Doctor Richard Dante took the barely running Ghost Train to the Black Mesa.  He finished  his report on Melvin the Dragon's autopsy.  He found some interesting things about Dragon DNA ( see here).

He then decided it was time to head back home to Portland to the Century House.

While there, he noticed a significant lack of animated service.  Bob, the spirit of the house, was no where to be seen.

He looked and to his relief the library was intact.  But he did notice a new door.  He heard about the 101st room, the secret room while working with Sally Nile, just in his eagerness to unravel the mysteries of dragons, he forgot to ask her about it.

So opened the door and found a dungeon with a book on a podium.   He couldn't see the book's title from outside the room.

He walked in, and the door slammed shut and sealed him in.   The book was titled  "the Century House."    He was scared to touch it, so he used his cosmic awareness.   He learned that the book itself posed him no harm.

He opened it and found it to be the last will and testaments of all the past owners of this house.     Once a century, the house required a sacrifice.  The current owner must come to this room and never leave.   Their suffering and eventual death powers the house for the next 100 years.

Mason Lodge, the previous owner, had given this house to  Dante as an attempt to dodge the sacrifice.

It looks like it worked.



It totally sucks to be Dick.

After a few more hours, alone in the room, Dick was starting to realize that there was a distinct possibility that he was not going to make it to lunch. After all, he was starting to feel peckish.

  He rested up and then stared into the diary on the podium.  He stared through it, into its molecules, into its quarks, into the essence of it, untill he saw that the book was put there by Baron Crystoff Heinrich, who in turn, made a deal with the Father Of Pain.  For what reason, Dante didn’t know. 

The diary, though interesting, proved to be useless.  It was probably just another prop to feed the despair and misery of the person doomed to starve in this hidden room.   So Dick had a new idea.  He then went right to sleep.

He dreamed a comfy room with his grandmother.  She was making brownies.   Not the brownies that eventually got her 5 to 10 in Joliette, but the nice ones, the soft ones.   She turned, as people do in dreams, into a matronly Sally Nile.  Dick realized he needed to contact Sally.  He went to talk to her, but alas, she was an image in his dream.  So he mustered his will and opened a door, with the help of the Silver Key, to the Dreamlands.

From here he walked a crooked path, for many a crooked mile, till he figured out that Sally was not asleep.  Undaunted, he made his way to Sister Tess’s dreams.

She was a lovely child, riding a white horse in a beautiful English Pasture.  When Dick called her name, it startled her and she awoke.  Leaving Dick exposed on a lonely road, literally in the middle of nowhere.

He did what he could do, he waited for Tess to go back to sleep.   She eventually did, and Dick made contact with her.  She was not a stranger to the concept of Dreamwalking and gave herself a focus to help her remember this dream.     He then dreamed of his library and worked on a spell.  With no distractions, he came up with a clever twist to an old idea.

Dick woke up and searched the room once again.  He found nothing.

He then decided to not play this game.  He would not give into despair!  He grabbed the quill, inked it up and began to write about how he would never give up hope.  He wrote about how when he gets out, he will fight back and win!  He did this for about 20 minutes, and promptly fell asleep.

He made his way to the Dreamlands once again, and was met by  Grimorie, Mother Minerva’s familiar.  Grimorie was with 12 other cats.  But a series of nods Dante figured out that Tess spoke to her Mother Superior and help was on the way.  Grimorie saw the Silver Key and went off on his way.      Dante walked the crooked path till he found the Dragon’s Corridor.  He snuck by and opened the door to the Abby.  When he crossed it, he awoke but in the dungeon room in his house. 

Curses, foiled again!

  Again he went to sleep.  He met Grimorie again Sister Tess was with him.  She told him the houses defenses prevented them from breaking him out.  But he could dream what he needed, and if he holds onto it and wakes up, he can bring it with him from the Dreamworlds to the Waking Worlds.   With that Dick formulated a plan.

He dreamed of his spell books.   And then he dreamed of a door.


He woke up and he had with him,  yes, his spell books, and a door.   He opened the door with the Silver Key, and walked bodily into the Dreamlands.  He was home free!

He went to the Dragon’s Corridor,  and walked, rather briskly, towards the Abby.  He forgot one thing, he was not immaterial dream stuff, and he was real.  And he woke a Dragon.

Or it looked like a Dragon.    It was alien, both insect like and reptilian.   He remembered that Dragons breed with anything, and this one must have bred with some alien life form.  The dragon taunted Dick.  He said “Blood or Barter, little mortal.”   Dick gave up his Spell Books, and the Dragon then laughed at him.   This scared Him.  He flew.  He didn’t know where.  He dreamed of someplace safe.

He found himself in a cold, but familiar place.  He was in the snow.  There were evergreens, and he thought that a few of them had lights.  Before he could examine them, he heard horses.  He prepared for battle, but he somehow knew it would be ok.   A man in a ruddy fur coat, with a white beard, and eye patch, and an EIGHT LEGGED HORSE was now before him.

His voice was thunder, and his smile, the horizon.   Dick knew it was Santa Claus before he even spoke.   Father Christmas grabbed Dick and put him on his back, and the eight legs of the horse turned to reindeer and he was then in a sleigh.    Skyfather Odin brought Dick to his Los Angeles home.   It was a mess.

And then the phone rang.  It was the police from Portland.  It seems his house over there collapsed.   

The Phoenix House......