logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: ENTER MR. SANDMAN (DREAMERS)

Entry tags:

EVENT LOG: ENTER MR. SANDMAN (DREAMERS)

characters: all characters that signed up as a dreamer for the event.
location: dreamland feat. beacon of the past.
date/time: november 16-29.
content: the dreamers investigate beacon as it once was.
warnings: psychological/existential horror. further cws will arise depending on the location; mods will cw tags appropriately, and you will too!

say your prayers, little one.

Hello, dreamers. Welcome to Beacon.

Below, each group has a toplevel ready and waiting for the investigation to begin. Feel free to tag in however to establish a tag order, and mod responses will begin once each character has tagged in. If you need a refresher on how the event will work, give the OOC info another read!

As for those of you in the ~~sin bin~~ opt out area...

The Beacon of the past isn't all too different from the Beacon of the present, frankly, except for a few notable exceptions. For one, it's far better lit: daylight leaves everything feels a lot brighter and more sensible than eternal night does. Several advertisements for community theater in the Invincible are hung up (Tryouts for the Ice Man Cometh! Cometh try your luck!) and minor lost and found posters are tacked to a community bulletin board nearby. Oh, and a merry little tune is playing on loop from a record player set up outside the Invincible.

It's cheerful, if not a little off-putting. But the signs of life are clear, even if the forest still looks darkly oppressive over yonder.

Additionally, since investigation threads 1) rely on mod responses, and 2) will likely move on the slow side given the nature of the event/size of the groups, if you would like to have your characters "mingle" in their assigned location, please feel free to write your own toplevels! We ask that you post them as separate toplevels not in response to the mod toplevels (so our inboxes don't get super flooded/we don't accidentally miss stuff). Remember that groups may only interact with each other during the event, but you're welcome to assume timey-wimey shenanigans to excuse why your characters are mingling instead of searching for clues—they do have two weeks in this dream, technically, and dreams are not always linear. If your investigation thread has not yet progressed to a point in which you've got enough of a handle on the setting to write a separate mingle starter, ask the mod you're working with! We'll fill you in on some OOC details so you can mingle accordingly while still allowing for characters to discover those details ICly in the investigation thread.

If you're still jonesing for more threading action during the event, we encourage you to check out the TDM!

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[He's less inclined to believe their meal has been dosed because if that is the case then he thinks- why only the three of them? Where is everyone else? But instead of mentioning it aloud he focuses instead on the muscle that pulls through his knees and back, the warmth in his arms that tells him that his body is working. That he's not just lifting the pew but holding it aloft, holding it steady. They seem to fall into step with relative ease, though Bruce has no memories of helping friends haul furniture into new apartments to compare it to. His experience with synchronization has involved heists instead- breaking into buildings and vaults, coordinating rescue missions and infiltrating high security areas. He suspects that the spirit of it must be the same.

Still, this concern for tandem is exercise is the reason that he nods in the direction they should put it down, instead of interrupting Peter's train of thought. This seems to be a thing he just, does. Elaborating. Filling the space. Bruce wonders what it is he's trying to avoid- what the silence represents that prompts him to it.

The pew comes down and wood creaks quietly, it doesn't groan. Unfortunately it reveals only a small fraction of their puzzle, the necessity of moving a few more. Bruce straightens and looks over at Villanelle, watches her approach the wall without apparent reluctance or fear. He makes a conscious choice, to keep his expression clear. To nod instead in the direction of another pew to be lifted- to take his position and trust Peter to join him.

He makes a similar choice not to look at the candles that have manifested. They have enough distractions at the moment.]

What drugs were those, by the way?

