The Haunted House

While following 'Bastian to the room and talking out her plan of action, Vivienne keeps her eyes moving, drinking in details of elegantly framed paintings, sturdy old (or maybe fake-old?) doors, any chairs and side tables in the halls or rooms they pass, light fixtures and chandeliers. Will she remember everything perfectly? No, not by a long shot, but giving herself a chance to at least sense if something is off later wouldn't hurt.

Her guide's comment on the last part of her little script brings her mouth into a smug smirk. "And a clever few," she quips back, "make a career of saying it to the people who do keep it to themselves. The good ones also find out what the actual cause was."

Or, if they're really good, use a mundane cause to cover the hard-to-believe truth...

She pauses in the middle of the room once they enter, doing a slow turn to take in the modest space.

"Cozy, but enough room to work," she notes with an approving nod, "If we'll be hitting up the basement later I'll want to grab my Geiger. One sec."

She opens up the bag with the more practical parts of her kit and moves some changes of clothes, mostly as... compact as her current outfit, out onto the bed. Under them, restrained by loops of black elastic fabric, is a surprisingly robust suite of tools. A dense set of screwdriver bits, a small rubber mallet, an adjustable wrench, a tube-shaped portable scanner/printer, a blocky, yellow, pastic-cased multimeter and devices which look like its cousins of indeterminate purpose, a laser thermometer, a long and narrow ambiguous white box at the bottom, and a digital camera with a small stand. Not a full tripod, but enough to have it sit steadily a bit above a table looking either out at a room or down at the surface below it. Everything is compact and practical, laid out in a way that gives an impression of a surgical tray. The equipment seems intent on afirming that its owner knows her stuff, whatever that stuff actually is.

She extracts one of the not-multimeters and pockets it, then hesitates and unstraps the scanner, camera, and stand as well, tucking them into the various ample pockets of her shorts.

"May as well leave the originals where they belong," she explains as she moves toward the door and her guide. "Lead the way. Let's take a peek at the place's archive."

Sebastian watched Vivienne buzz around the room, eventually letting his dark eyes leisurely slide slickly off her and sweep the room itself. He had snooped around a few rooms, but had found they were mostly copies of each other. The furniture pieces were slightly unique to each other in detail, but the overall format was the same. Great, giant frame bed with thick drapery and quilting, large armoire and wardrobes, dainty sitting areas, bookcases with worn covers stuffed tight. Some chests with extra bedding inside, at least one desk or table in each room. Each room fits the overall Victorian-gothic aesthetic, that Sebastian didn’t think was a purposeful marketing point.

“It’s going to take ages to bring this relic into a modern era,” the man mumbled his thoughts out loud. “Might be quicker to burn it and build from the foundation…” He lifted a hand to scratch his sandpapered chin.

While Vivienne prepared herself for their next chapter of tasks, Sebastian meandered leisurely to the book shelf, where he glanced over faded titles with little interest. “I recommend a good snoop whenever you get the chance to,” he called over his shoulder. “There’s some odd shit in some of these shelves and chests. I found polaroids of quite the photoshoot when I first got here, just stuffed between some books.”

Once the woman was all set, Sebastian mosied back to the door and slunk out into the halls once again.

“Soo, ya make any good money doin’ what ya do?” He asked casually, and nosely. He strolled with his hands stuffed into his pockets, and his gaze fixed ahead of them.

Somewhere behind them, a door quietly clicked shut again.

For a few turns and twists, the pair was so deep in the manor that there were no outside light sources. Only the amber, overhead lights. The atmosphere was heavy here, where no daylight had ever breathed fresh air. This place felt entirely removed from realty, suspended, set aside and forgotten in a box, collecting dust and dead moths.

Then, it lightened and they turned into an exterior lined hall, where three tall and narrow windows paralleled the passage and provided grey washed, natural light. And then, the beautifully stained glass doors of the library.

Sebastian pushed one open and gestured for Vivienne to enter. “Behold, the library,” he announced, in a comically flat tone.

"Quicker, less legal, more expensive, probably with a less stylized and unique result..." Vivienne adds on, "Projects like this are usually as much ego-driven artistic vision that will eventually pay itself off, sorry, 'long-term market projections,' than anything else. Still, I'm not complaining about the older style. It's a lot more interesting than modern minimalism, and gives more spots to subtly include tech and utility if you know what you're doing."

