[The Derry Town House has had a lively one tonight.
There are five bodies cooling on its floors. Three occupants checked out early the regular way: Bill, Beverly, and Eddie reconvene, realizing it's too late for two of their childhood friends, and slip out back before anyone can catch them. They pile into Eddie's rented car and drive to the Barrens to finish the job. They're not just two short now, they're four short of seven. Three is a lucky number but it's bad odds for where they're going, and their spirits are low as they've ever been.
Anders comes down on the left staircase. Methodical, uncaring about the wounds sustained, which are many. He stays upright and resolute marching down into the lobby.
Fidelio, Euphasia, and Taair could almost skip steps, they race to the bottom so fast. They're on the right staircase, avoiding the bloody mess of the left like the plague. Taair has a car parked out front, he agrees to take them out that way and find help. They arrive in the lobby just before Anders strolls in, looking like fresh hell.
Last to arrive are Shadowheart and her Father. They take the right staircase as well, but at a gentler tilt. She'd arrived first at the Town House in order of operations, while Fidelio came last, so she had extra time to cry it out and clean up a bit. As much as one can, with the amount of blood on her. They walk in on the awkward stare down that started only seconds before.
And something about hitting that ground level floor shakes you all. Any fog lingering in your heads lift. The spiral mark on Anders's forehead wipes clear, and so do all the wretched effects that came with it.
You remember each other. You remember the people with you, the ones you left upstairs, the ones you warned away. You remember yourselves, senses returning the moment all three of you are reunited on one floor, locking eyes and feeling a steep pitch of dread.
Why were you here? What have you done?
There's barely a moment to consider it. There's a flash of lights in the windows. The whole front wall of the town house is broad panes of glass, all the better to see the police cars switching on their headlights, their flashing red and blues. Officers are perched in their cars and crouched around propped open doors for cover. There must be at least thirty pigs squared up around the joint, maybe thirty-five, armed and aiming every gun at you. All of them with a glassy look in their eyes.
The boys at the precinct just had a funny feeling, you know? Strange that so many suspicious characters booked into the Town House this weekend. And the ones that wandered in on foot? Gosh, even stranger. So strange, after a year full of dead and missing kids. After the the town Librarian got cut up like a Christmas ham while working late. First some broad had called from this number — Beverly had called. Hung up before they got her name, but the officer had been suspicious. Who calls a library after midnight, just as they were wiping up the blood from the place? — then they got a hot tip, anonymous collect. Couldn't place the caller if they tried, but he's been around town for sure. He's been around a long, long while.
He's cartwheeling in right now as a matter of fact, though none of the officers react to him. They don't see the clown roll straight up beside the chief, pop to his feet and honk his bulbous red nose, screaming with laughter.]
BOOK 'EM, DANNO! SICK 'EM BOYS! YOU BETTER LIGHT 'EM UP! THERE'S YOUR KILLERS RIGHT THERE, YOU BET YOUR ASS THAT'S THEM! GREASE 'EM! GAS 'EM! BLOW THEM AWAY!
[And the chief, who doesn't so much as turn to look the howling clown in the eye, gets a funny feeling that hey, maybe they should just fucking shoot the sons of bitches.
So they do.
The glass crashes out in one calamitous shatter, and the bullets spray every which way. Fidelio takes three to the chest and one to the stomach, another improbably skates through the top of his right foot. Not enough to lame him, but there's a chunk of bone flying. One clean through the head. A damn lucky shot, no telling who pulled that trigger but congrats on your marksmanship, sir.
Anders catches two in his left arm and three more in his leg. He'd been turned to the side a bit, and the blows spin him around to take another in the collar bone. He falls flat after that, and most others miss him.
Shadowheart threw her arm up, as if that might save anything. She gets two in it for the effort, another through her neck and two more in her middle. One in the hip.
After that, it's anyone's guess who is hit where and which blow finally did them in. The whole crew, adventurers and guest stars alike, are lit up like fireworks at New Year's Eve. One big old blowout to close another year of feeding on children. Just like the Fire at the Black Spot, the Execution of the Bradley Gang, or the Revenge of Claude Heroux.
Maybe you might make it into Mike's history book after all.]
[she descends the stairs in something like a fugue state. all fight has gone out of her. she didn't clean up, she's still covered head to toe in blood, that's important. she still doesn't feel like she has any sense of where she is, who she is, but she's also reached a state where she's just given up on fighting back. maybe something like that helpless terror she felt before, the one that froze her in place, is a better protection right now than any proactive impulse.
she sees the others, anders no doubt also bloodsoaked and del with a gaggle of people he managed to evacuate, and...]
Andy? Del?
