A pleasant stroll around Royalston doesn't turn anything up, though Esme and Tommy aren't feeling particularly observant. They head to church. The church service is nice; the gossip is all about the warplane that tried to kill Farmer Bob's cow. They go by the Widow's house, with the pretext that Tommy has lost a key; neither room is being rented. The diner hasn't found his key either, but nobody in the diner looks non-local. Nobody appears to be staking out the Keeling house.
Circling around the town turns up a possibly rusted-out car off the side of a road; time to land again. It's a rusted out car. Off they go again. (Tommy sketches a map of Royalston, and places to hide cars).
Monday, April 17
Gerti heads to the Registry of Deeds to do research, and eventually
turns up the address of Number 7 Devonshire Rd, which Montague Feister
bought three years ago.
Roderick goes to the Luna Park Society; he finds the lounge upstairs has the Apcott family tree spread out on a table. There's Montague coming out of the bathroom. There's a bit of facing off and glaring, and then Montague mutters something and gestures at Roderick, who falls down the stairs and temporarily flips out. Montague and another Luna Park member named Robert start carrying him to a car to take to the hospital; the Scottish Manservant intercepts and comes as well (and probably keeps him from "accidentally" dying in the car...). He is diagnosed as having suffered a heart attack. Or mabye a seizure. In any event, he's sent to intensive care.
Gerti calls Marcus, who is soon on his way. Gerti and Eddie disguise themselves as nurses and go check on him. He's muttering to himself. "He's coming he's coming... shut *up*, mon! Calm down!"
Gerti decides it's time to take the offensive. Let's break into Montague's house! But what if he's there? Well, then we'll kill him!
Gerti prays for a while. She has this sense that Roderick is getting better, but he's coming back towards a cliff. Marcus shows up. He gets briefed a little more by the doctor; seizure, fell down the stairs, and was traumatized. "Bert" calls the Luna Park Society to ask about the attack; he's given Robert Walton's phone number. He talks to Robert, who mentions blood, in addition to the screaming and the falling down stairs.
What should be done to prevent the possible second spell from affecting him? Hard to tell without knowing what it does. ("Whack him upside the head when he starts to wake up!" - Charlie).
Gerti writes a note for Roderick - "We've gone to break into Feister's house." (Eddie votes for 3pm, when he's at the club. Gerti says you can't smother him with a pillow at 3pm, and thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.)
Eddie wants to wait until Roderick wakes up, if he's likely to wake soon; Gerti doesn't want to stall any longer. Hmm. Maybe they could blow up his car? Or have the Mafia firebomb his house? But that will warn him that they're after him. Well, he probably knows. (Roderick channels: "He doesn't have a car! He borrows it from the Society!") (Draw straws to see who has to sell their soul to acquire anti-Ezekial technology, now that Roderick is down? Gerti stomps out that plan.)
Gerti checks to make sure nobody actually objects to killing Montague. Nope, nobody does, there's just some disagreement as to how plausible it is.
11:30 pm. The group drives by the house. No, they consider going and throwing a rock through his window. No, they don't throw the rock. There are a couple of lights on. Time to burn his house down! Charlie rounds up some more gas. Eddie disguises the people and the car.
Esme is the driver, around the corner. Gerti and Tommy are behind a tree. Charlie and Eddie head in with gasoline. The house gets set on fire. Three people come out. Someone spots Charlie; one guy starts running towards the group, and shoots, but misses. The car escapes. The car gets left somewhere Charlie suggests as a place for cars to lie low. Everyone converges at Esme's.
Dr. Schreber shows up at the hospital, interrogates the manservant, and then pulls rank as his personal physician and gets him taken off sedation. (He has boils now. "Occam's razor says it was the witch." -R). Where is everyone else? Who knows? Well, they'll read about it tomorrow in the police blotter.
April 18.
Everyone converges on the hospital. The
house-burning party fills in the medical party, and vice versa.
Dr. Schreber manages to get Roderick released; a bunch of cars,
including Marcus and his sister Caroline, head off to Roderick's
house.
Getting out of the car and heading to the door, Roderick is attacked by three nightgaunts, which are promptly filled with bullets, disappointing the GM to no end. The police are called due to the gunfire. The bodies are hidden in a back shed, while Charlie breaks Dr. Schreber's car to look backfirey. Tommy loses it (there are Kraut birds everywhere). (Later: "You're humoring me. Those weren't kraut birds, those were monsters"). When the police show up, they aren't buying the backfiring-cars story, as there are some broken windows as well (and the cook doesn't know to say that the windows have been broken for a month, as Roderick claims) They start threatening to search the house, and rather than having them happen upon the dog-tree in the basement, Roderick shows them the dead nightgaunts. They're all for bringing people in; Gerti suggests it was a rabid dog. They decide okay, yes, it was a rabid dog, they never saw any nightgaunts in the shed after all.