The House of Edwin, Part Six: June 18, 1926

The Sleepers Have Awakened

Mikhail wishes to make sure that Smith is truly dead, and so begins the bloody work of hacking off his head and cutting his heart out of his ribcage. Johnny manages to interrupt Mikhail’s dismemberment of Smith just long enough to peel the dead man’s cultist robe and mask off of his body.

Moments later, the sleeping islanders, who have been unconscious on Mr. Edwin’s front lawn for several hours, begin to stir and awaken. Their confusion at what happened to them turns into screams of panic and terror once they realize what Mikhail is doing to Smith’s body. Several of the islanders turn and flee down the steps to the sea, while the rest scream, cluster together for protection, and yell at Mikhail and the others.

Kane Eastman attempts to interpose himself between Mikhail and the crowd, but this does not go very well. Judge Putnam, realizing that the islanders might hurt Kane or Mikhail in their panicked frenzy, also tries to sooth them. His attempt is briefly (and almost catastrophically) interrupted when Dr. Black opts to get the crowd’s attention by drawing his gun and firing a single shot into the air.

If You Can't Trust the Warm and Honest Face of Judge Putnam...

Dr. Black’s gunplay drives the crowd into further panic, but Judge Putnam is quickly able to reassert himself as a person of good breeding and reasonable authority. He tells the remaining islanders that the London Group is simply practicing their own bizarre, pagan ritual to celebrate midsummer. The judge further explains that what Mikhail is cutting up is not actually the remains of a human being, but the representation of one. Dr. Black, trying to help the judge in his endeavors, performs a deft slight of hand, replacing his handgun with the flare gun that he had picked up earlier. He shows it off to the crowd and smiles at them, disarmingly.

This somehow works.

The remaining islanders are either wholly taken in by the judge’s story, or are only too happy to leave these other, seemingly crazier, revelers to their own devices. They retreat back down to the village, leaving the London Group alone at the Edwin estate. Dr. Black quickly finds a shovel to bury Smith’s remains.

The Hound of Nephrem-Ka

While this is going on, Vivian has shut herself up in her bedroom inside of the old mansion. Ignoring the sounds of screams and gunfire from outside, she draws a ritual circle around her on the floor with a piece of chalk, hefts the stone that she took out of the Jade Sphinx, and begins to chant the Valusian inscription carved around its equator.

The Return of the Jade Sphinx

The light in the room dims perceptibly. The gem becomes heavy and ice cold in her hands. From the angle in between the room’s free-standing wardrobe and the wall, a cloud of thick, sparkling smoke begins to form. It pours out into the room, turned back only when it touches the invisible barrier created by Vivian’s summoning circle. In the corner, where the fog is thickest, Vivian sees a pair of large, luminescent eyes open.

“Hunt the sorceress Annie Chantraine,” says Vivian, giving the blessedly obscured beast its single command.

With that, the glowing eyes close, the fog reverses its flow and sucks itself back into the corner, and the room returns to normal.

Vivian, exhausted and lightheaded from the summoning, erases the circle and goes downstairs to tell the others what has transpired. The rest of the group, having gotten rid of the remaining islanders, have returned to the house to talk about their next moves. Vivian informs them that she has used the gem inside the Jade Sphinx to call the Hound of Nephrem-Ka down on Annie Chantraine.

Papa Doc Horus, upon hearing this, excoriates Vivian for her hubris and indiscretion. When he runs out of words, Vivian tells him, in a voice of icy, calm hatred, that she is ridding the world of the woman who tried to hurt her father and her godfather. She further states that if she could use the threat to exterminate every threat to her family, friends, and business interests, she absolutely would. Papa Doc, thoroughly cowed by her words, gives up and returns to the entrance hall to finish the preparations on his ritual salt circle.

Kevin Would be Proud

As its stands right now, Ron Deluca is still unconscious and being prayed over/magically healed in the entrance hall by Brother Theodore. Papa Doc Horus, also in the entrance hall, gives instructions to Johnny and the others about how to enter the ritual circle should the worst happen.