[some memory blooms, like seeing long lost friends, but along with that sense of reunion, the horror, the recollection of what happened to them.
and then the fog lifts. and she realizes that she's here with a man who she doesn't know at all, who may be nothing more than a character in this story, the story of a girl named jen hallow who never existed. maybe this man is someone she created, an amalgam of her own secret hopes and wishes. she had always dreamed of that night, of being abandoned in the forest, pursued by wolves, waiting for help to come. and she had always joked, either she was an orphan or she'd simply been abandoned, there's no good explanation for why she was there, no loving explanation for leaving a little girl alone in the woods with no one to protect her.
but there was still that secret hope, that secret wish, that once back before the time she can remember, maybe somebody had loved her. maybe that someone had looked for her, had missed her when she was gone. maybe the whole time she was the subject of some cruel experiment, a project to take a little girl and twist her into another shape for shar's hideous amusement, there was someone somewhere else who still wanted her.
he isn't real, but part of her accepts finally how much she wanted it to be.
anders and fidelio, andy and del, though, they're... they're both real. so is eupha, so is taair. so probably are all of these strangers. oh god - what's happened to them?]
Anders, you're -
[he looks so fucking bad. the horror of everything she went through hits her like a ton of bricks, and she imagines the same for him.
but there's very little time to process it before this story ends.]
[ yeah in an absolute fucking foogoo state man. the grink is HERE.
it takes a moment for him to realize that he's back from the desert. that color (red, blue lights) and music (sirens) are returning, like blood rushing into your ears at incredible volumes. the only cure for Tranquility is death. Or a Spirit reaches out to touch your mind, to return you full force into yourself. it's enough to break a person. but he's already broken, already something no longer human, but human enough to not be a monster.
he drops the bloody knife - maybe just because his hand can no longer hold it, now that he can feel pain and fear and relief again. Enough twists and turns though the sewer to end up here of all places. Funny how that works out. ]
Hi, Jen. Hi Del.
[ no where to run this time. but maybe that's for the best. he'd accepted judgment once before, and this feels like another opportune time.
he's just going to start hysterically crying in the moments before the curtain drops, but maybe that's not a bad thing. at least he can. at least it's something. ]
[ with the staggered timing in their arrivals at the building, fidelio had missed anders and shadowheart entirely. he'd only had the vaguest understanding of what he was actually supposed to be evacuating these people from in the first place, and had just assumed it would be the clown itself, or some other local under its influence that he'd barely ever heard of.
so the sight of the two of them here, covered in blood and visibly disoriented, throws him for a loop. he'd been perfectly lucid since before he ever set foot in this building, and it hadn't even occurred to him that their own roles in this might have ended up so different to his, that they were who he'd been trying to save these people from. ]
What the hell happened to you two?!
[ but then the sirens are wailing and anders is following suit and there's no time for any explanation before the fuzz are here pulling their guns on all three of them and the innocent bystanders alike. fidelio hurriedly shuffles eupha and taair behind him before they fire — not that he thinks these versions of them really matter, still, but it's an instinct he'll apparently never be able to let go of — for all the good that does.
he feels like he must have fucked up somewhere big along the way for things to end like this. but he always feels like that. ]
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holyspirits) wrote2025-03-09 04:46 pm
1985 - Close
There are five bodies cooling on its floors. Three occupants checked out early the regular way: Bill, Beverly, and Eddie reconvene, realizing it's too late for two of their childhood friends, and slip out back before anyone can catch them. They pile into Eddie's rented car and drive to the Barrens to finish the job. They're not just two short now, they're four short of seven. Three is a lucky number but it's bad odds for where they're going, and their spirits are low as they've ever been.
Anders comes down on the left staircase. Methodical, uncaring about the wounds sustained, which are many. He stays upright and resolute marching down into the lobby.
Fidelio, Euphasia, and Taair could almost skip steps, they race to the bottom so fast. They're on the right staircase, avoiding the bloody mess of the left like the plague. Taair has a car parked out front, he agrees to take them out that way and find help. They arrive in the lobby just before Anders strolls in, looking like fresh hell.
Last to arrive are Shadowheart and her Father. They take the right staircase as well, but at a gentler tilt. She'd arrived first at the Town House in order of operations, while Fidelio came last, so she had extra time to cry it out and clean up a bit. As much as one can, with the amount of blood on her. They walk in on the awkward stare down that started only seconds before.
And something about hitting that ground level floor shakes you all. Any fog lingering in your heads lift. The spiral mark on Anders's forehead wipes clear, and so do all the wretched effects that came with it.
You remember each other. You remember the people with you, the ones you left upstairs, the ones you warned away. You remember yourselves, senses returning the moment all three of you are reunited on one floor, locking eyes and feeling a steep pitch of dread.
Why were you here? What have you done?
There's barely a moment to consider it. There's a flash of lights in the windows. The whole front wall of the town house is broad panes of glass, all the better to see the police cars switching on their headlights, their flashing red and blues. Officers are perched in their cars and crouched around propped open doors for cover. There must be at least thirty pigs squared up around the joint, maybe thirty-five, armed and aiming every gun at you. All of them with a glassy look in their eyes.
