undergrounds | The Case of Blackthorn Mansion [closed to Apollo, Stiles, and Heiji]

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The Case of Blackthorn Mansion [closed to Apollo, Stiles, and Heiji]

"Dear Mr. Justice,

My family has recently suffered a great misfortune, of whose exact manner I am loathe to discuss by letter. An acquaintance of mine suggested that your law offices may be able to provide some remedy. I pray that this is the case.

Enclosed are instructions to the family estate. I hope you will forgive me for this impersonal manner of address, but if you can at all find it within your heart to lend an ear to my troubles, you would have my eternal gratitude. I shall be waiting for your visit on the date provided.

Best Regards,
Violet Blackthorn."

Heiji looked up from the letter and the swirl of the writer's signature. After a moment, he folded it up, and handed it back to Apollo. "Hey, I've actually heard of these guys. Real old family, used to make a lotta donations. High-society, but now it's down to two or three people."

The neighborhood of Viola Blackthorn's house certainly seemed to be a storied one. One particular house, grey, stately, and slightly dilapidated, rose at the end of the street. It was to this house that they'd been summoned, and it was indeed quite large -- practically a mansion. A heavy oak door served as its entrance, with a lion's head door knocker mounted on its face. The lawn was immaculately kept.

Oddly, they'd been directed to the service entrance, not the main one. Or maybe this was by design and Miss Violet Blackthorn simply didn't want Mr. Apollo Justice and co. using the door meant for high society. In any case, they'd arrived just in time; the sky was darkening with the rain clouds that promised quite a drenching...

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Apollo snorts at the pun, despite himself, but politely covers his mouth even though it's too late. On the upside, at least they were sent down together as a group, and that seemed to be first mistake this lady made. Well, besides the bad put-together plot on this nephew with... whatever was going on.

—Oh okay thanks Stiles.

"... You did not just nominate me for coffin duty. You seriously did not," Apollo bites back, taking out his own phone and turning on the flashlight.

"Alright, j-just have my back." With that, he steps forward, hands already shaking and ready to fight when he walks up to one of the coffins, and realizes he has to use two arms. Well, fuck.

"Stiles, shine your light over here," Apollo instructs, pocketing his own phone before putting full strength into pulling the farthest coffin's lid open.

The coffin's lid didn't so much swing as explode open, spewing its pressurized contents freely out at them. Chunks of thick red, mixed with writhing white tendrils, and...

It was spaghetti. It was like 50 gallons of pressurized spaghetti. Had she planned this.

High above them, a speaker crackled to life. "Did you hear about the Italian chef who died?"

A slight pause. "HE PASTA WAY!" This was followed by loud, high-pitched cackling; clearly their adversary was enjoying herself. "It's too bad I couldn't take care of you with the birdshot, but don't worry. I'm sure you'll find plenty down there to keep you company."

Heiji spotted a hint of a reflection, fumbled around in the spaghetti, and brought out a small key. "...Anyone see a door or somethin' we can unlock?"

Offering light as requested, Stiles almost has a heart attack when the lid slams open at Apollo. In that moment, he is so relieved that he didn’t venture any closer. RIP lawyer dude, it was nice knowing you. Except no vampire comes springing out to suck their blood. Once “Violet” has made her announcement, he slowly approaches and picks a piece of spaghetti off of Apollo’s head.

“Wow.” Shrugging, he dangles it over his mouth before dropping it. “…Could use some serious reheating.”

Thank you, Stiles. Your observation will undoubtedly be critical in helping to solve the current dilemma. As if aware of this fact, he sheepishly begins to look around, phone flashlight leading, for a door. There are none that he can see, so he turns his attention back to the other coffins. Maybe there’s another trapdoor somewhere under them? He tries to push one out of the way with his knees, but it’s totally ineffective. Grunting, he puts the phone between his teeth and uses both arms.

“Nebbermind,” he says around a mouthful of phone. “Nut habbening.”

When he straightens, the phone’s light hits another reflective surface—in the corner of the room, a particular coffin has a keyhole. Stiles glances over at Apollo and Heiji, uncertain.

"Hey, don't eat that stuff," said Heiji. "You don't know where it's been!" Yes, that was the problem, possible food poisoning. He made his way along a wall, looking for seams that might betray another door, but when Stiles spoke up again, he came forward with the key.

"...Well, can't be any worse than sticking around here, right? Here goes..." Heiji shoved the key in the lock, took a deep breath, and shoved the lid off. Inside was a body.

Well... a body that had been dead for a while and was now just a skeleton covered with rotted cloth. A yellowed, brittle piece of paper was clutched in one hand.

"I know that the family has its traditions, but she is far too unstable to remain at liberty, even in death. That is why I commissioned the spirit bottle. Take care to hide it away somewhere safe. And for god's sake, don't let anyone open it!

Yours Truly,
Aloysius"

... No one even bothered to offer him a napkin.