Vivienne looks over her shoulder as she finishes assembling the last of her equipment. "Oh yeah?" she asks, bemused, "Anything interesting, or just pornographic? I'll take a few looks around either way. Amazing what off-hand journal entries or background details in pictures are useful. I'll take a read through some of the books in here, too, if they seem relevant." Hopefully nothing TOO relevant would be so easy to find...

She makes ready to follow the contractor, putting her hands behind her head once they get moving toward the library. The maze-like warren of halls quickly grows more and more... not unsettling, not worrying, but concerning. Inadequate navigational aids, out of date lighting that somehow seemed like it was waiting for an excuse to flicker or go out, and that casino-like architectural intent to make the outside world as forgettable as possible. Remembering the history she had read of the place in preparation for this job, Vivienne can't help but imagine how someone without enough dedicated ties to the rest of reality might just let themselves get lost in here as long as the excitement kept growing. She shudders quietly and lets her train of thought be broken by 'Bastian's question.

"I make enough," she answers, shrugging, "Enough to keep up with expenses and upgrade to a nice electric motorbike if I live efficiently, apparently. And cite things as business expenses, bike included. It's less than I could be making as a sensationalist ghost-hunting content creator or whatever, I'll be honest, but finding and solving actual problems is more satisfying than making up new ones. Most people should be more afraid of electrical fires than they should be of ghosts. Or aliens, though that's not my specialty." She says with a laugh.

Talking, so far relaxed about this job, she misses the click of the door in spite of her unusually sharp hearing.

As they get to the library, she takes in a sharp breath...

[Moved to library! Vivienne is not in her room]

Vivienne’s Room - April 14, 2023 - 6:30PM

With each step ascending the stairs, it grew quieter, more distant from the jolly atmosphere down on the ground floor. It was separate up here, liminal. The doors on either side of the hall holding their secrets, so close yet hidden away. It smelled softly of age, perhaps the carpet that ran the floor. It should need replacing. Muddled with that, the scent of recently snuffed candles lingered.

One room had gentle music lulling from the opposite side of the door, a small island in the ocean of silence as it was passed by. A room across the hall from Vivienne’s entombed muffled conversation, that seemed to hush when she approached her own door. Down the way, just before a bend in the hall, an older woman in a black blouse and slacks sorted some towels on a push cart. If she noticed Vivienne, she didn’t make it evident.

Inside Vivienne’s room, everything was still and content. Yet, there was an unsettled feeling. An awkward suspense, as if she’d caught someone snooping. Beside the bed, a small lamp was toppled on the nightstand. Its scarlet shade subtly littered the floor.

The silky bedskirt rustled, movement from underneath the large frame catching it and swaying the fabric.

The taunting scents and sounds of actions and events that don't match up with what should be reality catch the investigator's attention as she stalks through the halls back toward her room. It's like they're challenging her, luring her with hints of secrets to chase, but she knows that they won't be anything but memories and madness if she tries to capture or prove them. And those little whispers aren't why she's really there, anyway.

As her hand touches the knob of her door she keeps an ear toward the other door and its fading whispers, also putting her gaze toward the woman at work further down the hall, all for just a moment. The next instant, she opens the door and steps through, checking to the side away from the door, then the one behind.

All is still, but more frozen than empty.

She closes, latches, and locks the door behind her before proceeding to the desk. Her main tool-bag unzips and she starts to unload the tools she had taken with her on her little tour. The miniature scanner/printer goes in first, strapped into place nicely. The camera follows, sliding into its pocket. She folds up the stand, and moves it toward the bag and then, trusting the locked door for a few moments, springs into motion. She swiftly turns around with a snarl on her face and makes a sharp extending and sweeping motion with one hand. The air behind her back shimmers, an illusory disguise partially disrupted around multiple long, fluffy, white-furred tails as energy surges around them, a violet pulse expands from her hand to wash over the whole room. Her eyes, now with an unnervingly gem-like violet ring around the now vertical-almond-shaped pupils, sweep across the scene as her supernatural senses become active, glaring out across the room...

