Vanderboom House

**The Vanderboom House** is the primary setting for Rusty Lake: Roots, with the building and its grounds appearing in almost every stage of the game.

## Rusty Lake: Roots

It was initially owned by William and Aldous Vanderboom, until William's death shortly before the game. It is then left to their nephew, James Vanderboom, who moves in with his pet dog. A few years later, he is joined by his new wife, Mary. Afterwards, it is occupied by their children, Emma, Samuel, and Albert, Samuel's wife Ida; and later by their respective children, Frank, Leonard and Rose.

The house has four levels; the ground floor containing a parlour and workshop, an upper floor with a bathroom, a smaller third level with a telescope, and a secret hidden laboratory beneath the house. There is also a front yard, where the family tree, planted by James, a well, and two planting pots are located. The roots of the tree extend down into the alchemy laboratory once the plant is mature.

The parlour is the main area; this is where Samuel and Ida celebrate their marriage by taking a wedding photo and where the family gather to play parlour games or music. It is also where William Vanderboom's body is found inside the house's Grandfather Clock. The workshop is where Samuel Vanderboom later repairs the clock, shortly before meeting his future wife. This workshop is also used for other purposes; the table holds James' coffin during his wake, and later for Samuel and Ida's son Leonard after he is injured in WWI, using the worktable as a recovery bed.

The upper floor contains the bathroom, as well as what appears to be the various private rooms for the family members. It is here where James and Mary's children are born, Emma searches for her missing son, and Albert practices his voodoo magic. In the bathroom, Frank Vanderboom has a warm bath and cuts his hair and beard short.

The main levels of the house have an attic room above them, where Rose Vanderboom communicates with the spirit of her great-great-uncle William, learning of his desire to be reborn. The room is mostly empty, containing only a small table, a golden framed mirror and a chest with some of William's old documents. A ladder leads up to an even higher level of the house, in the small turret that is visible from the outside. Here, there is a telescope used by Frank Vanderboom to examine the stars.

The front yard is where James first arrives and plants the family tree, and where he later proposes to Mary, as well as where young Albert is permanently scarred by his siblings dropping a beehive onto his head. Later, Emma starts a garden and is impregnated by a flower here, and hangs herself from the tree after finishing a painting. Even further on, Leonard searches for the bronze timepiece and digs it up here.

The grounds of the house also have a deep well, initially full of water but later becoming drained and empty. Frank Vanderboom becomes imprisoned here during his childhood, living there captive at the hands of his uncle Albert, who teases him from the adjoining basement laboratory. This secret alchemy laboratory is underground, and can be accessed from the house via a secret staircase in the parlour room.

The lab is one of the most important areas of the House; it is where William, and later James Vanderboom create the Elixir of Life and Death; where Albert Vanderboom creates his daughter Rose, and where Rose herself performs the ritual to resurrect William, along with her cousins Frank and Leonard. There are two rooms in this lab - a main room for alchemy experiments, and a smaller room containing a gate to the sacrifices and slots for the three timepieces.

## Trivia

* The house photo in Cube Escape: Case 23 may be of the Vanderboom House.
* The Vanderboom family crest is carved onto the house's front door, as shown in the Rusty Lake: Roots chapter "The House".
* The room with the sacrifice gate and the timepiece slots can be accessed as early as the stage "The Elixir", in 1870. However, there are no sacrifices behind the gate, and no timepieces to put inside the slots. The room serves no purpose in this stage.
* The only stage of Rusty Lake: Roots where the House or its garden do not appear is "The Graveyard", in which Rose spends a night grave-robbing her deceased relatives in the graveyard by the Chapel while trying to find the gold timepiece.
* The tree in the yard seems to grow to match the Vanderboom family tree. How and why it does it is unknown.
* "Vanderboom" means "*of the tree*" in Dutch.