Graveyard Standoff

(What follows is a dramatization of my recollections from a recent Call of Cthulhu session - spoilers for the legendary Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign are contained within!)

"Listen to me," Lawrence Vane shouted, his face dripping. "You can’t just shoot her - that monster is my sister! That is still Eloise!"

The Oxford student pointed behind him to a grey-skinned, bestial creature hunched beside a recently disturbed grave. Pieces of a shattered coffin lid surrounded it, and being on the buisness end of an elephant gun didn't stop it from taking defiant bites from the grisly prize it had torn from the grave.

How did it come to this, thought Bartholomew Jones as he brushed misting rain from his eyes with the back of his free hand. I could be on the savannah, leading pampered Europeans looking to bag a trophy buck or even a lion, but no, I’m looking over the sights of Uncle Dave's Holland & Holland Royal Double at a -what? A ghoul I suppose. A flesh-eating abomination which was a captivating lass when I met her just yesterday...

Vane had brought Jones and his two compatriots, Prof. Greenwald and the bartender Roy Conner, into his trust only the evening before, after dinner at Castle Plum. Lord Arthur Vane, Lawrence's father, had been coy and aloof, but as they returned to the village, Lawrence had confided the truth about the recent deaths in Lower Edale. 

After her 21st birthday three months prior, Eloise Vane had begun transforming at the time of the full moon, and had killed several townsfolk before her family eventually discovered her metamorphosis. Her father and brother had begun sedating her and incarcerating her in the dungeons beneath their ancestral castle during the full moon, but each month, the change is longer lasting and more pronounced.

That same night, Eloise's gaunt but muscular ghoul form had escaped through a hidden passage in the dungeons. The tunnel led her into the family mausoleum, where she attempted to satiate her unnatural hunger on the bones of her ancestors. By the time Jones, Vane, exited the mausoleum and caught sight of their quarry, she appeared to be chasing a townsperson down the road into Lower Edale.

Jones shouldered his immense rifle, and briefly considered letting fly with both barrels, but remembering he had but two bullets in his possession, he opted to conserve ammo. He pulled the first of his twin triggers, the enormous report of the .450 Nitro Express round shocking the others and panicking Lawrence Vane, who turned and screamed in protest.

The shot struck the ghoul below its left shoulder blade, knocking the creature to the ground with what must surely be a killing shot.

But the creature immediately rolled to its feet and loped off in the direction of the graveyard, with no trace of an entry wound.

The three investigators gamely pursued the monster into the church cemetery, Conner gripping his 12 gauge uneasily, and Jones saw Greenwald bringing up the rear. The academic appeared to be on the verge of untethering, trotting along with a giddy grimace on his face, a cigarette dangling from his lips and a bottle of brandy in each hand. Seeing Jones' inquisitive look, Professor Greenwald flashed back a fatalistic grin, and took a long pull from the bottle in his right hand.

Moments later, they'd surrounded Eloise as she prepared to feast, but in the ensuing fracas both Jones and Conner had been bitten by the ghoul, and the American was struggling to avoid going into shock. "Let her feed" shouted Greenwald. "Better dead flesh than ours!"

And so they stood there, eye-to-eye with an unimaginably horrific creature, helplessly watching her charnel feasting while the cold February mist began forming into droplets of frigid rain. As the torn earth around the grave started muddening, Jones pondered his single remaining bullet, not knowing if even it would enough to stop the creature if it attacked, or if he could manage a clean shot past poor Lawrence, still trying to protect whatever of his sibling remained in that gaunt, grey shape.

"What if we just...let her go?" Lawrence queried. "What more harm can she do if she prefers to eat dead things?"

"Don't be stupid," shot Conner, "she's already killed three, and you know she's getting worse."

The brother's shoulders slumped, and Jones struggled to come up with a plan of action, the barrel of his elephant gun never wavering. Conner did his best to keep his shotgun at the ready, but winced in pain as blood poured from the vicious bite in his shoulder. The professor, meanwhile, seemed to be using the two bottles he held to weigh out possible solutions.

Then Lawrence decided for them.

Leaping in front of Jones and thrusting the barrel of the Royal Double into the air, he shouted over his shoulder at the creature that was once his beloved sister, "Eloise, run! Get away!"

The ghoul's head snapped up, and for a moment it seemed she might leap at her brother, either to attack or to aid, who can say. But instead it dropped its grisly trophy and was clearly preparing to flee.

Pulling the barrel away from Vane's grip, Jones stepped into the youth shouldering him aside as he drew a bead on the creature with a coolness of manner and smoothness of motion born out of hundreds of such shots taken in Africa, and pulled the second trigger on his rifle.

The deafening boom of the Holland & Holland forced Lawrence to wince and cover his ears reflexively, so he didnt see the shot hit the ghoul directly in its chest, knocking it on its back. But Jones saw that once again there was no blood, and somehow, impossibly, the creature still seemed to be alive, and struggling to get to its feet.

The hunter looked helplessly to Conner as his comrade fought to overcome his wound and bring his shotgun to bear, but before he could, Delbert strode forward with only one bottle in his hand. 

He had crammed a brandy-soaked handkerchief into the neck of the bottle, and lit the improvised wick with the bright ember of his cigarette. He lobbed the firebomb at the prone creature, and saw it shatter on its chest, enveloping the ghoul in flames.

"Eloise, no!" shouted Lawrence, staggering to his feet and tearing off his jacket. As he moved towards his sister's flaming form, Conner, while yet unsure of the right thing to do, still made an attempt to tackle the youth, but ended up in a heap on the ground instead.

Lawrence flailed at the flames with his jacket, but as they finally subsided, it was clearly too late, and only a charred, barely humanoid form remained.

But as the brother sobbed and the others stood in stunned silence, the charred form slowly reverted to that of the lovely girl they had only hours before. Lawrence draped his jacket over her nearly naked form, and Jones put his hand on the young man's shoulder in commiseration.

"I'm so sorry it came to this, Lawrence," the hunter intoned. "But surely you understand we had no choice."

Vane wheeled on him with red rimmed eyes, full of anger, but his expression softened as he saw Rev. Stratton making his way over to them from the vicarage. He looked deeply into Jones' eyes, before finally letting his chin drop into his chest and nodding in agreement.

"You're probably right," Vane said softly. "But you will never be able to convince my father." He gestured up at the castle on the hill. "You've made a powerful enemy tonight, and I think you should leave Lower Edale straight away."

Jones nodded and stepped away to join Prof. Greenwald in helping Conner off the ground, but Lawrence continued: "And I wouldn't stay in England much longer either, if I were you."