We spend a couple days getting oriented and discuss what we're going to say. Plan is that Ray, Adam, and Hazel will go to talk to Mrs. Ekloff and Samuel. Didier and Alastair go to reconnoiter in the swamp.
At Ekloff estate:
Hazel poses as a child psychologist and goes to talk to Samuel while Adam and Ray talk to Mrs. Ekloff to try and get any information about Timothy or the rest of the family. As we approach the house, we see a priest (later learn his name is Cartier) talking to Mrs. Ekloff (Ray notes his license plate number--old habits die hard). The Ekloff estate is a sort of small mansion, has some outbuildings, apparently behind it somewhere there's a cemetery, and also the swamp.
Hazel hits it off well with Samuel. He's working on a picture when she first arrives. He finishes it by the time they go outside--it's a picture of Alastair being dragged down into the swamp by tentacled things. Great art the 6-year-old comes up with. On the wall are other drawings, akin to the four we got from Alan's room at Gibson. (see description of Samuel's pictures). Samuel says something about Irving, and says the guy by the red sports car is his uncle (Timothy), and that the priest in several of the pictures is _him_, that is, Samuel. Hazel asks Samuel if he likes drawing, and he replies, "I always draw, except when I'm me [and points to the priest]." Samuel already knew that Hazel had one of his pictures, of his mother (Karen Ekloff) floating above the swamp. Hazel gives him the picture. He indicates there's some trouble (sorry I can't remember if he said Hazel was trouble, or would be in trouble, or what), and said "'Cause of that--" (he points at the picture of Hazel in front of Squidzilla's eye). It becomes evident that Samuel can read Hazel's mind. Hazel showed her Queen's Mark to Samuel but he did not appear to have an opinion on it.
Ray and Adam learned that other people had come by looking for Timothy in the last year or less (can't remember). She said last she had seen him, he came by about a month ago, but didn't stay very long, then was gone again.
When we went to get lunch, we found that the waitress brought us exactly what we had been thinking of ordering, but without any of us having ever actually said what we wanted. They seemed to just know.
Then we get a panicked call from Didier. ("Didier, what is the nature of your emergency?"--Ray) Apparently, Didier and Alastair did more investigating than was good for them. They followed a track down into the swamp and found a shack. It was locked from the outside; inside, they found a man waiting with a shotgun who for some reason wanted them to open the trap door in the floor and see what was downstairs. Alastair drew a gun, they scuffled, and Alastair took a shotgun wound and Didier managed to tie up the man. They left him there and started back up the trail, calling Adam (who Ray then took the phone from.)
Get Alastair to hospital. Didier says it was a "hunting accident." When he says where it happened, the medical technician in the emergency room says the swamp is dangerous and that people have disappeared there. Didier, with no trace of irony whatsoever, says, "Really? Well, I'm glad nothing happened to us, then."
In the afternoon Hazel, Adam, and Ray go to meet Mrs. Ekloff, posing as insurance agents of Eastern Mutual with this bogus life insurance policy for Karen Ekloff. Hazel identifies herself as a child psychologist as an excuse to talk with Samuel. Mrs. Ekloff agrees, and so Hazel spends time with 6-year-old "autistic" Samuel while Adam and Ray talk with Mrs. Ekloff.
As we arrive at the house, we see a priest talking to Mrs. Ekloff, who shortly gets in his car and drives off (Ray notes his license number). Adam and Ray talk to Mrs. Ekloff but don't get a whole lot of useful information, except that people had been looking for Timothy and that Timothy had last come by about a month ago, but didn't stay long.
Samuel
Hazel hits it off well with Samuel. She finds him in his room, coloring. Hung around the walls are other pictures of his, equally detailed and photo-real as the ones we found in Alan Ekloff's room at the mental hospital. There are more pictures of the man with the red sports car, who Samuel explains is his uncle (Timothy Ekloff), pictures of a man Samuel identifies as "Irving" (of whom, he says, cryptically, "It wasn't his fault"), and some pictures depicting a priest--two different priests, actually. Samuel says one of them is him--Samuel. There is also a picture of Hazel being held up in front of a giant red eye, ala "Squidzilla." The whole time he's talking to Hazel, he's coloring--making apparently random dots of color with an assortment of crayons--but gradually the picture develops into a disturbingly realistic image of Alastair being dragged into the swamp by something nasty with tentacles.
It becomes clear that Samuel can read Hazel's mind. He knew already, for example, that she had a picture of his mother (Karen) and that his uncle Alan was dead. She gives him the picture he drew of his mother.
(Eventually Ray gets back there and takes digital pictures of Samuel's drawings--These descriptions are elsewhere)
After Alastair is released from the hospital we re-group and compare notes. We have found, in our separate investigations in different neighboring towns, that the wait staff in different restaurants seemed to know what we were going to order before we said anything, and brought it to us without our having ordered it.
Didier is anxious to go back to the shack and investigate what was there. He wanted to go back soon, in the hopes that the guy he tied up would still be there and his cronies wouldn't have found him yet and known that their cover was breached. Unfortunately, only two members of the group are currently in any kind of shape to be hiking through the swamp; Hazel is still on crutches with a gunshot wound to the leg, Adam has a full-leg cast, and Alastair has just had close encounters of the buckshot kind. Eventually we make a plan to have Ray and Didier drive down the trail to the shack while the "invalids" remain up near the road to watch...
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