Eustace & Hitomi, Chapter 2. The Dog Spray Found Upon the Path and Its Implication
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| From "Police Chief Says New Dog Catcher Program Will Clean Up Beaches." Maidenstead Monitor, April 12, 1989. |
The Stench on the Bench
Delmont and Meyer found a bench to sit on nearby.
Watched the gathered crowd disperse and take some of the agitated canines with them. The pair of them had the backpack and some of the clothing and the strange device found in the sand and decided it would be quicker to just walk off with it rather than ask around if anyone knew to whom it belonged. Meyer looked through the bag itself while Delmont is trying to ascertain just what the device might do, though he had a suspicion.
"What's that smell?" Meyer asked, taking a large sniff of the backpack and the clothes. After a few seconds of looking like she was giving herself a migraine, she thrust it against Delmont and said it was his turn to smell this. When that failed to get his attention, she shoved a bit harder and broke his concentration. [1]
"Smell this, Curls."
"CURLS?!" A normally unabashable Delmont felt the top of his head redden as he stared at her, suddenly aware of the sweat and sand on his scalp and how sweaty and grimy he might be after his silly bout of heroism earlier. [2]
[ Oh, Eu, it was a compliment, you dolt. I liked your curls. I really liked them. I found out just that moment that my type was apparently overwrought young philosophy professors. We will ignore the psychology of you being the first person in months, if not years, to actively listen to me. ]
"You did not say your name, earlier. So...Curls."
"Ah, sorry Ms. Meyer. I am Eustace Delmont. Pleased to meet you." Crossed his arms and then uncrossed them. Held out a hand to be shaken and then brought it back in before she had a chance.
"Call me Hitomi, Eu."
"You?"
"Ok, Eu. What's. This. Smell. Question. Mark."
Delmont took the backpack from her and gave it a sniff and kind of recoiled. "Like...bad breath and mint?"
"Yeah, like...dog pee mixed with an air freshener. Wait..." Hitomi dug down into the backpack and pulled out a cheap aerosol can with a bright pink label. "D.O.G. Spray. Og. Weiner. Reet? A love potion for your dog? 3 Spatz and the The Batch'll Follow You Home?! What the hell is this?"
Delmont looked over at it for a half second and scoffed. "Those are both I."
"You?"
"Um, no, I. The letter?"
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Meyer processed for a moment more and then made a disgusted face. Pulled out a cigarette pack and lit up after offering Delmont one. An offer he waved away. She smoked in confused silence while he kept poking at the machine in front of him.
"Wait, are you telling me that this is where Libby the Lab went? Someone sprayed this... love potion? And stole my dog?!"
"I'm an idiot!!"
"Eu?"
"Yes, me. I saw the effect of this machine just this morning. It screws with digital signals. Some one was using it to...wait, sorry. Your dog."
"One thing at a time. You say your nerd words and then we'll work out why someone is kidnapping dogs and doing nerd stuff."
"The pieces popped out of the Cyclops. It was to make room for this, which was aimed at the Rambler because they were messing with the video recording. I thought at first that it was stupid to only mess with the recording of the tape that was recording you messing with the recording but...are you ok, you look like you are in pain?"
"No," she said, somewhere between distress, anxiety, and good humor, "please..."
"Right, but I am the idiot. Well, Gunther is the idiot. They mix their recordings up. Some other cameras on that side of the Rambler was probably the target. But God knows which the target was..." [3]
Delmont took off at a slower speed but still relatively quickly back towards the Rambler's Inn. A minute or so later, he started looking around on the same side of the Inn, looking around.
"The RV park is over there, so that's not...wait, the road leading from the park goes this way, so if someone stopped over..."
Meyer waited by the Gygax Cyclops, finishing her cigarette. Done, she asked, "So.... Detective Holmes, what do your deductions tell us?"
"I need to talk to Harley to confirm, but I think I know where your dog is." [4]
Isaac Gibbs, Dog Catcher and Bastard
"Isaac Gibbs is the Maidenstead dog catcher," Eustace Delmont explained, standing a few hundred feet from a concrete building with a faded and peeling painting of the back half a dog and the letters "aac ibbs og cher" on a sign that had been torn in half during a previous hurricane and never repaired. "He is a bit of known character around here. Got in a trouble a few years back for luring dogs out of people's yards and graduated to preying on tourists." [5]
"Why doesn't someone do something to stop it?" Hitomi asked.
"Because the chief of police, Elmer Raylon, is his...uncle by way of second cousin or some such." [6]
"What do we do, then?"
"I asked Ralph and said it would be quickest to pay and then maybe make sure you spit on his front door on the way."
