Saint Croix

It was after nightfall. 

Umar al-Ghaffari

The party was split into three groups.  

1. Mezmer [Shane], Miriam [Jeff], Bernard [Jamie], Wonton [Darryl], and Cooper [Ian] who had woken from his marmalading. In Ahmed's Coffee House. 
2. Gazala [Richard] and Mario [Kevin]. On the roof of the pentagram house. 
3. Fleur [Steven], Jacob [Chris] and Toulouse [Tim]. Back at the Calomnie de Tunis newspaper building.

Toulouse had done some research and had updated the party on his discoveries:

"

Toulouse suspected that the ancient Saint Croix church was at the centre of a pentagram demarcated by the three murder sites already found and a further two. 

His research determined that this church was built in 1837, but on the site of a much older pre-schism Christian church. The site was left abandoned after the Christian schism in AD 1054 and left for hundreds of years until 1837. Going back further before the schism, the Umayyad Muslim caliphate had invaded Tunis in the 700s. They allowed the local Christians and Jews to stay, but they stomped out other religions.

Before the caliphate, on this site, was a temple to Baal Hammon, which was itself preceded by a temple to Baal Karnaim in Carthaginian times. Baal Hammon was the "nice face" of Baal. Baal Karnaim expected the sacrifice of children burned alive.

"

On the rooftop of the place of the last murder, the derelict "pentagram house", Gazala and Mario waited. Miriam and Wonton joined them. This left Mezmer, Bernard and Cooper in the coffee house.

The four briefly thought about opening the trapdoor here (after all, it went straight into the pentagram room below), but it was bolted, and it was easier to use that as an excuse and not try, rather than risk any horrors that might be below.

While they were pontificating, a group of eight figures left the building, in a perfectly straight line, all walking in lock-step, escorted by one "normal-walking" figure. It was too dark to make out any features, and this could almost pass as a group of normal people, apart from the perfectly unison marching.

After this group had gone, Gazala snuck down to street level, snuck across the street, pulled out her police Lebel revolver, and fired three times at the doorway (there was no door to this building, just a doorway). She was hoping to get some shots inside to attract their attention.  But she missed, and only hit the side of the building. Despite being a quiet night, the shots were still quite loud, but no-one inside noticed. Not wanting to waste any more bullets, she stopped.

So, she plucked up some bravery, and she went inside. There was a man just inside the door. He was reading something. He looked up rather irritated, grabbed a piece of pipe, and strode over to her.

Gazala played the damsel in distress, and batted her big brown eyes at the man [and rolled an 11]. He was taken by her story, and took her to a side room. He identified himself as Abdul, and kept looking to the side and upwards, worried, and saying "هذا المنزل غير آمن للعاهرات الجميلات!" (You can not stay here, woman!) 

Niqab

Abdul took Gazala outside into the street, and walked in to the Medina with her, physically chaperoning her. After a short trip, he delivered her to a side building of the Zaytuna Mosque. This was the "lady entrance" where women were allowed to enter the mosque precincts. An elderly lady in a niqab took over from him and showed Gazala into a dormitory for stray women. She assured Gazala that she would be safe here for the night.

_________________________________

Back at the Calomnie de Tunis building, Fleur and Jacob carefully took a scraping off the ceiling of the toilet to get faecal sample. This was at Toulouse's request to analyze them. (The cleaners had cleaned the mess earlier in the day, and the ceiling residue was the only bits they had missed.) Toulouse had a microscope, so was planning to check them.

_________________________________

Back on the rooftop, Mario, Wonton and Miriam settled in to stay the night up here. Glancing over the side of the building, they could see light in the pentagram room. Flickering candle-light.

Ahmed's Coffee House was closing, so Mezmer, Bernard and Cooper had an idea. They asked Ahmed if there were any quarries out of town. He knew of one to the northwest, and gave directions.

They had the newspaper's Citroen, so they bundled into it, and headed off to the to the quarry. 

