Opal

Echoes of the Lost

He didn't tell his packmates what he's planning on doing tonight because Tamsin is at the Fianna Sept in Wisconsin helping her tribesmate - their dead packbrother's sister - and her mate with their newborn baby. Or something. Tamsin told them where she was going but Hector only half-listened because it involves numerous somethings he doesn't want to think about.

And he didn't tell Jack because Jack is an overanxious mother-type and he would have called every kinsman he has and Hector just wants to go and not have an audience or other people to worry about. He knows where he's going and he knows what he's dealing with and if he doesn't he at least thinks he does. If he knows anything about this country it's that pretending to be confident is oftentimes better than actually knowing what the hell you're doing.

So: Hector goes to the Church of the Bane-Oozing Anchor-Thing without having told his pack or his kinswoman or the spirit-talkers or anyone where he was going or what he intended to do. He may have intimated to his sister and brother that he'd like to at some point in the future but.

He's here. All he has is a mental map based on what Tamsin says happened. He slinks up to the House of God and scowls at it. This is such a bad idea but he tries the door anyway.

Twilight

It is a Friday night and the thrift store is closed and the soup kitchen is closed and the storefronts are mostly-dark except for the two black-and-red storefronts belonging to the church proper. HOUSE OF GOD, reads one. Corners nearby, two and three blocks away, play host to dealers and prostitutes, but the corners of this block have been cleaned up. "Cleaned up." There's no evidence of sex workers or eight-year-old drug runners in the immediate vicinity. Catty corner to the church: a construction site that promises to be - someday, someday soon - home to the The Healing Place, according to signs prominent on the construction fences framing the building in.

One of those plastic "put out your cigarette here" bins on the sidewalk in front of the entrance. Not many people miss.

God - or at least Christina Black - is particular on this point.

--

The front door is open. Swings in his hand when he grabs for it, and opens right into a lobbyish sort of space. No more than a hallway created with sheets of plywood paneling, which have been painted a lurid crimson like the storefront. Religious art on the walls, crucifixes, lurid depictions of the torn-out heart of god, or the crucifiction of Jesus, or the martyrdom of some poor fucking bastard who was disembowled and roasted on a spit over an open fire are wrapped around with blinking strands of Christmas lights which give the space a ghostly glow. Double doors into the worship space are propped open and contemporary Christian music of the most macabre sort is playing through the tinny stereo system. The murmur of voices and the movement of a bulky body just inside the second set of double-doors.

Turning to see who's coming in.

He has piggish eyes and prison tattoos and is dressed in an ill-fitting suit that does not fit him across the shoulders or the gut.

"Who the fuck are you?"

Echoes of the Lost

He must have thought the place was going to be abandoned. Surely if the entire operation was just a front for Bane-trafficking they wouldn't actually have people in the buildings that were supposed to serve as fronts. It's good that he tried the door because now he can turn around and tell his packmates Nope they've actually got people in there all that stuff you found on the Internet wasn't a joke.

So he walks into a half-assed winter wonderland at the tail-end of August and draws the attention of a large suit-wearing person and Hector stops dead in his tracks and lets his eyes go wide.

"ACKWRONGBUILDINGSORRY" he says and then turns around and hustles back outside. Starts running as soon as he's back through the vestibule like the man-thing is possibly going to be able to catch up to him.

Twilight

There's the droning of voices in the background. Just a few, and the lurid christmas light wrapped around the religious and hellish iconography give the antechamber a grotesque, sideshow glow.

The muscle-bound man in the suit grunts and snorts out a quiet breath that rattles in the back of his throat, takes two or three threatening steps toward Hector as Hector turns and hightails it out of there. The front doors swing shut behind him and strangely the polluted city air with that deep layer of smog and ozone, cinders and car exhaust, feels bright and fresh after whatever was inside the sanctuary, though Hector hardly noticed the scent in the sanctuary when he first walked in. Some brine of human sweat, fear, desperation, and transport, maybe.

-

But: sidewalk. The barely opened door swings shut behind him and there are no signs of pursuit. Down the street, he can see a man khakis and a (second-hand) golf shirt pushing a pushbroom over the sidewalk, sweeping up the night's detritus, whistling Oh When the Saints beneath his breath. Hardly seems to have noticed Hector.

Yet.

Echoes of the Lost

Were not for the fact that he has committed himself to tearing ass out of there fast-as he would have slowed outside for the fridge horror effect of leaving that terrible place and stepping out into a place he had previously thought to be terrible as well and finding it easier to breathe out there.

So the skinny young man races from the doorway to the alleyway around the corner and once there he realizes okay. Doesn't need to book it quite so fast.

