logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

characters: everyone.
location: around town.
date/time: october 9-17.
content: the hallucinations begin...
warnings: psychological horror. please cw tags appropriately.

it's probably something that shouldn't be said out loud

October 9 feels like a normal day at first, save for the red lighthouse beam cutting through the darkness overhead. You know by now—or you've heard—that the lighthouse is only active during ferry arrivals and events... And there's definitely no ferry docked at the, er. Beach. The town is quiet, the forest spirits behave business-as-usual, Rastus doesn't know what's up. Whatever's going on, you'll have to figure it out for yourself.

And you will, though the hallucinations are subtle at first: objects moving when they shouldn't, people's proportions looking just a bit off, voices in an empty room, and so on. Is it just your mind playing tricks in the darkness? Might be! Will did warn you all about the effects of living without a sun and a proper day/night cycle.

As the days go on, the hallucinations are harder to ignore, no matter how much you may wish to wave them off as flukes. What's wrong with everyone's faces? When did all the howling start? Who do you hold onto when the world drops out from under you? And those hands...

While you might know it can't be real, it certainly feels real. But at least it can't last forever!

...Right?

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[Her own hallucinations have been . . . worrying, to say the least. Disturbing. Heartbreaking, as she sees the ghosts of those she knows aren't here, as hands push her into bowing, stumbling, clumsily dropping her things and leaving her scattered and unorganized. And now this: faces blurring and distorting, smeared expressions and warped features that turn her stomach.

She's learned to ignore them for the most part.

But as she exits her lab, to her immediate right there's there's a jerking, twitching thing coming towards her, just outside the bounds of the bonfire. Five feet away, if that, and approaching swiftly. She stares in revulsion at the way it moves, limbs thrashing against nothing. Its expression is still, the mouthpiece twisted up in what appears to her a lopsided grin, its face split and smeared, warping even as she stares. Four feet, then, three, and before she knows it she's moving swiftly: her right hand striking out, palm striking hard against the creature's cheek, the movement more instinctive than deliberate, shock and terror surging in her veins.]

[It isn't the first time that Bruce has encountered another person out here. There aren't many who choose here and now to start traipsing through the woods, especially now that the hallucinations have grown stronger- now that people talk about them openly. Everyone seems to know what's going on even if they don't share experiences beyond the phantom touches. The pushing and pulling and tugging.

Mostly Bruce tries to give people a wide berth. The mask he wears is a matter of privacy and protection, not a desire to exacerbate or exploit the situation. But he can't avoid every person every time.

He stays off the path and keeps his lantern covered, an attempt to minimize opportunities to spot him at all much less to garner attention. But Madame Lutece seems to notice him immediately. Her eyes follow him with horror and revulsion, and instead of running from whatever vision replaces him in her eyes- she closes the distance.

Bruce could run. It's a possibility. But he has never been very good at it and further, what happens if she gives chase? How far into the woods will she follow? How much danger would following him put her in? She doesn't have a weapon in hand and there's a small comfort in that- before her hand raises and she strikes him. The blow turns his face and floods his mouth with the taste of copper. Bruce doesn't raise his hands to her in turn. Instead his head comes back up. His palms remain empty at his sides.]

[The spirit moves passively, allowing the strike to happen, and wouldn't they protest? For that matter, wouldn't her hand go right through if it's nothing more than a hallucination? And yet the thing lingers, and that means--

--she grabs for his mask, wrenching it upwards a little too roughly.]

For god's sake!

[But that's where he has to draw the line.

Bruce has been very careful about how much of anything he lets any one person see. He's taken measures to present different personas to different people, to allow opinions of him to conflict and to avoid undue attention wherever possible. But to be seen with this mask and for this part of him to become known is unacceptable.

She reaches for his mask and Bruce knows already which direction she intends to pull it because it can only be removed one way. It makes halting that movement very direct. Bruce catches her wrist in one gloved hand and knocks her elbow hard with the other, not simply forcing her arm to bend but also placing pressure upon the nerves running through it, making her fingers numb. The mask comes up his throat but no further, and once her touch is disengaged, his weight drops and he kicks forward with one leg, an attempt to sweep her feet out from under her and drop her to the ground.]

[He succeeds, of course. She's been learning how to defend herself, but she's no match against anyone even vaguely competent. The instant she reaches for his mask she's done for; in a breathless moment she doesn't know what's happening, and then she lands hard on her back. The mask is still on, her hand is still numb, her back hurts, but none of it, none of it compares to the sheer terror rippling through her.

But the figure doesn't fly up and then lunge down at her, not as it should. Nor does it morph into the figure of a young girl, dark haired and pale skinned, furious at Rosalind for her short-sightedness. And when it does not, she takes in a breath and speaks.]

And which are you? Spirit or person?

[It isn't unlike Scarecrow's toxin. He can see the reaction in her eyes, the way she barely seems to register her fall and instead can focus only on the shape he makes. Her pupils are blown, the muscle in her neck is tight, her fingers look almost locked into shape, frozen by fear. Bruce is not hard-hearted but more than that, he remembers intimately what it was like- for his reality to distort itself seamlessly. To be unable to find a beginning an end, to grapple through the dark for some invisible veil between fiction and reality.

Bruce doesn't want to risk speaking. She's an incredibly clever woman and his greatest asset is the omission of detail. But he doesn't want to abandon her here either.

He pauses, visibly. And instead of answering aloud Bruce reaches one gloved hand out to her. An offer to help her to her feet.]

[It takes everything in her not to flinch from that touch, but she'd never forgive herself if she did. Instead: she pauses for only a moment, swallowing tightly, before gripping his hand and rising.]

That wasn't an answer.

[But if it's a spirit, it's unlike any she's ever seen.]

But I think it a foolish idea indeed to wander about in a mask if you aren't one. You may not be so fast next time.

[It's not a threat. Just a warning.]

[It speaks tremendously to her character that despite the expression she wears and the tension corded in her body, despite the unknown and the adrenaline in her veins, she reaches back for his hand. How much of this is habit for her? How many times has she made a decision like this- to continue on where others fear to tread? Where she fears to tread.

His gaze is heavy on her face and Bruce is aware of how firm her grip is in return, the pitch of her voice. How precisely she watches him.

How far would she go, for the right motivation?

Bruce takes a step backwards and in the process, reaches not just for the grappling gun at his back, but for a small pellet along his belt. He doesn't know her very well and hasn't known her for very long, but he suspects that her tenacity rivals his own. He can't presume that she wouldn't follow him. His voice is strange- too old, almost animalistic for the gravel in it.]

Thanks for the advice.

[The pellet drops and Bruce crushes it with his heel, causing smoke to erupt around them. It's theatricality more than anything else- a diversion, as he fires into the treeline and vanishes into the dark.]

[She tries to follow, of course. Still shuddering in terror, she races forward, but he's too quick for her. She's only the vague impression of movement in the air, and she stands beneath the place where he'd stood, glaring up at the sky.

This isn't the last they've seen of each other. She's determined.]

EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

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