villagelogs | 010 » something wicked this way comes

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010 » something wicked this way comes

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: ???
WHEN: Day 010
WHAT: Spooks happen. Some sanity loss may occur. (More on that next week!)
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Thank you so much for your patience with this! My Friday was much busier
than expected, so I'm very sorry for the lateness on getting these out to you all.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Deadly Avenger "Gyuki"

DAY 010
“We make up horrors to help
us cope with the real ones.”
—Stephen King
The day dawns but few wake to see it. Only one, who has been exempt from the strange happenings about to unfold. She will face a day like any other, a farce of normality in an utterly abnormal universe — but she will face it alone. For none who will experience these strange happenings are to be found in the town until the next morning dawns. Each has been taken, whisked away to another layer of the town, peeled back and exposed like a raw nerve.

Mathias screams and there are none who can hear it.

THE DETAILS
Each exploration, encounter, and revelation happen separately from one another. Though some may include the same locations, none will overlap in time or space. The circumstances laid out in each prompt are exclusive to that situation — do not assume the answers someone else received will also apply to you.

Players may ask questions as they normally do for logs, but these should be kept as part of the designated thread. You may create a subthread under your header for questions, or intersperse them with your "tags". Your responses may be formatted as IC tags or as a more OOC "telling" what your character does rather than showing.

DAY 011
All characters involved in this event will wake on the morning of Day 011 in the exact location where they began to sleep on Day 009, but they will find themselves covered in a layer of dust just as thick as that which had covered much of Mathias. The dust does not extend to their surroundings.

The memories of what they encountered or saw remain clear in their minds, no matter how impossible they might seem. Sights, sounds, smells, all may be recalled with crystalline clarity, even if they wish it were otherwise.

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Raylan stopped with him, looking up and down the stairs for what Malcolm was focusing on. He couldn't find anything. Brow furrowed, he stepped down a few steps to center himself in front of Malcolm's face.

"There's no one else here. Who are you talkin' to?" Who made him this way? What was 'This way'?

Malcolm just stared at Raylan for a moment, then cautiously leaned just enough to look past his shoulder, where Dr Whitly was still smiling smugly at him. He pulled back quickly and closed his eyes, ducking his head, taking a couple of breaths.

They wouldn't bring someone there that he could see and someone else couldn't, right?

No, stupid, that's what your brain does.

"Right. Of course," he said with a sage nod. "We should, um..." He gestured up the stairs and moved to slip around Raylan on the outside.

"No," Raylan stated, one hand extending out to gently block Malcolm's path. "You're sweatin' in the cold and seein' things... What kinda drugs were you hopin' to find in that room down there?"

If they were stuck in this situation together, he would have his answers and he was still betting on 'addict'. Without them, it was clear he was stepping in blind with Malcolm in the equation and that was dangerous enough on its own.

He laughed, but it was humourless. "Drugs. I'm not on drugs," he said emphatically. He paused, looking down at Raylan's arm like he was trying to remember why it was there, then he looked at Raylan and held up his hands. "Okay, I'm on drugs, but not," he stressed, raising a finger, "the way you think." He tapped that finger on Raylan's chest and then attempted to step around his other side, on the inside. "I'm on some medication that is prescribed by a doctor and you're not supposed to stop taking some of them without scaling down the dosage gradually," he explained, "and I don't happen to have even a rationing dose of any of them on me, so. That's where we're at, okay? It's fine; it'll pass." He wheeled on Raylan. "But, I think it's very telling that our captors didn't factor that sort of thing in when they were abducting people," he added, shaking a finger in a vague direction to make the point. "Though, I thought, maybe if they had, they'd hide them in this...." He gestured around with a wave of his hand. "In this great big scavenger hunt they've constructed and you just have to look in the right place. But there are no right places. None."

