Stories from The Between RPG
By Alex White
- 30 minutes read - 6219 wordsThe Between 30th June 2024
Players
Jen P - Vanessa Lythe, The Vessel, whom the dark entity ‘the Rowan Man’ has his eyes on. Jen M - Valentine Demaris, The Undeniable, whose memory dates back to Roman times and dresses as male or female to suit their needs Sally - “Six-Gun” Tom Larrabe, The American, who is struggling to keep the curse down.
Day
They read in the local rag about the Creature of Cremorn Gardens, and wondered whether or not it was a hoax.
Valentine dressed in his finest avant-garde clothes and attended a gentleman’s club, where he met the young man who had fought off the creature. They noticed fish-oil stains on his sleeves.
“Six-Gun” went to see his old employer, Thomas Simpson (while avoiding the daughter who had fired him when he lost important keys in a gambling game of Faro). He heard about an argument between the American painter James Whistler and an old dock hand. Tracking down the painter, the argument had arisen because the docker had wanted a painting of some incredible creature he had allegedly seen, and the painter wasn’t going to work for free, even if he did have some large scales which he said had come from the creature.
Vanessa (the Vessel) had made up a little picnic packet and gone to the gardens herself. She knew that often when small children died they hadn’t realised that they had passed away, and she set out her picnic rug with lovely sweets, and after a ritual successfully attracted a bevy of small ghost children who chatted with her, and who had seen something come out of the water and had made a little ghostly drawing of it.
Back together at Hargrove House, Vanessa does another ritual using the jacket Valentine brought back, and in another timeline the spirits would have been so annoyed that they would be screaming in her ears day and night. But in this world, she is able to find a supernatural affinity to the fish oils.
Looking at their clues, they decide that it must be a supernatural threat. But they roll really badly, and it is wrong! Not so fast. They all use a mask of the past, and in this reality it is true, but there is a consequence: Inspector Pettigrew turns up at their door and threatens them with police brutality if they turn up at Cremorne Gardens again, because he just doesn’t like the Hargrove House hunters. Valentine isn’t impressed by this AT ALL, and they storm up to the inspector, and tells the man in no uncertain terms that there is going to be a complaint to their VERY GOOD FRIEND the chief inspector, and that is going to ruin any chances for Pettigrew’s career. Pettigrew is cowed and withdraws his threats over their activities. Somewhere, where Valentine’s music is being performed, the horns slip into a minor key, and a part that was supposed to be victorious has become a little plaintive.
Dusk
Music Room
We think about the music room, where a few years ago a hunter had wrestled with an unclean spirit. Looking around, we can see the smearing of the wallpaper, the large harp which had been damaged by fire, and the crystal chandelier which still resonated with the sounds made by the harp in the battle, filling the room with an almost inaudible tinkling sound.
Six-Gun is wrestling with the curse this evening, and appears drained and sweaty with the effort.
They realise that they now need to answer the question of how to deal with the creature, and they must gather more clues…
Unscene
“The Baker’s Son” playing at the Grand Guignol theatre. As we see the stage we can see the fire of the bakers oven, the floured face of the young man who is the son, and the wealthy patrons.
Night
Vanessa plans to wander the night, reaching out with her mind to the threat as she has done before.
Valentine is going to dress as a high class lady of the evening and visit an old contact of theirs called Brisbon who is interested in the occult - at this time of evening he will be in an opium den.
Six-Gun is going to visit a dockside bar to speak to Abel Knox, the harbour worker.
Unscene Act 1 - the baker’s son Daniel rushes out of the shop to offer something to an older woman, but when she turns it is the beautiful Dahlia, and he is smitten. However, Dahlia’s father shoos off this lower class boy, and warns him against coming round.
As Vanessa opens her mind up, she hears the plaintive song of the creature, and she follows it through the gardens, listening closely as it draws clearer and clearer. She finds out through these words that the creature lives deep under the water and it is afraid of fire. But she finds herself at the edge of the harbour, and drawn towards the water… She realises that the water creature wants her to jump in, not to kill her but to mate with her in some horrible subterranean ceremony; her nature attracting more dark creatures towards her. With a wrench, she resists them and decides to run for home.
