2019-05-18 - Into the Woods

Alexander is walking in the woods, in an oversized green army vest - it's Vietnam era, so it can't possibly be his - with the collar turned up. He seems to be making his way in the direction of the abandoned sawmill, but it's a rambling, twisting path as he seems to get distracted easily. He can probably be heard before he's seen; he's not trying to be stealthy, and his boots crack branches and leaves underfoot, even with how sodden everything is.

The question everyone might be asking themselves is....why is a nice girl like her out in the woods like this?

Baylee has dressed for it, at least, in a pair of skinny jeans that are tucked into the tops of leather hiking boots, warm wool socks pulled up over the jeans, a t-shirt under an open hooded jacket under a leather jacket, hood up to cover her hair. The noise that is Alexander does serve to alert her to the arrival of someone else out in the woods, and she shifts behind a tree until she can see who it is. Very paranoid, really.

But when she spots the crazy guy from the boardwalk she laughs, stepping away from the tree to hold the cigarette in her hand up, "Got a light?"

Alexander freezes when he hears the laughter, and turns in that direction with a jerk, hands balling into fists. He relaxes only slightly when he sees who it is, his eyes darting back and forth before he says, cautiously, "I have matches." Then he starts moving in her direction, putting one hand into one of the the bulging pockets of the jacket. He stops just out of arm's reach, pulling out a disposable pack of matches with a bar's logo on them, and thrusting them abruptly towards her. "You're the Brit with half a name. Baylee. Private investigator." It sounds like an accusation.

"Half a name?" Baylee wonders with not small amount of amusement at the accusation in her tone, the matches taken and one torn out so that she can light the cigarette, then she passes the match book back, "So what, you want my full name?" She wonders, taking a long drag from the cigarette before letting it out with a sigh as that rush of nicotine hits her system, "But you're right on the other two accounts, I am British and I am a private investigator." She then pauses to give him a little bit more of a thoughtful look before she adds, "But I'm not looking for the Illuminati."

"Yes. It's more difficult to forget people if they have a proper name. First. Last. No nicknames." He takes the matches back and they disappear into a different pocket of the overlarge jacket. Alexander shakes his head. "I wouldn't expect you to be. Looking for the Illuminati. What ARE you looking for? Gray Harbor isn't exactly on a lot of 'see the beauties of the Americas' maps, and Seattle has more work for an investigator. Townies tend to be suspicious of outsiders."

"Beatrix Leigh Bewicke-St. John." Baylee offers when he establishes his reasoning for having a full name from someone, that amusement spiking just a little higher before she shrugs her shoulders, "I thought I'd try small town U.S.A., honestly." She glances around the woods for a little while before she turns her attention back towards him, "I didn't have any particular reason for Gray Harbor, but it's close enough to larger cities that if I get really bored here I can bail...But, I'm here, and I'm going to make the best of it."

"That's...a lot of names." Alexander blinks. Then looks pleased. "I will remember that, Miss Bewicke-St. John." He waits, patiently, for her to finish speaking, looking for all the world like a standing puppet with no one to pull the strings while she looks around. At the end, he jerks his chin in a nod. "I see." He tilts his head further into the woods. "You should be careful. It's easy to get lost in this town; even moreso in these woods. Have you been to the sawmill?"

"Baylee." The correction is quick, or maybe it is just a reminder that she has a nickname that is perfectly suitable for use. "The town isn't that big, how is it easy to get lost in it?" She frowns a bit, something tickling at the back of her mind, but she doesn't seem to be able to quite put her finger on it just yet. Instead she shakes her head at the question of the sawmill, "Can't say that I've been to the sawmill. This some kind of local landmark, like that carousel in the park is?"

"The town is larger than you might think. It contains multitudes, Miss...Baylee." Alexander accepts the correction only grudgingly, and with a flicker of pained exasperation. "Then again, I am exceptionally prone to getting lost." A ghastly sort of grin twists his face for a second. "So, you might ignore me. Most people do." He turns towards the direction of the sawmill. "No. Not in the same way, at least. No one's supposed to go there, but children play there, teenagers sneak off for drinks and sex. That sort of landmark."