Raylan's face remained unchanged as Malcolm started, glancing down at that tap on his chest as he dropped his arm to let Malcolm get back on the inside with a turn of him that kept the smaller man in his view. He knew it was drugs. Didn't much matter why Malcolm was on them on its face - he was suffering withdrawal symptoms and that could manifest as a lot of things.

"Stealin' copper pipe for moonshine ain't such a crazy idea now, is it." It wasn't a question. Raylan gestured forwards. They had steps to go. "They got you on somethin' heavy." That also wasn't a question. "What are your meds for?"

"Listen," Malcolm said, leaning towards him, "my mother is an alcoholic, so I get it, but... getting out of here is the way to resolve chemical shortages and we can only do that by figuring out what the purpose of this is and how the cage works. I know you want to know," he said, wagging a finger at the Marshal. "I've seen your face when you look around and figuring stuff out is what you do." A beat. "Though I'm sure it's very convenient to be able to just make the chemicals you're dependent on," he conceded.

He slid his hands into his pockets carefully picking his way around something that wasn't there, then glancing over his shoulder at it. He looked at Raylan and smiled faintly. "They've got me on several heavy things," he admitted like it was a secret. "For anxiety, depression... complex post-traumatic stress." He looked at the Marshal again, his expression suddenly sober. "You wish you were here with anybody else, don't you?" It wasn't a question either. He turned his attention down to the stairs as he stepped on them.

Though it seems as if, by looking up, the stairs should twist up and up for many more levels, when they reach the next landing, that will be it. The top of the lighthouse, with its glass encasement for the unlit beacon that will signal a warning to passing ships. The rust has continued as they made their way upward and is in this area with a vengeance — the metal and glass doorway to the balcony around this level has been rusted in place, a thick caking of the substance gluing the seam at the doorway into a firm position.

The wind snakes in through open door and whips around the tall building itself, and from this vantage point they can see down to the ocean (grey and angry), a wide expanse of sky (grey and angry), and the cliff upon which the lighthouse sits (grey and angry). If they go to the "back" of the balcony, they can see the small outcropping of the cliff, the forest that extends beyond, and to the left, the stretch of the town.

"Don't know you well enough to feel that strongly about it either way," Raylan replied evenly, ignoring most of the shots fired at him. Malcolm was half right but moonshine could barely be called a chemical he was dependant on. He was doin' well enough and since he was comfortable in that, nothing really bothered him.

He'd rather focus on putting steps behind them... Except suddenly there weren't anymore. Raylan frowned and looked back down the center well, already breathing easier for being up and out, and yet, not at all easier for having been down there in the first place. Well, at least he'd been right about something.

Lighthouse.

"Do you have a phone that works?"

"Most people don't need to," Malcolm murmured.

When they suddenly reached the end of the stairs, he was distracted by the rust and the glass and the wind and at Raylan's question, he looked at him suddenly and quizzically. ".....Does anyone have a phone that works?"

It wasn't sarcasm; he was genuinely asking. He had no reception. There was no network.

A beat and he added "Who are you looking to call?"

"Ghostbusters?" He glanced around the room, finally looking away from the view from the windows. "Not call. Take a picture. Nevermind. I'm going to go out, see if there's any sense of where the root of this place is. We're too high for a door or a road down and somehow I doubt there's a rope ladder."

Setting one hand on his hat, Raylan tried to push the door open a little more for a broader step, cussing with a 'shit' as he slams his shoulder into it, too confident in it moving. Sliding himself out instead, he stepped out into sharp wind, free hand curling around his chest as he eyed the horizon. He was still damp from laying on the floor and the wind felt like a million needles on his back and any bare skin he had showing.

"Wait..." Malcolm said, already reaching into his pocket, but the wind was howling and Raylan was wedged in the doorway and Malcolm's voice was lost with Raylan slipping outside. He frowned faintly and took a picture down the spiral staircase and a few of the 360 degrees of rusty windows around him and of the ceiling. Then he also shimmied through the door, glancing around as he got outside. He only had the thin fabric of his suit jacket for warmth, but the pinpricks of icy drizzly rain or sea spray - he couldn't tell which - and wind on his face felt good against the flush heat of his body's own reaction to its new chemical imbalance. He closed his eyes a moment and just breathed it in. It was like putting ice on a bruise, but everywhere.