Valentine worries that she is going to be accosted by someone as she walks the night streets to the opium parlour, but the portly man who might have given her some trouble looks up and down at her composure (boosted by destroying the inspector) and decides that Valentine is out of his league, and she proceeds onwards.
Six-Gun finds the bar and is worried that he will be reviled as an obvious outsider, but he was welcomed by the clientele. However, he gets carried away in carousing and becomes very drunk.
Unscene Act 2 - Daniel has baked some marvellous petit fours and brought them round to the tradesman’s entrance where Dahlia lives. But the servants revile him as lower than them push him around and toss his pastries on the floor, crushing them.
Vanessa is running for home and tries to get past a group of young men but trips. They grab her and grope her, we draw a veil over their actions but hear their horrible laughter, and we later see her continuing home, distressed and having lost her outer coat and one shoe. It is reminiscent of the servants pushing around and harassing Daniel from the theatre scene.
Valentine reaches the opium parlour and the woman who runs it gives her a nod and she goes in to find her contact. Brisbon is quite deep into his opium pipe, and the smell reminds Valentine of a long-forgotten pleasure. In another world Valentine would have succumbed to the lure and become an opium addict again, but as we remember another aspect of her past she resists the lure - and Brisbon tells her about a book of sailors hymns which contains a tale of fish men who sought fishwives.
Six-Gun has a long conversation with Abel, who claims that he has seen the monster, and seen piles of empty women’s clothing. He is sure that the monster is after women for some reason.
Unscene Act 3 - Daniel returns to the wealthy home with a giant breadknife and blinded by rage at his humiliation proceeds to slaughter everyone in the house; servants and masters alike. The stage runs red with blood.
Desperate to reach the safety of Hargrove House, Vanessa in her hurry had forgotten to plan her route carefully, had forgotten how much grandmother birch wanted to punish her. And now she found herself amidst the small stand of birch trees! Luckily the presence of Mr Rowan was strong in her heart, and grandmother birch was held back by fear of the consequences should she harm the Rowan’s beloved.
Valentine is just about to leave the opium den when there is a terrible commotion as a rival triad gang invades the den, hacking and slashing with their machetes in a reflection of the slaughter in the play. She knows that if she is not careful she is going to be stabbed right through the back, bringing to an end her perfect life, so she pushes someone else towards the attackers, and breaks the hidden dagger in her jewelled hairbrush to open a secret door quickly and slip out in the nick of time.
The drunken six-gun is staggering towards the dock, listening to the siren song of the creature, and in serious danger of being drawn in and drowning - he rallies a bit and staggers back from the edge, and is then coshed unconscious by someone from the bar and his cards spray out of his pockets like the petit fours scattered across the ground. When he comes to there is a lump on the back of his head and his treasured trick decks of cards are missing, stolen.
Finally they meet together at Dawn, discussing their clues and problems.
The Between 4th August 2024
Players
Jen P - Vanessa Lythe, The Vessel, whom the dark entity ‘the Rowan Man’ has his eyes on. Jen M - Valentine Demaris, The Undeniable, whose memory dates back to Roman times and dresses as male or female to suit their needs Camilla - Lady Pandora, The Explorer who stands for Queen and Country against the Mastermind
Dawn
Requisite bookkeeping was done.
Day
Reading the Daily Telegraph at breakfast, they hear of the death of a young woman in Whitechapel, Clara Yarborough, whose face has been removed. Two other people have died in a similar mysterious manner in the last few weeks. People are already talking about the legend of Sally No-Face, who is said to steal the faces of other people. Lady Pandora raises an eyebrow, as she knew Clara very well. The underground women’s fight club which she belongs to is in Whitechapel, and Clara used to let her use her room to clean up after a fight.
It’s Sunday, so Vanessa goes to mass. Some think of it as an unusual vice, but the calming rituals and lovely music quieten the distress she had been carrying. Afterwards she decides to follow a hunch by going to a home for outcast women, and after purchasing some marbles and jacks from a toy shop, sets up in the alley nearby. She wants to talk to dead children to see if they remember any babies born who died straight away because they couldn’t breathe air properly. She is worried that the ghost children will become alarmed and there will be some localised damage, but they are entranced by the toys she brought along, and can remember one such baby. The ghost children wonder if Vanessa is their mummy. She then performs a ritual using her special tarot cards to enable the children to pass on from this realm safely, and each gives her a kiss on the cheek as they discorporate.
