Session 10

Session Report - Played Monday 21st August, 2006

Friday December 13th 1929

With Saunders in Oslo, at a curators' conference on Viking culture, it is left to Withers, Bartlett and Browne to go to court to see Gresty's appearance before the magistrate.

Gresty turns out to be a scrawny man in his 40s, with protuberant ears, a scraggly beard and bad teeth. He appears contrite, and somewhat agitated in court, pleading guilty to the charge of breaking and entering, but not to assault.

Speaking in a strong West Country accent, Gresty says that he has been having trouble sleeping, and on the night in question was walking the streets in a fit of insomnia when he was struck by an impulse to pray - he can't explain why he did it, but he chose to break into Christ Church, Spitalfields, cutting his hands as he climbed through the window, and that he was kneeling at the altar when he was disturbed by a voice. Turning and fleeing in sudden terror he must have accidentally knocked the verger to the ground.

Gresty appears genuinely sorry, and is fined 2 pounds plus the cost of repairs.

As Gresty leaves the court, Bartlett approaches him and introduces himself. Gresty is thrilled to meet his 'friends', and is most interested to hear that they went to Scotland and witnessed (indeed, caused) the death of Montague Edwards. He invites them to his local watering hole, The Plough Inn, for a drink and a chat.

Gresty explains that he is a true servant of 'The Goat' sent here from the West Country to infiltrate the worshippers of Hastur, and that he succeeded briliantly. He is proud of his role in the death of Lawrence Bacon, and reveals that as the housemate and drinking partner of Coombes he was able to learn all of Bacon's plans and work against them.

He says also that he has been awaiting the death of his superior in the Shub-Niggurath cult, Atkinson, so that he can return home to inherit the role of leader, and that now that Atkinson is near death he has been summoned.

Realising that the influence of Hastur was once again strong, he decided to act against it by going to a place sacred to the 'British Gods' and calling upon their aid. He chose Christ Church because as one of the churches of Nicholas Hawksmoor it is in reality a shrine not to 'the carpenter god' but to the true, old gods of Britain.

He sliced his hands open deliberately and called upon 'Shub-Niggurath and Y'Golonac', and was then interrupted by the verger, who he deliberately knocked to the ground in anger and being so interrupted.

At this point, having touched on a personal obsession, Gresty launches into a rambling discourse on Hawksmoor and his churches - going so far as to lead the investigators to Christ Church, where he stands on the pavement outside, excitedly proclaiming his beliefs.

When he calms down, and is offered Bartlett's hip flask, which he drains, Gresty explains that he is about to return to his home at Mercy Hill in the Severn Valley, where 'the woman at Nug's Farm' thinks she is Atkinson's heir, but that he, Wilfred Gresty will inherit.

With this, the now quite inebriated Gresty walks off into the London throng. At last the investigators have a location for the elusive Nug's Farm, and with it Hillary Quarrie.

Saturday December 14th 1929

Bartlett and Browne have booked an early train to Gloucester, but there is a problem. Despite yesterday's promising lead, there is no sign of Mercy Hill on any modern map of the Severn Valley.

As time is thought to be of the essence it is agreed that Browne will head at once to the map room of the British Library and scour old maps for the location of Mercy Hill, and will give his friends the map reference by telephone. If Browne cannot locate it, at least the others can ask locally.

Fortunately, by early afternoon Browne has located a set of 1911 military survey maps of the area, and on them he locates not only Mercy Hill, but also Nug's Farm itself! The buildings that make up these settlements are in fact marked, though not identified, on the latest Ordnance Survey maps, which Withers carries, but oddly the local forest, Goatswood appears to have encroached significantly on them since 1911.

Browne phones the hotel where the others have just arrived and gives them the grid references. They head off to hire a car, but find that nothing is available and end up having to pat a garage owner an exorbitant fee to hire him to drive them to the area in the moening. The only other choice is a daily bus which stops at the village of Clotton, but this does not run at weekends.

Sunday December 15th 1929

Its a bitterly cold morning as the car struggles south along the minor road that heads into the Goatswood region. The driver explains that the people around here keep themselves to themselves and are not well thought of amongst 'decent people', but he's happy to take their money, and asks no questions.

Soon they are passing through grim little villages of ancient cottages, with hardly a sign of people or of commerce. They are dropped off in one of these places, a village called Clotton, which has no pub, no shops and apparently no electricity. The church is a boarded up ruin. The only sign of life is the movement of a curtain, but there is no answer to a knock on that door.

The driver agrees to return, but it must be before dusk, if they are not here when he arrives, we won't wait.

Withers checks his gun and the 2 men head across country to where Nug's Farm is marked on their map. They pass over a footbridge and find themselves following a very old footpath across the icy landscape. The region looks like it hasn't progressed in 200 years - farm machinery is horsedrawn, there is no sign of modern achitecture or amenities. Soon the path passes through a small wood that does not appear on the map.

The wood is thick, and strangely warm. A deep thrumming noise, almost below the range of human hearing, is just audible and starts to bring on headaches. Then the investigators spot a bizarre figure watching them through the trees. Humanoid, with a strangely goatlike face and naked from the waist up, the man, if man it truly is, seems at first to be wearing thickly furred trousers, but in the seconds before he disappears into the trees Withers and Bartlett realise that the fur is his, and that his legs are jointed the wrong way, and do not end in feet.

Realising that they have seen what seems to be a Satyr, Withers and Bartlett prepare themselves for the unexpected. Leaving the wood they see in the valley below a small, but well-maintained farm. Somehow this place seems more healthy, more homely than any other structure around here. On the far side of the farm sits the brooding bulk of Goatswood Forest itself, a long spur of the forest cuts the farm off from Mercy Hill to the North, and the hamlet is not visible from here.

The investigators head for the farm, trying their best to look like innocent ramblers out for a country stroll. In the yard of Nug's farm a labourer is working on repairing some tools. He sees the approaching strangers, enters the house and Hillary Quarrie emerges. The labourer has the inbred, unhealthy, goatlike appearance common to Goatswood locals, and reminiscent of Wilfred Gresty, but Hillary is a normal, quite attractive woman, albeit somewhat dowdily dressed in overalls and boots.

As the investigators draw closer, Hillary whistles and 3 huge mastiffs (Pig, Bull and Walter) emerge from the house and stand by her. Hillary hails the strangers and asks what brings them to this place on such a cold day.