The Lion Kills Tonight

The zoo has a new attraction: a rare specimen of an African mountain lion. The lion was the pet of the deceased Mayor Templeton, who brought him back from Africa and, since he had no heirs, has been donated to the zoo.

The terror starts one morning when, after opening its gates, the zoo's visitors make a shocking discovery: the lion gnaws on a human forearm, covered in blood!

 Possibilities

1 After the first shock it seems that someone has played a terrible joke: the forearm isn't real. Instead it belongs to a window dummy and it's covered in ketchup. It seems that the lion likes ketchup.

2 The lion is more than just an ordinary lion - trapped in its body is the spirit of an evil witch doctor. During his time in Africa, the Mayor saw how (and was horrified by) the witch doctor would take possession of younger men to lengthen his (the witch doctor's) life. The Mayor tried to kill the witch doctor by shooting his new body, but the witch doctor escaped death by possessing the body of the nearest living creature, a lion pup.

Realizing, that the witch doctor's spirit was trapped, but that it was impossible to kill by conventional methods, the mayor took the pup with him and searched for occult ways to end the foul magic. The mayor never succeeded, and when the lion was left to the zoo they did not realise quite how dangerous it was. Now a keeper has been killed. Worse, putting the lion down might set the witch doctor's spirit free again.

3 The animal keeper accidentally left the the door open, so the lion could go hunting for its favourite meal - human flesh. The mayor himself fed it to the lion from an early age, mostly remnants of the victims of his circle of the African Cult of the Bloody Tongue, an avatar of Nyarlathotep. An autopsy of the lion will reveal a silver signet ring in its stomach. The ring belonged to one of the mayor's rivals, a rival who vanished under mysterious circumstances.

© Philipp Mählmann

Bad Dog

There hasn’t ever been a problem with strays in the neighbourhood, until about three weeks ago. A huge, black dog has been seen and has caused all kinds of mischief. Bins have been overturned, cars have been chased and the local children routinely terrified when something sleek and threatening bursts through the undergrowth, teeth barred. Cats refuse to go outside. Nobody’s really gotten a good look at the dog, so its breed hasn’t been identified. Nor has any owner.

Things change when a man is found dead in an abandoned house, savaged and ripped to shreds. The victim is identified as homeless man Ken Charles, and for a time the police comb the area hoping to catch the dog, but have no luck. The predator remains at large and the sound of howling echoes through alleyways, to the terror of man and beast alike.

Possibilities

1 The dog is normal in body, but not in mind. It contains the spirit of a murder who vowed to survive death and return to have vengeance on those who condemned him. The murderer, Wilbert Johns, was a homeless man who shared an abandoned house with Ken Charles and another man, Tom Warburton. Johns murdered Warburton as part of an occult ritual but didn’t realise he was being observed by Charles, who went to the police. Johns died fighting with the officers sent to arrest him, but not before he had put certain plans in place for his survival. He viciously killed Charles by trapping him in the house they’d squatted in, displaying intelligence highly uncharacteristic of a normal dog. The only problem for Johns is that he has to share his mind, that of a coldly psychological killer, with that of a dog, sometimes causing him to act out animal impulses.

2 The dog is a creature of a magical nature (demon, faerie or ghost, etc…) that was attracted to the neighbourhood by the magical energy radiating from the abandoned house which had a powerful artefact hidden away within it. Charles was killed when he disturbed the dog while it was searching the house. The dog isn’t really a large problem, but the artefact is going to start attracting things that are smarter and more dangerous in the hopes of claiming its power.

3 Ken Charles was not a simple derelict, but in fact a disgraced professor who had been researching the possibilities of time travel, requiring isolation to perfect his research. In a secret room in the basement he designed a machine that could facilitate the opening of a portal to the past, but to his misfortune it let through a prehistoric wolf that gravely injured him and ran off into the streets. Charles was able to drag himself into the basement and seal off the time machine room, but didn’t manage to close it off before he died.

© Paul Hebron

Aunt Joan’s Little Treasure

One of the investigators has a senile, irritating Aunt Joan who has recently died from heart failure. Unfortunately, all the investigator receives from the old crone is her ‘Little Treasure’ – Baldwin the dog. But Baldwin is no normal dog. Although very small--about Jack Russell sized or smaller--he is extremely mean looking, with eyes, a weasel-like snout, coarse fur and needle teeth.

After a few weeks certain things start to go wrong. Other dogs seem terrified of Baldwin, and his breed (a ‘Ti-Hao’, if they recall Aunt Joan’s description) cannot be found in any reference books. Was Aunt Joan right about his breed? And, most worryingly, why does he fly into a frothing rage whenever brought close to a holy place?

Possibilities

1 Baldwin is a unique dog, born through the mating of a normal bitch and an evil spirit; an incubus, forced on the dog’s mother by magic. The cult, known as the ‘Tsi-Hao’, operated across the globe before the second world war, and Aunt Joan acquired Baldwin from a desperate leader on the run in Singapore about ten years ago. Although not aggressive towards the investigator, he senses the supernatural and reacts to magic by biting and snarling.

2 Baldwin is one of a near extinct breed of dog from China. He was acquired by Aunt Joan from a Chinese ‘dog breeder’ about ten years ago. On birth, these placid beasts are blessed by the secretive cult that breeds them in the name of He Who Is Not To Be Named. This ritual transforms them into slavering, eldritch monstrosities at certain solar events - or when threatened. Aunt Joan did indeed die of heart failure - Baldwin, in monstrous form, ate it out during the recent conjunction of Mars and Saturn.

3 Despite his mean appearance, Baldwin is a normal, affectionate dog. However, an earlier brush with the Mythos has left a powerful ability attached to him; those around him start seeing visions of various Mythos beasts and gods in their dreams. These visions gradually mount in clarity and duration (over a period of years), until they are strong enough to send a someone insane. These visions finally killed Aunt Joan; after years mumbling about monsters and ghosts, she was found with her normally-dark hair turned white and her face rigid with terror.

© Rory Naismith