~ two

~ when the player's ready for the mortuarium ~

Learner - With a sense for what's beyond the door, the iron too cold to the touch.  "What did you do ?"

Mayor - "It cannot be described.  There was an 'error'.  In our ceremonies.  It swallows this world from beneath this ... 'mortuarium' even now as we speak, locked within its walls. 

"And the Beast ... it's warned us it would use you somehow to escape this place once it has.  Into your world."

Killer - "Then we should just leave you to your fate.  Sounds like you've earned it."

Mayor - "Damn you to Hell and here you are, right.  But someone else will come in your stead. you know it.  And what I know is that you came to kill."  With despise, "And you will find what you seek here in droves."

Killer - "They do say a soldier's only welcome in times of war."

Mayor - "They say it right.  We were a peaceful people, building paradise."

Killer - "So much arrogance in such failure, and now ... here we are.  You paying me."

Mayor - "Indeed.  I'll not go in there, the door bars behind you I wait here for your banging screams to escape it."

~ unlocks, unbars, and pulls the heavy door open scrapping hard ~

Killer - "The door had better open back up again or I'm the next mayor of this town."

Mayor - "And sheriff no doubt."

Killer - "Judge."

Learner - "Jury !"

Mayor - "And executioner ..." a laugh to the crow pecking in the street.  "Well alright then.  Well met.  Perhaps there is hope for us after all."  

The door slams behind the player, the lock bangs through.

 ~ so what the hell's a mortuarium !? ~

 

A 'Mortuarium' was a place where bodies were dissected in a viewing theater, encircled like an arena in raised seating about the slab.  Along the hall to and surrounding the core were smaller rooms displaying samples and dissections for taken notes.

A museum of death provided well for by plagues and grave robbers, particularly when they had no idea how plagues worked.  The discovery times, these akin to a 'Museum of Natural History', or 'Bestiary'.

 

Artists would come to render for rare pay.  Some dug graves to survive the dark times, some simply killed.  While poor artists as well found their ways to make ends meet, or died to be here nonetheless.

 

Autopsies and samples on the wall, a 'Mortuarium' was equal parts gallery and school in times where bodies were aplenty and 'anatomy' was regarded nearly like horror pornography, when not precisely that.

 

They continued into the early twentieth century quite well alongside the classical Asylums, even now giving up their occasional touring displays, the bodies been signed away to 'science'.

But most skeletons in the classroom today come from India.

Ghosts of funeraries fade among the open caskets in the circular entryway.  The tears of mourners and their eulogies, good people spoken of dubiously, the dubious spoken of well, been taken by the beasts of the woods surrounding.

In passing they become angrier, seeking to lash the beast out, building to screams of rage at some dragon before silenced and gone.  But for the Mortician staring in his tall hat and jeweler's monocle, cane seeming forged from the cast of a brain stem to the spinal chord.

He examines them a moment, tips his hat and turns passing through the door where Hell's vine works grows most thick.

Learner - "I swear to God this is why I picked Demonology.  Everyone was like 'you should be a ghost hunter !'  And I was like 'fuck that'.  Just a bunch of cold ass breezes banging pots and pans.

"But Demonology ?  Those be the real haunts.  Right ?  Lesson learned.  I'm going the way where it's not Hell.  We're gonna need a map from the service booth."

Killer - "Why do we need a map ?  The path is clear.  Look."

Learner - "I like maps !  And also the secrets ... like you care.  I'll catch up when everything's dead.  Or you could just join me ... but we both know that's not happening because you're a gun wielding lunatic looking for a corpse."

Killer - "Lunatic now.  'Moon madness' ?  So Pych 101 wasn't on the learner's list then."

Learner - "Lost track when they went DSM ... did you know like every contributor has a position with a pharmaceutical company ?  Literally every single one of them."

Killer - "I did know that."

Learner - Smiles turning away for the booth, "I bet you did ... you comin' or killin' ?"

 

('The Earth Died Screaming by Tom Waits)

 

 

If the Killer tries the middle door, it's found locked.

Learner - From inside the booth, "Ha !  Here ya go."  A loud buzzer and click announces the unlocked door.  "If you die I'm going home."  Attention turns to babble about finds and drawers and where the hell's the goddamn map while the Killer enters.

