(Adapted from the published adventure ‘Danger in Dunsmouth’
by Jason Blair)
Prelude
“Once upon a time… Well, don’t all good stories start that way? Anyway, there were once three sisters, spinsters all, Angry, scrawny Hagatha, bookish, green-fingered Hannah, and matronly Henrietta who had spent their entire lives in Dunwich, a small coastal village that supposedly offered their relatively few visitors the “quintessential rural England experience” or at least that was what the noticeboard of the volunteer-run Tourist Information kiosk promised. However, to these three sisters, Dunwich seemed more like a punishment than a paradise. Their family had been the village’s blackest sheep for over three hundred years, since their earliest recorded ancestor, Hilda Whateley, was stoned to death after being accused by the local squire’s son of practicing witchcraft. The label of “witch-spawn” had stuck with her children and had been a stain on all of the generations that followed, finally falling on the shoulders of the last three surviving inheritors of Hilda’s bloodline: the Whateley sisters.
The three middle-aged sisters were as reclusive as life in the hamlet would allow; holed up in their crumbling childhood home on the outskirts only venturing out for food and other supplies as needed. Life was a living hell, slandered and feared by their neighbours, antagonised and terrorised by the local children, their isolation pushed each sister into her own little world.
That was until a visitor one fateful Friday night dared to knock on the door of that rundown old house on Graveside Hill. He was a slim man, abnormally tall; over seven foot in height with blonde close cropped hair and wearing sunglasses even at night to cover his blind eyes. He spoke with promise and charm, and enchanted each one of the sisters with the words that spun off his silver tongue, words of power and words of destiny that would change their lives forever.”
Now
The team were sitting in the lounge when they heard Frankie’s disembodied voice: <<Designation: The Balance if I may have your attention? I am sorry to interrupt your downtime but my sensors and data analysis of the UK weather patterns has identified an extremely unusual weather formation that has appeared suddenly over a localised region of Suffolk, a small village called Dunwich to be precise. My analysis, backed up by the National Meteorological Office’s own conclusions reveal that an intense storm is likely to cause serious and life-threatening flooding localised to a two-kilometre radius centred on Dunwich. Nearby villages and towns appear to be unaffected by the phenomenon.
I have intercepted local Police transmissions and it would appear that all attempts to evacuate the local citizens have resulted in the rescuers themselves disappearing inside the storm front without any further contact. Not counting the 16 missing rescuers, there is believed to be 183 residents in the village, none of whom have been found. Local Police are appealing for assistance.>>
Mary smiled, “Assistance? That’s our middle name!” She seemed quite enthused at the possibility of getting back out there after the anguish of the last few days. “And after all, we know a few people who can manipulate the weather don’t we?”
Frankie continued, <<For information; Dunwich is a small community on the North Sea coastline, which in the 11th Century was one of the largest towns in England and the capital of the Kingdom of the East Angles. The region was hit by a succession of massive storms in the 13th and 14th centuries and is now largely below the sea. Two great storms in 1286 and 1326 resulted in the loss of its harbour, its churches and much of the coastal region, decimating the city of Dommoc as it was originally known.
One bit of information is the local Police have reported the constant and repetitive ringing of a church bell coming from offshore, but all the churches sank or were destroyed in the 1326 flooding. The only exception is the ruined Franciscan priory of Greyfriars on the outskirts of the village and it has no bells. A popular local legend says that, a church bell will be heard from beneath the waves as a forewarning of great disasters.
A major rescue effort is being assembled but it is unlikely to be ready before what remains of the village collapses into the sea with the remaining inhabitants, wherever they might be hiding. Shall I inform the authorities that you would be available to investigate? For information Dunwich is located 150 miles east north east of Wessex.>>
Mace seemed familiar with the general location and warned them that it was “quite an isolated area and is frequently knocked off the grid.”
Akira pointed out that with Dunwich’s seaside location and the threat of coastal flooding, they should consider taking transportation that would enable them to travel both above and below the waves if possible. Mary nodded, “The Crate will be fine, it’s designed for sub-orbital flight and is fully compartmentalised so should be air-tight and Adam used to boast that it should be able to stand the pressure of being submerged to least to a depth of 300 metres. Beyond that, who knows..?”
30 minutes and several long conversations with the local Suffolk Police later, the Crate landed near a police patrolled barrier about two kilometres outside Dunwich. The Police had blocked off all routes that led into Dunwich. There were a fair share of gawkers along the barricades but thankfully, none of the well-wrapped civilians were trying to actually get beyond them, for now.
The Police confusion was now apparent as the team witnessed the abnormal weather conditions first hand. Where they had landed, the weather was raining heavily but inside the barriers the weather got progressively worse until, less than 50 metres inside the Police perimeter, clouds like sackcloth turned the sky pitch-black. All of the streetlights were out, knocked off the grid as Mace had predicted or smashed by the stormy conditions. Rain droplets pummelled the ground and thunder could be heard, though there was no lightning to illuminate the sky.
The only road into the village was along the shoreline and massive torrential waves were battering the coast and covering the road, making it difficult to traverse. From where they were, they could just make out what was now a very battered and wave-swept marina currently devoid of moored craft – presumably, any that had been moored there had been swept out to sea.
Something wicked was apparently brewing in this quaint seaside spot. Everything about it was abnormal; within a distance of 50 metres, it turned from heavy rain to hellish weather, the heavy cloud cover absorbing all of the light inside its maul and this was the same all the way round the village itself. It appeared as though all life had fled the darkness, gulls filled the skies above them enroute to anywhere but there. The only creatures that appeared to have stayed inside the cloud-encased hell were the ravens and crows who now watched the village’s borders like guardsmen at the gates of a medieval castle. From the twilight region, came the buzzing symphony of a million invisible insects, audible downwind for miles.
A thunderclap, like the hands of God coming together in anger but still with an absence of lightning rattled them and the crowd that had gathered by the blockade. The constant ringing of a church bell from far out at sea did not help anyone’s mood.
The bizarre weather was preventing the Coast Guard from getting in close to the shore and after the disappearance of the Police and Fire Officers who had tried to enter the village by road; no one else has tried since though the Police were currently preparing for another rescue mission into the hell that had been Dunwich. Mobile and mainline phone communication weren’t working within the village’s limits as towers and lines were either down or devices were unable to access the networks through the dense cloud cover and unusual electrical activity in the sky above. Satellite photos from the weather service show only a dark spot over where Dunwich should be: a blur with swirling tendrils stretching out for a couple of kilometres from the black heart of the storm.
It was time for action and the decision was taken to use the Crate to enter the maelstrom by staying low, hovering about a metre off the ground to reduce buffeting from the hurricane winds and head initially towards the marina and the centre of the village.
