’s notebook and Maynard’s notes, while Dr. Emmett Brown dozed off in a sofa. A series of encrypted keys caused the investigators some headache, but they managed to understand the workings of these symbols that should open some form of passage to the artifact sought after by Dr. Maynard, as Sylvia Sasso had done previously. All information pointed towards Dr. Maynard heading back to Holderness and the Livermore Mountains with the C-beam transceiver and excavation equipment, and the intrepid investigators were determined to get hold of Maynard before something apocalyptic happened. Jules Pollack secured first class train travel to Holderness, while Dr. Brown volunteered his remaining C-beam transceiver. Upon arrival at Holderness, the investigators found a winter wonderland with a significant amount of vacationers ready to enjoy beautiful New Hampshire. Pollack had secured a series of rooms at flashy Asquam House Hotel, and various experiments were conducted with the C-beam transceiver and the raven-headed Horus statuette that Moira Baker had brought along. Henry Chester, Moira Baker and Howard Lake were quite ready to follow the trail of Dr. Maynard next morning.

That Monday morning provided ample sunlight, quite different from the hellish retreat back from the inferno of Moose Manor a mere month ago. The walk up to the ruins of Moose Manor did make the three investigators rather uneasy, but this time there were no disturbing events. The investigators did find ski tracks heading up Livermore Mountain, though, and they promptly pursued the tracks up the mountainside. The intrepid investigators ended at a small cave entrance with a pair of skis outside, which were promptly thrown to the side and concealed by Chester. As the investigators entered the cave, they noticed that the temperature was a bit warmer than anticipated, but nothing out of the ordinary. However, they proceeded with utmost caution, weapons at the ready, and with the C-beam transmitter ready for use. Eventually they reached an enormous cavern with a most peculiar stone formation in what seemed to be the middle of the cavern. Dr. Maynard was sprawled out in front of the stone formation, his face painfully contorted and frozen in an expression of utter terror, with froth in the corner of his mouth and eyes almost entirely bloodshot. It also seemed as if Dr. Ralph Maynard had attempted to claw into the stone, since all of his ten fingers were bloodied and worn down to the finger bones. He also gave the appearance of having fallen and crawled on several occasions, besides being quite dead.

The C-beam transceiver did unveil a considerable amount of symbols that were quite similar to the ones that were the supposed six keys in the diary of Sylvia Sasso. Baker, Chester and Lake debated for some time before deciding to trace the matching symbols. Moira Baker found the symbols strangely disconcerting to trace, like sliding an index finger through lard, but without any residue on the finger. As the sixth key or symbol was traced, the investigators gazed into an enormous pillared room. The ceiling seemed impossibly high up, and the pillars exuded unearthly qualities in their girth and composition. Two objects were lying on the perfectly polished floor some 40 or so meters into the seemingly unending room. The investigators decided to defile the corpse of Dr. Maynard, but nothing happened. Yet, the investigators were unwilling to enter the oddly cavernous room beyond the portal, but someone or SOMETHING pushed a most reluctant Henry Chester beyond the portal. He was all of a sudden in a room that was significantly colder and dryer that the natural cave he came from. There was a significant of what seemed to be ozone in the air, and both his sight and hearing seemed to be playing tricks on Henry Chester. Lake followed Chester, while Moira remained in the natural cavern. Was this a doorway to a different dimension, a different place, or a different time? There was no way of knowing. Henry Chester nevertheless carefully entered the two objects, and one was a .38 revolver with empty chambers. The other one was a statuette the size of the raven-headed Horus, but in a decidedly Native American style that definitely showed off an intense amount of C-beams when viewed through Dr. Brown’s transceiver.

As Chester grabbed the statuette, he became acutely aware of a singularly putrid stench like nothing he had experienced before. A swooshing sound echoed between the enormous pillars, and both Lake and Baker saw a dreadful entity race towards Chester. It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon Chester and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. Chester had his back to the creature, and although Chester ran for his life, the creature almost caught up with the desperate investigator, who by now was a gibbering mess barely holding on to his very sanity. He was nevertheless dragged back into the safety of the natural cavern, and the episode ended as Moira Baker re-traced the symbols to close that dreadful and unnatural portal to nightmares beyond space and time.

Howard Lake, Moira Baker and the wreck that used to be Henry Chester did make it back on the evening train to Arkham, sad spectacles of their former self-assertiveness, but they had the statuette, still glowing with C-beams through the lenses of Dr. Emmett Brown’s transceiver. Meanwhile, Dr. Brown had spent some time looking over Jules Pollack's Model T Ford...