The Winthorpe Institute For Dream Research
Episode One | Episode Two | Episode Three | Episode Four | Episode Five | The Music of the Spheres12/05/2019 Episode Four
Monday, 17 April 2017
The Cold Comes
Damien tells Amy and John to go back into the Institute and they back into the building. The masked strangers move aside for something that appears to move between them to the institute.
Damien closes the glass doors and they suddenly start to frost over and a vague web-like pattern forms on them. The temperature drops.
John takes a CO2 fire extinguisher as a weapon, while the frosting, web-like pattern begins to spread around the windows and doors.
Damien tries to use his lighter to burn some of the web and it gives off a strange smell which affects him. He begins to see colours swirling around, then he realises they are concentrating in the ceiling of the Reception area.
They retreat into the kitchen and arm themselves. They see the exit door and windows are also covered in the web-like effect. They see the shadow of someone pass across the window and block the exit door with a chair.
Damien tries to smash the window with a large sauce pan, but the web effect holds the cracked glass together.
The Thing
John tries to use his dark web browser and contacts Sarah, who says the Thing is coming for them. They made her do it. It can’t be stopped – she knows no way to stop it.
Amy tries to focus on contacting Ellen and is aware that Ellen knows something about this. She realises that they need to ward off the power of whatever is happening. She realises that salt, garlic and other natural substances can help against this and starts collecting salt from the kitchen.
Damien uses his aura vision to try to see what is happening and sees a monstrous form is taking shape in the Reception area, a Thing hanging from the ceiling with horrible eyes. It chills him to the bone and he takes a moment, before warning the others.
They try using salt on the web, but it has little effect. However, where the salt falls new web does not grow. They quickly start using the salt to form a barrier to prevent the spread of the web further into the kitchen.
They discuss various schemes to use the gas supply to create an explosion, but they struggle for the right resources to make it happen with the power off in the building.
Damien goes out in search of a cellar and finds the other fire exit door. While passing through reception, he sees that the Thing hanging is growing stronger and the web is spreading fast.
Dead Zone
They realise they don’t have much time before the whole building is overrun and consider where they can go.
Suddenly, they remember that the wing where Winthorpe lives is a “Dead Zone” and hurry up the stairs, where they see through an open door that the upstairs windows have webbed over as well.
They enter Winthorpe’s wing as the power is off and see there is no web on his windows. Below them standing some distance apart are two of the masked strangers.
Damien wakes Winthorpe up and the old man is initially confused and grumpy. He questions them while he dresses. Eventually he is shown the Thing, which is now manifesting on the first floor and slowly moving down the hallway towards Winthorpe’s wing.
John reacts terrified to this turn of events and hides under Winthorpe’s bed.
The Search for SAVE
Winthorpe has incense in a bag at the bottom of the wardrobe and they go around lighting one at each window and door, reinforcing the protection against supernatural attack.
Winthorpe tells them this is the sort of thing that SAVE used to investigate and he welcomed the Institute to his home but insisted they use his name, hoping it would attract the attention of SAVE. Instead it appears to have attracted some sort of cult of animal shamans - Arachne.
Fighting Back
Opening his bag, which has his supernatural investigation equipment, Winthorpe reveals he has a revolver. He steps up to the window and tries to shoot the cultist nearest to them, who has a dog mask. He is not a great shot but the dog cultist raises a sword and directs some sort of magical attack back at Winthorpe.
Damien’s reacts instinctively, ducking and taking out Winthorpe’s legs so he gets down too. The old man is not very agile through and falls painfully, winding himself.
He gets Amy to bring him a chair and hands the gun to Damien, who shots the dog cultist and he falls over. Then he goes to the back window and fires as the bird cultist, who cries in a female voice when she is hit.
The bird cultist waves a wand and suddenly a large raven flies to the window and tries to attack Damien, but he is able to shoot it down. When Damien looks again, she has gone.
He goes back to the front window, to find the bear cultist, who they believe is the leader, dragging away the badly wounded dog cultist.
Damien fires several shots and wounds the bear cultist, but he retreats out of site into the darkness without collapsing from his wounds, taking the dog cultist with him.
There is then a lull period, in which everything is quiet.
Waking from the Dream Web
In the Dream Web building, Sebastian and Gerald have been dreaming about being trapped in a large building with a monster manifesting in it, similar to events in the Institute. Gerald also encountered a young woman who was watching him from behind a waterfall.
They have both now woken up around the same time. Gerald checks his phone for the time and sees several missed calls from John, so he calls him back. John tells him there is a monster taking over the Institute and he is clearly scared and pathetic. Gerald has him put Damien on the phone and tells him about the web engulfing the Institute and the monster manifesting in it.
Damien tells Gerald not to trust anyone, to get up and get out of there fast. Gerald takes off the Dream Web monitor equipment while Sebastian talks to the Orderly, who asks him to note down the details of his dreams.
Gerald tells Sebastian what is going on and they resolved to leave the Dream Web building. Once outside, the Institute is in darkness, but there is no sign of anyone or of any webbing over the Institute building.
Watcher
Winthorpe, recovering from his painful fall, tells them he was a Watcher for SAVE because of the power lying sleeping in the lake. Damien suggests it was not a good idea to invite dream researchers to a place where something powerful is sleeping. Winthorpe says he acted foolishly, but was only trying to make contact with SAVE.
He asks them more about who they are and who they work for. Damien tells them they don’t they are just a group of friends. Winthorpe says they have acted well and remind him of the people he knew from SAVE.
All Clear
Damien hears voices outside the door and realises that the other patients have woken up and are confused about the power outage. He checks and the webbing and the monster have all gone. One couple go down stairs to reception, but there is no one on duty. Instead, they meet Gerald and Sebastian, who are just entering the building.
Damien turns the power back on in the building and they return to Winthorpe’s wing to discuss what to do. The animal cultists must clearly be retreating now and Gerald suggests they pursue them before they have time to escape or recover, but the others are not so sure. They resolve to wait until first light.
While talking about their experiences, Gerald speaks of the girl behind the waterfall. Winthorpe pipes up that there is a waterfall only a quarter of a mile away, part of a stream that flows into the lake. John wonders if that girl is the Sarah he has been talking to on the dark web.
Winthorpe returns to bed, leaving his revolver with Damien.
DataMaster Computer
They resolve to go to the computer tower and Damien steals Winthorpe’s pass, which gets them in there. Once inside, John is in his element and is quickly able to access the DataMaster, which is an elegantly designed series of servers hosting software that is monitoring and storing a lot of sensory information and “Dream Visualiser” is trying to turn that into a video image.
He views back the images from Sebastian’s dreams and around 1am starts to see the image of the Thing slowly forming in amongst the swirling patterns. They are concerned about this thing proliferating and consider how to destroy the DataMaster, but realise that the original code is still available and they will only slow things down.
It will be dawn soon and at some point the Institute staff will arrive for the morning shift. They resolve to head to the waterfall now and see what they find.