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| Umar al-Ghaffari |
Miriam [Jeff], Wonton [Darryl], Gazala [Richard], Mezmer [Shane] and Cooper [Ian] were at Umar's apartment with Inspector Heroux, some gendarmes and some Légion Étrangère (French Foreign Legion) troops. Since Bernard and Mario had slumped to the ground, marmalading, the others arranged for Heroux to please deliver them to Ahmed's Coffee House. Best not to leave marmaladers in this place!
Jacob [Chris] and Toulouse [Tim] were back at the Calomnie de Tunis newspaper building. Fleur was there too, marmalading in the party's apartment. Toulouse was down in the darkroom with his lab assistant Selima. He had a theory. Are there any Friday the 13ths coming up? No. Today was September 7th. The only Friday 13th in 1930 was in June.
Miriam, Mezmer, Wonton, Gazala and Cooper left Umar's apartment and headed towards the "pentagram building" (place of the third murder).
They had to walk through the streets because their Citroen was left by the coffee house. Part way through the trip, Gazala noticed that they were being followed by someone, so she held back and intercepted him. It was on of the Deacons from the Saint Croix church. He was genuinely worried for the party's immortal souls and claimed that they reeked of evil. They didn't want him to follow, so Gazala distracted and diverted him enough with her feminine wiles, that he never did discover where they were headed.
A squad of soldiers were still guarding this building. The group entered.
In the actual pentagram room, Miriam saw Umar standing in the corner. When she pointed him out to Mezmer, Mezmer could not see him. Nor could Gazala. Nor could the soldiers. He was somehow invisible. But Wonton could. It didn't take Umar long to twig that Miriam and Wonton could see him, so he hurriedly left the building. She tried to follow. He entered the Medina, and when he went down an alley, she was too scared to follow. So, she returned to the group.
They racked their brains trying to work out why only Miriam and Wonton could see him. No theories.
Cooper took twelve of the thirty sticks of stolen dynamite (from the box stored in the boot of the Citroen) and some fuse and detonators. Wonton took four sticks for himself. Cooper then snuck them into the building's ground floor, and he started to place them into random holes in the floor, carefully avoiding the soldiers. Wonton helped him calculate the fuse lengths.
While they were doing this, Mezmer performed a Sanctify in the pentagram room above. After the ritual's hour, there was the usual mini quake and the whole building shook.
Cooper was still placing sticks of dynamite at this time, so he wet himself, thinking some had exploded. The soldiers were not very happy with the jolt either, and ran out into the street.
Back at the paper, Toulouse got the faecal samples (previously scraped off the ceiling of the Men's toilet by Jacob and Fleur). He watered them down, and placed them on a microscope slide. They were textbook samples of human faeces. And the man who deposited them had hook worm too.
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| Round worm, vanilla worm, hookworm |
Later that day, Toulouse and Selima took the tram to the two asylums of Tunis. The first was the asylum for women L'Asile de Tunis pour les Putes Impudique (Tunis Fallen Women Asylum), but not being a doctor nor a woman (despite Selima's presence), Toulouse was denied entry by the gate guards. The second was the asylum for men L'Asile de Tunis pour les Encules Fous (Tunis Crazy Fools Asylum). Here, Toulouse mentioned Inspector Heroux's name and the Calomnie de Tunis paper name and they were happy to let him in ("Oh, that group") , wheelchair and all, but supervised.
After that foray, back at base, Toulouse took the negatives from Bernard's photographs of the crypt and enlarged some of the pictures of the alcoves. Some had inscriptions beneath. It was Latin, and they were early Christian saints. No surprises there.
Toulouse sent Selima to the St Vincent de Paul Cathedral (the main Catholic cathedral of Tunis) to get some holy water. She got back just before dark, with a jug of it.
It was now night.
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Toulouse took the (monochrome) negative of the crypt cylinder, still with the unusual 3D effect, and loaded it into the enlarger. He exposed it on to a large piece of photographic paper, big as the tray, big enough to get good details (like A3), zooming in to the dark cylinder, despite the image turning his stomach. He had used the holy water (instead of normal water) to make the batches of developing solution and fixer solution. The print slowly appeared on the photographic paper as he swirled it about, but was hard to see well in the gloomy red light of the darkroom, but it was still 3D. Next, he swirled the print through the stop bath. And finally into the tray of fixer solution. At this stage, it was safe to turn on the darkroom lights, so he did.
Peering close, he could swear the image was moving; not when he stared straight at it, but out of the corner of his eye. While he watched, fascinated, the black and white photo suddenly turned to colour, and the fixer solution suddenly drained away, as if it poured into the print. The 3D effect became even more spectacular when a tentacle, febrile yellow, glistening with pus, and thick as his arm, snaked out of the print, as if it was a window.
Toulouse screamed.
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Back at the pentagram building, some time later, Heroux arrived with two gendarmes. He insisted that there was trouble at the newspaper building and that he had to take them; "actuellement!"
"Je vous expliquerai les détails pendant le voyage," he said. (I will explain on the trip.)
But the five were very suspicious and thought that Heroux was possessed or forced. So, they only sent Cooper and Mezmer (i.e. sacrificial lambs). Wonton, Gazala and Miriam stayed back. Wonton stayed in the courtyard where the fuse to the dynamites began, Gazala stayed in the observing room across the courtyard from the building, and Miriam stayed on rooftop.
Cooper and Mezmer took the Citroen and followed Heroux. At the Calomnie de Tunis building there were some police cars out front, two army trucks, a fire engine, and a large group of people. There was smoke coming out of a second floor window (the typing pool), and water was being hosed in there.
The soldiers were obviously waiting for Heroux and the party to arrive, and they crowded around the cars.
