Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Having defeated Gondolfino and his minions at Castle Lightningpsire, and having transferred their minds back into their own bodies, the party was ready to move on. They just had one problem - the little girl, Jane, who they'd rescued. Confident that the next world they visited would have to be better than one filled with undead, they elected to take her with them. Using the Gatestone, they felt themselves being stretched impossibly thin ...
From the dark, damp interior of the castle, they found themselves transported into a bright, sunny glade. They were standing on a large flat stone that appeared to be a natural feature, in the middle of a clearing surrounded by a hardwood forest. After some investigation, the party set out in the direction indicated by the Gatestone, which appeared to be northeast.


After a few hours of pleasant hiking, they heard a rumbling sound coming from up ahead. As it grew closer, they recognized it as the sound of a truck engine. Moving forward, they came out of the woods onto the shoulder of a blacktop road. Coming up the hill towards them was a truck hauling a load of lumber. Except that the truck appeared to be an antique, like an oversized Model-T.


Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, the party retreated into the woods and let the truck pass, then began to follow the direction it had gone down the road.  After a couple more hours, as the afternoon was growing late, they came upon a town. Deciding to try to look as "normal" as possible, they stopped to take off any chainmail or leather armor they'd picked up, and replace it with their 21st century clothing. They also tried to hide as much of their arsenal as possible, but things like bastard swords are a bit difficult to conceal.


As the party walked up the broad sidewalks of Main Street, they could see several churches, a hardware store, a feed store, a grocery/general store, a café, a newspaper office, and the town hall. Several cars puttered along the streets or were parked along them; most were Model-A’s or Model-T’s, with a few antique Buicks or Plymouths mixed in for variety. There were also a few horse-drawn wagons. The people strolling on the street were dressed in 1920’s era clothing. They eyed the party’s outlandish garb with open skepticism, and several of the ladies sniffed haughtily at the sight of Mary in pants.


The day was growing late, and the party decided that they needed to find a place to stay. But to do that, they'd need money, so Joe took one of Jerry's gold bars and went into the local bank (after first divesting himself of sword and pistol, drawing open stares from passers-by). The bank manager was more than happy to exchange gold for cash, but would need to validate the authenticity of the metal first - could Joe please come back tomorrow? Joe agreed, but asked for the location of a jewelry store. He also learned that the town was Bethlehem, New Hampshire, and the date was June 10, 1928. At the jewelry store, he was able to exchange some rubies and gold for enough cash to cover the party's needs for the immediate future. Mary immediately took Jane off to do some clothes shopping. The banker had recommended the Maplewood Hotel as the finest place to stay, and the rest of the party headed in that direction.


The Maplewood Hotel was a massive four-story Victorian structure just past the northeastern edge of town. The clerk behind the front desk seemed non-plussed by their odd appearance and strange possessions. “Oh, you folks must be with the University expedition. I wasn't aware that Professor Fulcroft was expected anyone else, but that’s all right – the busy season hasn't started yet, and we have plenty of rooms. Professor Fulcroft and the rest of your colleagues are in the lounge – I’m sure they’re anxious for you to join them. Let me just get you checked in." He let each person sign the guest register and gave them room keys. But when he got to Chuck and Ice, he simply said, "And your boys can stay out back in the servants' quarters." The party prepared for an unpleasant confrontation, but after the initial shock, Chuck and Ice shrugged off the racism, and retired to the (quite adequate) servants quarters.


The rest of the party dropped their gear in their rooms and then went to the lounge to check out this "expedition" they were assumed to be part of. They spied a quartet of three men and a woman gathered around a small table in one corner, huddled over a large map. An older man in tweed gestured repeatedly at the map with the stem of his pipe. A young woman with short dark hair in a long skirt and white blouse sat to his left. Across the table was a red-haired young man in his early 20’s, and to his right sat a sturdy looking man with a pencil mustache and slicked back hair. His pants were tucked into tall laced boots, and was smoking a cigarette.

As the party approached, the man in tweed broke off his conversation and gave them a broad smile. “Ah yes, you must be my surprise assistants! Imagine my surprise when the clerk told me that ‘the rest’ of my party had arrived. I wasn’t aware I was missing anyone! A natural mistake, I suppose. I just hope you weren’t offended to be mistaken for stodgy old college professors!” The party insisted they were actually quite interested in hearing more about this "expedition". The man seemed quite excited by their interest.

“Pardon my manners – I haven’t even introduced myself. I’m Dr. Quentin Fulcroft, professor of geology at the University of New Hampshire. This is my niece, Miss Doreen Hastings, who is a professor of anthropology at the University of Massachusetts. This young fellow is Red Barnsford, one of my graduate students. And this is Brett Vanderwaal. He’s quite a noted mountaineer, if you follow those things, but more importantly for my purposes, he’s a very accomplished spelunker.

