Terror on the Orient-Express
William Wellington
January the 6th, 1923, Lausanne (Switzerland)
The door bell rang downstairs. Edward get up of his chair and said :
– Pleas excuse me for a moment, I was expecting someone that you might want to meet too. I’ll be right back.
The moment Edgar left the small and cumbered kitchen, a large man came in, opened a shelve, took a bottle and sat at the table. There was a long awkward silence, only ruptured by the noise of James that fled to the stairs, causing no reaction from the giant whatsoever.
Henry tried a “hello” and some other greetings, only getting back a long and uncomfortable blank stare. Choura joined in, but after a few pointless minutes of one-sided conversation there was still no response. The colossus took a notebook and painstakingly started to wrote some words, then proceeded to show them to Henry.
“Today is good day. Hello. Nice to meat you.”
Henry shivers. Not because of the strange words, or the creepy typo. But because he saw now clearly the broken face of the giant as he lean into the faint light. Steel plaques hastily screwed to the skull, complete facial paralysis, deformed skull… He began to saw a story, the horrible tale of a victim of the great war, scorched by hellfire, shrapnel-mutilated and hastily repaired by a tired field surgeon in some god forsaken mud-filled trenches.
Pencil doodle on A6 sketchbook
Excerpt from the Terror on the Orient-Express Chaosium Call of Cthulhu RPG campaign