FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH

Willie Reeves, 45, pulp author/former pugilist (Nathan)

Martin Richardson, 33, cartographer (Tom)

Elliott Hutchins, 26, antiquarian (Paul)

Gabriel Thomas, 23, artist (Joseph)

Ricky Steele, 22, polo athlete (Ivan)

1. The Dreamer

Thursday, April 5, 1928

The investigators visit Irene LeMond in Buffalo about the disappearance of her son, Paul LeMond, a famous New York spiritualist. She explains that when Paul was 17 he suffered from a series of nightmares that left him hospitalized with partial amnesia. During his hospital stay he underwent a personality change and befriended a fellow patient named Clarence Rodgers. After his discharge Paul undertook a series of mysterious trips with Rodgers that lasted eight years. Following this he returned home only to suffer more nightmares and a bout of amnesia that erased his memory of the past eight years. As he recovered, his found his new psychic talent. Eventually he was contacted by a NYC talent promoter named Herbert Whitefield who signed Paul and took him to the big city to become a spiritualist for the wealthy. This arrangement worked well for two years and Paul came to be famous in psychic circles around town. Then, suddenly, he disappeared.

Irene offers the investigators $2000 for the return of her son. She doesn't trust Whitefield or Paul's new girlfriend, Velma Peters, thinking they may be involved in a conspiracy to collect insurance money on Paul's death. She gives out the NYC addresses for Paul's apartment and Whitefield's office (but does not know Velma's). She also lets the investigators borrow Paul's old diary in case it may provide clues. As they leave, Ricky Steele is able to convince Mrs. LeMond to a $500 advance on the reward money as well as procuring a notarized letter stating the investigator's business arrangement with her.

Before taking a train to NYC the investigators briefly visit the hospital where Paul stayed during his breakdown but are unable to gain any new information (the hospital having purged his old files).

Friday, April 6, 1928

During the train ride Elliott Hutchins takes the down time to read Paul's old diary and finds it mostly the dull account of a rural schoolboy growing up. The last few entries are interesting, though, detailing the strange dreams that preceded his first bout of amnesia. He finds himself in a gigantic, strange city set in a tropical jungle. As he moves about the city he no longer feels he is within his own body, but a thing of alien proportions.

Arriving in NYC the next morning the investigators go straight to Paul's apartment but find the front door of the building locked. They wait for someone to leave, hoping to grab the door while it is open, but the sight of a group of men hanging outside spooks the woman exiting and she turns around. Shrugging for the time being, the investigators take the subway uptown to Herbert Whitefield's office.

Up on the seventh floor they find the office cramped with barely enough room for two desks and a filing cabinet. Whiefield ignores the investigators while they converse with his secretary, Betty Avery, but he perks up when they mention they are interested in Paul LeMond. He gets confrontational, asking what they have to do with Paul, while Willie Reeves sits on the corner of the desk and leans in like a tough guy. This spooks Whitefield, "Whoa, are you guys working for Bugsy Wexler? Look fellas, I ain't quite in the clear yet!" Eventually the notarized letter from Irene LeMond is presented and Whitefield calms down and talks. He claims that he was at a party when Paul disappeared a couple weeks ago. "The police have already verified my story!" A successful psychology roll confirms he is telling the truth, but that he is also hiding something. He'll suggest they go talk to Paul's girlfriend, Velma Peters, and give them her apartment address.

Meanwhile, Ricky Steele tries flirting with Betty but gets a lot of sass. Gabriel Thomas has better luck when he quickly draws a sketch of the secretary and gives it to her. She is impressed and smiles, agreeing to meet up with him later after work. Interrupting, Steele then hands Betty $100 and tells her to get a cup of coffee. (This is only partially jealousy—Steele thinks they may have to rough up Whiefield and wants to get his secretary out of there.) Betty can hardly believe the money is real but obliges the request.

Not getting anything more from Whitefield, the investigators leave his office. Outside on the street, while they are deciding the next course of action, they are met by a bearded man with blonde hair and a suitcase. He introduces himself as John Dervin and says he works for Klein Mutual Life, an insurance company that holds a policy on Paul LeMond. He is investigating the disappearance of Paul and asks the group if they know anything about Whitefield. He gives them his card and requests they contact him at his PO box if they find out any more information.

The investigators split up. The first group (Reeves, Hutchins, and Steele) pays a visit to Velma Peters. They find her apartment in the same general neighborhood as Paul's. She is a vivacious young actress (if a bit dim-witted) that had already broken up with Paul prior to his disappearance due to his recent mood swings. In fact, the night he disappeared he was walking home from her apartment after a failed attempt to win her back. She has little more to add other than she thinks Whitefield is a creep.

