CHAPTER ONE: Walter and Emily's Journey: Entrapment

[Kadael]

"When I was a little girl, I thought children who were bullied deserved it. I know it's stupid, but I thought that they must have done something bad, and the others were punishing them..." Emily pauses. There's no way to make that sound anything but cruel.

"I couldn't imagine somebody hurting someone else for no reason."

[Seon]

"There was no reason to hurt her," Walter sulked. "Everybody was afraid of her. I don't know why."

He sighed. "There was an incident. A boy who picked on her particularly harshly just fell down and stopped breathing one day."

[Laraqua]

There's a soft, muffled sound, coming from the walls, like someone were whimpering so very far away. Someone beats on the walls, the sounds aren't frightening, more pathetic handslaps, as though someone were desperate to get their attention. Plaster flakes off the wall, nonetheless, like the walls were made of plywood, and some of the wall's wooden planks even comes loose, bulging out through the wallpaper. There's a sense of tense anticipation in the air that sets their hair on edge. If they remain, they could doubtless survive for a few days and wait for help but they'd be safe. In here, at least, they'd be safe. Or they could try to do something but they know, in the pits of their bellies, that to act, or try to act, to try to leave early, would be a gamble with their very lives.

[Seon]

Walter looked at the broken wall.

"I'm going," he said calmly. "You can help if you want."

He looked around the room to see if there was anything that he could use to pry the wooden planks open further.

[Kadael]

"Oh, my God." Emily straightens up, but doesn't leave the bed. Could that be Travis? But how in the world could he do that to the wall? "I... are you sure that's a good idea?"

[Laraqua]

Show,The room is as I've already described. There's nothing else particularly wrench-y. :P You could try to wrench it open with your hands, or break some furniture to do it with.

[Seon]

"Not really no. I don't think Travis has the guts to pull this kind of thing off," Jack said. He shrugged. "Of course I'm not sure that it's going to be safe. It's a fucking hole in the wall that something made on the other side of the room."

He took a nearby chair and bashed it against the broken planks on the wall, hoping to both weaken the planks and tear the chair into pieces that he could use as a prybar.

"Strange things did happen around Alessa, you know," Walter muttered. "But only to those who wronged her. Nightmares of monsters. Horrible worlds that not even HP Lovecraft could have dreamed of. It never happened to me... but... I think she's punishing me. For leaving her behind such a long time ago. She keeps a lot of grudges."

[Laraqua]

The chair batters against the wall and soon falls apart, leaving him with a hefty chair leg that runs all the way up to where the back of the chair would've been. It's easy enough to shove that between the edges of the wood and lever the planks out, one after another. He can hear a girlish gasp and a muttered word, incomprehensible, but in a pleading tone, and as he gives a final wrench a chunk of the wall falls back to reveal a hole into a hotel room identical but for the cracked and pulsing plaster-work that creeps across the rear wall and the thick dust that covers everything, leaving finger, hand and footprints of a child-like size distinguished on the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Then, for a moment, as he takes all of this in, and the smell - aged and moulding - he glimpses a translucent figure of a young blonde girl waving her arms at him, gesturing for him to step back, there and then gone again. She looks familiar....

[Seon]

"Wait," Walter said, peering into the next room over. "Please, come back! Claudia? Alessa? Jane? Is that you?"

"What happened to you? What is this place?"

[Kadael]

"Walter?" Emily scrambles off the bed, gaping at the hole in the wall. "Walter, what's going on?"

She looks into the room. Maybe she'll be able to see what he's seeing? If it's real, that is...

[Laraqua]

There's no one in that cracked, and dusty, room, though the cracks which crawl along the walls, moving and writhing before their very eyes, certainly capture both of their attention.

Show,Sanity Checks. 1/1d4 sanity loss.

[Seon]

"Shit...shit....shit..." Walter moaned. "Cracks... cracks don't move... don't look at it..."

Walter shook his head. "Who was in this room? There was a small blond girl... she gestured me to step back but... I can't... She's here. I'm sure."

He walked through the hole.

[Laraqua]

The air is thick and sluggish in the other room and there's a smell like burnt hair and old smoke that suffuses this room. The floorboards blacken around his feet as he walks, his steps turning dust to soot. He can hear a sound in the air, distant but vaguely there, of some steel machinery clanking and some voices chanting dimly in the background. The doors in this room are charred and warped within their frames. It won't be easy to open them, though he could still try the handle.

[Kadael]

The cracks in the walls are like threads of a spider's web, or burn scars creeping up your skin... Emily thinks of Alessa as they twist themselves across the room. It smells so much like smoke.

"No, come back, Walter, come back." One of her hands reaches out to him, but he's already moved forward - the other is pressed to her breast, as though she could shield her heart from the fire on the walls. "Walter, Alessa's dead, you know she's dead, she can't..."

But Roseworthy said...

[Seon]

"SHE'S NOT DEAD!" Walter screamed, pushing Emily away. "They tried to burn her, she didn't die! She's here!"

He reached out for the door handles but stopped, remembering something. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around the doorhandle before even beginning to try to turn it.

[Laraqua]

Walter can feel the heat emanating off the metal and it flashes him back for a moment to that door, to his father rushing up behind him, grabbing him, pulling him away and back into the bushes moments before someone (who was it? a truck driver?) broke in to rescue her. Alessa had called out. She'd called for salvation and that man had responded. Who was it again? Travis?

The knob turns beneath his hand and he pulls open the door into a hallway that looks much like they'd left it but for the charring, dust, and twisting scars that crawl across the walls. There's a vague ambient light out there but no sign of its cause. There's scratches, long lines of scratches, across the walls, and for a moment he hears footsteps rush past him toward the end of the hall.

[Seon]

"Get back here!" Walter demanded, chasing after the footsteps around the corner. He stopped momentarily to glance back at Emily.

"What are you doing? Help me!"

[Kadael]

Emily breaks into a run, blindly following Walter through the dust. They said so many things about Alessa... they were supposed to only be stories...

Stay away, Isabel. Don't look her in the eye.

[Laraqua]

As Emily runs, she notices that the floorboards don't blacken under her feet as they do under Walter's. As he stands there, the charring spreads out at inches per second and the wood begins to glow with flaring embers, just a few here and there. Perhaps if he stands there for too long, the wood might even give way beneath his feet. The shadows seem to clot around him and in the eerie, dim light, he almost seems positively demonic, his gaze almost seeming to gleam red. He was always Alessa's friend.... He'd shared so much with her. Claudia had been Alessa's friend, or so the rumors went, her with the rigid back and the strange way of talking, and everyone said that Alessa had drained the colour out of her ... but Claudia spent most of her time alone. There'd been whispers about Walter, but not many, because his father was so popular around town.

The corridor that branches off of this one seems much the same though one of the rooms seems to be lit from within by a fiery light though there is no sign of smoke dribbling out from under the door or any other indication of fire. A flashlight would help, it would illuminate the corners, chase away those shadows.

[Seon]

"Alessa?" Walter gasped. He ran into the room illuminated by the firery red light. "Are you there?"