Chapter the Eighth: Tekeli-li, Wilbur-r-r-r
So when we left off, we were about to explore the meatpacking plant, a life choice that we will in no way wind up regretting let’s say three rooms from now. Foreshadowing!
There’s a giant hole smashed in the side of the plant – it occurs to me I’m not sure whether it was smashed by something coming in, or something coming out, which seems like very relevant information? Regardless:
>gird loins
That verb doesn’t work here, or, at least, not right now, but it might work somewhere later.>in
The meatpacking plant (Kenneth Pedersen)
You are standing in the center of the main room of the meatpacking plant. An open doorway leads west from this huge room to somewhere darker, while some rickety stairs lead up. A long row of meat hooks are hanging from the ceiling parallel to a bloodstained table. It is not too late to leave yet, by going out the front door.
Hey, an author I know! Kenneth Pedersen, who also goes by Denk, has written a number of old-school inflected games in recent years – the ones I’ve played don’t tend to have punishing mechanics like hunger timers or carrying limits or anything like that, but have the stripped-down prose and puzzle-focused design I associate with older stuff, plus some of them have been in ADRIFT. For all that that’s not my usual preferred style of IF, I’ve mostly dug what I’ve played of his stuff, and especially enjoyed Grandpa’s Ranch, his entry in last year’s ParserComp.
Anyway, one nice thing about his style is that despite my expectations, we’re not being confronted with a grand guignol of horrors or anything, at least not yet.
>x table
This is a very long wooden table running the full length of the room from north to south. It is stained with old blood.>x blood
As this is a meatpacking plant, bloodstains are to be expected. Nevertheless it does freak you out a bit.>x hooks
The meat hooks are rusty, stained and out of reach. They are all empty except for a hook at the southern end of the room, which holds the body of a dead animal, hanging from its legs head down.>x animal
This dead animal is some sort of dog of a breed unknown to you. There is something disturbing, twisted about this dog. It hasn’t been dead for long. Especially you notice its stomach which seems particularly big and hard, as if there is something inside of it.
Like this is icky, but compared to what we had to go through to get in here, could be worse?
On the other hand, there’s this:
x door
The door is ajar, so you can quickly leave this terrible place.
The egress looked like a big smashed hole on the way in, so this actually is the creepiest thing in here!
Anyway, we all know what the puzzle here is:
>open stomach
If you want it open, you’ll have to cut it with something.
Inconvenient, albeit much less gross than the hands-only approach we took with the sheep out front. I try the various cutting instruments we’re toting around:
>cut stomach with spire
The cast iron spire isn’t quite what you need to cut the dog.>cut stomach with glass shard
The glass shard isn’t quite what you need to cleave through this dead dog.>cut stomach with shard of shattered carapace
The shard of shattered carapace isn’t quite what you need to cleave through the meat of this dead dog.
Okay, okay, we need a more bespoke solution. Given the vibe here, I try various SEARCHes, and LOOK UNDER and BEHIND the scant scenery – as well as standing on the table to see if I can abstract one of those nasty-looking meat hooks – but don’t turn up anything, and sure enough, when I check the coffee it tells me this is a come-back-later type situation. Darn, was looking forward to spending more time on the killing floor.
That west-leading door seems a bit creepier than the rickety stairs, so let’s start with the latter.
>u
Dusty office (Matthew Korson)
This must be the boss’s office. A large window overlooks the factory floor. Some shards around the edge suggest that it contained glass once. Pushed against one wall is a small table that might have served as a desk, and next to it stands a metal filing cabinet. Anonymous detritus is scattered at the edges of the room.Everything is covered in a thick layer of dust.
Matthew Korson is another person of mystery so far as I can tell. Anyone out there know the fellow?
…once again, this isn’t as bad as I was expecting?
>x window
A few small shards of glass remain around the edge of the window; otherwise, the frame is empty.>take shards
You’d cut yourself.
Probably smart – given all this dust it’d probably get infected, and we already have a glass shard anyway.
>x floor
It is covered in a thick layer of dust.>x factory floor
Machines line the factory floor below. You can only guess at their function.
…you mean the hooks? We were just down there and those were the only machines in sight. Did Nitocris suffer some off-screen head trauma?
>x detritus
Junk is piled up in the corners and around the edges of the room. It is scattered haphazardly, as if someone has ransacked the place. But if so, it was long enough ago that a thick layer of dust has accumulated. Who knows if anything of value is left?>search it
You rummage through the junk. You find a brass nameplate among all the dust.Dust blows into your face.