"Multitudes?"Baylee's brows lift upwards a fraction before she flicks the ashes off her cigarette into the damp ground at her feet, "Do you really believe in the Illuminati stuff, or is it some sort of..cover..." Cover for what? She doesn't even know. Without really pausing to give him space to reply to the first two questions she skips right to a third thing, but this time it isn't a question so much as it is a statement. "Right, one of those sorts of landmarks." And then another question, one that is asked with no actual ounce of seriousness to her tone. "You asking me to sneak off for drinks and sex with you in the sawmill?"

"I never said I believed in 'the Illuminati stuff', Miss Baylee," Alexander pointed out, voice deadpan and dry. "I said my client did. I am willing to entertain the possibility, but I don't think I've ever met an agent of the Illuminati." That's reassuring. "Not when they were real, anyway." Maybe that's not. He stares flatly at her at her last question, no twitch of humor or recognition of her humor. "No. But if you wanted to see it, I could show you the way. Better to go there with someone else, so you recognize it if you end up there again without wanting to be."

There is a very slight narrowing of her eyes when he adds that last part about the agents. But then she shakes her head very slowly, "Alright. So...you don't believe in the Illuminati, but you're willing to entertain the idea for your...client." She takes another drag from her cigarette before she waves her hand towards him, "Go on, show me to the sawmill so that I know when some disreputable individual is taking me out there." Some other disreputable individual, apparently. "Are all your clients related to the...Illuminati then? Or was it just this lucky individual and his penis."

"The Illuminati is fairly rare," Alexander admits after a moment of thought. "Bigfoot is more common. Sometimes witches, ghosts. Once a client hired me to find her dog, who she swore was eaten by the Bandage Man of Cannon Beach...except that it was here in Gray Harbor." At her acceptance, he jerks his head and starts walking through the woods, apparently trusting her to keep up. Or not. Whichever, he continues to talk. "People like to be believed, Miss Baylee. Even if by someone who is not considered credible themselves. And sometimes they're not wrong. Unless it's Bigfoot. It's /never/ Bigfoot."

"Alright. Never Bigfoot." Baylee says the words patiently, carefully, and calmly. Like she might just not be realizing that she's dealing with an actual crazy person. "So, witches, ghosts, Bigfoot...and sometimes the Illuminati. These are the sorts of things your clients bring you?" She shakes her head a bit, falling into step with him only after a last second of consideration for the wisdom of the action. "I'm shocked that you don't have any Mothmen or aliens on the list of who your clients think did...whatever they think they did." She then slants a look at him, lips pressing together a moment, "Don't you feel bad about taking advantage of these people?"

"Aliens aren't uncommon," Alexander says, with a shrug. "Just less interesting. Usually." He kicks a branch out of the way, steering them gradually towards the darker parts of the wood. At least there IS a path, and it seems well-worn, so surely he's not trying to lead her out to a killing field. Right. He turns to look at her at her last question. "What makes you think I am taking advantage of these people, Miss Baylee?" He doesn't seem offended by the question.

"Because none of that shit is really real, and you're just feeding into their delusions." Baylee points out as she continues to follow to the killin....sawmill. If he's leading her out to a well used killing field she's at least following along like a little lamb to the slaughter. "Look." She lifts a hand up before she takes a drag from the cigarette, carefully blowing the smoke out, "I fully believe that there are rings of powerful men in this world in secret, dark little rooms directing the world like evil overlords. Maybe not called the Illuminati, but yeah...There's an elite class that is pulling all the strings, sometimes more openly than others. But I'm not buying the rest. Bigfoot? Bandage man? Aliens?" She shakes her head, "Your encouragement of those delusions is sort of taking advantage, right?"

"Really real." Alexander ducks his head, frowning at a couple of the moss-covered rocks that they wander past. "What is real, and what is /really/ real, Miss Baylee? If it can kill you, is it unreal? If you have seen it with your own eyes, felt its clammy touch, heard its whispers, but it's only real SOME of the time, where does that fall in the continuum of reality to unreality. And does it matter?" He jerks his head up and points his chin down the path. "Besides, ask around. I'm widely considered to be crazy. If that's true, then aren't /they/ feeding into /my/ delusions? Who is taking advantage of who?"

"Are you being paid for your work?" Baylee wonders as she takes one last drag from the cigarette before dropping it to the damp ground, grinding it out beneath her foot. This causes her to fall behind him just a moment. "Really real, as in...this is something that can be proven. To exist." It's not a very strong argument, though. Considering things. "So have you ever seen your aliens, or anything like that? Have you ever felt its clammy touch and heard its whispers?" There is a tinge more unease at the final question than when she lightly bandies around the word aliens.

