Who Needs Plans Anyway?
As the mist of Havensport clings to the city like a suffocating shroud, the hunters find themselves once again drawn into the web of darkness. The events of the previous night had hardly faded from their minds when Saturday arrived, bringing with it fresh dangers. The air was thick with foreboding as the group approached the derelict Westbridge Asylum, once the workplace of the infamous Dr. Roswell Sudworth. Whispers about his grisly experiments still lingered like ghosts in the minds of those who dared remember. Now, the hunters sought answers.
Upon arrival, the crumbling façade of the asylum stood silent, yet it was not abandoned. Local kids, their eyes wide with curiosity and fear, loitered nearby, speaking in hushed tones. They warned the hunters of the rough men who controlled the area. Indeed, a group of grim-looking men, calling themselves Longshoremen, guarded the entrance, their weathered faces betraying both menace and resolve. The men spoke with a quiet authority, claiming this part of the asylum as their turf. Their warning to the hunters was clear: stay out.
A tense standoff followed. Dwight, his fingers twitching ever so slightly toward his gun, was ready to end the confrontation right there, in the harsh light of day. The heat of the moment bore down on the hunters, the atmosphere thickening like the shadows that clung to the asylum walls. Violence felt inevitable. Yet something else stirred in the air—something beyond the tension between men.
As the situation simmered, Barney felt it—a pull, a strange sensation that gnawed at the edge of his awareness. His eyes were drawn to a nearby door that the others seemed unable to see. It was nondescript, almost too ordinary, as if hiding in plain sight. Without hesitation, Barney moved toward it, his hand grasping the handle and pushing it open. As he stepped inside, the world shifted. To the rest of the hunters, it appeared as though Barney had simply walked through the solid wall, vanishing into the asylum’s bones.
The others were left standing in disbelief, the unsettling reality that Barney had somehow crossed into something they could not perceive. The hunters, now further unnerved, negotiated their way past the Longshoremen, gaining access to the asylum’s interior with a begrudging promise to meet with a man called Wrench, a figure of authority among the gang.
Inside, the building seemed to breathe with the ghosts of its past—a place heavy with decay, not just of stone but of memory. They wandered the halls, searching for Wrench, but it wasn’t long before they found Barney in a side room. He was not himself. Muttering, his eyes wide but unseeing, he seemed to be caught in a conversation with people who weren’t there. His voice echoed through the otherwise empty room, responding to things only he could perceive. It was clear that whatever force had claimed him when he crossed that invisible threshold was not of this world.
When they finally found Wrench, he greeted them with cold words, warning them that entering the asylum had been a grave mistake. "You’ll find it hard to leave now," he said, his voice carrying a weight that the hunters, at first, dismissed. But as they continued their exploration, they realized the truth of his words. The very walls of the asylum seemed to shift when they entered certain rooms. Doors that had once been behind them now opened into different spaces entirely, hallways twisted, and the asylum itself seemed to conspire to keep them inside.
Then it happened again—Barney, walking through a wall right in front of their eyes. This time, it was too much for the group. The already fraying nerves of the hunters snapped as they watched him vanish once more into the building’s labyrinthine madness. Desperation gripped them as they searched for a way to reach him, but the walls offered no doors, no passage to follow.
The hunters eventually discovered a path into the room where Barney had disappeared. What they found was far worse than anything they had imagined. Barney stood before them, not as himself, but as something else—possessed, or perhaps entranced, reliving the nightmarish experiments of Dr. Sudworth. Instruments were scattered about, and Barney’s hands moved as if controlled by another, reenacting the twisted procedures that had long since stained the asylum with the blood of its victims.
A struggle ensued, though not a long one. The hunters managed to subdue Barney, but the weight of what they had witnessed hung over them like a noose. The asylum, it seemed, was not just a place where horrors were once committed—it was a living entity, still caught in the echoes of the past, dragging anyone who entered into its unholy grip. Barney’s possession was proof of that, and as the group gathered themselves, they realized this would not be their last encounter with the darkness that ruled the forgotten corners of Havensport.
The shadows within the asylum had merely begun to show their true depth.
