The Faithful continues....

Once we were inside we found out that the other group had located the stones and the strange markings on top of them. More importantly, the party at the house had been reading through some of Shannon’s field notes and found out that the building had once belonged to a reclusive religious community over a hundred years ago, whose members all disappeared mysteriously. Then someone uttered "Things are being to look a bit iffy".

Then things turned a bit iffy.

Shannon, obviously mad and obviously insane, attacked Dr. Nails with a pen. He was quickly subdued, more so when the doctor injected him with a sedative. As the fruitcake slept, a couple of scallywags stole a book he had keeping close to his chest. It turned out to be Shannon’s diary, and it showed very clearly the man’s downward spiral into madness. He killed Thompson as he slept for no other reason than ‘the voices told him so’. People started to get more worried, then people started to get paranoid. I started to wonder if I would still have a job at Imperial Airways.

Lloyd suggested we should get rubbings of the stones as there were translations undone in Shannon’s notes and they could be instrumental in getting to the bottom of things. A small party, armed with various tools used on the dig made their way from stone to stone, taking rubbings in-between running and dodging the shuffling corpses. It was slow business, with West taking his time on the stones to get them right. But it had to be done - one stray nick and an entire symbol could change meaning.

Half way around the stones we heard gunshots, then the rest of the party came charging towards us. Apparently, Rutherstone had seen a man dressed in black cut the fuel line on the generator and the zombies had swarmed in over the dead grid (can a couple of undead be a swarm? I digress...), attacking them and killing the quite unconscious Shannon! At the time I thought it was quite merciless of them to simply leave the poor man to his fate like that, but I suppose it was a battle for survival. Either that or they’ll all heartless bastards. Sorry, I digress again...

The man in black was soon recognized as being on the plane during the flight, but was simply thought to have perished during the crash. Why he would want to hurt us in any way was beyond everyone, but even onboard he had given people the willies. Before the crash he had been sitting next to Rhys-Lloyd and just before our drop from the sky (which wasn’t my fault) had turned to Lloyd and said "Things are about to get worse". Again, I am forced to wonder about some of our passengers.

   The generator was fixed with parts found in the tool box belonging to the plane and the house was secure once more. We dug in, some of us keeping watch, while others read and tried to translate Shannon’s work. It was then a shambling figure emerged from the woods, carrying a briefcase. Shovels, axes and guns were all brought to bear; bloodlust appeared in peoples’ eyes; some checked the generator was still going and putting out a full current. Then the figure called out to us. He was alive! He frantically introduced himself as Stephen Perry while checking over his shoulder at the closing cadavers, asking to be allowed in. Members of our party recognised him from the plane (yet another survivor! Imperial Airways must let me keep my job now!) so no one was too sure as to how trust worthy he could be. But common decency won out - yep, it surprised me as well - and the group let him in, much to his relief.

Mr. Perry had a story to tell and he wasted no time in telling it to our eager ears: Perry was an archivist at the museum of Chichester, and he was chasing our man in black, a man called Samuel Stephenson. Mr. Stephenson seemed capable of lots of things, like turning up to work as a curator where the previous curator had died suddenly (and there always seemed to be a clay tablet found at the scene of death), possessing ancient objects that had gone missing from museums across the world decades before (and a certain black and copper box was one of them), and generally being a bit of a nasty piece of work. People nodded - they could believe it.

Perry was the first to awake from the crash and, seeing that Samuel had gone, immediately left in search of the evil man. Nice of him to think about us and our condition, I thought at the time. But Perry did grab Stephenson’s bag, which was pounced upon by Rutherstone and Walton. From inside I saw them draw out a book, seemingly a journal; a wedge of paper sheets bound together with cloth (I heard someone mutter ‘Spell book’ but I ignored it. I was having a hard enough time believing the undead), plus other little objects which I described as trinkets and Daniel described at 'Important Magical Devices’. We’ll see.

Pouring over the journal proved worth doing as it reveal more information about our strange Mr. Stephenson. It seemed like he had been here before, during the time of the Community - he was the Community, setting it up, so Samuel looked very good for his age. While he was here he was beguiled by the ‘Ancient One’ (something that surrounded us, apparently, and caused the dead to rise) into joining with him, turning him immortal. Worst was to come as Stephenson had come back to become one with the Ancient and he needed us to feed upon afterwards - he had caused the plane to crash so he would have some live stock!

Shock is a good word to describe what everyone was feeling at the time. Then anger at being used.

Someone said that in the writings there was mentioned about a map in a cross, and immediately Crowster, with help from Case and Lloyd, set about ripping apart the rotten remains of the community's wooden crucifix - obviously the word 'Blasphemy' didn’t enter into Fr. Case’s mind as he took a hammer and chisel to the wood. After a while, and after leaving nothing by splinters and odd sections of timber, the group had found nothing. Getting desperate, Crowster led a small group out into the woods to find ‘a bit of wood that looks the same as the cross’. Meanwhile Case seemed to have a divine intervention, because he suddenly spied a discolored plug at the end of one of the sections of  wood. It was easily poked out, and inside was a map.

Just as we were congratulating him on his find Tamarind and Brandon fell to the floor convulsing, curling into a ball. Spencer went to Miss Walton's aid, only to see her skin crawl and change, her features twisting and distorting. Before our very eyes, she and Lancer transformed into some kind of beast. Being the brave lot we are, everyone ran blindly, squealing in fright.