ah, let us mourn, for never morrow shall dawn upon him...
[This post is open for reactions, (short) threads, and thread-hopping.]
As the clock chimes its twelfth hour and midnight descends upon Chicago, so, too, does something else.
The man who suddenly finds himself in the Kashtta's barricaded hallway is dreadfully pale, painfully gaunt, and utterly bewildered. His suit, once fashionable and expensive and ( Read more... )
As the clock chimes its twelfth hour and midnight descends upon Chicago, so, too, does something else.
The man who suddenly finds himself in the Kashtta's barricaded hallway is dreadfully pale, painfully gaunt, and utterly bewildered. His suit, once fashionable and expensive and ( Read more... )
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The cry wakes her up. She's wandering near to the Silent Hall. And she stands for a moment, blinking in the darkness owlishly. Someone's whimpering and she's suddenly wide awake - someone is upset and she's compelled to find out what's going on.
Pulling her wand that's been safely tucked behind her hear, she murmurs a soft "Lumos!" and holds it up, the soft blue light filling the corridor.
The crying stops.
"Hello?"
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He shifts, just barely, when the light washes over him.
But that's all.
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"Hello," she says again, very gently, "Are you hurt?"
She tilts her head to one side, he doesn't seem to be moving much.
"It's quite alright, you're safe here. I'm here to help," she assures.
Unfortunately, Luna hasn't learned about the Silent Hall yet.
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"Turn off the light."
His voice, barely above a whisper, cracks.
"Go back to bed."
Luna takes instruction well, right?
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It's been a gradual process, and she still has a couple of things to pack up, so that's what she's doing, despite the hour. She's walking down a narrow hallway to get back to her room when she hears it.
The sound.
Just as quickly as it has come, it's gone, but Elena's heart is thumping wildly in her chest.
The box falls from her hands, contents spilling over to the floor, and Elena quickly looks around to see if she is not alone. It didn't feel like she was.
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He moves toward her room seeing her ahead of him in the hallway.
"Elena?" He glances behind him as if he's expecting something to be there, but there's nothing there. The lights have stopped flickering, and there's no more sound. "Did you hear that?"
Then he notices the box on the floor and moves forward. She must have heard it too. At least he knows he's not hearing things, but it was so strange and random. "You okay?"
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It's reflex, mostly, as she's jumpy after the lights momentarily flickered off and that noise she can't quite discern echoed through the hallway. "I did, even if I'm not sure what 'that' is," she says with a small sigh. Knowing the Rifts, it could be absolutely anything.
She breathes a sigh of relief at the sight of him and gives him a one-armed hug.
"I'm fine," she assures him, and she draws back to give him a quick scan. "A little on edge after what just happened, but I'm fine. What was that?"
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"I don't think I know either. I was hoping you could tell me," he says, looking up and down the hallway. "I thought it might just be... a sound the Tower makes."
It has ghosts so why not sounds? Jeremy hugs her back with one arm.
He nods at the assurance, and he looks back down the hallway either way before kneeling down to start gathering up her things. "It sounded--" Jeremy shakes his head. "I don't know. It was kind of a freaky sound. I wonder if it means anything or-" His bet is on the fact that it means something but what that is is going to be nearly impossible to figure out.
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He tried to leave without her, but she started throwing herself at her cage incessantly. It isn't fair to try to protect her from any potential threat as much as he needs to. Harry doesn't want to lose her, a second time, and he is already aware of her sacrificial tendencies.
Harry steps through the hallway with his wand out, light at the end of it. It is starting to feel like they all have gone mad. There is nothing-- no sign of what made that noise.
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"Harry! Are you alright?" she asks, as is the requisite form of greeting whenever something has happened. She cannot help herself.
Hermione worries.
She envelops him in a quick hug and draws back, the worry only slightly etched onto her features. "I haven't found much of anything, have you?"
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"Yeah, I'm fine," he assures her with a small smile because he knows why she asks. "It startled me, but... that's all. Hedwig seems more shaken than I am." Which is what worries him. "What about you?"
She worries, and she always has but especially as of late, especially in their later years at Hogwarts.
