ALTAR
You find yourself back at the spooky altar, and to your amazement, the candle has lit itself! It glows with an eerie, unnatural dark flame, casting wicked-looking shadows onto the photos of the six suspects. You’ve never been more certain. This is a spell, but an incomplete spell. Blood-red wax spills down onto the photo of Elsie beneath the candle. You close your eyes, and a voice speaks to your mind “torch the murderer!” The voice is that of an angry man, no… an angry father. It looks like you’ll need to choose which photo to burn in order to banish the murderer’s spirit.
Are you sure? You wouldn’t want to damn the wrong spirit! If you’re sure, enter the special codeword here to proceed:
You stare at the unsettling blood-red candle dripping wax onto the photo of Elsie beneath it. The dark flame illuminates the six photos behind it, yet seems to darken the rest of the room, sapping all that’s good and light and weighing down the air. You take a swallow, and a metallic taste forms in your mouth, growing more and more present as you continue to stare at the dancing flame. You turn to get the attention of your new-found acquaintances, but they’ve vanished! In their place are the six victims, gasping for breath in their dying moments! Their eyes are bloodshot! Their mouths are agape yet they’re unable to scream! They’re all staring at you! The candle’s dark flame extinguishes itself and you’re thrown into utter darkness and then… you’re back. The altar stands before you, the dark flame casting wicked shadows on the six photos behind it.
You scan the six photos on the altar, straining to determine which one of them could have committed this heinous deed.
Ah yes, the salesman! You always thought it was funny how he ended up in such a predicament. What bad luck! As your drinking buddy recalled, the salesman’s name started with an “O”. Odie? Otis? No… it was Otto! Otto the Salesman! He sold something creepy… was it dolls? That sounds right. Toys like that were big business back then, as it was easy to get a hold of cheap knockoffs and relabel them as brand name products to sell to unsuspecting families. As the story goes, Charles McDermott was away on business, and Mrs. McDermott and family had headed toward town in their car for an errand when their vehicle broke down. A storm started to roll in when lo and behold – Mr. Otto happens by and offers to give them a lift back to the house! They invited him in, and that’s where he was found days later, poisoned to death! The poor man, he must have thought he was going to make an easy sell.
You remember your buddy telling you about the Aunt. Jane was her name, and she was Charles McDermott’s sister. She lived in the house along with some of the others, having moved there after something terrible that happened to her daughter. Rose was her daughter’s name, and she was kidnapped. Your drinking buddy claimed it was likely Jane’s husband who took the child, but by all other accounts, he had died years earlier in a traffic accident. Oh, and then there was the note. A sinister and strange note left behind at the scene of the kidnapping, reading something along the lines of, “The curse will get you all!” Sounds like something straight out of a horror movie! Anyway, after a failed suicide attempt, her brother Charles insisted she move in with him and his family. Little did he know he’d be sealing her fate, condemning her to a horrible death by poison along with the others!
Your drinking buddy had some funny things to say about the brother. It was Elsie’s older brother, of course, or stepbrother, really. He was the son of Vera McDermott, some out-of-town babe who had married Charles after his first wife’s untimely death. Oh, the funny thing is that his name was Virgil! Isn’t it weird to think of a little boy named Virgil? Well, it was certainly funny when your buddy told you about it. Anyway, young Virgil was a bit of a hellraiser, always getting into trouble. In typical teenage fashion, he would often lock himself away in his room and write angsty entries in his journal about how much he hated his family. Well, that last part might not be true, but it probably happened. Had he stayed locked in his room he might have survived, but like the others he was found poisoned to death under highly mysterious circumstances.
The neighbor’s name was Birdie, and your drinking buddy described her as an old lady with a grudge against the family and a strong desire to get even! As he explained it to you, Birdie’s father had originally built the house you’re in now, and she had grown up here and inherited it after his death. After hitting some financial hardships though, Charles McDermott had taken advantage of Birdie and managed to purchase the house for a criminally low price. It’s said that once Birdie realized how bad she had been swindled, she never got over it, constantly making her presence known at the house to complain about everything a neighbor possibly could, anything to make the McDermott’s lives miserable! She was probably there that night, complaining about how the grass wasn’t green enough, or how the children had been playing too noisily in the afternoon, when she too was poisoned to death along with the others!
There was a man renting an empty room at the McDermott House when the deaths happened, and he had somehow gotten caught up in the mayhem. Emmett was his name, and as your drinking buddy said, he was probably some sort of criminal. That doesn’t mean he was a bad person, though. He probably just ran upon some hard times, made some mistakes, and was needing to lay low for a while. Nothing wrong with that, we’ve all been there. From what you heard, Emmett mostly kept to himself, occasionally joining the family for dinner or to help with a stray errand here or there. He had been living with the McDermotts for about a year, and had formed a sort of friendship with Elsie during his stay, often playing word games and dishing out riddles for the child to solve. Where was he from and where was he going? Now that’s a riddle as puzzling as the poisoning deaths themselves, an incident Emmett himself was present for firsthand.
Ah Mrs. Vera McDermott. Your drinking buddy said she was Charles’ “super hot” second wife, but that she was “stuck up” and not liked by many. Apparently, Charles had gone off on a business trip, and when he came back Vera was with him along with her weird son, Virgil. Rumor has it she murdered her first husband, but that’s always the rumor, isn’t it? Allegedly, she was very affectionate towards Charles and her son, Virgil, but not so much Elsie, Charles’ daughter from his previous marriage. From what you heard, she was cold towards pretty much everyone else in the house, resenting the need to care for Charle’s sister, Jane, and having a deep hatred for the lodger, Emmett, for fear that he would be a bad influence on her son. She must have been livid the night she died, with Charles being gone and her house full of not just the children, but the neighbor, the lodger, the aunt AND the salesman! Are you sure she didn’t just die of anger?
