Each member of the group has been called to the hospital bedside of their close friend Rupert Merriweather, a former literary professor at Arkham University.

Cynthia [Rob] – A doctor in private practice that has been Rupert’s longtime neighbor. Harvey [Jimmy]- A young librarian and former grad student of Rupert.
Tom [Brad]- An unskilled laborer and former Detroit auto worker, who met Rupert at a speakeasy and defended him in a bar fight.
Orazio [Jeff]- A local undertaker who has had many discussions with Rupert, trying to convince him to talk about the occult in more than strictly academic terms.

The four individuals meet at hospital and introduce themselves, where Orazio immediately sets himself at odds with the group. They meet Rupert’s wife and his angry/sneering son Bertrand, the latter of whom is not pleased to see the group.

Rupert explains why he has called on them by telling the story of his youth – as young men, he and some friends accidentally unleashed a dark evil “creature” while “innocently” exploring the occult. The “creature” has been bound to their small farmhouse so long as they all lived, but Rupert is the last surviving member, and when he passes….

Rupert provides them a box containing a few items, including a key to the farmhouse, a gold sarcophagus with strange symbols, and a journal documenting Rupert and his friends’ dangerous mistakes.

Rupert spasms into a coma and passes away, and the group, putting asside their grief, are determined to find out the truth of the task Rupert has left them (after Harvey awkwardly expresses his condolences to Rupert’s son).

The group looks heads to the library to do some research. Harvey accidentally lights a stack of papers on fire. The group is kicked out of the library.

Tom and Orazio consider “coming back to the library later that night,” but Harvey astutetly points out that the “library actually closes at 10.”

The group heads to speak to Professor Montana Smith of the Egyptology department, who helps analyze the gold sarcophagus. He dates the sarcophagus to the third dynasty of Egypt, at the time of a little known ruler called “The Black Pharaoh.” He is unable to translate the strange symbols inside the sarcophagus, but he is able to translate the Egyptian hieroglyphs: “The girdle leashes her. He of many faces frees her. Hotep.” The investigators determine this message does not apply to their current task.

Feeling their investigation is reaching a dead end, the group plans to head to the old house the next day… in Orazio’s Hearse.

On their way to the house, they drive through the town center of Ross’s Corner, where the few locals milling about give them suspicious looks. The group never stops to inquire why, and thus never learn that a young farmer’s wife went missing the day before.

Walking up to the house, Tom discovers a raccoon that’s chest cavity has been opened and heart seemingly eaten straight out of it’s rib cage.

The group enters the house via the unlocked backdoor (whilst noting the warding symbols all around the house supposedly carved to keep evil out), and Cynthia quickly points out that a hobo has been likely squatting there based on the trash. The group does not notice the small warding signs carved into the molding around the cieling.

They also discover faded papers that describe the chant that “awoke” the creature, along with vials of materials used to summon it. The group concludes that if the chant/ritual is reversed, it would banish the creature. That is, if any of this is real – Cynthia still doubts.

Harvey tries to translate the latin chants, but stops paying attention to his surroundings, causing him to fall down the stairs to the cellar. He is surprised to discover the hobo, hiding in fear in the cellar, who tries to smack him with a table leg before running upstairs to escape the house.

Orazio, in a moment of panic, blindly shoots at the fleeing hobo with his shotgun. He misses and instead blows the backdoor off its hinges, through which the hobo then escapes. Cynthia disarms Orazio and then unloads the shotgun with a flourish.

Cynthia and Harvey boost the surprisingly weak laborer Tom through the trapdoor in the ceiling to inspect the attic. Tom immediately discovers the creature is real as a wind of boiling color flies through the attic at him, slamming loudly through the house and causing ceiling tiles to fall.

Tom’s chest gets torn open and he gets thrown back down to the ground, knocking him unconscious immediately. The attic trapdoor slams closed, and the group can now confirm the existence of Rupert’s grave mistake. Cynthia binds Tom’s wounds and wakes him up. They hear the creature leave the house through the attic window. Tom tells Orazio to shut up.

