villagelogs | 059-061 » the place where you stop the story

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059-061 » the place where you stop the story

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central/Southern Mathias
WHEN: Day 059-061
WHAT: Time returns to "normal" and Mathias grants a reprieve.
WARNINGS: (PM this account to have a warning added!)
NOTES: Plotting post over here! The next log will be posted the weekend of ~~May 15th~~ May 22nd.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Nathan Johnson "Foul Play"

DAY 059-061
A BRIEF REPRIEVE
“There is no real ending. It’s just
the place where you stop the story.”
— Frank Herbert
Residents awake to a peaceful morning with the sun shining and earth remaining still. There is no unsettling shaking to rouse them at dawn, and time has continued moving onward as they slept. Whatever state they were in the night before, they remain that way now, for good or for bad.

On the surface, there seems to be little lasting effect on the tiny town from that strange series of days, save for the memories of any traumatic experiences residents may have faced — but there are always consequences within Mathias. The perpetrators of acts against the town are tormented by nightmares of those acts being used against them, and those who did not raise a hand to stop those acts of destruction may yet face consequences of their own. For now, however, the unwilling townspeople should do their best to rest and recover from the disturbing ordeals of late, for this reprieve from the madness shall surely be shortlived.

THE NEW ARRIVALS
The newest arrivals to Mathias will wake up on the beach near The Grey Gull. It's a bit 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.

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— THE HISTORY MUSEUM has not fared well with the return of "normal" time. The once esteemed wooden building is now a charred ruin, the recent fire leaving behind little of the contents within for study. The structure is unstable and it is not wise to venture into the ruins for long.

— THE WEATHER conditions remain fairly typical for early fall: warm days and cool nights. It feels almost like spring arriving except that there fewer red and orange leaves on the ground and more of them oddly returning to the trees and slowly fading to green. It's like watching one of those nature documentaries that have a timelapse of the seasons, only it's going in reverse.

— THE FOG has retreated from some areas!
— Residents may now wander the southern stretch of the forest surrounding Mathias Township — it is possible to leave the paths but potentially unwise to do so.
— The fog has also retreated farther into the western section of town, now stretching across town between Stine Road and Shelley Drive. This has revealed the Chasm in the earth that stretches from one side of town to the other between Stine and Hill Lane.
— Access to the northern section of the forest is still blocked 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.

— DEATHS & DISAPPEARANCES continue! Max Guevara has vanished into the fog. Claire Novak's body can be spotted on Day 059 facedown at the bottom of the Chasm between Hill and Stine, near Phillips Drive; by the morning of Day 060, her body will be gone. (Attempts may be made to reach her body but will likely not end well for those involved. Such attempts should be reported under Exploration.)

— ALCOHOL is still in Mathias! Just barely. (Supply is running very low after recent town events.) 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 does not replenish as food does.)

OOC NOTES

— PROJECT HELP Your mod needs help with some projects!

— FUTURE PLANNING If you haven't, please answer the questions here for future log planning. I will almost definitely need some of these answers for the log going up the weekend of May 15, so act quickly! Late submissions will not be considered for that log.

— UPDATES Don't forget to report updates as they come up! Changes to locations (like toppling a few bookshelves in the library), big plots you have coming up that will affect the game (parties, major property destruction, etc), or exciting discoveries that may tie into the game's mythology (even the things provided by the mod) are very helpful to have in one place so relevant page updates can be made.

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

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

“She was alive,” Malcolm tells her. “But when the police came, she was gone. I didn’t understand. Until I realized my father drugged me that night. He drugged me continuously, with chloroform, so I’d forget. I still don’t know how much time passed between finding her and calling the police. I only have fragments of memories. I don’t know what he did with her. I never found out.”

"Jesus. And I thought my parents were bad."

She sets the lantern down at the top of the stairs, leaving it for whoever comes next. She thinks about it, about him not feeling like a hero, about him not acting soon enough, all the way out of the library and half-way down Phillips.

"Do you ever think you'll save enough people to feel like... I don't know, like you've done what you needed to do?"

There's a silence when maybe it seems like he won't answer. But then he does.

"No. The sins of the father really are visited upon the sons."