"Usually." Alexander says, to the first question. "Not everyone can. But if they can, I get paid. If they can't, and it's interesting, I might do it anyway." When she falls behind, he doesn't turn to look back, but he does stop until she catches up again. "What is proof? Is it only proof if someone with a Ph.D. says it is, or a camera can capture it to be dissected and discussed?" He falls silent at her last question, staring blankly out into the woods for long enough that it seems like he's just not going to answer. "Yes," he says, at last. "Have you not?"

"If you're being paid for things that don't exist, seems kind of like you're taking advantage, yeah." Baylee makes sure that the cigarette it out, so that she doesn't burn it all down around them, then she hurries to catch up. The question turned back on her gets a frown, her shoulders tensing beneath her coat, "Maybe." It's a very begrudgingly given answer, though. "I'll grant you that there is some pretty strange shit in this town."

"But it doesn't seem like taking advantage to take pictures of infidelity and other moments of personal weakness, and exchange them for money to people who will use them against the subjects of the photos?" Alexander's voice remains toneless. "And, as I said, my clients aren't always wrong. And rarely completely wrong. The woman was stealing from my client. He just couldn't accept that she was just another grifter stealing money, so he created a story that was easier for him to accept. A lie? Perhaps. But it made the truth bearable. And either way, she is gone, and he feels like he got what he paid for." He does look at her at her answer, eyebrows going up, slightly. "Yes. Pretty strange shit sums it up admirably."

"Fuck no." Baylee shakes her head at that question, "It's rather more like...not taking pictures of infidelity and other moments of personal weakness would be taking advantage." Which is an illogical statement, all things considered. "Look, the reality is that the husband, or wife, really is cheating. They knew better, and moment of weakness or not, if I didn't allow someone to decide with full knowledge to stay with them or not that would be more of a shitty thing than....like, allowing them to continue to be taken advantage of by their spouse." But then there is a shrug of her shoulders, "Fine, I'll grant you that the guy was being robbed...but not in the way he thought. You've got a point there."

"And you have a point with your response, as well, Miss Baylee." Alexander looks at her, thoughtfully. "But I am not certain why that would lead you to NOT take a client who then believed that they were being stalked by Bigfoot, or that an alien was sabotaging their car. Would it not also follow that THEY deserve to know the truth and have the full knowledge of what is happening to them? It may not be Bigfoot - but then, the spouse isn't always cheating, either. As long as you do not lie to them about what you find, is it wrong to give them one person in the world who is at least willing to take their concerns seriously?" He stops, then, so that he can stare at her more directly. Perhaps the answer to this question is more important than some of the others.

When he comes to a stop she takes a whole step further before she realizes that he stopped, then she stops and turns around towards him. There is a frown at the question, her hands tucking into the pockets of her jacket as she shifts from one foot to another, looking mildly ill at east by the turn the conversation has taken. "No." She answers, shaking her head very slowly at him, "No, it's not like...wrong to give them one person in the world who is at least willing to take their concerns seriously."

Alexander jerks his chin in his odd little version of a nod. "Then I don't consider myself to be taking advantage of them." He starts walking again, just as abruptly as he stopped. "Are you settling in well? Found a place to live, clients, all of that?" The questions are asked awkwardly, even more lifeless than the previous ones, as if he's just been handed a script saying Small Talk, and is reading off of it.

"I've got to get the proper licensing sorted out before I can officially have clients here." Which is a no. "But I found a place to live, met some people I guess. Learning my way around the town." Baylee starts to walk again when he does, her chin lifting just faintly before she narrows her eyes, "Worried that I'm going to muscle in on your client base?"

"Licensing." Alexander snorts. "Tagged and tracked and watched. Why bother?" He rounds a bend in the path, nods at the woods up ahead. There's a large, chain-link fence that is clearly designed to keep people out. But, at the same time, at least one large, ragged hole has been torn into it so that it's basically an open door to explorers. "And no. People who come to me come because I'm me. If they wanted to go /anywhere else/, they already would. And you don't take Bigfoot cases."