>x nameplate
“Charles Cragne, Owner”
This seems like something that could come in handy, albeit in very specific circumstances:
>take nameplate
Taken.>search junk
You rummage through the junk. You find a diagram scratched into the floor among all the dust.The movement raises a thick cloud of dust. You cough.
Okay I take it back, if you have allergies this place is terrifying.
>x diagram
Circles and lines scratched into the floorboards. It almost seems like it should mean something, but you can’t quite grasp it.>grasp diagram
That verb doesn’t work here, or, at least, not right now, but it might work somewhere later.
Well, we were warned.
>search junk
You rummage through the junk. You find a broken knife handle among all the dust.Dust swirls into the air.
>x it
A broken wooden knife handle. The blade is long gone, but there are dark stains at one end.>take handle
Taken.
This pile of junk is like Stephen King’s Christmas tree – it just keeps on giving!
(I try to see if I can cram anything sharp onto the knife handle, but get told it can’t contain things)
>search junk
You rummage through the junk. You find a piece of yellowed newsprint among all the dust.The dust you come in contact with cakes onto your skin.
>x newsprint
The article seems to be an exposé of poor working conditions and sanitation at Cragne’s meatpacking plant. You scan quickly through descriptions of horrific accidents among the workers and nauseating adulterants in the meat. One item catches your eye. In a section describing the vermin infesting the plant, the writer mentions a superstition held by the workers concerning a “Boss Rat”. Apparently this rat was three times the size of the usual pests and would direct the other rodents where they may forage. Those that found favor with the Boss Rat were allowed to gorge themselves from the heaps of meat kept in the plant’s storerooms for later processing, while those who fell out of favor were forced to run among the workers’ legs to snatch scraps falling from the mincers. Many workers believed that anyone who saw the Boss Rat would suffer a fatal accident, and the writer notes that several deaths and disappearances that occurred during his time investigating the plant were attributed to that very cause.
Once again, this could be worse? Like, I’ve lived in New York City, seeing a rat three times the size of a normal one doesn’t mean you’re cursed to death, it means you took the subway on a day ending in y.
>search junk
You rummage through the junk. You find an enormous dessicated rat corpse among all the dust.Dust blows into your face.
>x corpse
It’s the size of a large cat or a small dog, but it is definitely a rat. It is completely dried and its tail is missing, but it shows no other signs of decay. Dust is matted in what remains of its fur.
So we’ve solved the mystery of the boss rat, and yeah, I’m not impressed. Heck, if we find a taxidermist in town, this fella could make a nice little keepsake.
>clean corpse
You make a futile attempt to clean the enormous dessicated rat corpse. The dust you come in contact with cakes onto your skin.>x me
There is dust in your hair, dust in your eyes, dust in your nose, dust in your mouth. If you stay here much longer, you may turn to dust yourself.
At a cost to our questionable hygiene, we yoink the corpse and the newsprint for good measure. I try to see if the diagram is like one of those jobbies that resurrects dried-up bodies from their essential salts, but if so it’s on the fritz; putting the rat on it doesn’t do anything. So yes, he’ll be more living-room decoration than sidekick.
>search junk
You rummage through the junk. You find a thin steel key among all the dust.
That’s the last thing we’re able to find amidst the detritus, but there are a couple things left here to check out:
>x table
The only remarkable thing about it is that it is still standing.>push table
It would most likely fall apart, and there is no need to make the mess in here any worse.>x cabinet
The sides are painted exactly the same color as the dust that covers everything in here.>open it
It seems to be locked.
I’m betting we can solve this.
>unlock it with steel key
You unlock the filing cabinet.>open it
You open the filing cabinet, revealing a torn notebook.>x torn
Many pages are torn out, and those that remain are mostly smudged or otherwise illegible. One, however, stands out because it appears to have been pasted into the notebook. It looks like a letter."September 21, 1908
"…les Cragne, Rufous Alderman,
"I was pleased to hear of your success with … of the ritual…
"…Sinclair’s pamphlet will bring unwanted atte… …ven to your remote operation. I hope I need not remind you …tance of … role …
"… can get … blood befo… …crifice must be complete by the coming full moon… Vaadignephod will…
"Yours in fraternity
“… of the Variegated Court”
The facing page contains the notation
“Cattle: 10 gal, 200 / hr, 24000 gal
Hog: 5 gal, 500 / hr, 30000 gal
Man: 10 pt, 1 / day, 10 pt”
Hey, info on another member of the Court – Charles is the Rufous Alderman (rufous means reddish brown).
