#also your property is on a haunted road so like. abandon your people at your own peril | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

remsmoonlight · 3 years

Text

— title : point of view

— word count : 3k words

— pairing : daryl dixon x reader

— summary : tomorrow is something that is never promised, less so when the dead walk the Earth. being trapped for the night when a storm pours down upon you and daryl while trapped in a decrepit house by a few walkers are you sick and tired of hiding what you feel.

— warnings : some swearing, talk of potential death ( of the reader ) , a wee bit of angst that turned into more at the end :)

note: omg another daryl oneshot i gotta chill ajksajksk, but i had like seven main bullet points i made to follow when writing this and i followed like...... two, three at the most, anyways.... enjoy? this is brought to u by ariana’s discography lmao oops it does be cute at some point tho ... also felt a bit hsm with that one line at the end ahaha but fr lemme stop talking now

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* requests are open ! *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Dark and gloomy clouds swirl over your head, blending into an extremely large and angry looking ready to descend from above. You wonder to yourself just how long you have left before the loud cracks that crumble through the air to accompany the forceful winds and pouring drops of rain are finally released. Halfway through the trip back from the town that lays after miles from the prison the car used decided it preferred to lay quietly in the middle of the road, shortly after the sickly sputters from the engine you heard Daryl mutter a few curse words. You were unable to hold in your amusement, despite the fact that a lack of transport obviously leaves you in a vulnerable position, it felt like it was your luck for that to happen to you.

It’s why you stay behind following the hunter in silence.

Studying him with focused eyes you can’t help but wonder how he never realises when you’re unable to tear your gaze away from him. In the beginning when you began to develop a certain affection for him you had been glad, for it to be too embarrassing for the thoughts you had about him in your head. In spite of this, when you realised that it was much more than a crush did you wish for him to mind read, because you have no idea just how to approach him about such a sensitive topic and while he can be tender about feelings, it’s also his downfall.

“ it’ll be gettin’ dark soon, there should be some houses down there to spend the night in. “

You stop in your tracks with a curious look that bled so suddenly into your features you had no time to stop it.

“ you don’t want to carry on? I mean, we’re not far from home? “ you question him with a hint of fear coddling your words.

“ we’d be trippin’ over our feet. Let’s back it back in one piece, yeh? “

Nodding, you regain your pace. It’s been a few months since you’d been hopping from one house to the other during that harsh winter, the bare thought of having to stay in yet another frail structure sent a chilly hand drawing its claws deeply up your spine. If you never had your group, you don’t think you would have made a winter like that, barely protected from the elements and the walkers that wished to plunge their teeth cavernously into your flesh.

“ as long as we leave as soon as the sun comes up. Please. “ you plead, your words filter off into a gentle volume from your position.

Leaves crumble and buckle underneath the weight, the sound of crickets dominate your surroundings as the two of you walk in silence. You itch to start a conversation, but the fear of distracting the man and annoying withhold the words that wish to fall from your lips, even then you don’t know how to begin. What would you say? There’s not much to talk about in a world where the dead have risen, where they wish to drag the world into decomposition.

Your wandering mind is pulled from its very own depths from a noise coming from Daryl, he’d turned to catch your attention. You both set to work attempting to enter any of the abandoned houses, hoping one had been left unlocked at some point.

Of course, luck is scarce. Despite there not being a soul who occupies them, they’re still somehow locked. Mournfully, you wonder if the owners of these homes had thought the governments and armies would eventually lock everything under their control, to the point that there would be a house for them to come back to? Your heart thuds painfully in your chest to think about what happened to them, and if they’re even still surviving.

A large thud draws you back to the present, the wooden door splinters at the force Daryl puts into a large kick to its frame.

“ well, there goes the lock. “ you mutter humourously, lifting the heavy bag higher up onto your shoulders as you walk in the open door.

“ we’ll put the couch there, stop any unfriendly types that come our way. “

“ I don’t know if there’s anyone left anymore. “ you reply, dropping the bag to the floor and moving towards the couch.

Situated on the other side of it, you grip the plush handle and lift with a struggle. It’s a strain to get it through the doorway to turn it around the corner, but eventually it happens. Daryl is joined by your presence by his side, you both push ⏤ this time it’s an easier feat with two of you on one side to dedicate your strength and weight to advance it.

As soon as you finish, a heavy crackle cuts through the air.

“ we got here just in time, huh? “

“ just about. “ he answers you, sparing a glance before moving through the lower floor ⏤ searching for anything that can be taken back to the prison.

Thunderstorms had never been your favourite thing growing up. Of course, rain was something that calmed you from the anxieties life brought, but the thunder and lightning is what you loathed. Never knowing when you were about to receive a fright from the loud rumbles and flashing lights ruined the whole experience for you.

The rustling Daryl makes is the only thing that brings you comfort in this moment, keeping you grounded and away from your thoughts. It doesn’t escape your notice that these houses feel no more than graveyards with the memories that have no use to live, instead haunting the structures with what could have been had chaos and death not taken over. You climb the stairs, hugging your sides as you refuse to touch the handrail leading up stairs.

There is a middle room with access granted without having to push open the door to gain entry. Your eyes scan the room’s interior, even with the dust and grime that bespeckle its surfaces, you can still see its beauty. Now, who does that remind you of? Your mind cheekly thinks before you banish it into the shadows of your brain, where you know it will force itself out with an immense stubbornness.

Despite the thunder booming in the distance frequently, you can’t help but admire the beauty of rain drops falling to the ground with a dainty grace only it holds. The sky continues to grow dimmer, only seeing the rain on your level and lower, no street lights flood the street to aid you in being able to see torrent from above. Jumping at another roar of sound from the storm, your heart begins to pick up its pace, so much you don’t realise Daryl joining you in the room.

“ scared? “

Turning around with such speed that leaves you surprised whiplash did not greet you, Daryl is left smirking at your reaction.

“ yeah, I hate these things. “ you respond, a bitterness coating each word heavily as you speak.

“ more than walkers? “ he questions you, as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

“ well, I suppose not that much .. “ another clap of thunder interrupts you, the rain beating harder and harder on the windows of the bedroom. “ can we talk about anything? This shit really grates on my nerves. “

“ what y’wanna talk about? “

Your mind stalls, with the previous thoughts that had been swirling in a state of disorder your draw a blank. A continuous thump downstairs interrupts your shrug, speeding down the stairs you realise a few walkers are trying to enter the property, of course their lack of intelligence fails to realise they’re throwing themselves into the walls and not the blocked doors.

“ shall we take them out? “ moving closer to the lengthy curtained window next to the door to get a better look, you can see three walkers hauling themselves mindlessly against the structure.

“ nah, the storm’ll get ‘em soon enough. “ he shakes his head softly, your mind taking note of the lack of proximity between your bodies as he repeats your action. “ no need to risk ourselves. “

“ wouldn’t be the first time you’ve risked your life. “

“ s’nothin. “ he contradicts gruffly, wiping a finger across his nose at your words. He truly doesn’t view it as that, refusing to think of it as risking his life. To Daryl, it doesn’t feel like risking everything to help the people around him, it’s not something he can find the words to explain but all he knows if there’s a chance, he would do it again and again.

“ Daryl Dixon, so humble. “ you speak warmly with a gentle smile threading itself into your features. “ you need to give yourself more credit. “

“ stop. “

“ you’re as brave as anyone in the group. I’d say braver than Rick. “ you joke, setting yourself from the entryway to the sitting room. “ although, if I had to choose you and Carol .. I’m sorry, but Carol every time! “

“ damn woman frightens me. “

Laughter light in weight dances airily between you with an elegance in its movement. For even a fraction of a second you forget that there are walkers that are itching to break through into the property, that there’s an angry storm that threatens to demolish whatever stands in its path, because right now it’s only you both here and now in this one room.

“ she’s come a long way. “ you agree, pulling a lone chocolate bar from your bag. Your favourite and you’re thanking the universe that it hasn’t spoiled yet. Turns out all these preservatives and chemicals have some use after all you note to yourself as half is offered to the man standing across from you.

“ so have ‘yuh. “ he acknowledges, taking the broken half of the candy from you.

“ I think we all have to be honest. I don’t think any one of us are the people we used to be. “

“ now who’s humble? “ Daryl asks, his tone light in relaxed merriment. He’d long since taken note of the transformation you’d gone through, he’s never seen you so strong as a person before.

“ don’t you turn this round on me, Dixon. “

The two of you fall silent, you direct your gaze to the window and the raindrops that litter the window pane’s surface. The harsh noises thundered no more, leaving a calm pitter of precipitation to fall with no interruption. From your position on the second couch, you wrap around a thin decorational blanket around your arms, leaning your cheek against the palm of your hand.

Pretending the world hasn’t gone to hell, that it’s just a normal evening where you’re admiring the scene before you. Skies that weep heavily is what the Georgian greenery has been calling out for, especially since the warmer temperatures have returned in full force. Switching your line of sight to Daryl, you feel a mellowness in the pit of your stomach as you watch him fondly. You can’t be sure if it’s the lack of distractions or eyes from your group, but you feel a miniscule spark of confidence within your confines.

“ come sit down, you can relax for a bit. “ you call, trying to convince him lightly. Your hand moves to pat the seat next to you.

“ can’t relax in this world. “ despite the disagreement in his words he does move towards your position on the plush seat.

“ it doesn’t mean we can’t make it. Otherwise we’d be burnt out, I’d hate to see that happen to you. “ You divulge as you reply to him, little inklings of hope in your tone.

“ y’don’t gotta worry ‘bout me. “

“ but I do, Daryl. “ you groan as a dull glumness contorts your features into something new. “ I mean, the lengths you go to .. you scare me to death. “

“ don’t be dumb. “ Daryl warns lowly as he shakes his head, few have shared their vulnerability with him. Perhaps only Carol, his mind can’t wrap itself around the fact that people genuinely care for him. Growing up, he’d been taught of it as a weakness. Something that should not exist, no one cared when he went missing for a short while as a child, and now having people who show him the opposite? It leaves a strange feeling to settle within his heart.

“ please, I need to tell you. I mean, I might not even be here tomorrow. “

“ nah, don’t say that. Y’will. “ he argues, he doesn’t even want to entertain the notion of not seeing you even for a day ⏤ let alone forever.

Truthfully, you’d not been particularly close. He understands it now, he pushed everyone away wherever he had the chance to. But after the downfall of the farm? You wouldn’t let up in trying to forge bonds that could rival even the strongest of metals. You had no idea, but he’d overheard you talking to Beth one day. When you said you didn’t want to be afraid of living, to have something worth dying for. That struck him deep.

“ neither you or I can guarantee that. Now, call me selfish but I can’t die with what ifs in my brain. “ you explain, you know it’s probably selfish to announce any kind of fondness for a person nowadays, because you can be ripped from their existence without any kind of announcement. But if you were to depart from the realm of the living, you’d want to have affectionate memories to experience and for them to look back on.

“ what y’sayin? “

Your eyes well up in frustration, whether it’s over the way you find the words are hiding beneath your tongue like cowards under the cloak of night or over the fact that you have begun this topic of conversation, backing yourself into a corner. There’s so much you want to say but how you should is not coming easy. Eloquence in your words is something you find yourself yearning for with all of your being should it bring you a happy ending to this discussion.

This isn’t a fairytale, there’s no happy or bad endings in real life you sorely think. There’s just reality, and the conclusions for that are neither black or white.

Fingertips grip the roots of your hair for a fleeting moment before letting go as if you’d never clutched them in exasperation at all.

Shutting your eyes so hard they hurt, you muster up the courage to speak the truth you’ve locked away in your heart, allowing it the light it has been deprived of for so long.

“ Daryl, I ⏤ “ your voice shuts off with a painful sound, sighing as if to psych yourself up. “ I feel more for you than I probably should. “

When Daryl says nothing, you open your eyes. Your entire being preparing yourself for the worse answer, this moment may hurt now but the pain will lessen. At least your soul feels lighter with the hidden information no longer chained to it as a burden, no longer will it have to be weighed down by its mass.

“ I know it’s probably not what you want to hear, but I couldn’t keep it in any longer. “

“ who said I didn’t wanna hear? “

“ ⏤ what ? “ you question, your brows falling lower as you squint in disbelief. You wonder if your brain is forming a false memory to protect itself later on.

“ y’don’t nothin’ to do with me though. “ he hesitates, the automatic response to push away anything good that comes his way to the furthest reaches. “ nothin’ but trouble. “

A sorrowful smile full of grief clouds your features, your unshed tears threaten to fall. If only he could see himself from your point of view, he doesn’t see just how admirable of a human being he is. Yes, he has his flaws but who doesn’t? In all of humanity, you don’t think there has ever been a perfect person, but it’s how they approach their downsides that shows the peak of their humanity, that they don’t let the darkness fester in their heart, to poison their soul into becoming a shell of a kind hearted person. That shows the strength of their character.

Daryl? You feel honoured to have been a first hand witness to see him turn from a hot ball of anger to a softer, kinder soul.

“ Daryl, you really don’t see what I do.” you forsake everything, leaning forwards and laying your hands across his. Taking in the immense warmth from them. “ That? It hurts me, because you’re rather amazing. “

Saying nothing, Daryl looks down at your intertwined hands. He wants the chance that’s being offered, though the fear of being the one who poisons everything he lays his touch upon settles heavily on his shoulder. No one has come out unscarred when dealing with a member of the Dixon family, his family tree being nothing more than toxic, with weeds that wrap around the limbs of the poor fool who got involved with them, as they drag them to their lowly depths. He doesn’t know how to let go of the past and for this he continues to pay, with the high price being his happiness in the present world. No response leaves his lips, for the first time in a long time he doesn’t know what to say, while knowing what he wants to say. It’s not until he feels arms wrapped around the top of his shoulders is he brought back down to Earth, a shudder of a breath is released from him as he realises what is going on. The action is reciprocated in earnest, you’re full of gratitude that he’s accepting your comfort ⏤ knowing it could have been a gamble of a decision, a fifty fifty chance of him reacting negatively or positively. You, too, draw comfort from the position you both find yourself, clutching the other. Hope dawns on your heart, knowing Daryl is not a particularly affectionate man. This means a lot, for it’s a leap for you both.

“ thank you. “ he whispers in the night. You know that this is the start of something new.

#daryl dixon imagine #daryl dixon x reader #daryl x reader #daryl dixon oneshot #daryl imagine #twd imagine #the walking dead imagine #twd oneshot #daryl oneshot

66 notes · View notes

xesotericconundrumx · 3 years

Text

Episode 100: The Woods

CONTENT WARNING: Suicide, Loneliness, Abandonment, Death

This is a story about an escape and a story about a girl. This is a story about desolation in loneliness.

There is a back road highway. One road heads north and the other south; and it goes on for miles and miles. And the highway like others is littered with billboards, and agendas far from holy. They scream out with words like “repent or find hell, confess and be saved, perish in the flames, god, he’ll get ya, he’s always watching.” They tower in a never ending sea of tall grass and road. It feels like they are the only thing to look at until they become less and less frequent. Suddenly those billboards are traded for houses hidden among rolling hills of green and gold. In the mornings the warm golden hue of the sun drenches the grass waves. The same sun blinds drivers as they move down those one way streets. The hills begin far off until suddenly they are surrounding the road. The rocks are jagged and looming with each curve of the road and they only seem to become more threatening when the sun sets. But during the day the sun illuminates driveways and houses, turns and white lines. Some houses are flat on the ground, surrounded by broken trees, and run down barns. Some houses sit on the edge of the hills, and seem as if they’re floating, but also as if one strong wind could collapse the foundation. Everyone is a neighbor, they all know each other and they know that there are things you simply avoid. Most do. The town keeps to itself, people drive through without a second thought, it’s so easy. Press on forward and its another town and other and other until the city skyline peeks over the once fascinating hills. But in that town everyone knows what to avoid.

There is a sign that reads “ROAD ENDS”. The white fence that was supposed to keep trespassers out did little more than offer a reminder that the property was private, other than that it was easy to jump the decrepit fence. The road was worn in, tire tracks were imprinted in the dirt, all the same. A curve as people turned confused by where the GPS was taking them. There were legends about what was just beyond the fence, the house that stood there, the land it was on. Some talked about a witch, some talked about families who never stayed more than a year because something wasn’t right. And some said it was simply abandoned. It was an easy way to scare children so they wouldn’t sneak out at night. It wasn’t the house that bothered many, it was what lay beyond. Nobody talked about what was beyond that house. Just past the fence and passed the house was the edge of untrailed land. Walk a little further and the trees became dense and light scarce. In the day time it wasn’t too ominous, you could see pretty far in. At dusk it was normal to see kids with false bravery lingering just around the house. But after dark everyone simply agreed that you just never walked near that property, that you never stepped beyond that fence, that you never entered the doorway or that you never let yourself get too close to those trees. Any sound that came from over there was nothing but a trick of the mind, an explained noise from the neighbors, the tv, the radio anything but that area. So when the neighbors watched her leave the house sobbing, watched as the door slammed shut behind her and watched as drove to the fence and get out they did their neighborly duties, albit half-heartedly.

“It’s getting dark, should be heading home.” “Get out of here.” And then nothing. The silence was the worst. She looked behind her, and no one came to her, all alone and the sun slowly burning out. She should have left. But after everything that happened; the disappointment she turned out to be, the mess up, the angry little girl she was then, the broken woman she was now, childish fears were nothing against the unrelenting desolation of adult terror. Looking up the sky was velvet blue, the stars soft and voyerstic. She blinked back more tears and felt a numbness wash over her. What did it matter anyways? Knowing her answer was far more devastating than she’d like to think about. She climbed over the fence. The tall grass scratched against her legs and she waded in that sea of green until she passed the house, empty, another disappointment. She took in the abandoned house, the broken windows and the porach that looked like one step would have done it. It was just an old house. It was just abandoned. There wasn’t anything scary or haunted about it. The town was scared of something that didn’t exist and it was pointless in the grand scheme of it all. So she pressed on. Walking a little further she stopped at the edge of the woods. For one moment she looked behind her, that house looming in the background with nothing special about it. It still became a legend. For one small moment she thought about going back but she moved forward. It was stupid to walk in the woods alone and even worse to walk alone at night but part of her didn’t care. She wanted to rot among the trees, lay on the ground and simply sink into the cool, unremarkable dirt. Fingers brushed along the trunks of trees. She just kept walking. The air was utterly still, suffocating. Her boots pressed into the wet earth and she was sure that if she did indeed turn around her footprints would leave her back to the opening. The moon was high in the sky, her only light source in the woods and the only reason she saw the path.

There was a clearing, treaded out too evenly to be made by anything but people. Looking back for only a moment she made the small step forward to follow this new path. She walked for about a mile until she reached an end. Standing in the middle of the forest was a church. It was once white but the wood was chipped and gone in various places, sun faded and decaying.. The roof was brown and had a hole at the very top, rotting wood its defining feature. She approached with reckless footsteps and hesitant twitching fingers. Her faith was nonexistent but there was a calmness that immediately fell upon her.

Growing up she was warned about sounds in the woods, not always being what they seemed. She was warned about staircases that went nowhere and she was warned about how your eyes would play tricks on you. But it was always empty churches that people begged you to never step foot in, something about the soullessness and the godless creatures that lived in them. She never believed in those stories, nor did she ever think it was something she would ever have to deal with. But those were stories to keep children out of the woods, out of places where they didn’t belong. She wasn’t scared of the woods, she wasn’t scared of the horrors that filled ghost stories. So she walked. As she approached the door the handle was the most intantact thing about the outside. Pulling the handle the door creaked open. The inside looked untouched, pews made of wood and the altar undisturbed. Looking at the bowls of water she noticed how still it was. Even with the soft wind now pushing her through the door the water remained heavy and unmoving. There was no reflection to see just murky water, unholy and unnerving. As she walked the floorboards moaned with agony, they filled the walls making the empty church loud. No matter how delicately she walked she could not escape that noise. Fingers danced along the pews, smooth and still glossy. Her eyes glanced around until they came upon a figure shrouded by shadow, mumbling prayers under their breath. Her brow furrowed, had they been there when she entered, was this church still in use? Confused. Rules of abandoned churches, the stories from so long ago ran through her head, something about not approaching a person praying but she didn’t care about those rules. They held no merit. She started walking but stopped. She felt a hand on the back of her neck, hot breath making arms shake. She wanted to turn around but every fiber in her being told her not to. Her heart started to race ever so slightly.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw something move, she blinked. It was nothing. Just her eyes playing tricks on her. Her hand touched her pocket, her lighter wouldn’t be much help but it would be something. However looking around she realized one wrong move and her small lighter could set the whole thing on fire. Focusing back on the front of the church the figure was gone. The sound of prayers replaced by the sound of an organ, soft and faint. The girl moved and sat down in one of the pews. Her eyes filled with tears, warm and filled with self pity they fell down her face. She reached up fingers brushing away the unexpected sadness. Reaching out for the hymnal she thought maybe the words would help her focus but she noticed the words were all wrong, she couldn’t figure out the language, just words on a page with no meaning to her. Knuckles cracking she moved her hands back to her lap.

What was she doing here? Running away from her problems again. Again. It’s what she always did. Avoided her problems, but it was so much easier then having to deal with every single fear that resided in her. And what if those problems could go away? What if she could go away. Disappear into nothingness, fade slowly into a memory, rearrange into something that was more pleasant then the real thing. They would be so much happier that way, constructing her into what they wanted her to be. Her hands dropped to the pews clenching the edge shaking with possibility. Thoughts raced through her head. And then it hit her. Maybe she could abandon them. Finally people would stop leaving her and she could show them how it felt. HOw the feeling of loneliness slowly suffocated her. How every bit of her anger and sadness stemmed from those she trusted leaving her, they would know it. They would know how much it destroyed her and they would finally understand….

But…

No….

How could she

Could...No.

“And why not?” Her head jerked up at the sound of a voice, soft and familiar. Now she was hearing voices, it must have been the wind, the trees rustling making a noise that sounded like words, of course that’s what it was. Their was no one here….

The figure.

Looking up she half expected to see that figure again, but their was nothing. So her eyes were playing tricks on her and now she was hearing things. It was time to go. She didn’t want to stay out here really, she just needed to figure out her head. Moving out of the pew her head turned towards the sanctuary and she caught a glimpse of a figure again. Were they always there? Who was it. Walking over she was careful not to make noise as to not startle them.

“You could do it.”

The breath was knocked out of her and she stopped in her tracks. It was just in her head, that’s what it was. She was tired and distraught and that was all this was.

“You could do it and then we’d be together again, you’d never have to be alone. I hate to see you this way.” The voice sounded like a memory, different parts of moments that were so long ago. “What?” She asked quietly.

The voice sounded as if they smiled. “We’d be happy here. I’d be happy here with you. Wouldn’t you like that?”

She was about to answer when another voice spoke up. “I would never leave you again, I can finally make that promise”

“Come up to the sanctuary, if you come here it’ll all be better. The figure she saw earlier was now two, standing at that sanctuary, arms opening wide, hands beckoning her to move close and close.

All would be better. Would it all be better? How could they promise that, these voices she was so sure were in her head. But were they? Would she really tell herself these things? She paused, her feet stuck to the ground unsure of her own thoughts. Her chest rose and fell with quicking breath as she tried to rationalize what was going on. All would be better, all would be better if she just went away wouldn’t it. How tempting. She hated that it felt like a good idea, hated that she was letting it cross her mind. But after everything maybe all she wanted was to close her eyes and let it all go. She stood there, hand trembling at her side, maybe it was a good idea.

She looked up and brown eyes filled with unwanted tears and with quick blinks fell down dirty cheeks. Her lip quivered with the loss of words; everything she wanted to say stuck in her throat. She stood there in utter silence. The moon filled the room with a silver light and the softer of the two voices called out to her again. The voice was nearly serene like an ocean pulling against the sand, hypnotic and beckoning. With gentle footsteps she walked towards the shadow, the floorboard creaking under her footsteps. “Come with me.” the voice echoed around her, “You don’t have to worry about those feelings again. Not with me. If you just take my hand you won’t have to be alone and everything will be fine. We’ll just leave it all behind, no reason to let it weigh you down any longer. Remember how it was, it could be like that again.” Her hand reached out and she nodded. Maybe she did want this. She wanted to forget it all, leave it behind her, leave them all behind her.

“Up to the sanctuary you’re almost there. Don’t be nervous, it’s almost over. Look at me, nearly there. You don’t have to be scared. I will make sure it’s all better.” Even as the tears fell her lips turned into a small smile, she was filled with something else, her head danced with memories, happiness. It felt so real, so maybe it was. Maybe she just had to take these last steps and she’d leave it all behind. The floor creaked again as she moved closer.

The tears started to fall quickly now, her face stained and shaking breath turned into heaving. She stopped. After everything, after she had been through, after all they had been through she was just going to abandon them like everyone else….Her head started to turn. But what if? What if she made it worse, what if she went to that sanctuary and she tainted everything. They would resent her even more. They would blame her and then it would be all the worse, wouldn’t it. She could maybe do something else…. Her thoughts were interrupted.

“Don’t look back.” The voice almost snapped. She stumbled slightly. “Just keep coming this way. You’re almost there. Just a little bit more...” The soft whisper turned into something less than serene. Her hands dropped and she looked at the sanctuary, the moonlight shifting ever so slightly. Her head tilted. All the warmth from that moment suddenly left and she was standing in the cold, a rush of wind racing past her. Her eyes moved and caught sight of the rotting wood of the pews, was that always like that? The stained glass cracked, sharp edges of the colourful glass caked with something other than dirt. “Keep going.” The soft voice commanded. She turned towards the shadows, eyes widening with fear. “Don’t throw this away. It’s fine. It’s going to be fine, you’ll be happy again, you won’t have to worry about being outshined here. You’ll be the brightest, you’ll be loved. Don’t you want to be loved? Don't you want someone to always be there for you, don’t you want that, don’t you want to be more than this. Here you can be, here you can be my everything....”

