Unexplained Phenomena Unit, Session 8: Skulker of the Sea Life Park

Played 24/3/23.

The Player Characters:

Lesley Nemo had a marine biology degree, god dammit. How had he ended up as only the janitor of a sea life park? He's got the brains to be an aquarist or a tour guide. He'd seen his friends promoted several times over, while he'd worked twice as hard and stayed exactly where he was. He was pretty sure he could sue for some kind of discrimination, as a somewhat feminine/androgynous guy with prosthetic legs. But then again, student debt is a pretty compelling reason not to do anything risky, as frustrating as it may be.

This is what Lesley is thinking as he clocks in at Fisheridoo Park in the dark hours of one early morning, and heads to one of the aquariums to start scrubbing toilets. What he sees when pushes open the doors will haunt his nightmares for a while.

Later that morning, as the park opens to guests, Lesley is called to the park directors office. The park director, Mr Parks, is a scruffy, heavy-set, balding man that speaks with a southern drawl, always smoking a pickle like it's a cigar. No one has the courage to ask whether he's aware it's a pickle and he's just smoking it to look quirky, or whether he's just losing it in his old age.

"Sit down over here, Lesley. Try and let me take the brunt of whatever questions the police may have for you."

"Yes sir."

After flashing a homicide unit ID badge and being directed to Mr Parks office, John, Salem, Ghost and Mike introduce themselves to the director.

“Nice pickle.” Mike comments while shaking the director's hand, without a note of irony in his voice.

"Well, er - thank you. So very glad to make your acquaintances gentlemen, but if I may be so bold, none of you really look the policin' type. Especially -" He gestures to Mike, whose summer-y jorts are clashing with his usual attire.

"We came in civilian clothing because we thought you'd appreciate some discretion in this matter." John retorts.

"Well now you're speaking my language - yes, with so many customers around, just tryin' to have a good time, a bunch of officers makin' a public affair of a such a dreadful tragedy in this place of wonder - well I do suppose that would put a dampener on things. I do appreciate that, I do."

John goes to shake Lesley's hand.

"And you're the one who discovered the body, am I right?"

"He is, and he is just shellshocked, so if you could direct all questions to me -"

"With all due respect sir, it would be most helpful if Mr Nemo could speak for himself."

Mr Parks' face sours a little, but he allows it.

"What did you find, Mr Nemo?"

Leslie sighs.

"I found a corpse in aquarium A. Stuck to a ceiling somehow, with his eyes, teeth and fingernails missing. A young guy, late teens or early twenties. Saw him very much alive yesterday, caught him throwing litter in the sea lion exhibit."

Lesley leads Ghost and Mike through the crowds of park-goers, towards the aquarium.

"Obviously, we've roped off the building, told the public that it's undergoing maintenance."

"Why not, you know... close the whole park?"

"Oof. Well, if you've got the power to force us to close for a while, feel free to try, but Mr Parks wants to bleed this place for every penny it can make, and he's got the connections to have had things like this overlooked before. Well, probably not anything like murder before... I don't know. It's just what I've heard."

They slip past the roped off areas, unlock the double doors, and head inside. The body is immediately visible upon entering, like it was displayed there to be found, dangling from the ceiling by its wrists. A young adult man in a tracksuit, his eyeless, toothless bloody face staring forward limply, his mangled, broken jaw hanging in a grotesque laugh, the water tanks casting the image in an eerie dancing glow.

"Jesus fucking christ."

"Yeah, imagine my surprise this morning." Lesley offered, trying to mask his own discomfort.

"Well. Let's get to work. Lesley, do you mind fetching a ladder to help us get this guy down?"

Ghost and Mike start inspecting the body and the area, conferring quickly and quietly while they're alone. No sign of any magical influence, the guy was just beaten, clawed, strangled, tortured. Eyes, teeth and nails pulled out messily while he was still alive, like it was done by a raging, yet surprisingly dextrous, wild animal. Wrists plastered to the ceiling by some kind of adhesive gel, possibly something that an animal could secrete.

Mike turns to Ghost.

"I forgot to mention, I had a crazy dream this morning!"

"You had a vision, and you're just telling me this now?"

"Yes! Well, I don't know if it's a vision yet. Might just be a dream. I dreamt I could see the whole planet... and I was flying towards Mexico. And then I was flying towards a tiny island just off the coast of Mexico. And then I was flying into a whirlpool just off the shore of this island. And inside this whirlpool, there were dozens of smaller whirlpools, each of them, like, violently tearing up against each other. Like... a beyblade pit made of water."

"...And?"

"...And then I woke up."

