logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

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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Crowley turns to see the human soldier person. Oh, no. Hastur will spot him quickly and no matter what the human soldier person believes, he's still just a person, just a human. Basically putty in the Duke of Hell's hands.

"Get over here!" he shouts, waving him over. "I can't get to you, get to me!"

He can get them both away, and fast.

The Soldier pulls out one of its guns, but it does continue over to the now-winged demon. Looking around, even though the Sergeant just wants to get a better look at those wings. It doesn't see anything dangerous. At the moment, it doesn't even have any hallucinations itself.

"Crowley, what are you seeing."

"It's----one of the Dukes of Hell," he says. "There aren't any good ones, I'm afraid. But this one is particularly bad, you don't want to mess with him and I have no idea how he got here."

He gives his wings an experimental flap to see if he can get air without catching the Duke's attention.

"Come on, I'll fly you away from here, we can get back before he sees us."

Looking around, the Soldier doesn't see anyone. Or anything, really.

Actually, not true, it sees a pair of hands beckoning them towards the forest, but when it ignores them, eyes skimming past, they both make a rude gesture at it. "Where is he. This Duke of Hell. Point him out for me."

Maybe it will make Crowley less jumpy if the Soldier shoots this Duke of Hell he's seeing. Because it's definitely a hallucination. Poor Crowley, it'd been really relieved to hear he hadn't been effected....

"There," Crowley says, pointing out to the darkness. "He hasn't seen us yet, but he will. He can smell me. He knows I'm here."

In that moment, Hastur turns to face him, black eyes staring straight through him.

"Fuck fuck fuck!" Crowley calls out, and he makes fire appear in his hand. It won't do much to actually stop Hastur, but it'll slow him down. The light that should've appeared with the fire isn't there, but it's still hot, still damaging.

"It's all right, Crowley. If he's here, he can be hurt, same as you." Following Crowley's pointing and gaze, and where he appears to be ready to aim his fire, the Soldier smoothly aims its gun and fires a small spread of three evenly placed bullets in a pattern that should make it impossible not to "hit" the "Duke of Hell". It's probably stupid to waste bullets on this, but it's only three. And he has more for this gun. And it might make Crowley feel better.

Crowley watches the bullets shoot through Hastur. The Duke scowls, and stars to move towards them.

"Nope," Crowley says. "Nope, they didn't do anything to him. I got weaker here, he got stronger. We need to run."

He takes a step back and cries out when he steps on his broken leg. This damn thing is never going to heal.

And now it really does feel like those three bullets were wasted. Damn.

It comes immediately to Crowley's side to support him. "You are not running. You're either flying, or letting me carry you." In the midst of Crowley's fear and the lack of its own, the Soldier thinks it can manage a carry. "But he's not real. It's like I told you before. We're all hallucinating."

Hallucinating?

Crowley did a lot of LSD in the 1970's---Hell, why not? Everyone who was anyone did---but his hallucinations then were never like this. This is something completely different. Something vivid and real. He feels real terror right now, and he can definitely see Hastur there. Hastur is not someone to be messed with, not at all.

Hastur would kill the human soldier person just for being Crowley's friend.

"And what if you're wrong? What if he's here?"

"Then I will crush his head with my metal hand to keep him from hurting you," the Soldier says grimly. As if crushing heads of demonic dukes is normal. It's really, really nice to not be afraid for once. Now if only it can return the favor for Crowley. "But he's not here. You're seeing something you fear, the way I was seeing things I fear."

"I'm not afraid," Crowley says, fearfully, with abject terror in his voice.

That kind of obvious denial would almost be cute if it wasn't just so uncomfortable to watch Crowley be afraid. The Soldier knows what that feels like, even if it can't feel it right now. It wants that to go away.

"Sure," it says, aiming for soothing, but it's not great at modulating its tone. It does manage softer, at least. "You're just worried about me, right? He's not gonna hurt me. Promise."

Right, yeah, that's it. Crowley's just worried about the human soldier person. Definitely not afraid.

"Even if he's not there, I don't think we should stay here," he says. "Let's get out of here, see if it follows us."

"All right. Lean on me, you're not supposed to be on that leg." They really need to get the demon an actual, physical, non-person crutch. As soon as all this calms down, the Soldier makes a note to try and find something.