The shadows started to surround her and whatever she felt before was replaced with a cold feeling. She looked back up at the sanctuary, the moonlight revealing the decaying nightmare. The walls peeling and the carpets stained with blood. The altar that once stood in the middle was now a crumbling mess of forgotten prayers, unheard confessions, it was sinking into the ground, the weight of sins dragging it to hell slowly and cruelly. Shaking her head she took a step back “It’s almost over….”

“Don’t be scared….”

Come on. You can have what you want....”

“Stay here. Come with me.” Her steps became faster and she started to turn around and she heard a sigh which made her stop. “Don’t make us….” The voice was apathetic now all the love and warmth that had been so carefully constructed fell into the truth. “No.” She mumbled. And then there was a sigh, “Aright.” She turned quickly. “You really are the stupid one aren’t you.”

Suddenly a hand gripped her throat and made her fall to her knees the creature squeezed slowly, fingers digging into her skin. She clawed against the arm, tears falling down her face as she tried to gasp for air but it was unrelenting. The other, the one who spoke so sweetly, loomed over as if it was waiting for it’s turn. “A disappointment. Down to your last breath you were never anything but disappointing.” Breaking from the grasp she inhaled as big a breath she could, coughing, gasping until one that loomed pushed her back down. Twisting on the floor she clawed against the rotting wood, begging to be let go of. “Why? Why did you have to look back?” The voice was exasperated. Her own anguished pleads filled the chapel and yet it was like they heard nothing. “What are you talking about?” Please just let me go back.”

The other made its way back to her, looming over her. All of her failures echoed, the sound filling the impossibly high ceilings. Every insecurity, every little thing made her feel broken. “What do you think is waiting for you back there? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. One by one they are going to find a reason to just leave. And you still want to endure that.” The creature reached down and stroked her hair, it was cold as if mimicking affection. “You really want to make them realize their mistakes. You know what to do. They’ll live with regret for the rest of their lives, they’ll wonder what they could have done to make it better, what they did wrong. And you can remind of each one of their transgressions, every single one, you never have to let them forget it. Come one. Why are you scared? Do it!” The sinister desperation was clear. “You know exactly what you need to do.” The other scoffed and let go. “It’s so sweet that you think she’ll be anything but a footnote in their stories. They’ve hurt you once and after a while you’ll simply just be an afterthought. They’ll abandon you one by one and it’ll be even worse. You’re fucked either way. Why not make it easier.” She sobbed under the weight of her fear, “Why does it matter?” They both spoke at once. Someone how she twisted herself out of the grasp and scrambled backwards, hands inches away from the sanctuary. “No.” She repeated. “You aren’t….” A laugh escaped the crueler of the two. “Aren’t what? We aren’t what? Tell us. Nobody cares what you think but go ahead and pretend we care.” Again her words were stuck in her throat. She turned and faced the decrepit sanctuary again. The moon shown high, it’s beams revealing the horrors. She sat there unable to move and she shook her head. The fearsome shadows spiny fingers ghosted against her throat again. “No surprises there.” The other was soft again. “It’s better this way.” She looked up at empty walls and nodded. “It is.” Her focus was unmoving, staring up at her way out. Staring at her way to let it all go. And how easy it would be to simply end it there, to close her book and never finish the chapter.

“I know who you are.” The creatures hummed in curiosity. “Do you now. Do you know who we are, if you do then what’s stopping you.” The girl furrowed her brow and shook her head. “Because I’m not you.” She finally looked up and stared at the shadows directly. “I’ll never understand you. But I never knew you, so how could I. I blame you for a lot. And part of me knows you can’t help it. But part of me will just never understand . And if I keep trying to well what does it matter.” The air was thick, the moonlight shifting again. She was silent for a moment. “So fuck you.” She mumbled softly. “Fuck you both. Fuck you.”

She stood up. She stepped forward away from that wretched ending. Hot tears welled in her eyes, she shook her head. “I’m scared.” Her voice cracked, “and I’m tired. And I don’t care what you want from me. You don’t get a say in anything I do anymore. You get to watch me be a disappointment. You get to watch me fuck up everything. I want you to know just how much you play apart in every single one of those fuck up because they truly start with you.” The creatures stood up, their full height, menacing. “Oh really.”

She nodded. “Yeah. I know who you are and I’m not you. I’ll never be anything you want me to be again.”

Reaching into her pocket she pulled out her lighter. She played with it for a moment. “If I burn...so will you…” Eyes that were trained towards the ground finally looked up and she realized what horror she was dealing with. But she knew if they were anything else then what she saw getting out of her would be futile and she would be stuck in this hell, slowly turn into whatever was before her. Those weren’t the memories she wanted, She had to burn them away.

With a flick of her lighter she set the hymnal on fire and placed it in the pew. The silver moonlight and the golden flames reflected against her eyes. She backed away and climbed out of one of the broken windows, the glass scratching her skin. She walked over to the front of the church and looked at the two figures again. They were unfazed by the flames as the rotting church roared with the blaze. As the fire consumed the building they stood there, those creatures of her fears and failures and as the fire lit their faces she recognized them. The faces staring at her with such contempt and sorrow.. They would never leave her, never burn or get better. They would simply be there. She stared, tears falling down her eyes. The more sorrowful one of the two offered their hand, fingers too long for any human, it beckoned wordlessly. She was sure it was a trick of the flames, how the creature with the outstretched palm almost felt warm, a calling or beckoning type of warmth. The other spoke. “Why would you want to go back, back to a place where you are nothing but the dark side of the moon. No one to ever see, overshadowed by sun and stars, craters and meteors. You are cold and alone, desolate and not to be admired. Nobody cares. You are fools gold among diamonds, worthless and nothing to show for. Among them you are simply a nuisance, a frustration. You don’t bring them anything special, anything that would be noteworthy. Just another problem. You’ve always been a problem and will always be a problem.”

The girl nodded. “Yeah... .”

The creature was right. Right?

“I was? I wasn’t always.” She mumbled. “I could have been something.” The heat of the flames distracted her for a moment. “But what does it matter? It's not like either of you were there to fix that problem.” She smiled, the small sound of laughter finally bellowing around. The laugh grew louder until it echoed around her. “But if I stay then what is…” Her voice trailed off. “No. No. No more what ifs. Just this.” The flames continued to roar and she stood there letting the church be consumed by the flames. And when the smoke rose and the flames died out she finally exhaled. The moonlight dimmed and a cool blue tone took over the midnight sky. Dawn was coming. She turned on her heel and started walking away. She walked towards the forest and the trees became more dense she didn’t really know how to get back she was just walking. Her eyes became heavy though and she grew more and more tired with each step until she finally fell exhausted. Looking up the sky was turning pink and orange, Sunrise. She liked sunrise and something about this one was all the more brilliant. As the sun got higher and higher her eyes closed and she smiled.

#( && eliora jackson && )

2 notes · View notes

imaginedeux · 4 years

Text

Sixth Sense

Run, we need to get a way!

Guys run!

This isnt good, we need to get out of here and now!

LEAVE THEM ALONE!

Exploring places was something you had done since you were young, being the youngest and the only girl in your group of cousins, you wanted to show them you werent scared to explore abandoned places, or even haunted places. Your old home town was founded as an army base during the civil war and saw blood shed for the first give or take 100 years of its existence, which caused the places you and your cousins to explore to be haunted. Fast forward to present day, you no longer live in your hometown, but live in Santa Monica, California with a mundane job to pay for the overly expensive loft you were renting. You also had a small youtube channel, nothing too big, it was more of a way to record your adventures in California and a way for your parents to make sure you were okay. That is until you bumped into a very popular social media duo while they were trying to sneak into a ‘haunted’ location near where you lived. The warning you gave them, followed by a video by the duo a week later, caused them to contact you and to see if you wanted to join them for haunted location.

That was over a year ago, and now you regularly join them and TFIL for ‘haunted’ overnights. A majority of which were legit, you could feel the presence of spirits before you stepped foot on the property, while others were just people being a-holes and scaring you guys off. Thats one of the reasons why you joined the duo and TFIL for those adventures, you were able to sense a spirit near by, and were able to warn them when they went too far. This has been something you’ve been able to do since you were a kid, and wasnt an unfamiliar feeling either. That is, until Colby told you that he and Sam wanted you to join them for a haunted overnight in London, with Cory and Jake in tow as well.

With your luggage in tow and your new passport in hand, you and the guys were off to London for Sam and Colby’s new series. What they didnt tell you was, there were two locations you would be visiting, possible a third, but two for sure. The first location did a number on you and the group, the experts told you the stories associated with the room Sam and Colby and with the floor the five of you were staying on. Everything that went on during the night, and after the group went to their rooms for the night, shook the group, you especially. You weren’t one to have nightmares much less ones you could remember after waking up, but the dream you had stayed with you as you traveled to the second location.

“Hey, you okay (Y/N)? You look like you’ve been in a trance since we left the hotel.” Corey, who was sitting next to you in the backseat asked you as you looked down at your hands.

“Just thinking about what happened last night.” You murmured, your nightmare coming back to mind. “I didn’t want to freak you guys out while we were checking out, but I had a really intense nightmare that included all of us.”

“Nightmare? I thought you said you didnt have them?” Colby asked, looking at you through the rear view mirror, his eyes shifting from you to the road.

“Thats the thing I dont. I havent had one since I was a kid. It was after you came knocking at my door asking if I had called you guys, or even asking if I had left a voice mail. I fell asleep for an hour and I woke up from what felt like a never ending nightmare, I wasnt going to let myself go back to sleep so I sketched out what was happening in my dream. The only thing I could draw was the church, and its surroundings.” You explained grabbing your bag taking out a notebook you carried around with you, flipping it to the page where you drew the church. “The thing that stuck out the most was the graveyard that surrounded it, and the forest.”

~~~

“Hey (Y/N), didnt you say you had a nightmare about a church?” Jake asked from your right, shaking you awake from your short slumber.

“Y-Yeah, what about it?” You yawned, rubbing the sleep from your eyes, looking straight out the windshield. Both Sam and Colby were looking out to the left of the car, their camera recording on the dash straight at you.

“And that the church was surrounded by a graveyard?” Sam said this time, from his seat in the passenger side.

“Yeah, what of...” You started before you looked out the window to your left. “No, there’s no fucking way.”

“(Y/N) did you know what church we were going to today?” Colby asked, turning to look at you face to face. “Because that’s exactly the church you drew.”

“NO! You guys wouldn’t even tell us the name of the church! How was is supposed to know THIS was the church we were going to!?” You questioned the blue eyed brunette in the driver seat.

“I dont like this you guys.” Corey said from your left. “(Y/N) had a nightmare, a NIGHTMARE, about this place. And she apparently doesn’t even have nightmares, and she has one about this place, A PLACE SHE’S NEVER EVEN SEEN BEFORE!”

“Guys, off camera (Y/N) told us she had a nightmare, note she hasn’t had a nightmare since she was a kid, about us at a church surrounded by a graveyard last night after the phone call. She also said she drew out the church, a way to keep her awake until we had to check out this morning.” Sam explained to the viewers what was going on. “And this is what she drew, without knowing what church we were going to.” Sam grabbed the notebook from you and showed it to the camera.

“Which is the exact church we’re staying in tonight.”

~~~

“Okay, this is getting freaky. (Y/N), has called everything thats happened so far, from the crows, to the teeth on the graves. I dont think staying here is a good idea guys.” Jake said as the sun started to set over the woods at the back end of the church, giving the group less light to see over the graveyard. “She even called the fucking tombs in the church!”

“Come on Jake, shes also said by this time in her dream shit hit the fan, and we’re okay, we already have our blankets for the night, the camera is ready to record us for the rest of the night to make sure we capture everything we can. We’ll be okay.” Colby said trying to calm down the other skeptic in the group. You said nothing as Jake argued with Sam and Colby, all you wanted to do was get out of the place as fast as you could, and the only way to do that is go to sleep. Being unconscious was better than feeling on edge the entire time.

“What else did you dream (Y/N), was this in the dream too?” Corey asked taking a seat next to you, your back to the three other guys as you faced the front of the church.

“No, thats why I want to leave. With the dream I was able to pin point what not to do but now that its nothing like it, i’m scared that something might happen.” You confessed, still looking towards the front of the church, the tombs covered by darkness. “I’m not able to stop something bad from happening if something does go wrong.”

“I understand the feeling. Especially after what my little brother texted me yesterday, I feel like I cant help him if I dont know what im going up against. And its scary.” Corey whispered as the yelling behind the two of you started to quiet down.

“We’ve both had things happen since our childhood. You’ve been seeing things since your family used the Ouija board, and I’ve had the feelings since before I could remember. Believe it or not my mom once told me she could feel spirits when she was my age, and so did my grandma. They’ve both told me that they were able to feel spirits most of their lives, but they cant anymore.”

“What stopped them? Maybe you can do that and you wont be able to feel the spirits anymore!”

“I dont think it’s that simple.” You laughed. The dry laugh caught the attention of the three other guys in the church as well. “They stopped being able to feel spirits the day I was born.”

“Hey guys, I think this is a good time to head to bed.” Sam said this time, the harsh LED light illuminating dark half of the church. “The faster we get to sleep, the faster we’ll be out of here.”

~~~

Sam! Colby! Guys! Get back to the Church now! Jake, Corey, i’m going to go and get them, stay here.

You’re too late

No! No i’m not! Sam! Colby!

You cant protect them

I WILL!

The air was finally able to reach your lungs as you shot up from your make shift bunk. The cold air surrounding you caused steam to radiate of your person, and your deep exhales to create puffs of smoke in front of you. You looked around to see if your sudden movements woke anyone else up, thats when your heart dropped. Before you went to bed, Sam took the bunk closest to the door and Colby took the one to your left while Corey and Jake took the ones to your right. Both Sam and Colby’s bunks were empty.

“No, no, no, no!” You mentally yelled pulling on your shoes as fast and as quietly as you could, not wanting to wake the two other boys. As you got up, you heard one of the bunks shift and a loud gasp come from behind you.

“Did, did you shake me awake!?” Jake asked, his eyes wide. “(Y/N), did you shake me awake?!”

“No. Now quiet down.” You tried shooshing Jake. “You’ll wake Corey if you’re too loud.”

“Too late for that, what’s going on? Where’s Sam and Colby?” Corey asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Jake are you okay man? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I woke up because it felt someone was shaking me awake! Then when I got up (Y/N) was getting up from her bunk.” Jake explained getting up from his bunk and flipping it over. “Where are Sam and Colby? Did they do this?”

“I dont know! When I woke up they were gone, thats when I got up and you woke up. Stay here, I’m going to look for them.” You said grabbing one of the extra flashlights.

“No! We’re not going to let you go out there on your own.” Corey said slipping on his shoes. “Whoa, wait what happened to you? You’ve soaked through your shirt.” Thats when you realized your sweater was completely soaked with sweat from the nightmare you were having before you woke up.

“My nightmare. No.” You whispered before you bolted towards the door of the church. “You guys stay here, I think somethings gonna happen, something bad. I have a big bag of salt in my backpack, use it to make a circle around the bunk area, and DONT leave it. Not for me, not for anyone okay? Unless you see us in person, dont believe your ears, okay?”

You stood at the door, the gates open behind you, leading out into the grave yard, Corey and Jake confused. “Things are going to get bad.”

“Bad? What do you mean bad? (Y/N), you can’t leave us in the dark, especially after everything thats been happening!” Jake yelled walking towards you.

“FINE!” You screamed back. This was probably the first time they heard you raise your voice in anger. “Fine! When I was younger, right when I was realizing that could feel spirits, a demon attacked one of my cousins while we were exploring one of the old hospitals in the area. My other cousins all ran away, too scared to think of a way to get the demon away from them. I stepped in and the next thing I knew it was three weeks later and I was in the hospital. I was in a coma after detaching the demon from my cousin who was in a coma as well. The thing is while I was in the coma I had a never ending nightmare.”

“What does that have to do with us!?”

“Because! I was having nightmares of this place! Thats why when I woke up today I was repeating the nightmare from all those years ago! Before tonight I had no recollection of what happened to me and my cousin, its almost as if it never happened. And because of the nightmare from yesterday and the eerie feeling from today, I was able to remember it. I texted one of my older cousins while we were out buying blankets and they said that it was true, but that the family promised not to bring it up to either of us. In my nightmare, from YEARS before I moved out to California, I had a nightmare of you four. I was trying to protect you guys, Sam and Colby. Now it’s actually happening, so I have to go and protect Sam and Colby.”

“Wait! Why do we have to stay here? If we go and look for them all together we might be able to find them faster!” Corey said this time, grabbing the camera from where Colby left it to record you all through the night.

“Because the safest place you can be is in this church. The salt circle will keep you extra protected, you coming with me will just put you in danger. Please, stay here. There’s still a couple of hours until sunrise, if we’re not back by then call the police.”

~~~

“SAM! What the hell are you doing man!” Colby yelled, finally catching up with his blonde best friend. “You cant just get up and walk out of the church and into the creepy ass woods by yourself.”

“Sorry, I have the camera as a light so its not that bad, but I kept hearing things. I wasnt sure if it was from inside the church at first, then I heard it outside.”

“What were you hearing? You could have woken one of us up. You cant be going out here by yourself.”

“SAM! COLBY!”

“Is that (Y/N)? What’s she doing up?” Colby thought pointing the flashlight he had towards the direction of your voice. As Colby was about to call out to you, the atmosphere around them grew heavy. “Whoa, did you feel that Sam?”

“Yeah-yeah, it felt like the air got heavy. I think its time for us to get back to the church Colby.” Sam said this time, the camera facing Colby, the look of fear obvious on their faces. “Wait, where’s (Y/N)? I swore I heard her voice!”

“SAM! COLBY! Jesus, there you guys are!” You yelled, running up to them from the woodwork. “We need to get back to the church now!”

“We were about to head back, but why are you soaked? What happened?” Before you could respond to Colby’s frantic questions, an unearthly screech cut you off. The three of you fell to the ground, hands covering your ears, the camera in Sam’s hand fell, the light on it flickering from the fall. “What the hell was that?!”

“We need to get back to the church now!” The crack in your voice scared the duo. For as long as they’ve known you, you’ve never been one to be scared by the spirits, but this was a different story. “Please, we need to get back to the church!”

Grabbing the camera, you pointed it at the duo in front of you, the light still flickering, but it was the only way to keep you in your line of sight. “I can’t lose sight of you guys, so please lets get back to Corey and Jake.”

“What’s going on (Y/N)? Why didnt you bring Corey and Jake with you?” Sam asked coming to a stop near the edge of the woods.

“Yeah, and did you feel that shift earlier? What was that?” Colby asking this time.

“There’s no time for questions, we need to get to safety, please!” You were pleading with them at this point. The sinking feeling in your stomach was getting worse. “Please we need to leave!”

“No! Not until you tell us whats going on!” Colby yelled at you. It didn’t phase you, it was a high stress situation and yelling in normal. Taking in a deep breath you told the duo what you told Jake and Corey back at the church. You could tell as you were reciting the story that they knew this was serious.

“So, we need to get the hell out of here and back to the church where its sa-” You started before the light on the camera Sam still had in his hand, went out.

There’s no place to run, you were smart to leave the other two in the church, but these two are mine.

“Don’t you dare get near them! I’m the one you want! I’ve beat you once before, I can beat you again!” You yelled at nothing. “Whatever you guys do, do not talk to him. You guys acknowledging him will only make it worse.”

“Right.” The pair whispered. As your eyes adjusted to the darkness, you grabbed onto Sam and Colby, “We need to get back to the church, follow me.”

Not so fast (Y/N), you dont think it’ll be that easy?

“Sam!” A familiar voice yelled from the darkness. “Sam please help me I’m hurt!”

“Ka-” Sam started before you let go of Colby to slam your hand on Sam’s mouth.

“It’s a trick! Don’t trust your ears, they’ll trick you.” You explained. “Same goes for you Colby, no matter who you hear, it doesn’t matter who, if you cant see them, do not trust the voices you hear.” You grabbed Colby’s jacket, pulling him and Sam back towards the church. “I’m sorry you guys.”

“Why are you apologizing? It’s not your fault this is happening, you didn’t know that this thing was going to come back.”

“Yeah, if anything its our fault that we didnt listen to you, after you were predicting everything that happened.”

They’re right, they should have listened to you, just like your cousins should have listened to you when this happened all those years ago.

“We were children! You had the balls to attack children! That just shows you how weak of a demon you are! It makes you even weaker when a child was able to exercise you from a the body of another child!” You yelled into the darkness. “You thought you were powerful because of the place we were in! Your worshipers used the hospital as your portal! You were using my cousin as a scapegoat!”

You werent strong enough to get rid of me the first time. What makes you think you’ll be strong enough now?

As the demon started to laugh, the ground shaking with every cackle, the moon showed itself from behind the clouds, the graveyard lit up with the light. In the middle of all the graves was a massive being, a mix of human and a crow.

“You were always here weren’t you? You were hiding among the crows.” You said letting go of the duo. You faced this demon once before and lived, you can face him again.

“(Y/N)! Don’t!” Colby whispered as you walked towards the demon. “We need to get to the church!”

“Come on, (Y/N)!”

“No. Not anymore, if I dont get rid of him now, I’ll have to live with this asshole following me!”

Oh, I’m not planning on letting you live, (Y/N). You arent going to live to see tomorrow.

“And im not letting you go, Raum.” With that the creature, screeched at you, stepping back away from you. “I’m no priest, or exorcist but I’ve researched how to get rid of demons!”

“(Y/N) what are you doing!?” Colby ran up to you, blocking your path to the demon. “We need to get back to the church! We’ll be safe their.”

“Sam, grab Colby and haul ass towards the Church, Jake and Corey will be waiting where the bunks are in a circle of salt, that’s where you’ll be the safest. If I don’t make it back by sunrise, I’ve already told Corey and Jake to call the police. Hell maybe call a priest too.” You explained looking between the two again. “Please, im begging you.”

“Come on Colby.” Sam whispered, grabbing onto Colby’s arm pulling him towards the church. “(Y/N) can do this, we’ll only hold her back if we’re here.”

~~~

“Jake it’s been hours and they still aren’t back, and what the hell was that sound!?” Corey asked the only other person in the circle. The yelling and screeching that came from outside the church were something out of a horror movie, it didnt seem real.

“I dont know, and all the cameras cut out when the first screech happened and they havent been able to record since then. Even the cell service has been shit.” Jake groaned sitting on one of the bunks in the middle of the salt circle they drew after (Y/N) ran out the church.

“What if it doesnt come back by sun up? How are we going to get help?”

“We’ll just go to someone’s ho-” Jake started before the doors to church doors slammed open. “Sam? Colby? Is that really you?” Before they could answer Jake grabbed the nearest bottle of holy water and sprayed the duo as they walked towards the bunks.

“Really Jake? Was that necessary?” Colby asked shaking off the cold holy water.

“Sorry, had to make sure. Hey, where’s (Y/N)? And what was that sound from earlier?” Jake asked realizing the person who forced them to stay in the church wasn’t with the duo.

“(Y/N) stayed outside. Remember when she told us when she was younger how her cousin was attacked by a demon back in her hometown?” Colby asked looking between Corey and Jake as the screeching continued in the graveyard, scaring the group.

“Well apparently the thing out there is the same one from her childhood. She told us to come to the church and wait for either her or for the sun to come up. And for us not to trust our ears, that the thing out there might try to get us outside, he almost got me by sounding like Kat.” Sam explained as more screeching and roars sounded from the darkness outside. “And to add salt to the wound, I dropped the camera when the first roar happened so I wasn’t able to get any footage of the demon outside.”

“Right when the first roar happened all the cameras in here went out too. There’s still battery in all of them but they wont record. And, WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU LEFT HER OUT THERE?” Corey yelled at the best friends. “You’re letting her go against that thing ALONE!?”

“We had to! If we stayed there the demon would have used us against (Y/N), and she’s gone against it before and lived, shes got this in the ba-” Sam started before another roar cut him off, the lights in the church flickering as a scream joined the roar.

“COLBY, I CAN’T DO THIS ALONE!”

“Its not (Y/N)! Dont listen to it!” Sam grabbed Colby before he sprinted out the door. “You know for a fact she wouldn’t call out for us! In any of our investigations, has she ever called for us? No. Don’t listen to him!”

“COLBY HELP! PLEASE I CANT BEAT HIM!”

“COLBY YOU BETTER NOT! DONT YOU DARE LISTEN TO HIM!”

“See that’s (Y/N)!” Sam said tugging Colby back into the salt circle, “We have to trust in her.”

~~~

“It’s been two weeks since the church and we haven’t told the fans what happened, what are we going to do?” Sam asked looking up at Colby, from his seat next to (Y/N). It had been two weeks since the church incident, and they were still in the UK. The night took a turn for the worst when the sun had finally come up and (Y/N) hadn’t made it back to the church. It took almost two days to find her somewhere in the middle of the wood miles away from the church the group stayed at.

