A very merry Halloween! [Mingle]

[ourearth]

Date: 31st of October
Characters: Open!
Warning: Non-sexual desecration of formerly buried corpses

---

On the morning of Halloween, when people first step out of their houses, they will almost step into something.

A bucket of water. Every flat and every house in the Mossgate Boundary has a bucket placed in front of its entrance door (and sometimes, especially in Folkton and Moss Manor, the back door too), in which scary apples are floating. A little sign taped to the bucket reads: Have fun bobbing!.

But that's not the only thing that happened. The second thing that people will notice is that there are billions of spiders of all sizes crawling all over the town and villages, the military base, the Manor House... everywhere. And they certainly did their job - trees, lanterns, the higher attractions on the pier, and everything else that is high all over Mossgate Council is covered in thick layers of cobweb.

And lastly... those who pass by a church will notice something about the graveyards around them. Namely, that someone placed skeletons on top of most of the graves... Awfully real looking ones. Really, really awfully real looking ones. To some of them, the soil of the graveyard still clings, and the graves underneath them are in a state that betrays that they were dug up during the night. DNA tests would show that, indeed, the skeletons belong to the individuals buried in the graves.

Comments

[iamnotgod]

"Are you able to let go of it?"

Walter's just the slightest bit nervous, now, looking about in case a spider is somehow summoned - but that's an illogical thought, isn't it? Spiders wait until their prey is good and stuck, and all the ones he's seen so far have been far too small...

[fairfeste]

"Oh. You should probably eat something. Um--" Feste digs through their pockets, pulling out a granola bar that looks a bit beat up. They have to eat a lot, even if they forget sometimes. "You want this? It might help..." But they are a stranger, so. Maybe not.

[fairfeste]

Feste blinks at him. "Uh..." They hadn't thought of that. They carefully pull their hand away, some of the cobweb coming off but not sticking them to it. "Yup! We're good."

[iamnotgod]

Walter noticeably relaxes - though some of it is "for effect", so that Feste can see it.

"Good."

He ends up rubbing his own hand on his jacket; some sort of psychosomatic reaction, probably.

"Probably shouldn't do that again... in other news, did you take a look at those apples this morning?"

[fairfeste]

Feste wipes their hand off, still gazing up at the cobwebs until Walter distracts them. "Apples?"

[warped_replica]

As the aurora had, indeed the strange happenings spur a flurry of questions.

That shift of the bag makes it clear for the teenager and he nods once, thankful for the presence of his friend for such a ghastly task. Benjiro replies just as quietly, "Doubt they'd let anyone, but certainly not a random teenager." Then with a nod of his head off down the street he explains, "If we go down to the end of the street and over, we should be able to cut through some of the trees out near the back of the graveyard to slip in without anyone taking notice."

Should Walter be agreeable to the idea, he'll head off down the street with him.

[runs]

She remembers that part at the last moment.

And then eyes the food, trying to reason with herself if the granola bar looks good enough to ignore that part of stranger danger and just stick with 'as long as he doesn't know my name it's fine'.

In the end, she mentally shrugs and takes it. She is a bit hungry, after all. Breakfast was a while ago.

"Thanks." And then she starts walking while unwrapping it. He is right that they should leave... "Have you ever been at a crime scene before?"

[runs]

[She nods slowly. That makes sense.]

Then you should leave now before someone sees you here, or they'll want to ask your doctor questions and then you'll be with people who want to ask doctor questions about the skeletons for many odd hours.

[iamnotgod]

"Apples," Walter confirms.

"A bucket of water with them at everyone's door. No reports of who put them there."

[iamnotgod]

"Assuming no one else has thought of that already."

Never underestimate the draw of snooping, Ben.

Still, he doesn't add any further protest, and puts extra effort into not running so as to not draw any attention to them.

[fairfeste]

"Oh. Right. I did see those. ....They were kind of creepy looking." Is someone just playing a prank on the village?

[fairfeste]

"No, I haven't. Not really sure I wanted to be." Because that's weird. It's weird, right? Especially when the crime scene is dug up graves but with nothing stolen??? "Are you going to be ok getting home?"

At least the bucket isn't teleporting through space and time

[spaghettimonster]

Walter might not, but the television helpfully makes a ! sound effect at about the appropriate time, thanks to a commercial for famous action-adventure stealth game... and to Russell leaving the television on while he sprawls across the couch playing on his phone.

The sound of the commercial's not loud enough to cover the sound of Walter nearly falling over at the door, and Russell looks up and back in its general direction.

"Alright over there?"

B

[spaghettimonster]

After the prank at the flat's doorway, and realizing it had been done to every main door in sight, he'd put off his errands for the sake of walking around town and taking in the sights. The spiders, in particular, proved to be... a lot. The webs are fine, if indicating the same incredible industry as the bucket pranks, but the multitude of insects lurking and scurrying about were enough to make a fellow head home and grab a thicker jacket and some boots.

As Feste happens by, Russell's just arrived at the edge of the graveyard, having just glanced in and startled at the sight.

"They couldn't really be, could they? I-I mean, the spiders and buckets are one thing, but who would put out real skeletons like that?"