Just then there was a large angry bellow from within the building, loud enough to rattle the windows. It sounded like a bear or a tiger. Then a crashing noise, in the ground floor, as if heavy furniture was being moved around. People in the street backed away further. The firemen stepped back. The soldiers gripped their rifles
Inspector Heroux thrust Mezmer and Cooper forward. "Ces deux braves hommes vont montrer la voie. Ce sont des experts en ours!" (These two brave souls will lead the way. They are bear experts.)
Cooper facetiously asked for a rifle, and he was surprised when one of the soldiers actually gave him one. Then he entered the building with the squad of troops, a sergeant, Mezmer, Heroux, and four gendarmes.
The heavy moving noise was up the stairs, so they ascended. There was a trail of thick pus-yellow slime coating the stairs. The power had gone off, so the noisy generator on the roof had started up, and the building lights dimmed and brightened as it came up to speed. This was normal; it always took a while to settle.
When the group got to the landing, the noise of heavy furniture was above them, on the top floor - the party's apartment.
Then there was another roar. Like an angry bear in pain. The whole building shook, and pieces of plaster rained down from the ceiling onto them. But the brave soldiers, et al, continued upwards, following the slime path. 
There was the noise of breaking of glass above them, and the generator suddenly got noisier. They carried on creeping up, and got to the top floor. The slime trail went through the party's apartment's living room (every door was smashed) and out through the french doors, which were now matchwood and broken glass, and on to the roof.
They crept out onto the flat roof, guns at the ready. The air was stinking of diesel fumes from the rust holes in the muffler. The wide slime trail ended at the edge of the building. Cooper peered down the two storeys to the narrow street below, but there was no sign of the "bear". Mezmer looked into the sky. Did it have wings? Or maybe it jumped. It was 5 m across to another same-height building across Rue de Chekli.
The sergeant shouted down to some soldiers on the ground and ordered a truck be brought around to shine its headlights down the street. No sign of movement.
Two soldiers were left to guard up here while everyone went down ground level. Soldiers and gendarmes were ordered into adjacent buildings and streets. Some soldiers, Mezmer, Cooper and Heroux went down to the cellar level, following the slime trail backwards. At the base of the cellar stairs was a broken wheelchair. Through some splintered doors they came to the darkroom. There was a decapitated head lying on its side in the darkroom's broken doorway. Mezmer recognized Toulouse. A soldier vomitted. Pieces of Toulouse were all about the darkroom. He had been violently torn apart. Some bits had been chewed. His was the only body, and no sign of his assistant Selima.
Mezmer had enough presence of mind to pick up the fallen enlarger, wipe off the spattered blood, and retrieve the negative from within it. Interestingly, it was no longer 3D, and the cylinder in the picture was just a plain black cylinder now.
The gendarmes and soldiers searching adjacent buildings and streets found no slime on any of their roofs. And no splats on the surrounding roads and alleys. So, the "bear" had vanished, or flown away.
Cooper and Mezmer got Heroux's permission to return to the others, so they drove back to the pentagram building. Cooper managed keep hold of his rifle through some clever subterfuge, and luck.
Back on the rooftop the reunited group spent the rest of night with soldiers. It was a peaceful night; no beams.
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In the morning, the five took the Citroen to the Saint Croix church.
The priest & two deacons were there; one deacon was the same one who followed Gazala yesterday. But there was a second priest too, standing at the back by the altar. Miriam looked; it was Umar! She squealed. Like yesterday, only she and Wonton could see him.
He hurried to the main doors of the nave, down the aisle. Miriam beat him to the doors and slammed them. He drew a large knife and menaced her with it, while he pulled the bolts back.
Gazala gave Wonton her police Lebel revolver. His first few shots went wild. Cooper rushed down too. Wonton wounded Umar in the shoulder, but his next shot hit Cooper. Then Umar stabbed Cooper straight in his gut and he went down. But then Wonton shot again, and Umar dropped.
Worried about being caught in possession of a gun, Wonton, scurried off to hide in the surrounding streets. By now the priests had used the church telephone to call the gendarmes.
Umar was dead. His body suddenly appeared to all, and his blood became visible on the floor by the church door. As did his large knife, which Miriam hid on her person. He also had a strange medallion around his neck. It was on a leather cord and had a strange ampule on the end with glass faces containing a thick red liquid. Mezmer took this.
Cooper was patched up to stop him bleeding out, but he was unconscious [when you hit 0hp, you are unconscious and need medical aid to regain consciousness]. He was gently placed on a pew.
Heroux and two gendarmes arrived. He summoned another car to take Umar's body away. Mezmer warned Heroux to have the body cremated as soon as he can; just in case. Heroux didn't pry too much on the use of the revolver; in normal times, Wonton would be executed for using one.
After Heroux was gone, Mezmer, Miriam, and Gazala headed down to the undercroft, under the church's altar. There were four soldiers down here, still guarding (they had not heard any of Wonton's gun shots through the thick floors). The soldiers knew the group, so let them pass.
They checked inside the sarcophagi. There was no movement; just an old dusty skeleton.
Gazala and Miriam asked Mezmer if they should extinguish the candles. Mezmer thought on this for a while, but then gave the same answer as last time. If it was a summoning, then yes. But if it was a summoned, then no. So, we do not know.
The two girls said they would blow them out anyway, so Mezmer vacated the crypt.
Miriam and Gazala blew the candles out one at a time. After each one, they felt a shudder go up their backs. Then there were two left. So they both knelt next to each, and blew.
The room went dark... But only because those candles were the only source of light.
Back in the church above, one of the deacons had some medical knowledge and he had roused Cooper [on 2 hp]. And, Wonton had returned. It was now near noon, so they rested, intending to be awake for that night. Was the "bear" still out there?
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