As their now sealed vehicle entered the twilight boundary around Dunwich, the ringing of the bell became even more prominent. Akira decided to regale them with the tale of Cantre’r Gwaelod, a legendary ancient sunken kingdom said to have occupied land lying between Ramsey and Bardsey Islands in Wales; how it too had been lost to flooding and how the sunken church bells of Cantre’r Gwaelod were also said to ring out in times of danger.
Given all of Dunwich’s churches were destroyed centuries before, Akira wondered whether the bells’ location was somehow the cause of the extraordinary weather and suggested that it might be best to “turn submersible” and check out the undersea source of the peal first.
Outside the rain continued falling like rocks on the cabin roof, the sea slapped ominously against the cliff face and darkness swirled like a predator eyeing its prey.
They approached the marina, now decimated by the raging sea. There were no boats currently tethered though there were signs that at least a couple had been present before the storm hit. Shredded ropes dangled from posts into the water and an outboard motor, some wood from its boat still attached, bobbed in a shallow pool on top of a cliff. The dock contained a mostly intact refuelling area and a private parking lot for boat owners and employees, though the remaining parked cars had been flooded and had been washed into each other.
Mary drove the Crate off the wharf and allowed it to sink beneath the waves even as she closed all external seals. Without an integral life support system of its own, they were now limited by the air capacity of the Crate, which would likely grow stale very soon but it was worth trying. Deeper and deeper they went following the sound of the bell, passed square cut rocks and seaweed-covered ruins that had once been the foundations of buildings lost centuries before to the sea.
Finally, about a kilometre out from the shore they found a crater in the seabed that according to Mace’s readings appeared to be the epicentre of the peal. Pressure waves caused by the sound vibrations emanated from the centre of the crater but there was no ruins, no strangely shaped rocks and definitely no bell or spire to hold such a bell anywhere, yet still it rang loud and clear even through the water.
Mary and Akira both tried to reach out with their mystical senses but what they felt made no logic – it was as though what was out there was the very antithesis of magic, a dead zone that washed over them, psychically buffeting them and physically hammering at their craft. Mace seemed to get closest to explaining what they were feeling when she suggested it was like a black hole in reverse, a zone which pounded at everything in every direction. Mace was thankfully mystically ‘deaf’ to its migraine-like side effects.
It was Akira though that sensed a mystical ‘echo’ on land growing ever stronger that somehow was channelling the empty crater on the seabed.
The air inside the Crate was getting thinner and they knew they needed to surface and possibly investigate Akira’s land based ‘echo’. They headed back towards the land and blasted out of the water into a hailstone shower that pummelled the hull and threatened to crack the windscreen.
Aside from the atmospheric weather-related anomalies, the place was as silent as a tomb. The houses near the village centre seem abandoned, the storefronts locked and empty. The wind on the ground was just a light breeze despite the torrent of rain and hail and the raging whirlwind in the sky and at the edge of the village. What was off was how the crows and ravens —the only creatures left in the village—seemed to cluster in the trees and rooftops, as if keeping an eye on them. The raindrops and sleet pummelling the ground seemed to be missing them completely as they continued their constant vigil.
As the Crate hovered up onto the main street through the village, the weird birds with their uncharacteristic pale eyes followed their every move. They did not attempt to fly away or even to craw aloud, just staring in their direction.
Mary had had enough and handed the controls over to Mace while she Banshee’d up. She rendered herself insubstantial and invisible, phased out of the Crate and levitated until she was crouching beside two of the nearest birds. She resubstantiated herself, grabbed hold of two of them before insubstantialising all three of them and dragging them back with her into the cargo bay of the Crate. To her surprise, they did not seem to react and that’s when she saw their pupil-less glowing yellow eyes that followed her movement everywhere without ever blinking. Did crows blink normally, she wondered. Their presence inside the Crate made her mystical senses itch as though they were relaying multiple signals through the aether, all of which were seemingly transmitted in one direction, up the hill towards the outlying houses at the edge of the village!
She headed back into the cabin and looked out at what remained of Dunwich. The Crates headlights breached the clawing darkness enough to show the village centre which consisted of a small mini-mart, a Post Office cum general store and a couple of other local shops, all dark. The rest of Dunwich, other than a primary school and a nearby play park appeared to consist of residential properties, all at least a couple of hundred years old. Even what had once been the local pub had been converted into a house. Nearby there were signs that a number of properties had already collapsed into the sea as it reclaimed ever more of the land.
Mace realised it first, there was something (or someone?) out there moving in the darkness; a shape skittering across the street that then vanished into the interior of the Post Office. She immediately pointed it out to Banshee who again phased out and into the darkened interior of the Post Office before becoming physical again. There was no sign of anyone (or anything), but it looked as though the store had been abandoned suddenly; there was a stack of stamps lying on the counter and the door of the fridge full of what had been cold drinks lay open, as though someone had been in the process of grabbing a can when they’d suddenly left.
Then she heard something over the hellish bombardment of rain and hail outside, someone had slammed the rear door and ran out into the narrow alleyway behind the shops and houses. Thankfully, the team’s Commdots were still in close enough proximity to each other for their Bluetooth interfaces to be working and she was able to tell Mace to pilot the Crate over the roof as she headed through the store and out into the hellish weather. A hailstone the size of a fist hammered into her before she could reach the store next door, bruising her and making her question why she’d become substantial in the first place.
The alleyway behind the stores was too narrow to land so Mace was forced to put the Crate into hover mode above it before dropping down from the Crate using her grav-gauntlets to slow down her descent but she was similarly pummelled by icy darts from above as Akira calmly deflected any incoming as he levitated down. It didn’t help that the unnatural darkness of the storm seemed to absorb the illumination of the vessel’s hull lights so that the alley below remained in heavy shadow.
Huddled by the rear window of the store they looked through the glass and just managed to make out the shop’s name, “Joe’s Bait & Hook” painted in reverse on the front of the store’s big display window.
The rear door beside them banged with the wind revealing that it was unlocked. They decided that it would be safer than being battered to death by hailstones and entered. Inside they saw a shadowy figure hunched over by the cash register. As they moved closer, the shadow was revealed as an old man. He was rail thin with a few shocks of white hair on an otherwise bald head, dressed in denim overalls, a plaid shirt, and muddy boots. It was dark and he apparently hadn’t seen them yet or heard their entrance over the cacophony outside so they were surprised when he suddenly spun around holding something like two circular metallic pipes in his hands. It took a second to realise that the ‘pipes’ was actually a double-barrelled shotgun, ancient and very rusty, as though it was more likely to explode in his hands than actually fire. It looked as though it had been hidden away somewhere damp and mouldy since the last War. His finger however tremored on the trigger and his hands were shaking.
