IC - Day 4 - Another Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood

[Mr. Handy]

"It was a lot of bats," says Laurent after he recovers and gets back on his feet. "Pierre, are you okay?"

[Mephistophilis]

Pierre is lying on his back in the sand. Half in and half out the cave entrance. He has his arms crossed across his face and he's breathing rapidly but not making any other sounds. He doesn't respond to Laurent;'s questions.

Looking up into the sky, Laurent thinks he can see something wheeling away from the bay. A flock of birds perhaps, or even the bats.

[Mr. Handy]

Laurent tries to help Pierre.

[Mephistophilis]

Pierre doesn't initially respond to Laurent and he has to shake him by the shoulder for a few seconds before he opens his eyes. He levers himself up onto his elbow and grimaces at Laurent. 'Damn baton. This isn't a good idea Laurent. No good can come of it. Let's go home.'

[Mr. Handy]

"But Auxian needs our help," insists Laurent.

[Mephistophilis]

Pierre screws up his nose in what seems like a mixture of disgust and disapproval. 'Auxian can look after himself, damn houngan.'

He carefully pushes himself up into a crouch and then stands up stiffly. 'You don't know he's here. You don't know what's here,' and he points at the black, gaping mouth at the rear of the cave. Silent. Brooding. Laurent can feel it too. Not quite a presence, but something. Something waiting for him.

No more fluttering but that smell, it's still there, permeating the air, penetrating his nose, in his mouth. On his tongue. Slipping down his throat with the saliva. Flowing through him. Down, down inside him.

[Mr. Handy]

"Well, there's only one way to find out," says Laurent. He isn't particularly eager to go deeper, but he knows it is something he must do.

[Mephistophilis]

Shaking his head, Pierre nevertheless continues to follow Laurent at a little distance. Back inside the cave, Laurent slowly approaches the yawning crack that has enlarged out of the wall of rock. Its silence is oppressive. A black, brooding gash in the hillside which seems to slither away from the few shafts of sunlight that penetrate the cave. Whatever breeze there was now gone. Nothing but a sticky, clinging stillness. Heady with the overpowering stench of ammonic-guano.

The nearer he gets the more Laurent thinks he can feel a presence. Prickles on the back of his neck. A pressing tension between the eyes. A fullness in his ears, a sound...no...more like an absence of sound, a silent buzzing that he just can't focus on enough to say whether there is anything there at all.

'Laurent...'

Pierre leaves the name hanging in the air.

And Laurent continues to close the distance to the fissure. Placing his hand on the edge of the narrow passageway he can see there's enough room for him to squeeze through. Laurent isn't sure whether he was hoping for it to be impassable. He pushes his tool bag into the gap and then rolls onto the ledge, lying flat across the hole. Peering deeper through the the enlarged crack it disappears into darkness and he can't make out whether it narrows or widens as it goes deeper.

'Laurent...'

Wriggling around, Laurent is able to lie on his front, facing headfirst into the darkness. His elbows pressed hard against the stone, feeling pebbles and jagged edges of rock. He struggles to reach ahead of him and fish out the little flashlight from his bag. After a shake it flickers on and casts a weak beam of illumination that reveals little more than a few metres ahead where the floor of stone and scattered detritus continues onwards, into the cliffside. But beyond the beam of light the blackness remains, swallowing up the light until nothing remains. Just the relentless darkness. Just black. Black and black and black and no matter how hard he screws up his eyes and strains to see something more, just black.

Unwilling to move any deeper just yet, Laurent continues to sweep the flashlight back and forth, mapping out the walls of the passageway, grey rock, flat stones, little sharp pebbles, a few twigs and leaves. And something that glistens. Reflecting back the weak light. Twinkling as the beam skips past it. Expecting another piece of burnished gold jewellery, Laurent reaches out to try and grasp whatever is reflecting the light.

But instead of feeling the firm, sharp edges of metal, instead his fingers close around something that gives way in his grasp, dissolving into nothingness. Leaving the faintest of sensations against his skin. He pulls his hand away and looks at it in the torchlight. There is something silvery and glistening on his fingers, coating the fingertips, tacky as he rubs them together, viscid, stretching out to make thin bridges between thumb and forefinger.

