True to her word a couple hours earlier, once home, she winds up with alcohol in hand. Sleep will be difficult to come by tonight, she doesn't want to be a depressed and tired zombie tomorrow morning, and honestly, finding out that there are two endangered lives you need to protect is a decent occasion if she's ever heard of one. The wine would not be appropriate, so that leaves the strawberry liqueur to start creating a water ring on her glass coffee table.
She'll have to work at it gradually, though, no liqueur-mediated sleeping allowed yet. First, work to do indeed. Some driving time, distance, and a calm and steady boyfriend have permitted some recovery from the unpleasant discovery, and now it's time to deal with this thing. Sighing and pulling her fingers through slightly-damp hair, she retrieves the two stolen tapes from her purse, staring at them as though they're about to start reeling secrets off on their own. The process of sitting on the couch might more accurately be described as voluntary falling. Must stop doing that; it'll wear the springs out.
Biting her lip is temporarily put on hold to ask, "How likely do you think it is that there's actually something on this?"
"Well, unless we got the wrong tape....I'd say it's pretty likely. I don't know if we're going to see anything on it right now, though." If they did, maybe it'd be another indication they should move again. Or maybe just an indication of how much they'd been affected. Henry is not about to suggest they go back to South Ashfield and start shoving tapes under doors.
He feels as exhausted as Eileen seems, but yes, they need to talk this out. "We can try them now, but...if they don't have anything, I think we should still hold onto them. Eileen..." He sits down on the couch, next to her. "Was there anything you noticed about the place they disappeared? It sounded like a pretty normal spot, but..." But Toluca seemed normal. So did South Ashfield Heights.
Lesson #1 in lying and/or not being entirely forthright: When someone asks you about it, assume they asked innocently. Answering 'Hey, have you seen my dog?' with 'NO my bumper's fine!', world's biggest tip-off. But, uh, Eileen's not real good at this stuff. She seems to balk, and sounds uncertain when she responds, "Why would you ask?" She fiddles a little with the curled-up edge of a fresh label on the #3 tape. To put it in now or not? Kind of rude, and distracting and weird, but if they've got 10 hours of video to get through sooner or later, maybe she ought to go get them started...
Oh, damn. He thought she might be a little defensive about that. He rubs the back of his neck and thinks of a good way to put it. "It's just...uh, now that we know what we're dealing with, here, I thought...maybe there was something that happened, or something you noticed that turned out weird. Or...uh, something." He sighs. "I don't know..." He probably shouldn't have brought it up. But on the off-chance that something odd did occur to her- well, he had to ask.
...Lord, he has a point. It was in all likelyhood just another one of her little episodes, but sparing her dignity isn't worth the off-chance that it was something else. She takes a gulp of her drink, wincing when she almost breathes in a bit of it, causing her voice to croak when she first speaks. "I was sick that day, you remember how out of it I was when I got home." Standing, she sticks the tape into the VCR, but doesn't turn the TV on, just facing the blank screen and tapping a finger on the plastic casing. "I didn't notice anything weird there. I looked. I went out in the woods, the way they said Lynn had pointed? Didn't see anything. I just... didn't feel good. Probably a migraine."
Henry's silent while he thinks about the implications of 'migraine'. He doesn't really need to ask for specifics.
Eventually, he just sighs at the television screen, and turns the tape on. Nothing, not even static. Just blank. He lets it play. "So....does that mean we should look again or stay away from it...? It was probably dangerous for you there..."
God, even after spending so much time around all of it, they still had no idea how to handle things. This was mostly because there was very little to handle, just terrible things to watch and experience. Henry frowns as he thinks of it.
Eileen makes a sour kind of face. "It'll be a lot less dangerous if you're the one driving the car this time." She knows her zoned-out reckless driving that night is not the kind of danger he was referring to, but she sees no point in getting into vague metaphysical threats. If it's a lead then they have to follow it, and if it's in Silent Hill then he's not going on his own. "But I think you're right. I was only out there for a couple minutes and daydreamed my way right through half of it, so maybe we ought to look again in daylight hours."
Sitting back down on the couch, she should probably be taking this opportunity to carefully watch the TV for the unlikely occurrence anything but blank screen, but finds herself looking just about anywhere else. "And maybe, see if we can find the DeAngelis's old house and see if there's anything there. If we hit the library in town, maybe they'll have listings from a couple years ago. Save ourselves from having to make multiple trips." She frowns at a bare foot she props up next to her glass. "The fewer times you go there, the better, I think."
"Yeah...for the both of us." Henry very rarely says anything pointedly, but perhaps this was a good time for that. They knew what that place did to him (well, to a certain extent). But they weren't sure what exactly it would do to Eileen. It wasn't anything good, that's for sure.