[ he gives villanelle a moment to answer bruce: he's interested in the answer, too. his own thoughts remain with kraven, with the last hallucination-slash-vision he'd had before waking up in central park, the one that kraven had taunted him with. the one that kraven warned him that there was no way of knowing if it was premonition or imagination.

whilst the sun outside is setting and the church should, in theory, be darker than it had been when they first entered, the increase in candles is a sudden, valiant attempt to create a little more light. peter's never been good with surprises — part and parcel of being, ostensibly, difficult to surprise, at least negatively, which means he stiffens; a mild look of distaste and discomfort grace his features, though he manages to remain silent, at least for a moment.

it's not always a deliberate ploy, spider-man being funnier than peter parker: sometimes it's simply that the mask hides the minutiae of his expression. for all intents and purposes, peter's an open book — his emotions are almost always plain and easy to read, if not in his face than in his mannerisms and his body language. now it's hard to deny that he's less than happy with the situation at hand. the design beneath the pews is — well, it's certainly something, and as peter moves towards a second bench, ready to lift it again with bruce, he looks up at the ceiling. maybe it'd be easier to work out what it is from up there — easy enough for him to do, less easy for him to explain.

perhaps there's a feasible vantage point slightly higher up. ]

[Villanelle recognises the smell and rears back, flicking the bible cover away from her.]

Sickness.

[She hisses the word. It's not exactly fear that tightens here expression, but it's something very close. She can imagine little worse than hacking and coughing your way into an early grave. She wipes her hands on her clothes, studies her fingertips carefully. Did any get on her? She's distracted, still studying her hands when Bruce's question comes.]

Chl- [Chloroform] Coke. [She recovers, it's only a small slip, unfortunately for her, she's in a room with the kind of people who'll notice. She's supposed to be keeping these things a secret, isn't she? She had a plan, didn't she? Before today, before they ended up here.] Maybe some E. [She turns, and her grin is all bashful party girl.] Just a little, you know, to get the party started. [She gives Bruce an obvious once over.] Okay, maybe you don't know, but you do right? [She turns to Peter.] Takes the edge off.

[Subject change please.] There's something on the floor? Oh that's what you're doing. [She approaches them, a wary eye on the walls.]

Edited 2019-11-27 00:40 (UTC)

[The more pews they move, the more the picture becomes clear. It stretches and stretches until it forms a circle. But it's not a circle, of course. A circle is just the shape it takes. When all the pews are moved out of the way, the image becomes clear.]

[The second pew is moved, then a third. A fourth. Bruce watches her from his periphery, the way that she leans away from the wall in immediate, reflexive disgust. The way she looks at her fingertips and the way her syllables clip, sound like cloak. It's a curious stumbling block. Bruce has not known cocaine to be easily mistaken for anything else.

He watches as Peter's gaze travels up instead of following the movements of their feet- trying to be sure he doesn't bump or knock or stumble. Conscious of the way the face betrays, of the truths an expression will tell, Bruce is very aware of his eyebrows and the way they remain even slopes across his head, the absence of furrow between them. And without changing anything else at all, Bruce slowly begins to slacken his grip- lowering his elbows in degrees at a time to allow Peter to take incrementally more weight. It tests a theory, but it also comes with the veneer of laziness, the perception of a lack of strength, a lack of competence.

And slowly the image comes into view.]

Ouroboros?

[Is this also a message? He's disinclined to believe it is simple coincidence. The bell is broken, the stairs are old and weathered, the light is waning. It suggests that time is passing and not just hours but perhaps even years. The ouroboros. Repetition. A cycle?]

Uh, no, not really... [ it's not quite awkward, but not not awkward either: he'd always been teased for his distinctly unpartying ways, but drugs had otherwise never entered the picture for any of them, not even quintessential party girl mary jane watson, until — harry. they'd all wondered what had set harry off on that path, which had been stupid of them, him most of all. he knew norman osborn, knew what he was capable of even then. it shouldn't have been a surprise that harry might have searched for a way to try and deal with all of that.

otherwise distracted then, the shift in weight is slow and incremental enough that peter doesn't notice, not at first. when he does his attention snaps back to bruce, expression a somewhat startled, questioning frown. jason has told him enough about bruce and it hadn't been that peter hadn't taken it on board — he had, only he'd filed it away as something to be dealt with later. peter doesn't know enough of what had happened there to make a judgement call, can't say that the way jason's dealing with it is entirely the way that peter would recommend, but with all of that said and done, peter's managed to gather the distinct impression that bruce doesn't make it easy.

any version of him, he supposes. ] —Look, if you're getting tired, all you had to do was say.

