2020-03-11 - The Dress and the Spike
While doing some housekeeping, Byron decides to do something he's been avoiding for a while now: Trying to learn more about two objects that have attachments to a couple of violent events in his recent past. (This scene is continued in The Last Endeavor)
IC Date: 2020-03-11
OOC Date: 2019-10-23
Location: Penthouse
Related Scenes: 2020-03-11 - The Last Endeavor 2020-03-16 - Talking Crow
Plot: None
Scene Number: 4257
After a day of meeting with possible tenants, both for the Casino and the Bayside Apartments, Byron was finally home. Alone. Lilith had some work to do at her own shop as far as he knew. After having showered and changed out of business attire into something more comfortable: a long sleeved hunter green turtle neck sweater and jeans, he decides to take this time to rearrange a few things. With Lilith moving her things into his place, Byron decides to do some housekeeping of his own. It's during this process of shifting items and creating space for her to put her things that he comes across a few things that they both had stored away for safe keeping. Sorting a few items within his safe, he comes across a couple of objects that hold some amount of significance to them. What he was really after was Lilith's indestructible box. It held a couple of items of interest and he's not quite sure why, but he's being drawn to investigate the both of these further.
However, in his way sits an old fashioned hat box. The one which his great grandaunt's wedding dress was stored in. Unlike the other two items which were stored away due to the circumstances surrounding them, this wedding dress was only kept within the safe due to it's age and fragility. It was an antique and he had no good place to store it as of yet. If he's even still considering keeping it rather than returning it back to the Addington House Museum where it rightfully belonged.
On moving the hat box to retrieve the FCN manufactured container, just touching the intricate fabric covered sides of the fancy ribbon wrapped thing brings back memories of what he'd encountered during his initial reading of that dress.
It's a pretty dress and well-kept (assuming Hyacinth took care of it after she ROBBED it), the size and cut appropriate to the era and suggesting a well-shaped wearer. There's even a little lingering perfume in there, very romantic. Except that the wave of nausea that comes with that dress is pretty intense. It's a knot in Byron's stomach, some blend of revulsion and resignation. The veil comes down over fine, dark eyes and a shaky inhale fires that resignation into hardened steel. She thinks about her groom for a moment: her strange, awkward Addington. Everyone agrees that it's a good match. But he's so odd. Probably because of what happened to his brother and sister.
A shudder catches her unawares, and she tightens her hand on her father's when he comes to walk her down the aisle. He tells her how important this is and kisses her cheek. She tries not to think about the family she's about to marry into, about how cursed it is. People killing them on picnics. That whole... mess... with the Ghoul. Even this house - lovely as it is - with whatever happened to the architect, with whatever's really in the basement, and everyone knows about the hanging in the attic. She puts those thoughts away, too, and smiles her way through the church. The last glimpse before she turns to her groom - whom Byron never sees - is of her brother, David, looking uncomfortably at her. The only one in the family that seems to sympathize with her. He's a dead-ringer for Byron.
Byron's body remains still, almost as if he were in a trance. But he wasn't reading the dress right now, he was remembering. Remembering the nauseating nervous tension running through hi-- Claire Addington nee Thorne. Taking in the scent of the perfume as if he had just read it right this moment. Going through each and every frantic thought that popped into the poor young bride's head during what should have been the happiest day of her life. Byron's not stupid to know that marriage was all bliss. Especially not back in those days when you were part of a prominent family.
But how prominent were the Thornes?
His mind doesn't linger on that random thought for very long, it's Claire Thorne's worries that has him sifting through each Addington tragedy as they race through his great grandaunt's mind. He knew of some of these incidents, but not all of them. Perhaps he wasn't paying attention. Perhaps they had nothing to do with anything. But why is he thinking on them right now?
And then he sees his own face in the crowd. David Thorne, his Great Grandfather. If not for the lack of facial hair, it would almost feel as if he were looking back at himself in the reflection of a mirror. If re-incarnation were a thing... Blinking once, he shakes those thoughts out of his head and finishes the pushing of the hat box slightly off to the side. It's the indestructible box that he was after.
With the safe shut tight, Byron brings the box out to the living room. It felt less confined than his decently sized bedroom and this was where he'd often do readings. From the comfort of his leather sofa. Setting the jewelry-box sized contraption down onto the coffee table, he heads to the bar to make himself a drink. This was stupid. A bad idea. He knows this. What use would any information that comes from either of these items be?
The only reason why he's doing this tonight is because that fucking crow attacked Lilith. But that was in the past. Lilith recovered from that trauma. Why dig this up now?
Pouring himself a much needed glass of whiskey to help him relax during what he expects to be a difficult read, he settles himself on the couch, his eyes on the still closed box. He's in no rush, but Lilith might return home at any moment and he honestly doesn't want this out here when she gets back. After taking a couple of adequate sips from his glass, the drink is set down on one side of the box. Here is when he opens it. The feather was what he wanted, but the way the contents within the box rattled around, the spike from their horrific winter ice skating expedition is the first item that he touches, if only to move aside very much like the hat box earlier, to get to the main prize.