After Frankie’s recent ‘historical’ revelation about the fate of Marie Kelly, Mace didn’t exactly have a high opinion of the rest of humanity and for a split second she considered disarming the old fool in the fastest way possible, and to hell with the consequences. Instead she spoke up, her voice a bit more confrontational than she had intended, “Put the weapon down and we can talk.”
Banshee glanced over at her even as the old man slightly lowered the barrels and in a shaky voice replied, “You’re like all the others, or if not yet you soon will be.” That caught her curiosity and in a quieter voice this time she asked, “What others?” He glowered at her, “All of them. Only Ol’ Joe, that’s me Joseph Edward Wilbur, hasn’t been turned by the devils. They tried only he is special, he didn’t fall for it, no sir.”
He seemed to talk about himself in the third party, it possibly indicated a touch of schizophrenia and definitely a lot of paranoia on display but as Sam used to joke, ‘just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.’
She sighed, “Put down the gun before someone gets hurt. We’re here to help.”
After Ol’ Joe had placed the shotgun down on the counter, they approached and for some reason he seemed intent on staring soulfully deep into their eyes. His examination of them, gave them a chance to do the same of him. Closer examination revealed the twitchiness of his eyes, various bites (human-sized, Mary noted) and scratches along his face, neck, and arms. He was missing some teeth and had his pipe clamped between his gums but it wasn’t lit (and wasn’t even filled; it was obviously just an affectation that helped calm him down). Once soothed, he started talking, quietly and with constant glances over his shoulder at the darkened and water-soaked street outside.
“Ol’ Joe wasn’t born different but, he is now. They couldn’t turn him to the dark side, no sir! Maybe it was his time in the Army, maybe it was all that time at sea and maybe it’s his ancestry. Whatever the cause, Joe’s different.”
His tone was manic and he remained very jumpy, immediately going off on a mumbling tangent before he suddenly continued; “Now you’re going to think Joe is crazy, most people do, but ask anyone not turned and they will tell you Ol’ Joe might think different to others but he never lies. Never! I think Joe was saved by God and his angels because Ol’ Joe he doesn’t lie and that is what saved his hide while the rest of the folk went all swirly-eyed.”
He paused and muttered something then pointed to some runic looking marks roughly carved under the counter. “Ol’ Joe is the only one who knows how to make the witch marks that keeps them kind away, taught them he was by his father’s father and he by his. Anyways, it was the Devil come here three nights back. Joe knows because the sky turned purple before orange at twilight, that’s as sure a sign as any… And all the cats cowered under chairs as the wind whispered the horned one’s thousand names into the ears of the deceitful. Don’t ask how Joe knows that last part, he just does.
Ol’ Joe had been busy whittling a mast for his latest bottled ship, when he saw a tall, skinny man wearing sunglasses in the dead of night stroll through the village a parcel in his hand. He walked down toward Pickman Ave and up Graveside Hill. Joe watched the man from the window to his shop and saw him go where no one goes if they have any sense because everybody’s mam told them not to and with good reason. He was heading to the Ol’ Whateley Place.”
Joe shuddered at the name then continued. “As the sworn defender of this village so help me God, Joe grabbed his shotgun here and followed the man. He stuck to the darkest shadows and bushes, because the devil can’t see in pure darkness you know, which is why the devil can’t look inside his own heart. He saw the man knock on the door of that trice-cursed family and saw the older sister, Henrietta” (he pronounced it Henry-ate-a) “let him in. It was there, Joe’s sure, they consummated a pact to wash what remained of Dunwich into the sea to join the sunken city beneath the waves. The devil’s always hated Dunwich because it’s where God buried Michael’s sword, according to the spoken traditions of the Wilbur family anyway.
It’s the Whateley sisters what turned this community on its head. They turned the whole village into mindless drones, slaves to the devil, getting back at those who tormented them all the years of their lives and their entire family before them. Find the Whateleys and you’ll find the source. If you don’t stop this soon, the whole world’s next!”
He chewed again on the end of his pipe and muttered something under his breath about ‘devil’s eyes’. It seemed that when he was lucid, he was fine but he did have a tendency when his ‘humours’ foamed up to babble incoherently. They just had to hope they had caught him on a good day, mostly.
Banshee asked him again about the sister’s late night visitor. When Joe mentioned his height as being about seven feet tall, blonde haired and wearing sunglasses at night her thoughts immediately turned to a certain caulbearer and bargain-maker they had met in Israel the previous year. Could it possibly be..?
As she pondered the possibilities, Akira pounced on Joe’s statement about Dunwich being the hiding place of St. Michael’s sword. He fingered his own emerald pendant as he asked the old man if he knew where the sword might be hidden? Unfortunately, it was just a legend as far as Joe knew and it set him off into a long rambling rant about the rebellion in Heaven and divine justice.
He only stopped when asked where the Whateley’s lived, he pointed in the direction of a nearby hill. Time to leave, Ol’ Joe grabbed the old shotgun in his trembling hands and immediately headed for the attic as he explained, “Devil will not respect God’s covenant and will be sending a flood so seek high ground and don’t wait for any rainbows. Promise me, you’ll not wait for a rainbow now?” With that he dashed for the rear stairs and began hurrying up them two steps at a time. Thankfully, he didn’t trip and accidentally discharge that old shotgun of his.
Then, outside they heard his steps on the stairs being echoed back a hundredfold as the thunder took on a regular frequency and synchronicity which they realised was a horde of people walking in unison. The darkness did not disguise that fact that the street outside was starting to fill up as a wave of robed people occupied the street. The three of them walked through the front door of the store.
There were about two hundred people of all shapes and ages heading towards them. To Banshee and Akira they looked like Gregorian monks: in big robes with hoods up over their faces, hands clasped at heart level, folded inside overlapping sleeves. The majority were dressed in long brown robes, with some of the ‘devotees’ dressed in black and a select few zealots wearing oxblood robes. All of them had glowing, pupil-less yellow eyes. Quiet and mechanical, they walked with their heads bowed through the street, not paying any attention to the heroes for the moment. This was likely all of the village residents as well as their rescuers, minus one of course. Seemed word of their arrival had reached the locals and they apparently had sent a welcome party.
Akira muttered, “I’ve never seen so many monks gathered together before!” It took a few seconds for Mace to realise that what she was seeing was very different to what her companions were; standing in front of her were about 200 people of all ages though most were older adults, dressed in normal, regular clothing if thoroughly soaked through. A small number were in Police or Fire Officer Uniforms but they all had one thing in common, their eyes shone yellow and they were all armed with poles, planks of wood and knives.
