The Night of the Zealot - The Gathering

The meeting was boring and Daisy was used to meetings about the Dewey decimal system. Skids kept interjecting stupid little comments and she valiantly ignored them right up until he suddenly claimed the door has disappeared. She gave it to him both barrels at that point until she realised that the door had indeed disappeared.

Daisy, showing studious concern the door appears to have gone..

This was disconcerting, almost as disconcerting as Skids reaction which was a gut failure of epic proportions that formed a shroud of doom within the room. If nothing else disappearing doors and random chanting in a suburban house tends to concentrate the mind wonderfully and the group set to this new puzzle with a vengeance eventually discovering the door in the floor - and why not!.  The rest of the house was almost as disconcerting with a golden barrier of heat blocking access to the parlour. Daisy was also fairly certain the maggoty remains and shrieks and yells were a later addition and probably not part of the original design. Roland had just disappeared up stairs when he shouted down,'hey Skids come up here a second I think it would be safer if we kept together' Skids promptly pulled out a surprisingly clean looking derringer and disappeared upstairs leaving Daisy on her own armed with a large book.

"Men, typical", she muttered before shouting upstairs, " you boys found anything yet". Naturally they hadn't.  After pin cushioning a stream of disgusting rats she made her way downstairs where a ghastly carcass was hanging from the ceiling dripping into a bucket. She inched round shouting upstairs,

"you realise only Neanderthals and butchers handle meat like this nowadays? Can't you eat in a restaurant or take a cut of meat like the rest of us"

she carried on  mumbling under her breath before noticing a ghastly figure rising from the corner. Her scream was loud and brought the men running. At the sight of this creature Skids made another of his impromptu unpleasant clouds before Roland tried to hit it with a stick failing repeatedly.

Daisy wasn't sure what it was but she was fairly certain she did not want it near her or her dress. Instead she concentrated on searching the room and tried to ignore the curses as Roland and Skids tried to deal with it.

Singing. She decided singing would help.

"These are a few of my favour"
"kill the bastard",
"ite things"
"duck!"
"cream coloured ponies and"

Bang

"where did that come from!, did you forget you had that in your pocket while you tried to hit it with a stick?"
"crisp apple strudels"
"the bloody thing bit me, I'm bleeding"
"who cares no-one will notice"

Silence. The beast was in a heap in the corner and the boys looked dis-shrivelled. But on the other hand she had found a bucket of ice. Just the thing for that weird barrier although she was somewhat uncertain whether the safe thing to do was to go towards the chanting lunatics.

Roland helped carry the bucket upstairs and it did indeed collapse the barrier. That though seemed to make things worse. An angry red haired woman appeared and started shouting. Skids made another stinky smell, noises of unnatural running could be heard all over the house and finally another beasty made his way out of the house (she briefly considered whether something in the house was coming in or out and resolved to file that under 'things to be discussed when monsters aren't trying to kill you) and rushed towards them.

At a sprint she left the lads who were arguing whilst trying to deal with this latest monstrosity and moved to the parlour. Here the woman gave her an enormous lecture that she managed to ignore before using all her persuasive skills to sell her one of her encyclopaedias and as a bonus recruited her to their cause! It turned out this weirdo (Lita, what kind of name is Lita sounds like she was named after a mispronounced measurement of volume) was trying to stop the weird creatures she referred to as 'ghouls' - Daisy resisted the temptation to look this up as she was fairly certain Ghouls were of Arabic and not North American Origin and instead went back to the hallway where the two lads were failing to do much to stop the large ghoul (she decided to roll with calling them ghouls and perhaps make up a new name later on 'terrifying hairy earth monsters' or THEM for sort seemed workable) .

The drumming of multiple feet was now  getting louder and Lita turned with a look of horror shouting, " they come, prepare yourself!"

Daisy thought a second and propped a door up under the halls primary door. A thud on the other side showed that whatever was coming was not expecting the  door to be in an unopenable state.  The hande worked a couple of times before it also appeared to not be able to take the leap of imagination to break the door down and could then be heard trying to head butt the wall.

Things were also now going better in the room as well. Lita was proving surprisingly useful at giving the boys advice. Or perhaps the boys were more amenable to the advice when it was provided by a young red head with the top three buttons of her shirt undone.

"Hussy" she thought to herself as she tried to look up 'means to eviscerate undead'  in one her dictionaries. 'stakes, garlic, mirrors…no no that's vampires. Silver bullets? Were wolves"

"What - where's the wolf", shouted Roland as he ran by having overheard

"no werewolf, look why not use the gun", no response

Lita, " why not use the gun"

"Brilliant idea!", shouted Roland, " you are full of great ideas. I'm also very good around the house!". Roland pulled out another huge automatic pistol and promptly blew several big holes in the ghoul which collapsed. As it lay there Skids trotted up kicked it in the head before stabbing it and tried to find any pockets he could rob made more difficult by it appearing to wear a sheet with holes in.

"leave that we have to get out now", Lita snapped. As always the boys responded immediately and they all ran out of the back door.

As they stood panting Lita started to beg Roland to let her burn his house down. He seemed reticent though Daisy did wonder what he thought he could do with it - perhaps advertise it in 'undead weekly' , 'all ghoulish modcons!' but in the end he succumbed to the entreaties or the 'chest' and soon the house was burning.

Lita can be persuasive, not quite sure why

This seemed to push Roland over the edge and he collapsed in a gibbering wreck moaning about his Charlie Chaplin collection. Skids meantime appeared to have stolen several of Rolland's clothes and was looking a lot more presentable. HE also appeared to have to have taken the time to grab a quick snack as they left the house and was enjoying a cold collation which including some duck wraps.

Daisy shook her head disapprovingly and got the full story from Lita. It appeared this horror was just the start and terrible things would happen if they did not randomly kidnap or kill several prominent citizens of the town. Something struck her as logically flawed about that - perhaps this would make them notorious as opposed to the people they suspected -  but after what they had just seen she could not exclude the possibility that the tramp was correct. They would  re-organise and take the fight to the enemy the very next day.