villagelogs | 021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central/Western Mathias.
WHEN: Days 021-023
WHAT: A cold storm approaches.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here!

RECOMMENDED ♫ Emily Kinney & Lauren Cohan "The Parting Glass"

DAYS 021-023
THE WORLD TURNS WHITE
“Are ye the ghosts of fallen leaves, O flakes of snow,
For which, through naked trees, the winds A-mourning go?”
— John Banister Tabb
The howling wind is what wakes the residents of Mathias each day now as the world turns slowly into a bleak stretch of white. Snow continues to fall in thick curtains of flakes that accumulate on trees and rooftops, swirling sideways in the gusts of wind that bow trees and whistle through any crack they can find. The drifts of snow grow taller against the buildings and the wind makes the already freezing temperatures feel bitterly cold.

By day 022, the far ends of streets begin to resemble the hazardous fog with how little becomes visible as the winds pick up. Buildings can still be discerned as dark shapes but the weather's warning becomes clear — a storm is coming. And by day 023, the storm arrives properly, the wind still screaming through the streets like a winter banshee announcing so many deaths to come. These conditions are far from hospitable and only the truly mad would be foolish enough to venture outside in weather such as this.

THE NEWLY ARRIVED
With an embrace of wintery white, Mathias offers a chilly welcome to its newest residents. They awake along the southern treeline bordering Mathias, near the small makeshift cemetery containing a handful of wooden markers erected without names or signifiers of those buried within. And not far from them is the schoolhouse, where in a snowdrift they will the frozen corpse of a young woman named Rey.

LIGHTS IN THE DARKNESS
“A lantern can give you light only when you light it”
— Munia Khan
When residents wake on the morning of day 021, they will find outside in the snow the abandoned lanterns of those shadowy spectres who have moved so silently through Mathias. Each nestled in a patch of frozen white outside their door, the lanterns are now cold to the touch, the half-burned candle within each one seeming to have been lit so very long ago. Inside the glass encasement is a small rolled piece of paper, upon which is written:

keep it lit
There is nothing more, and the prior owners of these lanterns will not return within these days.

There is one lantern waiting outside the building for each resident wherever they are sleeping — the exception for this is those who may have already claimed a lantern as their own. Removing a lantern from its resting place results in no apparent reaction, nor does lighting or not lighting it. However, whatever residents ultimately choose to do with these lanterns should be reported.

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— SNOW continues to fall, resulting over the three days in upwards of a foot of accumulation. The winds blow in gusts over 35 mph.

— VOICES are not openly haunting our residents, though they may still be occasionally encountered in the more heavily decayed buildings where some rooms seem to almost swallow whatever light tries to enter them.

— THE FOG has still receded from the town proper and much of the eastern and northern beach, with the path through the northern forest to the lighthouse still clear on day 021. On day 022, however, as the storm worsens, the fog returns to the paths in the forest, urging residents to stay huddled within the town proper or else.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue to plague the town. While Zed Martin has returned, Rey's corpse will be found in a snowdrift near the Schoolhouse; she disappeared on day 018.

— THE STRANGER is gone.

— THE SPECTRES are gone.

OOC UPDATES

— DISCOVERIES have been collected and collated for your review. Please note that this is OOC information only, put together for the purpose of helping you as players see connections and possibilities for CR and your own character's potential avenues of exploration and investigation. (If we are missing something, please report it so we can add it to the list.)

— AP REWARDS have a new option now — Ideas may be requested if you find yourself stuck. You may now claim up to 2 rewards per log: (1) idea and (1) other reward.

— SANITY may be regained in two ways: self-medication and treatment. In Mathias, this means such coping mechanisms as drinking or drugging oneself into a stupor that allows them to face their fears and issues, or talking to someone about those fears and issues. Since both of these will take some time, best get started. (A form will be added to the Sanity page.)

— REMINDERS — Don't forget about the bulletin board. Please continue reporting your updates to locations, plots, and discoveries. The map of Mathias has been added to the locations page for ease of reference. Make sure your character's sanity level is kept updated. Prospective players are still joining the TDM, so it's recommended to track new top-levels so you don't miss them.

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Neal feels like he's waiting for some gruesome punchline. For Doc to admit to a tasteless joke. But no, he's serious. He's entirely serious.

Neal can't wrap his head around it. Just to make sure he has it right: "They died. You buried their bodies. They came back. Are... are the bodies still there?"

