Ellie mentally rubbed her hands together. She’d been patiently awaiting her chance to skewer this arrogant prick with everything they had found, and she was grateful Ash had just taken the initiative.

“What do you mean?” Gilbert said to Ash.

“Something in the basement directly below us attacked me,” Ash said. “It was vicious, and it couldn’t have been human.”

Gilbert and Delphine flicked each other glances. Armand stiffened. Ellie expected them to deny it, but they just listened.

Ash waited for them to respond. Gilbert spoke first. “We…regret any unpleasantness. You have stumbled upon cousin Jacques. He…likes to play tricks.”

Ash stood. “That was no trick!”

Delphine swirled her glass of blood-red wine. “You must understand, Mr. Blackburn. Our family has been on this island a long time. This region is…sparsely populated, even more so when one considers the…local stock. We have done what we must to perpetuate our family, but…there are consequences. Poor Jacques is one of those consequences, but he is harmless.”

“Harmless!” Ash said. “He killed—he nearly me!”

“I can assure you, it will not happen again, as long as you do not accost him,” Gilbert said.

Ellie looked around at their hosts. The Delacroix family horse shit was getting deeper with every sentence.

She said, “Tell me about Zacharias Richard.”

Gilbert stiffened and looked down his nose at her. “What about him?”

“You first,” Ellie said.

“What is there to tell?” Gilbert said. “A carpenter, a handyman about town. He’s worked for our family for almost twenty years.”

“And he was married to Jacqueline Delacroix,” Ash said. “What happened to her?”

“I do not know what you’re talking about,” Gilbert said.

“Oh, come now,” Ivy said. “We have evidence.”

“What sort of ‘evidence?’” Gilbert said with a sneer.

Ash flashed each of the players a little headshake, then said to Gilbert, “We are not obligated to divulge anything until our investigation is complete. That we have shared anything at all is purely out of courtesy.”

Gilbert leaned back in his chair, seething silently, steepling his fingers.

Delphine said, “Jacqueline was a lovely girl, a doppelgänger of our beautiful Anastasia.”

Gilbert said, “Delphine, you—”

“Shut up, Gilbert,” Delphine said. “Our guests care nothing about our family’s shame, only about getting to the bottom of the diamond’s theft. We trust you will all be…discreet.”

“Absolutely,” Ash said. “We will.”

“You are correct,” Delphine said, holding out her wine goblet for a servant woman to refill, “Jacqueline and Zacharias were lovers. We discovered their trysting when she found herself with child. She stole away to marry him somewhere on the mainland, and when she returned, we forgave her deception and immorality. Alas, before she could carry the child to term, she fell ill and passed away. Zacharias had no wealth, status, or income. Taking pity on him, we took him in, even though his capabilities were less than adequate.”

“Even a village idiot must have employment,” Armand said disdainfully. “Disturbingly, he may have had designs on our lovely Anastasia, given their resemblance. I have watching him like a hawk.”

Anastasia snapped, “You watch everyone like a hawk, ‘dear’ brother.”

“Why on earth would Zacharias continue to work for you after that?” Ash asked incredulously.

"Enough, Anastasia!” Armand said, “You've given away enough family secrets. And you, Mr. Magician-al. Leave my sister alone, you cad.”

James leaned toward the players. “What’s a cad?”

“A man-whore,” Ash said, his gaze flicking among the Delacroix family.

“What, me? A man-whore?” James glowed with pride.

Just then a tremendous splash of lightning filled the great windows, and in the strobing silhouette, Ellie spotted the shape of a crypt across the overgrown lawn in the direction of the sea. But next to the blockish silhouette stood a gnarled, misshapen figure, at once human-like but clearly not. She was absolutely certain it had been moving toward the house.

“Something’s out there!” she said, pointing. She threw down her napkin and ran to the window for a better look, hoping for another flash of lightning. As she approached the windows, the accompanying thunder hit like a cannon barrage, so powerful she felt it in her bones, in the floor underfoot. The glass rattled in its panes.

“Nonsense,” Gilbert said. “The poor chap has had too much wine.”

Hands on the glass, Ellie yelled back, “I haven’t had any wine!” Then, eyes glued to the spot, she muttered, “C’mon, bring me another lightning bolt.” Another tongue of lightning licked the churning clouds, and in its glow…the figure was still there. Watching her.

