501: Training Day

Synopsis

The case opens with the Keeper's monologue on sacrifice: what anyone would be willing to give up for something they want, something they need or someone they love, whether a sacrifice made in expectation of reward is anything more than an investment, and what is left when the beauty born from suffering is one you might never see, "broken, empty and hollow."

In January 1926, after weeks of near-blizzard weather, Dom waits on the snowy platform of the Arkham train station on Water Street for the morning train to Salem. With him are Billy McConnell, Dr. Simeon and two new allies: Simeon's younger brother Timeon, recently returned to town, who feels it is the least he owes Dom after the group travelled worlds and realities to bring him home, and Ezra Denny, the former innkeeper of Denny's, now in ruins in the ashes of New Jerusalem, who offered his help after overhearing the plan at the diner. Dom feels the absence of Tallahassee and Bakersfield. He has barely spoken to the Major since the night at the Arkham Sanitarium five weeks earlier, when they had to stop Tomaszewski, and the Major's eye now has a single focus on finding Corbitt, who has not been seen since. With the help of Goodman Gray's resources the others are sure it is only a matter of time, but Dom is following up the first lead he has had in years: Percy pointed him to Salem.

As the case begins, the investigators describe themselves. Dom, originally from London, is in his late thirties, dark-haired and a little scruffy, in a vest and button-down shirt. Billy, 21, wears a fedora, trench coat and scarf and carries a file marked "top secret." Simeon has round spectacles, a handlebar mustache, a giant fur coat for the winter and heart-shaped suspenders over the coat. Timeon, 32 and about six foot one, has thick black hair and a dark trench coat and fedora like Billy's, with little dagger designs on his suspenders. He spent twenty years in another world, calls himself the shadow of death and now works at a grocery store, Walt's Mart. Ezra Denny, a big redhead with freckles and a bushy beard, is a drifter since his tavern burned down; Delilah, with whom he has been courting since they fled New Jerusalem to Arkham, is covering for him at the diner while he is away.

On the train the group goes over what they know. Percy recognized the symbol Dom sketched as that of the Order of the Scorpius, asked whether Dom's wife was related to the Devereux family, said they were bad news with ties to Salem and told him to burn the symbol. The same symbol was on the velvet bag holding the small black mirror from Corbitt's lockbox. In the five weeks of downtime, while Dom recovered, Billy researched with Simeon's help. The society pages turned up only one clue: a July 15, 1903 Boston newspaper item about a visiting English dignitary from London, Lord Victor Devereux, in Boston for the opening of a new museum wing. A credit rating roll got Simeon into the restricted areas of the Miskatonic library, where scattered mentions describe the Order of the Scorpius as a very old witch coven, centuries old and associated with John Dee, the 16th-century astronomer, occultist and court advisor to Elizabeth I. They seem to think of themselves as some kind of gatekeepers. Billy's History roll recalls the obsidian mirror of John Dee, supposedly a portal to commune with other worlds. The mirror from the lockbox is small, with a silver frame and a black glass, and is not the full-size mirror that took Timeon as a boy. In the margin of Confessions of the Mad Monk Clifanus, otherwise in Latin, someone has written in old English, "Ethelred was here."

Dom tells the others about his wife Fiona. He met her in London, where she was studying literature at university while he worked in a pub. She never spoke about her family and he never pressed; he knew her surname was Devereux but did not know it meant anything until Percy told him. They were happy and had a child. Thirteen years ago this spring he came home from the docks, with legumes from the market as a private joke between them, and an ordinary day turned bizarre. He searched England, then France, after Fiona's only friend he had ever met, Hannah Baker, told him Fiona had talked about studying abroad there, and eventually came to America. He gave up hope until he met the group. He has not been able to find Hannah since.

The group plans its approach. Billy will make low-key contact with the local police, perhaps a records clerk, under cover of a missing persons inquiry, while Dom and Denny work the inns and the criminal underworld, and Simeon, who has a place of his own in Salem, offers it as lodging. Simeon's research gives them a map and the town's history: Salem is a coastal fishing and port city of around 30,000, much larger than Arkham, still haunted by the witch trials of 1692. The best-known sites are the Witch House, the home of Judge Jonathan Corwin, the only surviving structure with a direct tie to the trials; Gallows Hill, where the accused were executed; and the old Burying Point cemetery on Charter Street.

As the conversation dies down and the warm passenger car makes Dom drowsy, he looks up to find Fiona's best friend, Hannah Baker, sitting across from him.

Funny Moments

The group cannot agree whether they are getting on or off the train. It becomes the midnight meat train, then the morning meat train, then the "dairy train," then the midday meat train.
Billy is wearing the Billy McConnell t-shirt with his own portrait on it, and the file he carries is labelled "top secret" in red writing.
Simeon has "just picked up smoking. For my health," and wears his heart-shaped suspenders over his fur coat, which he wears "because I hate animals. And the cold."
Timeon's internal monologue: "I am death. Paper or plastic? I am a grim reaper. Paper or plastic?"
Timeon's only language is the tongue of the world he lived in, "Quabalarbered." The R is silent.
Ezra Denny does not remember what he looks like, so the table decides he is a redhead with freckles and a great big bushy beard.
The symbol of the Order of the Scorpius, drawn for the Keeper by his son, is unanimously agreed to look like a pumpkin, and worse. The map of Salem is "laid out in a scorpion butthole."
When Dom holds up the mirror and says "show me the beast," it shows him the beast.
The group spends a minute calling the man pressed to death in the witch trials "Jared Hess."

Notable Quotes

"I didn't push you into that damn mirror and you know it." —Simeon
"I am one with the darkness. I'm the shadow of death. They call me Tim." —Timeon
"As we hunt for my dead wife." —Dom
"Everything seemed normal until it wasn't." —Dom
"Is it even a true sacrifice? If done with the expectation of reward, is that really anything more than an investment?" —Alex Morrison