Meanwhile, the second group (Richardson and Thomas), went to meet with Betty Avery at the diner across the street from the office. Talking over a cup of coffee she tells them that Whitefield is trouble with the local mob boss Bugsy Wexler due to horse racing debts. About a week ago a couple of toughs came by the office to bring the heat on him about something. Also, just this morning before Whitefield got into the office, another man came calling asking about the whereabouts of Paul LeMond. His name was Rodgers and he jotted a note on the back of a card to leave behind for Betty to give to Whitefield. (She recalls the man had blonde hair and a beard.) When Whitefield got to the office and saw the note he said he didn't know the person and threw the card in the trash. Interested, the investigators ask Betty to retrieve the note for them. She accedes and runs across the street to the office, returning in about fifteen minutes with the card, proud to be helpful. The card is identical to the one given to the investigators by John Dervin, except this one has an address written on the back (in a seedier part of the city) and is signed Clarence Rodgers. As they thank Betty for her help she says she is looking forward to her date with Thomas later this evening and is going to use the money given to her (by Steele) to buy a nice new dress.

Before meeting up with the others, Richardson and Thomas decide to check out the address on the card left by Rodgers. It's about nine blocks away and a bit of a walk. They leave the business district and find themselves entering a seedier, more rough-and-tumble part of town. Dangerous looking characters hang out under street lights and mysterious noises issue from shadowy alleys. Eventually they come to a run down building with a missing front door. They enter and find Rodgers apartment while a drunken fat woman sings in Hungarian at the end of the dark hall. Richardson knocks to no answer and then tries to jimmy the locked door while a bemused Thomas quickly sketches the drunk woman in charcoal, leaving the picture in her lap. Finally, they force the door open, discovering a small, two-room apartment, sparsely furnished. In the front room, among ordinary items, they find a disguise kit laid out on a clothes truck, complete with fake facial hair and hair-lightener. In the back room (along with sagging bookshelves on history, archaeology, and anthropology) they find a table on which sits an odd book with metallic covers protecting cellulose pages covered in strange brush-drawn figures. Next to the book is a pile of pencilled papers as well as an iron box. Thomas looks through the papers and sees they're a translation by Rodgers of the odd book, referred to as the Pnakotic Manuscripts. Richardson opens the box and finds a peculiar, dissembled mechanical device. By combining their mechanical and electrical repair rolls the investigators successfully assemble the device and activate it. Appearing to draw electricity from the air (like Tesla-style broadcast energy) the device clicks and hums as a red light beams into the room from a nested crystal. A creature materializes within the light: a large conical body surmounted by four tentacle arms each terminating in a different appendage—one with a sphere and multiple eyes, one with four wet tube-like openings, the remaining two with claw-like pincers. The sight of the thing shocks the investigators terribly but they soon realize it is only a hologram image. The creature seems aware of them, though, and after a futile attempt to communicate it disappears.

Meanwhile, the first group of investigators decides to go back to check out Paul's apartment, being only a short walk from Velma Peters. They plan a clever way to gain entrance to the building only to have somebody walk out the front door right as they arrive, allowing them to slip through before it closes. Once alone in the hall, Reeves picks the lock on Paul's door. The place appears to have been tidily searched by the police and nothing of interest is found, with the exception of an unsent letter (found on the desk) Paul was writing to his mother on the night he disappeared.

The second group of investigators meets up with the first group outside Paul's apartment building so they can all share information. Someone alertly notices Clarance Rodgers (still in his John Dervin disguise) spying on them from across the street. Chase is given down the block, into an alley, through a back door leading to a Chinese kitchen, until they finally corner Rodgers in a dead-end hallway near a freight elevator. He spins around holding a .22 revolver and orders the investigators to back away so he can access the elevator. Everyone complies except Richardson, who thinks Rodgers is bluffing and tells him to hand over the gun. (Meanwhile, Steele is peering from the kitchen doorway having pulled out his .45 Colt automatic.) Rodgers gets edgy and steps forward, shouting again to back off—Richardson just shakes his head. Rodgers then shoots Richardson twice (winging him both times) as Steele swings into the hallway leveling the military automatic at Rodgers and ordering him to drop it. Seeing the big pistol aimed at him, along with the sight of Richardson still standing before him after being shot twice, causes Rodgers to lose nerve and he gives up. Concerned about the police arriving to check out the gun shots, the investigators quickly lead Rodgers back out through the kitchen and alley (Steele nudging along with the Colt in his coat pocket) to the street where they hail a cab for a tense ride back to Rodgers apartment.

Once there, they tie Rodgers up to a chair and interrogate him about his connection to Paul and the strange device in the other room. He is uncommunicative at first but then spills the beans after the investigators offer to let him go along with his strange device if he cooperates. He informs them he is an agent for a race of alien beings from the prehistoric past called the Great Race of Yith that have the ability to project their minds back and forth across time. They contact him via the strange device the investigators found in his apartment. The Great Race needed help finding a suitable human vessel one of them could inhabit with their own alien mind and Rodgers found Paul for them. (This happened back during Paul's first hospitalization.) A member of the Great Race took over Paul's body, sending his mind back to prehistoric Australia to inhabit the alien's body. The switch took place for eight years while Rodgers and the alien using Paul's body travelled the world on cryptic missions. Then the alien went back into the past, returning Paul's mind to his body, but not before the Great Race wiped all memory of the event. This was only partially successful, though, as Paul's latent psychic ability was triggered and now he has nightmare dreams of the past and future.

