2020-03-13 - Clocks, Basements and the Number Thirteen

Research in the library has kept Isabella largely out of sight and out of mind for most of the day and well into the evening when texts were sent to Easton and Alexander asking to meet them at closing time in Two If By Sea. It's a quick drive from her family home in Bayside where she had been visiting her father for dinner, given her grandfather's recent return to town.

The headlights of the cherry-red Jeep flash over the windows of the bar before it parks in the mostly empty parking lot. Relatively fresh from her travels and travails in England, Isabella even looks happy to be home when she emerges from the vehicle, dressed warmly in her lightweight winter coat, leggings and boots. The fact that she has arrived with Alexander confirms for Easton, at least, that the two of them are within one another's very close orbit again. With the door swinging open, she's clearly relieved to venture into warmer spaces, though.

"Don't worry, nothing's being taken off today," she says, laughter present whenever she finds Easton. "Besides, I don't think I'm drunk enough to entertain the both of you with that kind of nonsense."

Alexander waits until Isabella has arrived before he enters the bar, staying behind her, although he arrived a good twenty minutes before. Perhaps he's enthralled by the dark, churning sea, enough that he simply leans against some stones until the Jeep appears. He smiles and greets Isabella with a kiss, then follows her inside, nearly swallowed in his olive green jacket. He scans the interior suspiciously for ambush or patrons showing an interest in the two of them, and his smile when they find Easton turns faint and flickering. He does give Isabella an amused look. "You can't set anything on fire except metaphorically, so it'd be safer."

The bar is nearly empty long before closing time, and by the time the actual bar closes up there is only Gary left at the bar. Easton is busy cleaning and doing his best to ignore Gary. When Isabella and Alexander come in, Gary perks up at the talk of things getting take off. Easton rolls his eyes and says, "Don't get too excited, but do get your ass in gear. We're officially closed." Gary doesn't seem to take this too harshly, downing the last of his beer and heading for the door.

"Please don't taunt her into starting fires in my bar." because telling Isabella she can't do something is not something Easton would recommend to most people.

The bottle of Glenvlivet is plucked and set down on the bar with only two glasses. He pours one and then hesitates and raises his eyebrows at Alexander, silently asking him if he's joining Isabella in this.

Alexander's greeting kiss is one that Isabella returns with clear enthusiasm, before the two of them venture into the bar together. There's a wave to Gary when he's ostensibly kicked out by the boss. She does watch the man leave, however, before she continues - and quickens her steps when Easton breaks out the Glenlivet. "You're a lifesaver," she tells him with a smile.

She doesn't sit, however, not yet. She leans against the counter and sets her satchel on the other stool adjacent to her, plucking out a notebook and what appears to be a torn out magazine page tucked into it as a bookmark. "So remember when I asked you if the two of us could snoop around the building to see if we can find a secret basement in your bar?" she remarks, glancing over at the investigator before turning her attention to the ex-Marine again. "We found one. Or rather, Alexander did. It took us a while, and honestly it was only his knowledge about smuggler's holes and how turn-of-the-century crime works that enabled us to find it in the first place."

Alexander studies Gary, stepping well aside so the man can leave without risking getting inside his 'bubble'. His attention turns at the sound of the bottle touching the counter, and he offers a brief nod, slinking up behind her to the bar. "I don't know that's true," he says, as Isabella speaks of the finding of the basement. "But we did find the basement. It's pretty early. I think we found a newspaper from right after Gohl was arrested. When he was alive. It's interesting." A brief, but bright, grin. "You have an interesting basement, Easton."

"Of course" Easton remembers about the two of them poking about his bar for secrets that he's not super eager to uncover because there is less than 1 percent chance they are good things. The news that they found one is interrupted when she says smuggler's holes and his face twists for a second, "dirty" he can't help comment as an aside.

After pouring Alexander's glass, Easton seals the bottle and places it away, which is not the usual order of things, but then again neither is him forgoing the booze. His eyebrows raise at the compliment of his basement and he asks, "Is it too much to hope for a boring vanilla basement?" Well aware that he is probably talking to the wrong two people for that kind of hoping.

"So we know Gohl was a regular here, right? From the dream where he kept calling me Chuck and then everybody got shot to t'hell?" He tries to refresh himself on this particular strain of local flavor, separating out the facts from the turmoil it threw his burgeoning life into.

