We Made a Big Mistake

Present:  Bernard (Jamie), Cooper (Ian),  Gazala (Richard), Jean (Jeff), Mesmer (Shane), Wonton (Darryl)

Marmalading: Fleur (Stephen), Felix (Kevin), Jacob (Chris) 

BY Gazala.

The Gods continued to chuckle as Mezmer strode boldly back down the canyon with Gazala muttering behind him, Wonton proclaiming "this is da wong ting to do" while Felix scuttled to catch up.

As luck would have it though, Mesmer and Felix collapsed 200m down the canyon with marmalade pouring from their mouths. "see I towld you" says Wonton. 

"Good" snapped Gazala. "Let's go back. I didn’t want to do this anyway. We've done all we need to do".

"Wheelie – I do not tink so" Wonton muses while Gazala stares are him menacingly.

Back at camp Cooper continues to work on the Citroen "Jeep" [Citroen B2] and Gazala offers to help. "Fuck off" says Cooper; "You are worse than hopeless"

"We should bury the bodies" Bernard says "they are beginning to have a very strong and unpleasant aroma".

"Let's go" says Gazala, looking for any excuse to gracefully exit from "helping" Cooper.

Jean and Gazala head off in the truck. "If we go about 10km that should be sufficient distance" speculates Jean. 

"And stay close to the hills so we don’t get lost" warns Gazala.

Jean drives off leaving the others at camp and Cooper continuing to swear under the Citroen

 

They drive 10km and find a suitable place to bury the bodies. "One grave for all four" states Jean, pensively looking at Gazala. 

"No, they each need their own grave, you'd better get to work" 

"I knew she'd say that" reflects Jean as he starts to dig. Several hours later and bucket loads of sweat Jean finishes. The bodies are lowered into the graves and Gazala says a few appropriate words after positioning several rocks.  

"Right, let's head back" Jean says as he hastily jumps into the truck.

"There's a sandstorm coming" states an emotionless Gazala "we can probably get half way and when it hits point the truck into the storm"

Sure enough in about 5kms the storm hits. 3 hours later it passes and they return to camp.

Cooper is again working on the car and this time with some success – "got it" he exclaims.

By now its only 1 hour until dark and we decide to camp that night and head off the next day. Mesmer murmurs something spitting marmalade our of his mouth. 

"Why aren’t we going back up the canyon" he says. 

"Because we aren’t" chime in everyone else except Wonton 

"I fink here are stwange tings going on" he says

 The night is not restful. Bernard and Wonton see Cooper twitching and wake him. He screams eyes wide open. "Aghhh – I'm glad that was a dream" says Cooper looking nervously at a sleeping Gazala. 

"Wot you see?" questions Wonton.

"Gazala and her knife cutting me open and removing my intestines"

Cooper refuses to go back to sleep and Gazala soon joins him on watch. Cooper keeps his distance while Gazala wonders briefly why Cooper is acting strangely.

The next morning, we hastily pack up and get moving driving the truck and the Cooper repaired Citroen. The truck tows the other. We arrive at the main (and only) road and stop.

"We need to cover our tracks" declares Bernard. 

With that we go back some 200m – 300m and brush away the tire tracks 

"That wont shop dem" says Wonton, who is still dubious that we have resolved "this matter". Mezmer mumbles his reluctant agreement.

Back at the road we drive toward Tunis a further 15km before turning off the road and heading south for 2 hours. At last we find a rocky outcrop where we abandon the Citroens. 

"Put sand in their fuel tanks" says Gazala.

"No no, don’t do that says Cooper at he looks to protect his handiwork.

"Ok" agrees Gazala fleetingly to satisfy Cooper as she pours sand into the tanks.

Safely back in the truck, we head Tunis. We are passed by several vehicles of no note but then see a Citroen B2 coming toward us with two Arabs in the front seat.

"Ignore them and keep driving" warns Mesmer. 

"Ohhh do not like" muses Wonton. "Dey look for something Mythos – we awaken"

Upon our return to Tunis we go back to our unit. The Calomnie de Tunis newspaper has reopened and the city seems to be returning to normal. After bathing and changing we head off to report to Inspector Heroux, as instructed (when we radioed in earlier he told us to report directly to him. Given we are no longer employed by him we liberally interpreted the term "directly")

We only tell him broadly our achievements. 

"J'ai besoin que tu répares quelques details"(I need you to tidy up some loose ends) " says Heroux. "Especially this skeletal hand that we have locked away in our secure storage"

"nous avons aussi quelques bouts en suspens. Nous aimerions connaître toutes ces Citroën. (we also have some loose ends, we would like to know about these Citroens)" says Bernard.

"I will see what I can find out" says Heroux

"Oh – can you also get us some more silver" asks Mesmer. (the group has decided that certain other mythos items – the hand and amulet – need to be encased in silver)

"I will see what I can do" says Heroux. "Now please deal with that hand"

"Can we have some weapons?" charms Gazala. 

"Of course," says Heroux staring longingly as Gazala's ample bosom. 'and you can have a coupe of my Gendarmes to boot"

We approach the storage area which is secured behind 2 doors - both locked. Cautiously unlocking he first we can here scraping from behind the second. Guns ready, Cooper bravely opens the final door but refuses to look in.

A stench, so foul it threatens to void or bowels, greets us.