[Vivienne IS in her room, but has locked the door]

A somewhat small shape crouched under her bed, full of chaotic energy that buzzed like bees - somewhat hard to distinguish any one solid emotion from the strange static. It did seem of the living, in the regard though.

In the response to the sudden, tangible tension in the air, it shot out from underneath the bed frame. A cat, with long, fluffy grey hair that stood on spiked ends as it darted across the room. Its claw audibly raked the carpet as it tore towards the nearest window. Finding the window closed once it jumped up there, its furrowed and fluffed further. It yowled, then leapt back down. It seemed unnerved by Victi, her power and her presence.

The fur-ball made for the door, found no exit. It backed itself into a corner, growling lowly and menacingly. The sensation of Victi’s magic appeared to be agitating the gray creature. Its ears were pressed back against its head, hissing and growling low, lashing out with warning blows once or twice.

Where had this thing come from? Her door had been closed when she’d gotten to it, hadn’t it? All the windows closed when she’d left the room earlier?

The panicked cat scrambling startles her for a moment. Really not what she expected but, fortunately for the cat, it hadn't panicked toward her. That would have been an unpleasant mess to clean up. As it is, though, this feline incursion is still extremely weird and puzzling.

"Hahhh okay. This is going to be annoying," she sighs as all signs of the supernatural fade from view and the cat freaks out in the corner, "Unfortunately my partner is the one who's actually good with animals, all I've done is adopt a... never mind." She squats down a meter and half or so away and watches the thing, thinking. Opening the window and offering an escape was an option, but she wasn't sure if that would actually be a good idea. Letting a creature sprint and plummet, while an effective hunting strategy, was not really the goal here. Letting it out into the halls could also be slightly hilarious, but probably only for her.

Her eyes turn toward her second saddle bag. She has a pair of sturdy gloves in there, so she could slide those on and carry the sharp-footed critter out, probably, but then an small angry ambush predator would be running around the grounds up to who knows what, making who knows what noise. Her gaze then pivots the other way, to the antiquated phone on the side table and its little card of guest-friendly extensions. She could call someone, but most staff were probably already at dinner. Still, worth a shot

She turns her attention back to the cat. She gives it a steady, indifferent look and says, "Don't do anything stupid," before getting up and grabbing the phone.

She punches the first non-emergency or security number on the card which looks at all likely to yield results, and waits for an answer. If none comes, she moves on to the next.

In the lull of space and time between the first call with a disconnected line and the second number being punched, the voices from the hallway faded into the realm of attention. It was just on the other side of her room door, but was not directed at her.

“I can hear him!” A man’s voice. “Do you think he got into the vent, or something?”

A disinterested, female voice responded, “ew, he is probably going to be covered in dust and ick.”

Victi’s door knob clattered, the rattly handle tried and denied by the lock.

“Oh!” The man’s voice dropped a tone. “It’s locked…”

A pause of silence from outside. Then, the knob was tried again as if in confirmation of the original theory, then came a timid knock on the door.

All the while the cat sat in it’s pissy ball of bristly fluff, glaring at Victi as if it wasn’t her room, with round yellow eyes.

"Convenient," she mutters as the voices approach. She re-hooks the phone with a click, and makes it to the door by the time the knock comes.

She leans against the door and calls, "If you're looking for a runaway cat, he's in here. He's fine, by the way, though extremely upset at me for sliding a bag under my bed while he was under there. If you can get him out I'd appreciate it, I have some stuff to do that will be a lot harder with an angry critter in the room. Namely getting changed and stashing my bags under the bed."

"In case he decides to bolt when I open the door, let me know that you're ready to catch him? It's either that or he'll stay in the corner, but I'd rather not gamble with a critter who already escaped once."

Now, the voice on the other side seemed slightly startled, slightly awkward.

“Oh, uh, yeah, I’m really sorry about this! I hadn’t realized they’d filled this room, I - uh, wasn’t trying to be a weirdo.” There was some shuffling outside the door. “I’m ready when you are!”

When the door opened, a conveniently handsome man with sandy hair, green eyes and freckles was there. He lunged immediately, snatching the darting feline by the scruff and scooping it up into his arms. The cat still looked on edge, but no longer made sounds like a dying spacecraft.

