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 doesn't stir much. A little, as Raylan lifts him, as his orientation shifts and his center of balance goes with it. There's a brief, panicked moment once he's off his feet where the helplessness would make him fight--but he's so tired. Something in him keeps him hanging on to consciousness, even though his ears are ringing and, really, being out like a light would be the preferable scenario at the moment.

He can tell they're moving. Not really what direction. The wind seems to come from everywhere. The cold scrapes through him, but it doesn't fill those hollowed-out spaces blood loss left in his strength.

"Peter," he says, only half-sensible. He has to warn Peter about this place.

It had been quite a number of years since Raylan had had to carry someone like this but dragging him wasn't really an option; he'd be putting out more effort and probably ruining Neal's shoes. Not that he cared, but if it saved a little him getting yelled at, he'd take all of the perks of this choice.

But a mountain to climb was a task to focus on and he did as he walked them back towards 1306. It took several minutes, but Raylan kept a steady pace and made short work of it.

As he got up onto the porch, Raylan leaned over a little to let Neal's wrist go long enough to open the door and called out, "DOC!" as he worked them into the door, kicking it shut.

"WE NEED YA!" Dropping to one knee, Raylan turned and rolled Neal's bottom weight off him before awkwardly shifting to catch Neal's limp head from his own shoulder and turn the rest of him onto the floor with less thump than the first half.

Malcolm had been on his way downstairs already and flew down the last couple when Raylan shouted.

“Raylan? What’s g...”

He spotted Neal and rushed to kneel by him, looking him over.

“He’s not suffering hypothermia. What happened?”

"Heh. You know nobody's hollered like that since- Jesus Christ." Stories about the woman they know as Big Nose Kate will have to wait. Doc leaves the garage door ajar as he rushes over. He takes one look at the bleeding and ducks into the kitchen, grabbing the cleanest tea towel out of the drawer and whistling to get their attention before throwing it at them.

"Hold it against the wound and get him on the couch. Then we need clean towels, blankets. And make sure he stays conscious." Doc's already halfway up the stairs to grab the first aid kit.

Neal opens his eyes, expecting to be on the floor of Vincent Adler's makeshift cell, looking up at Peter and Alex. Instead, there are faces of familiar strangers. Voices he knows but can't place. Or that he can place, but doesn't want to.

He closes his eyes again, groaning faintly. "I would rather not be conscious, though," he croaks, and it's scary how much effort the words take.

Raylan was glad to hear the sudden feet, eyes glancing up at Malcolm and then over at Doc as he came through the door.

"I dunno. He was upright but uneven and then he dropped into the snow like a stone." He looked up at the whistle, deftly catching the tea towel and pressing it against Neal's neck, with another look over at Malcolm. "I'll grab his arms, you grab his feet, we can move him to the couch that way."

He couldn't help the huff of amusement that came at Neal's comment. "Yeah I bet, but we follow Doc's orders so. Hold in there."

Malcolm nodded his understanding of the instructions and scooted around Neal’s feet, hoisting him up and onto the couch on the signal.

“That was a puncture wound,” he noted of the injury Raylan now covered with a towel. “On that side of the neck, it should be bleeding a lot more. Spurting, even.”

As they set Neal down, Malcolm looked at him. “What happened to you?”

Doc is flying back down the stairs with a couple of blankets trailing behind him tucked under one arm, first aid kits wedged under the other arm, and some towels in his other hand. They've got him on the couch and they're trying to keep him talking - that's good.

He makes quick work of taking Neal's shoes off and covering him up with a couple of blankets, tucking one side in between Neal and the couch, letting the other side hang loose. He needs to take a quick detour to the kitchen to fill up that big salad bowl with water and wash his hands before returning to the flurry of activity around the couch.

"I've got it. We'll be needing a lot more warm water though," he says quietly to Raylan once he makes it back. There's a stutter and a moment's hesitation when he peels the tea towel back to check on it. He's seen this injury before. Glancing over at Neal's face, he lets Malcolm do the talking while he stops the bleeding and starts cleaning the wound out.

"Did you get hurt?" Doc turns his head to ask Raylan without being able to tear his eyes off of Neal. He did notice that Raylan's coat was a little bloody when he came in. "Or is that all his?"

Neal doesn't like this. He doesn't like being handled, he doesn't being vulnerable, doesn't like being at the relative mercy of people he doesn't really know. He should be grateful for their help--he will be grateful--but first he just needs to get through it happening.

He tries to stay as still as possible as Doc works, flicking an ironic smile Malcolm's way. "Don't sound so disappointed. I like it not spurting."

He's shaky, sweating. When he closes his eyes it takes him a moment to realize they're shut. He also hasn't answered Malcolm's question. Another little tremor rolls through him, and he tries to forget the feeling of fangs in his neck.

"Apparently vampires are a thing here. I really, really need to stop having expectations of this place."

