021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

[villagemod]

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.

navigation | faq | setting | mod contact

Comments

[conning]

"There's plenty of merit to it." He leans his head back against the wall, hands still cupped around the empty mug. "Everyone would prefer to see themselves as righteous. The truth is we're all liars. We all navigate the world by using others, manipulating our circumstances, choosing the battles we're most likely to win. Risk, reward, certainty, and consequence."

And morality is the tally of collateral damage left behind. Neal shrugs.

When Malcolm goes on... well, Neal isn't sure what to say. His look of curiosity slowly becomes disbelief, morphs into horror, stays there. "Jesus." No wonder Malcolm has PTSD. But there's something else that's bugging Neal, a half-thought that takes a moment of poking to fully form. He knew who I was.

"...Who was the Surgeon to you?"

[abrightboy]

“Not gonna buy ‘my first bust’ and ‘a fascinating case study’, huh?” Malcolm surmised, glancing at Neal sidelong. Part of him had been curious whether Neal would ask. He knew he’d said too much to be coy with someone as sharp as Neal, but sharpness was only part of the equation. The other part was taking the conversational risk of asking for what he’d outright declined to provide.

He took a breath, looking at his cup as he turned it around in his hands.

“Dr Martin Whitly, renowned heart specialist and notorious serial killer known as ‘the Surgeon’ is my father. And he’s been serving his twenty-three consecutive life sentences for first degree murder at a maximum security facility for the criminally insane since I was eleven.”

He looked at Neal. “I called the police after I found one of his victims in a travel trunk in our basement.”

[conning]

"Can't con a con man." It's teasing, but gently so. Again, when Malcolm goes on, Neal goes quiet.

The fact that Peter knows this already is the only thing that gets Neal to say it. If it wasn't already in the open--if Peter, and by extension Elizabeth, didn't already know--Neal would keep this on lockdown. As it is, it takes a lengthy silence for him to build up to it. "Mine was a dirty cop."

He smiles crookedly at Malcolm. "No judgement here. You at least did something worthwhile with your history."

[abrightboy]

"I did the only thing I could, really. Lucky for me it was worthwhile." He looked over at Neal. "You're doing something worthwhile with it now," he pointed out. Neal had maybe taken a scenic route but... he was also a consultant to law enforcement these days.

[conning]

"I would teach." He picks at a bit of string hanging out from the blanket. "If the commutation goes through but I can't keep working with the FBI. I would consider it, going back to school. Getting a degree the old fashioned way."

He hooks a smile in Malcolm's direction. "You're way too easy to talk to."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm laughed lightly.

"Well, conversation is a two way street," he pointed out. He canted his head slightly. "I think you'd be a good teacher, but... why can't you keep working for the FBI? You're just a consultant; not an agent."

[conning]

"It's always good to keep your options open." That's the automatic response. The reality is that he'd have to think about the answer, and he doesn't want to. "What about you? If you had to do something else."

[abrightboy]

"Options, right. I did have to consider it, when the FBI fired me. It was Gil's idea to call me into the NYPD as a special consultant, not mine. I... thought about maybe writing. Or. I don't know." He looked at Neal. "I really don't know what else to do."

[conning]

"The Major Crimes lieutenant. Your mentor." Makes sense. "How'd you meet him?"

[abrightboy]

"He was the beat cop that answered my 911 call and arrested my father," Malcolm told him. He huffed a rueful laugh into his teacup, then looked at Neal again. "That was how seriously the dispatcher took a child telling them that a murderer lived there. They sent one beat cop, alone, with a serial killer terrorizing the city. I saw him waiting in the entry hall. My father had offered him a cup of tea. I told him to take out his gun, because my father was going to kill him. To his credit? He took me seriously."

[conning]

Neal raises his eyebrows. "Maybe you should write that book after all."

Any and all complaints about the unusual nature of his own childhood have been entirely recontextualized. He studies Malcolm with fresh curiosity, sympathy in his tone as he speaks. "Must have been one hell of a ride for an eleven-year-old."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm laughed lightly.