The boys at the precinct just had a funny feeling, you know? Strange that so many suspicious characters booked into the Town House this weekend. And the ones that wandered in on foot? Gosh, even stranger. So strange, after a year full of dead and missing kids. After the the town Librarian got cut up like a Christmas ham while working late. First some broad had called from this number — Beverly had called. Hung up before they got her name, but the officer had been suspicious. Who calls a library after midnight, just as they were wiping up the blood from the place? — then they got a hot tip, anonymous collect. Couldn't place the caller if they tried, but he's been around town for sure. He's been around a long, long while.
He's cartwheeling in right now as a matter of fact, though none of the officers react to him. They don't see the clown roll straight up beside the chief, pop to his feet and honk his bulbous red nose, screaming with laughter.]
BOOK 'EM, DANNO! SICK 'EM BOYS! YOU BETTER LIGHT 'EM UP! THERE'S YOUR KILLERS RIGHT THERE, YOU BET YOUR ASS THAT'S THEM! GREASE 'EM! GAS 'EM! BLOW THEM AWAY!
[And the chief, who doesn't so much as turn to look the howling clown in the eye, gets a funny feeling that hey, maybe they should just fucking shoot the sons of bitches.
So they do.
The glass crashes out in one calamitous shatter, and the bullets spray every which way. Fidelio takes three to the chest and one to the stomach, another improbably skates through the top of his right foot. Not enough to lame him, but there's a chunk of bone flying. One clean through the head. A damn lucky shot, no telling who pulled that trigger but congrats on your marksmanship, sir.
Anders catches two in his left arm and three more in his leg. He'd been turned to the side a bit, and the blows spin him around to take another in the collar bone. He falls flat after that, and most others miss him.
Shadowheart threw her arm up, as if that might save anything. She gets two in it for the effort, another through her neck and two more in her middle. One in the hip.
After that, it's anyone's guess who is hit where and which blow finally did them in. The whole crew, adventurers and guest stars alike, are lit up like fireworks at New Year's Eve. One big old blowout to close another year of feeding on children. Just like the Fire at the Black Spot, the Execution of the Bradley Gang, or the Revenge of Claude Heroux.
Maybe you might make it into Mike's history book after all.]
no subject
she sees the others, anders no doubt also bloodsoaked and del with a gaggle of people he managed to evacuate, and...]
Andy? Del?
[some memory blooms, like seeing long lost friends, but along with that sense of reunion, the horror, the recollection of what happened to them.
and then the fog lifts. and she realizes that she's here with a man who she doesn't know at all, who may be nothing more than a character in this story, the story of a girl named jen hallow who never existed. maybe this man is someone she created, an amalgam of her own secret hopes and wishes. she had always dreamed of that night, of being abandoned in the forest, pursued by wolves, waiting for help to come. and she had always joked, either she was an orphan or she'd simply been abandoned, there's no good explanation for why she was there, no loving explanation for leaving a little girl alone in the woods with no one to protect her.
but there was still that secret hope, that secret wish, that once back before the time she can remember, maybe somebody had loved her. maybe that someone had looked for her, had missed her when she was gone. maybe the whole time she was the subject of some cruel experiment, a project to take a little girl and twist her into another shape for shar's hideous amusement, there was someone somewhere else who still wanted her.
he isn't real, but part of her accepts finally how much she wanted it to be.
anders and fidelio, andy and del, though, they're... they're both real. so is eupha, so is taair. so probably are all of these strangers. oh god - what's happened to them?]
Anders, you're -
[he looks so fucking bad. the horror of everything she went through hits her like a ton of bricks, and she imagines the same for him.
but there's very little time to process it before this story ends.]
no subject
it takes a moment for him to realize that he's back from the desert. that color (red, blue lights) and music (sirens) are returning, like blood rushing into your ears at incredible volumes. the only cure for Tranquility is death. Or a Spirit reaches out to touch your mind, to return you full force into yourself. it's enough to break a person. but he's already broken, already something no longer human, but human enough to not be a monster.
he drops the bloody knife - maybe just because his hand can no longer hold it, now that he can feel pain and fear and relief again. Enough twists and turns though the sewer to end up here of all places. Funny how that works out. ]
Hi, Jen. Hi Del.
[ no where to run this time. but maybe that's for the best. he'd accepted judgment once before, and this feels like another opportune time.
he's just going to start hysterically crying in the moments before the curtain drops, but maybe that's not a bad thing. at least he can. at least it's something. ]
no subject
so the sight of the two of them here, covered in blood and visibly disoriented, throws him for a loop. he'd been perfectly lucid since before he ever set foot in this building, and it hadn't even occurred to him that their own roles in this might have ended up so different to his, that they were who he'd been trying to save these people from. ]
What the hell happened to you two?!
[ but then the sirens are wailing and anders is following suit and there's no time for any explanation before the fuzz are here pulling their guns on all three of them and the innocent bystanders alike. fidelio hurriedly shuffles eupha and taair behind him before they fire — not that he thinks these versions of them really matter, still, but it's an instinct he'll apparently never be able to let go of — for all the good that does.
he feels like he must have fucked up somewhere big along the way for things to end like this. but he always feels like that. ]