201: Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
Synopsis
Deadlight opens in September 1925, about three months after the events of Mister Corbitt. The investigators are driving through one of the worst storms any of them have seen, on a washed-out road near the outskirts of Dunwich, Massachusetts. They are roughly eight hours out from Arkham and still hours from their destination, the town of New Jerusalem (see The Fall of New Jerusalem). Everyone is still recovering, in body and in mind, from the night in Bernard Corbitt's basement, and this time they have come better prepared and with the occult books they took from his house. Billy McConnell is driving the box truck, Major Bakersfield is riding up front, and Tallahassee Turner, Dom Druncard and Simeon Kantstandyerbitz are in the back, playing cards.
The radio gives a news update on the aftermath of the Corbitt case. Tomaszewski keeps confessing and the police are piecing the story together from his ravings, while Corbitt has said almost nothing since his arrest and his lawyer keeps filing injunctions. The mayor is distancing himself from his former friend, and the report mentions a commendation for "hero cop" Billy. Before it finishes, the broadcast starts to distort and whine under heavy interference, and the Major switches it off.
Peering through the rain, Billy suddenly finds a pale, wide-eyed woman in a yellow sundress standing in the road. He spends a point of Luck to make his driving roll and just manages to swerve around her. The woman does not react to anyone. She is soaked, in shock, bruised on the head, bleeding from the mouth, and her dress and stockings are torn. Tallahassee fetches a blanket and the group guides her into the back of the truck. Simeon tries to use his psychology training on her but gets nowhere, and Major Bakersfield patches her up and talks to her the way he once talked to shell-shocked soldiers. For a moment she focuses and whispers about her grandfather and "the light", then drifts away again. Dom, meanwhile, stays in the back with his flask and offers the woman a drink.
Tallahassee spots a flash of light between the trees, as if something metal had caught the beam of his flashlight, and heads into the dark woods with the Major following behind. As the Major passes the truck, the woman starts screaming. The woods are overgrown, and Tallahassee and the Major can tell there were once orchards here. The two of them find a young man standing motionless with his back to them. He ignores a thrown rock and a cracked whip. When they circle around to his front, they see his eyes rolled back, his body trembling, and his lips moving as though he is trying to speak. Then a silver-white, mercury-like light pours out of his mouth, and as it does his skin and clothes scorch and flake away. The light hangs in the air and seems to be searching for something. Both men fail their Sanity checks. Tallahassee makes an extraordinarily good Intelligence roll, understands just enough to be horrified by it, and bolts into the woods in a panic. A die roll decides his direction, which sends him back toward Arkham. The Major watches the man's eyes hemorrhage and his body hang slack in the light like a puppet, then shoots him in the face with his Colt M1911 and runs after Tallahassee.
Back at the truck, Billy and Simeon hear two screams, then a gunshot, and the woman in the back panics. Billy angles the truck's headlights into the trees and Simeon runs toward the commotion, but he trips almost immediately and gives up. Billy shouts after the fleeing pair. The shout is just enough to make Tallahassee hesitate, and Major Bakersfield catches him, wraps him in the net he carries, and uses it as a leash to drag him back to the road. During the struggle Tallahassee has a brief, hazy flashback of being netted once before. The group bundles him into the truck while he insists that everyone is going to die. On the drive Billy is rattled to learn that the Major shot a man in the face, and the Major tells him they are "not in Kansas anymore".
A little further along, past a side road on the left, the group reaches the lit-up Orchard Run Gas and Cafe, a modest but modern-looking roadside stop with a single gas pump, an office and garage, an older Packard parked beside it and a diner with big windows. A Ford Roadster is parked outside the diner. Out in front, a flatbed cattle truck has skidded to a stop crosswise in the mud with its cab door hanging open, almost blocking the road toward Dunwich. Billy pulls over, intending to eat and finally get the story from the woman. Tallahassee's madness has faded by now, and he comes to in the back of the truck still tangled in the net. Dom stays in the truck drinking.
The diner is warm, clean and cheerful, and the one waitress behind the counter is watching a booth where a middle-aged man and an older couple are gathered around a large, bearded man who is soaking wet. He is raving about a "dead light" that ran him off the road and says he is not going back out there. The portly man in the bow tie turns out to be Dan Keelhan, the manager, and he tells the man (addressed as Jake) to calm down and move his truck. Tallahassee introduces himself as the famous explorer and author and starts questioning Jake. He tells everyone about the man he saw in the woods with light coming out of his orifices, and the table's reaction is exactly as bad as it sounds. Simeon steps in to steer his friend away and get everybody seated. As they ask whether anyone recognizes the young woman, the waitress, whom Dan calls Mary (Mary the Hoebag), looks over, sees her, gasps, and drops a coffee cup. The episode ends there.