At Your Side Again

[madimpossibledreamer]

I looked up the shortened form of usual, because it’s totally a word Danny would use. There is no normal spelling and they all look weird. I think yoozh looks the least weird. Then I ended up editing it out of his dialogue. Normal writer things.
We’re getting into the history of the area and why it’s so cursed, so this is your warning: suicide, multiple tragic deaths and murders.  And, uh.  This is, like.  75% of it.  10% is an elaboration on some of the points that are already present.

Main Points: Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Danny fills Desmond in on some of the island's worst tragedies.
Word Count: 2671
Rating: Teen

 

         He doesn’t hear anything on the way back. No visions, no weirdness. And he’s still a little on edge, but Rukh’s staying close and grounding and Alice is actually crowding a bit, too, Bob trailing at her heels on the leash and actually nearly tripping her a couple of times. Like she’d heard or sensed something, too. She’s probably trying to have it come off like she’s just trying to observe, but there’s something about her posture that looks a little spooked.
         So it’s not like the Siren Song, but it’s...something about the park. It definitely feels cursed. But he can’t run. Run, and this thing is still here, blood soaking into the ground, staining...the air itself, it feels like. So he’s just going to have to face it head on. Maybe kill it somehow. He’s good at that, although if he tries to do it with the Calculations, it’ll probably put him in a coma again. He’s not a fan of that option. So he’ll have to find some alternative. He’s pretty flexible, and if nothing else, he’s got a lot of people he could use to brainstorm.
         And then he notices Nate’s staring at Alice, and it’s making her uncomfortable. Maybe. “What’s up?” It’s not worth confronting him directly, not until he’s got more to go on.
         “What is she?” That’s blunt, and kind of proof that he’s a little spooked, because he’s not putting on the trademark casual air. Though Desmond’s starting to get the feeling that’s more of an act than the real deal.
         Alice hisses, baring her teeth, and Winter’s kid, thankfully, doesn’t notice, too busy trying to have a conversation with Lydia and Nuala about the butler dude, apparently.
         Desmond sighs. Then again, from his ancestors’ memories, this is pretty typical once you’ve recruited enough Novices to start having more personality conflicts. Lydia and Chelsea just decided to get a head start on that front. “Pretty sure she’d appreciate you not talking about her when she’s right here. Why don’t you try asking her yourself?”
         “Sorry,” Nate states abruptly. Alice’s grin is vicious. “I don’t suppose you’d like to answer the question anyway?”
         “You can call me Alice,” she answers, acting innocent.
         Nate sighs. “Not even a real name, huh. ...I don’t tend to meet entities that mimic humans this well.”
         “I am…” she turns her head a little further than natural as she thinks. “...an ally,” she decides, announcing it loudly. And then, after a moment, she adds, “I am hungry.”
         Showing vulnerability like that is probably a really important step, Desmond guesses, ruffling her hair to another snarl. Though she’s not leaning away, so maybe she likes being treated like a kid. She’s just not used to it yet. “Pretty sure the Council have some food they could share. Though if we keep eating everything we might need to help them stock up again…”
         “We already did that. Ran into Nuala and her entire entourage along the way, putting everybody on high alert. Nuala there is one of the Druids of Avalon. Supposedly one of the smaller groups in the Council, but we usually only see them in Venice, and one at a time.” Nate explains, and Desmond suddenly gets the feeling that Nuala’s listening even if she doesn’t turn to look or anything too obvious, continuing the conversation she’s having seamlessly. “The leader, actually—she’s been reborn in so many bodies over the years, so she’s got a ton of useful knowledge. So she’s much older than she looks.”
         Funnily enough, that sounds like someone else he just met. Alice giggles, and either she actually is reading his mind or she just thought of something similar.
         Nate continues quickly, like he’s rushing to get all the words out, and as a couple of people start glancing around the Council base, a couple of whom wave, Desmond suddenly gets the feeling he’s trying to give a head’s up before they actually arrive. One of them gets too close to the zombies in the back yard, and suddenly there’s a flurry of owls and a completely different wolf and a bolt of lightning and...music? “Thick as thieves with Laughing Jenny. She might be immortal, too, but that’s more the subject of rumors rather than anyone actually knowing the truth. And there’s Francis Rowan, their magic animal tamer. Brann Mac Diarmada, a professional Stormlord. Amelia Bindings, a diviner. And Finn Mulligan, an Irish daredevil with music magic.” That’s—wait.
         “They’re all here?” Is that actually confirmation that it actually is Excalibur? Shaun hadn’t been having that much luck on that front.