Learner - "I've got to lock it behind you or the whole town is completely fucked and so am I."

Killer - Opens it slowly examining, "You've got your priorities backwards.  I think we can see clearly we're saving these people a fate they deserve.  This is a pure mercenary gig and get used to it.  Ready." 

The door locks behind.

Hell's biosphere has had time to grow here, voraciously clogging the hall.  In the rooms to the side, etchers etching and sketchers sketching undistracted around dissection corpses posed suspended from trellises with their skin peeled back as elegant cloth, positioned in scenes of drama and enlightenment.

And we're still talking about history.

Posed here according to their actual etchings.  

 

Such was the origin of 'Gray's Anatomy' and everything we think we know about the body in the west.  Grave robbers, strangely compelled artists, carnivals and underground mortuariums.

 

On the shelves lining the rooms are electrical experiments performed to animate disfigured animal limbs in the late 1800's and early nines, deeper into the rooms human.  These experiments were regularly performed in carnivals and were the known inspiration for 'Frankenstein'.

Limbs still twitching in generator sparks and dimming lights responding.

 

In the booth connecting the office just prior these, the most notable addition is a series of kinoscope monitors (round screens, 1926 prototype) keeping watch on the classrooms and an intercom.  

 

And Ooo ... a map.

Which shows the other entry to the artists rooms encircling the operating theater and an incinerator in the basement with sewer access apparently for the runoff.

 

In the office past the booth are pages concerning phrenology which overlay the island map, dividing the regions and predicting the beasts invading.  While the diagrams of actual brain functions seem to match the uninfected biosphere.

 

Books to be collected are anatomical, an herbology chapter on poisons, a page from John French with three differing recipes for the philosopher's stone, and drawing the essential oils from blood and bone.

Monocle atop the desk, service pistol in the drawer, his walking stick in the corner under the hat and overcoat on the hook, all can and be taken clothes and worn.

 

The Learner will show up later wearing them anyway if the player split ways, truly finds all secrets within a certain range of the player, scurrying about preferring ducts to doorways.  

 

Following can be useful for ways around places. left alone the finds appear automatically on the map.  The Killer's gear can't however fit most ducts.

Having found the janitor keys together and seeing each other ignored by the fast sketching artists, or on the intercom crackling in as the Killer enters the central door alone ~

Learner - Draws pistol if seen ... "I'm running ahead to lock the doors around the theater to trap them in.  The weird monitors just show me a bunch of fucking art students.  I'll scream bloody murder if I'm getting bloody murdered but I think I'll be okay."  

 

A deep breath and exhale before comm out or exit.

The central hall accessible from these side doors getting locked along the way, the occasional 'click' to show where the Learner is.  Overgrown with Hell's strange vine-work, the first chance to examine it closely.

Lining the walls itself harmlessly, expanding by force of growth alone through any way blocking while gliding over the frames without care, archways of vinework still growing before the eyes.  

 

Barely beast like responsive to the player's presence.

 

The occasional flicker of dated lights marks the passage of ghosts passing through carrying a body, a third with a shovel walking to the Killer's face staring as if to warn, 'Mind your own.'.  

 

Nothing done causes notice here, the Killer frozen.

The mortician pays the gravediggers a bag of coin and throws the body over his shoulders, nods to the Killer with a smile and turns through the door at the end of the hall.  The gravediggers glare walking by through the entryway door.

 

A knock on the door to the left ~

Learner - From the other side, "Knock knock."  

Killer - Watches the last gravedigger looking over his shoulder with a grin before passing through the front door.  "Who's there." 

Learner - "Harmonde Walthers.  The mortician.  He's dead and when they told me they were 'bringing life to this world', that's not what I imagined."

Killer - "It's exactly what I imagined."

...

Learner - "Really ?"

Killer - Loads, "Yeah.  Keep going.  This place isn't that big and the operating theater should be right up right through these doors ahead, the classrooms wrapping around.  How's that map ?"

Learner - "You're ... right !  And how do you know that do tell ?"

Killer - "They have these in the army."

Learner - "Explain."

Killer - "Never.  But something about it feels right like home."

...

Learner - "Knock knock." 

...

Killer - "Who's there."

Learner - "I want you to live."  

The door clicks locked as the Learner shuffles off on the other side, play resumes.