"We...we should probably get everything together, before we go..." He sighs, staring closely at the blank screen. "Candles and...uh, anything else that might help." Yes, he means the guns, and yes, he means the silver bullets they've got left. He'd like to think the ghosts were destroyed along with Walter, but clearly they were going to need all the help they could get.
She gets the weapons implication loud and clear. Privately, Eileen thinks that surely he must be overreacting, but it is definitely not to be blamed. Having been to Silent Hill several times since Walter's attack and having never returned with blood-gushing wounds, she doesn't imagine that'll be changing on this outing, but being prepared will probably make them both feel better anyways.
That she might be playing down any threat the place might present to her in hopes of preventing a ban against her return there never ever occurs to her.
She settles a hand on his back, feeling the need to balance out discussions involving firearms with some connection. "Maybe tomorrow morning we can have a cleaning party. I haven't dealt either of mine since the summer..." Never mind that at all times she carries one bitty handgun in her purse and keeps a more serious-business one in the dresser right by her bed; she likes not to think about it, so sometimes they go uncared for. "And I think... I ought to try to get a hold of Troy Abernathy. The one we know, I mean. See if he'd be up to meet, maybe he might know something that could help us." She frowns and goes in for more strawberry concoction. "Or at least find out if he saw our entries mentioning this, and if he did, why he didn't say anything about it..."
Henry frowns, too, at the mention of talking to the psychiatrist. In fact, he's frowning so much, he looks like he's going to protest, but he eventually nods. "He might know....but you'd think he would have told us about this...I guess we need to ask him anyway. And yeah, I think we'd better make sure everything is clean and ready before we go."
He runs a hand through his hair, trying to think of what else. There's always something else, something they miss. Something they're meant to miss. He stares into the blank screen of the TV and almost wishes it would show them something. "Damn...I don't even know how to get ahold of that guy..."
Eileen figures that Abernathy didn't know what was going on, but she's not quite naive enough to discount the possibility that he just decided to let them fumble to the answer on their own for whatever reason. "He's E-Mailed me a couple times in the past, I can try responding to that... whatever you call those numbers. IP. And if that doesn't go through, I'll put his name all over a journal entry or something, maybe that'll catch his attention. And then if that fails... we go looking." She tilts her head. "Right?"
Henry has possibly never frowned for quite this long. He doesn't like this idea, not at all. But it's the only thing they've got to go on. "Yeah...maybe he's at the same number. If we're lucky, he's reachable that way. And he...he liked talking to you, right? Maybe he'll help." He shrugs and shakes his head. "He's sort of stuck, too."
Henry is not entirely aware of Troy's attempt to help his patient in the town, but even so, he figures the doctor might want to help 'himself', at the very least. He can hold onto that, since he doesn't trust the psychiatrist in the least.
In the meantime, he continues to frown at the blank tv screen. "I don't think it's going to show anything...should we fast forward, do you think?"
She starts mirroring his expression as she reaches out to grab and hand him the remote control. "It'll be okay. I know you don't trust him after everything with Walter, but just remember that he went out of his way to help once too, yeah? He's still a person." A post-death person with supernatural power, vulnerability to control by an extraordinarily nefarious force, a tormented psyche and nothing really to lose, but she doesn't believe he'd try to stop or harm people treating him as the man rather than the monster. That, she is naive enough for. Short of Henry himself going on a murderous rampage through a downtown daycare, learning not to give killers unreasonable benefit of the doubt is not on her life's schedule.
A moment is spent scrutinizing the TV screen. Blank blank blank, not even a flicker. "Honey, do you know anything about VCR-type film? Is that totally different from film like in a camera?"
He fast-forwards as he listens, still not looking too happy, but with a softening frown. He might find Troy's status as a 'person' debatable, but he did occasionally help. They'll just have to see what happens.
And the frown melts when she calls him 'honey'. As awkward as he is with that sort of thing, he's happy to hear it. "Uh....it's not quite the same. Uses magnetic signals, but...it's sort of a similar concept. Why do you ask...?"
And lucky for him, 'honey' and 'sweetheart' are about as far as the terms of endearment are likely to go. She has seen what happens to relationships when weirdness like 'pumpkin noodle' start getting whipped out on the guy; she had no desire to say such a thing before, and she definitely has no desire to say it after witnessing that carnage.
"Is it possible for something to be on the tape but not on the screen? Well, I guess I should ask first if it's possible to look at the film frames without screwing the tape up?" She rests her elbow on her knee and props her chin in her hand, making an odd face at the TV. "I'm sure the police have tried that too if they could, but... I don't know, it's just a thing I thought."
"Oh....oh, yeah." He looks down at the VCR and debates popping out the tape now. Hmmm, no. He'll let it fast-forward a little longer. "Actually, I don't know if they would look at the tape itself....I mean, there's not much reason to see what the tape looks like, right? It doesn't show up on the tv. That's not a bad idea."