“Doreen here specializes in gathering the legends of New England’s Indian tribes. She’s heard several legends of an unusual geological formation in this area, and she asked me if I knew anything about it. To my surprise, I hadn’t, and it didn’t appear on any maps or surveys. However Red here is from this area, and he said everyone in these parts had heard of it, even if no one he knew had actually visited it.

“It’s called the Demon’s Mouth, and according to the descriptions, it’s a perfectly circular shaft that descends several hundred feet into the earth. Technically speaking, such a chasm would be described by geologists as a “collapse pit”—a nearly vertical, almost perfectly circular hole. Generally, these are found in volcanically active regions when lava hardens around and over columns of escaping gas. What seems to be a solid part of the lava plain can, in fact, be merely a few feet of rock covering a yawning circular hole hundreds of feet deep. However, the mountains of New England have not been home to any active volcanoes for hundreds of millions of years. I’m not aware of any similar collapse pits anywhere in this part of the United States or Canada. That’s why I became so excited, and decided to mount this expedition. We would be the first scientists to explore this site – in fact, we’d be the first to even map it!”

At this point, Red took up the narrative. “I grew up a little south of here. ‘Round here, the Demon’s Mouth is something you use to scare little kids – ‘You be good, or I’ll drop you in the Demon’s Mouth.’ Older folks say it’s haunted, though I've never heard by who or what. I don’t know anyone who’s actually been there, although everybody agrees it’s east of town, up in the White Mountains. Every so often a hunter will go out that way and never come back, and people will whisper ‘He must have gone to the Demon’s Mouth’, but hunters disappear all the time regardless of which direction they go.” 

As the evening continued and the party kept asking questions, Doreen described her research. “This area was originally inhabited by the Abenaki Indians, but they were almost entirely wiped out by a series of epidemics soon after the first European colonists arrived. There can’t be more than a handful of true Abenaki left alive. However the legends of all the New England tribes speak of a hole in the earth where evil first entered the world. Some say that the Great Spirit was hunting deer spirits, and his spear pierced the earth and stabbed a demon buried there. Others say that a lightning bolt burned a hole into the earth, and released an evil spirit that had been imprisoned there. Still others say that all the poisonous snakes and spiders in the world first emerge from that hole.

“I was doing research at Northeastern University’s library, in Boston, and I came across the diary of one of the first settlers in this area, Josiah Lloyd. He founded the village of Bethlehem in 1732. In his diary, he talks about being befriended by the local Abenaki Indians, and how they helped him and his family survive that first winter. In his diary, he tells how the Abenaki warned him never to go near the “Demon’s Mouth”, which he said they told him was but five leagues east of his homestead. They told him it was an evil place, and all who went there went mad or died.”

She pulled a folded piece of paper from a notebook in front of her. “Now listen to this,” she continued excitedly. “This is from Lloyd’s diary about a year after the Abenaki first warned him of the Demon’s Mouth.” She began to read.

“Winter is fast approaching, and game is scarce. Went far into the mountains following deer spoor but spying none. Came upon a clearing with a greate hole in its centre. This hole was as perfectly round as any welle dug by hand of man, but was a rod or more acrost. I durst not approach the edge, for fear it would give way beneathe my feet. I laid upon my belly and crawled like a snake to the edge, but tho twas midday and the sun strait overhead, I could see no bottom. A cold wind came forth from its depths, so cold I could see my breath tho twas a warm day. Sudden I was seized with greate fear, and heard the screams of the damned crying up from the pit. I lept to my feet and ran with all speede and did not stop until my legs could carry me no more. This must be the evil Demon Mouth that my Indian friends have warned me of. It is a fell place indeed, and Satan must reside there.”

The party offered to join their expedition, and Professor Fulcroft agreed wholeheartedly. He said they planned to leave first thing in the morning, but Mary asked if they could delay for a few hours.  She still had to make arrangements for Jane. She had inquired about girls' schools, but there were none in town. She asked the hotel manager if he knew of anyone who could look after Jane "for a few days" while she was out of town, and he agreed to make some inquiries and set up some interviews for potential nannies.

The party spent a peaceful night. The next morning, Mary interviewed three prospective nannies, and found two who might work out: a grandmotherly widow and a young schoolteacher looking to earn some extra money during the summer break. The party planned to leave most of their money, gold, and gems with Jane as her "inheritance", and Mary tried to explain to her that they would be leaving her and would not be coming back. Jane looked as if her parents had just died a second time.