It's a good thing Apollo always comes prepared, as he pulls a package of napkins from his back pocket to hopefully wipe most of this mess off. And he's not saying a lot of nice things under his breath, either.

It looks like Heiji's find was a lot more interesting and saved them from another bad ghost pun, but he still makes a face once he sees the corpse. He's seen dead bodies before, but... not skeleton.

He spots the paper however, and cautiously creeps forward before he swipes the paper in a flash and shoots back to a safe distance.

Apollo takes a deep breath before opening it, reading the contents, and trying to make sense of it.

"... We haven't even been here for a half hour and I'm already going crazy. Did they stick that insane lady's soul in a bottle?"

While the other two men are distracted with the note, Stiles stares long and hard at the skeleton in the coffin. There’s a furrow to his brow, a pensive look that doesn’t fade. Something isn’t right here. A handful of spaghetti later, he’s turning around to beam at Apollo and Heiji; he literally just decorated the skeleton’s head with spaghetti hair. Why does anyone take this child anywhere.

“It usually takes a few years for a body to decompose,” he remarks, thinking of what he knows from his father’s line of work. “If that Aloysaurus guy—” It isn’t a dinosaur, Stiles. “—was talking about her, then either she’s been free for ages or someone recently opened it. Maybe. I guess it’s dependent on what the hell a spirit jar actually is.”

Stiles.........

"I think someone woulda noticed it if she was out sooner," said Heiji, brushing a noodle off his shoulder. "I mean, she ain't exactly low-key. I bet that bottle was hidden away somewhere, and someone found it without knowin' what it was. Probably opened it and let her out and then she staged that 'accident'."

Then he brightened. "But if that's true, that bottle might still be intact! Ghosts can't pick up them jars, or they'll get stuck in them all over again." Yeah, maybe if they found it, no one would have to punch Stiles...

As if in response to their conversation, there was a small trickle of dust from one corner of the room. Part of the wall had swung inward just slightly, revealing a tiny crack of light beyond.

No, our goal tonight is to punch Stiles. SOMEHOW.

"So... we have to find this bottle, get to the top floor again, and seal away the ghost? Sounds easy enough." It doesn't.

Apollo carefully pockets the note into his ~~court record~~ pocket, fishing out his phone again for the flashlight. This is the last thing he needed, he had some other work to get done at home.

"Stiles found an interesting piece of information," Apollo starts as he searches for a door. "Miss Blackthorn and her grandson are the only two left. So who the hell is this ghost?"

After he has wiped clean his spaghetti sauced hands on a coffin lid, Stiles resumes poking about the room. The ray of light streaming through the crack in the wall quickly captures his attention, and he wanders in that direction with a thoughtful hum. One shove of his shoulder is all it takes to pry it open, revealing a long but dimly lit hallway. Hoping to save the battery on his phone, Stiles turns off the flashlight app and steps into the corridor.

“The only two left,” he confirms, fingers running along peeling wallpaper, “with the mansion going to the old woman and the money going to the nephew. It definitely would give the lady motive to kill Greg—” Grey. “—and maybe she decided to pop open the spirit juice to help her take him out. I dunno. Ghosts really… I haven’t had a lot of experience with them.”

Like, ever. He’s human, after all.

"Whoever it is, they were obviously around when this Aloysius fella was." Heiji put a hand to his chin thoughtfully as he walked after Stiles. "But they usually call bottles like the ones he's talking about 'ghost jars', don't they? Here in London, anyway. Sounds like a bit of a dated term.

"Given that and the condition of the body and message, this ghost is probably from a while back -- someone who was a thorn in this family's side in the past. Maybe an old, departed family member or an advisor who turned out to be more trouble than they were worth. In that case, it'd make sense for Spooky to feel slighted, right? Maybe want a little revenge? I bet takin' out a Blackthorn and claiming the family fortune seemed like a pretty nice place to start."

It was like Heiji expected to see murder and intrigue everywhere...

"If we can find that bottle, though, that'd be good for us. Ghosts ain't exactly easy to pin down by conventional means. In fact -- " he stopped. There was clearly another room at the other end of the corridor, some kind of library; he could see a row of shelves inside.

But he could also hear something... rumbling?

Apollo stops at about the same time, shining his flashlight down the corridor, listening for a minute, and then turning to Stiles with a smile of his own.

"It's your turn!"

Apollo, you bastard. Not that it really mattered who went first, because if any of them looked up, they'd see little trickles of sand start to fall from the ceiling...

"Um... maybe we should -- "

"Run!"

Which is precisely what Stiles does. Every man for himself! Scrambling for purchase, his shoes squeak along the hallway floor as he hurtles for the library up ahead. He doesn't even look back to check if Apollo and Heiji are going to make it. He dives inside the room and crashes into a bookcase, which rains down titles on him in a mini-avalanche.

... We are the absolute worst example of teamwork.