She heard her teammates and realised that they had to be seeing a mystical enchantment that seemingly disguised their potential hostility. Her mystical ‘blindness’ was for once working to her advantage. She whispered over the team comms that the robes were an illusion caused by whatever magic was responsible for this whole affair and warned the others that everyone, even the children were armed and ready to inflict violence on them.
Then out of the dark, in the sky they saw three middle-aged women dressed in well-worn, frumpy clothes floating above the enchanted crowd, bringing up the rear. Despite their many differences, there was a family resemblance about the three women and it was clear that they had to be the Whateley Sisters. Each wore a similar-looking golden and bejewelled pendant around their necks, each of which glowed brightly illuminating the people gathered below and, for the first time since they had entered the storm, dispelled the darkness. The rain and hail pounded everyone on the ground but it seemed the weather was as averse to assaulting the floating, smiling women as it had the birds.
The sister in the middle raised her hand and the robed people stopped mid-step. She addressed the heroes, in a booming and clear voice: “You are too late! The summoning has already happened and HE shall awaken as soon as the stars align in tonight’s sky! Fight as you wish but your heroics shall be in vain!”
Then with a wave of her hand, the cultists turned to face them. Perfectly synchronised, the cultists raised their hands and flipped down their hoods. As they did so, the mystical glamour vanished from in front of Banshee’s and Akira’s eyes and they finally saw what Mace had seen all along; these are just regular people though their faces were slack and their eyes glowed a dull yellow.
A crack of thunder immediately followed and then silence while the cultists’ eyes changed colour and flashed as brightly white as the pendants the sisters wore. As they raising their weapons, the crowd attacked!
Mace immediately readied a bolt and considered unleashing it on the mob rushing towards her, but instead selected a Taser head as Akira shouted out he had an idea but for it to work on so many, it would require all of his mana. Mace’s fired the bolt at the sisters which hit a barrier of white light that flared into life projecting out from their pendants shielding all three of the women as the electrical attack discharged across the front of their mystical shield.
The crowd were a wall that stood between them and the real threat, which needed to be dealt with promptly. Akira started to form the words and gestures that summoned the powers of an angelic being to his cause. He poured all of his mystical energy into summoning the Abjurations of Abbridon, a spell intended to counteract darkness, bindings and malevolent summoned creatures. Akira hoped that by using it that it would break the spell binding the locals, though he knew it would take more effort than usual to ‘declaw’ such a large number of attackers. The spell called upon the mercy of Abbridon, an angelic higher being associated with order, truth, and one of the three entities that made up the mystic trinity of the Modrossus.
The spell’s invisible tendrils reached out from both his heart and his mind and started to neutralise their attackers, starting with the one’s that they’d previously seen ‘wearing’ the blood-red robes. As the spell washed over them, they momentarily collapsed to the ground, the light washed from their eyes and they slowly returned to their sensibilities. Temporarily drained of magic, Akira struggled to stand under the strain. It would take a minute or two for the spell to reach all of their attackers but thankfully, those already liberated were accidentally hindering the progress of the others. Behind them, one of the women, the spindliest, weakest looking of the sisters gestured and the sky was suddenly filled with a gale that buffeted at the shopfront, the three standing in front of it and knocking over dozens of the mob. For once, Akira was unable to project his shield up in time and the wind slammed him into the door frame badly bruising him. Above, the witch that had called the wind started to undergo a physical transformation, her body immediately began to bulk out as muscle upon muscle grew on top of each other transforming her into a female Arnold Schwarzenegger on steroids! The transformation again reminded Banshee of other unexpected physical alterations she’d witnessed as a result of accepting a bargain for power.
On the ground, several of the mob had finally reached the three of them; Banshee dodged a thrown blade and a plank of wood aimed at her head and then elected to turn insubstantial in defence. Mace used the opportunity to rush in and parry both of the attackers, knocking them to the ground.
Akira was still exhausted from casting the spell on so many people and stumbled back, leaving Banshee and Mace to try to stop the assault. All three sisters’ pendants were glowing brightly and Banshee was sure that they were the source of their powers. She focused and unleashed a shattering shriek, which seemed to activate the light barrier that protected the sisters, reflecting the sonic attack back. It did at least shatter a number of the crowd’s weapons (as well as their pocketed phones and watches).
Then the now bodybuilder-shaped sister gestured again and from behind her the rains and waves combined into a torrential flood that rushed down the street towards the village. Cars parked on the street were picked up by the flow and slammed into houses as well as each other by the torrent. It seemed the flooding of what remained of the village and likely drowning of most, if not all, of the inhabitants was to be the perfect cover for the sisters’ escape as they turned in the air and flew away.
Mace unleashed a second Taser bolt at their fleeing backs but that damned shield of light flared into life behind them, protecting them again.
No time, they really needed to get everyone indoors behind closed doors and preferably upstairs before the flood hit and drowned everyone. Akira immediately flew over the mob and landed between them and the fleeing sisters. The waters was already at knee height and threatened to sweep everyone into the sea as Akira reached down and stuck his hands into the water and began transforming it into a stone dam to hold the rest of the flooding back at least momentarily. The water ‘folded’ itself into first a muddy constituency then solidified into stone, building itself higher and higher under his Meta guidance.
He ignored the murmured comments on his commdot from the others about “always wanting to be King Canute” and only he “could play at building sand castles at a time like this”. He smiled in spite of the seriousness of what he was about to try to do.
The pressure of the water building up was tremendous and he risked the level of water already present around his legs washing him into the sea. Time was not on their side and he hoped his teammates would act quickly.
Mace rushed to one side of the street and up some stairs where she began to smash open a couple of the doors using her grav-gauntlets as she screamed at those who had regained their freewill to get inside, quickly and to try and get everyone upstairs.
Meanwhile Banshee used her terrorising scream to compel everyone else to get off the street and inside any of the nearby houses. It worked, though Akira was almost washed away when his transformation collapsed and the water swept in. Then the hailstorm resumed pummelling them.
Grabbing the last of the stragglers off the street, the three of them made sure the villagers aided by their previously enchanted rescuers made their way upstairs to higher levels in several of the houses as they waited out the receding of the floodwaters. The Balance however had no such option. If things were not to get worse, they had to stop the sisters and quickly.
Heading back outside, Banshee turned herself and Mace insubstantial and immediately flew after the sisters leaving Akira to levitate after them having theurgical-kinetically ripped the roof off a nearby car to act as a shield against the falling icy bombardment.