Harry hugs her back tight and then shakes his head, adjusting his glasses and lifting his wand in the direction down the hallway. "I haven't at all. It didn't seem to be coming from anywhere. It was everywhere or I'd go in the direction of it instead of wandering aimlessly."
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Crookshanks didn't seem to be fairing much better, either.
"That does seem to be the problem," Hermione says in agreement, and she has her own wand at the ready, illuminating the expansive corridor before them. "The noise itself was resounding if not fleeting, but it didn't come from any one particular direction."
Everywhere at once, which hardly makes any sense. One can already see the wheels in her head turning as she starts to walk once more with Harry by her side.
"We will simply have to work our way up. I promised Ms. Jones I would place protective wards around the Tower for the time being, to give her and the rest some peace of mind."
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But then something stops him, that scream and his hands have gone white with how hold they're holding onto the railing and his breath shakes just a little when he breaths again. It shocked him more than anything and, after a moment, he's off at a dead run, looking for whatever the hell i8t is that could have made such a sound ( ... )
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This kind of thing is right up her alley, and she wasn't asleep when she heard the sound. In fact, she was returning from one of her cases, which would be awfully similar if she knew anymore about what happened tonight.
It involved a haunting, so she has some of the proper equipment for it.
She's got her flashlight, and she's inspecting the hallway Neal ends up in, and EVP recordings to see if she can capture anything. Whatever that was, it was creepy and supernatural, and she's going to find out what it is.
Jo turns to him, flashlight in hand. "I'm guessin' you heard that, too?"
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He can hear someone moving in the hall before he turns it and he's almost grateful. Either it might be someone who has answers or it's someone who needs help.
Or it's someone who has no idea what's going on but he's trying to stay positive.
He nods, looking at her curiously. He recognizes the equipment only because of Mozzie. "Yeah, I did. I can't tell you where it came for, I think it was...everywhere." He smiles weakly. There would be concern with how he's saying it if she hadn't heard it too and well, they are in the middle of a haunted house.
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"Everyone heard it as if it was right next to 'em, and we sure as hell weren't all in the same place at once."
With the Rifts, one can't dispel anything as impossible.
"I'm Jo," she adds, giving him a thin and worn but genuine smile. "The place sure knows how to keep us on our toes, huh?"
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As he begins to close his eyes, he notes the lights in his room begin to flicker.
“What the..” he sits up and reaches to tap at his bedside light. After a few moments, the flickering ceases.
And then there is a wail in the night.
He doesn’t know who it is, but he gets quickly up and rushes to the door. Pulling it open, he hovers in the doorway, looking up and down the corridor. The Tower seems to have fallen silent again. Did he just imagine that? Or was it just another resident having a bad dream?
“Jesus Christ…” he utters, rubbing at his eyes once more. “I need to sleep more,”
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They did flicker. It wasn't her imagination at all.
She pauses when she notices Capa outside in the hallway.
Martha lowers the flashlight, turning the light off since it isn't necessary at all.
Martha searches the hallways, knocking on doors to make certain that everyone is okay. There's no telling what to think in situations like this. She certainly has no idea what has happened. No one on the journals seems to know either.
"You alright?"
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So he wasn't just imagining it then.
If Martha's out, checking things - something is definitely going on. He would have just guessed something's going on with the electrics. But then that doesn't describe the wailing. Unless he just imagined it, sleep deprivation does that to people, he guesses.
But that's probably not the case.
"I'm fine," he says with a nod, "... I didn't just imagine all that, right?"
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Not that she knows what to qualify that as beyond not normal.
In Chicago, the not-normal IS normal, but in this case, there's definitely something more disconcerting about it all. Likely the fact that she hasn't found anything amiss, which would be normal in this city.
There's nothing.
"Glad to hear it," Martha says, smiling a bit and then shaking her head. "I'm afraid not. Everyone heard it, and everyone heard it as though it were close to them, which... is frankly impossible."
However, it sounding as though it were close to everyone makes it difficult to track down the source. "What did you hear exactly?" To be certain he didn't hear anything new or different than anyone else.
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