Shining the light back to where he put his hand, more of the silvery substance reflects back from the flickering electric beam. After zigzagging the light across the rock floor he is able to trace a path, the silvery coating winds its way across the stony surface and disappears into the blackness. It's like the trail of a slug or snail but much wider, several inches across.

[Mr. Handy]

"This way," says Laurent, shining his light on the slimy trail. He begins to follow it.

[Mephistophilis]

It's hard going for Laurent, crawling over the rough stone, trying to avoid banging his head on the overhanging rock. Pulling his bag along and keeping the quavering flashlight beam shining ahead. The silvery trail zigzags across the stone but continues to head further inwards, deeper into the crack, deeper into the hillside.

His progress is slow and difficult, his elbows feel raw and bruised. Taking a moment to rest he rolls to one side and looks back to the entrance of the passage. Pierre is standing there, staring into the fissure, an odd, haunted look in his eyes. He doesn't even make eye contact with Laurent, just stares past him.

Laurent shouts out to him but he doesn't respond. Rolling back over, Laurent continues crawling into the darkness.

Apart from the glistening residue reflecting the light, Laurent's progress is otherwise featureless. Just the monotonous grey of the rock, a few stones and pebbles. And the blackness of the dark beyond the short reach of the flashlight beam.

The only sound is his own breath, echoing off the walls of the tunnel, the occasional scraping from the tools in his bag against the stone. Yet it still feels like the air is filled with a buzzing, a buzzing he can't hear but he can feel, hovering at the edge of his hearing, tingling just beyond the surface of his skin. The air is thick with it. The ammonia smell has lessened slightly, but there's something else becoming more evident. He still can't put his finger on it, like the rich, damp of wet earth maybe. And those prickles on his neck, more like an aching now, from his neck all the way to the back of his eyes. Like his head is being clamped in a vice, or his brain is swelling up and trying to escape through the holes in his skull.

[Mr. Handy]

Laurent keeps going, in spite of the pain. He has to finish what he started.

[Mephistophilis]

In the suffocating darkness, Laurent's flashlight casts feeble beams of light, illuminating the jagged rock like shards of broken glass. With cautious movements he struggles through the crack, tool bag clanking against the uneven surface. The air thick with bat guano and a smell of decay, a nauseating cocktail that clings to his skin.

Wriggling through the confining space that seems to go on forever, his fingertips scrape against the rough edges of the fissure as he probes ahead, hoping for an edge, some end to the rocky passage. The flashlight reveals nothing beyond the few feet of rock ahead. Then just as he thinks he can't continue any further, glancing back towards the diminishing light of the entrance, he rolls slightly and the rock gives way beneath him. With a yelp he tumbles into a yawning abyss, flashlight tumbling through the air beside him and clattering against the rock.

The beam of light flickers and then steadies. Shifting slightly the ground beneath him feels uneven and then gives a crunch that echoes around him, revealing the tunnel to have widened into some sort of cave. Reaching out for the flashlight he lifts it and swings it around him, breath catching in his throat.

The walls of rock and dark earth are crisscrossed by roots and patches of moss. The floor is carpeted in a thick, grey powder of accumulated bat guano. Poking through this are fragments of ivory white detritus. Scrambling to his feet, Laurent is better able to survey the floor of the cave. Beneath his feet the shifting surface cracks and crunches. Swinging the flashlight beam across the floor from one wall to another, and back again, scarcely able to process what he can see. Bones poking from the dust. Many intact, others at unnatural angles, in disarray. Mingled with the soil and dust. Skulls, and rib cages, and pelvises, and femurs. Row upon row of human skeletons, piled one upon another.

The eerie silence broken only by a gentle drip of water, trickling down the cave wall and pooling in a grey puddle. Somewhere the gentle flutter of wings. Laurent's heart beat faster and faster, pounding in his chest. The stench of death hanging heavily in the air, being sucked deep into his lungs with every ragged breath, suffocating in intensity as he stumbled in circles. The flashlight illuminating scores and scores of bodies, in every direction, piled against the wall, under his feet. The aged bones splintering and breaking under his tread as he tramples over their final remains.