“I know they deserve answers, but our main concern is to make sure (Y/N) is alright. We already contacted her family and they’re aware, which is the most important part. Maybe us staying and Corey and Jake leaving was a bad idea.” Colby muttered, pacing around the hospital room. (Y/N) hadn’t woken up from the coma she was found in almost two weeks prior, and it was concerning the boys. (Y/N)’s parents told the boys that the last time she was in a coma like this it lasted almost a month, and that the boys shouldn’t worry about (Y/N), shes stronger than she seems. “I wish (Y/N) would give us some sort of sign that shes okay.”

“Why does it feel like its out fault? Like if we hadn’t come to London none of this would have happened? Or what if we had stayed in the church? Maybe then we would have been back in LA planning our next adventure.” Sam whispered, rubbing his face with his palms.

“Damn it!” Colby finally yelled after a few minutes of silence. “Why the fuck did this happen to (Y/N)? What if we had stayed there? Maybe it would have been one of us instead of her! Fuck!”

“Quiet down please. We’re in a hospital for fuck sake.” The whisper caught the duo off guard. It was the small smile on the patience’s face that brought them to tears as they hugged the person on the hospital bed. “Okay, I can’t breath guys.”

“Wh-what? When did you wake up? How are you feeling? Do-do you need anything?” Colby asked as Sam ran out the room going to find a doctor or nurse.

“When you guys started to blame yourselves for what happened. Raum was going to come after me one day, it just chose the church because of all the spiritual energy that we were carrying from the hotel the night before.” You, explained before a doctor, nurse, and Sam ran into the room. It was a week later that the trio was on their way back to the States, when you noticed something.

“Hey Sam, Colby.” You started as you made your way across the London airport to your gate. You stopped and looked around, something was different.

“What’s up (Y/N)? Do you feel something?” Colby asked coming up to (Y/N)

“That’s the thing, I dont feel anything.” You said looking around the airport, every place you’ve ever visited had some sort of spirit lingering around. Good or evil you were able to feel them almost 80% of the time.

“What do you mean you don’t feel anything?” Sam asked the camera in his hand pointing at you and Colby. The three of you had agreed to release what footage you had onto their Youtube channel since you felt like their fans needed some sort of explanation. They just needed to film the last bits of them leaving London before they would do a sit down segment back in LA explaining what had happened at the church.

“I dont feel any spiritual presence, like any. It wouldn’t have bothered me but I had felt a presence when we first landed here. Now there’s nothing.” You said looking back at Sam and Colby. “Maybe me winning cost me my ability to feel spirits.” That statement became even more true when you landed back in LA and did a quick visit to places you knew were haunted, you couldn’t feel anything in any of the locations.

“Hey, maybe its a good thing? I mean people who have some sort of power are usually targeted by demons or evil spirits.” Sam said as the three of you walked up to the first place the three of you met.

“If it keeps you safe, maybe its a good thing that you lost your ability.” Colby said this time.

“But now I feel like I wont be able to protect you guys.” You said looking back at the best friends, tears welling up in her eyes.

“But, we’ll be able to protect you. When you would tell us to back off during an overnight we started to notice how certain things would happen around the time you would speak up. We’re able to tell if somethings going to happen because of all the times you brought it to our attention that something was wrong.” Colby said walking up to you, giving you a small smile. “Anything to protect you even if you dont have your sixth sense.”

#sam and colby fanfic #sam golbach #colby brock #sam golbach fanfic #colby brock fanfic #sam and colby AU #sam golbach AU #colby brock AU

54 notes · View notes

masquerade-story · 3 years

Text

Chapter 1 - Moving In

"Whose dumb idea was it to go camping like this anyway?" Grey grumbled, smacking away a tree branch that seemed determined to get friendly with his face.

Walking behind him, his twin sister Lillian rolled her eyes and poked the small of her brother's back. "Yours. It was your idea."

"Oh please Crystal! Please oh please might we go live at the haunted house in the woods where we'll certainly perish! I, Dorian Grey Duvall, swear on my sister's honor to let you protect me!" Rayne fluttered her eyelashes, lowering her voice to sound more like Dorian. She yanked the handcart she was dragging over a set of roots, careful to steady its contents before resuming her walk.

"Has to swear on my honor cuz he doesn't have any of his own left after the last time," Lillian snickered, while Grey pointedly ignored their teasing and continued clearing the overgrown path.

Bringing up the rear with a digital camera trained on everyone's back, Crystal grinned and panned the camera to take in the large, dense trees, and huge, leafy bushes. "For a haunted forest, it's actually pretty nice here. Ah, more meadow rue! Specifically thalictrum rochebrunianum, neat."

"Gesundheit," Rayne said, eliciting giggles from the group.

"The lacy one over there with the purple flowers," Crystal clarified. "There's some rue anemone and meadow rue 'splendide' around here too. Don't touch the white flowery plant up ahead by the way, it's giant hogweed. The leaves and sap can give you phytophotodermatitis, making you blister up in the sun."

"Bro, how do you remember any of this? And as for you, you're a scary bitch," Grey cringed away from the plant in question while swearing at it, narrowing his eyes suspiciously at its pretty little flower clusters.

"I read a lot."

"Me too, doesn't mean I absorb any of it! I spent like six hours on Wikipedia the other day, don't even fully remember what I looked up."

"Was it about The Hobbit or Merlin? Cuz that's all you ever look up."

"Look, Lils. I know I'm walking in the front and all, but you don't need to stab me in the back like that. Also sometimes it's Pacific Rim, thank you very much."

"Was it Pacific Rim?"

"No it was The Hobbit."

The group talking and laughing were the self-proclaimed 'Fairy Rock' band Aos Sí Echtrae. Each of them wore a hiking backpack containing personal items, while Rayne also tugged along a sturdy handcart holding supplies and instruments with ease - a drum kit, harp, bouzouki, and keyboard piled up alongside some smaller instruments and the camping stuff Crystal insisted they bring along.

Though their banter was light-hearted and comfortable, they took their excursion very seriously. After all, they'd temporarily rented a locally infamous haunted house to use for a music video! It was a large investment, but they'd become popular online and had enough supporters that they were able to fulfill one of their member's dearest dreams.

Dorian Duvall, or Grey as he preferred to be called by friends, and his twin sister Lillian Duvall played bouzouki and keyboard respectively. Both had the same willowy stature, button nose and almond eye shape, but despite their similarities they both gave off very different impressions. Where Lillian looked soft and gentle, with large doe-like green eyes, and a kind smile, Grey had a mischievous glint in his hazel eyes and a roguish grin that he utilized with careless abandon. Lillian wore her sleek black hair long and loose, falling down past her waist and kept away from her face by a cloth headband, while Grey wore his hair in a high ponytail decorated with small braids.

As the one who absolutely loved haunted houses and anything spooky, it was Grey's idea to film on location for their new Halloween-themed album, Masquerade. Though it was the middle of July, they were hoping to get everything ready for an September promotional release before the album dropped in October, and so hurriedly set up for their video shoot in order to give themselves plenty of time for editing.

All four of them worked together to compose their music, write lyrics, and design stage costumes as well as fan merchandise. They also lacked anything resembling a lead vocalist, taking turns depending on what sound worked best with each song, and preferring harmonies rather than solos.

"Ray! There's a log up here!" Grey called out suddenly, kicking the fallen tree blocking their path. Rayne grunted acknowledgment, and shuffled around Lillian to help move the obstruction.

Rayne Rose played the drums, and also did a majority of the heavy lifting due to being the strongest person present in any room that didn't involve professional weightlifters. Her muscular arms were covered with watercolor flower tattoos, which she proudly showed off by refusing to wear any shirt with sleeves. Her curly hair, dyed a gradient of aqua blue and purple, was cropped close to her face for summertime weather. The short style purposefully revealed ear gauges and more than a dozen total ear piercings, matching the many piercings on her brows, lips, and nose.

The twins had fresh yet roguish charms, while Rayne had a more heroic air with heavy brows and an intense black gaze over lips naturally curved into an amused smirk. She dusted off her hands after tossing the log aside with little effort, while Grey panted for breath from the exertion of merely helping her lift it. Crystal, for her part, made sure to get the whole thing on video for future blackmail purposes.

Crystal Rose, Rayne's older sister, played the harp. Unlike her athletic and statuesque sister, Crystal was on the soft and plump side. Her long, wavy blonde hair was pulled back into a messy twist to keep it off her neck, the ends still pink from the last time she dyed it. Her face was round and childish, with bluish gray eyes above an upturned nose and broad cheekbones, unremarkable features made more charming by her innate overwhelming charisma and natural exuberance.

She was the kind of person that random strangers would strike up a conversation with, lost kids would try to hold her hand, wild animals would approach like an old friend, and when she raised her voice even the most crowded room would quiet down. She was also the kind of person who got carded when buying alcohol despite being thirty years of age, due to what Grey dubbed 'Acute Babyface Syndrome'.

"Anyone need to clean their glasses?" Crystal asked, pulling a cloth from her pocket to swipe hers clean. Aside from Rayne, who wore her contacts, Grey and Lillian both opted to wear glasses for the hike so they wouldn't have to worry about losing a contact forever if they tripped - a serious and ever-present concern for the slightly clumsy twins.

"I'm good!"

"Not yet, thanks."

"I'll take it," Rayne said, keeping her expression blank, and Crystal narrowed her eyes.

"If you wipe your sweaty face with the glasses cloth I'll push you into the patch of poison ivy over there."

"Ope, nevermind then."

The haunted house was a thirty minute hike from the nearest road, along a mostly uphill path that hardly anyone ever used and certainly wasn't wide or steady enough for any automobiles. By the time they reached the stone fence encircling the house's enormous overgrown yard, everyone except Rayne was ready to collapse.

"I'm gonna be so in shape after this if my binder doesn't kill me first," Grey wheezed, leaning on the stone fence and looking up at the haunted house of his dreams with a longing yet exhausted expression. It stood atop a hill in the distance, surrounded by several acres worth of mostly empty property speckled by a few large trees and scraggly bushes. Behind it was a small barn, a chicken coop that hadn't seen use in ages, and a greenhouse conspicuously lacking anything actually green. "A stone brick cottage in the middle of the woods overgrown by vines, a sagging peaked roof with exposed beams, and gaping windows whose panes are cracked like spiderwebs... Looks spooky enough! If the door doesn't creak ominously when we open it, I'm filing a complaint."

Rayne pulled the handcart into the yard, then glanced over her shoulder at Crystal, who was panning the camera up to take a wide shot of the house from just inside the fence gate. "How's it feel, Coco?"

Crystal frowned, furrowing her brows. All four of them believed in the supernatural after they all experienced several strange circumstances growing up, and Crystal had long proven to have abilities that most people would've considered fake nonsense.

She kept a dream diary after experiencing incidents where she'd dream events before they occurred, and wanted to prove to herself it wasn't a figment of her imagination. Whenever something weird happened, she was the first to alert everyone and get them away from danger before anything bad happened, and had an uncanny sense of whether people were lying.

"Hard to say. It does feel... Weird. The walk through the whole forest was fine, but as soon as I walked into the yard... The air's different."

"Really?" Grey raised his eyebrows, hopping over the fence and holding out his arms. He was the second most sensitive to any external oddities, with a particular penchant for finding rather nasty unexplained phenomena. After a few seconds he frowned as well. "No, yeah. That's a weird vibe for sure. It's like, the forest was fine and funky fresh, then you get over here and it's..."

"Musty," Crystal and Grey finished at the same time, and exchanged wry smiles.

"Could be trepidation from perceived fears," Lillian pointed out, gesturing toward the house. Though she also believed in the supernatural, Lillian also liked trying to find reasonable explanations before resorting to the occult. "The big empty windows feel eerie because people expect houses to be brighter and look more lived in, right? It's possible it's just a subconscious response to an old, dilapidated building."

"Dilapidated..." Rayne muttered, raising her eyebrows as she surveyed the house. She had a sensitivity to people's emotions and motivations, and could sometimes pick up lingering feelings from objects, but she didn't feel anything in particular coming from the building. "I don't think it looks that bad? We've lived in worse."

"It hurts me, physically, every time you and Crystal tell us about that kind of thing," Lillian sighed, patting her hand over her heart while Grey nodded next to her. "This place looks gross! It's horrible to imagine little Ray and little Coco in a place even worse than this..."

"Hey, they hired someone to clean the inside and arrange some basic furniture for us to use," Grey said. "It won't be fancy, but the interior shouldn't be too gross! And we'll sleep in the same room for safety! After all... This is the Corpse Consuming Cottage!"

"Ugh, that name..." Crystal and Rayne both cringed at the same time, while Lillian's eyebrows shot up.

"Wait, it's called what?!"

"Yup! Bad, right? But it's earned the name cuz of how many people have gone missing here. Poof! Gone without a trace! Every single person who's ever bought this place has disappeared, along with any family they brought along." Grey grinned, wiggling his fingers at his suddenly horrified twin. "I even made a spooky spreadsheet citing all my sources, aren't you proud? It's legit, this place is either hella haunted or hella cursed."

"Will we be okay!?" Lillian muttered, color draining from her cheeks.

"There's a loophole," Rayne said, and Crystal nodded.

"Yeah, we didn't buy the house. We're just renting. Supernatural stories are always big sticklers on rules, right? Chanting something three times, turning a certain way, walking a certain pattern. If buying the house is part of the problem, then renting it shouldn't be counted as the same thing because possession isn't being transferred." Crystal turned the camera to zoom in on poor Lillian's pale face, hiding her mischievous grin behind the lens. "Theoretically."

"Don't even pretend you aren't absolutely terrified too, Miss I Can't Go On The Haunted House Ride At The Amusement Park I Have A Doctor's Note," Grey scoffed.

"I don't like ghosts or wraiths or poltergeists or whatever wicked whatsits terrorize the night because I feel bad for them thanks very much, but..." Crystal glanced over at the house and frowned, furrowing her brow again. "I feel bothered but not... Threatened? Like there's something here watching but it won't hurt us."

"That's as good as a gold star to me. Let's crack this bitch open and make some lunch!" With renewed vigor, Grey fished the key from his shorts pocket and ran up the creaky old porch to the front door. "Come on in, it's nice and cool inside! Comparatively speaking, I don't think there's an air conditioner. Just fans. But it'll be clean!"

Like he'd promised, the interior was cleaner than the exterior condition belied. Furniture was sparse, but they were all fine wood antiques with a hand-polished sheen. Everyone dropped their backpacks in the foyer and stretched for a moment before getting to work.

"Water's on!" Grey called from the kitchen, where he set the tap to run. "There's dishes and cookware in here too!"

"Silverware?" Lillian called back, in the middle of helping Crystal and Rayne unload the handcart.

"Yup, as requested! I think they're all antique like the rest of everything here."

"Don't you dare break any antique dishes, Dorian Grey!"

"No promises!"

"Electricity works," Crystal said with some surprise, flicking a nearby switch after setting her harp case on the floor in the living room, alongside a towering pile of boxes holding personal things they'd had delivered via the realtor. She held her breath to listen for any crackles or pops, but the overhead light didn't give so much as a flicker. "Wires might actually be okay? That's surprising, this house is really old. Must've been recently renovated."

"Probably to try and reel in prospective buyers," Rayne said, setting down three drum cases. The rest of her kit was already unloaded, so she took a moment to glance around the living room with Crystal. "Inside looks much nicer than outside."

"We can make it look spookier with filters and editing," Crystal said, running her finger against the windowsill. When it came up without dust, she furrowed her brows. "They were real thorough cleaning this place."

"Found the terrifying cellar!" Grey's faint muffled cry echoed from somewhere in the house, followed by the sound of Lillian shouting his full name and charging off after him.

"Any cold spots?" Crystal shouted down the stairs after circling the entire bottom floor trying to find them. The cellar door was tucked into the kitchen's pantry, which was a full walk-in room rather than a little cabinet.

Since the house was so far from town, part of the rental contract involved the current real estate agent making sure the kitchen was stocked before tenants took over. All the shelves were packed full with newly purchased dry goods and spices, mostly sorted into pretty glass jars for aesthetic appeal.

"No cold spots, just some nice shelving, big old ground freezer and a wine rack! Fruit preserves and stuff but they didn't leave any complimentary wine. Zero out of ten, not recommended."

"What makes it terrifying then?"

"Big spiders."

Crystal grimaced and backed away from the cellar door, narrowly evading Lillian as she retreated up the stairs at maximum speed.

The house was surprisingly large. The ground floor had a large open kitchen with an attached breakfast room, a living room, a dining room, a sitting room, a study with empty floor-to-ceiling bookshelves alongside display cabinets, and a laundry/changing room attached to a bathroom with an enormous sunken bath large enough to be used as a hot tub.

"I would buy this house just for the tub," Lillian said, stroking the porcelain with obvious affection.

"Please don't," Grey muttered. "We're evading the horrible disappearance curse via fairy loopholes, don't you go walking into the trap face-first like that!"

"Fine, but when we leave, we're bringing the tub with us."

"Yeah sure that's completely feasible and not at all slightly insane."

The upper floor had five large bedrooms with attached changing rooms, two lavatories, and a walk-in storage closet. Rayne carried their bags into the master bedroom, then returned to the handcart to retrieve the extra supplies they brought - a couple of brand new air mattresses, blankets, boxes of instant food, tents in case the house was in worse shape than expected, a first aid kit, and little tools like scissors, binoculars, and lighters.

"This place is supposed to be super haunted and cursed, yet..." Rayne hummed to herself, patting the mattress in the master bedroom. Every bed in the house was neatly made, with clean sheets and blankets that still smelled like soap. "Won't need the air mattresses. They really worked hard to make this place nice, huh?"

Finally, the attic under the peaked roof had a few small gaps in the shingles, but otherwise lacked any signs of weathering or exposure damage. The only things occupying the space were a few cobwebs in the darkest corners. "Ugh, nothing for us to snoop through," Grey muttered, poking his head into the attic for only moment before heading back downstairs to start moving boxes from the living room into various bedrooms for later sorting.

Crystal and Rayne turned the fans on in all the rooms to start circulating air, opening windows on the shaded side of the house to catch any stray breezes, while Lillian and Grey got started on making lunch. The house which stood empty for so long soon filled with laughter, conversation, and the smell of good food.

"I just can't get over how unhaunted this haunted house is," Grey lamented, tapping a fork against his empty plate. "I've been looking and there's not so much as a suspiciously shadowed corner or creaky stair board!"

"Are you sure those disappearances were legit?" Lillian asked, gesturing for Crystal to pass the salt so she could douse her potato salad. "You checked the sources themselves, right?"

"I did! That's why it's so weird!" Grey drained the remaining water from his glass, glaring down at the ice cubes rattling at the bottom. "Other than the terrible cell reception, weak internet signal, and our gut feelings, there's really no sign of anything being weird. I was promised jumpscares!"

"You were promised no such thing," Rayne muttered around a mouthful of grilled chicken sandwich, deftly capturing some lettuce before it escaped her lips and hit the table. "The outside looks spooky enough for use in our video, we can think of this like a vacation and relax for a bit until we have to leave."

"There's a barn out back, maybe that's haunted?" Crystal suggested, but Grey shook his head.

"I already checked... It's clean as a whistle. No disturbed earth or rattling rusty tools or anything!"

"Would you feel better if one of us got possessed by a demon?"

"Maybe. It'd have to be a really good possession though, if you're not crawling on the ceiling I want a refund."

"Oh, you're paying us?"

"Hell no, a refund of my feelings. My feelings!"

"Speaking of feelings, how do you feel, Coco? Lils?" Rayne interrupted just as Grey was about to get dramatic. "That was a doozy of a hike. You guys alright?"

Both Lillian and Crystal suffered from several health problems when they were younger, and were still weaker than the average person because of it. They had to work harder to remain healthy than most people did.

Lillian, since her mouth was full, flexed her arm and gave a thumbs up to show she was feeling alright. Once her mouth was clear of food, she added: "Mostly just sore, but nothing a long bath and some music won't cure!"

"Coco?"

Crystal gave a start, realizing she'd been staring out the nearest window for awhile and tuning out the conversation. She turned back to Rayne and smiled apologetically. "Sorry, what was that?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine. Just feel a bit woozy, I think."

"Sensing something weird?"

"Honestly? I don't know." Crystal sighed, opening a can of grape soda and pouring it into her glass. "I still feel like we're being watched. And..."

She hesitated, then shook her head. No matter how Grey tried to cajole the rest of the sentence from her, Crystal kept the rest of her thoughts to herself. If she felt they were in danger she wouldn't be so tight-lipped, so they dropped the subject and started discussing their upcoming album instead.

After lunch they moved several beds into one room, turning the master bedroom into a big slumber party area. The rest of the afternoon and early evening was spent getting video and photos of the house and its yard, trying to find the perfect angles for use during the actual performance recording.

Rayne gathered some logs for firewood after noticing a fire pit in the back with some carved stone benches surrounding it. Dinner consisted of an open flame barbecue using packaged meats they found in the fridge, and a few veggies and fruit rolled into foil packs.

"We've really gotta thank that agent lady," Grey said, reclining in his chair. "She really came through with the supplies! It's so good having a fully stocked kitchen from the start, I was worried we'd be having pancakes and instant ramen for days."

"I'll head to town tomorrow and grab more meat for the freezer in the cellar," Rayne said, chewing on a skewer of chicken. "It's got a little variety right now but I'd like to stock up so we don't have to make as many trips. You and Lils might be fine with rabbit food, but Crystal and I need that good good protein."

"We're natural carnivores," Crystal agreed.

"Is there anything else we need from the store?"

"Nah, I can't think of anything. There's like, four entire bags of toilet paper, and towels and wash cloths and soaps and detergent and even pads and stuff. Like, I know we paid for the service but the level of consideration is really impressive!"

Crystal stared into the flickering flames, watching the embers rise into the rapidly darkening sky only to flicker away among the stars. The strange feeling she'd had all day was building to a crescendo, swelling in her chest in anticipation of...

Something.

Rayne glanced over, nudging her sister in the arm. "Coco? You're out of it again."

Crystal nodded. She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened again. Seeing her strange behavior, Lillian and Grey both fell silent.

Finally, Crystal heaved a sigh and poked at the burning logs with a long stick. "Remember when we first posted the video for our band? It was uploading and we were all watching the loading bar while holding our breaths? How it felt?"

"Don't get nostalgic on me old man," Grey muttered. Though his tone was teasing, there was an affectionate smile on his face.

Lillian nodded and smiled. "It was so exciting and terrifying at the same time. Maybe nothing would happen, maybe we'd be one of many bands that never got any traction. But maybe... Maybe we'd get lucky."

"It was kind of a relief too," Rayne added, gesturing with the skewer in her hand. "Like, we did it! We made our first song, and did our first video, and were gonna show it to the world. It felt really real right then. All our hard work."

"Yeah... And remember what I said?" When they all shook their heads, Crystal chuckled and poked the fire hard enough to send a flurried shower of sparks into the air. "I said it felt like a change was coming. For better or worse, something big was about to happen."

"Right, right! We'd either succeed in our dream or fail absolutely, with no in-between. That's what you said, yeah?" Grey sighed, patting his full stomach. "I remember. Man, that was heavy. I couldn't even sleep that night, you know?"

"Is it happening again?" Lillian asked, her voice even softer than usual. "That feeling?"

"Yeah. I've felt that way all day. I thought maybe it's cuz we never did anything as big as this, renting a house and doing a whole video shoot on location, that maybe I was worried about how ambitious our idea was, but..." Crystal bit her lip, poking the fire again. She made a point of avoiding their gazes, focusing on the burning embers and crackling logs. "I think if we stay here tonight, there's no going back."

Silence reigned for a few minutes. Then, quietly, Rayne whispered: "Are we in danger?"

"It's not like that. It's just... A massive change, that feels... Overwhelming. This is bigger than the previous time."

"Bigger than chasing our dream?"

"Yeah."

Rayne reached over to grab Crystal's hand, while Grey hopped up and sprawled across Lillian's lap despite her protests. He just laughed and said, "What's that matter? No matter what happens tonight, tomorrow, or whatever! We'll get through it together like we always have. You and me, sweethearts. Us against the world!"

Crystal smiled and gently squeezed Rayne's hand. "Yeah. We'll be fine, no matter what."

Once dinner was finished, the fire fully smothered and the leftovers packed away for later, everyone did rock-paper-scissors to determine order of bathtub usage. One by one, they soaked away their worries, changed into the pajamas they brought, and crawled into one of the master bedroom's beds.

As midnight ticked over, a single shaft of light from the full moon filtered through the room's lacy curtains, illuminating their peaceful faces. The sleeping occupants remained blissfully unaware of the tendrils of fog creeping along the ground, emerging from the forest to wrap the entire house in a dome of mist.

Several hours later, as the first rays of dawn burst from the horizon, they were finally awoken by a piercing scream.

#writing #chapter #original #original story #masquerade #fantasy #isekai

1 note · View note

percywinchester27 · 4 years

Text

About a boy (Part-13)

Word count: 3.7K

Warning: Suspense, feels, physical abuse, child-trafficking, kidnapping, child-violence, bullying, angst, this gets really really dark, rest of the warnings in the tags.

Characters: Dean, Cas, Gabriel, Benny, Michael, OCs and… Sam?

Summary: Dean Winchester has a secret. A secret that could really land him in trouble. He never expected to connect with anyone when he walked into the ‘Blue Stone Orphanage for Boys,’ but even then, the walls he has put up are slowly coming down. Now, a series of strange events are threatening to expose him. When everything starts falling apart around him, will he still be able to save the one person that matters the most?

A/N: Please pay attention to the tags if you have triggers. Also, things get better after this!