"Ok."
"100 dollars. American," the last part after a brief pause where Delmont seemed to acknowledge the accent of Meyer's.
"What?!"
"Exactly. Vacationers get caught in the scam and if they don't pay then Gibbs sells off the pure bread looking dogs to people over in Mobile and puts the others down. If they do pay, he just uses it to get drunk and buy more of that stupid D.O.G. spray. He might be the only actual customer for the stuff."
Delmont had realized that no one trying to hide whatever they were doing with the signal disruptor would willingly want a bunch of dogs to follow them. Maybe they were going to try and lead some dog somewhere in a classic detective plot - "The dog that did not protect the Inn at nighttime" - but not only does the Rambler's Inn not have guard dogs but Gunther Strange is allergic to them. [7]
This led Delmont to realize that the bright pink bottle might have been picked up by someone wandering around on that side of the Inn, the curiosity of the grotesque spray overcoming common sense. Which meant someone else had taken that same path to lead dogs away, dropping the spray, and that the first someone had maybe picked it up. Then stuck it in their backpack. Then...had their backpack torn from them with strong enough force to tear clothes from it and break the spray bottle open.
Delmont was concerned about the implications of all of this.
Still, there was another problem to face.
"We have another problem to face," he said.
"Which is?"
"Walk with me, this way, but stay on the far side of the street with me. No matter what."
Delmont and Meyer crossed Mangrove Avenue and carefully walked down the cracked and warped sidewalk. Behind Gibb's less than licit dog pound was a small wooden shack in a strong fence. Sad dogs walked back and forth. And on top of that was a pole holding up a security camera high enough to get the entire pound and most of the surrounding street. Just not, based on Delmont's calculations, the far side of the street where they were then standing.[8]
"Harley mentioned it to me that he had sold Isaac a camera. At a mark-up. Based on the language Ralph was using, it might be the last he does, but..."
"But... there is one now."
"Exactly."
"And either we pay a crook his money or we break in and the chief of police has a clear shot of our face."
"Exactly."
"Unless..."
"Unless, what?"
"What is the plan, Eu!? Why are you showing me this instead of us just going inside to get my dog? It's not like my dad wouldn't gladly hand over $100 to me. You wouldn't believe how much he has given my sister and Frank."
"Oh, well..." Delmont holds up the device he's been carrying in his left hand this whole time. "We have technology on our side."
"Broken technology covered in D.O.G. Spray. Og Wiener Reet."
"That's why I picked this up...one second...hold this for me..." Delmont took out a kit, what he was holding in his right hand, and begins working on the device with Meyer helping to hold it steady and replacing wires and screws based on his instructions. [9]
After it was finished, he handed it to her and instructed her to point it at the camera. "Now, I am going to break in."
"Would it not be better to wait until tonight?"
"Ah, well. Isaac's truck isn't here so he is probably getting out doing something. Either down at the Johnson Pharmacy and Feed Store or the Gibbs' Plantation visiting his mother." [10]
"Pharmacy and...wait, plantation?"
"Ah, you know, like a...um, manor house?"
"I'm British, not rich. Wait, no, I might be rich. I know what a plantation is, why is visiting one?"
"Because his family is the richest family in town."
"Then why in the hell is he stealing dogs?"
Delmont shrugged. "Are you doing to hold the device still?"
"YES!"
"Good, let's begin..." Delmont went to swing over the back fence and then stopped. "Wait, which of these is Libby?"
"She's not..." Hitomi stopped and listened for a minute. "She's barking in the brick building! I hear her!"
Delmont sighed and pulled out some more gear from his pocket and then went up to the building. He managed to get the door open in no time at all and then came running back out with a dog. [11]
"Is this her?"
"YES! Libby!" [12]
The three of them quickly scooted back up Mangrove Avenue and got away from the building. [13]
The Hounds Draw Near to Our Hero
Delmont was in the back room of Harley's electronics shop, working on figuring out exactly how the "disruptor beam" worked, when he heard the unmistakable of Chief Raylon in the front room talking to Harley about something. Listening in, he picked up that the chief was talking about him! [14]
"I caught your boy sneaking around a hotel with some out-of-towner while out there looking for that Patel girl. From experience, I know Delmont is good at screwing up technology [said in Raylon's accent as Tek nall jee]. You know what he is up to?"
"Eustace ain't my boy but I sent him out there to fix some stuff. Don't know no out of towner but Eustace was out there on orders." Delmont was actually surprised to hear Harley lie about Meyer after she came by the shop with him earlier, when they storing the cash and the clothes at the shop, but Ralph Harley and Elmer Raylon do not have the clearest of relationships.