Raylan would have put money on vampires; anything was possible, and he would have gotten his money back for it in the end. But he stayed silent, letting Neal answer in his own time. First the rains, then the fog, then vampires? Where's the door off the ride? Neal's state looked a lot like basic blood loss, sans the gunshot or gut wound that should have caused it, except for the holes in Neal's neck. He might be simple sometimes, but Raylan wasn't stupid.

As Doc took over the towel, Raylan nodded at the directive. "That I can do." Stepping back out of the way, Raylan took off his hat and dropped it into an empty seat before pausing in pulling off his jacket to inspect the blood he hadn't noticed was there. "I'm fine, must be all his."

His eyes snapped back to Neal at the confirmation of vampires before glancing between the other two men to get a judge of how they took it, his jaw tensing slowly. God he hated being right.

Edited 2020-12-31 17:51 (UTC)

"...Vampires. A vampire bit you? Where did that happen?" Malcolm pressed. They had to know where the danger was. And they had to let other people know.

He can focus on Neal fully with the confirmation that Raylan's okay. Once the bleeding has been successfully stemmed he works quickly to unbutton the top three buttons of Neal's shirt and pull enough fabric away so he can rinse the wound out without any interference.

"There is one here. Attacked someone else, too," Doc states matter of factly, still not taking his eyes off what he's doing, reaching behind to grab some tweezers so he can pluck some dirt and fibres out of the wound. He did not come to that conclusion the first time he saw this injury, but now he is certain of it.

"This is going to sting, but you're going to be just fine, Mister Caffrey. You're safe with us, okay?" He pats Neal on the arm a few times before he pours some antiseptic out onto a cotton pad and picks it up with his tweezers. Doc only has the one hand free so he opts to hold that shoulder down with it while he dabs at the wound to disinfect it. 'Sting' might be just a slight understatement, it probably feels more like a burn.

Neal bucks, weakly, at the pain hissing through his neck. He's never been a stoic. After a moment he subsides, teeth gritted, head swimming.

"Uh. Followed me out of town hall. We headed toward the boarding house, just talking. He said his name was... I don't remember what he said his name was. Conversation turned a little weird. I tried to leave, he dragged me off the road and..."

His lips quirk, his faux-amusement indicating their current situation. "Here we are."

"Well I sure as shit hope everyone's inside. If he's just hittin' people out side, the numbers are bound to be less." Raylan chewed his lip, hands propped on his hips as he watched the work go on, shaking his head a little before heading into the kitchen.

"Who was the other person? I'm gonna want to ask them some questions too."

You can't put something like this in front of a Marshal and expect him to not Marshal.

"Hope this don't mean he's gonna turn into one."

"If vampire lore is to be believed - and I don't know what other source of information we could look to - then he would have had to drink the vampire's blood too, to become one. It doesn't sound like that happened."

Malcolm, still lingering near Neal's feet, watched Doc's hands as he worked for a moment and gestured towards him. "Do you need help?"

"I'm fine. Almost... done." Doc's grip on Neal tightens until he settles down again, and he makes quick work of disinfecting the wound to minimise the discomfort. After splashing and dabbing with a bit more warm water that Raylan had fetched, Doc dries the area and finishes dressing the wound with some gauze and tape.

"Get some rest, okay? Everything's gonna be just fine," he tries to reassure Neal softly with a few pats on the arm before setting all his equipment aside, straightening up and stepping away, waving at Malcolm to come over to him and Raylan so they can talk quietly. Doc perches against the fireplace mantle, adjusting his hat while his other elbow hangs off the edge of the shelf.

"Last week I brought a young lady by the name of Elena here, to this very couch. She was wandering alone out in the cold, blood in her long hair down this side of her chest." Doc gestures from his shoulder down a few inches.

"I thought she might have arrived with the injury, given how it wasn't 'spurting', but. She knows who it is." Doc had his suspicions but unfortunately it has taken a second attack for him to draw some conclusions. "She did not want to speak of the incident, which led me to believe that she is either close to the assailant or she might have been too ashamed to say what happened, perhaps if something else had transpired." Hopefully it's the former.

"It must be someone newly arrived, or we would have come across this sooner. Given this is out of our realm of expertise I think we should call our hunting friends at 1301." He looks to Malcolm and then Raylan. "You both know I'm all for making new friends but I'm not sure this is someone we can broker a truce with." Sometimes the old ways of shooting first and asking questions later still have some merit.

Neal stays put, feeling like an elephant sat on him. He's not sure he could get up if he wanted to. He does eavesdrop, however, closing his eyes to focus on listening.

It's not comforting to know he isn't the first one who was attacked. It's worse knowing it was a young woman. He hopes, fervently, that Doc is wrong about Elena being ashamed in that way. Neal is a little ashamed himself of what happened, that he couldn't stop it, but simple assault is nothing compared to... that.

He clears his throat, rasping a little as he speaks up. "But people come back here. Even if..." He stops, hating the idea of killing someone, even if they have been attacking people. "There's no guarantee he'll stay dead."

Having handed off the water he'd gone into the kitchen for in the first place, Raylan stood nearby on Malcolm's left, hands propped on his hips as he watched Doc work.