The storm above Dunwich had resumed in intensity, dumping ice and buckets of rain onto the village with the hail ranging from pea to tennis ball-sized and traveling at unnatural velocities toward the ground, damaging whatever it landed on: breaking windows, splintering roof tiles, and denting cars. Aside from the potential for harm, there was an awful cacophony of shattering glass, punctuated by thunderclaps and the white noise of falling rain.
Through the darkness they reached a split in the road and headed up the hill towards Pickman Avenue and a waiting musclebound, weather witch, the other two sisters had apparently gone ahead and could no longer be seen. Pulling up as close as they dared, Mace shouted out to her that they needed to talk, did she really want to be seen as a villain, manipulated by another? Regardless, they were there to help and stop any further destruction of the village and its inhabitants. The muscular woman hovering in front of them reached to her pendant and shouted, “That was not the bargain. It is for us and us alone to claim it.”
Mace explained, “We’re not looking for revenge we just want to help. We’ve had some success with dealing with unexpected bargains that turn bad.”
In response, the witch fired an energy blast from her pendant, which looked like otherworldly tentacles shooting through the air at Banshee and Mace. It passed through them like a striking cobra. When that failed, she tried to reach out to grab hold of Akira to physically mangle him her musclebound arms. Akira managed to dodge as Mace pulled herself free of Banshee’s protection and immediately unleashed another of her Taser bolts, which this time was not inhibited by any energy shield and took her down, twitching on the ground.
The pendant that dangled from her neck was obviously her locus of power and Akira promptly retrieved it theurgical-kinetically from her and flew it towards him. Once he had the circular, pendant in his possession (though he refused to physically touch it, just in case), he could feel it immediately draw him towards a centre of power, the echo that had been felt earlier and presumably the remaining Whateley Sisters. The pendant was apparently acting as a sort of metaphysical compass with the sapphire in the middle sparkling whenever the pendant was directed toward the northeast and the old graveyard without a church, above the village. That of course was also the direction in which the other two sisters had headed when they had flown away.
Without the necklace, the sister immediately began to revert to her original skinny and dour, bookish self – quite the opposite of her bargain-powered form and the storm started to abate. The clouds were still dark and ominous and rain and hail still blanketed the ground but it was no longer being directed at them personally and the sea was no longer in a willful partnership with the swollen skies to drown Dunwich.
As the once more skinny, near-anorexic sister began to recover and sit up Akira wondered if they might be best to tie her up even as he made sure to keep the pendant as far away from her as possible. However Mace had a better idea, she manifested her hypnotic gyroscope in front of the dazed female’s eyes and began to put her into a controlled state.
Then she began questioning her. Her name was Hagatha Whateley, her sisters were the green-fingered Hannah and the oldest, bossy Henrietta. Then she began the interrogation of the compelled female by asking if the man that had recently visited them was still around. Visitors were apparently unusual and she immediately realised who Mace meant and confirmed his departure immediately after giving them each a pendant of power. “He had a way with words” she muttered, “He sold us on finally getting revenge on those who had taunted us throughout our life.”
Mace asked her to describe him. “He was tall and very slim, he had to slump to get through the front door, he had blonde, almost white hair in a crew cut and he was blind. When he took off his sunglasses he had no eyes. No, his eyes were covered with skin but he had such a lovely smile and his voice, Dutch accent and so very, very compelling. His name? Rath or Wrath Van something or other… Ah, Van Deloo I think or at least it sounded something like that? He promised us a bargain; one without a price and yes we were sceptical but what would be the harm and the power we felt when we touched the pendants was like nothing on Earth.”
Akira was anxious and immediately butted in much to Mace’s annoyance with, “Where have your sisters gone?” Thankfully the interruption didn’t break the hypnotic state. “Don’t know,” she whispered, “possibly back to the house?” She pointed up towards the churchless graveyard on top of the hill. “When the pendant takes you over all you feel is power and a lust for revenge. You just don’t think beyond that. It consumes you completely and nothing else matters.”
Before the hypnotic state could be further derailed, Mace pushed Akira aside and again renewed the conditioning before asking her even as Akira was reaching out to physically touch the pendant floating in front of him, “are there any dangers in using or carrying your pendant?” Hagatha looked confused as though it had never occurred to her before. “Ah, yes, well possibly, I didn’t ask. It felt ok when I first got it but I was so filled with an all-consuming lust for revenge, I never asked whether those feelings were mine or the result of the pendant. Then when it transformed me, made me feel beautiful and powerful, I no longer cared. It consumed me I think…”
Akira immediately pulled his hand away and allowed the golden bejewelled pendant to remain floating in front of him. Now they had to decide what to do with their recovering prisoner. Taking her with them did not seem sensible and the weather meant leaving her where she was wasn’t an option. In the end Mace created a compulsion in her to head down to try and help the villagers. It might help heal the wound between the sisters and their neighbours (she was reasonably sure the Police rescuers would protect her if her neighbours tried to attack her). What happened to her after that would be for the courts to decide but magic was so outside the norm that she decided she would need to put a call in to the Met Police’s CI-13 and Inspector Stranger once this was all over. Assuming they survived that is…
They began heading up the wet, overgrown path that led to the graveyard. The brambles and low-hanging branches made progress hard so they soon decided to take flight to the top. Mace was grateful that her gauntlets provided sufficient flight but missed not having her bike to hand on this occasion as the winds buffeted them.
On the top of the hill, they could see that the road ended at the graveyard and only a small lane led off towards a ramshackle house beyond. Sickly vines were wrapped around the wrought-iron fence and broken stone slabs were strewn along the trail forming a makeshift path that led through an overgrown garden to a ramshackle Tudor-style home with darkened windows.
The gate opened to the front garden of what they assumed was the Old Whateley Place. As far as they could see, the garden was full of raised herb beds both culinary and medicinal between sprawling bushes and trees growing wherever they apparently wanted. The area was heavily festooned with roses and vines climbing the broken, unkempt trellises that surrounded the house. A couple of tall Venus fly trap-like plants sat limply in front of the house’s bay window, the glass of which had been recently broken by the branch of a fallen tree during the storm. On the roof, they could just make out what appeared to be hundreds of ravens and crows watching them. The garden was too overgrown to fly directly to the house and they were forced to land just inside the gate and proceed up the path towards the house itself on foot.
However the floating pendant didn’t appear to be shining directly towards the house but off to one side, into the garden itself. Suddenly something rustled like someone pulling something long and rope-like from the soil. Then one giant plant by the broken window screamed and whipped a tendril toward them. Another of the plants pulled itself from the ground and prepared to unleash its fury upon those who have unwittingly stepped into the garden. The plants began to move, faster than they could have anticipated. They scuttled and jerked onto the path so they were between them and the main door as a another plant-like figure, willowy and alien but somehow imitating the human form appeared behind the fly-traps, or should that be ‘Venus Death Traps’ since they were obviously intend on doing the three of them harm?