"Arr," is what Isabella elects to reply to Easton, grinning at him broadly as she waits for her scotch. Whenever poured, she plucks her tumbler up from the counter and takes a long, savoring sip.

"Yeah," she says. "Alexander can show you how to access it, if you want to explore how interesting it is - he was the one who found the switch. The place used to be called Chuck's By The Sea, so it could have been Chuck's office, originally, since the article we found down there was dated 1910." That Dream feels like so long ago when it had only been a few months, in the last summer. "It was the year Billy the Ghoul got arrested by Sheriff Addington and the article basically detailed....what happened to us. Only we weren't mentioned by name."

His last query though? Gets a slow shake of her head. "And...no, sadly not about the vanilla-ness." She grimaces faintly. "Someone took great care to hide that your interesting secret and decidedly non-vanilla basement even exists, E. I think it was your uncle. We found..." There's another glance at Alexander. "A black door down there. With an old-timey lock and latch."

"It does appear to have been a watering place he liked," Alexander mutters. "Maybe he and Chuck were friends. Or business associates." There's a snort of amusement at the off-side 'dirty', and a roll of his eyes. He takes up the glass, but seems in no hurry to drink. "We didn't open the door. But I met it goes somewhere...interesting." A flash of a smile, again. "In a rare moment of sensible thought we decided not to go into the door, or wherever it leads. But we should."

Easton looks at the floor and back up at the pair of them. He nods at the information about Chuck and the newspaper. He shakes his head at the newspaper telling the story they lived, because that makes his head hurt. He sighs at the news that it's not a vanilla boring basement and he pulls out a pint glass and pours himself a beer.

"Okay.." He grits his teeth at the news about the door. "I'm just going to say this, but, should we?" When the thought that 'we should' is put out there. He looks between them, realizing this is going to be an uphill battle. "I'm not sure poking into things connected to Gohl or my uncle is really going to pan out well, for anyone."

"It probably won't - the Asylum particularly fucks with memories. One of the patients I spoke with seems to be convinced that memories about that place is corrosive. As in, it does something to your other memories when you try to think about it - or that's what I think he's trying to say anyway." Isabella takes a quiet sip of her scotch, before looking over at Alexander. "And honestly, if we could get away with not poking further into the Asylum, we should, but...considering the case Alexander's on, I don't know how possible that would be. He made a promise to a friend, and that promise might actually be in trouble with someone or something that is either staying, living in, or hanging around the Asylum."

It's the investigator's task, though, so she leaves most of the story to him, should he choose. Meanwhile, she proceeds to start digging into the pages of her notebook.

"Mr. Whitehouse is missing," Alexander adds, in a low voice, his attention on his drink. He takes a sip of the alcohol, shivering a little as it works its way downward. "And Alice is...intense. And Violet is dead. I don't know whether the Asylum is the worst part of whatever caused that, but I think there are things that are going to hurt people if they aren't known. Maybe it will hurt us trying to find them out, too. But," he shrugs, "I want to know. No one else has to, though. It's probably right that we shouldn't."

"We went." Easton states it firmly, looking between the two of them before cracking, "Right?" He hates that he has to ask that question but he does and it sucks. He takes a sip of beer, just a sip, not a gulp and winces when he hears the name Whitehouse. He knows that case was personal to Alexander, a friend. It's not likely he's going to drop it anytime soon. The statement that Violet is dead, unequivocally, as opposed to missing, is news to him. "I'm sorry." Easton says, though it has just a touch of hollow ring to it, that rote consolation that everyone offers at the news of a death.

"But we can't go fuckin' running in half-cocked. It.. they.." he frowns and looks back at Isabella, "My memory is fucked. That trips just ... isn't. But I know things around it? And that's intense." He looks meaningfully at Alexander and says, "You talk about 'altering' someone? Changing who they are? That's exactly what it feels like."

"Wait, he's missing?" Isabella's eyes widen faintly when they turn to Alexander - she hadn't known that, then again she's also been out of the country. With the news on Violet being dead is passed on, a hand reaches out to squeeze the investigator's shoulder gently and warmly.

Easton's query has her nodding. "We're unsure, but the fact that we remember the morgue before everything went hazy is proof enough that we did manage to get there," she tells both men, before finding her earlier notations.