Ghost sighs and massages the bridge of his nose.

"...Alright. Beyblade pit made of water. I'll keep an eye out for one of those I guess."

Meanwhile, John and Salem are looking at the surveillance footage with the head of security. They see the victim and two of his friends sneak into the park after hours, clearly drunk and looking for trouble. They wander through the park, banging on the glass of the tanks, throwing things at the sea lions. Then suddenly they're chased out of the park by something dark and shadowy, like a monster running on all fours. John pauses the footage to get a better look at the beast, but it's moving too fast - when paused, it's just a blur on the screen.

"I can't see what that is."

"I vote we call it smudge."

"Denied, that's too cute a nickname."

They resume watching the footage. The creature chases the three guys into the aquarium, and then they lose it and the victim in a blind spot between cameras. The other two guys can be seen escaping the park. John and Salem continue going through all the tapes, making note of every time a black blur can be seen running through, a silhouette of something can be seen prowling the shadows. They make two discoveries - firstly, that the creature avoids well-lit areas. Secondly, it seems capable of teleporting around the park, appearing in one place at one time, walking off-screen only to appear on the other side of the park in a matter of seconds.

Ghost, Mike and Lesley swing by the security office and get caught up on the discoveries made there, before deciding thatthey need to tell the park director that there is some kind of animal on the loose, and get the park shut down for the afternoon.

“Absolutely not! You want to deprive all those happy people of a fun day out?”

“You want to deprive them of their lives if this creature strikes again?”

“If you want to come back with a warrant, that’s your business, but don’t let a freak accident like what happened to this young man scare you into making up conspiracies about shadowy figures in the security footage. It’s probably just the raccoons that run around the park at night.”

“You think a raccoon scared those guys out of the sea lion exhibit?” Ghost snaps.

“You call a man losing his eyes and teeth and being strung up like a warning a ‘freak accident’?!” Mike adds.

Ghost looks to the security guard.

“You saw the footage. You think that was a fucking raccoon?!”

The guard shrugs, obviously afraid of going against the boss.

“I can’t close the park over this. End of conversation. Dec, show the officers out.”

Mike starts insulting the director's pickle, and the guard picks him up and starts carrying him out of the room. Ghost strikes a pressure point on the guard to make him release Mike, but more guards rush in and tackle him.

“You are putting people's lives at stake! Children's lives at stake! If it's you or them, it's going to be you.” Ghost goes for his gun, but Mike motions for him to de-escalate.

“He’s not worth it, man. Let’s just go.”

The director orders Ghost and Mike be removed from the park until they have a warrant.

As Ghost and Mike are escorted out, Ghost is beyond fuming. As he storms back in the direction of the car park, Mike tries to slow him down.

“Dude, chill.”

“Get out of my way.”

“Don’t be an idiot. We’re not bailing just because shitty corpo values peoples wallets over their lives. That’s nothing new.”

“Who’s bailing? I’m checking out the top of the multi-storey as a potential sniper spot.”

“Oh, right, good… thank god.”

“I was ready to kill him.”

“I’m not mad about it either, but you can’t just threaten to blow a guy's head off, it tends to make them less inclined to help you.”

“Whatever.”

“Your temper’s gonna get you in serious trouble one day. You at least tried those breathing exercises I taught you?”

Ghost walks away without another word.

“Please just try and relax! Or at least don’t be an idiot!”

Mike calls UPU HQ, and gets them moving on closing the park down. Lesley lets Mike back into the park via the maintenance tunnels, and leads him the underground way towards the arcade, the last location Smudge was seen on the surveillance footage. As they’re walking through the tunnels, they start to hear the sound of rushing water. Turning a corner, they see the source of the sound - a wide crack torn through the wall, containing a gravity-defying vortex of water.

"It's a whirlpool. Like your vision dream? Beyblade made of water?"

"Just like my vision dream! That's exactly - wait, you weren't there for that conversation - were you eavesdropping?"

"I might have been eavesdropping."

“Why were you eavesdropping?”

“Because you guys obviously aren’t cops. You keep talking about spirits and monsters and stuff. If you guys are like the secret magic police, I kinda want to know what that’s all about.”

“What- Of course we – I mean – alright. For legal reasons, everything I have said about spirits, monsters and magic is just deep fried memes and not to be taken seriously. But we’ll talk later.”

Mike takes off his pendant from around his neck, and holds it up to the portal. It seems to be caught in the gravitational pull. As Mike lets go, it gets sucked in.

“What did you do that for?”

“A little experiment.”