You stare at the unsettling blood-red candle dripping wax onto the photo of Elsie beneath it. The dark flame illuminates the six photos behind it, yet seems to darken the rest of the room, sapping all that’s good and light and weighing down the air. You take a swallow, and a metallic taste forms in your mouth, growing more and more present as you continue to stare at the dancing flame. You turn to get the attention of your new-found acquaintances, but they’ve vanished! In their place are the six victims, gasping for breath in their dying moments! Their eyes are bloodshot! Their mouths are agape yet they’re unable to scream! They’re all staring at you! The candle’s dark flame extinguishes itself and you’re thrown into utter darkness and then… you’re back. The altar stands before you, the dark flame casting wicked shadows on the six photos behind it.
Ah yes, the salesman! You always thought it was funny how he ended up in such a predicament. What bad luck! As your drinking buddy recalled, the salesman’s name started with an “O”. Odie? Otis? No… it was Otto! Otto the Salesman! He sold something creepy… was it dolls? That sounds right. Toys like that were big business back then, as it was easy to get a hold of cheap knockoffs and relabel them as brand name products to sell to unsuspecting families. As the story goes, Charles McDermott was away on business, and Mrs. McDermott and family had headed toward town in their car for an errand when their vehicle broke down. A storm started to roll in when lo and behold – Mr. Otto happens by and offers to give them a lift back to the house! They invited him in, and that’s where he was found days later, poisoned to death! The poor man, he must have thought he was going to make an easy sell.
You remember your buddy telling you about the Aunt. Jane was her name, and she was Charles McDermott’s sister. She lived in the house along with some of the others, having moved there after something terrible that happened to her daughter. Rose was her daughter’s name, and she was kidnapped. Your drinking buddy claimed it was likely Jane’s husband who took the child, but by all other accounts, he had died years earlier in a traffic accident. Oh, and then there was the note. A sinister and strange note left behind at the scene of the kidnapping, reading something along the lines of, “The curse will get you all!” Sounds like something straight out of a horror movie! Anyway, after a failed suicide attempt, her brother Charles insisted she move in with him and his family. Little did he know he’d be sealing her fate, condemning her to a horrible death by poison along with the others!
Your drinking buddy had some funny things to say about the brother. It was Elsie’s older brother, of course, or stepbrother, really. He was the son of Vera McDermott, some out-of-town babe who had married Charles after his first wife’s untimely death. Oh, the funny thing is that his name was Virgil! Isn’t it weird to think of a little boy named Virgil? Well, it was certainly funny when your buddy told you about it. Anyway, young Virgil was a bit of a hellraiser, always getting into trouble. In typical teenage fashion, he would often lock himself away in his room and write angsty entries in his journal about how much he hated his family. Well, that last part might not be true, but it probably happened. Had he stayed locked in his room he might have survived, but like the others he was found poisoned to death under highly mysterious circumstances.
The neighbor’s name was Birdie, and your drinking buddy described her as an old lady with a grudge against the family and a strong desire to get even! As he explained it to you, Birdie’s father had originally built the house you’re in now, and she had grown up here and inherited it after his death. After hitting some financial hardships though, Charles McDermott had taken advantage of Birdie and managed to purchase the house for a criminally low price. It’s said that once Birdie realized how bad she had been swindled, she never got over it, constantly making her presence known at the house to complain about everything a neighbor possibly could, anything to make the McDermott’s lives miserable! She was probably there that night, complaining about how the grass wasn’t green enough, or how the children had been playing too noisily in the afternoon, when she too was poisoned to death along with the others!
There was a man renting an empty room at the McDermott House when the deaths happened, and he had somehow gotten caught up in the mayhem. Emmett was his name, and as your drinking buddy said, he was probably some sort of criminal. That doesn’t mean he was a bad person, though. He probably just ran upon some hard times, made some mistakes, and was needing to lay low for a while. Nothing wrong with that, we’ve all been there. From what you heard, Emmett mostly kept to himself, occasionally joining the family for dinner or to help with a stray errand here or there. He had been living with the McDermotts for about a year, and had formed a sort of friendship with Elsie during his stay, often playing word games and dishing out riddles for the child to solve. Where was he from and where was he going? Now that’s a riddle as puzzling as the poisoning deaths themselves, an incident Emmett himself was present for firsthand.
Ah Mrs. Vera McDermott. Your drinking buddy said she was Charles’ “super hot” second wife, but that she was “stuck up” and not liked by many. Apparently, Charles had gone off on a business trip, and when he came back Vera was with him along with her weird son, Virgil. Rumor has it she murdered her first husband, but that’s always the rumor, isn’t it? Allegedly, she was very affectionate towards Charles and her son, Virgil, but not so much Elsie, Charles’ daughter from his previous marriage. From what you heard, she was cold towards pretty much everyone else in the house, resenting the need to care for Charle’s sister, Jane, and having a deep hatred for the lodger, Emmett, for fear that he would be a bad influence on her son. She must have been livid the night she died, with Charles being gone and her house full of not just the children, but the neighbor, the lodger, the aunt AND the salesman! Are you sure she didn’t just die of anger?