[ when they set the final pew down, peter wipes his hands on his trousers, attention shifting to the pattern in the meantime. villanelle had hissed something about sickness, and now— ]

Life, death, and rebirth. [ he comments, in response to bruce's half-question. peter doesn't think it's a question about what the ouroboros is or what it stands for; peter thinks it's likelier a statement, the question being what it means here and now, for them, for their situation. ] I think I read something about the transmigration of souls as well, but the ancient Greeks were never my favorite, I always had more of a thing for Egypt... [ he runs a hand through his hair, thinking. it's been a while since he's read anything on the subject matter — there'd been that incident with jennifer, but that... was hardly this. that had been cats. ] I want to say ... it was used to represent the beginning and end of time. [ beat. ] And periodic renewal. [ resets?

to bruce, then: ] Did you find anything else down here?

Edited 2019-11-27 09:11 (UTC)

[Neither seem particularly bothered by her slip, though the younger one, Bruce, has quite the poker face, she's not entirely sure.]

[She looks down at the symbol. She's not up on her mythology. Ouroburos to her means hackers, cyber warfare, that job in Ukraine where she'd worn a scratchy black wig and painted her eyelids neon green. Knowledge of a subculture that had been hard to fake, but a death that had been easy as spiking an energy drink and watching a hacker choke on his own vomit. He'd gone on twitching for so long. Talking about drugs, that had been a good one.]

[It takes her a moment, but eventually she refocuses on the subject at hand. Pokes the snake symbol with the toe of her boot.] Round and round it goes. [It feels laid out for them, like a music box, waiting to be opened, like they've stepped inside of a film, or a ghost's looped recreation of its final moments.]

If we're seeing what happened to Beacon, then where are the people that it happened to? The ones who scratched up the walls and painted this on the floor? [She looks up at the walls, at the candles clustering around them.] Isn't that why you light candles? For the dead?

[What an excellent question. What did happen to the people of Beacon?

Footsteps come from below the floor. Someone pacing quickly about a confined space. The clinking and clattering of many items hurriedly moved about.]

[It's difficult to say that his interest is renewed when it hasn't waned to begin with- but there are more variables to consider now. Not just where the church is concerned. Parker seems to recognize the additional weight as an afterthought, not because he begins to show considerable strain or because his grip becomes unwieldy. Bruce remembers what it was like when he first started to train- the shaking, the sweat, the numbness and the clumsy slide of his fingers, the awareness of his muscles. And there is no sign of any of it here.

Stronger than he looks is an understatement.

Villanelle touches the edge of the shape with the toe of her shoe and Bruce can admit she vocalizes many of the same questions he's turning over. But among them too is who painted this, and why? It's natural to want for a motive and he can recognize the kneejerk desire for one within himself, but experience has taught him that nothing easy lies in that direction. People do strange and even horrible things to each other all the time, for no reason at all. Better the how than the why just yet. How gives them something to control for.

Bruce reaches wordlessly into his pocket and withdraws the piece of paper he'd found earlier, we're all going to die, letting it hover in the air for the first hand to take it.]

This was inside one of the bibles.

[His head turns, towards Villanelle, but his face remains angled towards the floor, to the sound of pacing. Before he crosses to look once again, to see if the trapdoor is still absent.]

You didn't get any of that tar on your skin, did you?

[ peter reaches out to take the slip of paper; there's a moment of silence as he reads it, the corners of his lips quirking as he holds it out towards villanelle to allow her to read it. ominous and creepy: two of his absolutely least favourite things. ]

If we're talking about the original inhabitants of Beacon, I always assumed they'd died: the planet originally had at least one sun, the plant life is green and bears resemblance to plant life from Earth — although how any of it's still alive is beyond me. [ he'd considered symbiotic relationships, but there had been nothing to back that passing thought up, he wasn't a botanist and without access to a lab as well equipped as, say, tony's or reed's, there's little chance of figuring the how out. trees might be able to last decades, but smaller plants? not so much. that said, the temperature of the planet should be much lower, so whatever the details of beacon still being inhabitable actually were, they're apparently not anything that makes logistical sense. ] Sure, we're managing to exist in a fashion without sunlight, but we're apparently already dead. Most of the other groups brought to Beacon have ended up being reset, either through — failure or through madness and—.