Kudos to the lovliest @deanssweetheart23 for beta reading this story <3

About a boy masterlist

The adrenaline had taken over his body. That was the only explanation for how Dean could even remotely function with this sort of efficiency, let alone calmth. The first part of the plan had played out without a hitch. It had been easy to walk out of the Orphanage with Andy gone. They had walked too fast- almost sprinted- all the way till the edge of the town and it had taken Dean all of five minutes to fuse the wires and have the first car they saw running. It was an old Toyota XUV, stick shift, but nothing Dean hadn’t handled before.

So they had set out into the night. Dean in the driver's seat and Cas in the shotgun. Behind, Gabriel and Benny were sitting on either sides with Michael wedged between them. Gabriel had insisted on tying Michael’s hands behind his back. Dean couldn’t care less. It wasn’t like Michael was going to try anything funny. All he could do was point out directions when Dean was about to make turns and furtively steal looks at Cas who was sitting as passively as a stone besides Dean.

Dean knew Cas was distraught. Everything that Cas had believed in had been shattered in front of his eyes. Moreover, somewhere deep down he was wallowing in guilt that countless others had been sacrificed while he enjoyed his privileged safety. Both he and Gabriel must be feeling it. Dean should have been feeling something, too. Sadness, empathy… something for his friend. But in reality, he was feeling nothing except a haunting and all encompassing numbness.

His brain was processing Michael’s instructions, and his muscles were responding accordingly, steering the wheel in the right direction, but that’s all. Somewhere he knew that this odd disembodiment wouldn’t last, that it was his body’s defense mechanism to save him from the overloading of emotions and crippling fear each time he thought of Will. So he just didn’t. He didn’t think about anything except getting to the damned warehouse. Because, he knew if he waited long enough, allowed himself to feel, he’d be folded on the floor, paralysed in terror at the prospect of what might be.

If the numbness was the only thing keeping him upright and functioning, then so be it. Dean welcomed it.

“Take the second left and drive until the end of the road,” Michael said quietly. “That’s where the barn-house is. Turn off the headlights when you hit the country road. They have guards watching.”

There was a rough grunt from behind and Benny made a disapproving sound. “Stop hitting him,” Benny said.

“This is not about you, Lafitte,” Gabriel hissed. “This son of a bitch rode his high horse all these years and ruled the fucking place like he was some sort of king. All the while he was letting all those boys get bloodied and cut open and sold.”

Despite himself, a shudder overcame Dean, and he could feel a tiny crack in his numbness.

There was another hit.

“Stop hitting him, Gabe.” It was the first time Cas had spoken since they had left the orphanage.

Gabriel made an incredulous sound. “You of all people are saying this, Cas? You? Don’t tell me this bastard doesn’t deserve it!”

Cas shook his head. He looked haunted and his voice was dry, parched even. “You aren’t really angry at him. You’re angry at yourself. You’re angry because you always suspected that something wasn’t right with this place, that Andy was abusing his power. You always doubted that the privilege that came with being from Michael’s orphanage came at the cost of something horrible that he knew about, that he was a part of. You knew it in your gut and you ignored it. Overlooked it. Because confronting Michael would have meant giving up your freedom and comforts which you were so used to, which you loved. Don’t kid yourself by thinking that you’re angry with Michael. You’re angry with yourself. Angry and feeling guilty because you could have easily been one of those kids but you aren’t. You are safe and sound while some poor kid died instead of you.”

His words were followed by silence. An uncomfortable, too deep silence.

Dean looked over at Cas who was still glaring straight ahead into the night, eyes completely dry now. When he spoke next, his voice was softer, more like the Cas Dean knew and cared for.

“Gabe,” Cas said, “I know how you’re feeling. But now is not the time for it. You can’t let it get to you, can’t let the anger overpower you when you need to think straight. You have to get a grip on yourself because we need to save those boys.”

“You’re right,” Gabriel sighed. “I’m sorry.” And Dean could hear the crushing guilt there along with severe self-loathing.

How had he never seen this? All those weeks and months spent in the same room, he had never suspected that Gabriel’s outlandish, extravagant behaviour could be a direct sign of him acting out… because he felt miserable inside.

“It’s okay, man!” Benny said quietly. “Nobody is holding anything against you. Ain’t that right, Dean?”

“Yeah.”

“Besides,” Benny continued, “We’re here.”

The grey outline of the building was visible even from a couple hundred yards away. Yellow lights pouring out of the windows lent a sinister glow to the structure.

Dean cut the engine and climbed out of the car, everyone followed suit.

“Okay, here’s what we do,” he said. “Cas and I will try to get in from the front door. Gabriel, is there anyway that you can cause a distraction?”

“Distraction is my middle name,” Gabriel said with a small tilt to his mouth. He reached out into his pockets and casually removed what looked like detonators. “You say it, I got it!”

“Benny, I need you to go out back and see if there’s another entrance there. It seems likely.”

“Alright,” Benny said, bending to buckle his shoes.

“What about me?” Michael who was staring defiantly at him. At least as defiantly as one could, with their bound hands trussing up the shoulders awkwardly.

“Oh, you’re staying in the car,” Gabriel said, jerking him back in.

“You can’t do this to me!” he protested

Gabriel smirked bitterly as he pushed Michael inside and shut the car door to his face. “We can and we will.”

There was no point in discussing the nuances of the plan. Each minute spent standing was a minute wasted, a minute more of Will’s life in danger.

Dean signaled and all of them made a move, hurrying as stealthily as they could along the tall outgrowth that ruled most of the property. At the very edge of it, with a single nod, Benny split from them and sprinted towards the south. Gabriel too gave a sly grin, eyes full of his usual mischief. He saluted once and headed in the opposite direction from Benny.

With bated breath, Dean listened carefully for anything that was unusual. He wasn’t sure what Gabriel’s detonator was supposed to do, but it had to be something noticeable.

Cas was squinting into the darkness, trying to make sense of what lay ahead of them. It was hard to tell, but from the light that filtered out of the ghastly grey windows, they could make out the shapes of about five men. Two of them were guarding the entrance and three were making patrol rounds. All of them wielded guns.

Dean felt a shooting fear for Benny who was out there by himself and even Gabriel. They were both unarmed and alone. If anything happened to them… on Dean’s watch…

A sudden, brilliant light lit up the night followed by a loud blast far along the western edge. All of the five men abandoned their post and hurried towards the commotion.

“Where the hell does he even get those things?” Cas muttered next to Dean.

They waited for a few more minutes then crept further ahead. They were right in front of the warehouse now with just a few thinly spaced trees in between and a line of cars. There would be no hiding now.

“C’mon,” Dean said and they made a beeline for the car closest to the building and ducked behind it. The guards at the door had been replaced by two more and from inside the warehouse, a couple more were hurrying to join the others who had rushed to find the source of the blast.

When enough time had passed for Dean to be sure that no one else was coming out from inside, he gestured to Cas and they dived at the two guards. It was crucial for it to be a surprise attack or else they were going to start firing guns and alert everyone. It started out well when Dean jumped on top of the sturdier looking man, knocking the gun right out of his hand; but the other guard was quicker. He grabbed Cas’s hand and twisted it around till there was an audible crack and Cas went down with a yelp. The man standing over him hit Cas with the blunt end of his gun and then turned it around to aim the barrel at Cas’s face.

Before Dean could even register what was happening, there was a guttural cry and a fist landed on the guards neck, who immediately crumpled next to Cas. Dean noted Michael’s face in the flurry of movement but his instincts led him to kick the guy he was holding down and then land a blow to his neck. He slumped down as well.

“You were in the car!” Dean scowled. “How did you get out?”

Michael bent down to check on Cas. “No thanks to you, asshole,” he said. “I’ve spent my whole life being kicked out and pushed into sinkholes. You think a leather cord around my wrists and a locked car was going to stop me?”

Dean did not retort. He was worried for his friend. Cas looked faint and in a lot of pain. He had sustained not one but two blows to his head tonight, and from the looks of it, his wrist was broken. Even then, he shrugged out of Michael’s grasp.

“You should hurry, Dean,” Cas said through gritted teeth. His face was beaded with sweat and he looked ready to pass out.

Ordinarily, Dean would have never trusted Michael with anything, but when it came to Cas, there wasn’t much Michael wouldn’t do. Hadn’t that already been proven in the most horrible way possible already?

“Michael,” Dean barked. “You stay with Cas. He’s in no shape to go anywhere. Help him over to the edge of the outgrowth. He should be well hidden from view. I don’t care about what happens to you, but we both care about Cas. Protect him!”

Cas protested vaguely and Dean knew he would be mad about this later, but right now it was the right thing to do.

Fortunately, Michael didn’t waste any time in coming up with a comeback. He hauled Cas’s good arm over his shoulder, and led them both out the clearing.

This was it. Dean bent down and grabbed the weapons lying around. He tucked the smaller gun into the waistline of his jeans and held the rifle in his hands, then, he dove into the warehouse.

The inside reminded him of the west wing. It was just as dirty and stank of old blood. He shuddered as he made his way into the interiors. There were noises to follow and an obviously well used corridor leading towards them. Dean followed it as carefully as he could, keeping his eyes and ears open should there be any more of the henchmen around. It wouldn’t take them long to figure out that the noise was a decoy and then head straight inside.

His ears picked up the distinct sound of careful footsteps around the corner and Dean raised the rifle as he made the bend, poking it into the person who emerged from the other side.

“What the hell, Winchester!” Gabriel hissed. “Why’re you trying to kill me?”

He wasn’t alone. Next to him Benny was trying to keep a straight face at Gabriel’s panicked expression. Even being in a murder building with weapon wielding mercenaries couldn’t faze Benny all that much.

“Here!” Dean handed Gabriel the other gun. “Hold on to this. Nice work with the fireworks out there.”

“It’s like the 4th of July, baby,” Gabriel said. “Ran into Lafitte out back. The dumb guards there abandoned their post without waiting for backups. Where’s Cas?”

Dean quickly explained what had happened in a low voice. He could tell that neither of them were happy about Michael being with him, though nothing could be done about it.

“We figured out the surgery rooms from the backside,” Benny said. “They’re this way. C’mon!”

Dean followed their lead, watching the rear end. Benny wasn’t wrong, the operation rooms were right there. But they weren’t anything like the ones in hospitals. They were dirty and grimy; disgustingly so. The walls were bathed in old, brown blood and the floor was caked in it. It looked more like the underground torture chambers in gore movies than anything else. Dean felt a chill run down his spine. The stench made him want to barf.

Benny came to a halt ahead of them. “Dean,” he said in a muted voice.

It felt like a deja vu from when he had found the holding cells in the left wing as Dean walked by him and looked into the room. Inside, in the middle of the room, next to a trolley of bloody and rusted instruments was a stretcher. Resting on the stretcher with his brown hair drenched in blood was Barry. With each step that Dean took, he could see more of it. The blunt incision at the side of his stomach, roughly sutured, and the bloody cloth draping his body from his stomach down. There was blood everywhere on the floor. Bright and fresh.

Dean reached out to touch his face.

“Barry?” he whispered. The voice didn’t sound anything like his own. It was empty and echoed around the room.

Barry’s half open eyes stared at nothing. Dean reached out with shivering fingers and closed them shut. Then, he collapsed to the floor, face in his hands.

“Dean, Dean!”

The voices over him were coming from a distance. It seemed unreal. All of it.

A hand gripped his shoulders.

“I had assured him that I would come back for him. And now he’s… he’s… “

Another pair of hands seized him by his arms and shook him violently. “Snap out of it, damn it!”

“But he’s dead!” Dean pointed out, unable to move more than a finger. “Look at him. He’s dead.”

“I know,” Benny whispered urgently. “And he won’t be the only one if you don’t move.”

“Think about Will,” Gabriel said, his voice subdued. Dean looked up to see that he was crying. “Will needs you.”

Dean got up on his knees; his whole body was shaking. He didn’t want to think about it, but if Barry was dead…

“No!” he said out loud. “Will is alright. We’re going to find him.”

“Yeah, that’s my boy,” Benny huffed, hoisting Dean off of the floor, and edging him out of the door. They reached the end of the hall and to the last door. The scene that met his eyes was beyond horrifying. Someone small lay on a raised platform and a man in a white apron was bent over it. Two others were standing around assisting him. Andy and a dark haired man in an expensive looking suit were standing at the edge of the room. The man’s face betrayed no expression. He was simply overlooking what was happening with a passive look. Andy on the other hand looked revolted.

Dean leaned over just a little further to get a clearer view. Just enough to see the face of the figure laying on the platform. It was Will.

He didn’t know what came over him, but one minute Dean was standing at the edge of the door, the next he was bounding into the room, thrashing left and right at any obstruction he could see to get to Will. Again, the shock of it all was on his side. Before any of them could react, the two assistants were down on the floor.

Andy started into action. “What the-” Before he could finish his sentence, Benny had jumped on him, hand to the throat. All of a sudden the room burst into a flurry of action as the dark haired man whipped out a pistol and took shots in the air.

Out of pure impulse, Dean threw himself in between the man and the platform, shielding Will with his own body. But there was more shooting, and more men poured into the room. At first Dean felt a surge of defeat, assuming them to be the henchmen, but as more and more of them came in, he realised they were uniformed police officers. He turned to face Will, completely blocking out the chaos behind him.

Will lay on his stomach, his face turned to the side and his eyes closed. He could have been only sleeping if it wasn’t for the long cut at his side. The dirty cloth under him was soaked in his blood. His hair was falling over his eyes and the tiny mole on the left side of his nose. It was really small, and Will had a habit of scratching it when he was nervous. Dean reached out to brush away the hair, leaving a bloody trail on his skin. He looked at his own hands to find they were blood smeared. In fact most of him was, after he had slid into Barry’s blood.

A logical part of him knew what he should do; check for the pulse, but he simply stood there, not taking his eyes off Will’s face.

“Dean.”

The voice came from behind him and it was unexpectedly soft. He felt warm arms envelop him, felt a brush of lips against his temple.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Jody said, sounding heady with relief.

“Jody,” Dean sniffled, and he realised he was crying. “Will.... Will!”

“He’s alive,” she said. “Look, he is breathing.”

Even as Dean turned, to ascertain for himself, a group of EMTs blocked most of his view. He watched one of them tape the wound close and the others gently lifting him on to a gurney. Then they were taking him away.

Dean struggled against Jody, yanking free of her hold to follow them, but she held on tight.

“I need to go with him,” he shouted. “Let go!”

“Only family can ride with the ambulance, Dean,” she said sympathetically.

“But I need to be with him!”

“And you will be.” Jody let go of him then. “C’mon. You’ll ride with me.”

Most of the drive to the hospital was a blur. Jody told him about how the Orphanage was a middle house for the kids. And at the very minute that they were driving, it was being raided by the police for evidence. The suited man was Jacob Styne, and the warehouse had enough paper evidence to convict the whole Styne brood. They had taken into custody everyone present including Andy.

He barely paid attention to any of it, except what was happening to his friends. Cas was being driven to the hospital as well, so were Benny and Gabriel, where after ascertaining their well-being the police would record their statements.

By the time they reached the ER, Will had already been taken into the Operation Theater. There was nothing to be done except wait. At some point Dean felt the seat next to him dip and looked up to see Bobby beside him. He flung an arm over Dean’s shoulder, holding close, grounding him to reality. No words were spoken, but Dean was comforted in a way that only a father could.

When Jody came back, she looked worried. Dean got to his feet immediately.

“How’s he?”

She bit her lip. “They didn’t take out his kidney. You got there just in time… But, I don’t want to lie to you, Dean. He’s lost a lot of blood and the doctor is worried.”

“So get them to pump him up with more blood,” Bobby said, speaking for the first time.

Jody’s brow furrowed. “It’s not that easy, he has a rare blood group-”

“Let me help!” Dean said suddenly. “I can give him my blood. We have the same blood group!”

“What?”

“Jody,” Dean said, hurriedly. “Michael said that they were saving Will because he has a rare blood group, AB negative. That’s the same as mine. Ask them to take mine. As much as they need.”

Jody’s eyes rounded in worry, but she didn’t question Dean over it, and went to speak with the doctor.

Soon, Dean was put onto a bed. They first tested him, and then when it was confirmed that it was indeed, miraculously the same blood group, they hooked him up to a tube. It was killing Dean to just lie there watching the blood drain. Everyone should be hurrying, they all should be concentrating on saving Will. But it was a hospital. Every patient was just the same to them. And Will was an orphan at that.

The seconds bled into minutes and then excruciating hours as Dean waited. He was aware when Benny and Gabriel came in, quietly sitting besides him and Bobby, just waiting for the doctor to come out. When she did, all of them stood up at once.

The doctor lowered her mask and gave them a tentative smile. Then she said the words that actually let Dean breathe again.

“He’ll be alright,” the doctor said. “He just needs to rest.”

Dean sat down on the chair again. The relief had knocked out any and all strength that had been holding him up. There were hoots of exultation all around him, but Dean simply let the words seep into his heart.

Will was alright. He was going to be alright.

*******************************

A/N 2: Things will get better after this, trust me! two more chapters to go! (Plus and epilogue)

Please do tell me what you thought of the chapter? I live for comments!

If you wanna be tagged, please send me an ask

About a Boy taglist:

@sdavid09 @deanssweetheart23 @blacktithe7 @thing-you-do-with-that-thing @cosicas-cuquis�� @chalicia @anathewierdo @mrswhozeewhatsis @protectteamfreewill @firefly124-writing @spnbaby-67 @hoboal87 @rizlow1 @donnaintx @starmission @gh0stgurl @tftumblin @emily-a-c11 @ericaprice2008 @jotink78 @charliebradbury1104 @ohgodwhybloggg @i-dont-get-cold @bobbie3939 @samsexualdeancurious @dancing-the-hellfire-rumba @cookiechipdough @wildfirewinchester

#dean winchester fanfiction #dean winchester #spn fanfiction #weechesters #spn au #Ana writes aab #anawrites #anawritesspn #aab13 #tw: child abuse #tw: organ trafficking #tw: child trafficking #tw: kidnapping #tw: prostitution #tw: character death #tw: physical abuse #tw: torture #q

47 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 4 years

Text

“God God – Whose Hand Was I Holding?”: the Scariest Sentences Ever Written, Selected by Top Horror Authors

https://ift.tt/3kHWU1Y

Many people have a very intimate relationship with books. And horror books can get under your skin like no other medium, whether you’re peering at a scary novel under the covers as a youngster or devouring new or classic horror as a grown up. Good horror writing sticks with you.

For Halloween we’ve attempted to round up some of the scariest sentences ever written – and who better to ask for their recommendations than some of the finest horror writers and editors around? We asked some of our favourite experts to tell us the line that scared them most and why. Any suggestions of your own? Let us know in the comments.

To Serve Man by Damon Knight

Scariest sentence: “It’s a cookbook,” he said.

Is there a better whammy of an end line than this? Ten to one you’ll know the story that precedes it: Seemingly benevolent aliens, the Kanamit, arrive on earth, promising peace and prosperity. The aliens are as good as their word, and start whisking “lucky” humans off to their planet for a “ten year exchange programme”. A U.N translator, who (rightly) thinks this is all too good to be true, sets about translating the aliens’ favourite book, which, from its title, “To Serve Man,” is assumed to be an innocent handbook. It ain’t (see the last line). The story and its funny/bleak ending has haunted me since I first read it as a ten-year-old, way too young to consider that it could be read as an allegory about the horrors of colonialism. Back then all I could think about were the people the Kanamit had lured aboard their ships, unaware that they were destined for the table (or the Kanamit version of Masterchef). It still gives me chills. – Sarah Lotz author of Missing Person out now from Hodder.

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

Scariest sentence: “I have no mouth. And I must scream.”

If I tell you the name of this Harlan Ellison story, it’ll give away the last line… “I have no mouth. And I must scream.” I remember when I first read that ending, only to find myself caught in a loop where those two sentences kept echoing through my head. Reading it again right now, it’s still hard not to pinch my lips as tightly together as possible and try giving the ol’ lungs a good bellow. Still sends shivers down my spine. – Clay McLeod Chapman, author of The Remaking, out now from Quirk Books

Movies

How Hulu’s Books of Blood Movie Taps The Mind of Clive Barker

By Don Kaye

Cabal by Clive Barker

Scariest Sentence: “She knew what men afraid, and afraid of their fear, were capable of.“

According to some criminologists, the root cause of many violent acts isn’t anger but fear. Fear of rejection, of failure, of abandonment, of loss. In this early novel by Barker, the link between fear and violence is only subtly hinted at–which makes it all the more frightening. He alludes to the heroine’s personal history with violent men, leaving the reader to fill in the blanks. – Andrew Schaffer, author of Secret Santa, out 10 November from Quirk Books

The Sibling by Adam Hall

Scariest sentence: “He’s put the clown in her room,” Lorraine said quietly.

As a species, our goal is to keep clowns out of our bedrooms and living spaces and yet here’s some monster deliberately inserting a clown into someone’s room, ignoring the fact that since at least the dawn of time clowns have been mankind’s natural predator. The resigned tone of that “quietly” really drives home the horror because clearly this is not the first time. – Grady Hendrix.

Squelch, John Halkn

Scariest sentence: “It still doesn’t make sense to me. Moths attack sweaters and fly around light bulbs. They don’t devour humans.”

It doesn’t make sense to me, either, but if moths have stopped attacking our clothing and started attacking our bodies then count me out. I’m done. – Grady Hendrix.

Night of the Crabs by Guy N. Smith

Scariest sentence:“What a beautiful night,” Pat remarked, as they passed alongside the barbed-wire fence which enclosed War Department property. “If only we didn’t have to worry about giant crabs.”

Sometimes you just wish you lived in a simpler world. – Grady Hendrix.

The Farm by Richard Haigh

Scariest sentence: “The pigs,” then her control snapped. “Look, they’re coming out,” she shrieked. “Oh, sweet Christ. The pigs!!”

Every time I leave the safety of New York City I fully expect this to be the last sentence I hear as I am devoured by angry livestock. – Grady Hendrix, author of The Final Girl Support Group out July 2021 from Titan Books

The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum

Scariest sentence: “I’m not going to tell you about this. I refuse to.”

That’s half of chapter 42 from Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door. And The Girl Next Door is a novel that, just as Joe R. Lansdale says at the head of his story “The Night They Missed the Horror Show,” doesn’t flinch. So, if the narrator is looking back to having seen something that even he can’t put on the page, then . . . how bad must it be, right? I’ve talked to other readers of this novel and they’ve told me about chapter 42 as if the narrator actually fleshes it all out for us, and they (myself as well) all flinch as if traumatized from having had to read those words. Except they never did read the words of what actually happened. But that’s Jack Ketchum, for you. He doesn’t need to actually say it on the page to get it into our head. Worse, this is a chapter that never leaves you, either. Worse than that, you kind of become complicit just for reading it. – Stephen Graham Jones author of The Only Good Indians, out now.

In the Hills, the Cities by Clive Barker

Scariest sentence: “In Popolac a kind of peace reigned. Instead of a frenzy of panic there was a numbness, a sheep-like acceptance of the world as it was. Locked in their positions, strapped, roped and harnessed to each other in a living system that allowed for no single voice to be louder than any other, nor any back to labour less than its neighbour’s, they let an insane consensus replace the tranquil voice of reason.”

As a much younger person, reading this story for the first time, I was overtaken by awe at the imagery; not unlike Mick who chooses to hitch a ride on the impossible doomed giant made of city denizens. Re-reading it now decades later, the story and these lines fill me with bone-deep dread. Like the referee/car thief and Mick’s lover Judd, I cannot bear to view the inevitable fall. – Paul Tremblay, author of Survivor Song, out now from Titan Books.

Home Burial by Robert Frost

Scariest sentences: ”Don’t – don’t go. Don’t carry it to someone else this time. Tell me about it if it’s something human.”

The line here that I consider scary is ‘Tell me about it if it’s something human.’ Because of the implication that people may carry within them things that are not human. In this case, I imagine the ‘it’ that may not be human to be something so deeply felt and instinctive that it is pre-language – and so pre-human, almost. Something primordial that requires translation or mediation – and perhaps in that, change or diminishment – in order to be sensible to another sentient being. It is the suggestion that maybe our most fundamental aspects or thoughts – our most important feelings – cannot be properly communicated that is terrifying, to me. It makes me think of each person as a dark pool, with their lived experience and true feelings becoming manifest at the bottom, and the communication of these things to others being only what is visible through the surface of the water, from above.

As much as I do believe that all communication is imperfect, and that it is difficult for people to know each other truly, I take comfort from two things – one is love, which is, I think, a kind of deep, fundamental knowing and acceptance of each other. The other is fiction, which (in my opinion) is often an attempt at translating ideas and feelings that, coming from our deepest places, we don’t otherwise have the language for. – Tom Fletcher, author The Witch Bottle, out 12 November from Jo Fletcher Books.

The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub

Scariest sentence: “You’re the herd now, Jacky.”

I read King & Straub’s The Talisman when I was 15, at a time in my life when I’d said goodbye to one bunch of friends and hello to another, and the friendship between Jack Sawyer and his werewolf friend Wolf resonated strongly with me. In Wolf’s culture werewolves are farmers and fiercely protective of their herds who they protect by locking themselves away every month. The problem is that Jack and Wolf are on the run and Wolf’s change is coming upon him, and there’s nowhere to shut Wolf away. So when Wolf turns to Jack with blazing eyes and says this, it’s simultaneously a promise of protection (‘I will die for you’) but also a warning (‘I will tear you to pieces’). The chill with which Jack realises that his best friend loves him but will probably kill him anyway has stayed with me ever since. – James Brogden, author of Bone Harvest, out now from Titan Books

Movies

I Am Legend: Why Can’t Matheson’s Masterpiece be Done Justice on Film?

