villagelogs | 041-044 » the ghosts of the living

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041-044 » the ghosts of the living

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central Mathias
WHEN: Day 041-044
WHAT: Something is in the fog.
WARNINGS: (PM this account to have a warning added!)
NOTES: Plotting post over here!

RECOMMENDED ♫ John Carpenter "Antonio Bay"

DAY 041-044
THE GHOSTS OF THE LIVING
“Maybe before you die, it's your ghosts you see.”
—Lauren Oliver
The fog remains within the town, a cloyingly stagnant blanket turning the world a soft white that is the opposite of comforting. It has, at least, dissipated slightly since its initial entry into the town: residents can now see roughly twenty feet in any direction around them before the mist blots out the world again. Progress, perhaps, but at what cost?

Residents who venture into the fog will find that prolonged exposure still leaves them disoriented and eventually ill with dizziness, lightheadedness, or nausea. But with this new level of visibility, some may find the tradeoff worthwhile in exchange for being able to move about the town without getting too terribly lost.

But that's not all they find in the fog.

Beginning the morning of Day 41 and continuing until the night of Day 44, residents will begin to see Others in the fog. Appearing almost wraithlike and startlingly recognizable, these figures even feel a bit like ghosts to those who can sense such things, though everyone will feel that there is something wrong about them. Truly, there are many things wrong that residents will begin to notice as they encounter more and more of the apparitions that do not acknowledge their presence in any way. They simply exist, silent and subtly terrifying like so many things in this town.

THE NEW ARRIVALS
The newest arrivals to Mathias will wake up on the beach near The Grey Gull. It's quite chilly out with their wet clothes, but surely there's something to help warm them inside the restaurant. They may even find some alcohol within — and not just the cowboys' homemade moonshine.

ABOUT THE OTHERS
The figures encountered in the fog over these four days will be unnervingly familiar to the unwilling residents of Mathias Township. They are like misty ghosts of those who have been in the town at one point or another, specifically those who have died or disappeared and even, perhaps, themselves. The likeness is truly uncanny, to the point of being completely terrifying.

There is no way to communicate with the Others. They do not acknowledge anyone's presence nor anything said to them. At times, they may be only one in an area, or there may be a dozen existing in the same space. There is no limit to how many people can see them — if they are there, they are seen by all.

The Others do not enter buildings and cannot be contained in any way. They can appear at one moment and be gone in the next, or they can exist in one place for hours on end. Whether standing stationary or slowly wandering throughout the town, there is no discernible purpose to them. There is something absent and distant in the way they hold themselves, the way they walk, and their expressions, as if even they cannot grasp what is happening.

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— THE WEATHER conditions are fairly typical for mid fall: cool days and chilly "sweater weather" nights. It's getting warmer like spring but the leaves still look like fall...

— THE FOG remains stagnant in the town while also blocking the paths in the forest. Beginning a few dozen yards past the treeline, this section of fog will urge residents to stay huddled within the town proper by inducing a physical reaction of panic and fear. This type of fog also blocks the western section of town, beginning just past Hill Lane, before where residents know the chasm in the earth to be between Hill and Stine Road. Venturing into the fog blocking these areas is ill-advised.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue. Tony Stark, Neal Caffrey, Quentin Coldwater, Melanie King, Jaime Lannister, Yennifer, and Number Five have vanished without a trace.

— ALCOHOL is still in Mathias! (Unless they drank it all already.) A small stock of beer and cheap wine may be found at the General Store, and some homes may have a small store of alcohol in the fridge or pantry. The Grey Gull was also restocked with its lower-end offerings of a variety of alcohol types. Alcohol is not replenishing in the same way as food.

OOC NOTES

— PAGES that have been recently updated: deaths/disappearances, locations, madnesses, housing. Please give these a look and make sure any character information is correct and up-to-date.