Staring down at the macabre thing, he remembers completely the visions they'd all been shown at the creek. The woman nailed to a tree by several of these bloody things. Fuck Me. Rising from his seat, he walks to the bookshelf where he stores a spare pack of cigarettes in yet another box, in the case of.. well, something like this were to occur. Retrieving the smokes, he resettles himself down and lights up, taking one long drag of the cigarette. During that time, the spike was returned back to the Veil box and while he'd love to ignore it, now that he's seen it, touched it, it was no longer easy to dismiss.
Breathing in another breath of poison, he lets the smoke fume out from his nostrils. It was time. Setting the cigarette down into a nearby ashtray on the table, he takes in another breath, a deep one as well, before he takes up the spike to finally delve into its past.
Lilith told Byron when they stashed the spike inside the box that it was from close to the turn of the century, a time when the lumber and woodcutting industry was rampant, so it’s unsurprising to find these spikes in trees here and there. But the circumstances under which this spike was found no doubt warns Byron that the years have no way of dampening what secrets the spike holds. It’s probably not going to be pleasant.
In fact, it’s highly unpleasant. The spike is old but what comes through with emotional pain and turmoil is vividly fresh, the emotional signature of certain final moments lashed to the object like a supernatural echo magnet. In passing, the spike from a lumberjack’s kit is known to Byron because while feeling as someone else, he knows who is driving the stake into a hand while a woman screams in pain and bleeds, terribly cut open and disemboweled while being staked between two close trees. It belongs to Nigel Allen, his rage and need for revenge is behind each hit and the female victim feels it and knows why.
Mostly, she feels terror and pain, but through that, because of who is driving this stake, she feels sickening guilt, it’s her due, it’s his right to punish the hands that took a sacred life from him now that they’ve purged her. Hands. Spike. Blood. Hands. Hands…
The guilt is tied to an image of those hands wrapped around a younger girl’s neck. They’re in a fight by the edge of the water, the woman and the teenage girl, they tumble, those hands stay fast. Desperate to choke the darkness and cleanse the girl, she dunks her into the water, they end up in the water, it’s frigid cold, it’s supposed to be cleansing, she’s freeing Nina.
Gurgling and screaming in the water, there’s fear as the bubbles lace through with inhuman growls that scare the woman and her hands. She tries to make it stop, purge it OUT of the girl. There’s blood in the water as her arms and hands are clawed with self-defense that’s as much rage from something else, not just the girl’s life-preserving reflexes. A necklace snaps off under the water, the woman feels the chain break with snag of a finger and the fight. It’s washed to hook on a stone as the girl dies and the woman starts to hysterically scream, the inhuman growls lacing her own voice now.
Pain is one of the worst things a Mentalist experiences when doing a read like this. Pain, fear. Any sort of suffering. It would't be too bad if you merely observed everything going on, but as you're reading actual emotional residue, it's the emotions that come in strong, sometimes to the point of being overpowering.
Having one's hands staked to the trees and then feeling your blood and entrails spilling out after being disemboweled was not what Byron wanted to experience, even though he knew the fate of this woman. He'd seen it out in the forest already. But who was this man and why was he doing this. And why does he think that he already knows that answer. His grip around the spike tightens where he's seated in his living room, while his other hand digs deeply into the leather of the couch, feeling his whole body racked with pain.
The switch from being crucified on those trees and now this. This was a memory within a memory stirred up by this strong feeling of guilt. But there was another emotion attached to all of this. There was this strong feeling of righteousness flowing through him to go with this crazed urgency to cleanse, no free the younger woman. It was a huge mess and along with the strong emotional attachments, he could feel the frigid water and then the clawing hand when the teenage girl decides to fight back. While there was always a strong feeling of hysteria engulfing him through her, what comes after the girl's death is almost maddening.
When he comes to, breaking out of that trance, Byron is completely out of breath. Maybe it was the growling and hysterical laughter or the lingering sensation of your life force slipping away from you while you hang there bleeding. Either way, his heart is beating madly within his chest and he has this need to breathe. He knew that this was a bad idea and after the event at the creek, had no real desire to look into whatever tragedy occurred there any further. Yet here he was now, trying to shake the images from his mind and rid himself of those tainted emotions.
Who were those people? What was the woman trying to do that caused her own demise?
Staring up at the ceiling, his head tilted back so that its resting against the crest rail of the couch, Byron takes this time to recover from his psychometric ordeal. There were still so many questions. And here he's trying to remind himself that it's none of his business. That whoever they were, that woman, none of that mattered to him. After several minutes of trying to sort out this tragic story, he finally moves, posture straightening before he leans forward to take another sip of his whiskey.
The spike is left on the opposite side of the box from his deposited glass. Only the bone white feather remained within the magical box. If reading this lumberjack spike was this much of a shit show, he's already having second thoughts about reading an item that may have originated from the Veil.
Tags: violence