text: [Themes: horror, Lovecraftian]
  
  > describe your surroundings
  Outside Pub (Jason Lautzenheiser)
  As the street runs east through this side of town, it narrows as the jagged rooftops on either side of the road reach out to each other. To the north is the pub. You can continue to the west where you see a bridge. As you pause on the narrow brick sidewalk which lays unevenly along the ugly, half-crumbling brick walls, you hear a train whistle in the distance. A sign hangs loosely above the pub entrance and to the side is a murky window.
  
  You can see a newspaper box here.
  
  > get newspaper
  You pick one of the old yellowed papers off of the stack.
  
  > look at the paper
  Which do you mean, the yellowed newspapers or the repaired page?
  
  > look at the coffee
  The swirls in your cup form a gentle ripple. Lack of a symbolic image means that you have accomplished everything you must in your current environment and should move on to find new challenges in order to grow as a person.
  
  > check what you're carrying
  You are carrying:
  some yellowed newspapers
  loose bricks
  a rusty piece of metal
  an employee ID card
  a shard of shattered carapace
  a soggy tome
  a long hooked pole
  a grimy rock
  a dead battery
  a moldy, waterlogged journal
  a small, rectangular battery
  an antique locket (being worn and closed)
  The Dollmaker's Journal
  a repaired page
  a trolley schedule
  a trolley pass (being worn)
  Twin Hearts Between the Planes
  a pamphlet of home listings
  a Jansport backpack (being worn and open)
  a hidden pocket (open but empty)
  a key pocket (open but empty)
  a book pocket (open)
  a postcard of Big Ben
  the diary of Phyllis Cragne
  The Modern Girl's Divination Handbook -- Volume Three
  a side pocket (closed)
  a trash pocket (open but empty)
  a backpack features guide
  a book list
  Peter's jacket
  a faint chill (haunting you)
  a cast iron spire
  a waterproof flashlight
  a giant milkweed leaf (being worn as a mask)
  a pull-string doll
  a glass jar containing an insect
  a half-full styrofoam coffee cup
  a familiar gold wristwatch
  a brass winding key
  
  > go to the north
  The Invisible Worm (Sam Kabo Ashwell)
  A dimly-lit tavern, old enough that all its straight lines have worn or warped slightly out of shape, and everything feels cluttered and a little too small; you've had apartments with living-rooms bigger than this. Heavy, dark beams support a low ceiling, and the walls are crowded with ancient farm tools and yellowing photographs. A cramped doorway, south, leads back outside.
  
  The bartender impassively surveys the room. He might have raised his eyebrows slightly in acknowledgement as you entered, but you wouldn't swear to it.
  
  Old-timers monopolize the fireplace nook; a straggle of teenagers hunch in a corner.
  
  The old-timers opine on the time Reverend Wilcox caught his daughter in the dairy with Reverend Hagburn. Somehow this relates to one of the old-timers owing another money.
  
  > look at the photographs
  Floods of sepia; you don't think there's anything dating from after the 1940s. It's mostly portraits and group shots; their subjects look world-weary and frayed around the edges, and nobody seems comfortable. The women are uncertain, prepared to be angry, as though the camera is being wielded by an unfavored nephew who can't be trusted with the exercise; the men are ciphers, eyes tired and defensive in a mask of weathered flesh.
  
  The old-timers opine on how the ghost of a runaway slave wrought vengeance on Makepeace Osgood.
  
  > look at the tools
  The difference between a museum and a midden is mostly organisation. This falls about halfway in between: at some point someone rummaged through a series of old sheds and barns, grabbed anything with no useful future, and pegged it to the wall. You can identify about half of it, horseshoes and scythes and the like: the remainder suggests either the management of very odd livestock, an art student newly possessed of a welding-iron, or highly specialised forms of sexual deviancy.
  
  Most of it is affixed to the wall with wire and nails; but just about at eye level, on the wall facing the bar, there's a well-used whetstone that's just balanced on a couple of wooden pegs.
  
  The old-timers talk about the time Meg Martin's daughter lived in sin with Abe Crackstone's son.
  
  > examine the whetstone
  A dark grey, smooth whetstone, great for sharpening any cutting implements.
  
  The old-timers squabble over the time Virgil Thursley had a warrant issued for adulterating maple syrup and died in a shoot-out near Bear Flats.
  
  > About you
  As good-looking as ever.
  
  You bear the trauma of a woman who has been eye to eye with an eburnean pond kraken.
  
  The old-timers squabble over the time Adam Collamore burned down James Crowley's nephew's chicken-shed. Somehow this relates to one of the old-timers owing another money.
  
  > take the whetstone
  Nothing about the bartender's manner suggests tolerance of rude tourists. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to steal the decor while he's watching.
  
  The old-timers discuss the time Dusty Poole's damn fool son came at Farmer Buxton with a grain flail to impress a girl.
  
  > examine the coffee
  The swirls 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.
  
  > look athe old-timers
  The three old boys around the fireplace - one pipe-smoker, one roll-up, one Lucky Strike - are fumigating the premises and talking shit about their families and neighbors.
  
  The old-timers talk about the sad tale of how Parson Norris ran off to Syracuse to get famous, got involved with homosexuals, and was born again and returned home. In the process they insult one another in ways that would be fatal to any friendship you've ever had.