“Hey, thanks,” the man puffed. “Figaro has been coming and going just as bad as the drafts in this place, I can’t seem to keep him put!” He glanced down at the gray cat, then back to Vivienne. “My name is Harry, I’m camping out across the way here,” he nodded as a gesture towards the door across the hall, slightly ajar. There was a dark haired woman there, momentarily. She merely sneered, whether at Vivienne or at Harry was hard to tell, then disappeared from view inside the room.

“Anyways, I’ll let you get back to your business. Sorry, again, for the intrusion! And, thank you for your help,” Harry offered a sympathetic half-smile, shuffling towards his doorway.

When told to do so, Vivienne opens the door enough to tempt the cat but not so much that he's apt to be able to dodge around anyone waiting outside. Once the beast is captured at last she opens the door more fully.

"Thanks for saving me from annoying staff or having to lug him somewhere myself," she replies to the thanks. She catches the top of the door frame with her hands and leans forward slightly to support herself while they talk. "Hopefully we won't have to do this too often. Vivienne, I just got in here today. Contract work, more or less. We'll see how long I'm here for."

The last set of pleasantries gets a cordial, "Thanks, don't worry about it, it's the cat's fault anyway, and anytime!" before she pushes herself back to standing with a flick of her wrists and turns away. She catches the door with her foot as she turns to swing it shut. Once it's closed and latched once again, she leans back against the door with a sigh. Situation resolved, conversation managed without complication. Yay. She locks it again before moving away.

She goes back to repacking her equipment, finishing up more quickly now, and does slide that bag under the bed. She puts the cat-toppled lamp back in its place, then opens the other bag and unpacks a few items. First, she pulls out some clothing which is padding other objects, a slightly up-market black sleeveless crop-top which roughly covers the shape of her rib cage and is made of a lacy-looking fabric, a slightly glossy, dark grey, sleek, knee-length skirt, and a slim-fitting pair of black short-shorts, for personal comfort and practicality. For now she leaves them on the bed and pulls out what they were wrapping: a durable plastic container of salt. She also withdraws a closed chalk holder which, when then opened, reveals an slightly shimmery piece of almost highlighter blue chalk. That gets set down on the desk.

Satisfied she turns her attention to the bed itself. With a bit of effort, and possibly some reduced functional weight and friction on the part of the piece of furniture with a bit of supernatural exertion, she shifts the bed forward far enough that a circle slightly generously containing all four corners of the bed would not have to cross through the wall.

She checks the distance a few times from different angles and, when satisfied, takes the canister of salt and uses it to trace a circle which closely contains the bed, leaving enough space that she could comfortably sit cross-legged to any side of the bed and be solidly within the circle. Following that, she takes the chalk and traces a well-practiced string of runes around the outside of the circle, all interlinked as if a single string of cursive text. That done, she does sit cross-legged to the northernmost (or northeasternmost, if needed) side of the bed with her fingers just touching the ring of salt, and focuses. She mutters her way through a few equations, adjusts the positions of her fingers on the salt some, and a smell of ozone fills the room. Electric-like arcs dance across the runes, and jump to the salt ring and back again for most of a minute before her work is complete.

Once it is, she moves to the second phase of setting up her personal protections, using the chalk again to inscribe a single, intricate, tessellatable symbol inside the area of the circle. Another minute or two of focus and channeled energy, more crackling across the symbol, and a few moments of careful staring follow. She smiles, stands, and packs the chalk and salt away, then grabs the change of clothes and steps away from the bed as the inscribed rune begins to grow.

Another minute later, she tosses her sportier day clothes onto the bed, picks up the "no housekeeping" sign to hang on the outside doorknob, and heads out in the somewhat fancier clothes to meet the others for the first collective meal in the house. As long as nothing disturbs her little project for the next hour or so, and it would hopefully have a tough time doing so, she will be able to sleep as confidently as if she were at home.

[Vivienne is OUT of her room! The door is locked and has a "no housekeeping" hanger on it. The bed is surrounded by what looks like a ritual circle which is slowly filling with chalk runes. An unseen solid barrier protects the circle or the expanding sigils from being touched, but only by a few millimeters.]

As the night deepened, the darkness grew.