He tries not to shudder at the question. At the very idea of digging up the dead. The dead who, apparently, are not.

It's rude, and he doesn't really mean to do it, but he needs to. Neal sits down hard in the nearest chair. Deep breath. He presses his face into his hands. Everything in him screams against showing this kind of vulnerability to a perfect stranger, but this, all of this, is too much. Two days ago he was waking up in a tangle of sheets with Sara, making her breakfast, drinking in the sight of her wearing his clothes. Now he's in a stranger's bed with a stranger's wardrobe in a place more nightmare than reality.

What else did Doc say? Something in the fog. Neal remembers that message on the board about avoiding it. The voices are a siren's song.

"What did they run into? In the fog? And why do I need to answer the phone?"

"They are. I was violently opposed to Constantine digging his own corpse up, but he had insisted. There he was standing over his own corpse. Can't imagine what he was thinkin'." Probably wanted to perform some unsavoury magic on it, or worried he might get possessed and reanimated or something. Nobody's attached enough to a damn trenchcoat to be digging their own corpse up, otherwise. No one would ever believe it. But that kind of strange, occult, paranormal thing is not really Doc's forte. Even if he is a 160-something year old Doc Holliday barely aged a day after he was plucked from his deathbed.

He realises this might be a bit much. If they had been in the house he is staying in, he might have been able to offer some tea or coffee, or water. As it is, he is standing awkwardly in Neal's room in the Boarding House, lingering near the entrance. Eventually Doc also moves to sit, though it's more because he doesn't want Neal to feel awkward than because he wants to make himself comfortable.

"We don't know," he answers with a small shrug. He has learnt over the years that there is no gentle way about breaking bad news. It is better to say it, be honest, and let people deal with it how they can, in their own time.

"We think there was some kind of... choking gas? But there are no coroners here or the tools required to be sure. All we know is that everyone's phone rang, at the same time, and the voice on the other side said to not go outside. Everyone who picked up and stayed in were-- well, I wouldn't call it fine." Nobody's fine around here and if Neal is feeling fine, he won't be the more days he is trapped here. "But they didn't die."

Standing over his own corpse-- Neal makes note of the name and tries not to think about the rest of it.

He takes a deep breath, forcing himself to sit up straight, to wear a mask of neutrality since any smile he faked would be at best inappropriate and at worst manic. He can do this. He has to do this. Right now self-control is the only thing he has going for him. Maybe he's not quite together enough to channel Peter, but he can shoot for that kind of calm.

"Good to know." A pause. "The ones who didn't pick up--what happened to them? Aside from... the obvious."

"We found bodies outside. They were not anywhere near a telephone, at the time, probably thought the fog was harmless or tried to make it back indoors but did not have the time. The ones who were inside, you will see their windows shattered from the outside in." He knows how that sounds. Like the fog somehow managed to rush at the glass, break everything and come rolling in with an actual intent to kill. But that was how it looked.

"It happened to Miss Claire Novak, here in the Boarding House. Her windows are boarded up now, keep the cold out. She has since moved to a house on Phillips Drive." So if Neal wants to go poking around her room, sure, it's a little morbid, but Doc isn't judging. Better he knows the threats and pick up the damn phone or follow other mysterious instructions than to downplay it in his head and risk getting hurt, or killed.

From the outside in. The more he mentally repeats what the other man says, the more certain he is he's not in Kansas any more. The more convinced he is that this place plays by rules entirely outside his realm of experience. He knew from the moment he woke up here and found that body that this wasn't a normal case. It wasn't nearly as simple as some kind of mass kidnapping. Whatever's here doesn't care about jurisdiction, Dean had said.

Neal rubs his lips with fingertips that shake, then promptly twines his hands together so Doc can't see them doing it. He's never wanted home or backup more.

"What else? Has happened? How long have people been here? How many have died and come back?" He forces himself to take a breath. "You said most of them showed up again. The others..."

He lets the question hang.

He's living with someone with a persistent hand tremor. He notices these things. It just so happens that he's courteous and polite enough not to point them out.

"S'alright, son," Doc says gently when the string of rapidfire questions die down. Nevermind that they're roughly the same age when he got himself suspended in time. "It's a lot of information. Just breathe."

"You missed a party, too. It's not all bad news. We've been making moonshine. If you ever need to pick up a bottle, or get some wounds treated, we're at 1306." The Marshal is staying there too, so it won't be a house of strangers.

