Broom recoils as the man turned ghoul fights violently against his restraints. The sudden transformation took her by surprise.
As Rostam raised his spear and dispatched the ghoul she called out "Wait!", but it was too late, the creature had been run through.
She looked at the corpse with pity. "We wonder who he was. He was probably hungry."
After a moment resisting the urge to clean the gurney she carefully checked to see if there was anything of interest that the man may have been carrying before asking "Further North?"
Xander jumped back as the ghoul rose for him, very glad of the restraints, and his ally with the spear. "Ghoul fever? Hmm. I've never heard of any sort of yellow mist associated with it. But that does make me very wary of going outside. If that yellow mist is in ANY way similar to this... that's very bad." He scratches his chin as he looks at the body. "I suppose if he had been strapped down and forced to eat ghoul flesh, one might catch the disease as well. That seems like an awful lot of work for the standard ghoul to go through though."
"Perhaps he was bitten and infected before he was strapped down?"
John suggests.
"I don't have much experience with the undead .... or with any of the other weird things that are happening around here."
"I know I don't want to go outside and breath any of that yellow mist though...."
"...Broom, what did you want to ask him?" said Rostam. "No creatures here have been very forthcoming, possibly deliberately so."
With Rostam easily slaying the bound ghoul, the party was free to continue on out of the large recovery room. Exiting the communal ward's northern door, the party was immediately greeted with the coppery tang of blood in the air. Worn old chairs and small tables set with the scattered pieces of simple games were scattered throughout the large, airy room. A serving hatch in the north wall opened into a darkened space beyond. Vast glass windows dominated the eastern walls, beyond which a jaundiced kaleidoscope swirled hypnotically.
Of perhaps more interest, though, a stream of blood as wide as a small creek flowed across the floor down the hallway to the west, then up to pool on the ceiling, creating a flowing scarlet wall and macabre roof at the end of the hall. The blood appeared to be flowing freely from the wheelchair of a rotund old woman in a faded housecoat facing away from the group, as if looking out the eastern windows.
John holds out a gauntleted hand to caution the others and then slowly approaches the fat lady in the wheelchair to investigate.
Broom looked up at Rostam "We just thought that maybe We could give him something to eat before we killed him. Whether alive or undead, he must have been really hungry strapped to that bed all this time and it might have helped ease his passing with one last meal. There are plenty of corpses nearby. But, that's ok."
She smiled at Rostam before continuing along with the group.
At the gruesome sight in the games room she paused and whispered "This feels like a trap, be careful! We wonder why the blood is flowing upwards? The doctor with the purple mist coming out of her mouth was also bleeding a lot, wasn't she?"
"This looks great," Reine muttered. She'd been looking into the scene while everyone else was dealing with the body in the other room.
"Probably want to stay clear of the blood stream. No way that much blood comes out of one person naturally." She didn't bother to comment on the oddity of the reversed gravity effect. Odd was becoming the norm, here.
Miniel is startled by the sudden ghoul transformation, but before she can react, Rostam gives the poor man a merciful end. She lingers by the bed a bit before leaving, coming into the bizarre sights of the next room. Is there no end to the strangeness that permeates this place?
Xander is really having trouble wrapping his mind around this scene. An inexhaustible blood flow? A reversal of gravity? Curiouser and curiouser. He moves forward just enough to see if the stream is actually blood.
John walked around to the front of the wheelchair and found a gaping wound where the old woman's chest had been, gore pooling and streaming away from her. It didn't look like she had been stabbed or slashed, either- it looked like her chest had exploded from the inside out. Blood and gore welled up out of her chest like an evil spring, flowing down her body to the floor and streaming west like a disgusting creek.
Miniel and Xander both recognized that the effect was another manifestation of the wrongness in the air. The woman's spirit was trapped here with the living survivors, and it was not content to remain quiet.
John pokes the corpse with the tip of his outstretched sword.
Desdemona peered at the bizarre sight from what she considered a safe distance, wondering how to end the haunt. Oddly, she seemed less concerned with the strangeness of the macabre scene than the shadows pooled on the far side of the light they carried.
Her own shadow was behaving, for once.
The corpse didn't react to John's poking. The old woman remained quiet and still but for the river of blood and gore washing out of her exploded chest cavity. Because that's what it looked like to him- her heart had exploded in her chest.
Those familiar with hauntings knew there was often a theme to the cause of death and the form of the haunt. There might be something to the fact that it was her heart that had exploded and a river of blood. There just wasn't enough information to tell, yet.
Desdemona was able to see past the brightened area of her lantern and into the darkness on the other side of the service window. It looked like shelves of medicines, or at least bottles of liquids and powders and pills. There were probably patient files, as well, if it was some kind of pharmacy.
"Be careful Xander!" Broom called out from a little distance away, a hint of worry in her voice.