Also, that is an alarming amount of blood. In the run-up to this blood sacrifice we’re burning through one person a day, no big deal in the grand scheme of things. But looking at the animal side of the ledger, it seems like the slaughterhouse was operating 12 hour shifts, meaning 2,400 cows and 6,000 hogs were getting knackered daily. Even if this is just the big pre-ritual push, that’s an astonishing throughput – the average American eats like a tenth of a cow and a third of a hog per year, and in the 1910 Census, Vermont had about 350k inhabitants, so at this pace this one plant would be supplying their annual meat needs in about two weeks!
And actually, stepping back, why is there a meatpacking plant here in the first place? Most of the major turn of the century meatpacking centers in the U.S. were, logically enough, transportation hubs near the major grazing areas where you can raise livestock – like, Chicago is northeast of the Great Plains and right on the Great Lakes which, post Erie Canal, were an easy way to reach most of the eastern part of the country, or New Orleans, which likewise is near the plains and served by the Mississippi River and its port on the Gulf of Mexico.
Backwater, contrarily, is a backwater, and we’ve seen plenty of indications that it’s located in the rocky, central part of the state; I’d believe there’s some pastoralism based on sheep- or goat-herding, but extensive cattle ranching isn’t likely to be happening given what we know about the environment. Sure, there’s a railroad line, and stock cars definitely brought livestock to the big city-based slaughterhouses, but my understanding is that this was more of a last-mile solution; bringing animals on trains all the way from like Kansas to Vermont just seems cost-prohibitive, doubly so without a major waterway to get the products to market (Lake Champlain is a major potential thoroughfare, but since we’re clear on the other side of the state and presumably at some elevation, I doubt the river is sufficiently navigable to get much shipping there).
From this I think it’s clear that this plant was not an economically-viable concern, at least at the scales that it sometimes operated at (and thinking about the size of the facility and staffing you’d need to make those surge rates work, I’ve got to imagine there are substantial fixed costs preventing them from just dramatically scaling back production outside of blood sacrifice times). I think we heard some local scuttlebutt that the plant’s been shut down for some time, and of course there’s that giant heap of corpses out front, which did not get moved into the stream of commerce, so we can perhaps draw some conclusions: first, the Cragnes were probably operating this plant primarily to enable their blood sacrifices, not to turn a profit – so they must have had some independent source of wealth to subsidize the plant; and second, since they eventually shut things down, either that wealth ran out, or, more disquietingly, they decided they didn’t need to make these sacrifices anymore, perhaps because they got the result they’d been petitioning for.
Bottom line, as we start to check out the Manor itself we should keep an eye out to see if the family looks like they’ve come down in the world, or if they still seem sufficiently flush with cash; if it’s the latter, we should be even more worried than we already are!
…this line of speculation makes me somewhat lose track of the game, so I’m confused when the coffee says I’m not done here yet; I spend a lot of time doing some further rummaging in the junk, messing with the diagram, and doing untoward things with the rat corpse, before realizing I’d neglected to grab the notebook. Once I do that, the coffee confirms we’re good here.
Right, there’s no more putting it off – we go back down, then…
>w
Bathroom of the Meatpacking Plant (Chris Jones)
This is a perfectly normal bathroom. There’s a bathroom stall (which has some graffiti written on it), a urinal, a sink with a mirror over it, and even a shower for those days at work when meat debris happens. Perfectly normal bathroom.You can see a pentagram on the floor here.
I don’t see what I was so worried about – this is the last location in the plant, and once again, no big deal. Perfectly normal, in fact.
There are several “Chris Jones” candidates here and I’m not sure who the author is – there’s the one who wrote the Tex Murphy games, and another who created the AGS graphic adventure creation system, but there’s not much of an IF-specific paper trail, and this is a generic enough name that it could be either of them, or some totally different Chris Jones.
Well, first things first:
>x me
You fight down the urge to compulsively examine the comparative size of your knees in relation to one another. It’s a compulsion that pops up when you’re under stress, has done since the knee fetishist you dated before Peter dumped you in college. You want to look right now but it just feeds the compulsion. No, no, you mustn’t look! You won’t! They’re still the same size, Naomi. Your knees are still the same size.
Okay, so that’s not great, but worst case scenario Nitocris just needs to shell out for knee-enhancement surgery somewhere down the line. Could be worse.