"It wasn't going to be an autobiography but maybe one day I'll fictionalize the account so people don't think they're expected to believe it," he conceded.

He glanced over.

"It didn't go super well. I didn't sail through. I have a... litany of mental health disorders that stem from complex post traumatic stress. Like the night terrors Doc warned you about."

He didn't hear Doc warn their guests that Malcolm would probably end up screaming in the middle of the night so don't be alarmed, but he knew that Doc would have.

[conning]

Neal nods, eyes still on Malcolm. "I think it would be a miracle if you didn't."

He has issues, sure, but at least all of his issues are private and easily dealt with or ignored. He might be overstepping here--he probably is--but when has that ever stopped him?

"Were you an only child?"

[abrightboy]

"No, I have a younger sister." He smiled faintly. "She's a reporter." He looked at Neal. "You?"

[conning]

"A reporter and an FBI agent turned NYPD consultant. You people don't aim low."

Neal stretches his legs out in front of him, trying to ease the cramp that's started in his thigh. "No siblings, no. We lost my dad when I was two, and my mom never remarried."

It's the truth, in a manner of speaking.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looked over. "What happened to him? Did he get arrested?"

[conning]

Neal shifts again, uncomfortable. This, Peter doesn't know. Even after all this time, all Peter is aware of is the fact that Neal's father was dirty. Everything Neal's told him has indicated in some passive way that James Bennett is dead.

He's not thinking as quickly as he normally would. He's tired, shell-shocked. There's already no graceful way to avoid the question--he's been too quiet for too long. So he just smiles.

"No idea."

[abrightboy]

...Oh.

Malcolm considered him for a moment.

“Have you ever looked for him?”

[conning]

He rolls his shoulders in a shrug. "Did you keep in contact with your father?"

[abrightboy]

Malcolm didn’t know how to take that, but he’d still approach it by answering with a hesitant nod.

“Yeah. Yeah, I started visiting him less than a year after the trial. Regularly, until I decided to apply to Quantico. Then I cut off all contact. Until I left the Bureau and ended up back in New York. I wasn’t going to go... I really wasn’t. But. The case I was working was a copycat killer, copying him. I had... questions. And then... seeing him again, I started remembering things. Fragments of memories. From the last weeks before his arrest. About the victim I found in the trunk and... what he did to me when I found her. I want answers and he’s the only one who knows them.”

[conning]

Well, that was more than Neal bargained for. He doesn't know if he would do it, keep in contact with a serial killer father. But he can't say that he wouldn't. His on-and-off hunt for his own father has spanned a decade and a half at this point.

Slowly, Neal asks, "What he did to you?"

[abrightboy]

“He started chloroforming me. To help me forget what I saw. When I called the police, they couldn’t find the girl in the box. The box was empty. She was gone. I didn’t understand how. Everyone thought I imagined her. I now know that some amount of time passed between the night I found her and the night I called the police. Maybe a week. Maybe more. I still don’t know how much.” He looked at Neal grimly. “When I called them, I thought I was saving her.”

[conning]

It's a lot more than he was expecting Malcolm to say. Neal can't help a shudder. Once again, he thinks it's no wonder that Malcolm has PTSD, night terrors, whatever else he deals with. It would haunt Neal every day, knowing he was missing time like that. Not knowing what happened to the person he'd tried to save would tear him up inside.

"No wonder you do what you do."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm couldn’t help a dry chuckle and nodded.

“There’s a pretty clear line from cause to effect there. That part is.... psychologically uncomplicated.”

He looked at Neal. “You’ve looked for him, haven’t you? You haven’t been able to find him. That’s frustrating; I understand. Do you have any promising leads?”

[conning]

This guy is as bad as Peter. Or as good as Peter. Neal can't decide which it is, and that will probably depend on the day. And who the target of the interrogation is.

"Sometimes you need to know when to let things go."