From The Unspeakable Oath 22, now available for purchase in print and PDF.
Written by Ben Riggs,© 2013. Illustrated by Matt Hansen, © 2013.
One morning an Investigator leaves his home and sees, instead of a vacant lot across the street, a house with peaked windows and a cupola. Figures are seen moving behind drifting curtains. A middle-aged man in a suit out of fashion for at least 25 years leaves the house and greets the Investigator by name. The man’s name is Thomas Smedley, and he knows everything a neighbor would know about the Investigator including his occupation and marital status.
Research and a Library Use roll discovers that an identical house burned to the ground on the spot the house now occupies in a suspected act of arson 25 years before. All four members of the Smedley family died in the fire. No one was ever brought to trial for the crime
The Smedley House by Matt Hansen
Option 1: The Time Warp
The Smedleys are the victims of a time slip. They have been transported from the day before the arson that would have killed them. Strangely, the time slip endowed them with knowledge of their new neighbors, but they are puzzled by what modern conveniences have emerged since their disappearance (such as iPods, airplanes, or electricity depending on time period). Confused by modernity, they turn to the Investigators for comfort. Unfortunately, the Smedleys’ presence in our timeline has begun a chain of paradoxes that will lead to the collapse of our dimension.
Over the next 36 hours, blood begins falls from the sky. Children appear in an Investigator’s home claiming to be his or hers. The children eat only raw meat and sleep hanging from the ceiling like bats, though they have no physical adaptation or deformation to allow this. An Investigator’s deceased loved one comes to visit in the form of a moldering corpse telling hellish tales of the afterlife. Time-slipped soldiers from the Cruel Empire of Tsan- Chan arrive and pillage the town.
A successful Physics roll reveals that to save reality the original aberrant elements must be removed. The characters must kill the Smedleys to save the world. Murdering the family costs 1D10/1D12 SAN but stops the timeline collapse, rewarding the characters with 1D8 SAN.
Option 2: Ghost Story
Houses, like people, have souls. The soul of the Smedley house slept soundly until the Investigators’ recent paranormal researches awoke it. Smedley, his family and the house are all ghosts. Upon learning that his children were the product of an affair, Mr. Smedley killed his wife and children with a hammer and scissors. To cover the crime, he set his house on fire and allowed the conflagration to take his life. Since reappearing in this dimension, the house and the ghosts inside have been re-enacting the vicious murders. Investigators occasionally hear blood-curdling screams emanating from the house and see the flicker of an uncontrolled fire through the windows. Every morning Smedley leaves to “go to the office” and returns at 5 o’clock “ just in time for supper.” Investigators who enter the house and witness Smedley murdering his family suffer 1D4/1D10 SAN loss. Escaping and exposing the truth about the murders dispels the haunting, but Mr. Smedley uses all the powers at his disposal to ensure the Investigators do not leave the house alive.
Option 3: The Belly of the Beast
The house is a shape-shifting alien predator. The Smedleys fell prey to the beast some 25 years before, resulting in the conflagration which destroyed the house. It has returned, and taken the form of Smedley and his house to lure new prey. Understanding that humans are very clever monkeys, it uses reverse psychology to attempt to get the Investigators to enter it. Strange chanting emanates from the house at night, punctuated by a scream. Wan figures stare at the Investigators from the windows, though Smedley claims to live alone. A trail of bloody footprints is discovered leading to the back door. Unexplainable fairy lights buzz the house’s high cupola; if photographed, their pictures reveal they contain the Investigators’ faces. The neighborhood begins to stink like a Third World butcher. The stench leads to Smedley’s garbage: a blood-stained tarp and a rotting hunk of unidentifiable meat.
When confronted with any of this strangeness, Smedley’s explanation is that his cat died, he sings in the shower, he’s an amateur butcher, and he walked through red paint on the way home from work.
Whoever enters the house becomes trapped. White sheets of flesh flop down over all exits. Hacking through it results in a view of the house lumbering through a fantastic landscape populated with extra-cosmic monstrosities and costs 1D4/1D6 SAN. A pale yellow digestive fluid (1D3 damage/round) is released which slowly begins to flood the house from the basement up. The fluid only dissolves flesh, so the bones and clothes of the Smedleys can be found inside the house. Kind Keepers may allow the Investigators to find Smedley’s diary under an antiquated suit filled with bones in the attic, in which Smedley reveals that it takes about a day for the house to flood, and describes the location of the predator’s nervous system. Irritate it enough, and perhaps the beast will vomit them up. But where?
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