It looks over its shoulder; still no Hastur-looking anything. There are another pair of hands pulling themselves along the ground towards them, but the Soldier doesn't even feel the urge to kick at them. It ducks under Crowley's arm, up against one of the wings, for support.

"I like the wings," it says. Distraction from fear and hallucinations, and also true.

Crowley immediately leans against the human soldier person. His leg aches and can barely hold his weight at all. He's been using it far more than he should and far more than it's been patched up for. The daily healings that Lunafreya has given him haven't been enough to fix what's happened to it.

Hastur has vanished. It was easier when Crowley knew where he was. Maybe it's what the human soldier person said. Maybe it's just an illusion----imagining the person who killed him appearing here. Maybe it's worse than that. Maybe he is here. Hard to tell.

"Good for quick escapes," he says.

"Pretty," the Soldier counters, and starts heading for the village, rather than the cabin. It can drop Crowley off at the Invincible, where he can eat and recover and be watched over by half of Beacon.

"They're not pretty," Crowley says, petulantly, folding them back up into hammerspace. "They're remnants of being an angel."

To Crowley, they're really just a sign of his Falling. Demons with their large, black wings showing off how impure they are. He doubts the human soldier person would understand.

He leans heavily on the human soldier person as they walk. He can swear he sees hands in the woods, reaching out to him. More hallucinations?

You'd be surprised, Crowley. The Soldier might not have dark, damaged wings, but it does have a metal arm given to it by an organization that used it to kill people. Maybe not quite the same, but still. There's some potential parallels there.

"You might not think so," it says with what would be a shrug if it wasn't supporting Crowley. "Doesn't mean I can't think so."

Perhaps that's why they've become friends.

"Yes, you can think it, but you're still wrong," Crowley replies, tartly. "Scary, frightening, demonic. Not pretty."

His eyes dart out to the woods as the human soldier person basically carries him towards the town. He can't wait until his leg is functioning again, he hates being so...so...well, the word impotent isn't right, but it feels a bit right right now.

"Do you see the hands in the woods?" he asks. "Or is that another hallucination?"

"Yes, of course, you're very scary. But I can be afraid of something and still like it." No, Crowley, you're really not. Sorry, man, there's not much anyone could do at this point to make the Soldier afraid of you and your very fine wings.

It sighs just a little at the question. "The hands are the most common hallucination for most people. They grab onto things, push people around. They kept pushing people into the Chair, when I saw them. Or trying to stab people. I see a couple between us and the house right now, but they're just crawling around right now."

"Yeah, but----I mean, what the actual fuck though," Crowley says, watching the hands grope towards them from the woods. "Hands? Images from the past? This----this has to come from somewhere! Someone has to be doing this to us."

He turns his head towards the direction of the Lighthouse. The light is on, glowing.

"Do you think it's her?"

"It could be. But I can't imagine why. I spoke to her, finally-- she refused to punish me for the ferry," the Soldier says. "And got upset with me for making her feel badly about being mad at me. That doesn't seem like the kind of person who would do this." It's not entirely certain in this analysis-- it's not used to gauging people through text alone, and she could certainly be projecting a false persona. But usually cruel people are happy to mete out punishments.

"So she got mad at you because you made her feel bad about being mad at you," Crowley says. He lets out a humorless laugh. "Sounds like Someone else I know."

He hasn't even tried to talk to God since he arrived in this place. He doubts She was listening before, but he's doubly certain here.

"Maybe she knew she had this in the works," he says. "Didn't want to punish you alone because she was going to punish all of us."

"She said I should help rebuild the docks," the Soldier explains. "To make up for what we did. You could be right, but it doesn't make a lot of sense, unless she doesn't make sense." Also possible. "It could be related to the world. None of us are native here. We could be reacting badly to some compound here."

"No, I've had a few bad trips in my time," Crowley says. He turns to the human soldier person. "Woodstock. Anyway, this is nothing like that. This is too real, too persistent. This is far more than just a bad trip."

He doesn't know what it is, but he doesn't like it at all.

"And I can't block it out. I can't use my abilities and make myself tell what's real and what isn't."

Resistance is Futile!!!

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