By Dan Hajducky

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Scariest sentence: “The watch had stopped”

I think a lot of us can relate to the feeling of getting caught up in our work and letting the hours pass us by without much thought. In the case of Robert Neville, the central figure in Richard Matheson’s seminal I Am Legend, getting lost in the hours is the most horrific thing he could possibly do. The simple four-word-sentence that has scared me more than any other in all my days of reading is “The watch had stopped.” If you’ve read the story, I’m sure you remember how those words burned into you. – Rachel Autumn Deering, editor of Hex Life, out in paperback from Titan Books on November 10 2020

One for the Road by Stephen King

Scariest sentence: “And I think she’s still waiting for her good-night kiss.”

I’m not easily scared, but occasionally I get a real chill up my spine. Shirley Jackson did that with the last line of The Haunting of Hill House. But if we’re talking about one line that lingers, that still makes me remember the way it felt the very first time I read it, I have to go with the last line in Stephen King’s short story “One for the Road,” from his collection Night Shift. It’s a vampire story, a sequel to ’Salem’s Lot, about a family whose car is trapped in a blizzard on the outskirts of a town plagued by vampires. That last line is “And I think she’s still waiting for her good-night kiss.” There, I just felt it again. That shiver. All these years later, it still works on me. – Christopher Golden, editor of Hex Life, out in paperback from Titan Books on November 10 2020

The New Mother by Lucy Clifford

Scariest sentence: “Now and then, when the darkness has fallen and the night is still, hand in hand Blue-Eyes and the Turkey creep up near to the home in which they once were so happy, and with beating hearts they watch and listen; sometimes a blinding flash comes through the window, and they know it is the light from the new mother’s glass eyes, or they hear a strange muffled noise, and they know it is the sound of her wooden tail as she drags it along the floor.”

The scariest sentence ever is from The New Mother by Lucy Clifford. The strange tone of the writing, the situation in the story and the fact that the new mother is not in any way human… – David Quantick, author of Night Train, out now from Titan Books

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Scariest sentence: “God God! Whose hand was I holding?”

This scene perfectly conjures the feeling of being afraid in the night. Distance, time, sound – all the natural laws of the daylight world grow slippery and loosen. It’s a unique sensation – no other fear has the visceral, unhinged quality of cold terror in the dark. Shirley Jackson puts all of this on the page – she takes Eleanor and the reader into that same heightened, accelerated state, she makes our hearts race, she makes us feel alone, disoriented, lost in the night with only a friend’s hand to cling to. And then she saves us – the lights come on, our heart rate slows, and the rational world seems to settle into its proper channel again. And at last Eleanor sees: the friend whose comforting hand she held in the dark has been on the other side of the room all along. – Catriona Ward is the author of The Last House on Needless Street out 18th March 2021 from Viper Books

The Haunting Of Hill House: How the Extraordinary Episode 6 was Made

By Louisa Mellor

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Scariest sentence: “God god – whose hand was I holding?”

It’s from a scene about two-thirds of the way through the novel. Eleanor and Theodora go to sleep in their adjacent beds in one of the many bedrooms in Hill House. They sleep with the lights on because of previous frightening incidents. But Eleanor wakes in the night to find the room plunged in darkness, and hears an eerie voice muttering from the next room. The darkness and the frightening sounds go on endlessly, and Eleanor is filled with a mounting sense of dread. She reaches out blindly for Theodora’s hand and holds on tight.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

But when the lights finally come back on, Theodora is several feet away, sitting up in her own bed, too far away for Eleanor to have touched her. So the hand she was holding belonged to someone or something else. It’s a brilliantly oblique bit of horror – the realisation that the monster was right alongside you, inside your guard – and every adaptation of the novel references it in some form or other. But I don’t think you can beat Jackson’s chilling, deadpan prose. – Mike Carey author of The Trials of Koli, out now from Orbit Books

Books

Who Was The Haunting of Hill House Author Shirley Jackson?

By Don Kaye

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Scariest sentence: “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

I’ll be surprised if no one else has picked these sentences, although maybe not, because I’m blatantly cheating for choosing the entire first paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House. It is a classic of looming dread, and it’s probably generated more commentary and criticism than any other first paragraph in a horror novel. I love it. – Ellen Datlow, editor of the Best Horror of the Year annual series.

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

Scariest sentence: “It was so dark it was like nothing was there in the room but us. Only the nothing was actually something because it filled my eyes and lungs and it sat on my shoulders.”

Paul Tremblay perfectly captures our universal fear of the dark in these two lines from A Head Full of Ghosts. That made the flesh on my skull crawl when I read it. The wording is simple but so effective: in one, two, three increasingly creepy instances Paul transforms what’s simply darkness into the tangible, the intimately dangerous… as darkness tends to do. – Thomas Olde Heuvalt, author Hex and Echo, forthcoming from Nightfire in 2021

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

Scariest sentence: The Black Meat is like a tainted cheese, overpoweringly delicious and nauseating so that the eaters eat and vomit and eat again until they fall exhausted.

I read Naked Lunch in high school and it was a mind-destroyer. Thankfully, it is also a mind rebuilder. You can turn to any page and find sentences that bewildered, disoriented, horrified, and excited me. So that’s exactly what I just did: I opened the book randomly to page 55 and found one. Disgusting, delightful decadence! – Daniel Kraus, coauthor with George A. Romero of The Living Dead, out now from Tor Books.

The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe

Scariest sentence: “And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.“

It’s ‘illimitable’ that does it for me, though the capitalisations and the against-the-advice-of-grammarians superfluous first and second usages of ‘and’ add quite a bit. That first ‘And’ – the one your teacher told you not to start a sentence with – is a pointed touch and does a lot of work, indicating that all the bad stuff in the rest of the sentence is a consequence of what’s gone before in the story … which, this season, seems like the most pointed tale of mystery and imagination ever written. – Kim Newman author Anno Dracula 1999 Daikaiju out now from Titan Books.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Scariest sentence: “In the unending, crashing second before the car hurled into the tree she thought clearly, Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don’t they stop me?”

Discussions of the prose of Shirley Jackson’s monumental The Haunting of Hill House tend to focus on its famous opening paragraph. Certainly the beginnings of both the novel’s first and second chapters offer a wealth of riches for scholarly consideration, rhetorical analysis. Yet it’s this long sentence from the novel’s second-to-last paragraph that comes to mind if I’m asked to name the most frightening line in the book. Indeed, it seems to me one of the most frightening sentences of any novel or story I’ve read. Obviously, there are lines whose immediate impact is greater, which have a more substantial visceral effect (Clive Barker’s fiction is rife with these). But I’m not sure any echo in quite the same way. At this moment in Jackson’s narrative, Eleanor Vance is being made to leave Hill House, the dwelling with whose structure her personality has become entangled and confused. Seemingly unwilling to be separated from the place, she steers her car straight toward an enormous tree at a curve in the driveway and steps on the gas. “I am really doing it,” she thinks, “I am doing this all by myself, now, at last.” This would be an awful enough end for Jackson’s protagonist, but with the sentence that follows and finishes the paragraph, she gives the screw a final, diabolical turn. Eleanor experiences a moment of clarity, which tells us that her thoughts of just a line before were not clear. She is not accelerating toward the tree of her own volition—or, not only of her own volition. Something else is at play here, some other factor. Is it the “whatever” Jackson has described walking in Hill House, the unspecified, (possibly) supernatural force (which might be any one of a number of ghosts, or an aggregate of those ghosts, or the house itself, brought to occult life by the peculiarities of its design)? Or is it some submerged part of Eleanor—guilt at her role in her mother’s death, or anger at her expulsion from the group brought to Hill House to study it? She doesn’t know, and she is trapped in her unknowing, as the final instant of her life stretches on and on, “unending.” Her ultimate motivation obscure to her, all she can do is wonder why no one is stopping her. With hideous irony, the power, the control Eleanor was celebrating a moment prior turns on her, her freedom becoming the freedom of death. The line passes as quickly as the crash it describes, and in its speed, it’s easy to miss everything going on it. To say it’s another example of Jackson’s skill as a writer feels somehow inadequate, as it doesn’t get at the way the sentence braids claustrophobia, terror, and confusion. It’s the kind of writing that haunts you in quiet moments, long after flashier, louder lines have faded into silence. It’s the kind of writing that reminds you of the horror story’s particular power, its reach and its resonance. – John Langan, author of The Fisherman, out now.

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

Scariest sentence: “Sometimes dead is better.”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Nobody says this line better than that guy in the first Pet Sematary movie who used to play Herman Munster. Although John Lithgow did his best. King struck on an age-old wisdom when he showed us the folly of trying to bring people back once they’re gone. Just as WW. Jacobs did in The Monkey’s Paw and Shelley demonstrated (albeit piecemeal) in Frankenstein. You’ve got to be careful what you wish for. Sometimes, dead really is better, and far less likely to come back and stab you to death with a scalpel. C.S. O’Cinneide is the author of Petra’s Ghost, out now from Titan Books.

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

Scariest sentence: “Darling,” it said

This line has to be read in the context of an entire, brilliant novel that went before. It’s really not something I want to give away, because of spoilers, but if you’ve read this one, even hearing the final line again should send a shiver through you. The writer was at the top of his game – and that’s saying something – and it remains his most terrifying novel. Here’s the line: “Darling,” it said. – Tim Lebbon, author of Eden, out now from Titan Books

The post “God God – Whose Hand Was I Holding?”: the Scariest Sentences Ever Written, Selected by Top Horror Authors appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/31T5a7G

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

2 notes · View notes

therainroguefanfiction · 4 years

Text

🎃 Frightful October Act VII, #21 ~ Stalker (Yao Wang/China)

📑 Table of Contents

Genre: Angst, Fluff

Word Count: 1,456

Pairing: Reader x Yao

World: Hetalia

───── ⋆⋅🎃⋅⋆ ─────

October was a fun time filled with candy, costumes, and mischief, but it was also a dangerous time. Halloween brought out the weirdos and the freaks. People often throw caution to the wind in lieu of some spooks. You were one of those people, enjoying the thrill, the rush of adrenaline that came with doing dangerous things.

Your favorite thing to do was to explore abandoned locations in town, which wasn’t necessarily bad, but you liked to go alone in the dead of night. It was terrifying, but in some strange way, it was also peaceful. You enjoyed the solitude almost as much as you enjoyed the way your heart raced within your ribcage.

Your boyfriend, Yao, was not happy with your choice of activities and tried to persuade you to, at the very least, bring someone with you, but you always refused. No matter how hard you tried to be angry at each other over your difference in opinions. The most you could muster up was a few hours of annoyance.

October 30th

Yao had a world meeting to attend and wouldn’t be home until tomorrow night, so you decided to explore an abandoned house just outside of town. It was a little past midnight when you finally made it there.

The house itself was a few decades old, the wood charred from the fire that had mysteriously broken out some ten years earlier. The dense forest surrounded it on all sides, breaking only for the thin dirt road that led up to the property.

You carefully put your foot on the step up to the porch, the wood creaking under your weight. An owl hooted in the distance as your flashlight swept across the porch. To the left was a swing, lopsided because one of the chains had been pulled out of the ceiling. You twisted the doorknob and it clicked, the hinges squeaking as the door was pushed open.

Just as you lifted your foot to step inside, a sudden crash came from behind the house. Your body froze, ears straining to pick up any sound other than the rustling of leaves in the cold night breeze. Curious, you stepped down from the porch, your shoes crunching orange and yellow leaves as you walked around the left side of the house, flashlight sweeping the area around you. The dark sky was covered by clouds, bathing the world in a darkness so thick, the beam of the flashlight couldn’t cut through it.

A chill went down your spine, but you weren’t sure if it was because of the chill or because of the sudden feeling that you were being watched. You brushed off the feeling as you approached the small shed behind the house, looking for the source of the crashing sound. The faint bark of dogs in the distance carried on the wind, like a warning. It unnerved you.

‘Something feels… wrong tonight,’ you frowned, clutching the flashlight tighter in your hand. You were someone that strongly believed in the human capability of sensing danger, instincts acting as a sort of sixth sense. Only bad things would come from ignoring it. ‘I was really looking forward to exploring this piece of the town’s history, but it’ll have to wait until another day.’

Twigs snapped and leaves crunched as you walked around the other side of the house. A large weeping willow bent over at the trunk, its branches scratching at the sides of the second story every time the wind blew. Something grabbed your shoulder and you repressed a scream, jumping away and frantically panning around with the light. ‘It was just some hanging moss…’ you took a shaky breath, resting your hand over your racing heart.

You continued on toward the dirt path, brow furrowing. Over the years, you had visited countless abandoned and haunted locations alone in the dead of night, but only a handful of times had you felt so unnerved that you left before dawn set in. This was one of those times. Your mind was yelling at you to run away as fast your legs could carry you, but that seemed like a very bad idea.

It’s like when you come across an aggressive stray dog on the street – if you show fear and run, it’s a natural instinct for it to chase and attack you, but if you remain calm and slowly walk away, not giving it an opening by showing your back, the chance that it will attack is grateful reduced. When you’re being hunted, you have to remain calm and not give the predator what it wants most – the thrill of a chase.

You could feel eyes on you, but you couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. The forest felt as if it had come alive – twigs snapping, bushes rustling, leaves scraping against the ground. You were surrounded by noise as if the forest itself was chasing you down. You tried to swallow your fear, keeping the light trained in front of you so you wouldn’t trip.

The dirt path finally turned to concrete and the trees started to thin out. You could see the street lights in the distance, giving off a dull yellow glow. As you walked farther, houses started to appear on either side of the road, getting closer together as you made it farther into town. Aside from the occasional car in the distance, the streets were silent.

The feeling of being watched never left you.

As you walked through town toward your neighborhood, your ears picked up the sound of footsteps behind you. You assumed it was just a teen looking for trouble or someone on their way to work, or perhaps on their way home from work, but as you zigzagged through neighborhood after neighborhood, you came to the realization that the person was following you.

You glanced over your shoulder. The person was thin, standing at about five-six and covered from head to toe in black clothing. They didn’t even try to hide the fact that their brown eyes were fixed on your every movement. Your hand slid into your pocket, fingers brushing over the cold steel of your pocket knife. You had never used it against another human being before… you were prepared to defend yourself if need be, but you would try everything within your power to prevent it from getting that far.

You changed course, sticking to the main road instead of the deserted neighborhoods where everyone slept. There were teens egging houses, a drunk man staggering out of a bar, a woman trying to coax men into a nearby alley, and a conspiracy nut on the corner screaming about the end of the world coming. Even with all of these people around, the man pursuing you didn’t stop.

Almost to your home and not wanting to lead this stranger to your door, you stopped in your tracks, turning around to face him, fear morphing into anger. “Can I help you with something?”

The person said nothing, taking a threatening step forward.

You scowled, lowering your body before launching at him, the heel of your hand forcing their chin up while your knee slammed into their stomach. They cried out in pain, falling back onto the pavement. You brought your foot up to slam against his chest when a familiar voice made you pause.

“Wait, wait, wait! It’s me!”

Blinking, you lowered your foot. “Yao?” Your boyfriend pulled the black mask off, brown hair falling across his shoulders as his face twisted in pain. With a huff, you folded your arms over your chest. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?! You scared the daylights out of me, Yao!”

He flinched at your tone. “I wanted you to stop being so reckless. I thought if I scared you, you’d change your mind, aru. Where did you learn to fight like that?”

You frowned, kneeling down beside him and brushing the bangs from his eyes. “You’re usually away on business, so I took a few self-defense courses. Are you okay?”

“I bit my tongue, aru,” he pouted. “Sorry if I scared you, Y/N.”

“I guess I can forgive you,” with a smile, you stood up, offering him your hand.

Once on his feet, he wrapped his arms around your body, lips brushing against your ear. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it up to you~” his hand gripped yours as the two of you headed home, but the feeling of being watched still plagued you.

Standing around the corner was a tall man, red eyes watching the two of you through the holes in the hockey mask. A large blade dangled from his hand, blood dripping from the tip to the puddle near his feet.

───── ⋆⋅🎃⋅⋆ ─────

5 notes · View notes

sad-sweet-cowboah · 5 years

Text

My Little Secret part 3

Summary: Sam decides to take you to a ghost hunt at the local bed and breakfast. You weren’t sure what your stances on the supernatural was, but some strange things begin to happen...

The arrival of Monday came too fast for you to be prepared, let alone comprehend it. You weren’t prepared for the dreary, rainy morning that cast iron gray clouds over campus, occasional torrential downpours pattering loudly against the roof. Though far from distracting, you found yourself listening to it than your professor’s seminar. It certainly didn’t help that it was an 8 am class.

The day continued on as uneventful; finishing your classes in early afternoon and spending an extra hour at the campus gym. Fully fatigued and covered in sweat, you headed back to your apartment, tossing your heavy textbooks onto your desk. With a quick, soothing shower, you collapsed onto your bed for a nap.

Your nap had lasted longer than you intended; waking up at around 6 pm. You only had an hour to eat dinner and get ready for work.

Managing to shovel food into your mouth and make yourself appear semi decent, you arrived at the bar on a timely manner. Working Mondays was a blessing and a curse; a small crowd meant less time rushing around, although it also meant less tips and the time trudging by slower.

It was the usual week crowd, mostly middle-aged people and a handful of twenty and thirty-somethings drinking cheap beer and snacking on bar food while your boss hosted trivia night. You couldn’t say it was boring; watching the teams put their heads together to solve the questions, cheering and jeering in their somewhat drunken stupor.

You kept yourself occupied by cleaning the bar every once in a while, wiping up the sticky residue left behind by sloppy drinks. Though every time the door opened, you found yourself glancing up, something you don’t normally do. Your eyes darted to each person’s face, though a small prick of disappointment hit you each time. It took you a few moments to understand why; a small flicker of hope that Arthur would step in, though he never did. You couldn’t fathom why, though.

The bar closed at 12, and you were out the door before the clock struck half past the hour. Venturing out into the back parking lot, you paused for a moment, remembering what he told you about falling and injuring yourself. Your gaze shifted around, wondering what could have possibly caused your misfortune initially. Could it have been a fallen trash can? A piece of garbage that wasn’t properly disposed of? Who knows.

That Tuesday proved to be just as boring as Monday, though thankful your classes weren’t until later so you could sleep in a little.

By lunchtime, you were in the campus library, catching up on some study work you’d intentionally neglected over the past few days. You sat curled up in one of the large armchairs, your laptop perched on your thighs as you scrolled through essays and thesis papers.

You tried to focus, though your mind had once again succumbed to wandering thoughts. It’d been an hour since you settled, and it felt as if your brain was beginning to melt. It was even a wonder how you got into this program in the first place. The writing and paperwork became a blur about a month ago.

The unmistakable sound of your messenger pinging caught your attention, and your gaze darted to the blip on your screen. You opened it, finding a message of greeting from Sam.

Hey you, working tonight?

You typed a reply. No, what’s up?

You know that bed and breakfast not too far outside of town? The one that’s like bordering the swamp?

Frowning in thought, you combed through your mind to think. Yeah, what was it called? Shady Belle?

Yep. They’re holding a first ever ghost hunt there tonight, and I just scored some tickets!

Oh boy, you knew where this was going. Before you could respond, the pending message icon popped up again.

You wanna go with me? It starts with a dinner at 6 pm.

Ghost hunting? Not that it ever really piqued your interest, and you weren’t even sure if you believed in such a thing in the first place. But it beat sitting at home and eating Chinese food on your couch tonight.

Yeah, sounds fun!

---

Somehow the day went by quicker than you thought, and it was soon time to leave for this haunted hotel ghost hunt. You knew the general area of where the bed and breakfast was, though you never cared to venture that far out into the bayou. Supposedly it was surrounded by water, and the thought of swampy depths teeming with gators and water moccasins turned you off from the idea.

Still, there was something mesmerizing about the land. You turned off the main road and drove down a dirt path lined with dense trees, spotting some other cars ahead of you upon a long driveway. In the last faint rays of the dying sunset, a large plantation house emerged, its windows casting an eerie golden glow already.

The cars ahead of you pulled into a gravel parking spot off to the side, and you followed suit. Stepping into the night air was like walking into a wall of water, the humidity smacking your face heavily. Taking a deep breath of the damp swamp air, you looked around. It wasn’t exactly surrounded by water as you’d imagined, though you could spot the shine of the ever brightening moon casting off in the distance. Otherwise, the place was surrounded by trees and beautiful plants. In front of the house sat a fountain with sleek running water.

“Y/N!” you turned at the sound of your name. Sam was trotting up to you from her car. “Glad you could join me tonight.”

“So what else is happening tonight?” you asked curiously, falling next to her to walk side by side toward the house.

“Well…” Sam opened her phone. “The dinner is first, obviously. Then we get a tour around the grounds and house with some history of the place. And then we end off the night with a séance, hosted by a real psychic medium.”

“So, Ouija boards and shit? Or a crystal ball?” you joked, the skeptic part of you starting to rise.

Sam snorted at that. “Guess we’ll find out.” She responded with an airy tone.

Stepping into the house, the first thing you’d noticed was how cozy it was. It certainly showed its aging with the molding and woodwork, though somehow beautifully preserved to keep its original taste. Décor hung heavy on the walls, paintings of Victorian era men, women and children. It was well lit, the golden glow you’d noticed from the windows seemed welcoming now. A small crowd had already gathered, chattering amongst themselves. After a few minutes you were ushered into a room on the right, the dining room, where multiple small tables sat with plates set.

After an introduction and an unexpectedly delicious dinner of steak and potatoes, you were guided once again toward the entrance hall to be split up into two smaller groups: one staying in the house and the other to explore the grounds, and then switch.

You and Sam were a part of the inner house tour first, exploring the lower floor before moving upstairs. Though still skeptical about the haunting, you had to appreciate the history of the place. Once a plantation house owned by a rich southern family soon abandoned during the Civil War as there was a battleground not too far from the property. It sat mostly empty and unused until a gang made it their hideout, where apparently a lot of bloodshed occurred. Since the days of gangs and outlaws have dissipated, the plantation house sat yet again unused, until being purchased from the state in the 20’s by a wealthy investor who restored it, though it’d become a bed and breakfast in the 50’s.

“The Lemoyne Raiders once called this their hideout, until the infamous Van der Linde gang wiped out their numbers and claimed this place as their own,” the tour guide’s voice echoed oddly in the hall as she paused before a photo on the wall. You craned your neck to see, only getting a glimpse of what looked like a crowd of people in front of a wooden wagon. “However, this didn’t create a safe space as they’d hoped. The O’Driscolls, a long-time rival of the gang and Dutch Van der Linde himself, had found their whereabouts and launched a full scale attack.”

“Ooh, can you imagine all the dead bodies?” Sam whispered to you.

“Kieran Duffy, once an O’Driscoll member that had been captured and eventually turned into a Van der Linde boy. Unbeknownst to everyone, Kieran was kidnapped by his former crew. They sent him back on his horse, his decapitated head in his lap, strolling right up to the front doors as a surprise before they fired.”

A chill sent up your spine at that, the image a little too clear in your mind.

“Some say they can hear a man’s voice behind them, asking if they’d seen his head. Others have claimed to see a headless shadow pacing on the porch. More people have heard the whoops and jeers of the Lemoyne Raiders, the gunshots ringing off in the dead of night. Others say they can smell gunpowder, or a strong smell of tobacco inside their rooms.” The tour guide went on.

As you shuffled down the hall toward one of the rooms, your gaze wandered toward one of the windows overlooking the grounds behind the building. The sun had long since set, and the green landscape had a silver glow provided by the full moon. Though the thick canopies of the trees made it slightly harder to see, you could make out the silhouettes of the other tour group wandering around. You weren’t sure what else was out there – a shed maybe? A couple of sheds? You’d have to find out.

As the outside tour moved, another silhouette caught your eye. They were standing still, though seemingly facing the house. You blinked, and the figure vanished. Was that just a trick of the light?

A few more minutes of peering into the other rooms, and then you headed back downstairs to switch with the other group. Stepping back out into the thick and heavy air, you appreciated the better view. There were certainly a few sheds here and there, a modern one placed close to the back wall whilst the others certainly showed their age. Slanted foundations with bowed roofs, it’s a wonder they still stood in this environment.

Your group wandered further on the grounds, all guided by flashlight. The tour guide had mentioned graves of a family cemetery not too far off, though some had been swallowed by the swamp. She shone her light into the darkness, the telltale shape of old tombstones illuminating against the murky water. It was true; some were half sunken in, others on land were leaning like the sheds were.

“Over the years of Shady Belle’s run as a bed and breakfast, patrons have claimed to hear strange noises out here. Whispers and friendly chatter that carries with the wind. The sound of horses whinnying and hoofbeats, even the barking of a dog. Others have even claimed that they felt a strong presence overlooking them, or even running up behind them while out here.”

Goosebumps erupted on your arms, odd for such a warm and humid night. These stories were beginning to get the best of you. Your eyes wandered further out into the swamp, your imagination beginning to take over. Those gangs spoken about earlier, it was almost as if you could see them in front of you, locked in gunfire, moving amongst the shadows to keep cover. Although, it almost seemed as if a silhouette was standing there…

“Y/N, come on. We’re moving.” Sam caught your attention, and you fell back into the group.