It now becomes clear that the group plans to make their final stand in the house. Realizing this, they attempt to booby trap the entrances to the house in the kitchen, library, and main hallway. They will then split their attention between watching the front entrance and the back terrace, attacking any cultists that come into view. In order to ensure their safety, the group turns off the house’s gaslight pipes at the source. This will limit explosions and also give them the cover of darkness.

A Most Unlikely Battleground

After some final preparations, the group arrays themselves in the following way:

Judge Putnam: In the billiards room, with his shotgun cane, overlooking the terrace. The judge also employs his drone, and the camera mounted on it, to watch the perimeter.

Tommy Hayes: Stationed atop the roof of the loggia, providing a lookout.

Johnny: In  the morning room, with his shotgun and the remaining sticks of dynamite he grabbed out of Ron’s pockets, watching the terrace.

Kane: Stationed in the butler’s pantry, watching the front. Unbeknownst to the others, he takes a small hit of cocaine out of his jacket pocket and snorts it just as the party gets started.

Dr. Black: In the entrance hall, watching out for Ron, Horus, and Brother Theodore.

Vivian: In the library. She previously stowed the mi-go cylinder that carries Christopher Edwin’s brain inside of the fireplace. This gives her flashbacks to her experiences in Cannich, but also will, hopefully provide the cylinder with some manner of protection. Vivian wields Ron’s magic knife, which she took off of his unconscious body.

Mikhail and Pushok: In the music room.

Once they are situated, there is little for the group to do but watch and wait. The sun finally begins to set in the west, over the sea, on the longest day of the year. The air in the house becomes taught and hot. At the judge’s command, the drone makes widening loops around the house, seeing nothing, until…

Rear Assault

Just as the sun vanishes over the horizon, Tommy Hayes and Judge Putnam (via his drone) spy a large group of cultists and deep ones coming out of the forest to the north of the estate and converging on the terrace. One cultist, who is also masked and cloaked, but smaller than the rest, appears to be leading them.

At about the same time, Kane and the judge’s drone spots a smaller group of cultists and deep ones clambering up the steps from the sea. Kane and Vivian overhear the cultists complaining that, “none of the others are here,” and suspect that this means that the cult planned to enslave the islanders and use them to assault the house.

In the back of the house, the cultists and the deep ones split up into two groups and charge up the back steps leading up to the terrace. While this happens, the smaller cultist remains standing down behind the terrace. Loudly, in a familiar voice, she calls out to the house.

“Johnny! You in there?”

Johnny and Judge Putnam recognize the voice as that of Annie Chantraine.  Johnny calls out to her.

“Yeah?”

“You dropped this!”

With that, Annie opens her cloak and hefts something up with both hands. Johnny recognizes the familiar silhouette of his future gun as Annie opens fire, cackling madly as she indiscriminately sprays down the back of the mansion. Windows shatter. Judge Putnam crouches down and avoids taking any fire. Johnny gets winged in the shoulder. Brother Theodore, still praying over Ron, takes several rounds to the chest and collapses in a bloody heap, gasping and dying.

The Future Gun Returns (Fire)

Annie reloads as the cultists and the deep ones close the gap between the edge of the terrace and the back of the patio. Judge Putnam unloads his shotgun into the nearest deep one, killing it.

Johnny, meanwhile, uses a candle he had lit earlier to ignite one of the sticks of dynamite. He fumbles his first throw, bouncing the stick of dynamite off the windowsill and back into the room. He recovers it and, with the fuse burning dangerously short, hurls it out toward the nearest group of cultists. The explosion shakes the house, kills the deep ones in that group, and routs the cultists.

In the meantime, the other group of cultists at the back of the house rush forward, seize Judge Putnam, and try to drag him bodily through the shattered billiards room window. Judge Putnam fights them off and retreats into the loggia.

Annie, still cackling, slaps another magazine into the future gun.