“Come on!” she said to the others. “There’s something out there by the family crypt.”

“It’s probably ‘Jacques,’” Ash said.

Delphine said, “Jacques wouldn’t go outside at night in such a storm as this.”

“Then Jacques has a brother!” Ellie said.

Ivy was on her feet. “Let’s go.”

As Ellie crossed the room, though, the dining room’s parquet floor sparkled in her HUD.

Successful Perception Check! Gain 5 points to increase any skill! Perception checks represent moments of sharpened sensory acuity.

The parquet floor had been built in the pattern of a sigil. It exactly matched the talisman she’d seen above the bank manager’s office door.

But she didn’t have time to consider what this meant. The four players rushed to the front door, and as she had been the only one of them thus far to explore the island, she led the way.

#

James was right behind Ellie—Elwood—as they all ran for the front door. His heart was in his throat with excitement.

Behind him, Anastasia called, “Be careful!”

He turned and blew her what he thought was a gallant kiss, then continued outside. It was time for some ass-whooping. No way would whatever they found out there be able to stand against the four of them. Ash and Ivy already had their guns in hand.

Elwood flung open the giant front door, and wave of wind howling and rain lashed over them. Had he felt the rain on the bare skin of his face, too? He couldn’t remember, couldn’t make the distinction.

Out into the turbulent night the four of them ran.

“Holy shit, this feels real,” James said to himself. He’d never been in a hurricane before, but he imagined this was what one felt like, buffeted by wind and rain, making it difficult even to walk. Hugging the side of the mansion alongside some rose bushes offered some shelter from the tumult.

“Hey, Sean,” he said, “how do spells work? How do I cast one?” James was thinking ahead to an impending fight, and his mouth was dry.

The GM’s voice said, “Your spell, Eldritch Fire, may be cast by touching both thumbs to the tips of your middle and ring fingers simultaneously.”

“That way!” Elwood yelled, pointing toward a pitch black hulk of the mausoleum, barely visible among the black, spindly trees and bushes across the rear lawn. Light from the grand picture windows spilled into the night, illuminating their way, at least partially.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

James tried touching his thumbs to his two sets of middle fingers. Deep purple particles and green tongues of flame appeared around his hands. “Hah! Like Doctor Strange!”

Text appeared at the corner of his vision.

Current Soul Points: 44

Damage: 1-10 Life Points per every four Soul Points spent.

Stability loss: One-half the number of Soul Points spent. Choose Soul Point Expenditure.

He released his fingers, and the flames disappeared. It was not yet time for spell slinging. “Cool!” he chuckled.

They ran toward the mausoleum. He heard Ivy say to Ash, “I so would never do this in real life.”

“I know, right?” Ash said, laughing nervously, maybe remembering that he’d already been killed once.

Elwood was the first to reach the Gothic-style mausoleum, an ornate structure of stone blocks and ancient lichen, roughly square, maybe twenty feet on a side and ten feet high. Gargoyles squatted—were they gargoyles or something else?—on the corners of the roof, guarding the entrance. Four stone steps led up to a green-tinged, bronze door, which was easily half an inch thick, with a ponderous metal door latch.

The group could see that much but little else under the black sky, the house too distant to offer much light. Sheets of rain poured over them.

“And nobody brought a flashlight?” James asked.

The other three shook their heads.

“We should’ve grabbed a lantern,” Ash said.

“The wind would’ve blown it out,” Elwood said.

“Is this were you saw it?” Ash said, gripping his pistol.

Elwood nodded.

“Idea!” James said, touching his fingers together again. The flames of Eldritch Fire appeared around his hands, glowing bright enough to see. The portal of magical flow had been opened. The text appeared in his vision again but he ignored it, focusing on what was before him. The flames cast sickly greenish light over the stone face of the mausoleum.

In the glow he saw…

“The door’s open!” he said.

The massive, bronze portal hung ajar, a finger’s breadth.

Ash gave Ivy a meaningful look and grasped the edge of the door with one hand, pistol ready in the other. Ivy stepped back to give him room and leveled her six-gun with both hands.

After so long, it was weird for James to see his sister using both hands naturally.

Elwood whipped a sword blade from within his cane and held the wooden length of scabbard in his other hand. Its steel glimmered with the light of James’s green flames.