[ he'd been about to say murder, but what if it was just madness? (with a side of murder.) what if the hallucinations they'd experienced recently weren't strictly the result of the spirits, what if they were part and parcel of beacon? the fingernail scratches on the stairs spoke of desperation, whatever the cause; imagined or otherwise. ]

—Point is, the resets keep happening, right? So maybe they're not entirely unrelated to whatever happened here originally or just a means of figuring out how to stop the World Eaters — assuming you're right and this is the Ghost-of-Beacon-Past... [ or maybe it's wildly off base. who knows!

he glances over at bruce, as he heads in the direction of what would have once been the trapdoor. maybe it is there, given the peculiarities of the bell and the stairs. he weighs up his options: they're not in any immediate danger, not so far as his spider-sense can tell, but with the gross wall-ooze, he's disinclined to trust it's working as advertised. (flossy the magic spider, you did him poorly, thanks.)

there's a temptation to squat, to crawl along the floor on all fours and see if he can feel any vibrations in the floor that indicate where the noise below them is coming from, but— god, couldn't he have just woken up in the suit? couldn't there be a convenient place to slip off and slip into something that's weirdly way more comfortable than it looks; a convenient something something and "oh you know that peter, runs off at the first sight of danger". no? no. apparently not.

so instead of crawling across the floor, he does squat; places a hand on the floor — if the sound's audible, whoever it is can't be that far beneath them, quirks of sound travelling aside. the question is how far does whatever the space below them extend for — the entirety of the floor? ]

[She takes the note, reads it, then flicks it between her fingers.] There should be bodies. Dead people don't just... evaporate. [She looks at the lines of pews, the candles against the walls.] They came in here, into the church, for shelter. [That's what people do, isn't it? Pray to God for deliverance, for a miracle.] And then what? They got trapped here? [She looks down. Painting the floor? That seems an odd thing to do in your last days.] Maybe this was here already. [She walks around the snake.] Maybe it was part of their worship. [Or maybe it was to ward something off? Magic? Since the impossible is possible here, maybe magic is too.]

[The clattering from beneath their feet is unexpected. She stiffens, eyes on the ground, tracking the movement. Sounds like just one person, not the people who died then, but maybe someone who has answers. Maybe if they had something sharp they could lever up the flagstones, but the noise would alarm the person below. If there even was a person below and this wasn't more hallucinations.]

Get it on me? No. [She replies to Bruce. Her tone confident, but her fingers curl around the note, she thrusts it into her pocket. She's not going to be sacrificed for the safety of the others. If they want to check her hands they'll have to fight for it. Still, she rubs her fingertips together, feels no stickiness. She doesn't think she's lying.]

[They're both studying the same patch of ground, and she belatedly remembers talk of a trapdoor. She leaves them to it, walks carefully across and over the symbol, feeling for loose flagstones.]

Isn't this what they say about crazy people? They try the same thing over and over hoping it will be different. The lighthouse keeper, right? She's the one who makes the resets. [She looks up at the two of them.] Do you think she was here? Part of this? The first time. Do you think she was trapped here?

[She looks up at the doors.] If they even were trapped here... [If they're living through the villager's last moments, a sped up version of events at least, then shouldn't the doors be locked? She walks around the pews, heading for the doors and pulls on the handle once she gets there.]

[The trapdoor is there now, as if it had always been, though the wood around the door is rough, as if it's been clawed at by desperate fingernails. If either Bruce or Peter test the handle, they'll find no resistance. It's unlocked.

When Villanelle tries the doors that lead out of the church, they creak open noisily on rusted hinges. The flowers are dried out and sagging, the grass withered and ashen. It looks like the life has been sucked straight out of the land itself.]

[He doesn't stop short when he finds that the trapdoor is there, but instead of reaching first for the handle, Bruce's fingertips trace the claw marks that are found there. They're deep enough, uneven enough, to suggest more than authenticity. It betrays a degree of desperation. How many of these marks look distinct from one another? How many suggest smaller fingers, shorter hands? How many people tried to get inside?