"Definitely not - honestly we didn't go through the Door because we know we can't go half-cocked. Not anymore, we've been doing that too much. So before any attempts are made, we should probably collect as much information about it as we can." She pushes her notebook towards Alexander, as well as the torn magazine page. He'd find the magazine page similar, at least, to the diagram she'd shown him before about the three locations. But her notebook's page is full of her writing, a glimpse of the number 13 repeatedly on it.

"We went. We had books. Alice's books. Where else would we have gotten them? And Isabella remembered something that led us to your basement." Alexander's eyes slip in that direction, and he takes a sip. "We must have gone." He looks down at the glass at the consolation. He takes a sip. "I still don't know what happened. I saw her dead. I think it happened at the Asylum. Someone put that story into the books for us. Alice, Alice...I don't think she's well. I think she might have hurt him. She visited me in the hospital after the fight."

He looks up. "Not half-cocked," he agrees. He turns as the writing is pushed in his direction, and bends over to read it, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully.

The fact that they are also piecing together their misadventures in the asylum is both a comfort and a source of pain to Easton. He shakes his head and takes another sip of beer. "Okay, so we have some books." He doesn't sound entirely convinced even though they did enter the morgue, have something happen and then return and something at the edge of his mind thinks they went. It's far more unsettling to not know than he would have thought.

"You don't think she's well?" Easton asks, not entirely sure what he means by that. "Did she blame her father for her being locked up?" It's the most likely motive if someone 'escapes' an asylum to attack a relative. Though there are others he doesn't want to think about.

"What are our sources of information? I mean besides my bag of dicks rotting sack of flesh uncle who.." He gets a glimpse of seeing his uncle at the asylum but then it's gone. He almost was going to reference the event but now all he can remember is seeing him with Dr. Glass and Geoff earlier. "Do we have anyone else?" He didn't mean to sound quite so desperate to avoid his uncle, but it's clearly there in his voice.

Her gold-flecked eyes find Alexander when Easton asks about Alice and what may be driving her to do what she's presently doing; she knows none of the Whitehouses and at present, it seems poor form to speak ill of people she doesn't know. At least with the exception of Walter Whitehouse and in her opinion, he can die in a fire and she'd dance around the ashes. That sentiment is briefly present on her expression, and her lips press together in an attempt to stave off the brewing, vitriolic rant.

She takes a swallow of her scotch. "Doctor Hailey Stevenson's no help," Isabella tells them both. "But I did run into a red-haired woman in the library today by the name of Ruby Cavendish - she told me that she was investigating the Veil, and the Asylum, specifically. She came across August and me talking about it, so she joined our conversation." Her gaze meets Alexander's. "She was working on the Asylum investigation with Alistair Carver, before he disappeared."

There's a nod of her head to her notebook. "According to her, the Asylum can manifest in thirteen different locations that all correspond to places in the real world. Only eight of those were successfully located and mapped by Doctor Marshall and apparently, he never gave a copy of that map to anyone else that she knows of. The people who work there seem to always be able to find it since, she suspects, most of them live on campus so they never really have to leave it. She also said that the facility itself moves 'three on thirteen to the left, not the right'....as in, if you were to put all 13 locations on a map, it would form a clock-pattern. From its starting point, the hospital moves three spaces counter-clockwise every thirteen days."

She nods to the magazine page that she had torn out - it's a watch ad with a close-up clockface (OOC: looks like this https://imgur.com/M5riOLR - courtesy of KB). She had written what she had remembered in their asylum visit on it. "I remember seeing a clock with those notations in the Asylum before everything went blurry."

"Also, according to Miss Cavendish, the tricky part is figuring out the starting point, but once you figure out the starting point, it can be mapped out. The starting point changes every three 'shifts' on the 13th day of the 3rd shift." She then replicates what Ruby showed her:

Starting Point: A
13 Days Later: moves to B
13 Days Later: moves to C
13 days later: moves to D
13 days later: moves to a new starting point, and the cycle happens all over again.

"So I think...if we pair this information, with the clock I remember." She nods to the magazine page. "And remember the fact that Doctor Marshall only managed to map out eight of the thirteen locations and he's keeping a hidden door underneath, we might have enough to try and predicting where the facility goes and how to access it."

