010 » something wicked this way comes

[villagemod]

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.

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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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Comments

He has Zero answers lmao

[tinstar]

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.

[abrightboy]

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?"

[villagemod]

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...

[tinstar]

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'?"

[abrightboy]

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."

[tinstar]

"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.

[abrightboy]

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.

[tinstar]

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'?"

[abrightboy]

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."

[tinstar]

"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."

[abrightboy]

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.

[tinstar]

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.

[abrightboy]

"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.

[tinstar]

"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?"

[abrightboy]

His expression lit slightly. "Oh, would you like to guess?" he asked. A game might take his mind off of other things. "Though who he is is probably both easy to guess and far less interesting than who he is."

[tinstar]

"Not particularly, though you bitched about him makin' you what you are, so that narrows down the list. Family member, mentor or friend?"

This was going to be a very short game of 20 questions but he was willing to play as they made their way back down. Wouldn't take them much longer than that to get there - Did they spend more time walking up?

[abrightboy]

"Yes," he said cheekily. He grinned. "Technically, you're supposed to ask yes or no questions," he explained, "but I'm going to answer anyway, because I'm nothing if not flexible." A beat. "Literally and figuratively, actually." Another beat. "You probably didn't want to know that about me," he acknowledged. "A family member. But also a mentor at one time."

[tinstar]

Raylan glanced sidelong over his shoulder at Malcolm, eyebrows lifted faintly before he returned them to the steps so he didn't miss one and take them both down in a tumble.

"Sibling or parent? My money's on parent, but I was an only child." He knew there was bias there because of it.

What rules?

[abrightboy]

"I would have guessed that about you. You're very independent, very... contained." He felt a wave of vertigo and grabbed Raylan's upper arm for a moment with his free hand, then, after a moment, let go. "Parent," he answered, slightly shaken. "It was a parent."

[tinstar]

While he wondered what Malcolm meant specifically by 'contained', the lurch had him turning a little, his closest hand coming out from his side to 'catch' Malcolm if he fell, and giving him a sturdier surface to lean on by accident.

"Only a few more levels. Thirty or so steps, maybe forty. So your daddy then. What'd he mentor you in?" Talking seemed to help Malcolm and until they were on flat ground again, Raylan would tolerate the chatty conversation. People tended to want to talk about themselves anyway, something that helped him more often than not in his job.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm huffed a humourless laugh.

"Ostensibly? Medicine. He was a heart surgeon. But probably actually murder, if we're being honest."

He let his free hand trail along the wall, just to feel it's solidity. He didn't think Raylan would appreciate Malcolm using him for solidity any more than he already was.

[tinstar]

If a lean needed to happen, it needed to happen - Raylan wasn't above carrying him off his hip if he had to. As it was, he slowed them down.

"Murder?" His head pulled back a fraction with the question and the curl of his features towards Malcolm again, however briefly. "Hellva thing to be mentored in." The set of his brow didn't change as he looked back at the steps. "How well did you take it up?"

Was.. Malcolm on meds because he was psychotic? His suit said New York, private tailor, Raylan knew a good suit when he saw one and could list several different types so that ruled out mental institutions. They wouldn't give a tie to an inmate, no matter how much money they had.

[abrightboy]

"I took to it very well," Malcolm said freely. "Just... not in the way that he wanted. I joined the FBI. Hunted killers. I'm good at it."

[tinstar]

Oh that was a much better possibility and Raylan nodded once, slowly, in understanding as he pieced the frayed bits together. "That's why you're a profiler," he said, largely to himself with a faint nod.

"Ain't beyond people to hide in law enforcement, I'm sure you understand the questionin' of it." A beat passed before he continued. "Actually why I ended up becomin' a Marshal. To spite Arlo. Be anything he wasn't.. Yours get caught?"

[abrightboy]

"Yeah. I turned him in when I was ten, after I found a woman in a trunk in our basement."

He paused.

"'Arlo' is your dad? ...He was a murderer too?"