McCurdy grinned at the sight, but only after ensuring it was doing the woman no harm. He walked over to her after picking up a piece of the fruit and holding it out to the “squirrel”, hoping to bait its attention away from Marianne. “There now, little fella,” he said in a bold but soothing tone. “You probably like red hair too, but I reckon you’ll have a hard time getting those locks away from her.” He moved closer with the fruit and his other hand out as if beckoning the thing to jump on to him. “Come on down from there. You might catch cold or something...”

The lizard-squirrel clung to Marianne.  As one limb was prised away, the rest clung tighter, and the big dark eyes viewed its assailants with alarm.  It did not try to bite, but did try to hide in her hair, behind her head, under her chin - all ineffectually, of course.  The fur was soft and fluffy, and the patches along the head and legs where it was not were warm and leathery scales.  Its claws, clearly intended for climbing trees, were prickly but it did not harm her.  It did indeed sample Marianne's hair, and decided that it wasn't tasty with a snorting "PTAH !" sound.

Brother Clary looked to be of assistance, and McCurdy tempted the thing with a piece of fruit as Hawksmoore made impatient - but silent gestures to 'hurry on'.  It looked at him for a moment, then sprang onto his arm, wrapping itself securely around his forearm and grabbing the fruit in one 'hand'. Then it guzzled it, dripping fruit pulp liberally onto his hand and sleeve.  Even holding it upside down and shaking didn't dislodge it - just made it hold on tighter - and chew idly on his shirt-sleeve, where the fruit juice had dripped.

The adventurers pushed on into the jungle, with Hornsby hacking at the greenery and Hawksmoore on guard against come-what-may.   Brother Clary looked down as he stumbled, and in the soft loam, saw a deep footprint.  It was three feet long, two feet wide and bore the marks of three clawed toes pointing forward - and it was notably deep in the soft earth.

McCurdy looked at Marianne and grinned crookedly. “Seems it ain’t just me.” He chuckled and started after the others, looking at the animal thing again. He held it as far from him as he could. Shaking it loose wasn’t an option apparently, and he was most worried about the thing taking his hand for another piece of fruit, what with all the dried juice on it. Since the thing didn’t seem to be leaving any time soon, he kept his hand clenched in a fist so as not to lose a finger or two to its teeth.

He studied the thing as they moved on and despite his initial reservations, it seemed it wasn’t as bad as he imagined. It was still a bit too strange though. As he walked on, he wondered how long it would be before it decided to go home...

“Hey, Hawksmoore,” he said in a low hiss. “What do ya call this furry-lizard-leech thing?”

At McCurdy's remark, Marianne simply glared at him. The man was up to something... Still, he had helped get the squirrel to let go of her head. The furry creature soon drew her attention, and her expression lightened into a grin. It did seem rather harmless, munching on McCurdy's sleeve like that.

"He's a cute little thing," she said softly, chuckling. She briefly debated touching the soft fur, but wasn't quite sure the creature wouldn't jump right back onto her head.

"Thank you," she added airily. The remark wasn't obviously directed at McCurdy, but at some point midway between them.

McCurdy re-examined the lizard-squirrel and nodded his head. “Yeah... I suppose he is kinda cute at that. Even if he can’t make up his mind what kind of animal he wants to be.” McCurdy looked sideways at Marianne and smiled crookedly. It wasn’t clear if he was acknowledging her thanks or if he was finishing his remark about the squirrel. He started looking around for some more fruit to give the thing...

"I call it 'dinner'," Hawksmoore replied heartlessly, wielding his machete against the greenery.

The creature seemed perfectly content to ride along on McCurdy's arm, and accepted another offering of fruit with great eagerness.  It did not try to bite, either on purpose or by accident, and actually examined the fruit for a moment before settling in to chew it sloppily, dripping more on his sleeve and arm.  When the fruit was gone this time, it climbed up McCurdy's arm to his shoulders and crouched there like a bizarre wrap, using the prehensile scaly tail to steady itself by wrapping it around his throat.  Then it tasted his hat brim.  "PTAH !"

Something quick and greeny-yellow scampered across the path, bobbing like a strange bird, about the size of a chicken.  It was a lizard, running on two legs, and took off even faster as it realized that the path was being used by much larger creatures than itself.  They had all seen things like it....in museums, usually in the fossils section.

Remembering that he used to hunt squirrels with his father and brother back home, Brother Clary eyed the thing on McCurdy's arm.  Then he decided that since there was only one, there probably wouldn't be enough meat for all of them.

Then the chicken-lizard thing scampered across their path.  'Hmmm,' he thought.  'A few more of those might do the trick...'

Sidling up close enough to Hornsby to whisper in his ear, the preacher said, "I don't mean to be a pest, but how much further before we take care o' the business we came here fer?"

Marianne's eyes lit up wonderingly as the creature appeared, and she looked disappointed as it darted quickly across the path. She would have liked to get a closer look at it. But if it seemed strange to them, like something out of a different time, they must seem so much more strange to it.