Later on you found yourself back inside, settling into the living room at a large, round table. The psychic medium introduced himself before settling at an empty chair. Others had a couple of contraptions, EMF detectors and infrared cameras. Time to see if ghosts truly existed.

The medium began by announcing the group and their intentions, as well as asking if there was anyone out there to communicate. You’d seen ghost shows before on occasion, so this wasn’t unfamiliar to you.

Everyone had gone quiet, others with expectant faces, others seemed nervous. A couple of people seemed to not be interested at all. A few minutes had gone by, some of the other tours guys moved around the room smoothly with their gadgets.

Suddenly, another shiver ran up your spine. A small, cold gust of air ghosted across the back of your neck, as if someone was breathing on you. A vague, faint whisper in your ear caused you to flinch. Your eyes closed involuntarily, as if you were a small child trying to hide from the monsters in the closet.

Opening them again, you noticed that the scenery changed. You were still in the building, which was evident. However, the people that surrounded you had changed. Surrounded by men in what resembled cowboy outfits, all leaned over the table and viewing some paperwork. They were speaking to one another, though their voices were muffled and distorted. You opened your own mouth to speak, yet your throat felt parched and dry, producing nothing but an exasperated breath.

As if your action caught their attention, the heads of the closest men turned to look directly at you. One with slicked back hair and a thick moustache, the other with dirty blonde hair and bright blue eyes…

You blinked again, the image before you disappearing and bringing you back to reality. The group and the medium were still in their spots, though it seemed as if no one had noticed what happened to you just now. Did you just hallucinate, was your food laced with psychedelics?

---

“That was cool, wasn’t it?” Sam mentioned as the two of you headed back to your cars. “When the EMF detector went off, I think I got chills at one point!”

You thought back to that little encounter you had, even if you could call it that. Quite frankly, you weren’t even sure what to label it as. A hallucination, your imagination running wild, or maybe an actual ghost encounter?

“Y/N?” Sam’s voice pierced your thoughts. “Hey, you still with me?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” you sighed. “It was interesting.”

“You okay?” Sam pressed, noticing the tone of your voice.

You nodded. “Just a little tired. I think that food gave me the itis.”

Sam chuckled at that. “Alright, get home then. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

“Goodnight.” You said as she veered away toward her car. You approached yours and got in, falling into the line of people leaving for the night.

As you drove back down the dirt path, your mind couldn’t help but to wander back to that vision. Something about it seemed familiar to you, though you couldn’t place what…

#Arthur Morgan x reader #vampire au

89 notes · View notes

catgluue · 5 years

Text

Chapter Two: Mortal/Immortal

I’m a day late but still trucking along!

Read on AO3

Chapter One: Coincidence

Chapter Two: Mortal/Immortal

“You’re going to be okay? Living here alone with him?”

“Of course,” Riza all but scoffed, a mannerism she had picked up from Roy - Mr. Mustang when her father was around. She didn’t know for sure that she would be okay, but at fourteen she was so different from the kid she’d been when Roy had come to study under her father. She was like a plant who had finally gotten to spend time in the sun. She’d flourished in his presence, and she would miss him.

“You’ll write to me, right?” He looked bashful, hopeful. She couldn’t quite place when he had gone from awkward and gangly to boyishly handsome. For that matter she didn’t know when she had gone from compact and sure-footed to awkward and gangly but here she was. Suddenly the gangly one.

“Lots,” she promised, holding out her hand and hoping it wasn’t sweaty. Instead he wrapped her in a tight hug that she returned hesitantly; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been hugged.

“Oh and stay out of my room,” he joked. “I expect it to be waiting for me just as I left it when I come visit.”

He did come visit, years later, in time to help her plan a funeral, but he’d slept on the couch, as though not to venture further into her life than the sitting room. When she told him, somewhat self-consciously, that his room as ready for him he’d told her he didn’t want to intrude.

-x-

Riza entertains the idea of sleeping in her childhood bed for about five minutes, standing anxiously in the upstairs hallway by the huge window they had never gotten curtains for, before going to sleep on the couch in the sitting room. The fire she set earlier is crackling away, and shadows dance across the walls. She stops at the bottom of the stairs for a moment, breathless, feeling as though she’s been transported through time. She can almost see a scrawny fifteen-year-old Roy Mustang setting up the checkers board, alchemy textbooks piled high on the coffee table.

But she is alone. There are no alchemy textbooks, no checkers, and no Roy Mustang. Not yet, anyhow. She’s glad, not for the first time, that the General is accomplished at letting people only see the parts of him he wants to be visible. If any of their team guess at their shared past here in this house Riza knows that she personally will never hear the end of it.

She settles into the couch and stares into the fire, muscles taut with nerves. Something about being back here feels like floating in a void, in a place untouched by time, existing somehow outside the mortal coil. She remembers how living here before, sometimes she would feel like the one who was haunting the old house, too incorporeal to be real but too solid to fully float away.

Riza wakes on the couch in horror to find that it’s at least mid-morning and someone is knocking at the door. Blearily she grabs her sidearm off the coffee table, and creeps towards the front door. Halfway there she realizes it’s probably just the team but she’s been through too much not to stand on tiptoe to peer through the peephole before lowering her gun and opening the door.

“Nice place,” Breda tells her, leaning to look past her. “Sure you want to sell it? Fix it up a little and this could be a great place to retire.” Riza moves aside to let him pass, followed by Fuery whose arms are full of equipment. Havoc is nowhere to be seen, but the General walks up, hands in his pockets, with an impossible-to-read expression.

Impossible for most people, anyway.

“You slept on the couch,” he says quietly, peering around her into the sitting room. “How are you doing?”

“Fine, sir,” she says in a clipped tone, reminding him with a glance that he’s never been here before. “I’ve gotten a lot done since yesterday.” Havoc appears finally, striding around the side of the building.

“I couldn’t find much, boss,” he tells them. “There’s a few tracks around the northwest side, and some tampering with the window, but that’s about it. Hey Hawkeye,” he gives her a nod. “Really nice landscaping.” He shoulders the duffel bag he clearly left on the porch and heads inside. Riza gives her superior office another significant look, then turns and walks inside and to take stock of the chaos that had immediately befallen her house.

“Well I’m going into town,” she announces. “Just as soon as I change. I want to speak to the mayor about what he saw here.”

“I’ll go too,” the General announces. “You could use a second set of eyes and it won’t be the first time we’ve pretended to be a married couple.” she rolls her eyes but everyone seems to take this in stride.

“I’ll get a wiretap going and see what I can find out,” Fuery tells them.

“I think I should go alone,” Riza tries to give Roy a significant look but he’s carefully examining the contents of a china cabinet. “There’s no evidence of foul play apart from a tampered window. It might even just have been some kids from the town trying to get into what they thought was an abandoned house. And there’s certainly no reason to pretend to be married . This isn’t Aerugo.”

“Couldn’t hurt,” Roy says, picking up a teacup and turning it over.

“I don’t know,” Breda says slowly, still looking around the room. “Your father was an alchemist, right? But he never worked for the state-”

“How do you know that?” she asks, probably sharper than she means to.

“We did our due diligence,” Mustang replies, finally meeting her eyes.

“Which means,” Breda continues, “either he didn’t qualify because his research wasn’t enough to impress them, or he simply wasn’t interested in working for the military. Understandable,” he shrugs. “My biggest question is why Grumman sent us here - the pattern seems to be this individual - or group - going after state alchemists exclusively.”

“Exactly,” Fuery chimes in, busily setting up what looked to be a great deal of equipment on the dining room table. “So it looks like, for whatever reason, the state’s had their eye on your father for a while, Captain.”

“I remember them sending scouts to try and recruit him,” Riza says, and this much is true; however the last scout was years before her father ever decided to take on an apprentice. “But as far as I know his research is all destroyed now. I made sure to see to that after his death.” Also technically true. Havoc shrugs.

“It’s weird but the whole thing is weird; what do they plan to do with incomplete research?” he wonders out loud. Riza is already heading for the staircase to go change and almost misses the General’s quiet reply.

“Maybe they’re trying to solve the equations.”

-x-

The walk into town is almost painfully familiar. She walked this way every day to school for years, occasionally with Mustang to walk her home afterwards, chattering the whole time about a new transmutation or new theory or asking her what she’d learned. He was very good at talking then, just as he is now, pointing out a particular type of tree lining the path as they approach the town and he reaches out to lace his fingers through hers in a motion so natural that she doesn’t notice at first. She just has to give a sidelong glance to get an apologetic grin back.

“We’re undercover,” he tells her.

“Which I still think is unnecessary,” she reminds him, but leaves her hand in his as they walk through town. It’s changed, as she noted on her walk from the train station. There are more buildings, more houses closer to the center of town. Further off she can see the old schoolhouse - that building looks exactly the same. “I could have done this just as well on my own. Maybe better,” she considers, “ You might get recognized and that’s bound to be awkward for everyone involved.” He shrugs at this.

“It’s not a bad story. I studied under your father, left for the military, you followed, and now we’re married and selling the old house. Hardly unbelievable.”

“No,” she says slowly. “Not unbelievable.” It could have been reality, she thinks, had a butterfly flapped its wings at the right time.

Seemig to read her mind, as usual, he lifts their joined hands and quickly presses a kiss to the back of hers as they approach what passes for a town hall in Werthem, and she ignores the blush she can feel creeping up her neck. His touch makes her feel human, solid, not like a shade haunting the manor where she grew up but a flesh-and-blood human.

The receptionist directs them to what is really the only office in the place, but the door opens as Riza is about to knock, and she finds herself face to face with Ernst. He looks vaguely familiar, as do many of the people in town.

“Are you the mayor?” she asks anyway, holding her hand. “Riza Hawkeye. I got your letter.” The man looks between her and Roy for a moment.

“Ah… which letter was this?” he asks, and she falters.

“You wrote to tell me that trespassers were spotted on the property,” she reminds him. Surely he can’t be that busy. The town is miniscule and from the bustle of the office he looks like he has plenty of help. Roy looks to be bored but she knows he’s actually taking in all the details of the office.

“See honey, I told you it wasn’t that serious. There’s nothing in the house anyone would even want to take, unless they’re into ornamental spoons.”

“I apologize, Miss Hawkeye,” Ernst says with a shrug, donning his hat. “While it’s nice to have you - and your ...husband?”

“Fiance,” Roy corrects, settling an arm around Riza’s shoulders.

“-in town,” the mayor continues, “I didn’t write you. Terribly sorry for any confusion.”

-x-

“Well that was pointless,” Riza laments as they walk back up the road to the manor, having stopped in the market to buy groceries. It was reminiscent of the many times they did so as teens, although this time instead of generally being more of a nuisance than a help, Roy seemed to enjoy himself, strolling through the sunlit streets, her arm looped through his as she filled a basket - her old shopping basket, actually - with produce.

“Not entirely,” he replies. “The mayor was clearly lying, and while I’m not sure why I think we can safely say there was money involved.”

“And what makes you think that?”

“His hat for one thing. His jacket for another. Both brand new, and the suit was tailored, which I know for a fact isn’t cheap.” She snorts at this.

“Says the man who would rather buy nice suits than furniture.”

“Priorities, Captain,” he says. “I think Ernst might just be our man.”

-x-

She’s still resentful of the intrusion, but by evening the air in the house seems lighter, the voices of her comrades chasing away the spectres that seemed to lurk in the corners of her vision. They’ve stopped working for the night, and she can hear them laughing and chatting over a bottle of wine Breda found somewhere in the kitchen. Riza stands at the end of the hallway, looking at the double doors that lead to the study.

This is ridiculous, she thinks, and pushes the door open.

The metal was cold against her skin, the blanket between her and the table barely giving her any protection. It was in contrast to the burning pain that seared her shoulder blades. She had agreed to guard her father’s research but now she was beginning to think better of it. She’d planned on guarding a notebook, maybe, or even burying research notes somewhere in a weatherproof box.

This would be, her father told her, much more secure.

There it is, the metal work table where she spent much of the fall the year after Mustang left for the military. It’s smaller now than in the nightmares she had for years afterwards. She walks forward, touches it. All that trouble, she thinks, and the tattoo was destroyed not even five years later. All that trouble to ensure the secret of flame alchemy survived and here she was, still wishing its keeping had never fallen into her hands.

-x-

Chapter Three: Flashover

#royaiweek19 #day two #late af #riza hawkeye #Roy Mustang #royai

19 notes · View notes

winchester-ofthe-lord · 5 years

Text

Classic Winchester Adventures - Chapter 6

Square Filled: Motel

Rating: gen

Warnings: none

Word Count: 2.7k

Summary: Sam and Dean have to find out what’s going on in the “Haunted Motel” they discovered in chapter 2

read on ao3 read from the beginning

A/N: hiya guys, this is chapter 6 for @spnclassicbingo ’s challenge. MASSIVE thanks to @thefandomforme for helping me with this <3 Stay tuned for the next chapters :)

_____________________________________________

A couple of days later, the Impala - now (un)fortunately back to black - rolls off of the highway, and onto the narrow forest road leading toward the “Haunted Motel” Dean is already very keen on entering. The building is only a few minutes outside of town, but for whatever reason about half a mile into the woods, accessible only via a bumpy track that doesn’t really benefit Baby’s suspension.

“Who the hell came up with the stupid idea of building a motel here?” Dean complains, wincing when one of Baby’s tires hits a pothole, rattling both the car and the two brothers like children in a washing machine. Dean sighs internally, externally, and most of all, eternally, as he tenderly strokes over his steering wheel, muttering plaintive apologies under his breath.

They reach the parking lot, or rather the slightly more flattened area in front of the bedraggled building, and let their eyes roam the shabby house facade that seems to be crumbling away right before them, the abandoned, rusty-looking swing hanging from the tree in the ‘front yard’, the wall of trees surrounding the parcel of land and the road, and a decayed sign that says ‘Welcome to Coal Creek Motel - Enjoy your stay’. Homey.

Today is the eleventh, meaning that they’ve got two and a half days left to find out what exactly they’re even hunting here, why it’s killing people, and how to annihilate it. Easy as pie.

“Why is it always Friday the thirteenth, anyway?” Sam asks as he opens the Impala’s trunk to grab his and Dean’s guns and knives - they decided to scan the area first, then the, at this time of the day hopefully empty, building, before they’d interrogate the owners and possible previous victims. “I mean, why not… I don’t know, why not Thursday the 25th or something?”

Dean takes the proffered weapons from his brother, shaking his head with a soft huff, “Hell, if I knew.” He tucks the gun into the back of his jeans, the knife into the sheath at his ankle, and locks the car. Checking his flip phone for the time, he also sees his most favorite notification: no service. Awesome. “Okay, Sammy, cell reception is shit out here, so we gotta make sure we’re both back at the car in about-” he checks the time again, because he sometimes has the attention span of a goldfish- “one hour and fifty minutes, before the owners open the motel for the nightly tour. You copy?”

“Yes, sir!” Sam scoffs, grinning smugly while he salutes to his brother.

______________________________

Neither of them found anything on their search around the property. No weird symbols, no dead bodies, no creepy altars, no traces of blood, nothing. Which leaves only the house itself to examine.

The brothers accompany a group of seven other people on the tour through the motel. Their guide is a grumpy old man with an unkempt beard, and a generally unkempt outer appearance. But he answers most of the questions some of the overly excited visitors ask him, so he’s at least doing his job.

Unfortunately, even though the tour includes the entire building, nothing Dean and Sam didn’t already know is brought to light. Except for maybe the horrifyingly poorly done getup of the whole “Haunted Motel”. Including faux skeletons and cobwebs (although, looking at the overall condition of the house, the latter ones might actually be real), fake blood stains on the walls and floorboards, eerie paintings and soiled mirrors in the most random places, and a bunch of other stuff that doesn’t bring the Winchesters closer to solving the case.

They let themselves fall behind the group for a moment to share their thoughts, but none of them noticed anything off, or even slightly suspicious, so they decide to come back in the early morning to sift through the house on their own, without that creepy old dude watching their every step.

______________________________

“Hey, Dean,” Sam yells from somewhere on the first floor while Dean lets the yellowish beam of his flashlight wander across the walls in the hallway on the second floor. “I think I found something, get your stupid ass down here.”

It takes him almost two minutes to find his way back through the maze structured building until he finds Sam standing right in front of the front door, illuminating the ugly rug splayed on the floor. More precisely, the rug is rolled to the side, revealing dark wood planks underneath it. There’s a faint outline of a symbol...or a sigil maybe? drawn in dark gray paint (it probably used to be black, but over the years it must’ve faded) onto the floor, looking like a big ‘T’ with some sort of swirl above the upper horizontal line, and another swirl on the right next to the vertical line. “A tulpa?” Dean asks, squinting into the blinding beam of his brother’s flashlight pointed at his face.

“Sure looks like it.” The blinding light lowers toward the floor again.

Awesome. Just. Awesome. Tulpa means they can’t kill anything, and have to convince possibly hundreds of people, if not more, that there’s nothing going on here. Easy. As. Pie.

Which also means that they can’t do anything at the moment.

“Let’s get back to our motel and get some shut-eye. I’m so fucking tired, man,” Dean says and kicks at the rug, causing it to roll unceremoniously back over the painted planks. He opens the door and waits for Sam to walk past him before he follows suit.

______________________________

After sleeping until late morning - they came back from their self-guided, private motel tour around 4:30 am after all - they spend several hours reading stories about people’s experiences in the “Haunted Motel”.

“Holy shit,” Sam curses at his laptop sitting on the desk in front of him, “there’s someone who ran away from about 500 giant tarantulas that were scattered across the entire house.” He taps viciously on the touchpad of his laptop to scroll to the next entry. “And then there was a guy who said he, quote, ‘was torn apart by giant cockroaches with wolf heads’. Damn, that shit sounds terrible.”

These stories go on for quite a while, and Dean isn’t so sure if they’re really dealing with a tulpa in this building, or if they’re entirely on the wrong track here. “Isn’t a tulpa like, a bunch of people believing in the same shit?”

Sam nods his affirmation. “Yeah, a tulpa is created when many people are concentrating on the same thing while looking at the Tibetan Spirit Sigil we saw on the floor in front of the door. Once created, the tulpa takes on a life of its own and doesn’t need people to believe in it anymore. But Dean, I’m not that sure anymore if it’s really a tulpa going nuts in that motel.”

“Yep, just my thought,” Dean says, leaning forward to scrub his hands over his face. “I mean, first off, the sigil is under that ugly ass rug, so people aren’t really likely to see it, right? And every single person is seeing something different? Shouldn’t most people at least see the same thing? That doesn’t make any sense.” Heaving an exasperated sigh, he sinks back into his chair, closing his eyes, trying to sort through the given information.

Sam shuts his laptop with a soft click, and sighs almost as loud as Dean did mere seconds ago. “I don’t know, man. But I think you’re right.” He sighs once more, running a hand through his girly hair. “But if it’s not a tulpa, what else could it be? We only have like, one more day to find out what it is and how we can kill it, Dean.”

His brother is right. And this year, Friday the 13th only happens twice, so they have to kill whatever it is now, or they won’t get another chance for a rather long time.

______________________________

“No no no no no no no. Fuck. No. Nope. Nu-uh. Big. Fucking. HELL NO,” Dean repeats over and over again, a little under his, but mostly out of breath, as he’s running down the hallway on the second floor of the motel. Why he’s running? Oh, just the blonde woman in a white nightdress, looking suspiciously similar to his mom, chasing after him while screaming bloody murder.

Oh. And she’s on fire. Literally.

All of a sudden, she appears right in front of him, causing Dean to come to an abrupt halt, almost face planting into the wall to his right in his attempt to change the direction of his stampede.

“Where are you going, Dean?” his not-mother asks in a malicious snarl. “Don’t you love your mommy?”

Dean jerks his head around to look for another escape. “Not real,” he mumbles under his breath. “Not real, not real, not real, not real.”

The blonde, burning woman reappears right in front of Dean once again as he tries to make his way downstairs where he suspects his brother. Just that now he watches his mother’s face slowly melting off her bones, revealing charred flesh that starts to turn into a new shape.

It’s black and gooey for a few seconds, but little by little, the charred shape merges into a new face.

“Dean, why on earth is my car pink? What have you done?!” the slightly contorted replica of his father asks in an accusing tone. What the fuck, John isn’t even dead. This fucking tulpa is obviously on crack. Besides, the car was pink. It’s black again. Thankyouverymuch.

“SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM,” Dean shrieks into the hallway.

Mary-John-now-flaming-Vampire-Hellhound dissolves into thin air, only to re-materialize behind Dean, growling threateningly at him, and drooling hissing acid on the creaking floorboards. Where the fucking hell is his idiot brother?

The day before, while Sam was busy doing research on the origin story of the tulpa, Dean was equally busy chatting with Nancy the witch via text messages on his flip phone. She may have mutilated his car for a day, but she was also pretty darn hot, and Dean’s never been one to miss out on an opportunity to do some horizontal tango. During all his, what could easily be called, sexting, he pretty much blanked out the Samsquatch and his findings, so Dean doesn’t actually have any idea what’s really going on in that “Haunted Motel” after all.

He vaguely remembers Sam telling him something about Harry Potter fans staying at the motel in 2000, the year after The Prisoner of Azkaban was published, and something about Boggarts. Dean thinks that Sam mentioned the fans “summoning” the Tulpa-Boggart more or less by accident, when they talked about how interesting and frightening the idea of the physical manifestation of one’s worst nightmares would be - while standing right over the giant tulpa sigil in the entrance area.

There was also a good reason why it’s always Friday the 13th, maybe it was because one of the fans was thinking about Jason with his ugly hockey mask. But maybe Dean got that wrong. He wasn’t really paying that much attention, to be honest.

Sam seemed to know and have a plan, so that was enough for the older Winchester.

This plan included an attempt at “exorcising” the Tulpa-Boggart by performing some kind of spiritual cleansing Sam found in one of his books. Or on the internet? Whatever. The important thing is that he did have a plan including the destruction of… something. They’d hoped that by destroying this something, the Boggart would vanish.

It did not.

“Dean?”

Breathing a relieved sigh at the sight of his brother ascending the stairs from the first floor, Dean takes a step toward him. “Took you long enough, asshat. We really need to get outta here. This thing is driving me ins- WHAT THE HELL?!” His relief quickly fades away into nothingness when his brother’s head, rather unexpectedly, bursts into a thousand pieces, painting the walls around the staircase in blood splatters.

Worst fucking nightmare.

Dean scrubs viciously at his eyes, trying to scratch the disturbing image from his retinas, while stumbling forward, and rushing down the stairs. Please let Sam be here somewhere.

“Sammy?” Dean tries carefully, peeking around the corner and into the room where he hopes to find his brother.

Two strong hands clasp at the lapels of his jacket and press him against the wall. “Dean? Please tell me it’s you.”

“‘Course it’s me, you dipshit,” Dean grunts into his brothers face, squirming slightly in his attempt to free himself from the persistent grip. “Now get your giant Sasquatch hands off of me. We need to get the fuck out of here.”

Finally, Sam lets go of Dean’s jacket with a nod, takes a step back from Dean, and briefly skims the room with an unnerved expression. It’s been quite a long time since Dean’s seen his brother that panicked. If it wasn’t for fear of his own life, he actually might find it hilarious.

“What does it look like for you?” Dean asks as he leans around another corner to make sure the entrance area is empty, holding his fist up as a sign for Sam to stay behind.

He hears a grumbled, defeated sigh before Sam answers, “Clowns. Yours?”

“Mom.” This time it’s Dean who exhales a shaky sigh. Only a couple more steps until they reach the front door. “And then Dad lecturing me on defiling his car with the pink velvet shit.”

Sam stops next to him, furrowing his brows in a judgemental expression. “Really Dean, that’s your worst nightmare?” Dean’s eye-roll is basically a full body move. He yanks at the door handle, and says, “Well, now it certainly is.”

They step out onto the front porch, down the stairs and toward the Impala where they take a couple of minutes to catch their breath, and process their respective nightmares. Leaning against the side of the car in the middle of the night in front of an eerie building somewhere in the woods is definitely not one of Dean’s favorite things to do.

“What the hell are we supposed to do now, huh?” Dean pinches the bridge of his nose for the hundredth time tonight before refocusing on his brother. “I mean, technically, there’s not really much we can do. We can’t kill it. We can’t stop people from coming to this fucking motel. We can’t find these damn Harry Potter fans and make them, I dunno, unthink the Boggart out of existence. We can’t do shit, man.”

For once, his smart-alecky brother doesn’t have a witty remark. All he manages to do is a somewhat forlorn shrug, letting his arms go limp by his sides, exhaling wearily.

“Okay, then,” Dean says and pushes himself away from the car, swatting his thighs once, “let’s burn that shit down.”

“What? No, we can’t do that, Dean!”

“Why not?”

“Uhm, because it’s wrong? And what if they just rebuild it?”

Dean rolls his eyes again. “Then we’ll come back and burn that down, too.”

There’s a minute of pregnant silence until Sam speaks again. “You know what? You’re right. Let’s burn it down. The building’s empty now, so at least nobody will get hurt. And it’s not like they’re making a fortune with that shit house anyway.”

So they do exactly that. They each take a gas can from the Impala’s trunk, and spread the highly flammable content around and inside the house, soaking the already rotting wood of the first floor and the porch - neither of them dares to go upstairs in fear of another nightmarish encounter, but well, if the first floor burns down, so will the rest of the house, right?

While Dean is already back at the car, getting it ready to head off by driving it toward the narrow path leading back to the highway, Sam spreads a trail of gasoline from the front door of the motel down the stairs of the porch and several yards away from the building, until he’s next to the car.