         Nate laughs. “Not even close, but it’s more than you tend to see anywhere than Agartha. Amelia got a message out to Madame Rogêt, and they agreed that they should be ‘on hand’, although it’s not completely clear what that means.”
         “Did they happen to say anything else?” That’s kind of vague.
         “The Madame asked Nate here or me or both to keep her company, but ol’ Nathaniel here said he had business.” That...might be Finn, given the accent?
         That’s...breaks are kind of important. “You know you’re free to go do that, right? I don’t think the world will end while you’re gone.”
         Nate laughs and shakes his head. “I get the feeling her offer was for later, anyway. She didn’t say it directly, but she was scared. Not any useful visions, I don’t think—probably just more general dreams of death. The Sheriff and the rest were a little spooked, too.”
         Chelsea and Winter coordinate something with some of the druids, and then Chelsea calls back, “We’ll be back after we bury this fellow.”
         “Sounds good!” he calls back. Chelsea seems to actually like digging graves, but then, maybe she likes being able to bring peace to the dead. And they’ve got druids here, so...okay, maybe it’s not necessarily the ceremony Wahid would’ve wanted, but it’s something, maybe.
         And then his phone rings, and he actually remembers to check caller ID this time. Funny what habits you get into when a total of three people—and, yeah, occasionally what’s left of an ancient goddess—are the only people who would bother calling you. It’s Danny. “Hey, Desmond. Figured you needed more of a head’s up about what you’re about to wade into.” Given the timing, that means…
         “Some of the cameras on the park were yours, huh.” They’d all only showed up gold.
         Danny doesn’t question that, but then, he’s probably just guessing it’s magic or something. Technically by the standards of this world it...is, kinda? “How the hell—I mean, uh, heck—else was I going to keep an eye on the place? Which means, yeah, I totally got the scoop on the other batch of goons setting up cameras to keep an eye on the old man, though they kind of noticed most of mine and fried them with an EMP, too. Which is seriously messed up. I put a lot of good money into those. You don’t just mess with a man’s cameras, unless they’re totally being used for evil. But, right, back to trying to keep a long story short. There’s some seriously bad stuff, and that’s before the park even started being constructed, so I’ve got a lot to go through to get you up to speed, okay? So, Archibald, or Archie, Henderson, right? You heard the name before?”
         Thinking about it...yeah. “John Wolf mentioned something about him and Nathaniel Winter finding power they maybe regretted.”
         Danny sighs heavily. “That’s one way to put it, I guess. You might not have been able to see it through the fog, but a few feet away from where Nicholas Winter was parked was the last remains of the old Henderson farm. Now, uh, I don’t know how, but they say he learned sorcery. Though your friend keeps sending me hints that I’m thinking kind of point to the ol’ tinfoil hat conspiracy theory of the Illuminati.” He waits a bit, and Desmond gets the point he’s supposed to be reacting somehow.
         “That’s weird.”
         “You still suck at that, dude, get a better poker face already, come on. And also, ugh, that means Carter wasn’t just messing with me, okay. Uh, going to shove that in a box and process it later when I’m trying not to get through explaining this—so Henderson finally retired and became a farmer, got married, had kids, but he still practiced, still researched, all that. Still sharp. And then a bunch of tragedies—oldest boy died in an earthquake, wife committed suicide. And he decides to try to protect his family and seek revenge, because, y’know, the Wabanaki didn’t try hard enough to help his wife, so obviously they deserve to be murdered by revenants. For protection, he made those scarecrows by murdering travelers, anybody who ventured too close at night, and then harvesting their organs and then using them to bring his creations to life. Just your average hobby, right? The hearts still beat, but if you can stop that, you can stop them. And the ghosts of those killed are probably trapped inside, screaming all the while, probably making ‘em ten times more vicious. That was, uh, early 1900s.” He pauses and then adds, “...It sounds a lot less grim when you’re just reading it on a piece of paper. Ready for me to go on?”
         That’s kinda...no wonder it’d kind of shoved its way through when he wasn’t even trying to use the Calculations or Eagle Vision or anything. “Yeah.” Though he’s not too jazzed about the idea that there’s more. Rukh croaks lowly, seeking pets again, which is kind of calming as they talk about this.