"Strange said he had looked at some tapes and that's evidence. Some of those tapes are messed right up. I am trying to find out of Delmont destroyed valuable [val bull] evidence." [15]
"I bet Gunther jammed up that machine with some sticky candy. Eustace is good at fixin' that sort of thing."
Delmont heard the chief shuffle around and tap his hand on the counter a few times and then heard the voice get louder, clearly being a shout aimed at the back room. "You still owe me for dinner, boy! And don't let me catch you hanging out at that RV park or anywhere near the Rambler, you got it?" Then the bell jangled as the chief left and the shop got quiet. Delmont came out front and looked at Harley.
"I suspect you heard all 'at. You be careful. Awfully careful. Raylon ain't a good 'un. Being loose with the law is why half the folks 'round here backed him to be chief. That and Nancy Gibbs' money."
Delmont chimed in, to confirm something. "That's his cousin or something, right? I know they are family."
"No, son," a bit ironic considering Harley's language to Raylon a few minutes before, "That's her boy. First marriage. Before Wilson Raylon went and shot up a bank. She cut Elmer out of her life for years until letting him back when he said he wanted to be a cop. Still keeps him at a distance. Says she figures he'll end up just like his dad given enough rope to hang himself." [16]
Pier Pressure
While Eu was being grilled by the police and finding out Chief Raylon's secret past (which will come up again), I had taken Libby the Lab back to the RV and found the door open. Thinking the worse, I half panicked running in and then the smell of pot smoke being aired made me realize the idiots probably thought they were being clever.
Spotting a note, in Daphne's hand writing, that simply said "beach" I shut up the doors and followed the trail down to the beach and then followed my nose and went to the pier. Well, under the pier. Sure enough, Frank and Daphne and Vern were there with a guy I did not know and they lighting up yet another joint out of who knows how many. A stack of cigarette butts around their feet let me know they would be hoarse in the morning.
"Hitty! I see you found Libby! I told you would show up," Daphne said. She was always most sisterly and optimistic while high as a kite.
"Well, actually..." I started, planning to explain to them about a rich dog catcher and running around with a local nerd who might also be the dork of my dreams when Frank cut in...
"Awesome. Awesome. Look, meet Mike!"
Mike, full name = Michael Anderson, was in his 40s but dressed like the shadow of an 80s rockstar. Later on, I found he was once the front man of a Christian rock group with the ludicrous name "The Screwtapes". "Like Lewis, the letters?," Anderson explained by way of asking a question. I think this whole town is full of people who can't talk straight. He had a very gruff whisper-voice, which was unnecessary. The others ate it up, though, like they had found some rock genius. [17]
Apparently Anderson had gotten into a fistfight and taken a throat punch that ruined his voice. The Screwtapes kicked him out and he ended up in Mobile working for WPMI running some of their non-standard programming. He took it as his new calling. He knew if he could just one show that took off and went national (which in Anderson's limited imagination was mostly just being syndicated around a few other stations) then he could rich and get his revenge on the remaining "'Tapes" who were mostly a strange Christian cover parody band. "The thing about me baby is I can tell you about Jesus Christ..." to the tune of Michael Jackson's "Black and White," etc.
"See, Hitty," cuts in Frank, this time. I had told both Frank and Daphne both that I hated that but they insisted, "Mike and I were talking about our tapes and he would like to feature them on late night Fridays!" Handing me a half smoked joint to bring me into the circle.
"Didn't you want to get out of the old media and make something new?" I asked after taking a hit, tossing back one of Frank's most frequent rants explaining why we had been living out of an RV for the past few weeks.
"Yeah, yeah...but, Vern?"
"The problem, Hitomi," Vern always used my real name, which I appreciated. He was a serious faced black kid, my age, who had befriend Frank back in highschool while doing Frank's homework. I had the feeling he was always deeply sad, "the problem is...we have the site up and pre-orders for the first three tapes and have only had five takers and Frank is one of them while your and Daphne's dad probably makes up the other four. We need something to get their attention."
"Yeah, Vern's right, Hitty, this will be just part time. Mike is going to get us rooms in The Rambler and we'll get the scoop of how haunted it is. Hush, hush, mind. According to Mike, it's going to be sold off soon and the owners might freak if they knew we were about to describe it as The Most Haunted Hotel in Gulf Coast Alabama! Plus, with that banker chick going missing, we can weave that in. DID THE GHOSTS TAKE AMELIA PATOUR?"
"Amy. Patel," said Vern, sternly but obviously used to it.
I ignored that bit and cut in. "Wait, wait, the Rambler. What about Libby! We looked into getting a room, remember? No dogs allowed."