The halls were walked. Slow feet dragging over the spongy carpet, soft creaks and groans with each shift of weight. The meandering pace was directionless, goalless.

sniff, sniff

The pinch of brine in the air did not go unnoticed, by nostrils long at home in the musk of mildew and age. Those draggings steps sloo]oo]wed. A sound akin to the gurgling a stomach makes when it curls with awful hunger, quietly disturbed the hallway.

The steps stopped at the door, long fingers brushing affectionately against the sign that hung from it. Those fingers latched to the knob, jerked it. Those darn, old locks. Good for nothing, weren’t they? Probably rusty, brittle, breaking away little by little with each engagement. It wouldn’t matter anyway, no matter the material or its expiration date.

The door swung under gravity, brushing against the carpet just enough to be heard.

sniff, sniff

The sprinkling of salt on the floor, like a moth to flame. Footsteps drag themselves to the side of the bed, where their bearer dropped to its knees. It went to pick at the salt, but found its grasp could not touch the granulates. It sat, silently picking at the edge of the barrier, sending little tickly tingles down the spider's web to its creator. It sat, it picked. The index finger that scrabbled rhythmically and unrelenting against the barrier grew raw over time.

It sat, it picked.

As false human hands pack up notebook, map, and camera in the library, a tingle runs along the abnormal myelin sheathing material of nerves, starting from the very end up the spine, extended far behind its bearer, up to the very top faster than the feeling of a tug or pinch would....

Vivienne straightens with a start and glares in what she knows is the direction of her room. She could get there faster, reduce the risk of anyone else seeing... whatever is poking at her protection, but possibly escalate her inevitable fight with the house more quickly than she is ready for. No, she would walk. Quickly, but she would walk.

She marches over to the rail overlooking the ground level of the library and vaults it, landing deftly. It's at least possible for someone to be trained enough to handle that drop. Maybe not land as quietly as she does, but hopefully no parkour masters had been lurking in the library to question it. Her long legs carry her swiftly out the door and along the now familiar route toward her room.... Oh, she had a bad feeling about that, too, but so far no trouble of that kind was deciding to stand in her way. She stops and glares again as her door comes into sight. Open.

Yeah, and I KNOW I left it closed and locked this time.

She barely holds down a growl in favor of silent, stalking steps toward her room. Whatever is in there, human or otherwise, was interacting with her barrier, investigating it. If it were inhuman, well, her job is her job. Deal with the problem. If it were human, well, her objective demands secrecy. An incident is better than a breach. She surges around the doorframe and into the room. There's a sudden smell of ozone as veil of eerie silence surrounds the room, cutting off sound to the outside. If someone looked at just the right time, they would see what looks like a flash of snow and smoke as the door slams without a sound.

Victi snarls at the miserable creature, two-toned eyes full of contempt and feral glee as she leaps up, arching her back and still almost hitting the ceiling, before dropping down toward the back of its neck, a foot striking down and awaiting that familiar...

satisfying...

SNAP

Mushy flesh did nothing to pad brittle bone, like the feeling of stomping through swamp muck in a marsh and finding a thin branch underfoot. It gave easily, the lovely snap of the thing’s neck only a little bit muffled through its saggy, pooling skin. It lay where it was smashed, it’s watery eyes rolled into oblivion and a small chunk of tissue that must’ve been the tip of its lolling tongue on the carpet beside its ghastly mouth, bitten off when the top of its cranium compacted into its lower jaw and then into the floor.

For a moment, things were still, until the mounting movements from the floor were enough to be noticeable. The plush carpet… was consuming the remains. The hair-like fibers making up the carpet undulated like millions of tiny tentacles, grasping and pulling. The ghoulish corpse was sinking further with each discrete grasp and pull.

Victi lets out a small grunt of exertion as she lands, followed by a sigh and growl of primal satisfaction. It was easy, too easy, even, but it still just felt good to kill something. She can't leave remains behind, of course, that would lead to all kinds of questions she isn't free to answer, so she begins to draw on power. A lot of it, honestly, but that would feel good to unleash, too. One of her tails comes around, tingles running along its length as a dull green light, the colour of oxidized copper rubbed with charcoal, begins to throb under the fur of that tail's tip.

