[closed] → you were falling like the leaves.

[agrat]

Who: Wolfgang & Lea
What: Two members of the same cohort spot a man staggering down the street, toward a cliffside...
When: Veerdi, mid-late afternoon.
Where: Flag Hill
Notes: :)
Warnings: SEVERE BODY HORROR, creepiness.

There's really no reason she needs to be in Flag Hill, looking at that property. It's a steep price, even if her finances have been augmented by her savvy decision to sell off every piece of gold jewelry she'd worn upon arrival (sans that antique ring she's so attached to), and she doesn't need that much space.

She just wants it. So she bought it today, and is feeling--something, about the decision. Not happy, as there is no swing in her booted step while she walks toward the train stop, but she's not having buyer's remorse, either. It's just that purchasing property is a way of acknowledging that she is here, that this isn't some wishful-thinking elaborate hallucination she's dreamed up while in captivity, and she's not going anywhere. She is putting down roots, and a house is a way of putting them fairly deep in soil, to stretch the metaphor, she doesn't trust; this risks letting them get ripped out again, and that was a painful enough experience the first few times.

Lea swings her bag at her hip, appearing, for all the world, like she's paying very little mind to fellow pedestrians. This is inaccurate: she has the make and measure of every approaching person, guessing their species if at all possible, their height, their weight, how competent they are in a fight. She judges their walk and their clothes and whether they look at her, and some do more appreciatively than others, which adds incentive to her decision to ignore them, steadily. If someone approaches her or decides to get pushy, she is entirely on her own here, and she'll have to pick her fights with care. There's no sense in being overtly solicitous or nosy when she's so new here, particularly since she needs to establish her own reputation for not taking any attitude from anybody, and yet--

When she spots a red-haired young man staggering down the street a ways away, seemingly moving with purpose despite his haphazard steps, she's immediately concerned. The stranger has come from a tall, teetering Flag Hill house not far away, which Lea realizes only because he's left the front door open--not a sound mind's act in a city like this, or any city anywhere. She discreetly glances around to see if anyone else has noticed--or, more likely, to see if she's the only one who cares.

Comments

[gramarye]

Wolfgang lets out a yelp, stepping back and then immediately forward again to prevent himself from just falling right into their grasp. They're in a pattern of some kind, that's all he notes before the more pressing problem captures his attention -- namely that the more they emerge from the mirrors, the more reach they have and the less room the two of them have to maneuver.

And the presence of those hundreds of hands, emerging more and more, makes it harder to tell which way is out, because they're obscuring the mirrors, reflecting themselves hundreds of times more. He looks around, starting to panic. They have to stand in the very center of the corridor to stay out of their grasp and he knows without having to touch them that if they drag them inside the mirrors with them, it is very unlikely either of them will come out again. He's just about to do something stupid like, say, shatter every mirror in here when he sees her.

He knows she's dead before he looks at her, like he knows she's the presence he's been looking for. She's about nine years old, blonde, blue-eyed, pale-skinned. She doesn't look a thing like Safiya, if anything she looks more like him, but looking at her barely corporeal shape is enough to bring back a surge of painful memories. She's standing about three meters ahead of them.

"This way!" she says, and turns and runs. He doesn't think before following her; she's not part of this game. And she's easy to follow in spite of the nature of this house, because she has no reflection in the mirrors. Unfortunately the two of them have the problem of being both much larger and much more corporeal than her, and he finds himself having to sidle sideways through those grasping hands, feeling fingers that are so hot they burn brushing against his shoulders, touching and yanking his hair.

She leads them through a winding path that is not the most direct route through the house of mirrors -- and also seems too long to be contained within the building, and he gets the sense that more time has passed than they are aware of, again -- until she stops at the room before the exit, a tiny plush room with a single antique mirror above an old-fashioned couch, and a door leading outside.

Wolfgang, who is well over six feet tall, crouches partially to steady himself but mostly to be on her eye level. "Thank you," he says, and... desperately hopes Lea can see her too and he doesn't look like a crazy person, talking to air.

"You shouldn't have come here," she says, gazing at her shoes -- one is untied. "The bad man will get you."

[agrat]

Lea has always liked kids. Even though her heart is pounding, adrenaline making her fingers twitch (she has a much stronger 'fight' reflex than a 'flight' one, she wanted to wreck that place, in her heart of hearts), she crouches down to the little ghost-girl's eye level too, tucking sweater sleeves over her fingertips. The memory of those--it must have been thousands, really--grasping hands won't leave her any time soon, and it's hard to resist glancing back.

"Not if we get him first," Lea says. "We've come to find him. What is your name?"

There is a hesitation. "Sabrina," she says, finally.

"I'm Lea, and this is Wolfgang," Lea tells her, indicating Wolfgang with a tip of her head. Seeing ghosts is always many things, often sad, but a little child ghost is the worst. She can guess, vaguely, how long this girl has been trapped here, but not whether her death precedes the activity they're following here. For all she knows, it could have been nesting in this city for centuries, waiting to make its move.

"I followed you," Sabrina admits. "Are you really looking for the bad man? He'll hurt you. He makes people hurt themselves and they--they get ugly. Like monsters."

[gramarye]

"What did he do to the other people?" Wolfgang asks. Ordinarily he would ease into this slower because he can tell she doesn't want to talk about it, but -- he can't shake the feeling that they don't have much time, especially now that they're in 'the bad man's' territory.

The little girl toes the ground, although nothing she appears to touch is disturbed. "He put the holes in and makes them go inside, and when they come back up, they look..." She looks away from them and shrugs. "And he put the people in the mirrors."