— REWARD REDEMPTION has a new option now! Anyone looking to spend big AP and learn a bit more of the lore of the town may now redeem History Revealed for a cost of 10 AP and 1 Sanity Point. This is an advance redemption — dreams about the past in Mathias will occur in the following log to allow for proper planning and utilization of any plot or lore elements revealed. Note: This reward may be gifted to another character than the one claiming the reward.

— MOD STATUS The usual reminder that it's just Amy steering this ship for now, so things will probably be pretty slow for a while. Apologies in advance, and please don't feel shy about pinging me if you're stuck waiting for something.

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Malcolm glances towards the door, then looks at Doc.

"I wonder if a mask would help. I mean, if there are any in here for, like, woodworking or drywall, I wonder if they'd help with this... Fog Lite we have going on."

He positions the drill again, carefully, the tip of his tongue just peeking out between his lips as he pulls the trigger.

That goes better, in that he unscrews the screw, but when it comes free, he stumbles back a step and the screw falls down behind the shelf.

"...Oops."

"You'd be breathing it in either way, I would think." It's not like fine sawdust or liquids or powder or anything a mask could protect them from. Might be worth a shot but Doc can only imagine them feeling worse and more suffocated for wearing it rather than better.

Doc hears the telltale clink and clatter of the screw, giving Malcolm another lesson about having your other hand at the ready or not unscrewing it all the way perhaps.

"There's a magnet here if you need." Saves him some time crawling around on his hands and knees.

"With any luck it'll be just the one trip next door. There were some shelves there. And a bed we could take apart and bring over, too." Maybe they can just take everything apart, stack the slats flat on the dolly they brought the fridge over with and just push it across the street.

Malcolm picks up what is essentially a magnet on a stick and looks at and then looks at Doc. “This is so clever,” he enthuses before trying to steer it down the back of the shelves. “Raylan said he’s going to harvest some wall materials to make a wall across the big door,” he recalls. “So we only have to worry about the middle wall.”

"We were losing too many pegs behind the washing machine." If Doc was grumbling like a dad about it, he didn't notice. But with so many people in the house and how often they need to do laundry, the clips and pegs casualties were getting out of hand.

"And how was he going to do that? With his... rubber neck ingenuity and a whole lot of hot air?" Red neck, rubber neck - same thing.

Malcolm looks over. “I think ‘hillbilly’ is probably more accurate than ‘redneck’,” he muses. “But he says he’s handy.”

And Malcolm believes what Raylan says with unqualified trust, same as Doc.

“He thinks that’s the most important wall. For security and warmth.” Malcolm grins. “Though he did suggest that you could probably sleep there, regardless.”

He pulled the screw up with the magnet with a look of triumph over at Doc, plucking the screw from the magnet, he held it to the hole, lined up the screw bit with it, let go of the screw and it promptly fell back down the back of the shelf. He looked down after it, then looked at Doc. Something went wrong there.

"None of these terms sound flattering," Doc observes flatly. "Southerners are meant to be charming. Hospitable. Friendly folk. We can be traditional and protective, but. Not- Well. It's got nothing to do with hills or necks." These colloquialisms. Honestly.

"Well he found me camping outdoors, and I had fallen asleep on the porch the other day." Deliberate word choice there. "He probably would say I could sleep anywhere." And he'd be right, too. Although if the room is too claustrophobic, if he can touch every wall and it's going to be pitch-black at night, Doc might panic.

Ambling over, he picks up the screw and holds it by the edges of its head against the hole, turning it a bit so the teeth can just start to grip the screwhole. Raylan would remove his head with a butter knife if Malcolm put a hole through his hand while under Doc's supervision, so he's going to hold the screw in place. Better his own hand than Malcolm's.

"One hand on the screw and the object, the other on the drill." Since Doc's got the screw, Malcolm can just hold onto the shelf. He double-checks that the button is toggled to turn the screw the right way and cups his hand over behind Malcolm's to try and keep it steady. Obviously if it can be avoided, he'd rather not recreate the hole in Jesus's hands in his own today. "Go on. Hold it steady and pointing straight so it doesn't go in at an angle."