"It cuts down on my jail time, and it means that if I need to bother the police then I'm in a better position to get their attention. It also means that I don't get as much bullshit from them if I end up having to shoot someone." Which is probably not as true as some of the other of what she says. "No, I don't take Bigfoot cases, that's true. You've got the market cornered on that." She pauses when the large, chain-link fence comes into view, "So that's the sawmill. I can see how it might appeal to teenagers."

Alexander makes a thoughtful noise. Like he never once in his life considered the benefits of legitimacy. What he asks, though, is skeptical. "Do you shoot many people, Miss Baylee?" Just a jerk of a nod at the recognition of his unique client base. "Would you like to go in? Unless we get lost, it's just a sawmill."

"Never shot anyone. But I might, some day. The guy that I learned everything from, he had before. But then again, I guess he was more quick to pull the trigger...he was an ex-cop." Baylee offers, studying the fence for a little while before she glances at him, brows furrowing slightly, "Okay, you've said it a few times now, so I'm going to bite. How do you get lost in a place you know?"

"Maybe he was just very bad at diplomacy. You shouldn't have to shoot anyone who is real," says the crazy guy with no social skills. His brow furrows. "And if I knew how, then I would know how NOT. It just happens, sometimes. You can even get lost in your bedroom, or wherever it is that you sleep, if you aren't careful. And then you might find that real is a continuum rather than a binary."

"Like..." Baylee starts, then frowns a moment, "Like realizing the world is tilting around you and suddenly you can hear all the voices of people who should not be there." She glances at him, brows lifting upwards, "That sort of lost in your where ever?"

Alexander smiles, then. It's a real smile, even if only the barest upward tilt at the corners. "Ah. You have been lost, then." He shoves his hands in his pockets, slouches in place. "It can be different. Sometimes you don't know it's happened until something is just wrong with the world. Sometimes there are aliens. Or Illuminati. Or ragged men covered in bandages who eat dogs. Consistency is the hobgoblin of small towns, and Gray Harbor is larger than it seems."

"When I first got here." Baylee ventures forward with the narrative, evidently feeling that telling the obviously not-crazy-but-maybe-still-crazy guy the fucked up story is fine. "I thought it was some bad weed, you know? This guy on the bus gave me a joint, and it was just...immediate. Bad trip, like, really messed up." She lifts a hand from her pocket, waving it in front her, "World felt like it was tilting, and I couldn't keep standing. Then the metal began to rust, and I heard my fucking dad telling me shit. And my dad isn't anywhere around here."

Alexander considers her story quietly. "Does metal often rust around you?" There's no mockery in the question. No disbelief in his expression. In this moment, it's somewhat easy to see why someone who thinks they're being stalked by alien Illuminati or god knows what else might come to him, because while there's a hint of sympathy in his furrowed brow, his downward turned mouth, there's absolutely no skepticism or urge to say things like 'and why did you take drugs from a stranger' or 'you know how that sounds, right'.

"Nope. Never had the experience before in my life until I got here." Baylee shakes her head, her arms crossing over her chest, shoulders hunching just a little, "Never before heard voices, either. If that is going to be your follow-up question...or dented metal when I got angry. But all those things seem to have happened." She then thinks about it before adding, "Or maybe I really was having a bad trip."

"And now you know why asking what is 'real' begins to be a hard question to answer." Alexander stares up at the leaves above them, wet and dripping with the cold rain. "Have you had anything happen since then? Voices, metal rusting, other strangeness? Once it starts, it usually doesn't leave you alone. Drugs don't help. Alcohol, either. Doesn't stop people from trying, but I think it just makes it worse."

"I slammed a door shut." Which doesn't sound weird on the surface, but given the context of the rest of the conversation it is probably not very normal. "Other than that? No...nothing else seems to have happened yet. That...was weird enough that I noticed, I guess." She glances down towards the ground, stubbing her toe lightly against the sodden earth, "You? Beyond getting lost sometimes, you have any weird shit happening?"

"Give it time." Alexander is not very good at reassuring people. "And yes. I hear things. Feel things. I..." He frowns, takes out a small notepad and pen, and kneels down. He digs through the fallen leaves and wet mud for a moment, until he unearths a tiny cedar sapling, just starting to poke its way out of the wet loam. He lays the notebook beside it, and starts drawing a weird, intricate sort of design - circles within circles, studded by triangles and Latin phrases. He mutters under his breath, then touches the sapling. It grows beneath his fingers, shooting up six to eight inches, a couple months of growth in a rush of green and brown.

