"I can't believe I'm doing this."

The book that Preston held in its hands was an oddity for even the family's tier of library hoarding. Its sheets were thick vellum, crumbled and hardened with age into sheets of stained balsa. It stank of stale vinegar. Preston wasn't even aware vinegar could go stale, but it sure as hell smelt of it.

He laid it on the floor and grimaced. "This damned cover is moist."

Preston desperately hoped that the cover was leather. It felt decidedly smooth and slick, wrapped in odd clumps of- was that peach fuzz? And freckles? Was it - was it sweating?

He wasn't sure how much of what he noticed was genuinely creepy, and how much was just his paranoia. He had promised himself after his father's death that he would never dabble this paranormal business…

And now here he was, holding a book that felt like it was breathing.

"It's an old book, Preston. Please, stop stalling." His wife replied, gripping the blueprints for the Northwest Manor's subterranean lairs.

"Alright, alright… you know I don't tinker with these things…"

"Be that as it may, there must be something in this… this grimoire. You're sure it's the right one?"

"Of course it is. 'Communicating with outer planes'. Just be patient, Priscilla. After all, I've only been taught six grades of Lati-oh, wait. Oh, this could work…"

"And what's 'this'?"

He chuckled at his own perceived intelligence. "We'll seek some advice."

"...Advice." She repeated, her voice dripping with more than a touch of venom. It was quite the anticlimax.

Preston silenced her with his hand. "Trust me."

"Trust you with getting advice? "

"You don't understand, my dear. I'm not going to turn to some kind of… useless, common all-garden vampire or demon. I'm going to go to the best. The best kind of…ah'm. Negotiator."

Her botox-filled brow furrowed as best it could. She had a strong feeling that it was Preston's egotism at work rather than a genuine solution. Perhaps a certain reluctance against turning to something with real impact.

The Northwest Matriarch seethed as she watched her husband continue wrestling with the complicated broken Latin, handwritten on those browned, textured pages in a deep red… ink? She just presumed it was ink.

Preston huffed, twisted his lip and wrote down the list of ingredients. It was all fairly common sundry. Quail's eggs, ketchup, wild boar bacon lardons, rose petals and a bottle of whisky. Hardly what Preston could imagine as the ingredients for an incantation. Frankly, it sounded more like breakfast.

Habitually, the middle-aged man murmured as he noted things down. "Kikimora soy… Rose petals… Whiskey… And some… Northwest blood."

Priscila raised an eyebrow. It went quite unnoticed.

"Should be achievable." He sniffed, closing the book. "I'm sure there's some in the family archives."

"...Blood? There's blood in the-?"

"The Northwest family has a pint or two of every family member, all temperature controlled and-" He glanced over at his wife, who was staring, her nose wrinkled in thinly veiled disgust.

He'd never really thought of it as a particularly odd thing. Did the working classes not have blood banks? There was much worse than just blood down there. He adjusted his tie and coughed nervously as he considered the ramifications.

"Well, be that as it may, it'll be useful for this little - ahm - experiment."

"Wonderful. Your family continues to be a gift, Preston…"

"You shan't be complaining when the plan works, darling."

"Then at least tell me what this plan is. Yes, I recognise an incantation, but who are you going to summon? For what purpose?!"

"The most powerful Northwest of all, naturally. Who could be better to advise on our future than the man who mapped it all?"

"You're going to conduct a seance with Nathaniel Northwest? Preston, let's not forget-"

Preston interrupted his wife bitterly, almost immediately waving away the concern. "That coverup is a pack of lies. The Government elected Nathaniel to take charge because of his intellect, his ferocity, his strength and his willingness to attempt taking charge of the town's… odd nature."

"You don't seriously think this will work, do you?"

"Of course it will," he continued. "My dear, we're going to get advice from one of the greatest men of the last two hundred years. If there was anybody who could help us plan a crisis, create an uproar, do something truly spectacular, this is the man to do it."

She twisted her lip. Frankly, she had never been raised to revere any of the Northwests, unlike her husband, and thought all of this sounded like it had less substance than the fire safety certificates at Northwest Mudflaps.

"Now then, let's find a nice laboratory space to kick things off."

"Well, according to these plans, there's exactly that just-"

"Not that laboratory."

"Why not?"

"I categorically forbid it."

Priscilla glared at him, stepped closer and snatched the old man's keys. She stared like she could see right to the bottom of him, dripping in anger, her voice coated in a slick layer of barely contained anger. "You are not getting in the way of our daughter returning."

"I'm doing so to protect you!" he shouted back.

"You can't even protect our carpets!"

"That's different, I-"

It was too late. She plunged the key into the recently disturbed lock and heaved open the bolted door. It creaked loudly, scraped across the flagstone floor and flooded the corridor with that ethereal, teal blue glow that marked the long-lost remains of Cornelius Northwest.

Priscilla stared, slack-jawed, her reflexes seemingly lost between shock, fascination and the overwhelming need to vomit.

Broken pipes and shattered glass still marred the floor. Steam, even weeks later, continued to pour unabated, and, from the damaged ceiling, a water pipe continued to leak.

But not a single drop hit the floor.

It fell, alright - then, by some unforeseen force of paranormal nature - was pulled towards the body of Cornelius, and disappeared, as if it was being swallowed out of sight.

The rumbling of the cavernous underground space seemed strangely condensed with the room, echoing and ringing from metal pipes and cylinders. The levers in its controls rattled gently of their own accord.

And there, stood in the broken glass, frozen in a permanent expression of horror, still dressed in finery, chained inside the broken glass chamber, was Cornelius Northwest. Or his remains. His skull hanging, its empty, black, hollowed sockets glaring at her with expressionless wrath, rage and fury.

He was still slick with that teal lacquer, that gave him the menacing blue, glowing hue, reflecting against burnished copper and iron that had once framed his crystal prison.

A mangled pair of pince-nez still sat in his breast pocket, his fine silk suit only slightly ragged from the misadventures that had taken place in the manor's bowels.

She took a step closer, her nose wrinkled so far that it threatened to destroy sixteen years of plastic surgery.

"Good evening, Cornelius." Preston huffed absently as he grabbed some ingredients from the shelves. "Still hanging around, there's a good man."

Priscilla wondered for a few moments if the ghoulish remains would actually reply. At this point, she was forced to admit that the Northwest's… historical connections may well be too much for even her to bear.