“I think his people are from the hills of Kentucky, so it comes from something.”

He frowns in concentration as Doc lines up the screw, shaken from momentary consternation at ‘fell asleep on the porch’, but then Doc doesn’t let go of the screw. Malcolm’s eyes widen slightly and, while Doc’s other hand steadying the drill is a little comforting, it feels unwieldy in his hands still and he makes an effort at holding it very, very steady as he looks at Doc.

“Is that safe? What if it slips?”

"Then there will be a hole in my hand, Negan will take my hat, and you and Mister Caffrey can joust over who gets to inherit my waistcoat," he jokes, not pushing it too far into burying him and whatnot. It's a bit too soon for that talk. Even though they should probably talk about what they would like to have done if they do die, if they have any specific death rituals they prefer.

"It is on the lowest setting. It'll be fine. A scratch at most. Trust yourself, Malcolm."

Malcolm presses his lips together, then looks at Doc.

“I won’t let Negan take your hat,” he promises, then concentrates intensely on holding the drill steady with both hands, squeezing the trigger gently, but then a little too hard, then startled into easing off, but the screw starts going in. He pauses and looks at Doc with a bright expression because the screw is half in and he hasn’t taken off any of the gunslinger’s fingers.

If he's honest, he wouldn't care who got his hat once he's dead. He wouldn't care about anything anymore. And it's not as if Negan's leather jacket wouldn't be up for the same repossession once he's gone. But he appreciates that Malcolm will defend what's left of him.

"Negan can have my hat," he permits, even though he can't stand the man sometimes. It doesn't suit the New Yorkers' styles and let's face it - Raylan doesn't need twice the capacity to stuff his feelings into.

"That's it," he encourages, lifting his fingers and thumb away from the screw once it's gripped and started going in, holding the shelf steady. "You'll get the hang of it, son. Don't overthink it."

Malcolm grinned at him and looked at the screw before lining the drill up again and working on getting it the rest of the way in. His hand jiggled the drill inadvertently and it skipped out of the screw head, startling him momentarily, but he lined it back up carefully and finished it, looking at Doc again.

"I should do it again, right?"

"You may, until you feel confident. Then we can head out across the road." Is Doc deliberately trying to buy them some time? Perhaps. He can't imagine anyone is eager to go gallivanting into the fog and navigate the sea of ghosts that might be wading within it. He is also trying not to think about Neal too much. About how he might be letting the New Yorker down, having stopped looking for him. They are making space in the garage. Surely it is time for him to come home.

He leaves Malcolm to it while he finishes up moving things around making space for the dividing wall. If this all turns to custard he is at least happy about the fridge staying put here and not going back into the other house, and not making all their food within it disappear either.

On his second try, Malcolm again dropped the screw trying to put it back in, but when he picked it up, he lined it up with the hole and twisted it manually a few times so that it would hold itself long enough for him to line the drill up with both hands. He managed to get it in, but looked over at Doc.

“That’s not going to work if there isn’t already a hole.”

"No. We would need to tap the wooden frame," Doc confirms. "You would need to make a slightly narrower hole first, with the drill. Then you can line up the screw and create threads in the drilled hole doing exactly what you are doing right now. Wood is soft like that. And we are fortunate that we need not do this the old-fashioned way."

Doc can do the tapping, if necessary. He's got steady hands. Once they've got everything standing upright where they need them to be, he can then hold the drywall while Malcolm does the screwing into place.

"You know, I learnt a lot of this modern method from the youtube. 'tis a real shame we don't have that here."

Malcolm listens carefully as Doc explains how they could use this method if they could drill holes first, nodding as he understands how that would work.

When Doc mentions learning from YouTube, he perks up again.

"That's how I learn how to do things I've never done," he says enthusiastically. "Um. Mostly cooking, if I need to for some reason. Like. Things I don't normally eat. Oh! And I fixed my own toilet once using YouTube. The handle came off the... plungy thing inside the tank," he explains, gesturing to demonstrate the plungy thing going up and down.

