He couldn't shake the feeling... That he was being watched.

A loud scratching caught his attention!

Shining the flashlight toward the other side of the path, he can see grass being disturbed, and earth pushing up, like a molehill. Something just outside the range of clear vision, something was coming out of the ground, and it probably wasn't a mole!

A bony, withered hand breached, followed by another. It clawed it's way free of the earth, and entered the light. This... Thing? It looked like a half rotted corpse, but it had a portion of exposed skull, with a chunk broken off. Stranger still, it had a horn, opposite the fractured hole, and it looked natural!

It was shambling toward Allyn!

((Spirit roll, please- ETA: Success! You don't freak out, remembering the rules))

However, it stops just outside the salt circle... It's claws clench and un-clench, what flesh remained scrunched up, seemingly frustrated as it's jaw moves, as though it was gnashing it's teeth.

"What the fuuuuuuck..." Even he thought his voice sounded weak. The same effort he was making to stop himself from hyperventilating was also stopping him from breathing too deeply. It was a balance that couldn't hold, but he felt a desperate need to stay perfectly still. The salt circle was keeping that... thing away from him. The letter had been very specific that there must be no gaps, and Allyn was finding that he was now much more prepared to extend the old man who had written it some good faith.

(Not that much good faith--part of him was becoming more and more aware that he had been tricked, if not in any of the ways he had expected.)

Doing his best to slow and deepen his breathing without losing his entire shit, Allyn turned his head to each side, making sure to keep the half-dead thing in his peripheral vision as he scanned the rest of his surroundings. Was there something he could do other than sit here and not freak out? Was there something even worse he wasn't seeing?

(6 to Notice)

He couldn't see anything else that looked as worrying as what was in front of him--but as he turned his head back and forth, he realized that he also could no longer see the nearest gargoyles. Had they even been there? A second ago, Allyn would have sworn he'd seen them--but now he wasn't so sure.

A strong wind, and a crash, and Allyn now see's the wings of a standing gargoyle!

All 4 of the gargoyles are standing in a circle, now staring at the crumpled remains of the ghoul that one of them had just crushed.

The 4 sentinels proceed to lay into the undead victim, pounding, ripping, and tearing. Bones crack and break, and the rending of half rotted flesh is audible. as if that wasn't enough, the sound of what is presumably blood and gore dropping on the grass rolls through the air like rain drops.

Suddenly, just as quickly as it began, the sound stopped...

His eyes were wide. Allyn wanted nothing more than to shut them, to look away, but to his horror he found that he couldn't. The revulsion that was making his gorge rise--a deep, literal gut feeling--couldn't override the terror response that told him not to look away from the threat.

(He did manage to tear his eyes away for a split second, to look over at the phone he's still holding up--a corner of his brain remembering that turning the camera on would require him to turn the flashlight off, at least temporarily. Not an option, at the moment.)

When he looked back, however, the gargoyles were gone, and where they'd stood, a pile of splintered bones, topped with the skull of the... Thing, like some kind of offering.