Khad Vishtu

Dr. Black panics. He knows that he has to help Brother Theodore, but he also fears that Ron will quickly die now that Brother Theodore has abruptly stopped his ritual chant. Realizing that he has a second person inside his head, Dr. Black pleads with Khad Vishtu to help him in his hour of need. He tells Khad that if can keep up the chant over Ron’s body, that will give Dr. Black the chance to treat Brother Theodore.

Khad agrees. However, once the doctor becomes absorbed with trying to help Brother Theodore, the ancient, dead priest sees his chance. He forces his will on Dr. Black and briefly possesses him, standing up just as Annie Chantraine opens fire on the house for a second time.

As if from a very long distance, Dr. Black watches a spray of bullets tearing through the air toward him. Then he watches himself raise his hand in a dismissive gesture. The bullets slow to a stop and clatter to the floor, doing no harm to him or to anyone else in the room.

Dr. Black renews his inner strength and forces Khad Vishtu out of his mind. He takes control of his body again just in time to hear Horus screaming at him in Haitian Creole. He also just happens to notice something that looks very much like Tommy Hayes lifeless arm draped over the roof of the loggia.

Knowing that he has to perform life saving medicine on Brother Theodore, Dr. Black orders Mikhail to go upstairs and tend to Tommy Hayes. Mikhail complies while Dr. Black staunches Brother Theodore’s bleeding and binds the wound.

Frontal Assault

The four cultists who came of the front stairs, still cursing their lack of numerical support, join together in a horrible chant. Between them, they summon up a massive tendril of energy, which they send lashing into the library’s window. Vivian ducks, watching in horror as the tendril shatters the windowsill before withdrawing again. She takes a few shots at the cultists before retreating to the front hallway to support Kane.

Kane, pumped up on drugs, fires at the deep ones before moving into the front hallway to prevent them from getting into the house. He is pleased to see that one of the deep ones blunders into booby traps that Johnny prepared earlier. Kane watches in satisfaction as the deep one stomps on the bottom of a rake, causing the top handle (which has a knife tied to it), to snap up and stab it in the head. It roars.

Kane again opens fire, to limited effect. The rest of the deep ones plow through the other booby traps, and one of them gets close enough to rake Kane’s chest with its claws. It is only due to the chemical additives in Kane’s system that he remains conscious. He lets out a defiant cry.

Vivian rushes to Kane’s side and, with a deft slice of Ron’s knife, critically injures one of the other deep ones. However, there are still too many of them, and it looks like they’re going to be overwhelmed.

Dr. Black, rather heroically/foolishly, once again overtaxes himself to attempt to harm the deep ones with greater magical power than he is normally capable of. This, once again, weakens his focus sufficiently so that Khad Vishtu can take over his body. Khad mocks the skills of the cultists before pointing a finger at one of the deep ones and extinguishing it with a word.

On Other Fronts

A Deep One

By this point, Mikhail has reached the third floor and the side of the dying Tommy Hayes. Mikhail is able to stabilize Tommy, but realizes that the British policeman’s condition is so fragile that he doesn’t dare move him, Mikhail runs downstairs to find Dr. Black, unaware that the doctor is no longer himself.

At the rear of the house, Judge Putnam escapes to the loggia. Several cultists and deep ones who remained outside follow him to the loggia, while the rest pour through the billiards room window to attack him on a second front.

Johnny, crouching in the morning room, prepares to go to the judge’s aid when he sees Annie Chantraine cast a magic spell. He watches as Annie transforms into smoke before flashing across the terrace and through the entry hall’s broken windows. She rematerializes in the entrance hallway, with only Horus and a now possessed Dr. Black in any position to offer resistance.

Out in the front of the house, Kane and Vivian watch, with growing horror, as a huge group of deep ones come slapping up the sea steps. As the reinforcements rush across the mansion’s front yard to the main entrance, both Kane and Vivian notice that the deep one in the lead is holding a sphere of red glass in its hands.