"What the fuck." Baylee exclaims as she takes a very steps back from him, and the newly growing sapling. "That..." She uncrosses her arms, pointing towards the little tree in the making, "How'd you do something like that? I've..." She shakes her head, hands raising to rub at her face as she takes a deep breath, "Alright. So....you can make things grow."

"Sometimes." Alexander gently puts a heap of insulating leaves and loam around the newly strengthened sapling and stands up. He seems oblivious to the big black stains on his pants. "It's harder than other things, and doesn't always work. It's why I use the," he shows her the intricate diagram, before flipping the notebook closed and tucking it away into the jacket, "focus. It helps. I think. Hard to say, really. It's not...scientific. really. It just IS. You learn as you go." He frowns, and his shoulders hunch. "We should start walking, though. Sometimes bad things happen, after."

"I've heard that much." Baylee glances around, like she's now curious about if something bad really is about to show up, "But in the context of...the more you do the more likely something is to happen that was unexpected." Which doesn't mean that what she's heard before is any more right or wrong than what he is telling her now. "How long have you...uh, been able. To grow plants and other things?"

Alexander starts walking. Apparently she can come or not. He doesn't go closer to the sawmill, though, instead turning around and starting to head back down the path. "I've always been like this. That I can remember, I mean. Always the whispers, the feelings, getting lost. Everything." It's just an observation - there's neither bitterness nor self-pity in it, at least not openly. Resignation, perhaps. "It's gotten stronger, I think, as I understand more about what I can do. But I don't know if that's MORE, or just...using it better."

Stay where she's at, risk finding out if something dark and scary does show up. Or follow. Following him wins, and she turns away from the sawmill with one final look towards it before she hurries to catch up to Alexander. "Fine like I guess between more and refining of your abilities. Like...." Baylee trails off, then shakes her head, "Not sure like what, but I get it."

Another jerk of his head. "It's not...good, Miss Baylee. Or bad. You can hurt people if you're not careful. Sometimes if you are. You can definitely hurt yourself in a hundred different ways. But I don't know that ignoring it helps, either. Then you just get sucker punched by things. Because you draw attention now. I don't know if you did before. But you do, now." Alexander glances back to her, that ghost of a grin reappearing. "I wouldn't tell you any of this if you didn't."

"Attract attention?" Baylee shakes her head, "No more than the usual sort of person does, I guess. Or..." She trails off, then changes tracks after a moment, "No. I don't think that I've ever attracted attention in this manner, at least. With this sort of shit. But I have noticed that some people are distinctly different feeling than others, and that is a really new fucking thing." She reaches into her pocket again, pulling out her cigarettes, and a lighter to light one. Evidently she didn't actually need the light earlier.

"Yes. You see them. They see you. And they see you." Two distinct sets of 'theys' by Alexander's emphasis, but he doesn't elaborate. Just looks around the wet forest with its deep, damp shadows as they walk, as if scanning around for anyone else who might be out there. The smell of tobacco draws his attention back to her. "Those things will kill you."

"Probably will, yeah." Baylee agrees as she looks down at the cigarette in her hand, the pack being tucked back into her pocket, "But there are plenty of other things that'll kill me too. Drugs, alcohol....my lifestyle. My life." She shakes her head, taking a drag from it before she adds, "Evidently maybe these mysterious theys will kill me, too."

"Maybe. Maybe not." Alexander gives a shrug, hunched under his jacket. "I don't see the point of making it easier than I have to for any of those things, but as the phrase goes: you do you." He runs his hand through damp hair, leaving streaks of black loam from his horticultural experiment earlier. "I should go. You can find your way out from here. Stay on the path." A quirk of his lips. "Don't talk to strangers. Definitely don't follow them to isolated places in the forest."

"Or get in their cars and go home with them." Baylee adds, which might be part of her statement about her lifestyle and things possibly being things that'll kill her in the end. She takes another drag off it before she gives him a very slight salute, "But yeah, I can find my way out of the woods and safely home from here." Assuming that she doesn't get lost, at least.

"Uber is a curse," Alexander mutters, shaking his head. He waits only long enough to receive that last reassurance, then strides off...not down the path, but going in an odd, random direction.