Cassandra

A psychic research institute is currently investigating a local phenomenon. After a near death experience, Cassandra Wilson, an art student who talks in her sleep, seems to be able to predict the future. However, none of her predictions are remotely happy, and most have to do with people she knows dying. Needless to say, this knowledge is not pleasant, and has resulted in Cassandra seeking psychiatric help. Her psychiatrist, Alexander Marcus, is a firm believer in her psychic abilities, which doesn’t really help her all that much.

Lately, Cassandra has predicted several events of disaster proportions, and she doesn’t know what to do or how to alter the future.

Possibilities

1 Cassandra is not psychic. She is merely a young woman who tends to have nightmares and talk in her sleep. However, Dr. Marcus is profoundly disturbed himself, and the strength of his beliefs in the paranormal will not allow him to consider the possibility that Cassandra is normal. Therefore, he has been making her “predictions” come true.

Investigation will show that every single event that Cassandra has successfully predicted can be accomplished by one person, and that only the predictions that Dr. Marcus have heard come true. He is currently planning a way to make the first of her disaster predictions come true. He will not look favourably on anyone who tries to prevent it or anyone who seems like that might be trying to prove that Cassandra isn’t the real deal. He is also extremely violent when angry.

2 Cassandra is a precognitive. She was always a latent psychic, but almost being killed made her abilities active. If she ever comes to terms with this, her predictions would prove most helpful. It is possible to alter the futures she sees, but it will be difficult and complicated.

3 Cassandra is the subject of a Yithian’s experiment. The Yithian found a way to fragment a human’s consciousness across the time stream. It transposed parts of Cassandra’s consciousness from the future and the present. The nightmares that she has are the memories of her future-self surfacing in her sleep.

As time goes on, it will be noticed that in addition to her visions of the future, she has periods when she can’t remember anything that happened recently. If left alone, the Yithian will eventually become bored with the experiment and abandon it. Cassandra’s precognitive abilities will then start to fade as time catches up to her.

© Megan McKnight

Small Things Forgotten

Following the death of his two children about 30 years ago, and his wife to pneumonia about five years ago, Hiram Dretts has lead a quiet, solitary existence deep in the hills, working his farm. He is well known and liked by the folk of the nearby town, and is known for a sharp mind.

Hiram’s farm does not have the modern conveniences of electricity or gas, but does have a coal burning furnace. While stoking the furnace one evening, a lump of coal broke apart to reveal an object: a worked triangular piece of green stone. The two long sides measured approximately two inches long, and the piece was about a quarter of an inch thick. The base of the triangle was unfinished and appeared to have broken off from a larger piece. Strange marks were along the two finished edges, giving the impression of some kind of writing or symbols.

Hiram has never had a formal education beyond the third grade, but he knew that what he found was very old. Hiram placed it on his mantle with the intention of sending it to a museum next time he was in town.

Possibilities

1 The fragment is a piece of an elder sign used by serpent people in the late Carboniferous period. The whole elder sign had been originally used to seal a gate but has been destroyed and fragmented for over 275 million years. The gate is no longer active, but if the serpent people learn of the fragment, they may make attempts to recover it and discover if more fragments exist.

2 The fragment belonged to a powerful serpent people sorcerer priest called Tthast-smmun. The fragment contains part of Tthast-smmun’s essence, and as the days progress, the sorcerer begins to take possession of Hiram. Hiram begins experiencing dreams of the long past times of the serpent people’s glory, and his sanity begins to crumble. Over a few weeks, Hirem starts worshipping Yig.

Through rituals taught via dream, Hiram begins a physical transformation into a serpent people-hybrid. Tthast-smmun plans to inhabit Hiram’s body as soon as he is completed. Hiram will be no more.

3 The fragment originally comes from an elder Sign used by the Great Race of Yith to trap and contain a flying polyp. The seals holding the polyp have been destroyed over time, but the polyp has long since been trapped in a pocket in the rock. It is only a matter of time before miners discover more of the fragments, then the pocket itself . . .