“To do what? You can already tell it sucks things in and it goes somewhere else. Now you’ve just lost your necklace.”

“*sigh*. Fine. Yeah, I guess there’s only one thing for it.”

Mike jumps in - Lesley tries to grab his coat and pull him back, but gets sucked in with him. They spend several agonising seconds dragged by twisting water currents through what seems like many diverging paths, before being spat out into the wall of a dark cavern.

As they get up to examine their surroundings, they find the walls are made of plastic, and they’re standing on roller coaster tracks. Lesley walks toward the light around the bend of the tunnel they’re standing in, and peeks out to see the entire park below them - they’re standing in a section of the park's tallest roller coaster. Mike's phone starts buzzing with a call from Ghost.

“Hello?”

“So I’m eyeing Splash Hill right now to see how I’d get me and my sniper rifle up there, and I’ve got eyes on someonethat looks like Lesley standing on a section of it.”

“Yeah, we’re both up here.”

“Well you’d better get out of there, cause the coasters heading your way.”

As if on cue, the track starts vibrating.

“Thank you for the heads up - Lesley, back through the portal we go!”

Ghost hears a rush of water, and then the line disconnects. He hears some commotion coming from the sea lion exhibit nearby. As he runs over, he sees Mike being pummelled and tossed around by angry sea lions, and Lesley in the waters. As he and a few other park visitors fish them out, a few security officers they haven’t seen before come over to assess the situation. After a successful bluff that Mike is a crazy person who wanted to pet the sea lions and Lesley dived in to save him, the officers escort the three of them to an area where they can dry off and get some fresh clothes. Mike gets some new jorts and an oversized ‘don’t fuck with fish’ t-shirt, while Lesley gets the undersized variant of the same shirt, which is basically just a crop top on him.

It is at this moment that the park director can be heard over the park PA system, telling everyone that an incident has occurred and the park will be closing for the afternoon. He sounds nervous. Mike grins.

“Sounds like HQ found some dirt on him. See now, that is how you resolve a conflict with those kinds of guys.”

The rest of the park-goers seem to evacuate over the course of the next hour.

Meanwhile, John and Salem have looked at the records of customers who were at the park the day before, and put names to the faces of the victim and his two friends in the security footage. They take a short car ride to one of the friends' houses, a young man called Jared, and they are met at the door by the Jareds father. The father seemed to have grounded his son for sneaking out the night before, but didn’t know anything more than that.

“We’d like to emphasise that we’re not here about the breaking and entering. We’re here because we think he’s a witness to something dangerous that occurred in the park last night. If he can tell us about that event, we’ll let him go with just a slap on the wrist.”

The father drags Jared out to have a talk with the “police officers” in the living room, and they begin the interview about what transpired that night. John tries to ask questions that evoke as much mental imagery as possible, so that Salem can telepathically tap into Jareds memory.

The night before, Jared, Brad and Richard got real drunk, and decided to break into the sea life park. They jumped some fences, got lost for a while in the maze-like corridors of the aquarium, kicked a ball around, poured beer into the water at several exhibits, and threw rocks at the sleeping sea lions. Then they heard what sounded like a baby crying from inside a broom cupboard. Richard went to check it out. As he opened the door and stepped inside, something furry wrapped around his neck and lifted him off the ground. Two large, bright, wild eyes stared him down from the darkness as he began to choke, the sound of the baby’s wail distorting, getting deeper. Brad threw a stone at it, catching the creature's attention. With superhuman speed, the creature threw Richard down and dashed from the dark cupboard to a shadowy alcove in the wall. It didn’t stay still long enough to get a good look, but it looked almost human-sized, with long, gangly limbs - was it some kind of ape? Or maybe it looked more like a dog when it ran on all fours? Maybe it was some kind of mutant seal, the way that its grey and black waterproof fur glistened. The strangest thing was the long tail that it had used to try and choke Richard… it ended in some kind of spindly, clawed hand. Richard scrambled to his feet as the other two ran out of stones to throw. They ran through the dark park, hearing that terrible wailing close behind several times. Richard shouted “into the aquarium - we can lose it in there!” The three ran in. Two found their way out. Brad and Jared didn’t notice they’d lost their friend until they were outside the park. They didn’t know what else to do except assume he’d found another way out.

Of course, Jared left out the most fantastical parts of his story, the parts that would make him sound like a crazy person, but Salem could see it all in his mind's eye.

“Alright. I guess it's time to break the news. I’m afraid your friend Richard… didn’t make it. His body was found this morning. And let me be the first to tell you that it wasn’t yourfault.”