“Would you do the honors?” Sam asks his brother, holding out his favorite Zippo with a knowing smirk. As much as the two of them enjoy solving cases, actually killing the monsters they’re hunting, and leaving haunted places...not haunted anymore - it’s also fucking amazing to destroy things. Besides, watching a house burn down does have something oddly meditative.

And the truth is, not everything can be saved.

__________________________________________

taglist: @leatherandapplepies @demoninflannel @cross-roads-blues@thefandomforme @tiernayne

(please let me know if you wanna get added to/deleted from this list)

#crack fic #spn fic #sam and dean winchester #supernatural fanfiction #my fic

8 notes · View notes

fanficsandthings · 6 years

Text

Unsolved

Modern!Racetrack Higgins x reader

Word count: 2.5k

Summary: Race decides it’s a good idea to go to a creepy, abandoned house.

Author’s Note: There’s some Buzzfeed Unsolved references in here, cuz I got the main idea from that show. If you don’t know the show, watch it. It’s great. I took a lot of prompts off of this list.

“This house is not haunted. This house is not haunted,” you whispered to yourself over and over. This house was haunted, but you needed to tell yourself it wasn’t.

Race had this brilliant idea to sneak into the old rundown house a few blocks over. The house that had dozens of ghost stories derived from within its walls. Stories of violence and terror. Race also had the brilliant idea to do this on Halloween night. Why did you listen to him? Because, apparently, you were almost as stupid as him.

Every thought in your head was screaming at you to turn around, but you crawled through the window anyway. This was something that Albert or Elmer should be doing, not you. The only reason Race literally dragged you here was because he knew how scared you were of these sorts of things. You loved Race, but if he got you possessed by a demon tonight, he’d be the first person you had that demon kill.

As you stood on shaky legs, in what looked to be a small living room, you reached for Race’s hand. “Why are you so determined to see this ghost, anyway?” you asked, squinting through the darkness to try to make out the features of his face.

He let out a small laugh. “Ghosts aren’t real. I’m only here to prove that to you.”

The laugh that came out of your mouth was high pitched and obviously fake. “Ghosts aren’t real?! Tell that to the millions of people who have witnessed them.”

He just shook his head, grabbed your hand, and led you further into the house. You came to what must have once been a kitchen. The cabinets broken, cupboards half hanging off the wall, a lone chair sitting in the corner.

Race pointed at the chair. “They say that if you move that chair and leave the room, when you come back it’ll have moved itself back to its original location.”

The kitchen itself was terrifying, but Race’s comment was too familiar to scare you. “Race, you literally took that story off of an episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved.”

“You’re damn right I did,” he grinned at you. “I gotta try to make this place scarier than it is. Right now you’re Ryan and I’m Shane.”

You rolled your eyes at his comment. He was right though. He didn’t believe in any of this supernatural stuff, but you were terrified of even the slightest sound that could have been more than just a scurrying animal.

At that moment, a soft thud came from behind a door on the other side of the kitchen. You let out a small scream and tried to run, but Race held you in place. He started to drag you to the door.

“Come on, Ryan,” he said. “It was probably just a mouse.”

You tried to stop him, but he was stronger, and eventually you were standing in front of the door. He swung it open to reveal stairs that looked like they went down to a cellar.

“I dare you to go down there,” Race looked at you.

Your eyes got wide, and you finally yanked your hand away from his. “No, no, no, no,” you took a few steps back. “I absolutely draw the line at going into dark, dank basements.”

“Fine, I’ll do down there.” He took a step forward, onto the stairs. You tried to reach out to stop him, but he was already half way down, and you weren’t going to risk going after him. You could see the flashlight on his phone shine up at you. “It’s literally just a small basement. Shelves on the wall, a few boxes in the corner.”

“Then come back up here right now,” you tried to command him.

“On second thought,” he said. You knew he was grinning, even though you couldn’t see his face through the light shining at you. “I think I’ll go explore those boxes.”

“Anthony Higgins, if you die down there I’m not coming down to retrieve your body.”

“That’s fine. Just make sure to tell the police where you left me.” His light got dimmer as he walked away. Suddenly, his light went off and he let out a scream.

Your eyes widened in panic. Your heart told you to run down the stairs, but your brain told you to stay put.

“Racetrack!” you screamed as you took the few steps to the top of the stairs. You put one foot on the first step, your body not allowing you to go any further. “Race! What happened?! Please, tell me you’re alright.” Your eyes were scanning the darkness, begging for any sign of light.

You were about to turn on your phone’s flashlight when the light returned below you. Race was there, a huge grin on his face, trying his best to suppress his laughing.

“I can’t believe you fell for that,” he said as he walked up the stairs.

You hit him on the arm as he got closer. “You’re an absolute asshole. You knew for a fact that I would think something actually happened to you.”

“Yeah,” he shrugged, smiling. “But I like to see your reactions.”

You hit him again, and mumbled under your breath, “dick.”

“Hey, I heard that.”

“Hey, you were meant to.”

As you got to the foot of the stairway that let to the second floor, Race asked, “You too afraid to go upstairs?”

“I just don’t like basements.” You said, walking up the stairs. He followed close behind. You stopped at the landing at the top of the stairs. It split off in two directions.

“I have an idea,” Race said, smirking.

“If you say let’s split up, I swear to god.” You glared at him.

“What?” he shrugged. “If we split up, the faster we get through the house, the faster we can leave.”

“Or,” you poked him in the chest. “We could just leave without exploring any further. You know what? That’s a great idea, Race. Let’s go.”

You turned to head down the stairs, but Race grabbed your hand. “We’re almost through the whole house. Just a couple more rooms up here, and then I’ll have proven to you that it’s not haunted.”

A few loud creaks could be heard coming from a room to the right. You squeezed Race’s hand tighter and tried to pull him down the stairs.

“C’mon. I’ll prove to you that was just the wind.” He began dragging you towards the room.

“Racer,” you begged as you continued to get close. “Racer, please. If this ghost kills me, I’m gonna come back just to haunt you.”

He didn’t take your threat seriously. “There’s no such thing as ghosts. So one, you won’t die from a ghost, and two, you can’t haunt me.”

You stood to the side of the door as Race opened it. “Holy shit, you’re not gonna believe what’s in here,” he gasped, shock adorning his face.

“I don’t wanna know. I don’t want to see the dead body. I just want to get out of this house.”

“You have to see this.” He grabbed your arm and pulled you forward, pushing you into the room.

You started to scream, not knowing what to expect, but the scream stopped halfway up your throat as you looked at the room. “There’s nothing in here,” you shot Race a look.

“Exactly. You’re all worked up for nothing.”

“Stop trying to scare me then, asshole.”

“That’s the fun part,” he smiled, winking at you. “Stop being so scare-able.”

“I can’t help that you take advantage of my fears.” You walked past him out of the room. When you reached the stairs you tried to go down, but Race ran in front of you to stop you.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he said, putting his hand on your arm. He pointed back up the stairs, to the left. “There’s still two rooms over there.”

You turned to look at the doorways. “It’s probably just another bedroom and a bathroom. Mystery solved; let’s go home.” You tried to take another step down the stairs but Race spun you around and put an arm around your shoulder.

“It shouldn’t be too scary then if you already know what they are,” he said as he led you to the first door.

The door was off its hinges, leaning against the wall beside the doorway. It was a bathroom. A gross, terrible smelling bathroom. There was stagnant, murky water sitting in the sink and toilet. A smell that had to be some sort of dead animal wafted out at the two of you.

“This is disgusting,” you said through your hand, as it was covering your nose and mouth.

Race had his hand over his face too. “Yeah, this is the scariest thing about this whole house.” He pushed you towards the next room down the hall. “One more room to go. Then, I promise we’ll leave.” You reluctantly went with him. The promise of leaving outweighing the fear of the last room.

The last room was just another bedroom. This one had a gross looking couch in it and bottles scattered around the floor. The only scary thing was the thought of someone actually sleeping in this house. You couldn’t go another minute inside these walls.

Race slowed down as you reached the bottom of the staircase. “I thought I heard something coming from the kitchen.”

“Race, please,” you continued towards the door. “I’m not up for another one of your tricks. You promised we could leave.”

“Yeah, you go outside. I’m going to go make sure it’s nothing.”

“Race. Please. Just leave it be. Come outside.”

He tried to not listen to you, but the worry in your voice and the look on your face made him break. He couldn’t leave you. He let out a sigh. “Fine. I’m coming. You’re lucky I love you.”

You grabbed his hand and smiled. “Thank you.”

You crawled out of the window you came in, finally free of the hell that is that house. You’re heart rate was slowing down, and you were ready to enjoy the rest of the night with Race. Your calmness was cut short when you saw a figure move out of the corner of your eye.

“Race,” you said, swinging your arm behind you, frantically searching for his hand. You found it and grabbed tight. “Race, there’s definitely something over there. I know what I saw.”

“It was probably just a deer,” he said against your head as he put an arm around your shoulder and pulled you close.

“A deer? In the middle of the city? I highly doubt that, Race.” You looked in the direction you had seen the figure as Race led you towards the road.

“If you just ignore it and keep walking we’ll be off this property in a couple of seconds.”

“You’re right,” you breathed out. “I’m the one who wants to leave. You’re the one who wants to do stupid stuff like check out haunted houses.”

“Hey! I’m just trying to prove that it’s not haunted.”

“We didn’t see a ghost, but that doesn’t mean it’s not haunted. Other people have completely convincing stories. I guess whether or not it truly is haunted will remain... unsolved.” You grinned at Race, appreciating your own reference.

You were off the property, almost to your car, when Race stopped you. “Wait. There’s something behind that bush over there.” He pointed to a bush maybe 10 feet away.

“Race. I already told you I’m tired of your tricks. We’re away from the house now. I’m not scared.”

“I’m serious,” Race said as he started to walk slowly towards the bush. “There was some rustling over here.”

“It’s probably a rabbit. Or a child trying to pull a prank. It is Halloween after all.”

“Just let me check it out.”

“Fine.” You shrugged and let him go.

He crouched down a little as he got closer to the plant. He was halfway around it when a guy popped up from behind it, screaming at Race. Race fell backwards, letting out a scream of his own. He sat there on the ground, staring at the guy who was now laughing at him. He turned to look at you, but you were also doubled over in laughter.

You tried your best to stifle the laughing so you could speak. “Al, that was great. He looked more scared than I did all night.” You walked over to Race to help him off the ground.

“Wait, wait,” Race started to speak as he was standing up. “You knew about this?” You nodded your head, a smile on your face. He looked over at Albert, who had now taken his mask off. “Albert? Really? You helped?!”

“What?” Albert shrugged. “We knew that you were gonna be a dick all night. We figured it’d be funny to get a good scare out of you. And we were right. It was hilarious.”

Race looked between the two of you before throwing his hands up and walking towards your car. “You guys are both assholes. I hate you and I hate Halloween. But you were right about it being a child behind that bush.”

Albert clutched his mask to his chest over his heart. His face forming a look of betrayal. “That hurts, Race. That hurts.”

“He loves us more than anything,” you said to Albert. You both started walking after Race. You raised your voice so he could hear. “Isn’t that right, Racer? You love us both more than anything!”

He stood by the passenger side of your car, waiting for you to unlock the door. He glared at the two of you. You pressed the button on the key fob, and you all climbed in.

“Scary movie night, anyone?” Albert asked from the backseat.

You and Race both shook your heads. You were tired of being scared. “Family Halloween movie night,” you stated. “Hocus Pocus, Halloweentown, Scary Godmother.”

Albert sat back in his seat. “Fine. If that’s what you’re up for.”

You smiled back at him and turned to Race. “Sorry about the scare, but you know you deserved it.”

“I know,” he looked at you. “And I’m honestly sorry for forcing you into that house.”

You shrugged. “It’s whatever. I had fun. But no more haunted anything ever. Promise?”

“Promise.” He reached over and squeezed your hand. “I’ll just take Albert next time.”

Albert let out a sigh from the backseat. You heard him whisper “I hate you.”

“You love me,” Race smiled back at him. You and Albert both rolled your eyes as you laughed.

The rest of the night was spent with your best friends, laughing and joking. Elmer and Romeo showed up about half way through Hocus Pocus, Katherine, Jack, Davey, and Sarah wondered in at the beginning of Halloweentown, and many others wondered in through the rest of the night. Some were drunk from parties they had been to, but you didn’t mind. You were happy to have your friends all together. You were having one of your best nights in a long while, and it was all because Race took you to a creepy, abandoned house.

#racetrack higgins #racetrack higgins imagine #racetrack higgins x reader #newsies imagine #newsies fic #newsies broadway #this is technically posted after halloween and im cursing myself cuz i missed my deadline #but its only like 5 minutes past midnight #halloween #halloween imagine #newsies fanfic #newsies x reader #newsies fanfiction #newsies #my writing

69 notes · View notes

douxreviews · 5 years

Text

Arrow - ‘Past Sins’ Review

“You can’t stop the past from haunting you.”

Three cases of Daddy Issues and one huge dollop of moral ambiguity. One of these things is not like the other.

Family relationships, particularly parental relationships, have been a recurring theme for this show. So revisiting Oliver and now Emiko’s complicated relationship with their father should come as no surprise. I’m all for it. Robert Queen’s love for Oliver and Thea was obvious despite his other failings. His feelings towards Emiko were more convoluted. His obligations towards Emiko are undisputed regardless of his actions. However, this did not stop him from abandoning her or her mother in the face of what we assume were Moira’s demands. The fallout from Robert’s decision and its effect on both Oliver and Emiko certainly warrants a deeper dive.

I am less impressed with the execution. Robert Queen’s legacy has seesawed between hero and villain throughout the years due to either the poor memory or deliberate retconning of the writers. In the first season, we learned Robert accidentally killed a councilman. His guilt over that death was the domino that allowed Malcolm to rope first Robert and then Moira into the Undertaking. In season five Adrian Chase delivers the councilman’s cement encased body to Oliver. He is reluctant to believe Robert is capable of such a thing, conveniently forgetting he watched his father shoot Dave Hackett in cold blood. After recovering footage of the councilman’s death, Oliver called a press conference and publicly admitted it. So explain to me why the journalist referred to Robert Queen as a hero? And why would Oliver not at least acknowledge what he announced two years before?

Emiko’s conflicting opinions regarding both her father and her half-brother are understandable though no less problematic. Emiko’s claim that the Queen family destroys everything it touches is borne out by fact. The series is littered with victims of the Queen family’s love, from those that survived such as McKenna Hall, Roy, Slade, and even William, to those that didn’t like Tommy, Shado, Laurel, Billy Malone, and Samantha Clayton. Yet if Emiko resents her father so much why return to his gravestone time and time again? And if she believes Oliver is a spoiled Trust Fund Brat why go through so much trouble to emulate him? We still have no answers but since Emiko’s agreed to talk to Oliver, we may get some soon.

Laurel’s Daddy issues are two-fold. First, we see how the guilt over her real father’s death led to her descent into villainy, discovering that the drunk driver who killed Earth-2’s Quentin was Black Siren’s first victim. Finding him walking and talking on Earth-1 dredges up her anger for the man who stole her father away and the guilt she feels for sending her Dad out to meet his fate. On the other hand, the desire to live up to the Earth-1 version of her father gave her the aspiration to be better. She may still lean toward the more expedient methods instead of the legal ones but at least she’s trying. It also doesn’t hurt that Felicity has her back.

Laurel and Felicity’s relationship is becoming one of my favorites. What started as a matter of convenience has developed into a legitimate friendship in spite of either Felicity’s or Laurel’s intentions. It’s as if Laurel’s road to redemption has met up with Felicity’s path to pragmatism. I won’t go fully out on a limb and say Felicity is no longer a hero but the version of her presented in the flash forwards no longer seems quite so farfetched. Regardless, at the moment it is the most nuanced relationship on the show and I’m loving it.

Like Laurel, the death of Sam Hackett’s father has left him in a dark place. It appears Sam spent years refusing to accept his father’s death. It’s not an outrageous belief considering both Oliver and Sara made it off the boat alive. Why not hold out hope? Then he hacked Oliver’s Slabside transcripts and discovered his father’s murder and Oliver covered it up. Sam’s reaction, indefensible though it may be, gives even more credence to Emiko’s belief in the destructiveness of the Queen family. It never occurred to Oliver that Sam might need closure let alone that he had an obligation to provide it. It is a failing that Oliver never thinks of the consequences until they land forcibly on his doorstep.

Speaking of consequences, is there any way that the story of Diaz and Dante ends well? I thought not. The fact Curtis is preaching the moral gospel to Diggle is the first clue. And for all Lyla’s bluster last week, she fell in line pretty quickly. I must admit this version of the Suicide Squad, I’m sorry, Ghost Initiative is far more intimidating than the previous incarnation. It’s one reason I fell for Curtis’ untimely demise. All things considered, I should not have been fooled, especially after Diaz’s dig about Curtis being some kind of genius. Unfortunately, the inconsistency with which they’ve written Curtis over the last two years gave them enough wiggle room that the virtual version of events seemed plausible. I was still happy to be wrong and I look forward to learning what Curtis “calling his own shots” means.

This episode focused far more on character than plot. The means to catch Dante and the introduction of a new and mysterious threat being the only forward progression. Normally the focus on character would thrill me. However, the inconsistencies gave me pause.

2.5 out 5 virtual realities

Parting Thoughts:

This episode marks David Ramsey’s directorial debut. Congrats!

The journalist was on the phone when he was attacked and he never made it to dinner with his wife yet didn’t look for him till the next morning?

Glad to see Nick back on his feet again. I bet Curtis is too.

Will Felicity’s security system lead to something specific in the present or is just the first step towards future Felicity’s Smoak Enterprises?

If Oliver is really on the side of the law, he should stop entering through windows and destroying private property.

There’s also something called warrants he, and Dinah for that matter, need to become acquainted with.

Quotes:

Felicity: “You were amazing. You were genuine and heartfelt and amazing, and for a second there, I almost believed that you liked Laurel." Oliver: “I almost do.”

Lyla: “Tell us about a challenge that you’ve worked to overcome.” Cupid: “Well, the love of my life rejected me... For a blonde."

Curtis: “What the hell is going on? China White, Spawn of Slade, and now Cupid? It’s like the Ghost of Villains Past in here.”

Laurel: “Oh, please. I don’t have a problem with alcohol, maybe the first thing I managed to one-up your Laurel on.”

Curtis: “There has to be a better way.” Diggle: “I wish there was.”

Laurel: “Hypothetically-" Felicity: “Ok. Let me stop you right there because we both know that ‘hypothetically’ means this is definitely happening.”

Diaz: “Mr. Terrific. It’s been a while, my friend. You look a little nervous. Is that because the last time we met I had my knife in your gut?”

Felicity: “You should be flattered. I only stop people that I like.”

Cupid: “I love it when a plan comes together.” (She is way too young for the A-Team)

Curtis: “A.R.G.U.S thanks you for your cooperation.”

Dinah: “You think you’re gonna do one interview and all of the sudden, your problems go away overnight?”

Curtis: “Well, I’m happy to make Diaz’s life miserable anytime anywhere.”

Dinah: “A stalker from a different Earth. Of course. Why wouldn't there be?”

Shari loves sci-fi, fantasy, supernatural, and anything with a cape

#Arrow #Green Arrow #Oliver Queen #Felicity Smoak #John Diggle #DC Comics #Arrowverse #Arrow Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

3 notes · View notes

notsoperfectrp · 6 years

Photo

we hope you’ve all had a great weekend thus far, but to top it off for you guys - we're releasing ANOTHER PREVIEW today! below is our neighborhoods / boroughs. waverly has six personalized locations, any of which you’ll be able to choose as your character’s stomping grounds. they all contrast each other in many ways (social class, aesthetic, businesses or lack thereof) so we’re sure there will be a place best fitting for your characters! i’m gonna stop blabbing now and get on with it okay? okay.

BYWATER

louisiana’s largest body of water, lake pontchartrain, flows right into waverly’s backyard and is an estuary connected to the gulf of mexico. if you were wondering where the somewhat swampy landscape comes from, this is it. have a pontoon or even a yacht that needs a parking space? eastpoint harbor should fit all your boating needs! to the west of the harbor, you’ll find bradbury beach - which is less of a beach and moreso a small portion of the shore that isn’t just mud and tall grass. however, it isn’t recommended that visitors stay past sundown, which is when the merfolk pods are most active - and deadly. despite the many dangers lurking in this particular area, some choose to live lakefront in the small neighborhood situated by the coast.

CYPRESS GROVE

as lowly and run-down as waverly may seem, it isn’t without its very own hub of old money. the town’s founding fathers owned many of the plantations situated in cypress grove - some sporting rather modern renovations and others succumbing to the rest of the town’s decay. the latter, no matter how abandoned and rickety, remain a piece of waverly’s history and are owned by the bank - making them private property. some have been preserved, serving as museums of sorts in an effort to educate the town of the very founding fathers that built them. there is one, however, that the general population tends to avoid completely - orville plantation. the orville’s were devoutly catholic up until the day they all mysteriously died in the summer of 1932. The youngest daughter was said to have suffered a demonic possession, the last effort at an exorcism going horribly wrong. Unless you’re a particularly brave ghost hunter or harboring a morbid death wish, you’d be better off skipping a tour of the supposedly haunted estate as well - if you believe in that type of thing. on the opposite end of the spectrum, devout churchgoers will fit right in at epiphany church, the largest waverly has to offer. lastly, the cypress grove country club serves as much of the neighborhood’s entertainment where there’s sure to be some high class party going on at all times.

HOLLOW CREEK

waverly is no stranger to wooded areas. in fact, if there’s anything this town has an abundance of - it’s trees. however, no pocket of forestry runs deeper than hollow creek. located to the east of lake pontchartrain, hollow creek runs along the southern edge of the town, cradling it in a grasp of impenetrable darkness. there’s a rumor among waverly citizens that keep most people out of the woods’ clutches. legend has it that the deeper one finds themselves venturing into hollow creek, the less likely they are to return. many missing persons cases have run cold in waverly and most of them have one thing in common - the last known location being none other than hollow creek. despite its shudder inducing reputation, the area comes complete with an actual campsite. cabins (available to rent or own) varying in sizes are situated a mile into hollow creek road and encompass only five percent of the northern section of the woods. multiple trails will satiate any hiker’s needs and a number of random creeks and brooks provide visitors with the option to swim or kayak. don’t forget to stop by the general store on your way in - it might be a good idea to come to hollow creek well prepared.

THISTLETHORN

perhaps the most lively borough in waverly, thistlethorn provides most of the town’s entertainment. if you aren’t the outdoorsy type, chances are you’ll find yourself here when the boredom of small town life starts to rear its ugly head. sure, it’s no vegas strip, but thistlethorn gets the job down well enough. If you’re looking to get some retail therapy, belleridge center serves as the town’s shopping district complete with a couple of clothing stores, a pharmacy, the local hair salon, and one of those new age boutiques that most people glare at as they pass by. down the road, you’ll find rusty’s karaoke bar which is mostly family friendly before nine pm. not big on the whole singing thing? Come by The Lodge, Waverly’s largest bar that’s situated just a mile further. Take your friend’s money over a game of pool or take your chances on the mechanical bull. Then if you're feeling particularly adventurous, a few miles down the road on a patch of earth that shares boundaries with the eerie Hollow Creek there's a demon bar called Delirium that caters to the supernatural residents of Waverly. Humans are welcome, but should tread lightly. If you thrive in the nightlife scene, you most likely live in the nearby neighborhood where Thistlethornians sleep soundly to the off-key vocals humming in the night air.

VINECREST

vinecrest is waverly’s most populated borough, housing most of the town’s lower-middle to middle class citizens. perhaps the most family friendly neighborhood to raise children, vinecrest holds the public school district as well as the public library and the town hall. you’ll also find fernview park, where the kids can play on the jungle gym while you walk the dog or lounge on a bench to read a book. a baseball field and duck pond are also featured, you know, if you aren’t five. additionally, if you’re a person of faith like most of waverly’s inhabitants, come by the southern baptist church and join the tightly knit community. they’re sure to welcome you with open arms - if you’re willing to fully repent your sins, that is. lastly, and likely waverly’s most frequented eatery, is the shady nook diner. mostly referred to as simply ‘shady’s’, the decently sized restaurant serves all the best comfort food twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. so grab your pals and your favorite corner booth and stay awhile!

WESTGATE

as you venture toward the western perimeter of the town, you’ll find that the decay has only worsened. situated on the outskirts of waverly, westgate seems to have been long forgotten. the structures have fallen into disrepair and one would mistake it for a ghost town if it wasn’t for the nearby pleasant acres trailer park that serves as low income housing. along with other rundown homes sprinkled throughout, you’ll also find old pine cemetery. the groundskeeper hasn’t kept the place well maintained in years, thus leaving visitors spooked for days and less likely to return. lastly, on the corner of the main road, you’ll find hair of the dog. this seedy motorcycle dive bar is a little more than it may seem to someone on the outside - and one would be wise to steer clear of the place unless the owner knows you by name.

#preview #update #perfectplacesrp

4 notes · View notes

cursewoodrecap · 3 years

Text

Session 19: Hunters and Haunts

It’s time for some proper horror movie monsters, y’all.