"Goolah's refuge...," she said suddenly in awed tones, looking around with new eyes. "This was what he was talking about. The home of the first creatures that ever walked the earth." There was a thread of apprehension in her words, but even more, there was a sense of wonder and anticipation.

"Giant dinosaurs and pink dolphins with teeth," she said softly.

Hornsby gave a slight frown. "Tis long enough to test us, yet never so far to keep us from it," he replied to Brother Clary, and slashed with his machete at a thick green plant.  Hawksmoore's expression was grimly unreadable, and sweat had matted the short-cut hair to his forehead.

Another green lizard darted across the path and into the brush on the other side, snapping a bug out of the air enroute.  Then Something roared, a fierce gutteral sound close at hand, and sent another flurry of strange birds into the air.  The squirrel-lizard squeaked in fright and dove into McCurdy's shirt through the collar, wriggling frantically to find cover, no matter how it scrabbled and choked him.

The trees moved, wood creaking, as Something shouldered its way towards them, heading toward the path; Liza Waters kilted up her skirts and lit off at a run, nearly catching up with Hornsby, who was also running, though Hawksmoore had stayed to wave frantically at the other three travellers to follow, before heading up-trail at top speed.

The roar came out of nowhere, making Marianne jump and look around anxiously. Something was coming - something big from the sound of it. While Marianne had wanted to see a dinosaur, this one sounded particularly fearsome, and much too close for her comfort. She followed behind the others at a run.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:46, Mon 19 Dec 2005.

McCurdy didn’t waste any time either except to ensure Brother Clary had gotten the obvious message. He grabbed hold of the squirrel with one hand to keep its claws from digging in his face at the sudden burst of speed. He took off like a shot after Marianne...

Believing in safety in numbers and believing that he had a personal responsibility, maybe even a divine commission, to see this task through, brother Clary followed the group as closely as possible, shotgun at the ready.  Although, he wondered to himself, it might be like usin' a pea shooter agin' an elephant...

Fleeing headlong through the jungle, on a path so overgrown that tripping and being slashed by the greenery was the only way, the travellers rushed onwards.  Only the flash of blue ahead of them that was Liza Water's dress led them, as the darkness got deeper and the roaring got louder.  They could only hope that Hornsby and Hawksmoore were up ahead, and that they were still on the path.  Finally, just as their lungs were ready to burst, they staggered into a clearing, lit by brilliant sunlight through a break in the canopy of dense green.  Liza Waters was doubled over, panting, Hornsby was in not much better shape, and even Hawksmoore was short of breath.  They had the sense that something very big was behind them...then, simply gone on, in a manner in which it seemed both far away...or long ago.

The squirrel-lizard stuck its head out of McCurdy's shirt and blinked at the sunlight, but did not choose to leave its new den.  Brother Clary's grip on his shotgun relaxed; that feeling of being hunted had left them.

"The big ones...are troublesome," Hornsby gasped, "One ate three of my crew. Only the boy got away."
"This path covers more than distance," Hawksmoore elaborated, and unstoppered his canteen, taking a mouthful and then handing it to Liza Waters.  He was standing beside a meter-tall black stone stele, carved in the form of a stylized jolly fat woman, holding up a sun.

Marianne recognised a waypoint on the map, designated with a sun.  They were a third of the way there.

Brother Clary moved closer to the stele.  He looked it over with an expression that alternated between fascination and disdain, but he found himself compelled by his deep and abiding curiosity to examine the monument.

McCurdy made it into the clearing and stopped with the rest of the group. He had handled the run fairly well - readily conscious about fitness, not only for his hobbies, but for his work.  He looked at Hornsby and shook his head. Man should have taken better care of himself considering his “condition.”

McCurdy let the squirrel-thing adjust and get settled into place, trying to reassure it so it wouldn’t go rabid on him. Then he paced a short span along the wall of the clearing where they had just emerged and studied it carefully. He had a vivid imagination considering his country upbringing. He blamed it on his mother and her insistence he spend some time at the county library with her just about every day. She had been an avid reader, and it rolled over onto him. He fell into the world of the brilliant detective stories and the authors that penned them including... “Anyone here a fan of Conan Doyle?” he asked, still looking at the wall.

He turned away from it finally and looked at Hawksmoore. “Any more of these jaunts through time we gonna have to make?”

His mind was still swimming with all that they had seen, and if not for his being in the middle of it – and if not for the lizard-rodent attached to his shoulder - he would have dismissed it all as the ramblings of a kook that had spent far too much time lost in the jungle. He was actually quite excited about it all, but wasn’t going to let that cat out of the bag around these blokes. He had to keep his edge and his wits about him among this group...

Brother Clary notices McCurdy looking over their suroundings.  "What do y' make of it, brother?" he drawled, still trying to get a handle on what it was he was looking at.

McCurdy saw a flash of the wariness Hawksmoore seemed to live with, and could even understand it a little now, as well as the youth's apparent fitness.  Even the wound in his side didn't seem to slow him down, much, though he caught the lad wincing. "Yes," Hawksmoore replied then, with a moue of annoyance. "Two more.  The next is the worst.  Or the last is worst, should you think it so.  This was the easy part.  The next waypoint is the place of the ghosts."

