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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Wait. No, wait, what?

[Because yes, it might be possible for some place to be cursed or haunted or fucking shifted sideways in to a pocket universe for a limited time only, like it's the Fun House hour without the fun in it, but it might be planned? Like, someone sat down thought, hey, let's make everyone lose their minds, wouldn't that be the most fun thing? And Quentin frowns, hunching his shoulders against the growing cold.]

I don't, no? I've only ever stared at things in the dark that were actually there? Several times. This isn't-- how do you know? How do you know it's not real?

It's just a thought.

[He has no proof and all he can really do is sit and think about this for hours on end, anything to stop focusing on the maddening images that seemed to dance in front of him. Maybe it was easier to assume that this place was out to get them or someone who ran this was tormenting them.

It made sense of the chaos, otherwise...they'd have nothing.]

You know if you close your eyes for a few minutes. When you open, it's gone. The hands never touch you and they never seem to touch anyone else. They always look like they will.

[Quentin just stares back, mouth a little open and there's a horrified look flashing over his face before he looks down, scuffing his shoes in the dirt.]

Close my eyes? When I can see-- yeah. Yeah, I'm not going to do that? Because I'm pretty sure something is going to get me if I do.

[It sounds crazy, saying it out loud like this, and he shrugs, shaking his head.]

It's just-- it's like every time I open my mouth, I sound like a lunatic.

If you're mad, we're all mad.

They can't hurt you. None of this is real, it's a trick of our imagination.

[He's only half certain of that, but he'll hold to it.]

Well, I mean - aren't we? Just-- look at where we are? And what we're supposed to do? Saying we're all crazy isn't wrong?

[Only, these last few days, something had felt more off than usual. Whispers in the back of his mind, growing stronger. Things moving when he wasn't looking. He shakes his head, and twists his face in to some kind of smile, strained as it might look.]

Hi, I'm Quentin.

It's not the sort of afterlife I've heard of before. You eat, drink and die here. There's something strange about it all, I don't know if I would call it madness.

[He's been brooding over this since arrival, still not having any answers or feeling any better about it.]

Jon Snow.

You don't eat or drink in your afterlife?

[With all of the implications that Jon probably isn't from the same place as Quentin, and it's not just the man-bun and the pelt of a dead animal slung over his shoulder. Jon looks too serious, like he's had a hard life or maybe he was some kind of mountain man. Compared to Quentin own middle-class life, and Jon just doesn't look like he's from New York.

Maybe he was a viking?]

There's- uh, in the afterlife that I know of, there's food. And tents. And other people. Mostly, it was just a long wait in the Meadows or, uh, a bowling alley. But. That's not really the part that I'm-- that's not the crazy part about this place? It's the darkness and the spirits and the-- and now the. Yeah, the weird things. That we could possibly do this, fight World Eaters.

There's nothing in the afterlife that I knew before now.

[A viking was a good guess, and after his time with the Freefolk, he was more like them than he was a Northerner. Even as he tried to adapt to this world, he still surrounded himself with aspects of his previous life. The cloak that he couldn't give up, Longclaw strapped to his side and the brooding that only a Stark could really perfect.

If he wasn't a viking, he was just some sort of wild man.]

You've died before? [He's just assuming.] The spirits are the greatest danger, but I haven't had a chance to fight them before. World-eater? Is that what they are?

I-- uh, yes? But, I don't- it's not like I remember it? I just know about it. That I, uh, died? Before? But-- but I remember dying this time? And there was hot chocolate. So. Yeah. That's how I know.

[Quentin settles on a viking of some kind, and tries not to stare too hard when what looks like a hand snakes out from the dark to push at the huge sword strapped to Jon. Or when there's something like a quiet whisper on the wind that blows by them.

He's just been awake for too long, probably. Maybe the canned meat wasn't as good as they'd thought? He shakes his head.]

The spirits? I have no idea what they are. Maybe they're all that's left from the people who used to live here? Maybe they're lost souls? Demons? They could anything.

[All things that Jon hadn't considered but now seemed likely, given their surroundings and the things that happened before. If they were victims of the rest, they'd have reason to be angry, enough to attack the newcomers. It might even be some sort of sick warning?

But there was no real way to know, only to be on their guard and prepare for the next attack that was most likely to come.]

Might be better if we get inside somewhere. We're too exposed out here.

What?

[He heard, but- it's weird. It's like there's more voices, talking in tandem. There's Jon's voice, calm but with that edge of steel in it, like this is a guy who's used to giving orders. And for those orders to be obeyed. But underneath that, there's something soft. Cajoling, almost. And Quentin shakes his head.]

I-- maybe? But. If we can get in, can't everything else? It's not like any of these places are secure.

[But also, it seemed worse indoors. Like, there was a pressure inside his skull that just kept getting worse, and it wasn't as bad out here.]

At least out here, we'll see them coming?

[He wasn't wrong. There were times when he was inside and still saw the disturbing visions, but it didn't remove his uneasiness at being outside, surrounded by the darkness. Anything could be moving towards him and without Ghost to help alert him, he had to rely entirely on his instinct.

Given that he died, he's not sure how much he trusts it.]

Not far enough. I can't see anything past a certain distance. The darkness is too thick.

The hands seem to come from everywhere.

I-- yeah, I didn't expect you to, like, have super vision or something. It's just that out here, there's a always a way out? Inside, we'd be trapped.

[And for some reason, Quentin's mind keeps circling back to Midtown Mental Health Clinic and that whispering just below his hearing isn't helping. Where the hell to find help, when they're all stuck in literal hell.]

Hands?

I've seen hands come from around the trees or from the ground, reaching for anyone standing nearby.

[He doesn't want to focus on it. Giving it more thought means inviting those hands to make an appearance.]

They always disappear before making contact.

Hands?

[Okay, so that's worse than your regular kind of weird and Quentin frowns. He'd heard voices, but not really hands? Maybe it was hands? It was just something from out of the corner of his eye and then it was gone when he turned his head.]

Do you think it's spirits? The hands, I mean? That they're attached to the spirits?

I don't know. I don't even know if it is really there or just something I think I see.

[He suspects that even if he tried to approach the hands, they'd disappear before they had the chance.]

None of this seems real.

Mmmm--

[it's not disinterest that makes Quentin's gaze slide slowly to the left of Jon's face, but there's just something about the way the firelight flickers over the ground that catches his attention for a few seconds. Maybe almost like hands, like Jon said, but he can't be sure.

Whatever it is, it's unsettling and fear churns in his guts like a herd of sick butterflies. He clutches his book tighter to his chest, the title probably visible as

"The Magicians" by Lev Grossman.]

That's how I feel about most of this place? That it's maybe not real? But, I remember dying, so. That's that.

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EVENT LOG: BURY A FRIEND

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it's okay to be busy! Just watch me kind of flail through December

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