Dateline: Friday, 27 April, 1900 – SCENE 01 – Grekov and Detective O’Reilly proceed to Mrs McDonald’s Boarding House. Mrs McDonald explains that the house does have a root cellar but she’s not been down there in years.

Proceeding to the rear of the house, the root cellar is accessed from a pair of wooden storm doors. As Mrs McDonald fights the old, rusty padlock, Grekov spots cloven hoof prints in the flower bed behind the house and signals to O’Reilly.

Entering the root cellar, they are disoriented by the strange, otherworldly feeling that pervades the atmosphere. The strange form of the ceiling appears to lead to a focal point, under which is a wooden table with blood on it. O’Reilly verifies that the blood appears recent, but cannot tell if it’s human or animal in origin. The rest of the floor is too scattered and scuffed up to find out any more details. Grekov notices a strange spot on the cellar wall, where the old tunnel once stood, but is it now covered over and there’s no way to tell what was once there.

SCENE 02 – Leaving the root cellar, O’Reilly and Grekov proceed to Susan Douglas‘ room. Susan confirms that Evangeline never returned home and she is worried sick about her.

O’Reilly gets permission to search Susan Mason‘s old room along with Grekov and Susan; together the find a hiding place beneath the window seat. Inside is a letter box.

SCENE 03 – The trio heads to Whitney’s house, which is empty, but there’s evidence of a hastily-eaten breakfast, left unfinished, on the table. Going through the letter box, they find the missing pages from Charity Smith‘s diary, a handful of ritual magic fetishes, and a small diary which traces Susan Mason’s family history back to Hesper Payne. O’Reilly helps himself to the uneaten sausages and toast left by Whitney.

SCENE 04 – The next place the trio stops at is Walter Jameson’s room. Jameson is not at home, but the trio finds a business card to Watley Imports, now an abandoned warehouse not far from the Old Wooded Cemetary. O’Reilly tells Grekov and Susan to go home, he is going to the warehouse with reinforcements.

SCENE 05 – Whitney and Parker awaken to find themselves chained to the wall in a small tin shack. Jameson enters the prison and tells them that they are trapped in another place of existence, and they wouldn’t understand. He assures them that they will be returned to their bodies once the Walpurgisnacht ritual is completed.

After Jameson leaves them, they try in vain to ecape the prison; they cannot understand why the ceiling to their prison seems to fade into a grey, formless mist, swallowing up their chains.

SCENE 06 – Instead of going home, Grekov and Susan proceed straight to the Orne Library. Fortunately, the library is open late for students cramming for exams. They desperately research for any clues that they can find pertaining to where Jameson might be keeping their friends.

They learn that there is a ley line which runs under Watley Imports and that there is a text called Book of Black Stones, which contains vast amounts of knowledge about the Dreamlands. Finding a volume called Gate of Dreams, last borrowed by Susan Mason, Grekov finds a ritual which can bring a person into the Dreamlands in their corporeal body. They leave the library and immediately race to the boarding house.

SCENE 07 – Breaking into the root cellar, Grekov proceeds to the focal point of the basement and begins the 3-hour long ritual, following everything he read in Gate of Dreams. Once complete, the room glows a pale violet and a circular beam shoots down from the ceiling. Looking into the beam, Grekov and Susan can see another world, tinted purple by the beam’s light. They see hills, quaint old houses, and cobblestone streets busy with cats.

Holding hands, Grekov and Susan step into the light and proceed 12 of the 13 steps forward to pass into the Dreamlands. Looking back, they see that their bodies have aged terribly into dessiccated corpses; the only way to return after their next step is with the aid of a Silver Key.

They take the 13th step forward …