After a moment, he opened his eyes, squinting against the icy rush of wind, and took some more pictures. Sea. Rocks. The town sprawled below. The forest where he woke up a scant few days ago with no idea the trouble he was in.

He didn't try to speak to Raylan and he didn't scrutinize the view from the lighthouse. They were seeing what someone wanted them to see: that there was nowhere to go. Instead he lingered quietly by the wall and watched the set of Raylan's back as he looked out.

Is this really all of the town? All we see now? Raylan ignored the biting pain of the cold and breeze, staring down at the town and the forest that split between them. There'd been no door at the bottom, no obvious way out. Where is the bottom of the lighthouse? Carefully, Raylan stepped forward to peer down, hoping that he'd see some structure that would point their way.

They'd have to go back down to where they started.. right? What was the point of this view? Raylan flexed his jaw as he mulled it over. What was the point?

So what if he was hit with a wave of unexpected isolation. This was not where he was meant to die, that's all Raylan was sure of.

Malcolm had some ideas of the point.

He watched Raylan for a further moment, then stepped up beside him. "Maybe there's a fire escape or something, if we walk around the perimeter," he suggested, his voice raised above the din of waves and wind. "And if not, we'll have to go back down." He held his phone up. "I got some pictures, but... was there anything in particular you wanted me to get?"

There is no way down from this level of the lighthouse except the way they have come. Well, there is, but jumping from this height and onto the cliffs below is inadvisable. Which, if they look closely, they will see a precarious path winding down the side of the cliff to the beach below.

Back in the attached living space, they will find a front door, slightly ajar. Perhaps they simply missed it before. Perhaps it wasn't even there...

If Malcolm hadn't, Raylan might have stood there forever. The sound of his voice pulled Raylan back out of his thoughts and he nodded briefly. "Let's walk around and talk inside." Shouting made his accent worse, drawing things out a little more with the force of his voice.

Walking around to the other side of the back outcropping, Raylan glared at the whole landscape, as pretty as it was and tilted his head down to head back inside the rusted out welltop, shuddering violently once the wind was off him. He shook his hat and put it back on his head before wrapping his arms around himself tightly and rubbing off what he could of the water and cold.

"I cannot die in this shithole of a place," was the first thing out of his mouth once Malcolm joined him, speaking about the tower specifically as well as the town at large. "How thick do you think the walls are. This goddamned town," he continued, muttering the last words as he started pacing back and forth. "Disseminate our situation now, Mr. Bright, where do you think we're standin'?"

It was the right sort of question because Malcolm's fractured mind functioned best when it had a puzzle to distract it.

"Besides 'in a lighthouse', I assume," he joked weakly.

God his head hurt, but his thinking cap was his most comfortable one, so he put it on anyway.

"This lighthouse... they could have made it findable - like the 'new' parts of the town you told me about - and then... just waited for someone to find it. They wanted us to see that," he explained, pointing outside. "They wanted us to see that, specifically. You and me. And what did it show us, exactly? That there's nowhere to go. The town and its neat borders: the forest, the sea, the rocks.... This is psychological warfare. It has been since the start, but they want to make us, in particular, feel trapped. Which means there's an advantage to them if we give up looking for escape or answers." A pause and he leveled his gaze - intense, despite circles under his eyes and a greyness to his pallor - to meet Raylan's eyes. "Which means there's an advantage to us if we don't."

"They only showed us the hill we gotta climb," Raylan replied, sharp at their situation, resolved in his dedication to getting the fuck outta town. Trees could not stop him; he knew the foothills of Kentucky. Surviving in them wasn't as hard as otherwise unprepared people might make it seem.

Clearly, he took psychological warfare incredibly well.