About now, back on the rooftop, Wonton, Mario and Miriam suddenly felt tinging in the backs of their necks. The air around them felt electric, but smelled of cloying sweetness; rotting dates and pomegranates. 

Suddenly, there was a beam of light shining through the concrete of the rooftop and into sky, perfectly vertical. It was a dirty febrile yellow, and not at all pleasant to look at. The beam was the width of a person's torso, and it had movement within, like strange extra-worldly ropes, or intestines, plaited and twisting in a slow random dance, but moving upwards. They watched in awe, but did not put their hand through the beam, nor stand on it. It gave off no heat. It was an overcast night and the beams went into the cloud.

Saint Croix marks the spot

Out over the city, in the distance, maybe half a kilometre away, were four other beams, also shining skyward. They guessed that two of them were at the site of the first two murders - Safar's house and the other unoccupied one. And they estimated that all five were neatly spaced on a circle.

So, they cast their eyes to the centre of that giant circle, to see a beam of similar coloured light, but thicker, come downwards, from the sky. At this spot was the Saint Croix ancient church, exactly as Toulouse predicted.

The beams lasted for half an hour. Not sure what to do now, the Miriam and Wonton headed back to the paper. Mario wanted to stay the night on the rooftop.

Two hours later, Mezmer, Bernard and Cooper arrived at the quarry. It was an easy matter to cut through the chain-link fence and sneak in to one of the sheds. Here, they took a box of dynamite, a box of fuses and a plunger thing. "We will work out how to use this stuff when the time comes" was the general theory. 

And then they returned into the city and to the newspaper building. 

___________________

At first light, the plan was to all meet up at the coffee house. Gazala had spent the night in the women's shelter, so she joined them. Mario was still on the pentagram building rooftop. In the light of day, he could see that there was a black circle on the roof in the spot where the beam was last night. It was a sticky substance as if it had been sprayed with tar. He didn't touch it.

Mezmer and Wonton were dropped off at the library.

When the rest of the party got to the coffee house, there was a platoon (about 40) of Légion Etrangère (French Foreign Legion) troops in the streets, plus their trucks. Inspector Heroux had recovered from yesterday's ordeal of terror, and he was back with a large group of gendarmes. Heroux was in charge of the whole operation; the FE troops' lieutenant took orders from him.

At the party's suggestion, Heroux ordered troops into the pentagram house. Mario was on the rooftop. The trigger-happy soldiers saw this suspicious figure on the roof, so they opened up with their rifles before Heroux could stop them. Mario was hit and he screamed, wounded. When the smoke had cleared, he limped down and rejoined the party. Jacob and Fleur tended him.

The building was empty inside. And all the candles out.

They went to the other two pentagram sites that they knew. These were empty, but the candles showed signs of being burned. They all tried to guess where the two new sites were. Wonton's navigational prowess came to the fore, and using his observations last night, and the map of Tunis and a pentagram shape, he worked out the rough locations of the two new sites. Some gendarmes and a squad of FE troops were dispatched to both. 

Everyone else went to the Saint Croix ancient church itself. At the church, the priest protested about weapons entering his church, but Heroux, the gendarmes and the soldiers ignored him. 

As expected, on the floor of the chancel, was a big circle, and a matching one on the ceiling, made of the same sticky tar-like substance that Mario had seen on the rooftop. This silenced the doubting priest and his two deacons somewhat. The crowd all went down to the undercroft and then down to the crypt, weapons drawn and army torches out. The undercroft level was lit by electric lights, but not the crypt. Down here was a pentagram, larger than the others they had encountered, with candles lit on each point. There were no figures and no movement, except for a column of swirling darkness in the centre of the pentagram.

"Best to not touch anything!" someone hissed. "And don't extinguish the candles."

The crypt had some sarcophagi and tombs, some very old. The walls were lined with small alcoves, each with a statue of an ancient pre-schism (1054) saint.

Bernard had his Speed Graphics camera out, and he started to take photographs.