"We've had a few other young people disappear. Miss Daisy and Miss Zed have returned safely. We are still looking for Mister Quentin. I was hoping the lady you drew would have, too." But here they are. Talking over a beautiful portrait of her.

"Five people died to the fog. Only Jill Valentine is still gone. I suppose she is properly dead, the way we understand dead."

Neal breathes out a laugh. Of course there's booze. "People are people, no matter where you put them."

He stares at his hands. "What was her name? The woman we found?"

She had to be twenty, twenty one at most. The same age he was when he walked into Vincent Adler's offices for the first time, before he knew who he was or who he wanted to be. A kid, really. No matter what, no matter who she was, not someone who deserved to get taken out of the game so soon.

"Miss Rey." There were a lot of one named people here. Negan. Ellie. Castiel. She need not be a pop star to have gone by the one name.

"I wish I had known her better, but there aren't many of us here. Twenty, perhaps. Not many more than that. You will get to know everyone, at least in passing, in due time. I would offer to tell you more about the others, but I'm afraid these hands... were not made for drawing."

Rey. Neal braces his elbows on his knees and runs his hands through his hair. He'll make her a headstone. Or as much of one as can be made, here. Probably just wood, carved with whatever he can find that will keep an edge, but it's better than nothing. It's the kind of thing Peter would approve of.

"What are we doing to get home?"

"I couldn't tell you, on that front. There does not seem to be any coordinated effort. People have been investigating various leads, but. Herding cats is no simple task." He has a hard enough time just looking out for two grown ass men.

"I think finding a way out is more important than asking where we are, why we have been brought here, by whom. But not everyone agrees." He did jokingly suggest building an ark, but he has no expertise in the area. He can follow simple instructions from a few boatbuilding books in the library, but it's dangerous to be setting sail in winter. They don't know where they're going or how long they will end up on the water for.

"If you are a boatbuilder or a mechanic, now would be the time to say sommin'."

Neal's laugh is soft and surprises him with its bitterness. "Nothing that useful, no."

He has no idea what good a con artist can do in a place like this, how someone with his particular skill sets can be remotely helpful. Sure, he's smart. He's good at puzzles, good at teasing out solutions to complex problems. But against fog that can attack through closed windows? A steady hand and an easy smile can't stand up to something that seems more nightmare than reality.

Peter could handle this. Peter could organize these people, pull them together, keep them safe and moving forward toward a solution to all of this.

You don't owe anyone here anything, he thinks. You don't need to save anyone's skin but your own.

He knows what Peter would say at that thought. Neal doesn't even believe it himself, any more, that selfishness. When did that happen?

"You clearly have some skills, though," he says, trying for levity. "Moonshine?"

"Heh. I'm much better at drinking it than making it." Doc runs a hand through his hair and leans back a bit. It honestly tastes like a bottle of paint stripper so he shouldn't be impressed until he tries it. At least it gets the job done, fast and relatively painlessly.

"My particular skillset isn't required here, unless you come across a six-shooter or a pack of cards. I have some medical knowledge, but not the kind that anyone uses anymore." Still, he's well stocked with a few first aid kits should anyone swing by. And he's had a few idiots, done something stupid to themselves swing by already. Not that he would name names.

"Good old-fashioned cowboy, huh?" Neal smiles faintly, with no clue how right he is. The comment about medical knowledge that's not used any more, though, that gives him pause. He hasn't forgotten about Dean saying he's from 2020.

A pause. "So... Possibly this is a weird question, but I think we're kind of at the point where weird is the new normal. When are you from?"

"Sommin' like that. A fellow by the name of Mister Negan did abscond with my hat..." He has been meaning to get it back, but. It's been a rough and busy couple of days.

"That's..." Doc narrows his eyes just a bit, though he never quite breaks eye contact. "Complicated. I've been around since 1851. Bit longer than many of you folks have been around." Or so he's gathered, talking to people here and there. Maybe they're all from slightly different times. Only a handful of them are unnaturally old.

“Since—-“

Wait. “When is it for you now?”

He leans forward, eyes lit with curiosity.

Edited 2020-12-22 17:00 (UTC)

This kind of scrutiny makes Doc uncomfortable, though he doesn't show it. It doesn't bother him to be looked upon as some kind of circus act, he gets comments wherever he goes. But he doesn't fancy getting dragged away by some government organisation and turned into some kind of lab rat.

"2017," he answers truthfully. He hasn't lied to anyone here, but. He hasn't gone around telling everyone everything either. There has been a lot of details conveniently left out and peculiar omissions. With this direct line of questioning though, there's no clean or neat way of dancing around the topic.