Valentine goes to the british library, to do some research into fisherman’s tales and fisherman’s songs. She finds not only confirmation of the stories from Brisbon, including stories about green woollen dresses made as bridal gowns for fishwives, but a ‘mastermind’ clue too… the shop that produces those green dresses is owned by Theodora Braithwaite. The very mastermind that Lady Pandora is often talking about. They feel extremely proud at their ability to cross-reference and chase down those details, because frankly, reason isn’t normally their strong suit.
Lady Pandora goes to Whitechapel and finds the tenement where Clara had lived. You can tell that money was invested in it at one time, because of the grand entrance, the once-rich but now stained carpet, and a statue in the courtyard (albeit with it’s face eroded off).
The beggars outside plead for money, and gives them a few pennies. One of them, Old Boot, says that he needs a few more pennies to feed the rest of his kids, and she agrees to give some more in exchange for information. he remembers seeing a middle-class couple around here, and provides their names. He also passes over to her a receipt for several bolts of high quality cloth that he had found on Clara’s body. It has an amount and a shop address on it.
At around this time we can see through the eyes of the Boy what it was like when Lady Pandora came to his village with her retinue. All pomp and circumstance, speaking a strange language and with huge confidence. Everyone thought that it must be something special, and that there would be a lasting change for them.
Lady Pandora then went to look in Clara’s room, and setting her little music box to play it’s tune while she searched around calmed her mind and allowed her to find another clue - a little gold-edged invitation to an event which included both medical and artistic aspects. Noting the address, she tucked that into her pocket.
Everyone gathered back at Hargrove house, and starting thinking about the clues they had discovered. They knew that the Creature of Cremorne Gardens was something supernatural, and they needed to think about what it wanted, and how they could lure it out and deal with it.
While preparing, they used some masks. The mask of Revelry from the Creature threat brought three things to mind. Valentine remembered the last day that they truly had fun was when they gave a young man a jolly good flogging, and he had enjoyed the shame of it as much as Valentine had enjoyed delivering it. Vanessa remembered attending a fete with a maypole, and sitting down and picnicking with real flesh and blood children who had rosy complexions and joyous laughter. Lady Pandora remembered an all-night drinking bout with commoners after a rare boxing loss, and how much more fun she had with them than clinking glasses with the upper class wets.
We know that the Boy assisted Lady Pandora when she visited his village, and she complimented the Boy. he exchanged knowledge, he then drank with them - especially this fiery drink which they had brought along called alcohol.
Vanessa remembers the time when she used her power selfishly. There had been a boy who pulled her pigtails and called her names. One day he chased her into the woods, and said he wouldn’t let her go until he’d given her a kiss. She had backed up against a Rowan tree, cut her palm and then smeared blood across the tree trunk. A deep voice spoke from behind her: “She is my bride to be, and her kisses shall be mine alone”. She ran off home. Never did see that boy again.
Together they solve the mystery of the Creature of Cremorne Gardens. It is a creature of the deep water, and it fears light and fire, but every hundred years it is drawn to the land to find a human wife who can bear it a child for reasons unknown. Women would be sent to meet the fish creature with kirtle hiked up and neckline plunging low, in dresses the colour of seaweed.
Dusk
Ballroom
Hargrave House once hosted a ball for a group of visitors from the fae realm. Even today there are subtle reminders of that night in this room. What are they?
- there is a muscians nook; if you sit in the musicians seats you can hear the melodies of that day being played.
- tucked between the glass and the frame of a mirror in the corner of the room there is a faded red rose; it is said that when people look in the mirror they see only the truth
- in one of the corners, behind one of the big curtains there is a small circle made of black translucent glass that might be an entrance to the fairy realm. Rumour is that to break the circle would bring a curse.
Lady Pandora calls upon one of her friends at the Explorers Club, Rear-admiral Alfred Bingley-Green. He used to be part of Hargrave House and lets them choose some of his special weapons to help out with the task ahead. Vanessa chooses the razor rosary, Valentine chooses the runic gauntlets, and Lady Pandora picks the exploding pocket watch.