Wolfgang half-turns in the direction they just came from, reaching mentally -- but nothing's there. Either they're too far out of his range (he doubts it; he hasn't pushed his limits, but Baedal is not that big, even metaphysically speaking) or there's nothing left of their minds to hear.

"He came to the city a long time ago, but he wasn't nice like most people are. I don't know how come the gods brought him."

They might not have. He keeps that thought to himself. "They probably didn't know," he says instead, thinking she might rather believe that her gods made a mistake out of ignorance than out of malice or apathy, or that something trapped in here with them is cleverer or more powerful than they are.

Sabrina twists her braid around her hand. "He came to the park a long time ago and he made all the rides go bad. Everyone got scared and ran away. I couldn't find..." She trails off again, her hand pressing into her side like something there hurts her -- looking at it, he sees that it's a hole, as if something pierced her abdomen. He made all the rides go bad. Wolfgang can guess how she must have died.

"Now he's hiding and no one believes he's here anymore. No one listened to me." She turns her eyes towards them, like but you believe me, right?

Wolfgang glances at Lea. "We're listening."

[agrat]

Lea nods, her voice as reassuring as she can make it without dipping into 'patronizing' (being little doesn't mean Sabrina won't notice). She doesn't talk to her like a baby, and even though this place is worlds apart from home, it's hard to forget the faces of the children who stayed on the estate.

The ones no one knows about, the ones that could still be in the facility on Baffin Island. Or dead. Or worse.

"We saw someone he was hurting, but we didn't know it at the time, so we came here. We're going to do what we can to try to change something here. I promise."

Lea pauses.

"But we might need your help. Will you do that?"

Sabrina doesn't waste a lot of time in agreeing. "Yes." Something causes her to hesitate, though, as though she is remembering. "But I don't want to get into trouble..."

"In trouble with the bad man?"

"Uh-huh. This place is his house. He wants to make it bigger and I'm not supposed to get in the way, or else."

[gramarye]

He closes his eyes, listening again, but this time pushing his range outward. "There are people here," he says, slowly. "West of us, by... the ferris wheel. But something's... wrong with their minds. It feels twisted, like --"

He doesn't need to finish that. Furthermore, he knows there's nothing left there to rescue, that whatever this entity has done to them is permanent. That makes it simpler in a way, although not actually any easier. Mercy kills are never easy.

Or else. Something in him shifts -- sharpens. It's hard to tell outwardly, his demeanor is generally the same no matter what, but inwardly, there is cold anger. He's reining it in as best he can, but there's something a little unhinged in his voice.

"Do you know where the bad man is now?" he asks Sabrina.

"I can show you," she volunteers.

Wolfgang does not want to involve her that directly, he would rather have her stay somewhere they could throw a ward around to keep her safe, but the feeling he gets just from being here is that there is nowhere in the park safe from the entity. If they keep her with them, at least they'll be there to defend her if whatever this is decides to attack her.

He gets up and moves towards the exit door, looking outside, but there's nothing there but darkness and abandoned attractions, so he turns back to look at Lea again. "Can you shield her?" He sounds a little frustrated, because that's something he used to be able to do -- it's how he got his friends through the Gauntlet with him -- but he can't anymore.

[agrat]

Lea hesitates. It isn't that she doubts her ability, but she'd rather make a tower out of a cyclone of magic and put Sabrina in it, frankly, until they can resolve what is keeping her on this plane and not allowing her to pass on. Still, she can feel the range of this thing's crawling reach, the taste of sin still in her mouth, and she knows that Sabrina's means of death would still make her susceptible. It is a familiar principle among her people, her magical kind, indicating their shared ancient history with demons like the one they are chasing: you own what you kill. Death doesn't necessarily save you from the reach of faqra--that's just your body, a shell hiding what's really important.

"Tamam," she says, "Sabrina, I'm making a wall around you. Can you feel it?"

Sabrina squints for a second, and then her eyes widen. She's startled; she's dead, so it's been a long time since she's felt any physical sensation, but she raises her small hands and presses them against an invisible force (more visible astrally, but they're on one layer of the Other right now). "Uh huh. What is that...? Is it magic?"

"Yes. But it's very important you stay inside it." Sometimes little girls don't listen (Lea knows better than anyone, because she was exactly that kind of little girl, in some ways still is), so she makes sure Sabrina is looking at her when she says it. "Only you and I can step through that door."

Sabrina considers those words, and then nods, slowly.

"Good. Now, can you show us the way?"

[gramarye]

Sabrina nods and starts out the door.

Wolfgang hesitates only very briefly before following her. He stays close, not so close as to touch Lea's wall, but close enough that should something happen, he could physically block her. He stops once to pick up a pipe. He doubts whatever they're going up against has much in the way of a physical body to fight against, but its minions clearly do, if those hands were any indication.

It's quiet where Sabrina leads them, but no less eerie, all long shadows and lurking darkness. Joyside is not very inviting during the light of day; it's worse at night.

She leads them towards the ferris wheel, then stops near it. She points upwards, at the Joyland sign; the top of the ferris wheel is as close as anyone can get to it, there is no ladder. "He lives up there."

Wolfgang cranes his head upwards, but he sees nothing. That doesn't mean he's not there, just that Sabrina sees something neither of them can. He can feel it, anyway, a churning in his gut, like the closer he gets, the more nauseated, as well. He glances at the ferris wheel, the rickety old metal thing, with an incredibly dubious look on his face before glancing back at Lea. "Climb or ride?"

Gravity is a force. But tonight is not going to be his night to experiment with levitation.