Cooper thought he heard movement in a sarcophagus, so he opened the lid a crack. There was movement in the darkness. Then a skeletal hand poked out and a skull leered at the opening. He screamed, dropped the lid, and scurried away, whimpering [SAN loss].

Bernard came over and a gendarme with a chauchat submachine gun, just in case.

Bernard put the lens of the camera to the lid gap, angled the detachable flash bulb so that it would illuminate what was within, and took a photograph. In the brief bright flash there was a decayed dusty skeleton hunched over, its arms extended to the gap. Did it move? They slammed the lid.

Bernard and Cooper repeated this for a few more sarcophagi. The flash showed each had a decayed skeleton in a different pose.

The swirling column was about two metres wide, as wide as the crypt ceiling was tall. It was a perfect cylinder, and as looked like it was made of glass holding thick black oily smoke which danced and swirled. No one touched it, which was probably sensible.

Bernard took some photos of it. In the bright flash he was sure he saw a figure in the cylinder. And eyes. And mouths. And tentacles? Maybe it was a distortion of the light. Everyone felt sick.

They all left the place, up to the calm of the church's nave. Inspector Heroux asked the army to station some troops in the undercroft and not to let any one go to the crypt.

The priest agreed that St Croix would be closed today. So the group hung around in the church while Bernard returned to Calomnie de Tunis to develop the photographs.

Speed Graphics Camera
(note film cartridge pulled out)

Speed Graphics camera film is in cartridges - one cartridge per photograph. The negatives are the size of a cartridge; big as your palm.

Toulouse developed the crypt room-shots and alcove statue photographs first. The statues came out clear but they looked like they had skeleton bones superimposed upon them. Almost like some talented artist had painted skeleton bones on the actual stone statues, but more see-through.

The sarcophagus photographs each showed a fully formed skeletal creature with teeth and claws, and even some skin. It was much clearer and more formed than the dusty bones that were actually there.

But the central column photograph was something else entirely.  When Toulouse developed the negative, it looked three dimensional. In the red light of the darkroom they could see the side of the cylinder actually projecting out of the negative. When you turned the negative in your hand, the cylinder moved. Toulouse reached out and touched the projection. His finger passed through it, but he recoiled it in shock. "Ugh" 

Being a negative, the black-and-white image was reversed, of course, and this helped lessen the discomfort Bernard and Toulouse felt by looking at the many-eyed tentacled thing in that cylinder. Was it moving? Can't be.

Toulouse persevered, and he loaded the negative into the enlarger, and projected it onto the printing paper. In each step of this process, the image was 3D. So, he developed the print, and fixed it, avoiding looking too closely throughout, and only holding things by the edge of the paper. The print was 3D too.

"Maybe do not make another print, Toulouse" said Bernard.

Bernard returned to St Croix in the Citroen, with all the photographic prints. Mezmer and Wonton had finished their stint in the library, so he picked them up en route.

 

Mezmer commented that they did the right thing by NOT extinguishing the candles. If this was a summoning, then candles OUT will prevent the arrival. But if this was a summoned, then the candles may be what is maintaining its "cage", so candles must be ON. "We do not know which."

Wonton's research had established that the crypt of this place was indeed the Carthaginian Baal temple layer, and that there ought not to be any deeper layers.

Bernard passed around the prints. The group was intrigued, but they did not like the look of the 3D cylinder in the bright light of day, nor what it contained. In fact, it was enough to physically give Miriam a turn [SAN loss], and she sat in the corner whimpering and rocking. 

Mezmer snatched the print and burned it. "Not good."

They all summoned Heroux and some troops and revisited Umar's apartment. It was empty, but had been cleaned somewhat. The faecal mess was all gone.

The cold room door was closed. Rather than open it, Heroux put a padlock on it. "Nous attendons des armes de gros calibre avant d'ouvrir cette porte." (We'll await heavier weaponry for here.)

It was late afternoon.