"Remember, We have Our magic hand if anyone needs something poked or sampled or pushed or moved or anything from a safe distance"
Xander doesn't touch it. He's not even sure it's "real," (Ectoplasm, perhaps? ) though it may be real enough. He gets within a few feet. "Indeed, Broom. This might be one of those cases where a magical touch is far safer." He looks around the room to see if there's anything else that might help them figure out the nature of this haunt and how to remove it.
When nothing jumped out of anywhere to attack them, Reine relaxed her bowstring and entered the room with the others.
"What killed her?" She asked John, "Maybe whatever it was needs to be put down, or poisoned, or..." Reine rounded the wheelchair and saw the mess of the dead woman's chest, "shoved back inside?"
She shook her head. "That's disheartening," she said, but the joke was only halfhearted.
Broom grins "Ok, everyone stand back"
When everyone is away from the blood and body, Broom takes a small cloth from her supplies and stands at the hallway. From roughly 20' away she utters the strange words that just seem to spring into her mind and the cloth floats over to the stream of blood.
Once there, it dabs the blood a couple of times before floating over to Xander for his inspection.
John gets out of the way before Mashiki starts casting.
"I believe this is a haunt, a spiritual manifestation. Latent psychic energy links the spirits of those who died horrific or terrifying deaths to a particular spot. They are quite difficult to permanently get rid of, especially because each one is unique in its cause and effect."
Reine looked over at Xander, looking interested.
"So, you're saying that this..." she waved her hands at the stream of blood and everything connected to it. "This is here because she died in a horrific manner - or that she was terrified when she died? So, like, if she had some kind of disease, and couldn't take care of herself, and everyone just left her here to die, and she knew the disease was going to kill her, and that thought terrified her, her spirit might still be here once the disease actually killed her? And that we have to do something specific to release her angry or terrified spirit? Something specific and somehow related to how she died? Like find the orderly who was supposed to give her her tincture and make him drink it, or something like that?" Reine shook her head in disbelief.
"How in the hells are we supposed to be able to figure that kind of thing out without having been here to see what happened? That's nuts!"
Desdemona raised her lantern, moving toward the pharmacy. "Over here - medicine, and I think there may be patient files. Maybe they can shed some light on that woman's end."
She stepped past the gore as though it were a minor inconvenience, rather than a soul-chilling and macabre supernatural manifestation - but when she reached the pharmacy, she hesitated.
So many dark crannies.
Swallowing, she tried cautiously reaching in to see what she could pick up, her lantern raised like a talisman before her.
Rostam raised one eyebrow at the haunt, then lowered it. "So much death around here, and it seems like we're seeing a series of...trapped souls...and displacements," he said in a low tone. "I wonder what it means. The rubble. I think this place was hit by something like an earthquake, but not of the earth--perhaps something of a dimensional sort."
He strolled near Desdemona, intrigued by the pills and vials, adding his halo to the light of her lantern. "Ah, something I can do," he said. He muttered and the flesh of his skin rippled oddly, in time to his speech.
"Hmm, where is it..." Miniel mutters as she digs around in her pack. "Ah, there!" She pulls out a small, glowing stone , then lightly tosses it into the air, where it starts floating about around the elf's pointy ears. With they way forward illuminated, she carefully steps over the blood trail, not touching anything, and peeks in the service window, then heads over to listen for any sounds beyond the double doors in the north.
As Des, Miniel, and Rostam attempted to cross the blood, the sluggish, thin stream suddenly roared to life, dousing all three of them in the old woman's lifeblood and heart-gore. Miniel was knocked into Rostam as the two of them tumbled toward the inverted bloodfall at the end of the hall.
Blood splashed up onto the walls of the narrow hallway and hemmed the pair in as they struggled against the flow. The blood was impossibly deep, threatening to push the trio under as they fought against the current.
"Dammit!" Reine ducked past John, around the wheelchair, and ran towards Desdemona and the others, looking for a way to help somehow.
"Desdemona!" Reine yelled, hoping that Des could hear her under the gore, "I'm right here! Come to me!"
Desdemona's startled shriek was cut short by the sudden surge of blood. Spluttering and gagging, she reached for Reine, her concerns about the perpetually-angry woman completely dissolved by the gore.
Her shadow flowed out of the stream, and seemed to catch at the shore of the crimson river.
But neither shadow nor Desdemona herself seemed able to grasp the slippery stone, making Reine her best chance.
"Grab this!" Reine flipped one end of the sash she'd taken from the dead man in yellow to Desdemona's flailing hand. As soon as Reine thought Des had a solid grip, she leaned back, hauling her gore-covered companion to (relative) safety.
Rostam continued to splutter in the river of endless ichor.
"Wha..." Miniel's exclamation is cut short as the river of blood suddenly slams into the group trying to cross it. She struggles briefly in the torrent before catching on to a rope thrown by one of the others on solid ground.