And why was it necessary to keep them out?

These questions are more immediate than anything he might entertain about Robin or the resets. Too many pieces to a puzzle that he cannot even be sure it belongs to. It wouldn't be his first time with an investigation that branched out in unattached directions. Gotham has secrets and it buries only half of them.

Villanelle's footfalls create an audible trajectory, allowing Bruce to follow her movements without raising his head. It means that when he does look up with his eyes it's at Peter instead, who has come down to his level, who presses his palm against the floor to seek out vibrations. The glance isn't an unspoken conversation or even a request for permission so much as it is a moment of warning. Bruce doesn't make a habit of telegraphing what he intends to do, that he finds space for it now is a matter of courtesy.

And then he pulls the trapdoor open.]

Hard to say, [ peter says, attention flickering back up to villanelle. ] She says she's from Earth, but that doesn't preclude her from having been here whenever whatever happened here happened.

[ he thinks, vaguely and loosely, of a time across time when he'd been stuck with logan — oh, sure, it'd been fun in retrospect, a total barrel of laughs living on a sort-of version of planet of the apes, worrying about the cretaceous-tertiary extinction event, about eating aunt may's muffins and lying about it, robotic dinosaurs and doctor doom (unrelated), but the point is that none of this needs to be linear or make a degree of rational sense.

(doom had helped him time travel once, too, back into (a version of) his past to deal with the issue of the tinkerer and aliens and—

—why is his life so complicated? whilst it means he has a wealth of similar-yet-different scenarios to compare and contrast this — all of it — to, it still hasn't provided him with any absolute answers.) ] Time isn't linear, and Beacon's particularly egregious in its approach to it, so... [ a breath of a pause, and peter looks briefly at bruce, the slight movement of his head drawing peter's focus. he shifts his weight and shuffles back a couple of steps; bruce pulls open the trapdoor with relative ease.

he doesn't think there's a person in beacon that hadn't wondered what was below the trapdoor. he's not convinced it'll answer the question of what brings them back when they die, but that doesn't mean he's not curious. based on their bell escapade, he's also not entirely expecting the cause of the noise to still be down there by the time they're down there, but—

only one way to find out, right? ]

[She takes a couple steps outside, reaches down to pluck a fading flower between her fingers. The desiccated stalk snaps off, the petals, greying and old, fall to the ground around her feet.]

World eaters.

[She looks up at the sky once, a shiver, unbidden, running across her shoulders, before turning back to the church.]

Do you think the spirits did this? [She calls it out. The candles provide a flickering light and she can't tell if the other two are still outside the trapdoor, or if they've found it and climbed inside.]

They brought us the food, didn't they? [The time before now is foggy, but she knows she didn't simply stroll into the past.] Are they trying to help us? Show us what happened so we can do something different?

[Though how you defeat an enemy that can pull the life out of the ground itself is beyond her. She's not sure she's interested in trying. She makes her way back across the church to where the others are.]

Or are we being lead into the same trap?

[Then again, this whole place has the feel of a memory, not present danger, not to them at least. She spares the snake a watchful glance as she crosses the flagstones.]

[The staircase below the trapdoor leads down into the dark earth. But it isn't dark in the stifling, infinite sense. In fact, they can see the bottom; it isn't a long set of stairs. The cavern below isn't cramped, exactly, but it isn't altogether spacious either. A tunnel dug for the necessity of passage without the prying eyes of others. Maybe without other things, as well.

There's a small nook next to the bottom of the stairs. A makeshift shelving unit covered in candles and various tools. It's quiet, until someone coughs, just a little ways down. The tunnel heads west.]

If it was a trap, it seems like a waste to use it on just the three of us.

[He has to pitch his voice low as a matter of practicality- because the trap door comes open despite any and all attempts to have taken place before now. And because in the event that they can interact with whoever is below, the cause of the small cough, he doesn't want to give away the element of surprise.

Bruce lifts a finger to his lips, a universal signal for quiet as he looks up at Peter and a newly approached Villanelle- before he begins to descend. He does intend to head west and follow the voice, but he's also going to take any tools that look like they could be used as a weapon, tucking them into each pocket. The temptation to bring a candle, to have a light in the dark, is a powerful thing. But it also promises to give away their presence inside the tunnel. It will make them vulnerable.