OOC:   Roll Insight

[Mr. Handy]

Laurent barely manages to keep his cool.

Insight roll (current level 4) for seeing the bones:
1d6

[Mephistophilis]

As the significance of what he is seeing begins to sink in for Laurent he finds the stinking air growing thicker and thicker, clinging to the inside of his mouth and lungs. More and more difficult to suck in, the rising panic of suffocation as he can't draw in enough breath. His vision clouds, head spins, and he tumbles backwards in a crunching, splintering heap of corpses and dust, rising to fill the air with the powdery residue of pulverised bone.

Half-rolling onto his side, Laurent coughs, and retches, eventually vomiting the contents of his stomach into the dust. Scrambling onto his knees he takes another minute to settle his breathing, slow down the retching, and let his vision stabilise until he can focus on the sight in front of him.

Up close to the piles of bones he is better able to look at the individual remains. Directly in front of him the skeleton is mostly complete but the rib cage is splintered and fractured, the individual ribs scattered and the sternum shattered. And beside that one the next set of bones appear the same. Hauling himself to his feet he looks at more of the remains. Each of them seems damaged in some way. Mostly the ribcage, usually smashed or ruptured. But not from an external blow, as from a strike with a weapon, more like something inside has exploded out. But what could cause such injuries?

And who were these people? How could so many people die without anyone knowing? How long have these bodies been here? There haven't been this many deaths for...twenty five years...

[Mr. Handy]

Laurent gets out of the pile of bones. Shining his little flashlight around the cave, he looks to see what other exits there are, or if there are any other features he missed.

[Mephistophilis]

OOC:   Do you want to roll for that search

[Mr. Handy]

Laurent's light reveals something.

Roll (human die) to search the bone room:
1d6

[Mephistophilis]

Running his faltering flashlight beam along the walls of the cave, Laurent searches for signs of another entrance, but the rock and packed earth seems solid, although, now he looks more closely, there are some dark green and red patches that he thinks might be algae or maybe fungi. The only way in or out now is the long, narrow fissure leading back out to Anse Douce.

Now he has his breathing back under control, and the dusty clouds of bat guano and...whatever else have cleared, he is able to take a more measured look at the bodies that litter the floor of the cave. In amongst the dust-coated bones he can see small fragments of material. Pulling one out from among the detritus he blows the stinking guano off to reveal a soiled and weathered piece of cloth, browny-green in colour, frayed all around the edges. It has traces of an unpleasant, silvery residue on it, not unlike the trail Laurent saw in the passage. He thinks it is probably a preserved piece of cotton fabric, presumably all that remains from whatever this individual was wearing when they died, whenever they died.

Where he has disturbed the remains by pulling out the cloth, Laurent can see something quite angular sticking out of the dust. He pulls it out and cleans it off. It's a coin, obviously originally silver but now tarnished with a yellow-brown patina. On one side there is a flying eagle and it says UNITED STATES OF AMERICA...QUARTER DOLLAR, and on the other side there is a bare-breasted figure with a shield and olive branch, with the writing LIBERTY...IN GOD WE TRUST and finished with a date at the bottom which has significantly worn away, but which Laurent thinks might say 1917.

Turning to look back out into the weak light coming through the tunnel he sees an alcove to the side. Flicking his flashlight over it reveals what looks like a squat statue on a pedestal, before the beam finally gives up and flickers out. Before the light fails, the air turns heavy and oppressive. Laurent gets the unsettling sense that something is watching him, studying him. There's the faintest of sounds, trickling water, that almost seems to carry a voice that is just beyond his hearing. He moves towards the narrow alcove trying to get a better look at the figure in the near darkness. A sense of dread slowly building in the pit of his stomach as he gets closer.