Ash looked at each of them as if to ask, Ready?

They all nodded.

He swung the door, which opened with an ear-splitting screech.

Blackness within yawned like a mouth, but no beasties charged out.

James’s flames reached a few feet inside, but the space went much deeper than that.

Nothing moved inside.

Ash told him, “You first with the light. We’ll cover you.”

“Yeah, well, don’t shoot me,” James said and edged toward the door, his voice a dry croak, lacking any spit at all.

His hands burned like green torches as he stepped into the mausoleum.

Beyond the door was a hallway about six feet wide with four rows of crypts on either side. Cobwebs caught the green light. Dust covered the floor.

His HUD lit up to outline footprints in the dust. The game had spotted some fresh footprints for him, leading away from the door.

Rain swept in around him, but he went deeper. “Come out, come out wherever you are,” he called.

No response but the moan of the wind.

The others followed him inside.

Lightning flickered through a grimy window set high on the rear wall of the mausoleum, illuminating the granite name plates affixed to the crypts. James’s neck hairs were prickling, as if something might burst out of one of these sepulchers at any moment.

“Here’s Jean-Paul’s crypt,” Ash said, stepping past . “The original Jean-Paul, judging by the birth date, 1748, but…” He blew dust out of the engraving. “…there’s no death date.”

“Open it,” Ivy said.

Ash set about looking for the means to do that.

Elwood meanwhile was reading the other name plaques. “So many children…”

Ash pulled a pocket knife and began to pry at the crypt seal of Jean-Paul Delacroix.

“There are almost no adults buried here,” Elwood said, reading the plaques. “Here’s one for Delphine. No death date. Born 1750.”

James said, “Yeah, I saw a piece of published music with her name listed as the composer. Could that old hag really be almost a hundred and fifty years old?”

“She doesn’t look a day over a hundred and ten,” Ash said, tongue poking from the corner of his mouth as he worked to dislodge the crypt seal with his knife.

Just like that, the seal came loose and fell heavily into his hands, revealing a black, empty void.

James moved a flaming hand closer, letting Ash peer inside.

“Nobody home,” Ash said.

Ivy said, “Which means the howling upstairs was the original Jean-Paul.”

“Unless they’re lying to us about everything,” Ash said.

James noticed that his hands were growing oddly chilled, an ache spreading from his fingertips up his forearms. Could that be the cost of holding a spell ready like he was doing?

“Let’s open one of these,” Elwood said, pulling out his own pocket knife and prying at the crypt of one Renee Delacroix, a child of six. That one also proved to be empty, a void full of dust and cobwebs.

“But there’s a death date,” James said.

“Right, so what does that mean?” Elwood asked. “Maybe the game never bothered to fill that in.”

“No,” Ash said. “This place misses absolutely nothing as far as details. How many times have we noticed details none of us even thought to consider? No, this is not because someone forgot to dress the set.”

“‘Dress the set,’” Ivy said with a smile. “Don’t tell me you’re a theater nerd.”

“I was a production assistant on a couple of student films. Trying to learn how to make movies.”

“Cool. You can tell me about that sometime,” she said, keeping her gun at the ready while Ash and Elwood opened crypts.

“Focus, people!” James said, suddenly uncomfortable seeing his sister vibing on someone.

Elwood pried open another child’s crypt. “This one is empty, too.”

Ash opened another. “This one, too.”

The aching chill spreading up James’s arms was getting seriously uncomfortable. “I can’t hold the light much longer,” he said. The shadows at the corners of his vision were squirming, as if alive, but the movement disappeared as soon as he tried to focus on it.

They opened seven crypts before they found one with a coffin in it.

“Should we open it?” Elwood asked.

“Do it,” Ivy said.

Ash dragged coffin out of its crypt, and Elwood helped him lower it to the floor. They opened the cracked, dusty lid to reveal a skeleton held together by papery leather and rotten lace.

Elwood yelped and jumped back, his face full of disgust.

“Yup, that’s a corpse,” Ash said calmly.

“Uh, do you guys not see them?” Elwood asked.

Ivy peered closer. “See what?”

Elwood hesitated, disgust now mixed with confusion. “You don’t see any worms?”

“You mean, like, maggots?” Ash asked. “This body is long since past maggot food.”

James said, “I don’t see any worms at all.”