"Well," butts in Daphne, done with being the understanding sister and now being the dutiful girlfriend, "Maybe we could leave Libby in the RV?"
The conversation went downhill from there. Turns out I was "destroying Frank's dreams" and "being unreasonable" and "it's just a dog" and all the kind of arguments they had given me just this morning. Frank even made me a bet. If I just gave him two days he would be able to get enough footage that he would buy Libby and myself a stack of "Libby snacks." But I couldn't leave Libby alone and did not feel safe staying by myself in the RV knowing that Gibbs might be back at any point. So I left in a huff, found a payphone, and made a call.
"Mr. Harley, this is Hitomi Meyer, we met this afternoon...yes...thank you sir...yes, Eustace is a very sweet boy. Well, you see, I have a favor..." [18
And that's how I ended up staying in an upstairs room of Ralph Harley's electronic shop and unofficially moved to Maidenstead, AL before making it official at the end of the summer (yes, still over Harley's shop which goes by a different name nowadays). . And why I was not around when Vern, and our equipment, disappeared.
DOUG'S UPDATED COMMENTARY (January 1, 2025)
See, again, the commentary at the bottom of the prologue for more details to get an idea of what I have been editing when I edit these posts.
Almost all edits were structural and grammatical this time. A few story-mechanical glitches got cleared up. A big one just realized (that the camera recording the Gygax was not the one being targeted so the tunnels can't be on that side of the dang building dang it, I'll fix!) Dialogues got very slightly tweaked to make some more sense here or there.
Speaking of dialogue, the long rambles between Hitomi and Eustace in this one make me a bit sad the campaign essentially got completely ignored for nearly 3 months. There was a nice quick-fire energy in these original posts. I am happy, though, because the long break and the rewrites [partialy due to me forgetting details] opened up the door to several new characters, some new concepts, and other things. It also gave me time to drop the bad 1920's mystery novel stylings and most of the "trapped by the future" aspects where I was piling on too much gritty noir. Not only are Frank and Daphne not going to die (well, maybe not) but the shoot out is now removed despite me thinking about keeping it in.
Yes, the implication at the end is that Eustace and Hitomi inherent the shop and run it after Ralph Harley retires. Implication. No more being trapped by the future, right?
To show what might have had happend had this series pushed on to a conclusion back in August 2024 as was expected, here was the last ever "NEXT TIME!" gag: "The dog catcher hatches a plan! The audiovisual geek leaves a cryptic message. Delmont gets arrested!?"
Hmm, I think I kept all that in. I'll be. I was paying attention.
As I said, the campaign dropped off after this and the blog got a lot less busy for a few months—essentially just being weekly The Bleak + The Pearl sessions for a bit, finally with some The Bloody Hands returning from the dead as I worked through some things. By the time I got my mind back into Maidenstead, stuff had changed. Ultimately, I think for the better.
I have only three more sessions after this to fix, and those are from October and November 2024 and two are written in a whole new style.
To give you an idea of what I have been working with, here's what the old HTML looked like in the backend and I had to go through and copy and paste and re-align and all kinds of stuff:
I did make a whoopsie this time around and copied and pasted the new HTML into the blog before I copied and pasted the old commentary into the HTML. It was bound to happen. In the middle of me updating it I got up to put my daughter to bed and I came back and hit save a step too soon.
On the down side, I do not even have a record of my previous notes. I think I commented on the dog spray and I think I talked about about Ralph Harley turning into an increasing ally. Besides that, I couldn't begin to guess.
On the upside since my current plans were put completely on hold and then more or less completely rewritten before this campaign started back up, it is almost 100% guaranteed that everything in the old commentary was out of date and only of a Past-Doug-historian interest. Live and learn. Another mistake to figure out when dealing with solo play, I suppose.
MECHANICAL NOTES
- Q♣ (Scene about an action/skill at 2 effort) + 3♠ (Standard Alertness). Hitomi takes 1 Resolve damage before they figure it out. This makes Eustace at 2K 3R and Hitomi at 3K 2R.
- Future Doug, here. I forgot that I gave Eustace curly hair to turn him into essentially a bearded take on Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor. Yeah, the shift to Doctor Who was a good choice. That's a Sixie quote, by the way.
- His task was 3♣(so another skill). K♣ + Q♢. 2♡ so Easy Alert. Eustace gets an exceptional success. So bad for the missing person but good for the missing dog storyline.
- Is the RV park on the same side as the camera disruptor? 4♣. No. So, a shady dog catcher trope. And away we go.