His gaze lifts once more, to the top of the stairs. And he whispers very quietly.]

We should anchor the door open. Just in case.

[ peter gives the shelf a cursory glance: taking any of the tools as a weapon isn't a thought that seems to occur to him (or: it does, but if it comes to it, he'd rather rely on something a little more discreet).

he does, however, inhale as bruce raises a finger to his lips in an effort to shush the two of them. for now, bruce has a point, though it's not because of him that peter remains quiet — it'll be a different story, undoubtedly, when they finally hit the end of the tunnel but for now—

well, he's not wrong.

peter huffs a breath and heads back up the stairs, waving a hand over his shoulder dismissively. ]

I've got it.

[ there's not a whole lot in the church that can be used as a prop short of the candles and the bibles, so he opts for the latter over the former. they're more for decoration than anything else; he shoots a cursory glance back down the stairs before opting to help the trapdoor stay open with the aid of some webfluid (don't say he never does anything for anyone, alright). the books can be moved, but good luck shifting the webbing before it dissolves.

once that's done, he pads back down the stairs and joins back up with bruce and villanelle; a moment passes.

he looks at villanelle, then he looks at bruce.

look, just because being silent is a good idea, it doesn't mean he's not going to struggle with it. ]

[Villanelle doesn't care much about alerting the voice, mainly because she doesn't believe they'll ever catch up with it - everything so far has been in some kind of past tense, except the slimy walls, that had been unsettlingly present. She wants answers, if they find any, they might need some light to read them by.

If they do catch up with the mystery person, well, she's at the back of the line, it'll have to waste time attacking the other two before it can reach her. Plenty of time to prepare. Decision made, she reaches for a candle. The wax that had dripped down to the base had stuck it to the shelf. She pulls harder until it comes free with a faint snap. She shrugs sheepishly at the other two, an apology for the noise.

She rests her weight forward, on the balls of her feet. Anticipation tightens her muscles, she wants to chivvy them along, but she holds her tongue. Keep silent, right. But this is fun, isn't it? She's not the only one intrigued? Her eyes shine in the flickering light. She waits until the last moment, when the other two have turned away, before her hand flicks out to the shelf again and a screwdriver disappears up her sleeve.]

[Nothing comes toward him, and there's no sound of movement outside of their own. It's so quiet that even when they stay silent, their every action seems to echo. This place feels...not wrong, exactly, but there's an odd feeling in the air.

It's claustrophobic down here. Heavy.

If, or when, they choose to follow the sound of the voice, they come across what appears to be a person...wearing a sheet. They just stand there, silent, head bowed slightly forward as if in prayer. It would be more weird than unsettling, but they can see more sheet-covered humanoid shapes past this one. And more...and more, until they clog up the entire tunnel, leaving no space between the bodies, like sardines crammed inside a can.]

[The change in atmosphere is palpable. Bruce doesn't expect for a moment that his two companions would leave him to explore this space on his own- if not for his sake then as a matter of curiosity. They hadn't hesitated to seek the bell ringer after all, and Beacon has no shortage of mysteries that its residents have been agonizing over. Besides, Bruce has more than enough self-awareness to know he has no business faulting others for the pursuit of knowledge. Truth be told he finds it to be a comforting thought. The last thing they need is a town full of people willing to jump to conclusions, fueled by impulse.

Peter disappears for a moment, presumably to brace the trap door as asked, and Villanelle isn't immediately at his back. But Bruce is aware of them on his periphery as they begin to find one another inside the tunnel. The ceiling and the walls close in around them and the sense of claustrophobia grows the further they go.

And then there's a shape. A person inside a sheet.
Then more than one person inside a sheet.

Bruce pauses visibly, coming to a mute standstill within the tunnel. And then he very slowly extends one hand, reaching for one sheet with two fingers. His intention is to graze it first, to be sure he can touch it. And then if he can, to slowly draw the cloth down.]