He hasn't lost his breath so when he gets there he stands still to listen for footsteps. All he hears is whistling. The Uktena scowls and looks around for a piece of broken glass or tin foil or something to peer across the other side. Barring that there's a reason he wears so much freaking jewelry. One of his bracelets has a piece of mirror woven into it.

Look before you leap, son.

[gnosis: peering into the umbra, trying to see if ghost-opal is lurking around. i forgot the diff for that roll.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Echoes of the Lost

[perc + alert]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Twilight

The umbra is dark and the entire block of church-related buildings have a pregnant solidity that is darker and more immediate than any of the similar blocks of old brick storefronts surrounding it. What is here is there as well: darker perhaps, opaque and cloaked in shadows though a waning gibbous moon gives the places an eerie, opalescent glow. The buildings are too solid, too immediate, too present to see inside even in spiritual reflection. Even the dark suggestion of windows fitted into the shadowbrick walls have a blackened, oily sheen to the glass. Staring down at the street like dead and blackened eyes.

But yes. There; the second floor on top of what must be one of the two storefronts devoted to worship space, a flicker of white figure, framed in dark glass. The only relief from the oily facade of the whole block of buildings.

Echoes of the Lost

[cross]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 4, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Echoes of the Lost

In this part of town the Banes hunt free clinics and street corners and houses where partners hit each other. They're the reason he stopped to check the other side before he pushed across the Gauntlet but they're occupied and once he spots the banshee-woman Tamsin described for him Hector steps sideways.

Here he finds getting around easier but that does not mean the way is unobstructed. If he can he goes to the second floor of the storefront to investigate the spirit on the other side of the obscured glass.

Echoes of the Lost

[dex + athletics WOO CLIMBING STUFF]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Echoes of the Lost

stam

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 10) ( success x 1 )

Twilight

The shadowstuff of the buildings' reflection feels - viscous somehow rather than solid. Some phantom sensation of sinking in as he gains the base of the building and looks up at the second story window where the female figure appeared and now - fades by. He passes a pair of dark spirits, who seem largely intent on the other side of the gauntlet, feeding on some stranger's misery, some broken person's pain, some slow promise of building rage, and stands in the dark shadow of the dark buildings, and starts to climb.

It is easier than he might have imagined. That tackiness to the surface gives him more purchase that he might have otherwise assumed, and he games the second story window none the worse for wear for his traverse. But: back-of-the-throat, some acid burn, some tingling of his skin suggests that on some level, even the building itself feels slightly... off.

There is: the shimmering 'barrier' across the window much as Tamsin described across the interior door. Perhaps it is merely a trick of the moonlight; the waning gibbous moon shining down over the dark reflection of the city.

The woman's figure has faded from view, drifted back inside the second-story room where she lurks, but as he gains the windowsill she comes back into focus. Glowing white, with eyes like onyx, and a mute, sewn-shut mouth. Watching him stonily.

Echoes of the Lost

At the apex of the pipe or the ladder - just outside the window - he works his hand to make sure the tack on the surface hasn't started to eat through his flesh and then he peers through the 'glass' at the woman inside. Suffused with light that does not touch her eyes, stitches binding her lips together.

Like there was another spirit in the area matching the description Tamsin gave him that he needed to worry about.

The moondancer slinks across the barrier and comes to stand before her. Her black gaze rests on him and he looks back and he could not intimidate a kindergartener. He does not expect to intimidate a spirit.

All he has going for him is that he understands and speaks their language. That's spirits, though. Dead people are a different story.

"My name's Hector," he says. "Are you Opal?"

Twilight

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Echoes of the Lost

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Twilight

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )

Echoes of the Lost

shit

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Twilight

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

Echoes of the Lost

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Twilight

It is not precisely as easy as slipping through the window. Though he does slip through the window, which gives with a membranous quality that feels damp and clotted somehow against his skin as he climbs through. First an arm then a leg and each limb ten degrees colder on the other side than it was on this one. This push of fear so forceful and immediate and intense that it feels like the fucking rush a junkie gets when she shoots up. It spikes through his veins, cold and cold and colder, wraps around his spine and pulses up the articulations of his vertebrae in opening waves that have him shivering and frozen unmoving, but not running, not now, not yet.

Again and then again he withstands that rush of cold water in his veins, and then at last something changes; he breaks his teeth on the sensation, tears it in half and finds himself on the other side.

