Ghost of a Chance -- Coda
Search the upper levels, near where we were playing.
we tell an adult where we saw him running to
You seek out your mother, and find the Countess already down in the great hall, bleary-eyed but busy, organising a search party while also trying to reassure Jack's panicking mother and father. You tell her that you last saw Jack climbing upstairs, and she nods and leads the group up. As you all ascend, Jack's cries seem to fade out a bit, and his parents lose control of their worry and shout that everyone is going the wrong way. Their poor baby must be in the cellars! They and many sympathetic searchers peel off to scour the lower levels.
Lady Marna continues onward to the second and third floors and orders the remaining searchers to tap on the walls and floors, to overturn the beds and to move the furniture. A dark crawl space is quickly found to be sandwiched between part of the second and third floors, and an advisor explains to Marna that the castle has been expanded and renovated many times over the centuries, and numerous irregular-shaped empty spaces like this were sealed off rather than be torn down and risk structural collapse.
After hallooing into the dark crevice for a minute, the searchers give up; with a sigh and a glance around at the ransacked third floor, Marna shrugs at you and leads them downstairs. You, however, are certain that you saw Jack Scamp go upstairs, and you refuse to follow after the receding torchlight of Mother's search party. The dark closes in around you.
***
You have begun to explore an unfamiliar place within the castle, so impenetrably dark that your arms and legs have been reduced to mere concepts and intuitions. All your senses fail you here, except your hearing. The distant crying of Jack never stops. In fact, it only grows louder, and your little heart pounds in your chest as you realise that Jack is coming for you this time. He found the other children and took them back to his secret home. Now he wants you. You pump your unseen legs frantically in the pitch black, but you can feel yourself moving nowhere at all. There is nothing you can do. Jack is approaching.
You awake with a racing heartbeart and whirling thoughts. The sobbing cries have followed you out of your nightmare, and they persist in the waking realm. Jack has followed you back into the land of the living. You whisper to the darkness. "Leave me alone, Jack. You're dead these three months."
Outside, a door opens and the source of the sobbing runs down the corridor, screaming in tears, "Jack-in-the-Wall wants to carry me away!" Her mother rushes out and stifle her screams, while other parents glare at what could easily become another cascade of wailing children scaring each other senseless again, and indeed many parents themselves make signs of the cross to ward away Jack-in-the-Wall, the ghost of Curbiston Keep.
Suggestions weren't bad, just hard rolls and bad results. By way of trivia, the one certain way to keep Jack alive was only available at the very beginning. Follow Jack to his perfect spot. Otherwise, by fate you could have picked the floor that he chose and seen enough of his path to narrow the search very much down. Had he lived, he'd have been an adorable little scamp with a habit for getting into interesting places, starting with... well, his resting place, I suppose! Heheh. And next up, it seems we have the much-awaited Turn 2... Huzzah.
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Topic: Heirship: A Suggestion Game (Read 29437 times)