Alexander takes a long breath, let's it out slowly. "I don't know. I need to look into an incident that Walter mentioned. About a boy. But he didn't blame Alice for that. He thinks she is an angel. It was Violet he hated. He was glad she was dead." It's a toneless sort of thing. "I wanted very badly to kill him." His fingers not holding the glass beat out a rapid rhythm on the bartop. "But Alice is scared and angry and believes the...that THEY are coming for her. She's asked me to protect her. I will. But I want to know exactly what happened, because I don't think she's telling me anything." There's more resignation there than angry; no one ever tells an investigator everything.

Then he falls silent as Isabella explains, and his eyebrows go up. "That...didn't you and Dr. Glass receive a message that involved 13 at some point, Easton? And that would make sense, with the map that was found."

Easton makes a small grimace at the mention of Hailey Stevens. He gets it past it though when there is talk of a Ruby investigating the veil and the asylum. The talk of thirteen sends a shock through him. The words his uncle told him him that "Not even with the map.." He echoes his uncle's words and shakes his head.

New of Mr. Whitehouse and his amazing parenting skill cause Easton to raise his eyebrows distracted. "Understandable" he replies to Alexander's desire to kill him.

"Thirteen to the left. Not the right." Easton echoes and shakes his head. "So that's at least meaningful." As opposed to the utter nonsense that he could make of it before.

"E?" Isabella prompts, brows furrowing when Easton suddenly looks shocked. "Yeah, I think...even if we did have the map, we'd have to know how it moves and where it starts before the map is in any way useful....if any copies exist."

Alexander's remarks about Alice being not all too trustworthy has her nodding once. "I'd like for you to be as careful as you can be, dealing with her. But I agree, regarding the incident with the boy." To Easton, for his edification, "He hated Violet and was convinced she was a witch because she apparently summoned some kind of demon and it hurt someone."

Easton's reiteration of the directions has her turning to him. "Did your uncle say anything else to you that you could remember about that number? I know the two of you don't have the best relationship, but..." She also frowns. "Not to mention a clock really only has twelve numbers, not thirteen, unless they're going by military time."

"We know when it was at the morgue. When it was probably at the morgue," Alexander says. "If we opened a door there when it wasn't there, then we might could cross reference it on the map that we have." A pause. "Somehow." But there's a shake of his head when Easton says 'understandable'. "No. It wasn't..." a pause. "I won't say that wasn't angry, but I wasn't going to kill him. But I really, really wanted to. And then everyone got angry, and there was a fight, and Alice came to 'rescue' me so that I would owe her a debt. She was there, watching. And she said I'd never find her. I wonder if she wanted to make sure of that."

A nod, to Isabella. "I intend to. But. Until I know things for certain, I'll protect her. Violet would have."

"Shit, sorry. Just forgot about it because I couldn't connect it to anything. We were talking about Monty taking us to the asylum. He said something about us having her map, I forget who she was. Maybe his car?" He grimaces and doesn't really delve into that 'special' relationship. And instead plows on with, "He said it wouldn't help because it's thirteen to the left, not the right. Then he said he would take us in thirteen days?" But that never happened.

He glances back to Alexander and says, "Oh. Literally." He realizes that Alexander meant actualy murder, not like I'm annoyed at you murder. He quirks an eyebrow and says, "Did you feel like someone was amping up your murder-drive?" Did you roll detect basically but he doesn't have the words to describe that. He shakes his head and says, "I'm sorry about Violet, but it sounds like her family was kind of fucked. You don't owe her getting in the middle of that now." Especially with the murder and demons and the everything else. There are enough problems without inheriting dead people's problems.

"People will also defend the hell out of people they love even when they shouldn't Alexander. I'm not saying give up, just saying she may not have been the best objective judge." When he brings up the point about what Violet would have done. He does relent on one thing, ".. okay, can we at least see the murder basement that's going to suck my bar into some fifth dimension of hell at some point?"

"Wait...whose map?" But he doesn't seem to remember who, and there's mention of a car and Isabella's expression becomes very confused. "....is there a Christine situation I ought to be worried about?" she wonders, referencing Stephen King's haunted car.

When Easton starts asking Alexander more about the bar brawl, she goes especially silent. The reasons why are rather apparent, because if looks could kill, the bar's counter would be whittled into toothpicks with how potent and intense the archaeologist's glare is. It's all impotent rage, in the end - all she's managed to do despite her fury was vandalize a comatose person's face. It's not like she could get away with murder as easily as Alexander in a place like that - cameras are everywhere and sometimes, it's extremely handy to push someone into stepping off a roof.