She gets it. She's not sure why, exactly, but she does. That feeling that who you are will never be enough for who you were, that it will never be enough for who you weren't.

But it's too bleak for it to just be that. For life to just be that.

"Well," her tone is far more cheerful than it had been a moment ago. "That's lucky for all the people you're going to save, I guess."

Edited 2021-05-23 19:31 (UTC)

"I hope so," he says sincerely. He looks at her. "If we ever get out of here so I can do it."

"We will." She's got perfect confidence in that.

1308. She leads the way to the front door, hitting the bell before she opens it just so Raylan and Tim know someone is arriving.

Of course, the fact that she immediately hollers, "RAYLAN, TIM, I FOUND SOMETHING MURDERY," kind of makes the bell-ringing unnecessary.

Raylan had just come back from his very bad, no good, complete failure of an expirment and he bore the signs - t-shirt stuck to his chest and back, hair dirty and unkept it was getting longer than he liked, really. Gonna have to do something about that, and an attentive eye would note the marks wrapped around his hands.

Stepping out from the kitchen, Raylan tried to tame the mess on his head with a hand as he headed towards the living room and entrance way, face already stony and displeased, now tainted with a sharp concern.

"Somethin' Murdery doesn't sound great." Considering the body in the chasm yesterday. "Wha-" His head tilts as he catches sight of Malcolm. "What's goin' on?"

They should wait for Tim, but he couldn't help the question popping out anyway.

Ah the dulcet tones of a loud teenager. Tim was tempted to yell back at her, just because it was a thing he sometimes did when they were in the house alone, but he knew Raylan was in the kitchen so he refrained.

It took him a little longer to surface from the garage looking a little disheveled and rocking a new Hello Kitty t-shirt. It was also sweat drenched and he had more than a few cobwebs in his hair.

"Any severed heads? I just finished stealing a freezer chest, we could use a severed head to test it."

“Just blood evidence,” Malcolm supplies, holding up his hands. “Nothing super exciting. Except for the fact that the sheer amount of blood suggests that someone died in the tunnels about a week ago,” he added like a dangled carrot.

"First of all," Athena says, "I want that shirt. Secondly, what he said."

She gestures at Malcolm. "The ones under the library. And there's footprints, past one of the gates, but nothing on our side."

Like Raylan hadn't heard some yelling in his time.

Raylan narrowed his eyes, the correct response given the information, and lifted his chin a fraction before looking over at Tim as though to get his opinion. What he was looking for was first reactions, and the short glance gave him plenty on how he assumed Tim wanted to play this.

"That's not the same gate you saw the shadow man move through, is it? You think Mathis is.. manifestin' the past or somethin'?"

Yes, Raylan could lie as easy as taking a breath, but Malcolm knew that Tim had died, though not how. Athena knew something had happened but not what. He'd play the game until Tim gave him signal to otherwise not to. He wasn't going to out it and put Tim in a hotseat.

"Gonna have to fight me for it," he said in an aside to Athena before focusing back on the conversation.

Outwardly his face remained neutral. Inwardly he winced. He couldn't entirely stop the flick of a gaze towards Raylan. He didn't expect his partner to immediately throw him under the bus and Tim was initially reluctant to jump into the frying pan on his own.

Raylan's play to draw Malcolm and Athena into focusing on the footprints, rather than the suggested size of the blood pool that would have been needed to make them was a reasonable one. As he had with the handcuffs Tim moved to support his partner's call.

"Which way are the footprints leadin'?"

The required blood pool had been in the front of Malcolm's mind from the moment he saw the footprints. The glances between Tim and Raylan were interesting, but he didn't have enough context to know why yet. His own eyes narrowed slightly at them, though. The wheels were turning and the watchful gaze was watching.

"Through the gate. The blood pool had to be on our side. No evidence of the cleanup that must have taken place, though I did forget to bring my little spritz bottle of luminol with me when I was kidnapped."

Yes, he had one. Yes, he brought it to crime scenes sometimes.

"I don't think the victim could have survived that degree of exsanguination. I'm no medical examiner, but I've been around a violent crime scene or three hundred and footprints that thick with blood stepped in a sizable blood pool. Sizeable. We're talking an adult, bled dry."