She stops as she's about to unleash the spellform, eyes widening as she watches.... the house, presumably, devour its failed creature. She's stunned for a second at the weirdness of the scene, but quickly composes herself and springs into action. One tail applies a force to the door to keep it shut as though barred while a second projects an area with a strong enough upward force to let her place the map and her notebook in the air, off the floor for now. Tails three and four close the drapes, covering her window. Her hands turn on her camera and excitedly switch its storage mode to 'Memory 9,' scrolling past several instances of the same SD card of captures

A violet eye with vermillion wings graces the top right corner of the screen as the camera loads to its normal interface, showing the scene in front of the lens. She ticks the dial over to 'record video' mode, and clicks start.

For as long as it it takes for the creature to be completely devoured by the carpet, she lets tail number five sustain the telekinetic effect to hold the camera in place and watching. In the meanwhile, keeping well out of the lens's line of sight, she works her way around the bed to examine her ward, tails six and seven projecting the well memorized pattern of symbols over the part of the circle which she's examining, letting her see if those strands of carpet had been managed to move anything else and crack her nascent protected area. Hopefully nothing had realized just what she's up to yet, but it would never hurt to check. She would have sabotaged it just on principle, if she were an place like this. Never hurt to preemptively weaken prey, after all...

For fifty-three seconds, the remnants of what had been scrounging around was tucked away by the carpet, until completely gone. Nary a stain. The recorded copies of what had been filmed, naturally, showed what appeared to be still footage of the bedroom’s floor. Mundane and notably corpseless. Perhaps, if one looked hard enough it could seem like the carpet through the camera was squirming, but perhaps that was just the viewer's knowledge of what had happened here.

The sacred circle of protection was absolutely undisturbed. Not a granule nor symbol tainted. Was this comforting? Or unsettling? The bed was laying in wait for Victi nonetheless, ready to tuck her in and rest her little head, all safely and soundly within the dome of ward.

The camera ends up catching five minutes of dull footage as she goes about verifying that circle and inactive ward are intact. Satisfied, Victi returns to the camera and ends the recording. She expects that, at least on the conventional memory card, the footage will either be blank, blurred, corrupted, or full of static. Lots of things that go bump in the night either don't fully exist in the physical world, create electromagnetic interference, don't actually interact with light in a normal way, or cause countless other phenomena which could disrupt digital recording, physical film, or both. Her eyes lock with the winged one on screen, and she smirks. If she were right, though, none of that would stop her in the slightest. Even if she were wrong, though, that would be useful information, and she could wait to confirm it until she had slept. There were still chores to do.

She retrieves a sturdy plastic folder from her bag for the map, stores it inside, and tucks the folder back in the bag along with her notebook. The camera goes to its home in the other bag, and she sits both on the desk chair. After this, she moves over to the door and tests the lock. It was clearly unlocked now, so how had a strange, simple creature like that... ah, broken. It made her glad that she had killed it quickly, it was stronger than it had looked.

She glares at the lock for a moment and lets out an "UGH" of frustration. Later problem. For now, she's finishing up her main trick of the evening.

She kneels next to her circle of salt and reaches over, gently pressing her hands against the runes which glimmer faintly across the floor inside the ring. At least to her eyes. A surge of power leaves her hands and ripples across the magically cordoned off section of floor, making the protective symbols glow for a few moments before fading, their spread stopped and activation conditions prepared. Perfect. Now, the last step to activating them. She places one claw on the inside edge of the ring and quickly yanks it back toward her, slicing it through the salt to break the circle. As she does, the ward-runes flare to life once again and, to any one or thing able to sense magic, a shimmering blue veil rushes up to the ceiling like a pillar of icy flame. It isn't just a ring or wall, but a filled column of furious denial which only accepts Victi herself and inanimate objects already inside or intentionally brought in by her. Anything else, anything animate in any form, is forced out and forced to stay out.

The light of the runes fades to normal vision, but the barrier stays. A potent protection against interlopers, assassins, hauntings, and other miscellaneous dangers and distractions. With all of that done, she brings the chair over to the door and props its back up under the handle if she can to lock it in place, then brings her bags with her into the sanctuary around the bed. Clothing gets removed, finally, and stashed into the right bag and she resumes her disguise.


Vivienne slides her bags under her bed after a long first day in the manor, and curls up in bed to go to sleep.