Unscene
The Dinner Party. Eric Taylor has a good job as a clerk, and with his wife Abigail they form the very picture of the respectable new Victorian middle class. Behind the lace curtains of their terrace home, they are throwing a small dinner party for equally respectable friends, the Davenports. The Taylor’s daughter Maude plays piano passably in the parlour before dinner is served.
Night
Unscene act 1 - We see the Taylors dressed well, but the Davenports have come with new shoes too. The Taylors have half-glasses of wine, hoping to make the expensive bottle last the evening, but the Davenports have their glasses full to the brim as they are used to drinking what they fancy
Vanessa is going to the quayside to purchase netting, pitch, and oil lamps for a trap.
Valentine is going to purchase a woollen dress from the shop that has been making them.
Lady Pandora has more of a conversation with Rear Admiral Bingley-Green, before heading off to rendezvous with them all at Cremorne Gardens.
Unscene Act 2 - Mrs Taylor and Mrs Davenport hate each other. Mrs Davenport gives small compliments which are topped off with examples of how much better she cooks the dishes herself. Mrs Taylor wonders that she can obtain the fine things she wears what with the police clamping down on the smugglers nowadays. The snide bitching continues through the evening.
Vanessa is able to find the materials she needs, but after the previous nights’ experiences the sound of groups of young men make her very nervous, and she acquires the condition Jittery.
Valentine is able to purchase the dress, but in doing so she will draw the attention of Theodora Braithwaite who now knows about her. Taking a circuitous route to get to the gardens, she gets lost and is going to end up late at Cremorne Gardens.
Unscene Act 3 - Maud and Alexander, the children, chafe under their parents expectations. Maud rebels by wearing her neckline deliberately low to expose more décolletage than is gracious. Alexander rebels by wearing floppy shirts and quoting Oscar Wilde poetry. They play off each other to wind their parents up more.
Lady Pandora meets Vanessa at the Gardens and while they are wondering where Valentine has got to they are approached by DI Pettigrew, who is much bolder in Valentine’s absence. He is rude and abrasive and is telling them that he has his eye on them. Lady Pandora doesn’t like that and decides to throw her weight around, and Pettigrew is standing for none of that - summoning four policemen to arrest her and march her off to the cells! In some worlds, that is just what would have happened, but not in this one. Lady Pandora uses the Mask of the Dark Portal and we see a few nights ago in one of her illegal boxing matches she completely lost it during a fight - having beaten her opponent, she wouldn’t stop — punching, punching, punching and turning the other woman into a bloody mess. Some police were drawn to the commotion, but recognised Pandora as a friend of the Lady who owns Scotland Yard, and so they watch approvingly as Lady Pandora finishes beating the poor woman to a pulp, breaking her woman’s arm and enjoying her sense of power. When she finally stops her fists are red with the woman’s blood, and her face is spattered with the woman’s blood too. The policemen who are stepping up to arrest her now? They recognise her from the beat down the other day. They josh with her about her right hook, and how well she put the boot in when her opponent was down. She doesn’t get arrested after all, but this might harm Pandora’s reputation.
Valentine arrives, and Vanessa changes into the dress. As she adjusts the décolletage lower in line with the poetry, there is an echo of the night with the dinner party.
They head out to the quayside to set up the net and coat it with pitch, ready to trap the creature - but then it’s siren song swells out and Lady Pandora and Vanessa drop what is in their hands and move to the edge of a quay as if in a trance!
Unscene Act 4 - Mr Taylor and Mr Davenport retreat into the drawing room with port and cigars. Apart from everyone else and with the door closed they reveal their mutual vice. They set down their drinks and embrace closely, foreheads touching, and dance slowly around to the music in their heads.
The creature is going to reach up and grab Vanessa to pull her into the water. She throws herself backwards, hand stretched back to where she had set down the oil lantern, but cracks her head on the stones, dazing herself.
Valentine is going to reach out with the runic gauntlets and use their mystic power to turn on Lady Pandora’s music box - but she realises that if her magic attempt goes wrong it is going to push Pandora into the water, and so she hesitates.