That gets a small laugh out of Doc. Took him a while to figure out how to work these contraptions. How to access the youtubes and the wikipedias and the like. You get used to these things so easily; now it's not so easy to live without them.

"At least we still have books." Even if several of them have been kissed by fire. No doubt they will be able to find a trove of information in the library. But there's nothing like someone showing you how to do something as opposed to reading instructions from page one of the manual.

"Did you learn about your work from watching videos, or reading books?" Doc hasn't perused the serial killer psychology section of the library. Or looked in that area of youtube. He's not sure what there is to find there.

“Oh, my work I learned about from books and from my instructors at Harvard and Quantico and from..... my own field research,” he explains, voice trailing off slightly at that. He shifts guiltily. “I interviewed my father extensively,” he admits.

"Hmh." Doc has Opinions about Malcolm's relationship with his father, but he also recognises that it's not really his place to be giving such opinions. He holds his tongue for now.

"Does he help you with your work? Do you consult him when you encounter some difficulties?" They are innocent questions, but Malcolm can probably guess where Doc is steering their conversation towards.

Malcolm looked down at the drill in his hands, fidgeting at the screw bit.

"Not when I was with the FBI. Not even when I was training with them. But... since I got back to New York....." He took a breath. "The first case I took was a copy cat killer that was imitating him. They had his personal notes. I had to find out how they got them. It was the first time I'd seen him in ten years."

"I see. Were you-... was it alright?" He imagines yes and no. Malcolm seems fine, but he's clearly been impacted by the encounter. Doc can't conceive that he would be the first one to have a negative opinion of this, so he won't rehash the arguments that Malcolm would have heard before.

"I can only think of a couple of reasons for his notes to have gone walking. Suppose after ten years he didn't want to let you go."

Malcolm looks at him and looks down again.

“I was reluctant to go to him in the first place. He’s... a pathological liar and a narcissist. I was well aware of what he does to my head. But he just keeps... sucking me in.” He looks at Doc. “He was very reluctant to let me go. He said the notes were stolen, but his notebooks are kept in his cell. To get the information I needed, I had to promise to come back. He told me he was wrong before, when he got mad about my career choice. He said he wanted to help me. That we could work together. That he didn’t want to lose any more time.”

Edited 2021-04-05 10:42 (UTC)

"Malcolm," Doc says with a sigh, reaching up to scratch above his eyebrow. What a mess. It's difficult to say what anyone else would have done in that situation. He can't say he doesn't understand why Malcolm had done what he did. But naturally he strongly disapproves of it, too.

"Alright." He huffs another sigh and dusts his hands off, wiping his palms and then patting them down on the outside of his jeans. What is the point of unbreaking a jar and trying to scoop spilt milk back into it?

"Well, nevermind. Are you ready to go over?" Fetch the building materials they would need.

Malcolm still hadn’t gone to him willingly. Not at first. Over seventy voicemails in one afternoon, he ignored. Repeated overtures, he ignored.

But sometimes Dr Whitly’s involvement seemed... unavoidable, somehow.

He perked up at the offer, setting the drill down on the shelf he’d been drilling.

“Yeah. Just across the street?” He tilted his head slightly, studying Doc’s pallor. “Are you sure you’re okay? I can go. I can take the dolly.”

Doc is not the type to let Malcolm go without following along.

"I'm fine. Let's bring it anyway." He's covered in too much dust to want to bring it through the house so while the garage door is still accessible he opens it just enough for them to duck out from under there. He's bringing some tools with, knowing it won't be nearly as easy to salvage some building material as it had been putting a hole in drywall.

Malcolm picks up the dolly and follows Doc, but there’s a quiet concern in his features that the cowboy has been out too much and that it’s affecting him.

“I think this will save some time,” he notes as they go. “Pre-fab frames.”

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