© Bill Dietze

The Automaton

A friend of the investigators, Stuart Blatherly, is intrigued by an automaton chess player. The automaton, displayed by a Professor Wurtzel, is based on Kemplen’s 1769 device, and Blatherly is determined to discover how it works. However, despite several trials Blatherly can’t figure it out. Things take a turn for the worse when Blatherly is murdered. His body is so badly mangled that it is almost impossible to identify.

Possibilities

1 Blatherly was murdered by the automaton’s operator. Hidden inside the automaton’s base is a man, who runs the machine. This chess player is poor and desperate. He thinks that Blatherly is about to expose the automaton’s workings. If that happens, then the operator is out of a job. Professor Wurtzel doesn’t know that his chess player is a murderer, but he suspects.

2 Blatherly was murdered by Professor Wurtzel. Wurtzel is a no-talent stage magician who discovered that Mythos magic works very well. Wurtzel has found a way to bind the wraiths of dead men into objects, like the automaton, and make them do his bidding. The chess player was his first success, but he has other automata that he wants to display. Blatherly has been sacrificed to make one of Wurtzel’s machines work. Soon, Wurtzel hopes, he will have a whole range of performing machines.

3 Blatherly isn’t dead. Blatherly is a near-insane Mythos hunter, who wants a book that the investigators have. Blatherly intends to distract the investigators by getting them to investigate the red-herring chess player. The corpse is that of the automaton’s operator, and Blatherly now works the machine. Professor Wurtzel is kept under control by spells. When Blatherly thinks the investigators are off-guard, he will strike.

© Adam Gauntlett

The Wall of Bones

Unique in England, the carefully-stacked wall of bones, almost 7ft high by 5ft wide, divides the cavernous crypt into two aisles, stretching into the gloom. To either side, shelves full of human skulls cram the walls from floor to vaulted roof. Records of the crypt can be traced back for centuries, but there is some confusion over the origin of its contents. Some say that the bones came from the numerous battlefields around the area, others are of the opinion that the bones were exhumed from a plague-pit.

The guardian of the crypt is an elderly monk; he is slightly hunched and slow in his mannerisms, his face hidden by a heavy cowled robe. He rarely speaks but instead nods and points to items of interest. The public who pay to see the bones think it`s all part of the act. Indeed, his eccentricity adds to the popularity of the crypt as a gruesome tourist attraction. There is an elaborately carved chair near the bones - for a small fee people are allowed to sit in the chair and pose for their holiday photos.

Possibilities

1 An eroded, easily missed sigil carved on the keystone of the arched entrance may be recognised as a representation of Anubis, Egyptian protector of the dead. In the shadows at the back of the crypt there is a door bearing the same sigil. It leads into one of the oldest ghoul colonies in England, established beneath a barrow built when the Phoenicians first reached England's South coast. The guardian is a changeling, appointed to watch over the gateway. The wall of bones has been slowly growing over the years and all cemeteries within a day's march have been robbed of bodies. Tourists are a minor disadvantage of such a palatial entrance-hall.

2 During a group tour of the crypt, the guardian shows unusual interest in one of the visitors, although he still hides his face and does not speak. He eventually backs off, and they leave no wiser. Over the next few days, the visitor becomes the focus of poltergeist activity - subtle at first, but with increasing intensity. During this time the guardian may be seen in the vicinity - but disappears if anyone approaches him.

The bones were recovered from a mass grave for Medieval plague victims. In the 17th century the bones were moved from the plague-pit to the crypt. However, the souls of the dead, angry at their inhuman treatment after death, have manifested as the guardian to point out their fate to the living. The guardian's interest arises because the visitor was wearing an item of jewellery, a family heirloom that the guardian recognises.

3 The bones are from a Medieval plague pit. However, the 18th century chair is something far more sinister. A few people who take the seat are later dogged by nightmares and hallucinations. They believe that they have the plague, and are covered with open sores and boils that drive them to distraction. Eventually, the hallucinations draw them back to the crypt where they disappear.

The guardian is a soul-eater, draining the souls of people who sit in his chair. He projects images of the plague drawn from the bones to drag his victims back to the crypt. He must strap his victims into the chair overnight to feed properly, which he does once each lunar month. Those who succumb are never found - the soul-eater sucks them dry and places their bones with the rest.

Inspired by the crypt of St. Leonard's Church, Hythe, Kent

© Helen Rich