Lady Pandora doesn’t hesitate, and drawing upon her sword-cane from her personal items she stabs the fish creature through the mouth and out the back of it’s skull, killing it instantly. She asks Valentine to help her haul it out of the water, because she intends to take it back to Hargrove House as a trophy!
Come dawn, a question is answered, a threat resolved and experience gained. Valentine now has the additional move ‘Giveth’, and Vanessa has increased her sensitivity.
The Between 27 October 2024
Players
Jen P - Vanessa Lythe, The Vessel, whom the dark entity ‘the Rowan Man’ has his eyes on. Jen M - Valentine Demaris, The Undeniable, whose memory dates back to Roman times and dresses as male or female to suit their needs Diana - Paloma Cariòn, The Mother, who longs to rebuild Winston, her lover.
Day
At breakfast there is an additional complication that arrives in the morning post. A letter from one Burt Broadswell. He pleads for them to help find his lover, Penelope Levy, who has gone missing at the Society Obscura. Ordinarily missing persons wouldn’t warrant the attention of Hargrove House, but Paloma notices some blue discolouration at the edge of the photograph, and Vanessa finds that the scene changes when she looks out of the corner of her eye - both symptoms of the famous Whatley Camera, long known in the research tomes of Hargrove House, and a grave danger indeed.
Valentine hasn’t got up for breakfast and doesn’t like to rise early, while Vanessa is keen to go to morning mass, to recover from her jitters. Paloma offers her own particular vice (‘tonic’ water), but since Vanessa wants the mass, Paloma accompanies her. Vanessa finds a place where the coloured light through the stained glass windows comforts her. As they are leaving they hear a discussion between some society ladies - that there is talk about a fountain of youth, or some means of getting back the face they once had. The hunters couldn’t follow them in the press of the crowd, but felt that Valentine should go to one of her society lunches to find out more.
They decide that they want to follow up on the receipt for cloths found with Cara’s body. it is from a high-end shop called “La Modiste”. Valentine meets them there, dressed in male attire. The shop has a wall of bolts of cloth, mannequins with elegant cloths and big vases of flowers. As the hunters enter, they ponder the lies that people tell each other there - from the woman who hopes that the fabrics will make her plain children attractive, to the people purchasing white for their wedding who have no right to it, and the fabric which has passed through the gut of a marsupial to make it soft and yet nobody believes that.
The head tailor there answers Vanessa’s questions about the receipt, and brings a bolt of the appropriate cloth — a lovely Chinese silk print. He happily gives them a sample, cutting it quickly and neatly with his razor sharp scissors. Valentine was watching him but their attention was drawn to a plant behind the counter - a highly toxic Oleander, which could be used to make poisons that paralyse.
Paloma is unkempt and the gallant tailor, Vittorio Clemenza, believes that she would benefit from some finer clothes than the cloak with trinkets on that she normally wears. She is taken by his strong and supple fingers, and asks to look at them. She spends long enough feeling them, checking the bone structure and so forth that Vittorio starts feeling a little uncomfortable. Why is she so interested in his hands?
Valentine collects a sample of the Oleander secretly, and they leave. The plan is that Paloma will check the Oleander poison against the silk. Vanessa wants to hold a seance to speak to dead Edward, and Valentine will attend with the ladies who lunch.
Paloma uses her lab to render down the Oleander poison and compare it to the silk. In another world her task was fruitless and she only hurt herself. In this world she remembers her dead lover Winston, with whom she had an instant attraction. Some gaseous poison escapes and partially paralyses her face. It looks like she has a partial stroke. But she can confirm that the silk itself wasn’t poisoned.
Vanessa takes some good whiskey to speak to Vera Hale, the prostitute. She catches Vera in a relatively good mood (the whiskey helps) and she remembers Edward with some fondness, as a young buck like him wouldn’t normally have given her the time of day, and Vera would have liked him as a regular. She assents to Vanessa’s desire for a seance which she doesn’t really believe in.
Vanessa summons up Edward and finds that he is a faceless ghost. He can’t see her, but she holds his spiritual hand for comfort. She learns that he was a newspaper reporter, investigating a doctor who was struck off for his untoward medical practices. The doctor isn’t named, but the letter about him is in the bottom of a draw in Edward’s old room. Edward was paralysed from behind, didn’t see his assailant, and is doomed to be a ghost until his face is recovered and buried. Vanessa tells him she will do her very best.
