Continued from
here.
The next day, the investigators went to visit the Sisters of Mercy, where the apparently revenant Pat Bibby had been buried. On the way they remembered that the priest O'Brian was going to visit the Sisters so turned around and headed for his church, with the intent to travel together. Upon arrival they were informed that father O'Brian had already left, so they turned around again and went back to the Sisters' house.
Upon arrival they found all the curtains drawn and the front door unlocked. Inside they found two corpses in the entrance hall, one a woman hanging by her neck and another, O'Brian, slumped on the ground. Frank tried to get the woman down, hoping that she was still alive, and a spider the size of his hand crawled down her leg and leaped at him! The big bruiser dodged the spider, pulled out his handgun, and blasted the thing into goo.
All of this was too much for Danny and he blacked out.
The others examined O'Brian, finding puncture wounds in his neck and blood around his mouth and on his fingers, as if he'd been digging around in his own mouth...
Al splashed some whisky down Danny's gullet, bringing him back from unconsciousness, and the investigators, um, investigated further. They entered a chapel with what appeared to be a human body cocooned in webs on the altar. Frank crept in while the others held back and prodded the body, expecting a horde of spider to emerge. Which is exactly what happened.
They shot at and stomped on the spiders, but more appeared from under chairs and behind curtains, so the group retreated, shutting the door behind them. Within seconds, tens of tiny spider feet could be heard tapping at the door.
Moving on, the investigators went out the back door into the garden and found some graves, including that of Pat Bibby; her grave had been dug up and the coffin was empty. They then went into the kitchen and found two more hanging corpses, and two more spiders! Al and Frank killed the arachnids, but the shock broke Muriel's mind and she became confused, forgetting anything from waking up that morning. Why was she here? Where was here? What was going on? While the others attended to Muriel, Al searched the kitchen for anything useful and found a small can of kerosene.
They found the Sisters' office and found evidence that someone had stood on the desk in muddy shoes, and that a rope tied to a ceiling beam had been cut. They also discovered that somehow the spiders had got out of the chapel! How did they open the door? Surely they couldn't be intelligent?
(Yes and don't call me Shirley, etc.)
The investigators shut the office door and barricaded it with the heavy desk, and then went next door into a visitor's room, where they found the exsanguinated corpse of a male toddler and an open door, through which spiders poured! The investigators backed into the office, with Frank blocking the door and Al splashing kerosene over the approaching arachnids then setting them aflame. But there were too many spiders and Al was bitten, the venom causing his limbs to stiffen.
Danny grabbed the confused Muriel and got her out of the house, with Frank following, but Al instead headed down into the cellar, where he was swarmed by even more spiders and bitten multiple times. Danny shoved his aunt into Frank's arms, told his old friend to look after her, then ran back into the house to rescue Al. In the chaos, Danny also was bitten a number of times, while Al's condition worsened; he was unable to fight off the spider attacks, shuddering with seizures as the venom ravaged his nervous system. Frank returned to the house to drag them both out. Muriel, alone and confused, wandered off into the fog.
Frank shoved Al and Danny into Al's car and drove off. Danny used his
Scrounger ability to find a small vial in his jacket pocket; he remembered picking it up on one of his travels and was pretty sure it was spider antivenom.
Probably.
Ish.
Danny burned a couple of investigation dice to leverage this cosmic coincidence to halt the venom killing Al, leaving him alive but on 2 CON! The three men drove off and soon passed Muriel wandering about. Stopping to pick up Danny's baffled aunt, the investigators drove away to lick their wounds.