But Apollo doesn't think twice, he definitely does freaking run, but not enough to make himself fly into a bookcase, like Stiles so gracefully presented. He crashes into the floor instead, looking behind at the sand that keeps pouring onto the floor and piling as the ceiling keeps... doing whatever it's doing. Okay, what the actual fuck!?

"... So does the ghost have a pun for this too or was this just a cheap scare?" Apollo asks as Stiles buries himself into a mountain of books. Yeah, good going.

The sand came after them in a torrent -- HOW MANY SANDBAGS' WORTH WAS THIS. However many it was, Heiji slammed the door shut against it after the last of them had reached the library. A solid thump as the leading edge of sand hit the back of the door. Then all was silent. For now, anyways...

"No wonder these bozos are runnin' out of cash! Wait, where's Stiles -- oh." Stiles. Stiles. Get out from under that bookvalanche. In fact, if he hadn't gotten himself out yet, Heiji was going to help him.

The library was a pretty creepy place, all told; most of the large room was filled with bookshelves, which were interrupted at odd intervals by large framed portraits. A bunch of old dead people mostly, presumably all storied members of the Blackthorn family. As they proceeded through the library, these would become smaller and less grand, some even mounted with multiple pictures to one wall. The last set was hung inside a single alcove: a long row of metal-framed photographs. At the very end, past the photo of Violet and (presumably) Grey, there was a dark spot on the wall that didn't quite match the rest of the faded wallpaper.

Muttering a high-pitched, embarrassed word of gratitude to Heiji for the assistance, Stiles frees himself from Book Mountain. As the three continued through the area, Stiles trailed behind with an armful of...you guessed it, books. He thumbs through them rapidly, eyes scanning pages, only to toss them over his shoulder once they proved useless. By the time they reach the alcove, there is a trail of book-breadcrumbs leading back into the library; Stiles walks right into Apollo, nose buried in one book. It's a journal, and an old one at that.

"Huh? Why are we stopping? Did we find the bottle?"

No, Stiles. We found wallpaper.

Heiji plucked the portrait of Grey off the wall and turned it around. "November 14, 2015. What the --"

He did a bit of a double-take as he saw the trail of books. "Remind me never to lend any books to you. Whatcha got there?"

Interestingly, Stiles would find that a ways into the journal, the pages ceased. Or rather, that someone had cut a hole straight through the rest of the pages, forming a sort of compartment. Inside that compartment was... a small metal photo frame?

Apollo stumbles when Stiles runs into him, though he doesn't so much as even glare at Stiles, way too focused on the book he just opened. And, evidently, invites himself to pull that photo frame right out.

... More clues, it seemed like. This was going to be more complicated than finding some dumb bottle.

"Okay. I wonder if this frame was covering that spot?" Only a guess, put Apollo holds it in place, over the spot, checking if it would fit.

He then spots the date Heiji just found (dated in the future? what?), so he turns around the frame to check his.

"I gotta give it to Stiles, he's finding some pretty good stuff."

Grasping the book by either cover end, he shakes it vigorously over the ground to ascertain there’s nothing else hidden in it. Then it gets chucked over the shoulder as well to join its abandoned brethren. Apollo is quickly rising in the ranks of People Stiles Likes, and he cheerily grins at the lawyer in response to the praise—as if they hadn’t all nearly been murdered twenty minutes ago.

“So, uh, did we travel into the future when we fell into the basement?” Peering at Grey’s portrait, he frowns at the wall. “Why would it be dated months ahead of time? I don’t get it.”

"... Maybe something is due by this date?"

Most likely, anyway.

When Apollo tried placing the picture in the empty spot, nothing happened. On the other hand, when he flipped the picture around, there was another date: July 8, 1944.

Hmmmmm.

"How much you wanna bet this frame should have ghosty's picture in it?"

Sliding past Apollo to examine the wall, he glances at the row of portraits before digging his fingernails under the peeling edge of the wallpaper. Then he starts to tear it off, wondering if the darkened splotch has a clue on the actual plaster.

"Is there a missing frame on the wall over there? It seems like they've been hung up in chronological order or something."

The wallpaper peeled off. On the other side of the wallpaper was... wallpaper backing. No help there.

"Hold on, let's think about this," said Heiji. "If the ghost's picture goes on this wall, then they were probably a member of the family. And if they're in chronological order, then they must belong somewhere in the middle of these pictures, not at the end. Someone must've removed their photo and shifted the other ones over to 'erase' them from the family tree. That's why there's an empty spot after Grey."

"But why would they erase themselves from the wall? I mean, did they expect to throw us to the bottom of the house?"

Apollo looks at the dates again, a frown on his face. "I guess we have to know exactly what we're dealing with before we go and seal it. The family didn't like her at all, we know that much."

Heiji started moving Violet and Grey's pictures to the end just as the lights flickered. There was a brief crackling noise from what sounded like a speaker somewhere in the library.

"Yes, why would anyone waste their time doing something like that? Now get away from that wall, you little vermin, or I'll remove you myself!"

There was a slight pause.

"I can't sand nosy houseguests!"

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