Valentine dresses in their avant-garde femme outfit and goes to the ladies luncheon. She meets Dame Margarate Teasedale whose face isn’t nearly as lined and saggy as a lady of her years might be expected. There is some mutual appreciation, and Teasedale wonders how Valentine keeps looking so young… but clearly wants to talk about her own experiences. Her face looks drum-tight, and a little waxy. She vouchsafes that the amazing work was done by none other than Sally No-Face themselves! She doesn’t know them in person, but her people made the arrangements via a lad known as The Dapper Boy. On the way out, Valentine scans the room for her worshippers and locks eyes with one of the valets. Somewhere that their music is being played it is scarred as a violin solo gets a little harsh, almost sounding like someone having skin peeled off. The valet is devoted, and longs to help. He hopes that if he performs well he might even get a little light whipping for his trouble. He agrees to meet Valentine and take her to meet the Dapper Boy that night.
Paloma wants to examine the photograph of the missing Penelope again, and looking at it carefully (and donning the mask of the cosmic passage) she can see that there is an orerry in the background which is in very different positions in the two views of the photograph. She shows Vanessa who agrees and reckons it is a supernatural effect, but Paloma rejects the idea, sure that it is merely science.
Vanessa then borrows the photograph, gets a dozen meat pies from the baker and goes out to find chimney sweep children. Bribing them with pies, she gets confirmation that the photograph is taken at a house in Kensington, used by the Society Obscura.
Valentine goes to meet Burt Broadswell in person. Finds that he and Penelope were both actors and very much in love. During a quiet time for work, Penelope started modelling for the Society Obscura. Burt dislikes them, considering them to be decadent, lecherous, elites. He doesn’t understand where Penelope has gone and wonders whether she has been taken by the white slave trade and breaks down in tears. Valentine puts her hand on his shoulder because she knows that is something that ordinary people do to comfort others, although she doesn’t really have the empathy to know why!
Dusk
Servants quarters
These rooms are mostly empty nowadays as, given the place's history, very few people want to work at Hargrave House. They have most frequently been used as a place for trysts between the house's residents. What here reminds you of that?
- one mattress gives out a floral perfume scent when you sit on it.
- The closet woodwork is covered with initials, carved in remembrance of the trysts.
- In the ceiling of one of the rooms there is a hook and in the corner there is pile of chains.
Unscene
Sitting across the Thames from the Palace of Westminster, St. Thomas’s Hospital is London’s newest hospital, purpose-built to the most modern standards of medicine. It consists of sprawling wings joined by covered walkways, allowing convalescent patients to take the air during the day. But at night, a skeleton crew struggle to save their charges from the illness, accidents, and violence that stalk the gloom.
Night
Vanessa is going to go to mass, and then use her powers to commune with the night.
Paloma is going to follow the tailor after he finishes work, to see where he goes.
Valentine is going to go with her worshipper to see the Dapper Boy.
Unscene Act 1 — A destitute woman is in the throes of a complicated birth, a porter holding her down while a surgeon prepares to operate. The woman is white as a sheet and is screaming “where is my baby, where is my baby” but it is clear that the sickness is going to take her before the baby arrives.
Vanessa goes to midnight mass, and it clears her mind. She loses the dazed condition.
Paloma follows Clemenza through the darkened streets. She keeps her composure even though it takes her down to the docklands, full of dangerous characters. Her face drains of colour as she realises what a dangerous place she has followed him to.
Valentine ensures that she takes her runic gloves, a riding whip, and a dog collar on a leash with her. When she meets the valet, she instructs him to kiss the leash and put it on, which he delights to do. “You are now my dog” she says. She is pleased to provide such an erotic experience for one of her grateful worshippers.
Unscene Act 2 — In the casualty waiting room, the experienced ward sister Mary O’Brien triages the sick and wounded. She sees a prostitute who has come open with a great gash on her face, from crown through cheek to chin. She is mutilated horribly, but O’Brien thinks she will pull through. Although maybe she would prefer not to.