- Most of Isaac's stuff came from Table Fables: Modern. Is Isaac known for taking vacationer's dogs as something of a scam? J♣. Yes and quite a bit so.
- How has Gibbs avoided law enforcement? 4♡. So...a personal relationship, but not a particular strong one or at least not a friendly one. Friendly enough to not be arrested, mind.
- Does the Rambler's Inn use guard dogs? 5♡. No, and...
- [ Future Doug, here. In the original version of this scene, Eustace calls Hitomi by her first name. The joke was being that he did not know what to call her because the time he was writing this she was Hitomi Delmont. It made a few sections awkward to track and Past-Doug screwed up a lot, anyhow. It was one of the things I was needing to fix. ]
- J♠. A scene about conflict with 1 effort per participant. 7♢. A hard Brainy challenge. Note, this was pulled at the start of this scene so has flavored most of this. They get it relatively quickly with Hitomi spending 1 Karma. That puts her at 2R + 2K.
- How long will Isaac be gone? A of...something [ tsk, tsk Past Doug] (4 ==> New Location) into Joker (4 ==> New Location). Got Pharmacy and then Mansion. So while the pharmacy is a bit obvious, I decided to make it a bit funky. As to why the mansion is a plot twist, figured I'd make it that Isaac Gibbs is one of the richest people around. 9♡ → Gibbs will be gone for a fair time but not for a full afternoon.
- Is Libby the Lab visible? 6♠. No, but... Hitomi can hear her. Challenge to get the door open is Brainy and 9♢ = Standard difficulty. Eustace gets double 6s so extraordinary success.
- Can Eustace get back over the fence without trouble? Q♡. So not only yes, but yes and... he is definitely showing off for Hitomi and maybe also we'll say that Libby is probably a smaller-sized lab overall rather than the full Scooby Doo.
- Were they spotted? 5♠. No, but Gibbs is going to realize the dog is missing and something went down. Which means he will look at the tape, see it is garbled. We'll say that he talks to Chief Raylon. Did Raylon see any garbled tapes at the Inn? J♢. Very much so. So yeah, Raylon is going to go talk to Harley.
- 7♣. A scene about a skill/action. K♠. Bad for the central investigation (about the missing person). 2♢. Easy Alert challenge. Extraordinary success.
- Did Gunther Strange admit that Eustace had been messing with the BetaMax machine? 8♡. Yes, and he had told the chief that Eustace was fixing it. Does the chief know the girl who with Eustace was the person's who dog was stolen and retrieved? 9♠. Yes, but he isn't 100% sure it means anything. Just suspicious.
- Does Eustace have the right idea about Gibbs and Raylon's relationship?" Q♠. Yes, but he said earlier he was some distant cousin. Instead, let's say a distant brother. One cut out of the family fortune but more recently allowed to circle around it a bit. Future Doug: On retrospect that is a lot more than a 'yes, but' situation. But I am trying to not change Past-Doug's reasoning very much or any of the oracle rolls, so...
- Michael Anderson is made up of a series of rolls. An injured, but pious, musician now working for a corporation. He's passionate and restless. Wants to get rich.
- The scene was A♢ (New Person, which is Mike). 8♠. A scene about a conflict. 10♣. Hard Charming. Hitomi passed but I figured it was a good time to shake up the story a bit and have the charm being spent on Ralph Harley since there was no reason to suspect her sister or Frank would even listen to her. In retrospect, Harley was a fan of hers already so it wouldn't make sense as 'Hard' but part of that can be said to be her own nervousness.
CREDITS
The game engine behind the Eustace Delmont series is Tricube Tales, Tricube Tales Solo, and Maidenstead Mysteries: all by Richard Woolcock.
It eventually shifts to Mythic but that's a future Doug talking.
Additional gameplay elements will be derived from:
- Random Realities by Cesar Capacle
- The Book of Random Tables: 1980s -1990s, BORT: Modern, and BORT: Eldritch by Matt & Erin Davids. Possibly other BORTS as needed.
- Table Fables: Modern by Madeline Hale
- Lots of just random facts culled in a hurry from Wikipedia, sites of Alabama history, and so forth. I have not that worried about veracity since Alabama Weird is a different state than Alabama Real but I like to pretend.
The "newsprint photo" used in this post is "Three white dogs at an animal shelter. Shot through a metallic mesh." by Alvaro Gómez. Made available through the Wordpress Photo Directory through CC-0. I contemplated leaving the original AI art because Gibbs is a bastard and I did not want to throw shade on any actual organization. I just tried to blur it out enough that no shade was known.
The D.O.G. label is 100% my own sense of humor. As always. I make no apologies.
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