Bertrand shows up at the farmhouse unexpectedly and demands the investigators leave – he claims the house has been left to him and they’re trespassing. When they refuse to comply, he leaves, and unbeknownst to the investigators, tries to convince the local sheriff to come kick the investigators out. The sheriff is not eager to help, so Bertrand heads back to the house…

Through the frame where the backdoor used to be, the group sees the hobo far away from the house explode into a mist of blood. They decide now would perhaps not be the best time to leave, and coincidentally now would also be a good time to fortify the house. They put the door back in its frame, hoping that will suffice. They then decide to try the ritual in reverse to hopefully banish the creature.

Harvey attempts to help people prepare to speak the chant (in latin), but stutters over the words unhelpfully. Orazio instead helps using his italian expertise. They begin the ritual chanting.

The chanting seems to pull the creature back into the attic, which angrily tramples through the attic above them, unable to cross the warding signs on the molding. Orazio blows a hole in the ceiling with the shotgun in fear, allowing him to see the strange shadowy wisps of the creature above. Thick acidic goo drips down from the ceiling, burning everyone in the group. Tom barely continues to chant.

After an hour of chanting, the group hears a man’s voice crying for help from outside the house. The group is unsure of what to do until the door slams down off its hinges again and a zombified version of the hobo walks through the door and approaches Tom. Orazio, eyes closed and hands over his ears, continues chanting desperately.

Tom blows a hole through the hobo’s head twice with his trusty hand gun, and the gibs of of Hobo Joe, a man they never knew, fly threw the room.

Two more zombies show up: the farmgirl the investigators never knew about, and poor Bertrand, murdered by his father’s sin. The lurker in the attic is getting more violent and angrier as the chant approaches the end. Miraculously, Harvey manages to not stumble over his words as he takes over the final few minutes of the chant.

Tom struggles against the farmgirl, who bites him in the arm as he misses his shot against her. He is close to death. Orazio uses the butt of his shotgun to flip Bertrand, somersault flipping him 360 degrees back onto his feet.

Tom, muscles spasming and unable to hit the farmgirl, dives for cover behind a broken table. Bertrand, having always hated gymnastics as a child, bites into Orazio’s jugular, immediately incapacitating Orazio. Orazio falls to the ground unconscious, bleeding profusely from his neck, unmoving. Cynthia grabs the last, mysterious vial that rolls out of Orazio’s coat.

Tom impales the farm girl on the jagged leg of the broken table. Cynthia struggles against Bertrand, missing with the shotgun, and Bertrand runs into the pentagram at the chanting Harvey. Harvey blindly and fortuitously sidesteps the attack, and Bertrand trips and falls down into the Cellar as Harvey did earlier.

Cynthia stabilizes the dying Orazio, but takes note of the severe nerve damage to the neck, and realizes Orazio will be paralyzed from the neck down if he survives the night. Tom shoves the farmgirl zombie down into the cellar after Bertrand, killing her and knocking into Bertrand. He attempts to seal the staircase down to the cellar with the table.

As Harvey finishes the chant and the thing is pulled into the pentagram, Cynthia throws the mysterious powder into the fire, assuming it is the final ingredient. Instead, it seems to make the creature finally visible, shocking Cynthia into what undoubtably would be insanity… but the creature evaporates so quickly she is unable to process what she saw. The sound of Bertrand in the cellar disappears immediately.

The threat finally gone, the group takes a second to breath… until the sheriff’s department rushes in and arrests them all. Cynthia is casually pistol whipped. Orazio is taken to St. Mary’s hospital in Arkham, where he will never regain the ability to speak and will live out his remaining few days eating and drinking through a straw. The rest of the group is held in jail for a week without being allowed to contact anyone, including a lawyer.

Over that week, a man from New York reads in the paper about the horrible scene discovered in that farmhouse (the pentagram and disgusting corpses). He conducts some research into the groups backgrounds, finding most notably that the 73 year old undertaker Orazio has been selling corpses on the side for science experiments. He convinces the sheriff, with a healthy amount of cash, to pin the violence on Orazio, and secures the release of the other three investigators.

At their release he introduces himself as Jonah Kensignton, and inquires about their interest in an effort he calls “The Yellow King Company.”