Before leaving Mornheim, we ask Aubrey about the scroll in her mother’s writing. She’s baffled. “I mean, plenty of my ancestors dabbled in magic. The castle had plenty of secret rooms. But…my mom? As far as I knew, she was just a very talented gardener. That’s how my parents met! She was the castle gardener, he was the son of the lord, but she looked past that…”

She laughs nervously. “My mom wasn’t a druid. They don’t live in big fancy houses! They live in the woods and make friends with badgers! I mean, why would there even BE a druid in Mornheim?!”

“That’s a good question,” Gral admits. “Maybe to guard the old tomb in the Trollstones? If I understand correctly, it was a place blessed by one of the woods spirits they revere.”

“So you’re tellin’ me that MY MOM, Rosalind von Mornheim, was the secret mystical druidic guardian of a magic tomb that’s been on family property for, well, longer than it’s been our property?!”

“I mean, maybe? Skelbjor told us there always had to be a troll in Mornheim, maybe it’s like that?”

“I guess? Skelbjor’s been the local troll since Dad was a kid. He knew about all this?”

“Oh, nah, he just knew there’s always supposed to be a troll.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right, he’s a big galoot. Just tell me I don’t have to worry about this immortal troll demigod getting up and causing trouble. I have enough problems.”

“Don’t worry, he didn’t even get up for a direct summons from that dybbuk creep.”

Aubrey shudders. “If you ever wanna figure out a way to kill that guy for good, you have my help.”

Clem grimaces. “Believe me, I’d LOVE to.”

“Anyway. You folks cleaned up the water, stopped my people getting so sick, heck, maybe this’ll even slow down the undead situation. I owe you a lot of thanks. As the ruling lady of Mornheim, I can offer you…a bottle of hard cider or somethin’? I don’t have a lot. It takes all the money we have just to keep this place running. I’m sorry I can’t do more to reward you.”

Valeria smiles, the picture of a chivalrous knight. “I’m just glad to know there won’t be so much sickness. Hopefully things will improve for your people.”

“Thank you, I mean it. And, uh, sorry for glassing you in the face, Shoshana.”

The sorceress shrugs. “It’s water under the trollbridge. We all have family members who we would both hug and cry, and glass in the face. It’s chill.”

To everyone’s surprise, Valeria nods in commiseration.

“You’re welcome to stay if you want – I mean, things are crowded, the food sucks, and every night we get undead and penitents waking everybody up, so I understand if you don’t want to stick around. Can I treat you to breakfast?”

We get breakfast, though the offerings are meager. Mercedes is cooking, and Aubrey scowls at her. “I’m mad at Mercedes because she’s a morning person. Also she lit me on fire yesterday.”

Shoshana nods. “Okay, I understand lighting people on fire, but being a morning person is a capital offense. I know this, because I live with THIS ONE.” She points at Valeria, who shrugs in acknowledgment.

“As ruling lady of house of Mornheim, I hereby banish 8am from my lands,” Aubrey grumbles. “My house is now renamed Midafternoonsheim. Like, 2pmheim. Especially if I spent the last day and a half chasing some regenerating superghoul through the tunnels.”

Mercedes and Aubrey tell us about taking out the superghoul they fought last night, bickering the whole time. “Okay, you don’t speak Goblin, but if I shout words in Goblin it only ever means one thing. I don’t cast buff spells. It means there is about to be fire, get out of the way.”

“If you ever find a cloak of fire resistance, I could use it,” Aubrey deadpans at us. “I might smother her with it.”

Gral chats with Mercedes – apparently she’s a skilled chef as well as a mage! “Yes, it is part of pyromancer training. To learn to respect the gifts of Brother-in-Flame, all students must take up a fire-related trade. Pottery, blacksmithing, cooking. That way if you wash out of pyromancer school, you have a trade! And you have respect for flame and know how to commune with it. Working with non-magical fire gives a natural guidance toward using Brother-in-Flame’s gifts. I will say, cooking contests at pyromancer school can get rather intense. If you burn the food, you have to burn your jacket.”

“Would you say they get…heated?” Shoshana quips, shooting finger-guns. Mercedes ignores her.

Gral considers. “Did you ever meet an orc who went by Firesong?”

“Oh yeah! Orc bard, wore a mask?”

“Uh, all orc bards wear masks.”

“Yeah, she’s why we can’t have the chili cookoffs anymore. She had to leave the Republics under, uh…circumstances.”

“She told me she has fond memories of her time there.”

“Oh, so do I! Passions were already high, and a professional orcish bard providing background music did not lower the emotional intensity. And, well, we’re pyromancers. We thought we were far enough from the swamp gas wells! If it hadn’t been for that damn bird – oh, one second.” She cuts off what was promising to be an excellent story to open the window and hand a sizable plate of eggs outside to Skulbjor.

“The first time I saw him, I jumped out of my skin,” she confides. “Have you ever met a swamp troll? They’re the reason we’re so good at fire.”

“The pyromancer school was originally founded to defend the Republics against trolls. So it was, you know, a liiiiittle bit awkward. Horrible creatures, swamp trolls. YOU’RE GREAT, SKULBJOR,” she calls out the window. “But I did almost light him on fire, until Aubrey stopped me.”

Gral murmurs an aside to Clem. “Is it just Valdian trolls who are weird, then?”

“I dunno, maybe bridges calm them down?”

After breakfast, we prepare to get on the road. Valeria resummons Aethis, and Skulbjor gives our good chomper some quality scritches. Already, the waters flowing into the town appear clearer, less foreboding somehow. Everything else is still, honestly, super Tim Burton-y, but we’ll work on that.

We head out, traveling the now familiar path to Three Oaks Junction. We’re glad to see the bloody chain banners have been taken down. The locals have even made new banners, featuring a shield with a chunk taken out of it, symbolizing they’re under the protection of Duke Shieldeater!

Business has resumed as normal. Some of the outriders are guarding the gate to provide a more visible presence. Not a lot, but they stand out. It’s more of a visual reminder that more orcs are coming and town has agreed to be under protection.

Gral’s pretty psyched his diplomatic master plan is working. Meanwhile, we’ve got trading to do. We manage to sell our old Aquilian coins to Pierre the furrier, who says they’ll be popular in the Demish court. Valeria keeps one of the coins as a collectible.

We’ve got enough stuff to carry and traveling to do that we decide to buy a cart. Clem, familiar with travel from her drow caravan days, heads over to the Used Cart Lot out behind the cart repair, where a guy named Sal shows her around. Looks like these guys do good repair work, with a line of apprentices and masters dating back to Three Oaks himself. Maaaaybe they might get a lot of business from selling carts which will shortly need to be repaired, but Clem uses her know-how and also her impressive guns to intimidate the guy into showing her the good stuff instead of the junkers.

She picks up a nice solid dark oak cart, secondhand, repaired recently. Clem checks it over and it seems pretty sturdy; seems like scavengers found it at an abandoned farmhouse. We also pool funds to buy two draft horses, a shaggy pair that came as a team package. The chestnut one is named Pierogi, and the bay one is named Chestnut. Shoshana attempts to have a Horse Girl Movie moment, but rolls a nat 1 and gets ignored.

Valeria, of course, buys a map to Hoska.

Clem checks her mail – she’s received a form letter thank you from the embassy in Schotzengrad – and sends 200 gold back home to her caravan, along with an update letter. Valeria writes a letter reporting back to Order of the Rose.

Clem gets busy decorating the cart in drow fashion to make it look presentable. She makes a start; a proper drow cart is decorated and redecorated over years and years. She encourages the rest of us to add our own designs, because in drow culture it’s important to have everyone in the caravan participate. We’re not at all familiar with the symbolic language used in drow art, but we’ll give it a try during a few long rests on the road.

Now we have a cart and horses and money and we bought some potions! We roll a mediocre enough survival check to meet the DC, so we head to Hoeska without issue.

Clem’s heard about Hoeska, which stands high in the collective memory of the czar’s military. During the Kevan occupation, it was said that castle was haunted. It was built 400 years ago by Gottfried von Hoesk, a Valdian warlord who wanted to become the first king of a unified Greatwood. He failed, but his descendants have occasionally tried again, and this is their ancestral seat of power. The elves, knowing its significance, took it as one of their first targets and stationed a garrison of 500 elves there. When the Valdian rebellion kicked into high gear, one of the big things that convinced the elves to leave was that the entire garrison vanished without a trace.

Shoshana, well, she’s heard plenty of stories about Hoeska. Every time a Valdian ghost story needs a mad wizard, or a ghost, or a vampire, or generally anything that lives in a big spooky castle, it takes place in Hoeska. Most of those stories are tall tales and urban legends, but on the other hand, there’s been an awfully long history of vampires and ghosts and mad wizards in Valdia, many of whom originated from or occupied the towering, dark castle on its isolated mountain.

Merchants who have been there say it’s a sprawling fortress; every inhabitant since Gottfried von Hoesk, from his descendants to various nobles to the elves, has added something else to castle, so it’s a big mismatch of styles. Some parts are a grim fortress, some are a luxury palace. The castle’s changed hands, but the von Hoesk family is still around and more often than not they ride in and reclaim their ancestral home. A couple of mad wizards were von Hoesks; when something truly evil goes down, usually a bunch of knights ride in and clear it out and some other von Hoesk descendant moves in. Rinse and repeat.

When the Cursebreakers were founded, their first move was to clear out Hoeska and take it over as their headquarters. It’s the Usual Suspect of spooky stuff in Valdia, but if the Cursebreakers found anything relating to the Curse there, they didn’t tell anyone.

Shoshana tells some ghost stories about it. Valeria eats them up. There’s a long Valdian tradition of “having a cousin” who worked at Hoeska as a servant and totally saw something spooky.

With the cart it takes like a day and a half to get from Three Oaks to the edge of Hoeska territory. As we approach, we see a guard house sitting on the road. Gral can see from a distance that the squat stone building appears to be abandoned. That’s not normal. We consider: should we avoid it because it probably has monsters in it, or should we go clear out the monsters and see if there’s loot? We’re gonna go see if there’s loot.

We get out of the wagon and approach, weapons drawn. The small stone building, just big enough for a couple of guards to keep an eye on the road, looks like it was abandoned in a hurry. We case the place quickly; there’s dried blood on the ground in the back storeroom. Maybe someone was killed here, or injured and brought here to get patched up? There’s not a body or anything. Gral’s keen eyes pick up a recent set of footprints; someone came in, after the guards had left, did something here, and then headed out into the woods.

The woods? In the Cursewood? Near the haunted castle? DEFINITELY full of dangerous monsters. But we’re PCs, so we want go investigate the mystery. Aethis stays behind to guard the cart, mildly weirding out the horses.

We follow the tracks into woods. Clem hears something behind her, and as she turns, a furry something whips out of brush and spears her for minor damage. She looks down and sees a scorpion stinger emerging from her torso. She barely has time to register it’s glistening with poison when she’s accosted by massive slavering jaws. This thing looks like it was once a huge wolf, but now has mutated into something far worse, and its teeth are buried deep in Clem’s armor.

Clem goes pale under her ash-dark skin, and must save against the panic and flood of memories brought up by the sudden sight of an attacking wolf.

How in the HELL did that thing get so close without us noticing?! Hell, we were following humanoid tracks – where did this monstrosity come from?!

Valeria immediately smites the hell out of it, and it does enough extra damage we suspect it’s some kind of fiend. Unfortunately, it’s immune to being Frightened, so Gral’s plan to Dissonant Whispers it past two tanks fizzles.

The wolfbeast uses the same tactic on Valeria as it did on Clem – as Valeria’s distracted by deflecting the stinger, it strikes in with its massive jaws, for a huge amount of damage.

Dammit, it’s resistant to Shoshana’s lightning, too. We’re in trouble.

As we’re barely fending this thing off, we can hear snarling and barking coming toward us from another direction. It sounds like wolves or dogs, smaller than this thing tearing through us. And Gral can faintly hear booted humanoid footsteps hurrying alongside them.

Clem misses on her first panicked swing but catches it on the upswing, Great Weapon Master letting her drive the blade deep. Valeria slices it good too, vines tearing through its corrupted flesh. Gral tries to Phantasmal force and fails) It swings its poisonous tail, and Valeria goes down, unconscious. Then it chomps on Clem. Clem is down – except, hold on, not so fast. She uses Last Gasp to use her Second Wind as she falls, in accordance with the Deal she has made with the Pale King.

Panicking, Shosha deals it thunder damage which it does not resist. BIG BOOM THO. That was dumb of me.

Shoshana, panicking, hits the thing with thunder damage. It doesn’t have resistance, but now everything in the forest knows we’re here. As Valeria passes her first Death Save, Gral shouts a Healing Word to keep her alive.

Three large hounds burst from the trees snarling and howling. A voice in Elven shouts “Alexei! Kill! Go for legs!”

Gral can’t understand Elven, so he goes for the neck with his sickle and draws a nasty gash across its throat. The thing glances around, snarling, furious at being deprived its meal, but it recognizes it’s in danger and withdraws, sprinting away into the forest.

A large wood elf wearing a tattered Cursebreaker coat steps out of woods holding a club and a heavy blunderbuss. He whistles sharply, and the hounds abruptly stop their pursuit. “No further!” He gestures, and the hounds spread out and form a perimeter.

“I do not know you,” he says in Valdian, though with a thick elven accent. “You fought the Shusva.”

“…The what?”

“That thing, the Shusva. At least, I found name in book. Seemed similar to this, yes? I am Ser Boris, of Cursebreaker Knights. What brings you here? Is dangerous territory.”

“Kyr Valeria Argent, at your service! We’ve been working with Ser Quentin Morozov.”

A grin breaks across his thickly bearded face. “Ah, Ser Morozov! I know him. The grumpy one! He talks to people, finds what is in hearts and minds. Goes to towns, finds cultists. As he is to the people, I am to the beasts.”

“Yes, we had information for him and needed to make a report. Also we were trying to meet up with another person headed this way?”

He grimaces. “How recently? This Shusva has been stalking roads.”

“Um, recent?” Shoshana interjects. “But he’s accompanied by two fuckhuge goliaths, so…?”

“Oh, yes, him. He is fine. Oh! You injured it!” Ser Boris cries, distracted. He pulls out a small waxed pouch and grabs a chunk of flesh off Clem’s blade. “Good! With this, we can track its scent! Not today, though, you are wounded. Must get you two to castle.”

“These are Alexei, Sasha, and Xander,” he introduces his hounds, which have heeled obediently.

“You are – ah! A drow!” He greets Clem in Elven. “You are very far from home!”

“Ah, home is where you make it,” she replies in kind.

He laughs. “Indeed, indeed. Come, we must share stories back at castle! I move here during war, think it would be peaceful.”

“Yeah, bit of a mistake, huh?”

“I do well enough. I have my dogs, I receive employment. And coat! Employment with coat is better than employment without coat, da?”

We go back to our cart, and Ser Boris is immediately taken with Aethis. “Oh, my! A wonderful beastie. Is it Celestial? May I see teeth?”

Valeria’s happy to make introductions.

“Have you cared for such a creature before? They are adapted for warm streams, not cold woods like these, you know.”

“Do they need any further care than occasional spellwork? That’s all they told us at the academy,” Valeria says, puzzled.

“Is gift from Rack, no? Then double important you take good care! It does not need it, but you must. Caring for exotic mount in inhospitable climate is difficult task. I will give you literature. You would not believe poor beasts Dr. Galvan had, I am giving him dietary instructions, seeing if I can create sweater for them to keep warm…”

He goes back to cooing over Aethis. “Nice luster on scales, though that is expected. Feets---oh, you’ve been running on hard road, you’ll get used to that. Very well. Castle is this way!”

He whistles, and the three hounds form a triangle around group. “Do not wander too far off, they may try to herd you.”

It’s somewhere around here that the pun finally hits the players. Ser Boris. Three dogs. …Cerberus.

The path winds up to the dramatic gates of castle Hoeska.

“Now if you look there, you will see castle.” A lightning bolt cracks dramatically across the sky, casting the castle in ominous silhouette.

“It always does that. It is very stormy around here. I do not know why. Impossible to get good sunlight. I worry for Alexei, he likes to frolic in sun, in fields of flowers. I am not allowed to let him in garden. How will Alexei frolic without field of flowers?”

There’s a Cursebreaker Knight at the gates, some kind of battlemage with a big staff. Next to him is a grim figure in full plate, holding a halberd and looking distinctly displeased to see us.

“Do not mind them, the castle guards do not appreciate us being here,” Ser Boris tells us cheerfully. “It is okay, we have permission. They do not like that we do their job better than them. Hello friend!” He waves. “These are guests, please open gate!”

The guard glares.

“Pretty please, open gate for Ser Boris and friends? And Alexei and Sacha! Oh, have you met Xander yet?”

The guard silently opens the gate, his withering scowl not diminishing a bit.

“I do not know what problem is. Must have woke up on wrong side of bed,” Boris chatters as we enter. “Maybe should not leave lunch where dogs can get it. Guard knows I am here with dogs! Maybe dogs have done nothing wrong ever in their life and guard should apologize for making such a fuss!”

We’re past the castle walls, in a large courtyard before entering the keep proper. As we pass our carts and horses off to some stablehands, we notice a familiar cart and two draft gatorbeasts in the stables, with quilted blankets thrown over them against the chill.

Parked incongruously among the carts is a looming metal construct in a hulking, vaguely humanoid shape, with buzz-saw arms protruding from the front and a machined metal owl mask affixed to what might charitably be called the face area. Peeling paint on the front reads “Valdian Tree Company,” and it’s chained to a heavy wagon proudly bearing the insignia of the Sturmhearst University College of Engineering.

Ser Boris shrugs. “Many visitors are here now. One shows up with that thing. I do not like. Not natural, so much metal moving on own.”

We step into the grand hallway of castle, past another set of guards and a big statue of a fine-featured man in armor, labeled Gottfried von Hoesk. Ah, Ingborg and Bjorn are there, drinking.

We hear someone clear his throat imperiously, and turn to see Ser Quentin, regarding us with annoyance. “You’re late,” he bites out pointedly.

“Uh, did we make an appointment to see you? Because I was certainly not informed,” Shoshana snarks back.

He doesn’t take the bait. “So. The Pale King.”

“…Yup!”

“That letter and those words are why we’ve been stuck here. You’ve been escalated to the higher ups, who would very much like to hear what you have to report in person. Follow me. The dogs can stay here.”

Ser Boris grumbles. “Is fine, they do not bite! Well, they might bite sandvich. I could go for sandvich. I get us all sandviches, yes?”

We head up grand winding stairs, into the more palatial section of castle, and find ourselves passing through long dark galleries full of portraits of von Hoesk ancestors. The eyes follow us as we walk by, natch.

The path we take is DEFINITELY a little bit Scooby Dooby Doors. Ser Quentin Definitely Does Not Get Lost on the way there, what are you talking about? “This place was built by a succession of mad architects in an intergenerational argument with each other, of course it’s a damn maze,” he huffs.

Eventually, we are taken into a small, elegant drawing room. Two figures sit in comfortable armchairs in front of a roaring fire.

“Allow me to present Ser Brigid Konig,” Ser Quentin states formally, gesturing to the old woman calmly knitting in the chair on the left.

The other chair holds a tall man with sharp cheekbones, a fine black and red outfit, and rather similar features to the statue in the foyer. “Our host, Ludwig von Hoesk,” Quentin introduces stiffly.

“Hello,” the old woman, Ser Brigid, greets us warmly. “Our dear Quentin has told me so very little about you. Quentin, did you offer them anything to eat? It would be quite rude to let our guests go hungry.”

“I am told Ser Boris has arranged for sandwiches,”

“Perfect. Sit down, everyone, pull up a chair.”

Gral unnatch 20s a perception. That Ludwig von Hoesk – maybe Gral’s gotten better at picking up on this sort of thing since we’ve spent so much time in in Mornheim, but there’s something odd about that fella. He’s a little too still when he sits still, his motion a little too deliberate. And his skin is awfully pale. The old lady? Her, he can’t get a read on, even with a 20. Daaaaang.

“If you would, please, tell us of your travels. Ser Morozov tells us you first worked together in Ovruch; why don’t you start there?” Ser Brigid asks.

We take turns describing the entities we’ve seen, how we’ve fought them, and how they seem to categorize themselves. We produce the Eyegis as evidence of the Key, and explain what the Astronomer told us regarding the concept of Prisoners.

Ludwig, though very reserved, seems keenly interested in Clem’s tale of Mornheim. Once we’ve told our tale, he asks us to produce the tapestry we took from the cultists in the manor. He examines the partially-woven image carefully, tracing a thin finger over the crowned, skeletal figure.

“Well, Luddy, does it look familiar?” Ser Brigid asks smugly.

The aristocrat is too dignified to roll his eyes, but just barely. “It does. If we’re just going to-“

“Oh, we’d have to clue them in sooner or later. They’ve done more in a few weeks than half my agents have done in years!”

Ser Quentin grumbles audibly. She ignores him.

“Ludwig, is that the symbol you described to me?”

“Yes.”

“And the name?”

“Yes.”

“Do you consider that independent verification of what I told you?”

“Yes.”

“So I think you owe me something, old friend.”

He lets out a huffy, aristocratic sigh. “Yes, fine. You weren’t lying, and I was right not to kill you. I apologize for doubting you.”

“Thank you. Oh, the sandwiches are here!”

He turns his attention back to the tapestry. “Yes, this is the thing that appeared to me and offered me a position at the head of its armies.”

…oh?!?!

He rolls his eyes at our alarm. “I refused, naturally,” he sniffs.

“I should hope so!” Valeria says, and removes her hand from her sword hilt.

“I have no interest in submitting myself to some power-hungry usurper.”

Ser Brigid winks at us. “Perhaps I should re-introduce us properly. My name is Ser Brigid Konig. I was on my way to Valdshart when the city went dark, to formally retire as the Duke’s chief vampire hunter.”

“And this is Ludwig von Hoesk. His son built this castle! For the past couple hundred years, my office has been dedicated solely to hunting and killing him. Greetings!”

She rolls her eyes at her companion, who looks a bit miffed. “Really. They would have figured it out eventually. And you are not subtle about it. With the spooky castle? And the red and black outfit? C’mon, Luddy.”

“A few years ago, shortly after the curse manifested, I had a dream. This in itself is quite unusual; I do not normally experience dreams. In it, a creature resembling the figure on your tapestry appeared to me, offering a position as general of its armies. As its power grew, it would gain control of all undead in Valdia, and it would like myself and my followers to be the first and most honored of its forces. Naturally I refused. There is only one king in Valdia, and it is not some strange skeletal specter.”

“Wait, we have a king?” Shoshana blurts. “…oh. You mean yourself, don’t you.”

“Yes. It was my son’s idea. And what can I say, I spoiled the boy. Now, I was wondering what to do about this vision when who shows up but a bunch of angry knights with crossbows? Not that we’re not used to such incursions.”

“Oh, I’ve been trying to storm this place for years,” Ser Brigid agrees airily. “Every time we try, a mysterious new von Hoesk heir shows up with money and a whole court of followers! People buy it every time. Wishful thinking, I suppose.”

“She accused me of being behind the Curse,” Ludwig explains dryly. “I argued otherwise, and eventually we came to an agreement. Which is why Brigid Konig, my worst nightmare, HAS BEEN LIVING IN MY HOUSE.”

“Yes!” she agrees, with a beatific granny smile. “This way, if you ARE behind it, I can kill you!” She lifts the blanket she’s knitting just enough to give us a peek at the crossbow hidden underneath. Gral sees runes on the crossbow similar to his heartseeker bolts. “The rules are simple! I get to use his house and money, and his people assist as we try to get to bottom of this thing! And in exchange, I don’t kill him!”

Ludwig sighs. “She removes the monsters. I don’t appreciate monsters in my land, and I genuinely will do anything in my not inconsiderable power to drive out these ruinous Prisoners. Even if it means entertaining a woman who’s been a thorn in my side for the last sixty years.”

“Not a thorn, arrows!” she retorts cheerfully. “And a scythe one time. You got better, you big baby!”

“Of course I got better, I’m a vampire.”

Quentin sighs. “Needless to say, all information disclosed in this room is top secret. Frankly, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t have chosen to divulge even this much.”

Ser Brigid turns her level gaze on him. “Please. The orc would have spotted something and said ‘My goodness, Kyr Argent, I suspect something is up with that handsome and brooding fellow,’ and then she would have Detected Undead, and killed several guards, and the castle would be on fire, and we’d be in the dungeons having this conversation, but it would be far more awkward!” She turns to us. “Have I read the situation right?”

“…yup,” admits Valeria.

“See? Now Quentin, dear, eat your sandwich, you’re far too skinny.”

Ludwig is not eating a sandwich. He has a glass of red wine, of course.

They grill us a bit about the Key, specifically, and the Sturmhearst scholars we met who seem rather susceptible to the whole knowledge-seeking lure.

“Hmm, yes. We have several guests here, two of whom are professors. Professor Galvan, whom you’ve met, and a visitor from Sturmhearst. Professor Bjork, from the College of Engineering. I have some suspicions about things going on there. He’s told us a few concerning stories; you might want to pick his brain and get your take on the situation.”

“Such an august institution,” Ludwig agrees. “I gave some of the money to start the place, I’d hate to see it go bad.”

We wonder if he knows Dr. Wendell. But it’s getting late, and while the party discusses their experiences in great detail, we’re going to cut session and pick back up once they’re ready to go meet some other guests of the von Hoesks.

#the cursewood #cursebreaker knights #quentin morozov #ser boris #von hoesk #hoeska #aubrey von mornheim #skelbjor #mercedes the pyromancer #clem haxan #valeria argent #gral omokk'duu #shoshana bat chaya #The Pale King #The Hunt

0 notes