Jared goes pale. The stress and worry he’d been carrying, the worst case scenario he’d been in denial about, it all comes crashing down on him, and he immediately throws up.

The team regroup at the park, and Salem makes a call to Zoe Gadzooks to see what MOTHMAN can tell them about the creature based on their evidence.

“Monkey or dog-like amphibious creature with a hand on the end of its tail, that protects bodies of water and the sea creatures therein, lures victims to their deaths with a sound like a baby crying, and then feasts on their eyes, teeth and nails? That’s pretty spot on for a creature from Aztec mythology called the Ahuizotl. We’ve got rumours of a tribe of them living on an island near Mexico, but we don’t have the jurisdiction to go near them. No records to indicate them being able to create portals or appearing in other regions ever before, but they are supposedly pretty intelligent. Very territorial.”

“Okay, so we’ve got a creature that stumbled through a portal and ended up here, protecting this park as if it was part of its territory. We’ve observed that it likes dark places, and we haven’t encountered it during the day. Any weaknesses?”

Zoe scans the records a bit more.

“…no recorded weaknesses. Although it doesn’t sound invulnerable.”

“Damn. We’ll just try to keep it out of the water where it’ll probably be strongest, and hedge our bets with silver weapons then.”

“Maybe some bright lights to disorient it?”

“Good idea. I’ll let you knows how it goes Zoe.”

“Good luck. And tell Mike that I’m down for his ethics union project.”

“…Will do.”

Salem hangs up, making a mental note of the fact that Mike is working on an ‘ethics union project’ and didn’t tell him. He does not pass on Zoe’s message.

The team gets to work preparing to draw the Ahuizotl out, and hopefully capture it alive. John builds a silver net. Lesley sources some walkie-talkies and some heavy duty flashlights to stun the Ahuizotl. Mike throws as many GPS trackers as he can find into the first portal that he stumbled upon, and locates four more portals scattered across the park.

When the sky is turning dark, they set their plan into motion. Salem starts harassing the penguins – throwing stones and pushing them around, scaring them by blinking his flashlight on and off. A door in the exhibit opens a crack, and a sound of a wailing baby pierces the air. Salem ignores it. The door opens wider, revealing two wide, bloodshot, insane looking eyes in the darkness. The wailing grows louder still. Salem locks eyes with the creature and throws another stone.

Moving jarringly fast, travelling 50ft in two powerful bounds, the beast gives chase, grabbing Salem’s leg with its tail-handand attempting to drag him off the platform and into the exhibit waters. A sniper shot breaks its grip, and Salem uses the split-second window to make a break for the aquarium. He bursts through the double doors, shouting into the comms that he’s inside. Looking back, he sees the creature crawling up the wall and onto the ceiling after him.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the aquarium – John and Mike have propped some ladders up against the wall, either side of an exit, ready to drop the silver net onto anything that comes through. Lesley is standing by with a flashlight.

Mike starts panicking a little.

“Uh… guys? Probably a bad time to bring this up, but I just remembered my wand is in my coat, which is still drying in the locker rooms. So no spellcasting today I’m afraid.”

“Your wand? Okay, now you really are pulling my leg with this stuff. No pun intended.” Lesley looks down at his prosthetic legs.

They hear on the comms “get ready!” and suddenly Salem barrels through the exit, followed instantaneously by the Ahuizotl. They jump down with the silver net – and it works. The silver doesn’t seem to have an effect, but Mike and John are keeping it pinned to the ground momentarily, as it screeches and thrashes wildly. Its clawed hand-tail breaks through and knocks one of Lesley’s legs off. A well-placed sniper shot makes its tail fall limp. The creature gets up the strength to start dragging Mike and John along, so Salem joins in holding it down, and Lesley wraps his disembodied leg around its neck in a chokehold, managing to restrict its breathing until it falls unconscious.

They deliver the beast to a containment team that UPU sends out, and they go to the arcade to relax and cool off. In between games of DDR, Mike makes Lesley a proposition.

“Hey Lesley – listen. You’ve been a real help today. Yourdeductive skills are seriously impressive, how easily you wereable to read us for what we are. And you’ve got guts too, to stick with us through what you saw today and to do what you did back there. So you know what I said about all of this secret stuff just being a ‘deep-fried meme’… well, if you want to, y’know… meet the ‘mods of this meme forum’, so to speak, find out what all this is really about – I can put in a recommendation for you. If you want.”

“Does it pay well?”

“Jobs that put your life on the line tend to pay pretty well, and this is no exception.”

“Rather my life be on the line than stay here, working for Mr Pickle another day. Count me in.”

“Welcome to the UPU.”