Paloma sees Clemenza meet another man by the dark arches. Something is passed between them and she can just make out…
Valentine is led by the valet into Whitechapel, and to a townhouse which is surprisingly well lit. From an alleyway to the side comes a 13 year old boy in blazer, cricket cap, smart trousers and spats. He saunters over and asks what she is after. She suggests maybe a half-sovereign or two would provide some information. He looks at her carefully and asks whether she is Valentine Demaris…
After mass, Vanessa goes out into the graveyard and uses A Beacon in the Dark - her consciousness spreading out over London, seeking the nature of threats. Suddenly a pearly fog so thick that she can barely see the gravestone next to her envelops her and a chilling voice in her head asks “who are you?”
Unscene Act 3 — The young nurse Agnes Pell walks the TB ward, silent but for the laboured breathing and hacking coughs of her charges. Among the gaunt, pale patients is an elderly lady who has been a great benefactor to the poor of the city. She fed the hungry, she taught the children. She made a difference. But death respects neither age nor rank, and Agnes knows nothing of the woman’s life’s work.
Paloma can see that the unknown man passes a… finger? To Clemenza, and both of them then rush off. In the dark near to where they met she can see the dead body of an elderly, woman, whose face has been cut off.
The Dapper Boy is pleased that he has met THE Valentine Demaris, because Sally No-Face has been looking forward to gathering such a perfect visage for his collection. In another universe Valentine is stabbed from behind with a poisoned needle, and as she collapses she feels a sharp blade slice her face from crown through cheek to chin and blood gush forth. But in this world, she puts on the mask of the Gilded Door, becomes Most Beloved and the needle snags in her clothes and she pushes free…
Vanessa is surrounded by the pearly fog, and she speaks freely. “Hello my dear. Can you tell me where your lair is?”
The voice in her head replies “my lair is white and silver and gold and black”
“OK” says Vanessa, a bit unsure. “And what do you fear”
“I don’t understand your question” it replies. “Fear suggests powerlessness or danger, but that isn’t something that I know. I AM power. I can do what I want, when I want. All is subject to my will” Suddenly all remaining colour drains from Vanessa’s vision, as everything becomes sepia-toned. “I could burn you now” it continues “But I won’t. That would start a confrontation with Mr Rowan that I do not want to have. At this time”
“Where is Penelope” Vanessa cries out in an echo of the voice of the childbearing woman in the hospital. The chill voice responds “You have two questions, not three”
Then the fog is gone.
Paloma is kneeling by the faceless body, cutting out the heart which is going to be perfect for her ‘child’. But it’s a dangerous thing to be doing at night, and suddenly there is the piercing sound of police whistles and bobbies appear round the corner, grab her, and cuff her. “Hey, we’ve got Sally No-Face bang to rights, in the middle of her work”. That would be in another world. In this one Paloma remembers the time when she looked across the mortuary slab at Winston, her dear Winston, and it was love at first sight. She sprang up at the first sound of the whistles and escaped with the warm heart wrapped in her cape. But she has been spotted and now has the condition Wanted by the police.
Unscene Act 4 — As dawn begins to break, how do we see the staff dealing with the stress of the night before, knowing they will be back again soon?
- Sister O’Brien and Agnes go into a closet and fall into each others arms in a passionate embrace.
- The porter who had held down the woman who died in childbirth stops by an open church, puts some money in a box and lights some candles. When he gets home he peeks at his infant daughter sleeping and wipes tears from his eye.
- One of the emergency doctors takes off his operating gown and goes to the closet with the main medication. He discreetly takes several vials of morphine.
Vanessa makes her way back to Hargrove House avoiding both beeches and rowan trees.
Valentine hands the valet one of her possessions - the mirror that shows her true eye colour, and says “hold them off while I escape”. “I’ll die for you, mistress” he says, and he throws himself at the gang members, fighting ferociously while Valentine escapes back to Hargrove House. When there, she touches the whip fondly, and puts it back in its closet.
Paloma returns to Hargrove House and goes to her secret lab in the basement. Into the cold torso she tenderly wires up the new heart. “Here you are Winston” she whispers. “Another step closer to the day you can hold me in your strong arms again”.
Dawn
Although no questions have been answered or threats resolved, there have been many echoes in the night, and other personal questions have been answered. Vanessa increases her sensitivity once more.