As they found their passage cut off they could see that the slim humanoid plant was wearing a pendant similar to the one being levitated by Akira – Mace immediately nicknamed it The ‘John Travolta’ of plants given its current ‘pose’ as it raised one of its multiple limbs towards them. Banshee was sure that they had just encountered the transformed green-fingered Hannah and her Audrey II (or what was it they’d called it in the film? Twoey for short?) bodyguards?
Banshee immediately unleashed a terrorising scream on the advancing plants but to no obvious effect. It appeared they were immune to terror, possibly due to having no individual wills of their own to affect. Taking no chances, she immediately turned insubstantial. Mace thought she had identified a gap in their defences and switched to using some experimental arrow heads she had hoped to try at some point – filled with a carborane super-acid; hundreds of times stronger than fluorosulphuric acid and over a million times stronger than concentrated sulphuric acid. Her target was the ‘Travolta’ – she unleashed her bolt but it caught the side of one of the protective plant guardians which moved as the bolt was fired. Its contents began to empty burning away several of the plant’s limbs and scorching the ground around it.
Banshee muttered jovially that she had “shot her bolt” but Mace knew that she still had a couple more of the experimental heads available if necessary. As if in response Banshee immediately found herself becoming dizzy as she realised that the female plant the Twoey’s were protecting was releasing some sort of scent, pheromone’s would be her guess and that whatever it was, was affecting her despite being insubstantial. Thankfully, the other two noticed her stagger and stepped away so it wouldn’t affect them as well, at least immediately. Akira responded with a mystical blast at the nearest of the plant guardians and despite scorching the epidermis and the roots it didn’t appear to stop the thing advancing. It did however evaporate the pheromones. The attacked plant suddenly struck out at both Banshee and Akira. Its flailing root passed through Banshee and thankfully, Akira was able to dodge as it smashed into the fallen tree behind him.
This time Banshee unleashed a devastating wail that caused the nearest two plants to stagger back and out of the way allowing Mace a clear shot this time round. She didn’t waste it, unleashing the second of her experimental acid bolts at what she assumed was a transformed Hannah. The bolt hit and began burning away her bark. Mace smiled, that acid wouldn’t stop burning until it was removed or neutralised. In response the Hannah plant rushed forward at inhuman speed and slapped at her lower torso with a couple of her multiple limbs. They connected and the thorns dug in, piercing her skin even through her costume. She just hoped the thorns weren’t poisoned as she found herself feeling dizzy.
As she pulled herself free, Akira muttered one of his annoying little sayings, “the way of the sage is to act but not compete.” Sage? Did he mean the herb or..? She turned on him even as he unleashed another of his mystical blasts at the nearest ‘Twoey’, “You don’t do either, now focus.” His blast hit the head and he was rewarded as it stopped moving and burst into flames. He even forgave the muttered comment over the comms of this being his “bonfire of the vanities.”
The gap in the floral defences breached, Banshee was able to unleash a terrorising scream at the plant’s mistress staggering her as the acid finally burnt through one of her stalks causing her to fall backwards. Mace was muttering something about this now being a vendetta as she unleashed another acid bolt on one of the other limbs causing her to collapse totally incapacitated. As she fell to the ground the monstrous plants, guarding her staggered to a stop and immediately began to wither and die.
Akira levitated the first pendant over towards her and then TK’ed the plant creatures’ pendant from around her neck, using a lot more strength that he had expected to pull it free. Both floating pendants began to glow as they became closer to each other and there was an almost magnetic pull towards each other, forcing Akira to concentrate on keeping them separated.
With the pendant removed, the ‘Travolta’ began morphing back into her original form, admittedly one with acid burns on her limbs. In her human form, Hannah was not an imposing figure. She wore a thick brown woolly frock, which seemed to have taken most of the damage from Mace’s acid bolts so far, a big pair of unfashionable prescription glasses and she carried a large book in both hands. She muttered a plea for them to be gentle on Henrietta before falling unconscious.
Akira dropped both pendants to the ground and rushed over and immediately began transforming the acid into butter which he scraped away or wrapped it in her dress before he threw it away leaving her wet, cold, half undressed and with serious burns on her limbs but no longer at risk of being burnt through by the acid. They would need to get her inside but first they had to deal with the last remaining sister.
He went over and levitated both pendants, making sure to keep them apart. As he examined them, he could see that the layout was the same on both with the disks made of shimmering gold, but while Hagitha’s had a sapphire surrounded by swirls of diamonds, Hannah’s had a big ruby encircled with sapphires. They were both laid out in an identical pattern with the primary jewel in the middle and the surrounding jewels arrayed like tentacles.
Temporarily leaving the unconscious and depowered Hannah outside, they headed towards the rundown house. The apparently thrown trash and signs of discolouration around the outside of the house and the front door (most likely the result of thrown eggs, bleach, or other such homebrewed ‘shame grenades’) spoke more about the intolerance of the other villagers than of any wickedness on the sisters’ part.
That didn’t excuse the fact that the Whateley sisters anger had boiled over enough that they had accepted a deal they didn’t fully understand and that had changed everything and put the whole village at risk.
They entered the unlocked front door hoping to find the last remaining sister but as soon as they stepped inside, both gems stopped glowing. Seemed their mystical compasses weren’t going to be able to help them find the last sister.
They began to search the house; the ground level consisted of a large room immediately inside the front door, obviously used as a living room with a small old fashioned television and some extremely threadbare furniture. A couch, once bright yellow with pink roses, was now reduced by age to a dull tan, the once vibrant flowers hidden underneath wine stains. Next to this room was the dining room, which still looked ornate as was the heavy oak dining table, the walls papered in patterns that were old when radio was new. Finally at the rear of the house was an old fashioned kitchen.
There were two floors above that to explore next: a stairway led up to a first floor consisting of several bedrooms and a couple of bathrooms. The bedrooms had a number of strange marks or runes carved into the doorframes, symbols that looked a lot like Ol’ Joe’s witch marks. The interiors looked as though they had been ransacked with the beds overturned and books, clothes, and bedsheets strewn about the floor. The other rooms on the top floor were unremarkable and seemed to primarily be used for storage. The only thing that stood out was a large, burnt leather-bound book set upon a wooden pedestal.
If there was anything to be learned from the house Mace realised, it was that these women were pretty normal if excessively insular before, as Joe put it, “the Devil came”.