Who wants to let these guys know that insurance claims masquerading as hauntings never work out? [ peter half-mutters, half-whispers. it's directed more towards villanelle than to bruce, although he's not entirely convinced either of them will appreciate the remark. it's hard to deny that the image of many sheet-clad figures is unsettling, and peter's struck by the thought that if he had a choice — although technically, he does — he'd much rather be on the ceiling than down on the ground with them.

he's not quite sure if it's the mass of bodies or the general cramped nature of the tunnel that contributes to the change in atmosphere, though truthfully he's not sure the details of that really matter. he'd move to pull a sheet off a figure himself, but bruce has apparently already got that covered, so he watches and waits, attention split between bruce and the seemingly endless figures stretching off into the tunnel.

he'd ask where they came from, but it's not a question that'd have an answer, not yet. the one thought that does occur to him is that: when they're brought back to life, they emerge from the trapdoor, and aren't dead bodies ordinarily covered with sheets?

or, you know, children playing at being ghosts, but that doesn't seem the likeliest of options given the situation. ]

[Ghosts. Ghosts. She doesn't like ghosts. Her list of fears is short, it starts and ends at 'g'. The dead should stay dead. They shouldn't be given the chance to revisit horrors on the living. They had their chance.

The oppressive silence weighs down on the backs of her hands, the planes of her shoulders, the base of her spine. The air grows thick with it. Makes her antsy, nervous, foolish.

Bruce reaches for the sheet, and a judder of nerves runs through her at the thought of what might be under it. She doesn't want to see, doesn't want to know. Her drive for answers is paling at the thought of dead faces under white sheets. Dead eyes, ever watching.]

You need dead people for a haunting, right?

[Lets call it a moment of insanity, she'd certainly never admit to feeling something very like terror. She steps forward, almost knocking Peter's shoulder as she comes face-to-sheet with one of the ghosts. A split second, then the screwdriver shaft is slipping, cold, between her fingers. The handle solid in her palm. Her fingers close, her hand comes up, elbow bending, weight moving forward, then she lunges forward, her arm out straight, the screwdriver headed for where the ghostly form's neck should be. Her left arm flicks out behind and above her head, a counterbalance, holding the candle clear. Shadows careen wildly across the tunnel walls, the flame flickering, guttering, then going out.]

[Bruce reaches the figure first. The cloth is tangible, rustling at his touch. The figure beneath it doesn't move. When he starts to draw the cloth away, there's a sickening, halfway-wet sound, like a bandage being pulled from raw, bloody skin. There's a mild amount of resistance, but not the sort of resistance that comes from anything behind held. It just seems...stuck, slightly. Just barely.

And then Villanelle pounces, and the pointed end of the screwdriver jabs through the cloth, into the figure's would-be neck. There's a grotesque sound, like tearing, maybe, like puncturing a filled canvas bag.

And then, in the near-dark, the figure melts beneath the cloth. Something thick and hot and foul and dark pours onto their feet, covering the area.]

[He has two immediate thoughts: that Villanelle is not who she has been pretending to be, with that response and that precision. And that she's going to get them killed.

Bruce can feel the movement before it happens and it splits his attention in a strange way- distending the moment and stretching time out around them. The decision she makes to rush forward changes the flow of the air in this space, a signal that prickles at the nape of his neck before she has the chance to appear in his periphery, let alone to charge forward. But there are also the details from these last moments before. The resistance of the cloth as he begins to draw it away, the texture of it in his fingers, the stillness of the shape. There's something profoundly inhuman about it that keeps his weight on the balls of his feet, that keeps his knees from straightening, that keeps his limbs loose enough for a fluid response.

It's a screwdriver she uses and Bruce doesn't stiffen immediately, because that tendency to freeze is something he's trained himself out of. He backs up suddenly instead- is two paces away as the figure begins to melt. What are the odds, he thinks, that it's the same liquid that had oozed from the church's walls upstairs? Bruce has experienced plenty of synchronicities in his life thus far, it's the reason he doesn't believe this is a coincidence. One hand goes out blind, in Peter's direction- a telegraph of his urgency.] Go, go.

[He doesn't stop moving.]

It's the floor- clear the area-

EVENT LOG: ENTER MR. SANDMAN (DREAMERS)

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