Under the Library – A Call of Cthulhu Podcast
Last time we left Harold, Florence, and Quentin in the Morensen house and Quentin had just knocked Gerald Morensen out with the butt of his rifle. Florence and Quentin argue as Harold rolls a 99 while examining Gerald's head and becomes distracted talking to Millie.
Florence and Harold drag Gerald away and then leave quietly while Quentin breaks open the locked door, entering the kitchen. He searches the kitchen and bedroom, finding a scrap of paper covered with strange shapes/forms - no recognizable language. However, the symbols are very different from those found in Florence's book. Quentin takes a break from searching to shove the strange box from the gopher corpse down Gerald's throat. Returning to his search, Quentin realizes that the notes Gerald took about our lomava research are in the same strange symbol script. He then searches the kitchen and bedroom for a hidden door, suspecting that Gerald has more experiments hidden somewhere. He finds a hollow sound in the bedroom floor, near the foot of a bed that had clearly been moved. He also notices an electricity line running to the basement. At the same time, Florence feels guilty leaving Gerald unconscious and returns to check on him. Harold is still outside bickering with Millie, but eventually agrees to come back inside and help Florence, even though the house clearly unnerves him. Quentin throws an arm over Harold's shoulder and Millie shrieks! Back in town, Beau has returned from the mines (leaving Philip to travel slowly with his injured horse), and he runs into Jaker. Beau and Jaker decide to visit the miners' families' camp, but first stop by Lolita's Quick Draw to buy some ammo. Approaching, they hear a jaunty violin tune followed by a resounding screech. It was the store owner, Jane "squeaks" Dunn, a gruff, blunt old woman with a gravelly voice. When Beau inquires about Jack Crabb, a man who roughed him up in CO, Jane immediately whips out a pair of guns and offers to kill him. She then asks about any special rocks Beau found in CO, and he describes the vein of pure gold that led to his altercation with Crabb. He carries a nugget of the gold with him, and sometimes it glows. Jane says "your rock's filled with the spirit, and when it glows you should pay attention." Since the gold came from a site of great violence (and Indian massacre), Beau deduces that it glows to indicate tragedy/violence. Jaker suggests putting it on a chain to better see when it glows. (Maybe Florence can use Rose's old tools?) As Beau and Jaker leave, the violin squeaks at the same spot in the phrase. Finally, they head northeast to find the encampment. There is no path, no footprints, no wagon wheels... no sign of any regular passage. They do a wide sweep around the area to look for other tracks or any sign of the families, but they see nothing.