Raylan met Malcolm's gaze and didn't bother answering. He knew his face would impress upon the New Yorker that giving up wasn't in Raylan's DNA. But he was frustrated, and thinking about them breaking through the walls. "Might be able to make a hole, we find a way to get something pointy and sharp. Not hard with all this rottin' railing."

Some part of him missed Malcolm's point, too hot and hard headed, already pissed off and uncomfortable.

At least the man was a fighter.

"We know this is a lighthouse now, Raylan. There has to be a door on the ground level, if we just l..."

He doubled over slightly and sat heavily on the stairs.

"If we look; we know what we're looking for now," he finished weakly leaning forward to rest his head on one of his knees.

He eyed the line of Malcolm's shoulders as the man seemed to sink into himself on the stairstep. While he didn't know what Malcolm was suffering personally, he could empathize with the man, especially if his drug usage was prescribed and for a good reason.

"The same thing we were lookin' for before," he replied quietly as he paced, strides slowing a little but unable to come to a complete stop.

"How're you feelin'?"

He shook his head and it wasn't clear if that was addressing the question or the assertion.

"We were disoriented when we woke up. Intentionally so," he said with some difficulty. "We might not be looking for a normal door; a lot of this building is metal. It might be more like a hatch."

He reached for the railing, trying to pull himself to his feet, but the section he was holding gave out and sent him sprawling back onto the stairs, lucky he had been pulling on it or he would have gone to the ground floor the fast way.

On his back on the stairs, he tossed the piece of railing in his hand over the side and it fell. Far enough that it took a moment for the clatter to reach their ears.

He closed his eyes for a moment and took a breath, scrubbing his hands over his face.

"Shut up," he implored... something. "Shut UP."

Edited 2020-11-02 13:08 (UTC)

"I looked for a hat-" The sudden sound of the railing break and Malcolm's fall stopped him. He saw it happen and had stepped forward but he was already too far away.

Well that looked like it hurt like hell.

Raylan walked over and down the steps enough that he was below Malcolm by one or two. Enough that he could stick out his hand with a gesture of his fingers. "C'mon. Nice and slow. We ain't got any other choice than lookin' again, no matter what we looked for the first time. Maybe we hit a button or somethin' - I wouldn't put that past this place either."

If Malcolm let Raylan help pull him up, Raylan would continue and guide Malcolm in against the wall. "You can use my shoulder if you need to steady yourself, just don't go shovein', else we'll get down a lot quicker."

Malcolm looked at Raylan's hand for a moment, then took it, letting the taller man pull him to his feet. He fully intended to use the wall for support, but he was unsteady enough and it was uneven enough that, after a moment, he reached out and gripped Raylan's shoulder, putting a little weight on him.

"Sorry. This would be a lot easier with only symptoms of my problems or symptoms of withdrawal. Both at the same time is... a lot." And he gave a spot further down the stairs a withering look. "And he won't SHUT UP!" he shouted at it.

He could take it and stepped slowly enough to match Malcolm's pace and stay the even one step ahead. There was a tactile counter in the back of his head that ticked up to 3 as Malcolm's hand landed and he glanced further down the stairs at whatever the smaller man might have been screaming at.

Nothing.

Raylan dropped his eyes back to the stairs. "What's he say?" He didn't know who 'He' was, but the question served to give him some sort of context on 'the way' Malcolm was, as he'd screamed before.

"He likes to think he's helpful." He looked down the stairs. "But he's not," he told the empty space pointedly. He looked at Raylan's profile just ahead of him. "I know he's not really here," he clarified. "He's a manifestation of an aspect of my subconscious." He frowned faintly. "The part that hates me, apparently," he added wryly.

"If everyone's subconscious was screamin' at 'em, I'm sure you'd have a lotta people findin' the same." Himself included. Of course, he wasn't going to say that out loud.

"Do I get to know who 'he' is or do I gotta start guessin?"

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He has Zero answers lmao

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