"Whaaat are we doing ear? Who are deez pepoole?" says Wonton [ Wonton failed his Sanity roll and his sanity reduced to 9 when he saw the abomination that greeted us. The rest of us were unaffected.  The affect was minor and caused confusion for Wonton – none of us really noticed a difference. ]

Before us was a deformed Gendarme with the skeletal left hand attached. It shuffled toward us and we opened fire. With 79 points of damage (much of which was inflicted by Jean's submachine gun), it was plastered against the wall. (It is worthy of note that Mesmer was the only one who missed)

 

The hand though was still attached to an arm and is crawling across the ground slowly toward us. Mesmer steps forward and plants his slippered foot on it [ successful Brawl roll ] while Gazala nimbly used her knife to cleanly cut the hand from the arm [ successful knife roll ]. It stops moving.

"We need a safe place to store some of these items until we can encase them in silver" says Mesmer. 

"A bank vault?" Gazala asks

"You can keep them in this store room" offers Heroux who has now joined us.

That seems sensible and we decide to leave the hand, the amulet and the censer (albeit already encased in silver) in the room. The other items (Tala's mirror, the knife, Cooper's soap-stone eskimo and Mesmer's necklaces) we take with us.

We had a few things we needed to do. Bernard wanted to follow up the Citroens and decided to ask around his journalism contacts. Cooper needed rest and medical attention for his injuries incurred by the large skeletal creature. Wonton wanted to go to the library and was frustrated it was closed for a further 4 days. And we needed that silver.

All in all, this takes a few days and a few more restless nights. These nights are interrupted by dreams all involving Gazala and her knife removing various bodily parts of the dreamer. Everyone seems to be becoming cautious around the psychotic Gazala.

One evening Jean decided to talk to Tala in the mirror. After introductions are made (Jean hadn’t met Tala before) and whilst Mesmer was having a dream, Jean showed Tala the sleeping Mesmer. 

"There is a shadow behind Mesmer" says Tala. "It looks like Gazala" – Gazala however was sleeping like a baby.

Jean wakes Gazala and they decide to use her knife to poke the shadow, as they had done some time ago. This seemed to work a treat with the shadow immediately disappearing albeit Mezmer woke up screaming that Gazala was trying to kill him.

"Not yet " thought Gazala. "and it won't be your hand I cut off"

"You are safe with me" Gazala says to Mesmer.

"Keep away from me" says Mesmer cradling a rifle.

The other strange dream that Wonton had was one of a Citroen crashing into a large skeletal creature.

"I fink deez dreams are premonitions" says Wonton. 

Naseeba

Everyone ignored him.

"I dream of Naseeba, my bride to be" Wonton proclaims "I miss her but need 10,000 francs. Dats a lot of money"

 

"You cannot marry her" states Gazala " you must free her" 

"I Chinaman and she marry me" responds Wonton.

"You will free her" Gazala states as though there is no room for argument.

"We put on big banquet – lots of meat and rice – Chinese food - sweet and sour pork." 

"You don’t eat pig," says Gazala "you are truly ignorant."

"I eat wot I wan', pork good." 

The argument goes on for some time, Wonton taking some delight at Gazala's discomfort but not so much that he risks physical harm. Gazala stores this insult away for the future.

Meanwhile Bernard's journalism connections have discovered that the Citroen B2 "fleet" was stolen and is being stored in an old warehouse near the docks. When we say fleet, we mean 20 vehicles.

Heroux kindly supplies us the address and that the property is owned by a company called Baal Pty Limited with the directors being Iva Biggin and Midiks Enormous. Cooper found this hilarious and explains the joke in some detail to Gazala who he erroneously thought would also find it funny. Jean overhead the explanation and smirked with a sailor's carnal knowledge.

We scout out the property. It is clearly Arab owned and we decide to follow the next Citroen that leaves. 

"Why are we doing this?" questions Mesmer.

"Do you have a better idea?" answers Bernard

"We will be seen" argues Mesmer.

"I doubt it" responds Bernard. "We are in a non-descript and commonly seen truck, driving on the only road east from Tunis. Nothing unusual in that"

Citroen B2

Mesmer is silent in his protest. 

Sure enough, an hour or so later, a Citroen with two occupants heads out of Tunis travelling east. We follow at some distance.

The car travels to the point near where we exited the desert. We slow to help but they aggressively wave us on. We continue on for a kilometre or so until we are out of sight. We pull over near a rocky outcrop, put the bonnet up to make us loom as though we have mechanical issues, and set watch on the Citroen.

After not long the Citroen begins to head into the desert toward where the baby is buried.

"I told you something going on" says Wonton. "We should have gone back and removed those hieroglyphs" 

"You said you didn’t want to go back" corrects Gazala pointing out Wonton's hypocrisy.

"Did not" responds Wonton

The Citroen drives further into the desert and we lose sight of it. Night draws near and we set camp. The usual watches are maintained. During his watch, Jean engages Tala and shows her the night sky.

"Strong Mythos," says Tala. "There is a beam coming from those distant hills in the desert, shining straight up."

 

Jean wakes us and tells us all what Tala has said. We can see nothing however we know she has always been truthful.

"Oh no" says Wonton, "we make big mistake. Now beacon to all who know mythos. We need to fix".