Plane Island

Trip north with regular bearings

The next morning, Bernard [Jamie], Cooper [Ian], Gazala [Richard], Hubert [Kevin], Wonton [Darryl], Jacob [Chris], Reinhold [Tim], Gunter [Jeff], and Mezmer [Shane] were rearing to go.

Fleur marmaladed in a slovenly coma.

Using the skull containing the gem and the medallion, worn by Jacob this time, it gave a direction bearing: roughly north.

So, they loaded up the car and hooked up the trailer (already loaded up with supplies). Gazala put Tala's mirror (Mirror of the Ghost) in her backpack. 

They headed north, up the A4.

They drove northward for a couple of hours, towards the north coast. During the whole trip north, the skull-gem direction bearing veered more and more east-heading. Eventually, they left the A4 road and headed east towards Cape Farina. 

About 11am, at the end of the cape, the gem pointed out to sea to a small island in the hazy distance. This was Plane Island (Jaziret el-Monbasta in Arabic).

Plane Island

There was a small fishing village nearby called Njila. They found a fisherman, Pedro, who was willing to ferry them out to Plane Island, for a substantial sum. After all, he claimed, Plane Island was haunted by ghouls and genies. He would drop them on the western end and then leave. 

The four kilometre boat trip took them about an hour. Plane Island was a tiny island of rock, 500m by 150m, which had a lighthouse in the centre.

They asked Pedro to return in two days at the same time (noon).

Ju 31

On Plane Island, as they walked westward, they passed a rusting wreck of a ship. It was Belgium vessel SS Scheldepas, (a 5000 ton steam ship wrecked only last year in 1929). They headed toward the lighthouse in the very centre. As they approached it, down the eastern end of the island, they could see a crashed plane: a Junkers 31.

But before they could take the scene in, a figure in robes emerged from one of the lighthouse buildings. It started to run, then sprint, then move unnaturally fast. Like the creatures from the dig, it was a ghoul.

CR submachine gun

They had their Chauchat-Ribeyrolles submachine guns out, and they brought it down in a hail of bullets.

Then two more figures emerged from the lighthouse buildings, and these two were brought down as well. They were presumably the former lighthouse keepers. Gazala beheaded them all.

Down by the crashed plane, two hundred metres away, a large see-through shadowy figure stood up. Was it three metres tall? Five metres? Ten? It was hard to tell. It was merging eerily in and out of focus.  And there were four human-sized figures near it, dressed as German aviators. These fellows just milled about aimlessly. The group suspected they were ghouls too, but it was hard to see.

Rather than take them on immediately, they went to the two lighthouse buildings, accommodation and generator, and did a quick search. There were no other people here, and no more ghouls.

To try to lure the four figures from the plane, Cooper took a long-range rifle shot to get them to move close enough, so that everyone else could blast them with the submachine guns. Sure enough, the four aviators started to sprint immediately. But they only covered 50m, before they all stopped suddenly, in lock-step, then rushed back into the plane's fuselage, as if summoned.

If the mountain won't come to Mohammed...  So the group headed towards the plane. They covered half the distance but then made some salient calculations in their heads. These things move fast... maybe this is not such a good idea to take on four at once.

So, they bravely skulked back to the lighthouse.

"We will wait here until dark. What could be safer?"

...

They blocked up all the windows of the accommodation block, and strung ropes across the room to make barricades. The lighthouse tower (with spiral staircase) was joined to one end of the building. It would be here, by the door, they could squeeze in five of them, standing next to each other, with submachine guns, to make a killing zone.

Around sunset, a mechanical timer automatically started the diesel generator and the main lighthouse light came on. There was a system of rotating mirrors and lenses around the main lamp, and that gave the light a 10 second cycle. But the party didn't want this, so they turned the main light off, and just left the accommodation building's electric lighting running.

So, that night, lighthouse Admiralty E6416 did not shine.  The last time this happened was last year. The Belgium shipwreck they had passed earlier that day was the result of that.

It was a clear night and there was a half moon. Gazala was positioned right up the top of the light house, outside on the walkway, with the rifle and binoculars. Part-way down the spiral stairs lurked Wonton, Reinhold and Dr Jacob, to relay messages to and from the group below. The brave five, Gunter, Hubert, Mezmer, Cooper and Bernard, stood in a line by the stairway door, with their CR submachine guns. Bernard had his speed graphics camera handy too, with eight flash charges, in case bright flashes were needed.  They had 10 grenades spread amongst them too.

And they waited.

About 10pm, Gazala saw a shadow slowly stretch from the crashed plane towards the lighthouse, as if a giant light behind it was moving downwards to lengthen its shadow. She took aim with the rifle and fired. There was a splutter and tepid bang. The bullet cartridge had discharged, but the bullet was now jammed tight halfway down the barrel [such are the joys of a double 1 fumble]. This is not something that can be fixed in the field. 

She passed the message to the Wonton and Jacob who relayed it down the tower.

The power suddenly went off. The generator had gone quiet. And at that same time, the wood barricade blocking one of the side windows suddenly exploded inward, as a German aviator sprang inside. Well, former German aviator - now a ghoul dressed as one.

The small room was filled with the thunderous noise of five submachine guns firing, and it quickly filled with gun-cotton smoke and dust. The light from the muzzle flashes lit up the room, and in a hail of bullets the creature went down. But it was quickly followed by two more aviator ghouls.

They blasted away at these two too. One managed to get to Mezmer, and one got to Hubert. Mezmer's ghoul went down, but it still managed to claw his throat and his fat belly with its cigarette-long iron claws, and Mezmer dropped gurgling blood. 

Hubert was even less lucky; the creature clawed and bit at him, and the others had no choice but to blast away at that ghoul and at Hubert. [ If you fire into melee combat, your damage gets spread. ] Hubert and the ghoul both went down in a hail of bullets.

Field dressings and band aids were applied to both unconscious figures. Hubert's weary heart stopped a brief time, before Dr Jacob got to him and applied CPR. 

Then Cooper hefted the unconscious Mezmer over his shoulder, and Jacob and Gunter lifted the unconscious Hubert, and all ascended the spiral stairs.

Gazala and Reinhold had come down to help, so they and Bernard guarded the doorway of the stairs. There was one more ghoul unaccounted for, something had stopped the generator, and there was still that shadow figure. They kept guard down here with frantic waving torchlight.

Suddenly, they saw a shadow loom through broken barricades of the side window: "Mon Dieu!"

Bernard had his camera ready and shot the shadow with the camera flash, and Gazala lunged at it with her long mythos knife, Reinhold didn't risk a shot. In the brief instant of the flash, they all saw into the "face" of the shadow figure. It was an enlarged version of the three-eyed baby-skull face they had seen a few days ago in the baby coffin. But now it had flesh; papery greasy flesh, which moved, crawling and slithering slug-like, over the surface of the skull. The protruding over-size sharp teeth of the baby skull were now long glinting protruding teeth made of iron. The three eye sockets now had eyes in them, and Bernard, Reinhold and Gazala drank in the insane awful depths of those eyes. 

Luckily, the bright flash was enough to cause the hideous shadow to pause, and drift back through the broken window.

Bernard, Reinhold and Gazala's skin crawled at the horrendous thing they had seen. They all shuddered and gasped in revulsion, then slammed the stairway door, and retreated back up the spiral stairs.

Just then, a grenade bounced down the stairs and past them, thrown by Wonton. All three snapped out of their stunned reverie, and quickly crouched down behind the central pillar of the spiral stairs. The grenade went off and blew open the lower door.

"Ah, non! Encore, non!"