Believing Rodgers incredible story about mind-swapping aliens from the past, but not his claim that he was looking for the missing Paul for benevolent reasons, they renege on their agreement to give him back his holographic communicator and destroy it instead. At first Rodgers is shocked and angry then he turns silent and unemotive. The investigators let him go, saying they never want to see him again, and he leaves without a word or look back. Gathering up their things, everybody decides to grab dinner as it is getting late, giving time for Thomas to meet Betty for their date. (They enjoy each others company over steak and whiskey at a fancy speakeasy. Afterwards, Betty gives Thomas a peck on the cheek while saying goodnight, making him feel like a million bucks!)

After dinner the investigators meet up again to return to Whitefield's office. The building is open although most of the businesses are closed, including Whitefield's. When the coast is clear Reeves goes to work on the door lock and soon they are inside, searching through the desks and filing cabinet. They find a set of keys (one labeled "Paul" the other blank), Paul's business contract with Whitefield (a 50/50 split), and three life insurance policies on Paul with Whitefield as the beneficiary. Also found is a threatening letter addressed to Whitefield from someone named B. Wexler that demands payment for "services rendered" on the date of Paul's disappearance.

As the investigators ponder the implications a silhouette appears in the glass of the front door. There is a knock, then the door opens without waiting for a reply. A large rock of a man in a hat and trench-coat enters, filling the doorway, asking what's going on in a deep and deliberate voice. A cat-and-mouse conversation is engaged as each party tries to get information from the other. The large man ambles into the room relaxedly and sits on the couch lighting a cigar, while a tense smaller man in a brown suit appears in the doorway holding a hand in his coat pocket. The investigators end up spilling the beans on who they represent while learning these two are gangsters representing Bugsy Wexler. The gangsters are cagey about questions regarding the whereabouts of Paul but claim to be at the office looking for insurance papers between him and Whitefield. The danger of violence bristles in the air with these men so the investigators decide to hand over the papers without a fuss. Taking their leave, the large gangster thanks them (the small one at the door never speaks) and jovially suggests the investigators should go talk to Whitefield at home if they want to find out what happened to Paul. 

Whitefield's apartment is in the fancy part of town and Steele tips the doorman $20 to let them in late at night. When the investigators get up to the apartment they never get a chance to try one of the keys they found back at the office as the door is already cracked open. Pushing it wide, they find it was forced and that the whole apartment has been ransacked. In the kitchen, lying on the floor, they find Whitefield beaten to a pulp, but still alive. Barely conscious, he asks to be taken to the hospital. The investigators agree, but not until he comes clean. Giving up all pretense, he points them to some papers on his desk that refer to Woods Estate Rest Home, a luxury sanatorium in upstate New York for clients that wish to remain anonymous. Whitefield decided to have Paul committed after the psychic's latest nervous breakdown, but was concerned about the negative backlash of the press if people found out. (Paul was Whitefield's cash cow after all.) There was also a problem in that Paul didn't want to go away as he was emotionally invested in his crumbing relationship with Velma. Whitefield contrived to use his gangster connections to have Paul kidnapped and disappeared up to Woods Estate. Things started to unravel when the gangsters got antsy about the money owed. "Go find Paul," mumbles Whitefield, "Tell the kid I'm sorry about everything."

In celebration of solving their case, the investigators decide to live it up and stay at the Bristol tonight. Steele stays up late reading Rodger's journal and has the foundational understanding of his world shaken to the core. He learns that the Great Race of Yith are time-traveling aliens that sent their minds from the future destruction of their own world to inhabit the bodies of strange conical creatures on Earth, some 400 million years in the past. They study history by projecting their minds into the future and inhabiting the body of a host for a number of years, observing events. (The host's mind is sent back into the past to inhabit the body of the conical creature, with the memory of the event blanked upon returning to their own body.) There is a loose cult of humans in the present day devoted to aiding the Great Race in their work and Rodgers is a member. As a reward for his efforts, his masters led Rodgers to the discovery of the Pnakotic Manuscripts and are helping him translate the strange book. Rodgers current mission is to find Paul again and kill him. The Great Race is disturbed by Paul's ability to see into the future and do not wish him to alter the timeline of the future apocalypse. 

Saturday, April 7, 1928

The revelation of the historical manipulations of the Great Race leaves Steele sleepless and out-of-sorts the next morning. Regardless, the team resolves to take a train up to Woods Estate Rest Home in hopes of finding Paul. Once at the exclusive sanatorium, persuasion is needed to get past the nurse's desk, but soon the investigators finally meet with Paul LeMond in his room. He is thankful for their efforts in locating him and wishes to be reunited with his mother as soon as possible. His precognitive dreams have shattered his emotional state recently and he no longer feels able to continue his career as a psychic for dilettantes. In particular, he is plagued by a recurring dream of an apocalyptic scenario where a gigantic four-legged creature referred to as the "Beast" ravages human civilization. He vows to stay in touch with the team, sending them correspondence about any of his dreams that may be of interest in their paranormal investigations. Lastly, a relieved Irene LeMond pays the team the remainder of the reward ($1500) for their successful mission.