>x mirror
A perfectly normal bathroom mirror: one of those big frameless dealies that they hang on the wall above the sink. In it you can see the bathroom reflected: the stall/toilet, the urinal, the shower, all floating in a terrifying dark void filled with unfamiliar stars. Wait what.There’s a sign on the corner of the mirror that says “Mirror Temporarily Out of Order - mgmt.”.
This is maybe not great, but the endless starry void so far is staying on the other side of the mirror so could be worse?
>x stall
A walled bathroom stall in the corner of the room. Someone wrote “Beware Horse” on the side of the stall in marker. For some reason. Below that, someone has written “Don’t use the shitter, bro!”, also in marker. Pretty wide existential gap between those two graffiti but okay. Anyway the door to the stall is slightly ajar.
Seems sorta gross, let’s leave this for later.
>x urinal
A stainless steel trough in the floor, presumably for pissing into. There’s a blue urinal cake at the bottom. Right about head-height above the urinal, the words “Do Not Shit Here Either” are scratched into the wall. Just below that are the words “stop telling us where not to shit, dude” in smaller letters. And just below that is the word word “No”.So much drama.
We’re learning all sorts of unpleasant things about the workforce here, but could be worse.
>x cake
A small blue urinal cake. It’s basically a post hoc urethral perfuming agent made of chalky poison chemicals fashioned in the shape of a hockey puck.
Poison could be handy?
>take it
You’re not touching the urinal cake.
…I apologize for the following, but how often does Nitocris wind up in a guy’s bathroom? She’s gotta be curious:
>pee on it
Enh, you don’t feel like it right at the moment.
Probably for the best.
>x sink
A perfectly normal stainless steel sink set into wall below the mirror. Looking at it reminds you of how much awful and/or weird stuff you’ve been touching with your bare hands, recently. And how covered in other peoples’ germs you must be at this point. There’s a tap on the back with a handle that turns on the water. Just above that tap handle, someone has scrawled the words “Stop Shitting In The Sink” with a marker.Okay maybe not the best sink to wash your hands in, but a sink nontheless and they’re in short supply in this town.
>wash hands
(in the pamphlet of home listings)
You don’t feel like washing your hands with that. Or can’t. Or both.
>wash hands in sink
You turn the tap and hold your hands expectantly under it. Finally! You can wash your hands!..…but all that comes out is noise. A weird, horrifying and terrible noise from somewhere behind the walls. A long wet meaty sound with some kind of mechanical whine behind it, like a car was trying to peel out on a street covered in greasy bacon. That’s… not a sound that a sink should make.
You turn off the tap (almost pulling the tap loose from the sink in the process, damn thing wasn’t screwed in properly or something) and the horrifying noise stops. Dammit, you really wanted to wash your hands. Well, maybe something else in here works; lord knows it’s been a while since you used a restroom properly.
Umm. At least the noise stopped? Could have been worse!
>x shower
A chrome showerhead hanging from the ceiling in one corner of the room, presumably for the plant employees to wash various species worth of meat and meat byproducts off their filthy bodies. Directly below the showerhead, there is a large metal grate over a drain in the floor. On the wall between, there’s a single shower knob that says “warm”.Above the knob, someone has scratched the words “Don’t Shit In The Shower Anymore Bro!” into the wall. What the hell is wrong with the savages that use this bathroom?
>x knob
They like their showers simple in Vermont.
We are kinda gross and dusty after all that rooting around upstairs, and warm water does sound nice.
>turn on shower
You turn on the water, but all that happens is a horrific banging sound starts up in the pipes. A wet, sloshing banging noise, like a bunch of hams were being tossed about in a washing machine. You remember your Uncle (the plumber, not the one that went to prison) telling you that pipes in buildings would do this sometimes when the air gaps were backed up. But then he also told you to always keep a bucket in your car to shit into just in case a toilet didn’t work somewhere.You turn the shower knob off (almost accidentally unscrewing it in the process, damn thing is real loose for some reason) and the horrible noise stops.
Whew. Maybe we should grab that loose knob so that doesn’t happen again:
>take knob
You unscrew the single shower knob and take it with you. Now the meat-stained workers of this plant will never be clean.Right after you take the knob, a horrific banging sound starts up in the pipes. A wet, sloshing banging noise, like a bunch of hams were being tossed about in a washing machine. You remember your Uncle (the plumber, not the one that went to prison) telling you that pipes in buildings would do this sometimes when the air gaps were backed up. But then he also told you to always keep a bucket in your car to shit into “just in case there’s no toilet all of a sudden”. Whatever that meant. So who knows.