Sharp teeth sampled McCurdy's shirt button, making a crackling sound on the shell button, which broke.  The creature spit out the pieces,  "PTAH !" and crawled out to loop itself around his shoulders and tug at his hair in a thoughtful manner, searching through it with nimble little fingers and knocking off his hat.   It chirped in an amiable fashion, jumped off his shoulder and started playing with the hat.

Brother Clary peered closer at the happily smiling stele, and perhaps it was a trick of the sunlight, but she winked at him.  The carving was skilled, and the stele showed signs of weathering, the rays of the sun somewhat worn.  The woman was plump and well-endowed, and her stubby toes rested on a short pedestal of the same black stone.

"Doyle ? Aye, I've shared a pint or two with him," Hornsby said, with a low laugh, at McCurdy's words.  "Writer fellow.  Fancies himself an adventurer."

Hornsby dragged a pewter flask from a hidden pocket and took a pull from it; it doubtless was not water.  "Don't waste that," Hawksmoore said with uncharacteristic sharpness, for he had shown Hornsby a lot of deference previously. "My pack's lost. I don't have any rum."  Hornsby hastily stoppered it.  It was becoming clearer that Hornsby relied on Hawksmoore a lot more than Hawksmoore relied on anyone.

McCurdy glanced at Clary as he took his eyes away from the rodent tossing his hat around. He absently fiddled with the empty space left by the broken button and said, “Don’t reckon I make much of it but what it is. Just reminded me of a story I read once.” He looked at Hornsby and added, “And if you told Doyle the tale of this place I figure I know where he got his idea from now.”

McCurdy shook his head and walked up to Hawksmoore. “Anything we need to do to get ready for these next two? What exactly are these ghosts, and what is waitin’ for us in the last one?” The detective had gone numb long ago and he didn’t figure there was much more that Hawksmoore could tell him that would surprise him at this point. Even if he mentioned that club wielding Cyclopes or the bull-headed Minotaur was waiting for them down the road.

It was one thing to face something real, deadly though it might be. But what the next part of the journey might entail was beyond the grasp of even her considerable imagination. Marianne listened intently for the pirates' answer.

Hornsby chuckled at McCurdy's comment, a warm sound.  "Aye, laddie, I've told a tale or two.  Hard to keep a secret so long, is't not ?"

Hawksmoore was looking somewhat pale, under his tan.  "They're ghosts.  Every one of the dead that you could ever think to meet, Yankee, every one of them.  All the ones you put into Hell, and your friends and family, and angels and demons besides, all one and the same."  The sharp hazel eyes glared back at McCurdy.  "The last one is heaven or hell, depending.  What do you want to believe is there ?"
"The lad's not meaning to affright you," Hornsby said, with a soothing tone, and a nervous glance at the two women.  Liza Waters responded with a casual wave and a gentle smile, apparently unperturbed.  Hornsby went on, "There's a grand lot of evil ahead, in the place where the ghosts are, and ghastly they be.  Keep to the path.  Heed them not.  There's powerful magic there."
"So...you are saying that -all- the dead are there ?"  Liza Waters asked, a sharp tone to her voice. "Everyone ?"
"Aye, Marm," Hornsby replied. "And there's a way of calling them forth, but it's not a way that's good, if you follow me."

McCurdy eyed Liza carefully. "Don't be gettin any ideas about talkin to dead relatives to fill those gaps in your notebook... cousin." He smirked at her and moved over to pick up his hat from the squirrel. He didn't know what was gonna happen to the creature, but he figured it would keep itself from harm at any rate.

Marianne thought she had a good idea who Liza wanted to see on the other side, and her sympathetic expression turned into an angry glare at McCurdy. Sensitivity was a word that just wasn't in the man's vocabulary.

"What kind of magic?" she questioned Hornsby, pressing the subject. She felt very uneasy about the whole thing, but at the same time, she couldn't deny that a part of her was drawn by the idea of glimpsing what lay beyond.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:06, Thu 05 Jan 2006.

"The dark kind, miss," Hornsby replied to Marianne, in a soft tone, and settled his gear back onto his shoulders, as Hawksmoore put away the water flask and prepared to head onwards.

Liza merely returned a cool gaze to McCurdy.  But as he went to pick up the hat, the lizard-squirrel took that for an invitation and swarmed up his arm to coil itself around his neck again, sticking a cold, wet little nose in his ear and sniffing a couple of times before settling down into a strange-looking collar.

Brother Clary reviewed the statuette, which seemed to smile all the more at his perusal, the dark stone picking up and reflecting light like some kind of black diamond, sunlight glinting off the worn rays of the sun she was either holding up...or descending from.

"The Good Book tells us in Psalms that we need not fear the 'arrow that flies by day,' nor the 'terror that flies by night.'"  Brother Clary looked back at the group.  "What's keepin' us from proceedin' on with our quest?"

"I think we're ready to move on," Marianne ventured, looking at Hawksmoore and Hornsby shouldering their packs. Thanks -- or not -- to Basil, she had no luggage, so it was considerably easier for her to move around.