"There's a big gap. From about last year, back to a hundred and thirty years ago. I couldn't tell you what happened."

All Neal's interest rushes out, immediately replaced by disbelief and concern.

Strange enough being yanked from his own home and dropped in a place where locals would probably still call the internet the WorldWideWeb. He's largely tried to ignore the fact that if they have somehow jumped to the 90s, he's a preschooler and Peter is nowhere near the FBI and no help is coming from that quarter. But the idea of being pulled from the 1800s into 2017? That dramatic a change, a loss? It hardly bears thinking about.

"That's...." Awful. Neal can't help thinking about all the history this man would have lived through. All the things that changed without him seeing cause and effect. He clears his throat. "So uh, going out on a limb and saying this place is not the weirdest thing that's ever happened to you."

He'll take disbelief over accusations that he's making this shit up. Even though at this point he's not entirely convinced that he won't wake up at Shorty's bleary-eyed and doggedly tired trying to recall this strange, elaborate dream about this town and all these people he imagined up.

"I suppose not. But it's fairly high on the list." He's more of a roll with the punches, take things as they come one day at a time kind of guy than the kind who would rank weird things that happen to him. He cannot forget the mistakes he has made and he will have to live with his regrets, but he's lived too long to be wanting to keep score.

"What about yourself? You a modern city boy?"

Something about this man, his name, those dates, is bothering Neal, but he can't put his finger on what it is.

John Henry.

1851.

He shrugs, smiling. "Born and bred. Living the high life in New York City before this little field trip to the heart Bat Country."

John Henry, around since 1851.

Neal freezes, eyes going wide. "You're John Henry Holliday."

"I am staying with a gentleman from New York City." He's also a kind of high life person, although he has never flaunted it. His suit and no doubt the dozens just like it that Malcolm Bright must own back home can probably buy half the land in all of Texas.

"Perhaps you should come over sometime and meet him." He could use a few more friends, whom he doesn't also see as caretakers. Feeling reliant on people complicates a friendship.

Neal is the first person to recognise him from just his first two names and Doc stiffens a bit, lips parting as if to say something. But say what? He cracks a smile and brings a hand to rub over his lips and moustache, scratching under the corner of his bottom lip.

"Heh. Wouldn't that be sommin'?"

Neal is still staring, shock slowly giving way to delight.

"John Henry 'Doc' Holliday, born August 14, 1851. Dentist, gambler, gunfighter extraordinaire. Saved the life of one Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp, and later became famous alongside Special Policeman Earp following the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Arguably the most renowned shootout in the history of the American West."

All of that stress, that fear, that anxiety, has temporarily taken a back seat to the pure joy of a history nerd meeting an idol. "It really would be something, wouldn't it?"

God damn, did this guy write a book about him or something?

"Well if you know that gentleman that thoroughly, surely you would know what he looks like," Doc muses with an upturned hand. There were drawings, photographs, personal accounts.

"Word is he died of consumption... oh, I'd say, about a hundred and thirty years ago now."

"Give or take." He laughs quietly, leaning back in his chair, just taking in the sight of a historical figure in the flesh. There's a boyish glee on his face that's impossible to hide.

This is, without a doubt, the weirdest two days of his life. "Have to say, testing myself against one of the preeminent gamblers of the 19th century has an undeniable appeal."

So he's pretty sure he can't convince Neal that the name and the year and the guns and the cards are purely a coincidence, even if it is a common name, plenty of people were born in 1851, guns were everywhere and being a professional gambler made decent money.

For all his worries about his legacy, the things he had done with and without Wyatt, about the mistakes they had made over a century ago, it's actually good to get a positive reaction. There is still hope to right some wrongs. To be remembered as something more than a sickly asshole going around shooting people he didn't like the look of.

"You play poker?" he asks with a tilt of his head and the smallest of smiles, the kind he can't withhold until it's already half-formed on his face, a light returning to his eyes that hasn't been seen since he got here.

"If I am who you think I am I would say..." He purses his lips and nods a few times. "You'd be in for quite a challenge."

Neal's smile turns into a grin. "Poker, faro, Mexican monte--name the game. I've always loved the classics."

Playing cards with Doc Holliday. Now that would be a crowning achievement on a gambling career that's spanned the globe. Win or lose, who can say they've done that in the 21st century? "I'm not too bad myself."

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