         “The revenants killed his eldest daughter after she’d fought with him and left the safety of the farm, and from everything I’ve read trying to bury this whole mess twelve feet under and make it stay there, I get the feeling he’s the kind of guy who would blame the whole thing on her fighting with him and disobeying and not on the whole part where he summoned mystical plaguebearers to try to wipe out a Native American tribe. And all he’s got left is his farm, with all the crops rotting in the fields, and his youngest daughter, and the one farmhand that didn’t have the sense to hightail it when Henderson started making the scarecrows. So then his daughter falls in love. He forbids it, kicks his farmhand out, but they keep meeting anyway—only one time, the scarecrows attack them when they’re meeting. They kill her, but he shows up to find the farmhand, Jack, holding the broken body of his kid and he loses it. There’s some sort of chase, all sorts of curses, and then, poof, Jack the Lad. Pumpkin-headed guy, twisted by his own tragedy and the magic used on him. You meet him?”
         Desmond winces. “Unfortunately. I kind of ran.”
         “No shame in that, man. We only tangled with him a couple of times, but here’s a pro-tip. Lots of things don’t like fire. Same night, just to complete the whole ‘cursed land’ angle, old man Henderson slits his throat, but his magic’s still seeping into the ground, drawing even more wendigo and pulling up Filth and all the things the League was formed to combat. And it’s on this cheerful scene that Nathaniel Winter strolls up, wanting to build a park in that very spot. Everybody tells him it’s a bad idea, it’s cursed, just give up, but he doesn’t want to hear any backtalk. After he starts, there’s way too many construction accidents, most of ‘em fatal or, like, people losing limbs and stuff. A couple suicides. More of both after it opened, plus kids vanishing in the Haunted House, and then the mascot just stabbed two teenagers to death one day, out of the blue, and Winter didn’t shut it down. The town council did, and Nathaniel Winter just...disappeared. People said it was the ghost of Henderson, that after all his dreams went down in smoke, too, that Henderson drove him to kill himself, too, right in his closed park. The only thing they all agreed on, according to Edgar, was that luckily Henderson didn’t demand the rest of Winter’s family die along with him. Now, rumors had it that he didn’t get it. Like, plenty of adults, when they even feel like talking about it, think he just wasn’t superstitious, just ignored every single warning. I think he knew. I think he knew, and the park was just...a side project to whatever his real plans were, like he personally sought out the most haunted spot he could find—hell, he left that one barn standing, right outside. You can see it from the bumper cars. Maybe to keep everybody distracted from what he was really doing here, or maybe that was actually a part of the plan. I don’t know.”
         Actually, the kid’s hunch is probably right. “The only thing in his will was to restore the park to the original plans.”
         “Ugh, okay, so the park’s the thing. Like, uh.” Danny starts tapping a pen against a paper in the background, thinking. “A radio tower, maybe. I could see the big Ferris Wheel being like a dish. Trying to collect and funnel all the magic for...some reason. The reason why doesn’t matter too much. Unless it totally does.”
         “Is there anything seen there and nowhere else?” That could help them track down the cause.
         “Ooh, good thinking. The zombies are all warped there. Like, they look like carnival workers, for some reason. Some of ‘em even have makeup. How? Why? We couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t even traveling, I’ve seen pictures and workers didn’t dress like that, and there weren’t enough of them at the end, so some of the parkgoers and townsfolk who died nearby and probably a bunch of the tourists—‘cause they still did it, expensive houses you can rent and lighthouse tours and fishing. One of the older guys even used to run a haunted theme park tour just wandering around the park, only it got less and less popular every year and eventually he just stopped running it. Given that he was never the same after, I don’t think it was a good idea.” He pauses and adds, “Oh, and the bogeyman. Sorry, got sidetracked.”
         “So maybe he got summoned.” Okay, he’s got a pretty good picture of the place now. Just one other question. “So, how do we destroy it? Can we burn it to the ground?”
         Danny bursts out laughing. “Oh, man, great minds. Though maybe I shouldn’t be talking about a-r-s-o-n too loud in a sheriff station. We tried that—just on the barn, ‘cause it was a lot easier to burn and wood and all, and it was just...back. The next day. That being said…” More pen tapping. “We didn’t try to have Carter explode it. Maybe you should talk to Carter. She’s up at the Academy, you can’t miss her, and she’d love to be able to help. And if that doesn’t work, you could try exploding it and then setting it on fire. And if that doesn’t work, you could try exploding it, setting it on fire, and then...I dunno, consecrating it, maybe. We tried that too, but none of us are—were—too good at that shi—stuff. Barring that, the whole ‘it’s a collector thing’ thing. Disrupt the signal, or something, then do all of the rest of the above.”
         Being extremely thorough sounds like a good idea. “Thanks, Danny. We’ll do what we can.”
         “Hey, I’d complain about you putting me out of a job, but I’m already kind of out of a job, if that means the world’s safer I’m all for it, and I figure you basically just traded me jobs, so…” Danny hangs up, which is good, because Desmond doesn’t have a clue of how much he’s supposed to be keeping a secret here, anyway.