They approached the blackened old book and carefully opened it. Slivers of the burnt pages previously reduced to ash turned to dust. The pages were all blackened but on close inspection it appeared to be an old family bible, possibly a couple of hundred years old and apparently it had recorded the Whateley genealogy.
Very gently Akira laid the two pendants down and touched the cover of the burnt book, hoping he would get a reading of its past. There was a sudden flood of memories; the Whateley family had been a godly family, bible-fearing. Hilda had been a pretty, young wife that the local squire’s son had taken too much of an interest in. He had attempted to bed her whilst the husband had been away at war and when she rejected him he had her stoned, her corpse burnt and then on his return had forced the husband and their children into a life of soul-crushing poverty. Yet still they had remained faithful to God for several generations despite being outcast and shunned, treated by their neighbours as cursed and unholy, but faith can be turned.
The last image he got was of a familiar figure – the grinning Bargainer in sunglasses at night – stepping into the house carrying a parcel and of the family bible immediately going up in flames as a result…
Akira stepped back and levitated up the pendants. That only left the basement or cellar to search if there was one. They found the stairwell down located in a walk-in cupboard off the kitchen. Going down that way was like descending into Hell. There was no light switch until they reached the bottom and after they had flipped it on, they wished they hadn’t.
The basement ran the full expanse of the ground floor. It was obviously used for storage and the pickling of garden produce, root vegetables as well as fish and stank of vinegar. The walls however, were covered all over in hand drawn graffiti. While it appeared to consist mostly of rune marks and concentric circles covered in arcane iconography, there were also some words written in English, “The Old One Awakens” mixed in amongst the menagerie of symbolic chaos. What was missing from the chamber was the last sister, however there was a jewel-encrusted pendant lying in one of the corners of the basement, nestled in the centre of a small golden disk.
It looked a lot like the other two pendants. It consisted of a golden circle, this time with an emerald in the middle with tiny rubies circling the green stone like a swirling vortex. The disk it was lying on was another story. This had runic etchings that matched the arrangements of the gems on the pendants. They were definitely linked together somehow.
Then Akira let out a sharp groan of surprise as the two levitated pendants began to pull away from him, towards the third pendant and the disk. He put more mental effort into pulling them away from each other. He murmured, “They appear to want to be together but I’m pretty sure that would be a bad thing.”
As Akira struggled to keep the three pendants apart, Mace wandered around the basement checking out the markings on the walls. She realised that they had been drawn very recently, within the last few hours at the very most and using whatever drawing materials such as jams and paint were close to hand. Some of the ‘graffiti’ was still wet to the touch.
Banshee grabbed one of the floating necklaces and turned herself insubstantial again with it to ensure it didn’t touch either of the other pendants then felt the urge to see what was happening outside as she realised that the non-existent bell was no longer ringing out. Ignoring Akira’s previous warning Mace grabbed the final pendant off the disk and happily realised it did not have any effect on her.
She headed up to the front of the house followed by Akira. Across the bay they saw it, an explosion of searing white light out in the bay sending a ray into the sky, a radiant column apparently shining up from the crater in the seabed into the sky and in the middle, a small dot that might just be a human figure. The dark clouds swirling above seemed to absorb the illuminated column, which could not pierce through the maelstrom of angry-looking storm clouds.
Banshee immediately flew into the air ignoring the weather and headed across the bay towards the bright pillar. The air was thick and bristling with static. Even though the clouds were dark and it was hard to see, that pillar of light was a beacon.
Mace initially stayed behind and pulled Hannah indoors. She placed her safely on her raggedy old sofa until she could get her medical attention. As she did so, Akira and Banshee took parallel flights towards the pillar of light, deliberately keeping their distance from each other and the pendants each still carried.
There was a human-shaped figure hovering above the water near the bottom of the pillar. The light was either radiating out from around or inside her. She appeared entranced, hovering above the raging water in a stupor.
It had to be the final sister, Henrietta. As they got closer they could see the figure in the centre of the light much clearer – arms outstretched it seemed Henrietta had also been transformed despite no longer wearing her pendant. She was naked, her skin transformed into a covering of green-grey scales, her hands and feet now claw-like (and “desperately in need of a pedicure”, muttered Akira) her head was bald, her mouth covered by a mass of jittering tendrils and her eyes, round, unblinking, fish-like, cold as the wind.
Her body had also been transformed, now muscular but in a way that reminded them of an aquatic creature, covered in what looked like suckers in the most unexpected locations on her arms, legs and even her shoulder. Her head thrown back as if paralysed in the middle of a sustained, silent scream.
Banshee flew up to light and attempted to push through it but it resisted her attempt as though it was composed of solid light. She hammered at the barrier in frustration and tried to get the attention of the crucified figure in front of her without success.
In the end, she unleashed a penetrating Wail but it failed to breach the light or have any effect on the transformed sister inside. Damn! She unleashed another scream but this time just to let off steam.
Back on the shore, Mace hid her pendant in the house, checked on Hannah who was still unconscious then headed off to join her team with their assault on the final sister out in the bay using her gauntlets to fly across the bay.
Then they saw it, the water behind the light parted and up came the largest, greenest head ever seen by man. Beady eyes, black as the void, peered from slits in the middle of its face. A dozen writhing tentacles jutted from where its mouth should be. The head was attached to an almost humanoid-looking body; its arms and legs muscular but with folded wings on its back. The Old One has awakened, a massive figure a hundred metres tall that appeared even as the woman momentarily disappeared and then they seemed to alternate in being present then disappearing, both flipping alternatively in and out of existence.
Mary suddenly remembered a description she’d first read almost a hundred years before in a popular horror story, “A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. In appearance, it resembled an octopus, a dragon and a human caricature, hundreds of metres tall, with webbed human-looking arms and legs and a pair of rudimentary wings on its back. Its head was depicted as similar to the entirety of a gigantic octopus, with an unknown number of tentacles surrounding its supposed mouth.”
Could this be..? It began to appear even more regularly now even as Henrietta vanished into the light more often. Akira responded by trying to create a force cage round her hoping to drag her free from the column of light but it couldn’t breach the solid light barrier.
Meanwhile Mace arrived between them and tried to talk to the captive Henrietta asking, “How can we help you? What happened to you?” To everyone’s surprise, the transformed sister managed to whisper a response in a voice full of pain, “Stop him!” before she dissipated again into the light as the massive cephalopod-like creature they assumed was the Old One resubstantiated into their dimension in exchange.
Akira felt sure that they were facing an extra-planar creature of chaos and he prepared the spell he knew as Lamal’s Rebuke to use against it. A spell specifically designed to try to banish such trespassers back to their own dimensions. He cast it but his timing was off as for a final time the Old One vanished from sight and for the last time the altered female reappeared inside the pillar of light before fading away once more. The rebuke which might have been sufficient to banish the big guy was useless against the woman despite apparently acting as its anchor in this dimension and he lacked the mystical energy to cast the spell again.