"We gotta start tellin' each other when this shit happens," he laments before taking a deep breath. A young woman and now Neal. Great. The last thing this place needed was this kinda issue, but this kinda issue was one that Raylan could handle. Talk it down or kill it, really. But Neal had a point to hoist against his and Doc's tendencies, those of which Raylan was glad to know they were on the same page over. Tracking people down was his job, literally, and he was hillfolk. Mathis's less than a mile so far reach had nothing on the hollars of Harlan.

"I'll call Dean. Maybe only people who are killed by this place return, and only those select few. And you," he said, pointing at Neal. "Are stayin' here til mornin' at least. Til Doc clears you to leave."

“It’s not a good idea to go out in the storm anyway,” Malcolm agreed. “Even if you were well.”

He got up.

“We have lots of room,” he said.

Meanwhile, he could feel his anxiety rising. Any guests would hear him screaming. What would they think of him then?

Doc shrugs at that. The notion of doctor-patient confidentiality was reified after his time, but Doc keeps tight, closed circles with everyone that never overlap.

"I couldn't be sure what had happened to her, and I don't tell anyone else what people share with me in confidence. She might never come back if she gets hurt again." He doesn't even glance at Malcolm when he says that with a straight, serious face, maintaining eye contact with Raylan the entire time. Not to mention, it would have caused unnecessary panic if he ran around proclaiming there was a vicious monster in their midst. And for very much the same reason, Doc did not put any information about the museum up on the bulletin board. He just boarded it up and stuck warning signs all over the building, the same way they had done for 1307 to try and keep people out.

"They may know of a way to keep a vampire permanently dead," Doc agrees. "If it comes to it." He's a hundred percent sure it will come to it, but he inserts that afterthought more for Neal and Malcolm's benefit. If they believed it was someone that could be reasoned with on a more level playing field, they might be more amenable to bringing a bottle of moonshine and mama's special occasion chicken casserole over to have a little chat. But a vampire is on a whole different league, and them cowboys? They don't fuck around.

"My bedroom is yours until this storm blows over, Mister Caffrey." Raylan needs to be upstairs with Malcolm tonight and Doc will keep checking in on Neal periodically, make sure his condition doesn't worsen drastically overnight. "I will change the sheets and get you a change of clothes. A hot bath and some food will do you some good."

"He didn't kill me." Neal's not sure how to handle the wall of both kindness and command. So he does what he does when he's not sure how to handle something: barrels on regardless, ignoring his feelings and their decrees both.

He tries to sit up for a second, and decides almost immediately that it won't help his argument or his ego. He flops back, glaring at the ceiling for a moment, ignoring the way his whole body trembles. "And he didn't kill this other girl, either."

Neal can't bring himself to look at any of them, and he's not sure why. "It would have made his life a lot simpler if he had."

Raylan didn't back down from the direct eye contact as Doc explained his stance but whatever disagreement he might have, of which there were a few, were kept to himself. They had time aplenty - he and Doc could chew it out over one of their drinking sessions. It was one of the few things Raylan could count on here and no matter what they were talking about, he was glad for it.

He also knew he didn't need to say that. The tension in his eyes and jaw would do that talking for him.

Raylan glanced over at Malcolm with a nod to affirm his statement before looking back at Doc. "You can take my room if need be. I've got my chair."

His attention turned to Neal. "It would have made his life significantly more difficult if he had. The fact that he didn't shows restraint. Not somethin' to be discounted."

Raylan looked back to Malcolm then. "Could you make some coffee? I got a feelin' we're gonna have a long couple of hours."

Coffee. He could manage that. He glanced at Neal and then Doc, then gave Raylan a nod of confirmation and headed to the kitchen.

He wasn’t sure lethal force was the answer, either, but they also couldn’t have someone running around freely preying on anyone he liked.

Doc straightens up and starts to shift away from the fireplace mantle when Neal tries to sit up, pausing when he lies back down again. He watches their stubborn patient like a hawk and breathes out slowly through his nose when it looks like Neal has settled back down. Only then does he resume his casualesque lean against the shelf.

"The fact that you are both still alive is the only reason he still is." Doc is used to being the one who cleans up the mess, takes out the trash. He had sinned so Wyatt did not have to, on numerous occasions. He will sin again, if need be.

"We can work tonight out later." He would not impose on Raylan to be rushing up the stairs to check in on Malcolm tonight. They are flexible on these things though and he is confident it will work itself out.

"You survived, Mister Caffrey, and you are with us now." That is what it means to be in this house. It is a safe, protected space. One that both Raylan and Doc are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to maintain that way.

"Get some rest. We'll take care of it."

Neal has no idea what to say to that. He's looking at all three of these men, at this point, like a cornered dog waiting to be hit. They'll help, Malcolm had said. No strings attached.

He certainly feels like strings are attached. He feels like he's being roped into a job with unequal shares, and he can't figure out who's getting cheated.

Edited 2021-01-04 08:32 (UTC)

021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

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A NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHES

Re: A NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHES

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