“Dammit,” Elwood muttered. “It’s just that, twice before now—”

From one of the open crypts, between the gang and the entrance, flowed an inky blackness. A form with impossibly long limbs, a head, but impossibly flexible, like a contortionist made out of oil.

Ivy yelled a warning.

They spun.

James raised his hands to unleash his spell, but Elwood and Ivy were between him and the thing.

Purplish-black skin, pock-marked, warty, and patched with obsidian bristles, two lamp-like eyes catching the green flames, a prehensile, black tongue swinging from a broad, slavering maw.

James’s vision swam. The thing grew to twelve feet tall.

You have failed a Stability check! Stability loss: 3 points. Frightening experiences can shake your mental and emotional well-being, and the effects are cumulative. Failing Stability checks can affect what you perceive, as well as your available actions.

The Eldritch Fire in his hands, gathered in his spirit, ached to be unleashed.

At point blank range, Ivy’s gun boomed once, twice, three times, the muzzle flash blinding, strobing the creature’s body with stark shadows. A horrific roar filled the mausoleum, half pain, half rage. James glanced at the health bar hovering above the creature’s head, the bullets had knocked about ten to fifteen percent off the top, but at the rate, she would be out of ammunition long before the creature ran out of health.

Elwood stabbed at the thing with his sword cane but missed, which brought him within range of the creature’s taloned hands. Faster than James’s vision could follow, the creature struck Elwood and sent him flying backwards to bounce off the wall of crypts and fall at James’s feet.

Ash took careful aim and fired two quick shots, both of which staggered the beast, but then Ivy was in the way.

James shouted, “Ivy! Get back! Now!”

She took one look over her shoulder at James and Ash, and dove toward their feet, out of the line of fire.

With a glance and a blink, James allotted 22 Soul Points to his Eldritch Fire spell, and released it with a cry of rage. A gout of green fire roared into existence and filled the creature’s end of the mausoleum floor to ceiling with an inferno of roiling flame.

At the same moment, Ash’s pistol popped with incredible speed.

The creature threw up its hands in a defensive reflex, but there was nothing it could do against the onslaught of otherworldly flames and bullets. Its health bar plunged toward zero. James manipulated the gout of flames by adjusting his hand position, focusing it into an enormous blowtorch.

Then it fell into a smoking heap, and the air filled with the stench of burnt hair and charred, blackened flesh.

James retched. “Sorry, I—” Then he retched again. “Dammit! I—waugh! This is so stup—waugh! Seriousl—wauuugh!”

Ivy patted him on the shoulder, holding her other hand over her nose.

Ash helped Elwood to his feet. “Are you all right?”

Elwood’s health bar was down about a third. Unsteadily, he said, “That…hurt.”

“You, too?” Ash said worriedly.

“That was like the time someone hit me with a twelve-pound medicine ball in P.E. class,” Elwood said, rubbing his ribs. His formerly dapper coat now bore a ragged gash across the front. “No blood though. Maybe some bruised ribs.”

Ivy nudged the creature with her boot. “Look’s dead. Nice work, gentlemen.”

James raised his hands in triumph. “We! Kicked! Its! Ass!”

But then a wave of dizziness hit him like someone had just spun him on a merry-go-round at full speed for a full minute. His vision swam. Several hands caught him, held him up.

“Whoa…” he said. His hands were still half numb from holding the flames for so long, but sensation was spreading back into his arms.

Lying there on the floor, wisps of smoke still rising from its charred flesh, the creature looked a whole lot smaller now, not much taller than James. Had the creature’s size been an artifact of his failed Stability check?

Ivy asked Ash, “So we killed the monster.”

Ash shook his head. “We killed a monster. This isn’t the one that attacked me. Different size, different proportions—”

“It has boobies!” James blurted before he realized he’d used his outside voice.

Elwood and Ivy glared at him for a moment, but he pointed as if to say, Look!

This creature’s breasts were small and shriveled, more like half-empty, leather dice pouches than anything, but there could be no mistake.

“So there are more of them,” Ivy said. “But how many more?”

“One for every blank space in the family tree Ash found,” Elwood said. He had sheathed his sword back in its cane and used the handle to lift a charred hand. Around one of the creature’s fingers, something gleamed and glinted.

“A wedding ring?” Ivy said.

“I believe we’ve found Jacqueline,” Ash said.