The massive blue-black cloud above their heads apparently solidified even as each of them immediately experienced symptoms of psychotic schizophrenia; fear, distrust and disorganised thinking as they recognised this creature in front of them couldn’t possibly be real. At the same time they realised they had no chance of defeating it. They almost cried as they felt that it was already too late to do anything to save themselves.
They had to mentally fight through the feeling that they had already failed no matter what they did. It seemed the creature’s presence was causing them to doubt their capacity and abilities. Had they never experienced the chaos and random insanity of the Faerie Realm previous to this, then this attack would have likely have decimated their minds but they had all survived that realm and come out of that experience stronger, more resilient.
It had given the interloper the chance to respond to them. Its facial tentacles slammed into Banshee’s insubstantial body even as a blast of hellish energy erupted from the column of light – from where Henrietta had previously stood – at Akira. He dodged, just.
Back in the marina, a tentacled mass erupted from the soil and began to convulsively transform all fleshy organisms it touched. Out at sea, Banshee released one of her Wails at the Old One, which appeared to do some damage even as Mace unleashed a bolt at its forehead, at what Akira referred to as its ‘third eye’. That seemed to cause it pain but so far nothing they had done to the creature had caused it any serious injury.
Akira unleashed a mystical blast at its forehead even as Mace unleashed a flurry of bolts each hitting the same area as Akira’s blast, time after time. The creature responded with another blast of energy back at him but again the energy flare emanated from the pillar of light, where the female had been hovering previously even as Mace was forced to dodge its flailing arm.
Akira managed to dodge the shot. He responded with an eldritch blast even as the still insubstantial Banshee dived underwater to try to look at the base of the column of light on the seabed. There was nothing, just a crater emanating a supernatural light into the sky above, the bell now completely silent.
Back on the shore, the remnants of the village that had been destroyed in the flooding erupted into blue-green flame. Banshee surfaced and unleashed another wail and was rewarded with a scream from the massive creature before having to try and avoid several of its facial tendrils that somehow was able to connect with her despite being insubstantial. Thankfully it only bruised her but it forced her to back off.
Akira followed Banshee’s scream with a TK slam, which knocked it off balance but couldn’t follow through his attack because his mind was suddenly flooded with psychic noise and chatter.
It seemed that the villagers had suddenly developed telepathic abilities coupled with extreme physical pain, acute emotions and psychotic episodes. The villagers began to psychically scream, others started attacking each other while muttering to themselves in strange languages. Akira could hear their multiple voices and emotions in his head. To his surprise, Banshee seemed unaffected by the psychic backlash possibly due to being insubstantial and he envied Mace’s lack of mystical senses and inability to hear the cacophony of minds all screaming out in pain.
Then he heard her, one voice stronger than the others and emanating from the opposite direction from all the others… <<It takes a blood sacrifice to stabilise its presence in this dimension. Do not allow it to spill blood or it will be able to cross over permanently and then we would all be doomed…>>
Henrietta..? Could Henrietta still be in the column of light but rendered either invisible or insubstantial somehow? Overcome by the psychic onslaught he almost missed the tentacles that hit out at him from the creature’s face and again only just managed to dodge their blow.
Meanwhile massive seaquakes and earthquakes erupted and the region of the sea around the base of the light started boiling but there was no heat. Akira unleashed another mystical blast at the creatures forehead – it screamed in either pain or anger and every seagull for miles dropped dead from the sky in response.
Banshee’s wail seemed to hurt it. Mace followed it up with several bolts aimed again at its prominent forehead and eyes and was rewarded when the creature momentarily staggered back. She wasn’t sure how much damage she was inflicting but her precision shooting meant each shot hit the same location over and over and if nothing else focused its attention on her. Again, a blast of energy emanated from within the column of light – something or someone was inside it, protected by its walls, but who was in control of the attack?
Akira worked out where he thought the female had been before her disappearance – the light was a powerful physical barrier but what if he could hit it hard enough to shake its prisoner free? He used his TK to trip the ancient horror into the light and was rewarded when a naked female figure slammed out of the other side of the pillar light to splash into the water even as the column of light vanished as though it had never been.
As Henrietta splashed into the waves, the Old One also fell into the sea sending another tidal wave over the shoreline. Slowly, the Old One appeared to descend beyond the murky depths, presumably back to where it would sleep the dreamless sleep until someone else managed to summon it.
Banshee again elected to dive under the calming waves but there was no sign of the creature, it had vanished or dissolved. The light had vanished and it was now impossible to see the seabed. As Banshee headed to the surface the sound of a bell rang out just once possibly as a reminder that the Old One was vanquished but not defeated.
Having scooped the third weird sister insubstantially out of the ocean Banshee flew back to Dunwich carrying her and calling for the others to follow. “There’s going to be folks in need of help!”
The storm over Dunwich dissipated. The storm lightened to a drizzle before stopping altogether. Blue returned to the sky, the clouds become white and fluffy, and the sun shone again. Back on shore the villagers had snapped out of the compulsions visited on them but the emotional damage had been done. The sisters however were now freed from their servitude. As the emergency services rolled into town, Mace directed a paramedic to head to the Whateley place and the injured Hannah. Arrests could wait.
In support, The Balance immediately maximised their spread of skills to help with drying-out properties and propping-up and restoring physical structures.
As soon as the worst was resolved, Mary had another task she wanted to carry out before they returned to Wessex, tending to the distressed inhabitants including the three sisters. Commandeering the old pub she gathered all of the residents together including the sisters, even Hannah on her stretcher and deployed her harp skills to heal physical wounds first, but then went on to work on soothing minds.
She especially tried to work into her singing the true story of the three sisters, holy and religious and not witches or devil-worshippers. She also weaved into the song what had just happened so that it made them the heroes of their salvation while deliberately not mentioning at their part in causing it. What she couldn’t do was prevent an investigation into the crimes they had committed so while Mace contacted Inspector Stranger she had phoned Jimmy the Fish to ask him to contact a specialist lawyer for the sisters and to begin work on an application for legal costs to the Challenger-Wildeman Charitable Foundation.
As the team returned to the Crate Banshee suddenly heard the squawking of a pair of crows still captive in the cargo bay and remembered she had forgotten to release her two passengers. Ah, any mess would need to be cleaned up by her, rather than Jeeves. Ah well, a fitting reward for saving humanity once again she realised, as she walked through into the cargo bay, opened the door and released the birds into the air…
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 