She attempts to smother the rest of those dark thoughts, though.

"It's this way," she says, grateful for something to distract her from her anger. Stiff-backed, she starts walking behind the bar, leaving the two men to keep conversing.

Alexander shakes his head. "No. It felt like me. But it usually does feel like me." His lips thin. "She was my friend," is all he says, but there's stubbornness and steel underneath it. He stands up when Isabella does, putting his glass down to follow her, trying to place a hand at the small of her back as they move to the staff side of the bar. "At any rate. Even if it wasn't for Violet, I think we need to know more about a place that keeps eating people like us. People who remember being over there recall torture and pain, to the extent they recall anyone at all. But at least one person desperately wanted to go back and felt safe there. I think it's important that we know what kind of threat, if any, the Asylum is."

When Isabella asks if there is a Christine situation Easton gives her a look that is clearly unaware of what that means. He reluctantly says, "I think he's fucking his car, but I'd really rather not dwell on that?" For obvious reasons.

He catches Isabella trying to burn the bar to ashes with a death glare, but has no idea what to connect that to. Alexander's talk about her being a friend causes him to grimace. It's not like he's all 'hey, screw dead friends you gotta live..' but he is genuinely concerned at what this might mean for Alexander and for Iz. He nods and says, "Agreed. But I think the less direct method of intel gathering is actually going to be more profitable than a frontal assault." He knows they aren't going to go running off, they've said as much tonight, but he still wants to caution against it.

Easton picks up his beer and follows after Isabella. "If something down there eats us, I'm gonna be super pissed at you two."

The brush of familiar fingers against the small of her back has Isabella's face turning to press her lips lightly on his cheek. "Are you going to insist on going down there first again?" she asks with a grin, before turning her attention to Easton again - and the idea of a juicy corpse with falling, decomposing limbs making the tires of his beloved car squeak causes her to blanch visibly. "......................."

A breath. "Yes. Let's not dwell on that." A pause. "But how would that work though, I mean....does he just stick it in the gas tank? Won't that be too wide? Won't it just feel like...I don't know, throwing a hot dog down a hallway?" Isabella no!

Still, the ex-marine's thoughts on indirect intelligence gathering does earn him a nod. "I think that might be wise. Besides, Alexander's interest in the Asylum is more over Alice and Violet's connection to it - as in, what happened to them while they were there - than the facility, itself. And from what Alice told Alexander, there might be someone or something dangerous there who's now in charge. Kind of makes me glad we didn't send Thomas Addington in there while he was possessed by Billy the Ghoul." They might've just ended up handing him over to someone or something more dangerous than the ghost of a serial killer.

But they find the switch, eventually - a perfectly camouflaged wooden panel on the floor depresses in and slides away to reveal a heavy iron ring that one has to twist and pull up to open up the hatch, and reveal a flight of rickety wooden stairs that leads into almost oppressive darkness in the underbellies of the building.

"I actually found a guide on how to have sex with a car, designed for men, on the internet once," Alexander says, showing no particular concern about the concept. Don't ask why he even knows that. Or do. It'll be fun. "It suggested using the tail pipe, once it'd been lined properly. You could pad it as you needed for, er, your particular anatomy. ANd the car was cold, of course. There were some suggestions for women, but they involved the gear stick, and seemed even more egregiously uncomfortable."

But the mention of Thomas closes him down a bit, and he falls silent as the switch is found and the hidden door is reopened, staring down into the darkness with a meditative expression. "Thomas is missing now, too."

Easton is shaking his head at Isabella with a seriousness when her jaw goes slack at the news of his uncle's particular attachment. And he is relieved when the ring is revealed and the door is opened. But then Alexander is talking and Easton's face goes curiously neutral. He's mentally shutting down to protect himself from thinking about this. Alexander has managed to engage battle tactics Easton. "We're never talking about that again, or asking questions about why you would search for those things. Is that clear?" His tone makes it deathly clear that he's not about to continue this line of thought.

He flips on the flashlight on his phone as he descends the stairs after the other two. He shakes his head at the news of Thomas missing. "Missing? I thought he died?" Didn't Hya say her uncle was dead? Or was that the cover story? He can't quite remember now.