text: [Themes: Comedy, Lovecraftian]
  
  > Go downward
  You clamber cautiously into the grave, gagging at the stench, and don't relax until your feet touch the ground. Your footing is unsteady here; the walls seem to be dissolving before your eyes, slick with iridescent runoff that reminds you of gasoline. To the west is the grave of Zadie Cragne, you think, and to the east is the grave with the vandalized headstone; yet your sense of direction down here is limited at best.
  
  The dirt to the west is dissolved more than the rest. Something pokes through the mud there.
  
  > Dig
  Which way do you want to dig?
  
  > examine west
  You see nothing unexpected in that direction.
  
  The rain pounds your back and rattles your bones. Looking down, you realize you're knee-deep in water already. Around you the mud groans ominously.
  
  > dig west
  The mud crumbles away. You hold your breath, expecting a whiff of rot, a crumbling coffin no longer than your arm. But there is nothing--nothing but a pewter box too small to be a coffin.
  
  You hope, at least, it's too small to be Zadie's coffin.
  
  > get pewter box
  You scoop the box out of its crumbling niche. A whiff of stale air hits you, and you recoil. Yet the box remains safely cradled to your chest. Something inside it thumps, as if to the rhythm of your heartbeat.
  
  You can see no further into the grave.
  
  The rain pounds your back and rattles your bones. Looking down, you realize you're knee-deep in water already. Around you the mud groans ominously.
  
  > Go upwards
  You get out of the flooded grave.
  
  Cragne Family Plot (Mark Britton)
  A cramped and neglected place on unwholesome yellow soil. Over the years the gravestones have shifted like teeth in an overcrowded mouth, collapsing one atop the other. Crabgrass pokes up limply between them, urine-yellow and parched-looking. The earth mounds up around the shabby crypt, as if it's sunk over the years into the Vermont topsoil. You wonder who would want to be buried here--and who would willingly consign their ancestors to this brutal place. Perhaps that's why it's been so neglected.
  
  Four squat columbariums stand north, east, south, and west of here. A winding and uncertain path leads southwest. By stepping over collapsed gravestones and bleached obelisks you can go northwest. Carefully. You could also enter the crypt from here, if you were able to open it.
  
  Three graves nearby draw your eye. One headstone teeters drunkenly, half overrun by lichen. One headstone has collapsed entirely. An adjacent plot stands open, overlooked by a blank headstone. The grave within is flooded almost to the top with bubbling rainwater.
  
  > examine the pewter
  A dull pewter box, unaccountably heavy. Your gaze skids over the engravings. Damp and glistening, they look very nearly alive.
  
  With a thunderous squelch the walls cave in and the grave floods again; an acrid stink mushrooms up. Your eyes water, your throat tightens. Anything you left in there is probably pretty damp.
  
  > look at the teetering
  A perfectly round face gawps up at you, its eyes and mouth neatly drilled out. Deep gashes score the granite, the name obliterated. You wonder how long it took. You wonder how much hate it took.
  
  Just readable beneath a carpet of lichen is the inscription: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat-" Here the inscription has been pulverized. A line below it continues: "-till thou return unto the ground; for out of it was thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto-" The inscription crumbles away. An entire line has been scraped off.
  
  The quotation's almost familiar, but there's something off-putting about the missing words. They draw the eye like wounds.
  
  > look at collapsed
  The stone is pitted, perhaps acid-eaten. A litter of dead insects and blackened leaves leaks from every cranny. Almost unreadable is the inscription "Zadie Cragne, 1829."
  
  One date. You search in vain for a second, then glance round at the jostling tombstones and wonder how many infants lie beneath.
  
  > unlock the pewter with Key from an the urn
  You unlock the pewter box.
  
  > open it
  You open the pewter box, revealing The Lives of the Roman
  Emperors.
  
  > read it
  --Octavius Lucilius Saturninus, accused of turning Palatine Hill into his whorehouse. Few reliable reports exist from Saturninus's contemporaries.
  
  Fragments of satirical poetry now survive. Until the 17th century, the commentaries of Sextilius were rarely copied and often actively suppressed; they appear on several lists of books condemned by the Papacy. Sextilius's depictions of Saturninus's court are outrageous not for their sexuality, nor for their frank violence. Rape and incest were not unknown in the literary tradition of Imperial Rome, nor in the Imperial court (witness the accusations leveled against Saturninus's predecessor Gaius Lucilius and his daughters, the survivors among whom were exiled by the Salvius family).
  
  Rather, Saturninus was condemned primarily for his offenses against the Roman religious-political complex. The Eastern cult promoted in Saturninus's court did not merely deny the existence of the Roman gods; nor did it "simply" elevate Saturninus and his family to the pantheon. Saturninus is believed to have struck at the very heart of Roman morality, depicting Rome herself in helpless thrall to the Eastern gods--
  
  As you finish reading the passage, your own hands grow cold, and the book briefly frosts over before fading again, leaving traces behind only in the library insignia.
  
  Your reading glasses frost over at the edges. You feel a sharp pain
  
  > examine the coffee
  The clouds in your cup form a Viking longboat. Modes of transportation mean that your current environment presents challenges that can only be overcome by seeking fresh perspectives elsewhere until you're ready to return.
  
  A faint smell of mildew emanates from it.
  
  > Go southwest
  Front Walk (Matt Weiner)
  Cragne Manor looms to the north. Its light gray marble front is marred by a screened-in wooden porch, clearly tacked on well after the manor was built. A gravel path bends around the manor to the northeast and northwest, and the driveway leads south back to town.
  
  By the porch steps is a post with a placard reading "31." A strange little manikin is affixed to it.
  
  A mistlike trolley stop sign reads Purple Line -- Cragne Manor.
  
  > go inside
  Greenhouse (Petter Sjölund)
  Nothing should be growing here anymore — the heating and irrigation have been off for years — but roots seem to have covered everything.
  
  The walls curve inward, forming a huge dome, with a mesh of roots covering it from the floor up to about halfway to the ceiling. Sunlight still breaks through in places, throwing a pattern of bright spots across the room. The roots grow from an enormous tropical tree at the center of the greenhouse, towering all the way up to the ceiling, which it hides behind a thick crown of leaves.
  
  A spiral staircase, seemingly woven of roots, leads to a circular mesh walkway higher up along the wall.
  
  The parrot sculpture protrudes from the roots near the exit.
  
  > look at the coffee
  The swirls in your cup form a kayak. Modes of transportation mean that your current environment presents challenges that can only be overcome by seeking fresh perspectives elsewhere until you're ready to return.
  
  A faint smell of mildew emanates from it.
  
  > examine the coffee
  The clouds in your cup form the engine of a train. Modes of transportation mean that your current environment presents challenges that can only be overcome by seeking fresh perspectives elsewhere until you're ready to return.
  
  A faint smell of mildew emanates from it.
  
  > drop the gloves
  Dropped.
  
  > go north
  You climb the steps to the porch.
  
  Mudroom (Matt Weiner)
  The porch is a mudroom, a place for taking off coats and muddy shoes. The marble front wall seems like a sheer cliff face, the porch like a flimsy shelter built onto it. The front door leads inside to the north.
  
  In one corner of the porch a strangely shaped hook is fastened to the wall. A calfskin coat hangs beside it.
  
  In the other corner of the porch is a small wooden table.
  
  A slightly muddy welcome mat lies in front of the door.
  
  Against the front wall are a pair of blue cloth slippers and a single brown leather boot.
  
  > Wear the calfskin
  (first taking the calfskin coat)
  You put on the calfskin coat.