Hollow Lake Report

General Summary

A call comes in early morning on Kat Laramie 's phone. It's Barry Gibbs with news that's caught a fresh body and it's got him scratching his head over what he's found. He asks Blue Team to head up to Eden Isle for an assist.    After arriving, Barry introduces them to Samuel Voss, former fishing enthusiast and current drowning victim found on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain . This would be routine for Barry, except for the fact when he performed Samuel's autopsy, he discovered the victim was missing his liver and intestines. Even weirder, when he performed a more detailed examination of the body, he discovered severe trauma to the anus, suggested the victim has its missing organs sucked out through it.    Armed with this unsettling knowledge, the team knew something very weird was afoot. They set out to the lake where the body was found to investigate. Amie Castwell  found the ghost of Samuel on the shore fishing, unaware of what had happened and that he was deceased. After conversing with her and Lirael  , he slowly came to the realization that he had perished, but he couldn't remember exactly what transpired. He knew he was fishing on the lake near the Mickleson residence, and that something pulled him underwater. He requested that someone tell his family he would be ok in the afterlife.    Lirael and Chubbs Fondue made their way to the home of Samuel Voss to help the family grieve. Unbeknownst to Lirael, Chubbs had a secondary goal; the Cult of Richard Dean Anderson  had tasked him with a mission involving the Voss residence. You see, Samuel was a lay member of the cult, and had the audacity to take first place in a local fishing tourney years back - a tourney that Richard Dean Anderson himself participated in and placed second. Second. The Cult Leadership Team tasked Chubbs with procuring that first-place trophy from Samuel's home.    Samuel's wife and children did not take kindly to members of the Cult showing up before Samuel has even been released to the family, calling them vultures expecting a portion of Samuel's estate that he had bequeathed to the cult in his will. Lirael assured them that was not the case, and Chubbs assured them (falsely) that the Cult would not be accepting part of the estate. Lirael tried her best to deliver Sameul's message and help the family grieve, but with Chubbs' antics in getting the trophy, things did not go well. Chubbs left Lirael in the lurch to head for UPS to deliver his retrieved mission goal, and everyone else leaves in a hurry.     Meanwhile, Amie and Kat Laramie went to the Mickleson home to snoop and hopefully find Samuel's boat. There they meet Emiko & Peter Mickleson , owners of the residence. Emiko is especially saddened by Samuel's death, as he was a good friend of her mother Katsuko Tanigawa, Deceased . Amie learns that Katsuko emigrated from Japan after WWII and settled here in Eden Isle, but she died a year ago. She was very close with her grandson, Takahiro Mickleson , who is home during college break. The family chalks up Samuel's death to an unfortunate boating accident. Amie spends some time honoring Katsuko in the family's Shinto shrine, where she discovers Katsuko's ghost has lingered to keep an eye on her family.    The ghost of Katsuko is sad to hear of Samuel's death, and blames herself after she discovers he drowned. She knows what killed him, after all. The Kappa attacked her when she was a child wandering from her village near the river in Japan. Katsuko knew all the legends from her mother, however, and knew how to trick a Kappa. She remembered they enjoyed games of Shoji and Sumo wrestling matches, so she challenged it. When exchanging the introductory bows, the water spilled out of its head and became vulnerable, allowing Katsuko to make a deal that the Kappa was honorbound to uphold; it would leave the residents of her village alone if she offered it a cucumber (a Kappa's favorite food) twice a year. When Katsuko left Japan, it followed her to her new home. She would offer the cucumbers twice a year, every year, at a small Shinto shrine she built on the shore of her lake home, which became the Mickelson residence. When Katsuko died, the deal was broken as Emiko nor Takahiro believed in the legends, and so the Kappa resumed hunting humans.    Now knowing what they were dealing with, Blue Team set off to arm themselves at Rouses Market. They bought all the cucumbers, ginger, sesame, and iron they could find, and headed back to the Mickelson residence. At the shrine they found Takahiro, who had overheard Amie talking about the Kappa and became convinced it had killed his grandmother and was deadset on fighting it. Kat convinced him to search in the attic, making him believe a lie about Katsuko owning an iron key that could be used to fight the Kappa. When Takahiro took the bait, Kat locked him in the attic to keep him out of trouble, but little did she know that attic held far worse than what they sent him to find.    On the lakeshore, the team laid out a trail of cucumbers from the water's edge to the shrine and sure enough, after sunset the Kappa emerged, interested in nothing else but the cucumbers. There Kat - who was very, very drunk at this point - stripped down to her undies and began stomping as a sumo wrestler to challenge the Kappa. She looked up how to do so on YouTube, so she was very confident in her abilities. Sure enough, this caught the Kappa's attention and it responded in kind, only to forget itself and bow, tricked by Kat! She made it a deal - it would not attack any more humans, and it could remain in Louisiana and not be destroyed by the Angel with the flaming sword. It had no choice but to agree, and so it swam off into the lake waters.    Victory was achieved, but Kat's earlier actions with Takahiro would prove to lead to troublesome outcomes. Upon heading into the Mickleson's attic to let Takahiro out, they found noone in the attic. Instead, they find Katsuko's old trunk open, with various things strewn about. One of those things is an old Japanese mask, which stands out from the rest of the objects and gives both Amie and Lirael the heebie-jeebies. Katsuko's ghost was also strangely missing from the house as well. Kat gives her occult contact Hamish Klausmeier  a call, who informs her that this is a Noh Mask and it is some serious business. It absorbs negative energy and can suck the soul of anyone who wears it into another dimension filled with nothing but pain. Katsuko had it but never put it on, but Takahiro did and it took both him and the ghost of his grandmother.    As Luck  would have it, Lirael had actually been to this place long ago on a mission to retrieve an important soul. This place is actually a pocket dimension created by one of The Ten Commandments , using the Noh Masks as a means to collect souls. Lirael uses her Angel Wings to transport her and Amie to the pain dimension, leaving Kat at the Mickleson residence as she can only take two people with her (as they intend on rescuing Takahiro). Wracked with pain by merely existing in this place, they trudge through the hellscape searching along a river of souls filled with floating bodies whose teeth are constantly chittering at a cacophonous level. During their search, the dark entity that gave Amie her powers tasks her with plucking some fruitlike crystals that are growing from the branches of nearby trees. She can tell that these crystals house souls, but she fills her bag with them anyway, despite Lirael's protests.    Soon after, the pair finds Takahiro floating in the river catatonic, with Katsuko chained on the shore, unable to help her grandson. Lirael and Amie free both them, and attract an angry horde of demons hot on their tail. The Angel whisks them all back to Earth - just not back to Louisiana. Due to the strain of having passengers, they find somewhere in the Sahara Desert, all drained from the perilous dimension of pain. Lirael managed to heal Takahiro physically (taking on his pain into her), but his catatonic state remained unchanged. Eventually, they all make it back to Kat, who had to deal with Peter Mickelson returning home and ended up unknowingly leaving her old police badge in Takahiro's room. Katsuko is able to move onto her afterlife, and thanks the team for their help. The group decides to ditch Takahiro on his doorstep and ring the doorbell, then jump into Kat's waiting car and drive off, leaving his parents to deal with him.