[runs]

"I am supposed to be going to school," she explains. Or, technically, she is supposed to be at school, having gotten dropped off there early by a foster parent. Just that she wandered off. Don't drop her off half an hour early, maybe, or she wouldn't get that bored...

"I don't think I should be going home."

[scarsolderthanyou]

Sam heaves a sigh. Of course one of the kids is going to find him. "Chasing spiders," he says, as if that's a perfectly normal thing to be doing. "What else would I be doing up a tree full of cobwebs?"

He hasn't climbed a tree since he was a child. It's going... interestingly.

[scarsolderthanyou]

"Mary, you might not want to come in here," Sam calls over his shoulder, having caught her voice. He sounds irritated, too, because though he hasn't quite gotten to Amy's grave, considering the number of graves that have been disturbed, he's already assuming the worst.

[scarsolderthanyou]

"How many of those have you caught now?" Sam asks, coming to pause, bend down a little, and look over her shoulder at the jar. "Anything interesting about them?"

Not that he's found much of interest yet, besides the sheer number of them. Then again, his vision isn't the greatest.

[dragoonrouge]

Sadie squeezes his hand, "We'll just have to keep an eye out and an eye on each other just in case. And hope that nothing happens at school. We'll keep each other safe and James will be there too."

She grimaces at the mention of spiders, "Please don't, I'd rather not think about the spiders. I want to know what sort of ability could cause this." Sadie pauses, "God it's bizarre how quickly I've come to accept that this is what life is now."

[catted]

"I'm not five any more. You don't have to protect me." Truth be told, she's worried about her father. After all this is the graveyard that her mother is buried at.

If that means...

She won't tell him 'you need me'. But she will come over towards him and not leave.

[catted]

"I'd rather have context than not." She doubts that it is that terrible. The memory doesn't feel ...bad. Curious, excited, with a bit of trepidation, perhaps.

"I've read about phenomena like this before. I think they had something similar in Bangladesh... last year during Monsoon time? I think?"

[warped_replica]

He returns the squeeze to her hand, holding it for a good couple of seconds before releasing the pressure. By now, he has several contingency plans at the ready to deal with possible Echoes at school. “We should probably check on Professor Petty, too.”

Murmuring a soft apology as the talk about the spiders disturbs her, Benjiro makes note to keep a close watch on how close any spiders come to them. Her comment however makes him reflect on his own perspective and shakes his head slowly, “Yeah it’s…I never would have considered it as plausible before.”

[warped_replica]

“That is possible, but after so many hours dealing with this and with some time left before dusk, they may not be as vigilant.”

Benjiro makes a point to keep his gaze averted away from the church and surrounding land as he walks with Walter at a casual pace. Waiting to come to the corner of the street, he turns and begins to count steps to keep track of relative distance beyond the front door of the church while staying on the pavement. Only once he feels they have covered enough distance will he duck into an alleyway. Slowing to pause at the end of the alleyway, he looks around carefully among the growing shadows of the dwindling daylight. He lingers for quite a pause, and satisfied he sees no signs of anyone on watch nearby or the movement of a patrol, he heads through the trees and further to the nearest grave.

Approaching from behind the headstone, he veers wide to come up beside the disturbed grave adorned by the slumped skeleton still held together by sinew. His stomach clenches as he beholds the clean skeletal remains with the tattered soldier’s hat of an older time and what looks to be a deteriorated coat. The sight of it induces dizziness, but not out of a sense of revulsion. Sinking down to one knee as he turns hollow and his heart pounds, Benjiro puts a hand to his head only to inhale sharply with the flash of a new memory.

‘We gotta find my brother! He’s gotta be in here!’

‘Angel, no!’ a familiar male voice shouts as the girl pushes against a golden door. A red light floods the room with water over their ankles and growths of sickly vegetation curtaining from above and at the edge of the water. A deep, echoing voice speaks over itself in beckoning as numerous skeletons strewn about the chamber move and rise. The orbital sockets of the skeletons glow with the same red light, and close in around them. A skeleton with a sword attacks him, and he defends with his bo staff as they try to grasp the situation in which they have found themselves.

The fight is interrupted by an old man with a lantern at the far end of the chamber at the bottom of the spiral staircase that allowed them to enter. He calls to them, ‘You fools! You cannot kill the dead! Run!! You must follow me!’ Without hesitation they dodge the skeletons and flee together for safety from the relentless onset.

Snapping out of the memory, he looks wide eyed at the skeleton and rears backwards from it with a cry strangled in his throat only by the imperative that they have to be quiet. A full two meters of distance gained in a second, the impression of fright fades and he halts as he regains focus in the present.

Breathless, he speaks, “….reanimated skeletons. That’s….that’s different.”

... I think this is right. |D

[iamnotgod]

"I think that what they look like isn't as creepy as how it looks," Walter says, glancing once more at the webbing.

"All those buckets, all over Mossgate and the nearby villages. Not a single trail of wet footprints, or any indicator as to where the apples are from."

That would be terrifying, tbh.

[iamnotgod]

Walter isn't paying attention to the TV; instead, he's looking around the bucket for any sign of who could have left it.

"I almost wasn't!" he shouts back over his shoulder, before looking back up and... yup, other nearby flats have buckets, too.

"You might want to see this."

Y'know, so you don't trip on it.