Umm.
[A brief out of character note: this is of course a horror game, but at least in my commentary I endeavor to keep things PG, PG-13, you know, make the thread family-friendly. Fair warning: in what follows, I fall somewhat short of that commitment]
>x knob
You start to turn away from shower, but then a new sound emanates from the bathroom appliance. The new sound is so strange that you pause:“br-rn-nn-nn-nn-nn.”. Like an engine on a car or a lawnmower turning over. “br-rnn-nn-nn-nn-nn”. It’s coming out of the shower. Your Uncle never mentioned this plumbing noise.
You start to turn away from the shower again, and suddenly the noise jumps 50 decibels: “br-RN-NN-NN-NN!!!” It sounds like a car engine right behind you and you whirl. There’s only the shower. But you notice something:
Something is oozing out of the drain. Something brown, and flabby. Meatlike. Something meatlike is backing up out of the pipes like sewage
And it has a pair of LIPS. Big equine-looking lips and gums on a long flabby snout, sticking out of the drain.
“Br-RNN-NN-NN-NN-NN” say the lips and jaw, seemingly boneless, continuing to ooze out of the pipe. Half a head now, the eyeball on one side making a moist popping noise as it clears the drain. It glares at you. “Br-RNN-NN-NN-NN-NN!!”. And then, with a sound like a plunger working furiously on a clogged drain, the meat retracts back into the pipe and it is gone.
You breath again.
WHAT THE FUCK???
WTF IS THIS EUGENE-TOOMS-MEETS-MISTER-ED MOTHERFUCKER???
Any port in a storm:
>enter pentagram
Before you can do that, the wall of the bathroom buckles and then shatters outwards in a shower of drywall and fixtures, as a rolling ball of meat and sinew with four kicking limbs and a frothing toothless mouth bursts forth into the room.You try to run but it’s between you and the door, flailing and frothing. It squirms like a giant boneless worm and then the hoists the top-half of itself upright like a giant sausage with one end tottering in the air. “BR-RNN-NN-NN-NN-NN!” it screams at you from a long, boneless, mane-covered head. That’s when you see the swishing tail.
It’s a horse. A giant boneless horse. There’s a giant boneless horse in the walls. Was in the walls. Now it’s in the room with you , flailing hooves and making noises like a race car engine. What do you do??
Augh it’s worse it’s worse it’s worse it’s worse
>enter pentagram
Oh hell no.
Ugh, of course, we’re a creature of darkness ourself, we can’t take advantage of the pentagram’s protection.
The horse surges forward and flails its boneless noodle-limbs wildly, catching you in the chest with a fist-sized hoof. You’re thrown against the stall; shaking it and throwing the stall door open. You haul yourself to your feet as the flabby bag of horse pulls itself across the floor towards you. What do you do??
That airless, starry void is looking mighty welcoming right about now:
>enter mirror
That’s not something you can enter.The boneless horse shudders. Then it jerks every muscle at once, coiling, then jacknifing up like a sausage being set on one end. It rears above you, hooved forelimbs (or backlimbs, you can’t tell at this angle) pedaling in the air as it snaps and wreathes and tries to stay upright. It totters. The shadow of a boneless horse falls over you.
>push horse
It is fixed in place.
Seriously, game?
The rearing boneless horse falls forward in a graceless jacknife. The fleshy rubbery mass of the thing knocks you to the ground and the breath from your lungs. You try to wriggle free, but there is Only Horse above you. You try to take a breath but there is Only Horse to fill your mouth and nose with. You try to bite, to hit, but there is no space for it. Only Horse.
The last things you experience before you lose consciousness are the sounds of an engine gently revving somewhere on the other side of this horse, and a boneless mouth gnawing on your foot like it was a sugar cube made of You.
“BR-RN-nn-nnnnnnn…”. Then nothing. Only Horse now, in this bathroom. Only Horse.
*** You have been killed by a boneless horse a bathroom, just like that one crazy baglady warned you about, why didn't you listen why do you never liste...... ***
Holy crap.
So of course all the blurry-text that’s been flying around was about this bathroom, so I knew there was going to be something up. But, I confess, I did not have “giant horse-shoggoth in the walls” on my bingo card. This was just – this was a lot.
We’re gonna take a break, then a deep breath, then you’d better believe there’s going to be some UNDOing.
(more to come later today!)