Fish of Oblivion
Chronic
Nallore
SporkoBug
Slim Shady
Ersa93
Lexisheeps
Tyler Night
Lildear18
ForsytheJeremiah Dupree
Physical state: Exhausted
Mental state: Sane
Professor Dupree couldn't help but frown as he nodded in agreement with Dr. Steiner. The words were harsh, but Dr. Steiner had never been a soft man. Dupree supposed he was fortunate that he had been given adequate alibi and would no longer need to deal with Officer Lexington's investigation - actually, now that he thought on it...
"For what it's worth, Dr. Steiner, and my apologies for dragging your thoughts back to yesterday - the police seem to agree with you. That it was unlikely Dr. Atkins simply jumped." After all, Dr. Steiner had said Dr. Atkins was not particularly...suicidal. He wasn't sure yet how to tell Dr. Steiner about the apparent break-in of the deceased man's office, assuming Officer Lexington hadn't already shared that much. Nor could he reconcile what he had witnessed with what evidence was found at the scene - or lack thereof. He almost wished he had not been so quick to shoo the bystanders away but, then again, he doubted many would have remained once the police had arrived. No one to explain how Dr. Howard Atkins had gotten up on that rooftop, and if anyone had understood his bizarre ramblings. The end of the world, he had caught that much. Not that it differed much from typical doomsayers who had sworn that God himself would descend from the sky and strike down this wicked society at the turn of the century. Merely the source was different.
The wait had been dragged out as long as they were able, and the gates soon swung open, the weight creating an audible squeak from the otherwise oiled hinges. Professor Dupree looked over the large brick building, ivy vine trails trimmed neatly away from the windows and doors and left otherwise unchecked to creep along the brightly-scrubbed bricks like blackening veins.
Truly, the home of the insane belonged in Arkham.
The inside was much less remarkable - Professor Dupree noted how the dark coating of the wooden flooring seemed to, in fact, thin as the students and professors trailed water in from the half-melting snow and ice outside. The heavy wooden door creaked as it opened, clearly less cared for than the wrought gate, and shuddered as it closed behind the group.
The second they entered the reception room to find the doctor who would serve as their guide, pandemonium struck. Professor Dupree wished he could say he had been attentive, intervening to stop the poor sick man before any harm could befall the man or the group and managed to pick an important thread of the tapestry known to them all as Arkham, but, no, he had froze, still-exhausted brain struggling to process what was going on in the midst of the chaos and screaming that reminded him far too much of his nightmare. A man in white - briefly his brain superimposed splashes of blood and feathers clinging and staining the white - instead pulled the patient off one of the students, a young man who seemed familiar but Dupree was sure he was not in any of his lectures. Thus did the patient leave, unconscious and treated and his circumstances now requiring translation through a man taught that all human actions were based around a drive for sex or death.
Praise be to psychology.
The man in white introduced himself - Dr. Martin Gabrowski. Jeremiah thought back to a Father Martin who had occasionally visited his boarding school as a youth. He had eventually immolated himself, when faced with the guilt of his crimes, Jeremiah heard years later. Too little too late.
With that bit of strangeness tucked into the corner of his mind, Dupree again found himself nodding to Dr. Steiner. "Indeed. Any other day, I think I'd be looking forward to this. As much as one could in the name of anthropology, at least." An attempt to mitigate the apparent callousness of the statement, more the students' benefit than Dr. Steiner's. Their brand of knowledge had always come from the study of other human beings. Several students, he knew, hadn't come along on this trip for the expressed reason that it seemed 'cruel' to treat humans like animals in a cage for study.
Dupree nodded and quietly wondered why the hell they were in an anthropology course. Where had knowledge of other cultures come from, asking politely for letters?
With the trip formally begun and their guide leading the way into the jungles of bars and barriers to meet the natives, Dupree allowed himself to slow a little and, through the decreased pace, catch up with the student who had been grabbed by the insane man. "I should hope you are alright?" He knew this face, he was so sure he did.