Room 237
Room 237 is notable for the fact that its key is sitting in the lock, perhaps carelessly forgotten by the housekeeping staff.
Well, okay, that and the overpowering feeling of a lurking evil presence. But the key was the first thing you noticed.
You unlock the door and step inside. The room seems normal, at least within the standards set by the 1970's "orange and brown" school of interior design. The bed is neatly made, and you spend a happy moment appreciating the fact that the Agency didn't bother to outfit you with one of those ultraviolet gadgets that show you every stain that was ever perpetrated on a room ever.
Then you turn to face the bathroom door. The bathroom, you think grimly, is always the worst.
You open the door, and the presence of evil hits you like a slow-moving tidal wave. The fluorescent lights cast a flickering, sickening pallor over the avocado-green fixtures. There's no curtain obscuring the bathtub. You think you can see something lying in it.
As you step toward the bathtub, the evil presence you've been feeling resolves into an all-too-physical odor. Rotten meat. Gardenias. The rotting-fruit stench of an infected, pus-leaking wound.
You aren't surprised to find a dead body in the bathtub. You are surprised to find that she's quite lovely. Could've been the homecoming queen. She lies there motionless, naked, wrapped in plastic -- the shower curtain, apparently. You push the plastic sheeting aside, and a cursory glance shows no obvious wounds. Not even any decomposition. She could be mistaken for being asleep.
Where is that smell coming from?
You examine her face. There's something about her that you find strangely familiar. A stream of women's names float across your mind. Theresa? Laura? Caroline? You can't remember who any of them are, but you're pretty sure none of them are her.
| Carefully Inspect the body |
You carefully grasp her chin with your hand and gently turn her head from side to side, checking for cuts or abrasions. Her neck makes a creaking sound as rigor mortis resists the force. You don't see anything unusual, but then, your vision is starting to get slightly hazy. It's hard to think; your head feels like it's packed with cotton balls. That smell! How can something smell so sweet and still be so horrible?
Your thoughts dissolve into a muddled blur. Leaning in closer to her face. So calm. So innocent. Her arms slowly reach up to hold you. Sweet, cool breath. Her lips press gently against yours, then more firmly. You brush the hair at her temple with your fingers.
A clump of stringy gray hair pulls off in your hand.
You try to pull away, but she resists. Ragged nails claw at your back. You jerk away, fall back onto the floor. She laughs, a mad wheezing cackle. Her body is ancient, sagging, green. Withered flesh. Weeping sores. You scramble backward, crablike, unable to look away as she climbs out of the bathtub.
You bump into the sink, grab it, clamber to your feet. She chases you out of the bathroom, laughing, howling. She's on your heels as you race through the bedroom. Her clawlike fingers narrowly brush your collar as you dive out of the room, slam the door, turn the key.
You keep running down the hall. The carpet's black and white zig-zags blur to gray. The red curtains covering the walls shift in the breeze as you sprint past. You tear open the hotel's front door and dive outside, screaming, into a snowbank.
Much later, you wake up, back in the hedge maze.
You're going to need some new trousers.
With 4+ Stench Resistance (including familiars):
You take a moment to steel your nerves. You've inspected dead bodies before, and many in far worse condition than this. The dire odor is puzzling, but a bad smell can't hurt you.
The body appears untouched; you can't immediately determine the cause of death. Blunt force trauma to the back of the head perhaps, but you don't wish to disturb the body moving it into a position where you could verify that visually, and probing a gaping skull wound with your fingers would be contrary to protocol. And gross.
One last thing to check.
You carefully pull up her left arm, pushing gently against the stiffness so as to not tear anything, then take a pair of thin tweezers from your jacket pocket. Wishing you had Agent Stanley's magnifying device with you, you lean in close to peer carefully at her left hand.
You slide the tweezers underneath the left ring fingernail, and pull out a tiny square of paper. Turning it over, you find that it bears a typewritten capital <"G">.
Just as you expected.
You carefully put the tiny scrap of paper in an evidence bag and stash it in your wallet, then turn out the lights and close the bathroom door behind you as you leave. You lock the door to room 237, take the key, and leave it on the check-in desk in the lobby on your way out the front door.
You spend several minutes breathing deeply of the fresh, cold mountain air, clearing that smell out of your sinuses. Phew. That was a rough one. Worse than the time all those hippies asphyxiated when a sewage pipe ruptured and filled their sweat lodge with methane.
You head back to the hotel, but another freak gust of wind blows up, and you find yourself in the hedge maze again. Ugh.
| Return to the lobby |
- Occurs after selecting "Investigate Room 237" at Lost in the Great Overlook Lodge.
Notes
- The letter on the tiny square of paper will be the first letter of the player's name.
- Stenchform has no effect.
References
- As with nearly everything else in this zone, this adventure references the TV drama series Twin Peaks, which details the endeavors of an FBI Agent hired to solve the mystery of a murder in the town of Twin Peaks, Washington. Early in the series, the agent finds a tiny slip of paper with a single typewritten letter under the victim's corpse's fingernail.