Nope, still nothing. He stops the tape and ejects it. "And we can look at it without anything bad happening....we just have to make sure we don't break it, and we're set." He hits the button on the side of the tape, and flips the cartridge open. "Hmmm...it looks pretty smooth. I don't see anything weird." Yet, anyway remains unvoiced. "I guess it's just not exposable film, so...nothing hits it, other than the magnetic stuff...."
She'll have to work at it gradually, though, no liqueur-mediated sleeping allowed yet. First, work to do indeed. Some driving time, distance, and a calm and steady boyfriend have permitted some recovery from the unpleasant discovery, and now it's time to deal with this thing. Sighing and pulling her fingers through slightly-damp hair, she retrieves the two stolen tapes from her purse, staring at them as though they're about to start reeling secrets off on their own. The process of sitting on the couch might more accurately be described as voluntary falling. Must stop doing that; it'll wear the springs out.
Biting her lip is temporarily put on hold to ask, "How likely do you think it is that there's actually something on this?"
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He feels as exhausted as Eileen seems, but yes, they need to talk this out. "We can try them now, but...if they don't have anything, I think we should still hold onto them. Eileen..." He sits down on the couch, next to her. "Was there anything you noticed about the place they disappeared? It sounded like a pretty normal spot, but..." But Toluca seemed normal. So did South Ashfield Heights.
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Eventually, he just sighs at the television screen, and turns the tape on. Nothing, not even static. Just blank. He lets it play. "So....does that mean we should look again or stay away from it...? It was probably dangerous for you there..."
God, even after spending so much time around all of it, they still had no idea how to handle things. This was mostly because there was very little to handle, just terrible things to watch and experience. Henry frowns as he thinks of it.
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Sitting back down on the couch, she should probably be taking this opportunity to carefully watch the TV for the unlikely occurrence anything but blank screen, but finds herself looking just about anywhere else. "And maybe, see if we can find the DeAngelis's old house and see if there's anything there. If we hit the library in town, maybe they'll have listings from a couple years ago. Save ourselves from having to make multiple trips." She frowns at a bare foot she props up next to her glass. "The fewer times you go there, the better, I think."
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"We...we should probably get everything together, before we go..." He sighs, staring closely at the blank screen. "Candles and...uh, anything else that might help." Yes, he means the guns, and yes, he means the silver bullets they've got left. He'd like to think the ghosts were destroyed along with Walter, but clearly they were going to need all the help they could get.
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That she might be playing down any threat the place might present to her in hopes of preventing a ban against her return there never ever occurs to her.
She settles a hand on his back, feeling the need to balance out discussions involving firearms with some connection. "Maybe tomorrow morning we can have a cleaning party. I haven't dealt either of mine since the summer..." Never mind that at all times she carries one bitty handgun in her purse and keeps a more serious-business one in the dresser right by her bed; she likes not to think about it, so sometimes they go uncared for. "And I think... I ought to try to get a hold of Troy Abernathy. The one we know, I mean. See if he'd be up to meet, maybe he might know something that could help us." She frowns and goes in for more strawberry concoction. "Or at least find out if he saw our entries mentioning this, and if he did, why he didn't say anything about it..."
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He runs a hand through his hair, trying to think of what else. There's always something else, something they miss. Something they're meant to miss. He stares into the blank screen of the TV and almost wishes it would show them something. "Damn...I don't even know how to get ahold of that guy..."
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Henry is not entirely aware of Troy's attempt to help his patient in the town, but even so, he figures the doctor might want to help 'himself', at the very least. He can hold onto that, since he doesn't trust the psychiatrist in the least.
In the meantime, he continues to frown at the blank tv screen. "I don't think it's going to show anything...should we fast forward, do you think?"
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A moment is spent scrutinizing the TV screen. Blank blank blank, not even a flicker. "Honey, do you know anything about VCR-type film? Is that totally different from film like in a camera?"
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And the frown melts when she calls him 'honey'. As awkward as he is with that sort of thing, he's happy to hear it. "Uh....it's not quite the same. Uses magnetic signals, but...it's sort of a similar concept. Why do you ask...?"
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"Is it possible for something to be on the tape but not on the screen? Well, I guess I should ask first if it's possible to look at the film frames without screwing the tape up?" She rests her elbow on her knee and props her chin in her hand, making an odd face at the TV. "I'm sure the police have tried that too if they could, but... I don't know, it's just a thing I thought."
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Nope, still nothing. He stops the tape and ejects it. "And we can look at it without anything bad happening....we just have to make sure we don't break it, and we're set." He hits the button on the side of the tape, and flips the cartridge open. "Hmmm...it looks pretty smooth. I don't see anything weird." Yet, anyway remains unvoiced. "I guess it's just not exposable film, so...nothing hits it, other than the magnetic stuff...."
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