She doesn't catch the look between Raylan and Tim. She does catch the way Malcolm's eyes narrow as he watches them. There's something here she's not seeing that he obviously is.

Athena shivers a little. "Is there any... I don't know, roll call or something to make sure people are okay?"

"Mathis cleans up after herself," Raylan said with a shake of his head and a low, unconscious gesture at the two in front of him. "Between the windows to the walls-" No Little John Songs in here, we see you. "Not to mention any given open grave. If it was a week ago, either they're already back due to the loopin' and if not, then we've already got a short list."

It probably wasn't the nicest thing to let people like Max take the fall for this kind of thing, but he knew she was missing. The only one that was missing as far as he was aware. It was a viable way out, if they didn't get cornered and caught otherwise.

"Plenty'a people move through those tunnels. We could start askin' around. Don't know that 'Hey, you happen to bleed out anywhere recently' is gonna go over terribly well but maybe they'll tell the truth, given opportunity."

Meaning you, Timothy Gutterson, even if his eyes stayed where they where moving between Malcolm and Athena.

Mmm.

No, nope, think not. Just going to stand there looking like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

"Was there anything distinctive about the footprints? Could you tell what kind of shoe made them?"

"Same kind of rugged shoes you find around here. Judging by the size and the stride, I'd guess a male, probably around six feet tall. Whoever it is has keys to the gates, so probably works for... whatever is running this place. Or is running this place. The gait indicated by the footprints, the way the feet fell, was purposeful but not hurried. This person was relaxed but confident. Like someone on a mission that's going well. The person who walked through the gates isn't the person who cleaned up the blood pool and the fact that they only cleaned it up on this side suggests that, unlike the suspect, they didn't have access through the gate," Malcolm tells them.

Athena watches Malcolm talk with fascination. He got all that from some bloody footprints on the other side of a locked gate.

Honestly, she couldn't add anything if she wanted to.

"Might be a message, maybe. Even if they didn't have access through the gate, the bars themselves are wide enough for a hand to get through. Coulda at least cleaned up a few footprints if that was the case. Mathis bein' what she is, it sounds like a reminder."

Raylan frowned a little, head tilting curiously. "You got all that from some footprints? Mood and everything?"

Tim was going to follow Athena's example at this point. Particularly as Raylan was asking Malcolm questions and it was interesting listening to the small profiler work.

"People walk differently when they're rushed or when they're anxious or when they're scared. Their feet hit the ground differently. For more or less time, at different angles. There was so much blood on his shoes that you could see his footprints perfectly. I'd guess that the damage to the victim was done with a blade. You can kill someone by exsanguination with a projectile or even... manually. But for efficiency? You really can't bleed a person like you can with a knife or a razor or... something of that ilk," he assures them. "And I'd guess we're dealing with a cut artery for the blood to all be in one place. If someone was injured badly but bleeding out more slowly than that, they would try to escape. Crawl to the stairs. But, again, the footprints suggest pooling rather than a spread. That being said, arteries spray. The person doing the clean up... was thorough. We didn't find so much as a drop of spatter on our side of the gate."

Yeah she's just gonna keep listening for now.

"Like anything hauntin' this place is hurried." Raylan rubbed his forehead with a heavy sigh. "Alright. How about y'all show us, while they're still there and we can check the ranks afterwards. I'm still pretty sure that we can blame Mathis for the clean up, we're still stuck in this... fuckin' loop, but we can look at, see what we can see. See what people say."

Since Tim was obviously not going to spare them from this. He looked over at Tim for his opinion on it, using their half telepathic tendencies to push Tim towards telling the truth. You're not really gonna let them go out looking, are you?

Tim knew that look. He could feel the half telepathic vibes coming his way and he knew what Raylan wanted and why. That didn't mean he wanted to acquiesce but he knew what his partner was asking and what was worse? He knew Raylan was right.

He shot a quick look back at the older marshal and then set his hands on his slender hips. Classic Southern stubborn.

"It was me," he said with simple directness. "I died down in that tunnel. It was my blood."

Malcolm's gaze on Tim turns assessing.

"...Who killed you?" Malcolm asks.

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