Once Des was safely out of the stream, Reine patted her on the back. "Be right back. Got to get the others."
Then she hurried to the corner of the wall next to the bloody pool and let the end of her sash drift into the muck and gore.
"Grab it if you can," Reine called out.
"Don't cross the stream!" Xander yells out as he sees it lash out against Desdemona.
But it was too late and the river of blood had consumed the three of them. Seeing Reine use a sash, he realizes he has a scarf that might be used to the same advantage. "Here! Grab this!"
Broom stood for a moment, transfixed as the odd stream of blood turned into a horrifying torrent of gore. The sight of Xander trying to use a scarf to help out those caught in the deluge shook her free of her revulsion. "Here! Use this!" she called out, handing her broom to the half orc. It was sturdier than a scarf and more easily controlled than a length of cloth on the current.
"What madness has taken ths place?"
Between scarves and brooms, the group managed to pull Des, Miniel, and Rostam out of the churning blood. The instant the three were out of the gore the river turned back into a wide but shallow stream of blood. If it weren't for the blood drenched adventurers and the mess they were making on the floor it might never have happened at all.
Desdemona had lost her lantern in the sudden deluge of blood, and she quickly drew her glowing dagger, gasping as she approached Reine. Perhaps she hadn't given consideration to how it appeared: a blood-soaked and wild-eyed woman, advancing with weapon raised. Rather than do anything unpleasant, however, she merely held the dagger aloft for its light, wiping at her face and leaving red streaks on her brow and cheeks.
"I must thank you - I shouldn't have liked to find out what would happen were I to be swept up into that wat- uhm, bloodfall. Truly, I am in your debt."
For once, the darkness had nothing to say. Perhaps it was well-fed on fear.
Reine gave the smaller, blood-and-gore-drenched Desdemona an odd look. For once, Desdemona didn't see anger reflected in those mismatched eyes.
"You're welcome. Let's just try to stay out of pools of gore in the future, right?"
It may have been a trick of the light, or maybe it was the blood in her eyes, but Des could almost have sworn that Reine had winked at the end of that little speech, just before the taller woman had turned away.
"Broom," Reine asked, "is there any chance you can clean them up? And, I suppose, save some of the slimy stuff in a vial or something for Xander and whoever else is curious?"
"A ghost with real blood," says Rostam. "If we were vampires, an endless food supply, I suppose."
"Vampires aren't real, everybody knows that."
broom's look of concern is immediately replaced by a wide smile "Yes! We can do that." she said enthusiastically before pulling out some cloths and between a little magic and good old elbow grease set about happily fussing over everyone making sure they were all cleaned.
"We won't be able to get down the hall to the other doors until we can find out how to calm the angry spirit."
"Don't look at me .... I mostly just break things."
Reine turned to Xander.
"How do these hauntings things work? You said there's a way to get rid of them, right? Yeah, they're all different, but there's got to be some kind of basic rules, doesn't there? Like, I don't know, clues? Her chest is exploded, and blood is running out of it. Blood, chest, that's the heart, right? Can we... find a heart to put in there? Or maybe she had a heart condition, and didn't get her treatment? Do we stuff a bunch of herbs or medicines in there? What?"
"I don't want to seem like that guy who thinks chopping stuff up with a sword is the answer to every problem, but maybe we 'symbolically' kill her to make the blood stop?"
"Haunts are difficult to harm with physical weapons. We could use positive energy spells against it, though it would lessen our ability to heal ourselves."
Xander scratches his chin in thought. "We need more information. If only we were able to access the cabinet over there. Broom, you can manipulate objects at a distance, yes? Could you pull something from over there?"
Broom momentarily stops fussing over whoever she is currently cleaning off. "Yes! We can do that, as long as it isn't too far"
She gingerly stepped to the edge of the gory trickle and, being careful not to cross it, cast her invisible hand spell.
She stretched out with her physical hand, though there was no real need to do so as the mage hand reacted to her thoughts, and started to pluck whatever was in reach and in view from their places and pulled them over to the group.
As she did so she offhandedly said "If there isn't anything we can use here, John can just walk around behind her and see if there is anything left in the room"
Feeling quite a bit better without blood in her eyes and orifices, Desdemona thanked Broom, then went over to regard the strange dead woman at close range. She showed no particular disgust or concern, beyond a slight wrinkle to her brow as she leaned in close.
"What on Golarion happened to you, miss?" she whispered, no longer visibly upset by her ordeal.
Miniel thanks Broom as she cleans the blood off. It was a good reminder of the need to be careful around the asylum - something went seriously wrong here. And, by the Dawnflower's will, they'd have to drag it kicking and screaming back into normalcy...or die trying, anyways. Either way, it seems like there's a bit of investigating that needs to be done here.