Laurent whacks the flashlight with the palm of his hand a few times and eventually the beam returns, weaker and even more unsteady than before. The rock wall catches the light, strange, almost glowing lichen returning a green phosphorescence where it is illuminated, and reflecting the wet, shimmering look of silvery residue. A slow but constant stream of water runs down the wall and pools under a pedestal of dull gold. And on this sits a small statuette, squat and unpleasant to look at. The pedestal shines softly in the light, golden but with an unusual sheen, cool to the touch and slightly damp, the surface is engraved with intricate and alien patterns that suggest exquisite craftsmanship but which Laurent struggles to resolve in the poor light. Although he gets the feeling that the patterns themselves and writhing and twisting out of his sight. He finds himself reluctant to even look directly at the statue. It is made from some kind of stone, that much he can allow himself to see. A sort of greenish soapstone, but with a smooth surface akin to polished obsidian. It isn't exactly luminescent but Laurent can't help but feel like it casts some kind of glow around it. Looking closer at the shining stone surface there is an array of swirling colours deeper within, a mesmerising kaleidoscope of iridescent blues, greens, and purples dancing beneath the surface. Yet when he blinks his eyes he just sees the smooth greenish surface again. Reaching forward, reluctantly yet fascinated, he touches the surface of the figure. It is smooth and cool but running his hand over the surface there's something...indescribable about the sensation. Like it is lightly pulsating, like it is alive somehow. Grasping the figure firmly Laurent finds it is easy to move, deceptively light even, he finds it hard to reconcile the weight with the obvious size and material. But when he tries to lift it there is a certain...resistance, almost like a buoyancy in water. An inherent tendency, inherent desire to return to its resting place. And he returns it.

Finally Laurent forces himself to look at the statue. It's squat batrachian form grips the edge of the golden pedestal with webbed fingers and toes. The amphibian body is coiled and muscular, exuding an alien, otherworldly confidence. A sense of power and grace. He finds it hard to fully describe the shape of the figure, even to himself, but those round, unblinking eyes fix him with an unsettling intelligence and he has to tear his gaze away. Those eyes. They remind him of something. The towers and spires of coral beneath the calm waters of the bay. That feeling of unease, the prickle at the back of his neck, the shivers down the spine. The sure certainty that something is just wrong. Those fish. But not fish. The ugly, frightening, round unblinking eyes...

With Laurent's next breath he feels stinging, salty water gush through his mouth and into his lungs. Freezing cold, filling him up. He doubles over and starts choking...

OOC:   Another Insight roll I think

[Mr. Handy]

Laurent would be screaming right now if he could.

Insight roll (current level 4) for drowning on dry land:
1d6
Insight increases to 5.

[Mephistophilis]

The light in the cave changes, subtly shifts, darker. The only illumination is the unnatural green glow from the idol. Laurent still can't breathe, his throat is full, he sucks against complete resistance. Chest tense, a deep pressure rising from inside.

Looking around in panic he sees the cave is packed with people, pressing in around him. Normal St Joe people, they look scared. And in pain. The smell of sweat, and piss, and fear. No one is talking, there's just an anxious murmuring and sobbing.

Then someone cries out. People back away as best they can revealing a young woman doubled over in pain, gripping her abdomen. She almost seems to spasm, arching her back as her ragged shirt rips open in a gush of blood. Something...slimy, the size of a cat or small dog sloshes onto the floor, covered in blood and mucus. Like watching the birth of a goat. The thing on the floor is hard to describe to himself, even as he looks directly at it. Smooth, slippery, almost amphibian. The head turns to look at him, large, unblinking eyes that seem to bore through him. It slaps the ground with broad, webbed feet and then scampers on four legs across the floor with an unholy slopping. He watches it leap into the crack in the rock and slither out of the cave. Around him there is rising panic as others cry out, and he hears the sound of another moist body splashing onto the floor.

The pain in his chest is reaching an intolerable climax and he realises it is still impossible for him to breathe. No breath, no air will come. The pressure inside him is like something is trying to burst out. A throbbing pressure and pain, his ribs twisting, flexing...the wrong way, outwards, a loud crack and sharp, penetrating pain through his sternum. The agony reaching an exquisite peak, and he feels his skin stretching, tearing - a ragged pain then...relief. Something slides from inside him, releasing the pressure, as it slaps against the floor.

-----

And Laurent finds himself vomiting onto the floor of the cave. The pain gone. Gasping ragged breaths between retching. And in the distance he hears 'Laurent, Laurent, can you hear me?'

OOC:   Remember you can now Suppress Knowledge by destroying your discoveries - then roll and if you get less than your Insight reduce it by 1. You can now continue to do this even with Insight below 5