--

It is an ordinary room. He has one of his headaches and a damp cloth over his eyes and the lights are off and he's praying a prayer he has known since he was girl. Learned it from his grandmother he remembers the fringed apron she wore and the strength of her hands and the strength of her conviction. His grandmother never spent so much as a half-hour in bed during daylight hours and had seven children and raised them hand-to-mouth in a dugout in the dustbowl with damp towels stuffed in every crack of the sod dugout to keep out the dust but here he is, again, down with one of his headaches.

They are singing downstairs and it is his favorite him. The children's choir and he has no children of his own but their voices still even when every noise, every shouted profanity from the street is like a spike in his skull - even then their voices are like sunshine, the background hum of them reminds him to pray. For guidance, for the Commencement of the Signs, for the Fulfillment of Prophecy.

--

How much later it is he doesn't know but the singing has stopped and the light has shifted even though he has the blinds drawn closed. Sometimes the days run together into the nights and the nights are lurid with dreams of the end or what comes after. The Tribulation. The Trial by Fire.

--

She is here again with him and they are all downstairs and she will not go down. Another headache, another cool cloth. The same one? But he has seen her and seen inside her and whatever she offers his husband it is not worth the price he will pay. He cannot see past her pious words and her scrubbed-clean smile and her mesmeric eyes. Looks nowhere else when she's in the room and leans into all her praise and all her false words of praise but in her eyes he sees The Devil in all his glory and pain. Tried to warn him but the words are like blood and bile in his throat when she is in the room and then she leaves and the headches come and --

--

She does not knock. Unlatches the door and lets herself into the room. Which is closer and darker now and there is a smell that he isn't letting himself smell. It is a body smell it is a corpus smell it is a smell of this world not the next.

She does not knock and unlatches the door and closes it after herself and he sits up in bed and pulls the cloth from his eyes -

- the conversation is old and receded and long past and the words don't matter. The pain in his head is sharper than ever and even his arms feel weak but she comes and sits at the edge of the bed and picks up a pillow and smiles. Smiles and he can see that her tongue is forked and every promise is bitter and ruin is in her eyes.

"It never had to be like this, Mrs. Black. If only you would give yourself to Him."

Hector tells her that her He is the Devil not god and she smiles and he can see the oleaginous stain of the demon in her eyes. The slick, oozing immediacy of it behind the blond-and-blue. Trying to insinuate itself into his brain like an earworm, but - but - but -

Mad, the strength that dying gives you. It comes from the Lord yes to resist that which is below. There is no breath and no strength in his body he cannot breathe cannot breathe cannot breathe but he knows that he is praying a prayer against demons and thrashing against -

- oh he breaks free. Tears in a deep, gasping, grasping breath and staggers out of the bed toward the door and she turns in a sweeping arc faster and younger and demon-bled and demon-fed and demon-born, perhaps and picks up the goddamned praying hands statue from the nightstand and bashes Hector's skull in.

What's surprising is how little pain he feels after the first starburst of light. What's surprising is the blood on his hands, wet he thinks it is tears or rain or milk, why milk? - as he staggers toward the door, collapses, and falls.

--

It took him hours to die. Mostly unconscious hours, like laying on the quilt-covered iron bedstead with a cloth across his eyes. A cloth he couldn't pull off, no matter how many times he tried.

That's how the world ends.

And this is how it continues, after.

A room you cannot leave. Anchored by your corpse which is: sealed behind the wall.

Why they sewed your mouth shut, you will never know.

--

He is standing then, the center of the room. The ghost of the room-that-was still visible. The iron bedsted, the rickety wooden nightstands. The religious symbols on the walls, the old rag rug on the old worn hardwoods. The white woman with the sewn-shut mouth and the onyx eyes.

If he still has the presence of mind to ask if she is Opal: she just stares.

Hector

[perc + PU]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 5) ( fail )

Hector

[int + occult]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 4 )

Twilight

After the vision resolves and recedes Hector is left standing in the glowing white room with bloodied handprints on the - suggestion of a membranous door. He wonders how to free the woman, considers whether on some level her death may be tied to whatever it is that lies below. In considering how to free her from this haunt, though, he stumbles across the simplest answer: unearth her bones from where they have been stuffed into the wall.

See that she is laid to rest.

Perhaps it would not be enough. Perhaps some other unfinished Thing keeps her here. But -

Hector

[NOTICE THINGS HECTOR FUCK]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Twilight

When he swings out of the upstairs window to leave, he notices that a few banes have left the church and are milling around on the sidewalk for a minute or three. They are not as affixed to the tellurian as the ones he managed to avoid when he came scouting, but do look like they have an ear cocked to the otherside. Though he does not notice or cannot see what they follow, they leave in a sort-of-herd following something after 5 or 10 minutes.