Later, back downstairs, as you all contemplate the riddle of the portal, he starts telling a story...
A road-worn traveller stepped into the room. His knee length duster blocked most of the light to the dim interior, his round hat starkly breaking his silhouette. He paused, before stepping entirely inside and closing the door behind him. His turned about the room, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He soon spotted something that held his attention, and he took two steps forward, standing square in front of an old woman knitting by the fireplace.
"Louis Garderose," he said, his thumbs sliding from chest high down to his hips, pushing the edges of his duster back and showing the modified handles on his Colt revolvers. "Ma’am," he added, a little too slowly. His wrinkled, right hand tipped his bowler hat slightly down his forehead. His hand then ran down his trimmed grey beard thinned with age.
The old woman, dressed much like a puritan, finished her knitting row, while examining Louis with her wrinkled gaze. She finished her row and set the knitting aside. "You a changing one?" she asked suspiciously.
Garderose shifted uncomfortably and shrugged a shiver off of his shoulders. "No, ma’am. I ain’t reckoned I been done changed yet."
She pointed at something above the door. "Lookee yee, there, and tell me what you see."
Garderose turned, and above the door he had just passed under, was a human skull, mounted somewhat like a deerhead. The flesh had dried and pulled pack the mouth into a demonic grimace, made all-the-more baleful for the sharp teeth, long like a wolf’s, that protruded from the top jaw.
Garderose made the sign of the cross, and turned back to the old woman. "I done run into one of them a mess back, outside Fort Alamo. I plugged it with lead square and it done got back up. I hightailed it." He pauses again, his jaw chewing itself. "It caught me up just south of San Antonio. We wrestled some, and I set it afire with a lantern. It kept coming, like it had crawled out from the Abyss with a taste for my soul. Twelve shots, the wounds closed. Kerosene burns, knitting themselves like your scarf there. Outta luck and outta time, I stabbed it with my Jim Bowie, and then it was on me and frothing at my neck."
He pauses once more, and turns back to the skull, before continuing, his voice growing quieter. "All a sudden, it just hollered like I was the devil and it was the prey. On it’s cheek, there glowed a cross like there done be a fire inside. I felt at my throat and there was my wife’s cross, hot like blood." He signs the cross again, and turns to the old woman once more. "Well, I ripped that cross off that chain and I jumped on that beast and I hammered that cross into his head with the butt of my Colt like I was driving a railroad nail. That did it. I guessed it couldn’t take the Lord’s power, ma’am."
She leaned back, rocking in her chair. "Maybe," she said cryptically. "You still got that cross?"
From under his shirt, he pulled out a battered cross, abused harshly but hammered roughly back into shape. It’s silver shine glowing in the light from the fireplace.
"Silver cross." She muttered. "You need to go back to Fort Alamo, and fetch me something."
"I reckon I exactly ain’t welcome back there, ma’am, but I’ll go."
"Best get some people to join you. You ain’t young no more, Moses."