2020-03-13 - When the World Falls In

In a dream everything is perfectly normal. Everything is ordinary just like we know things to be, simply because for now this is all we know. The physics of reality are presented to us and we accept them as perfectly ordinary. Everything is fantastically as it should be...

...until it isn't.

It's early in the evening and the siblings find themselves waiting. They're at home. This is the house they grew up in though nothing like the one in the waking world. Outside the heavy downpour of rain in the cold Spring night promises to push the remnants of Winter back to the earth. Inside? Inside is warm. A huge mansion, old and majestic in understated opulence built by thinkers, not socialites trying to impress their wealth upon others since 1900. A large square room with two and a half stories overhead of ceilings vaulted by warm polished wood, and the floor in large tiles of marble that look like parchment. The room is square and large enough the edges of it are lost to the thick dark shadows. To the north is the large mahogany double doors that head outside. To the west lie rooms on this floor, a hall perhaps, but notably a stairway that ascends upward. East there is a 6' wide, six-step stair that reaches a large, well lit study lined with books and a large banker's desk and leather chairs. The south, presently is lost to shadow.

This is fine. Brother and sister sit in the square of couches in the middle of this main entrance in deep comfortable leather couches. Blankets pulled up as they are camping out in the main room as if waiting and waking up from dozing off. Weirdly there are no electronics here and that too is somehow normal. But they wake up to the sound of an elderly gentleman bringing them answers. An uncle? Who can really place him. He says in a voice that is weathered with age, but not of kindness, "You're up. Good. I think we finally have answers to this mystery we're working on. I invited Thomas Hading to come help us. Fellow professor from the University who is...somewhat proficient in matters like this. Leave it to a linguist to never pass up a puzzle." Looking to each of them he asks with concern, "How are you holding up? with your parents missing that is."

Uncle Allen (was he always? He is now) watches them with worry creased in the corner of his 72 year old eyes. How he is related who can say? Maybe mom's eldest brother? Did she have any? Well here she does and whatever is happening he's with the kids, grown up, and frightened all the same as people who care about the well being of their own do. "Good. It's alright to be scared. I'd lie if I said I wasn't worried but we'll get through this." Shaken but determined.

He sets a messenger bag down and pulls out what looks like an 11" x 17" black chalkboard with wood edge around it. Handy for going through ideas on the fly. He moves the small hand carved elephant within an elephant from someone's trip to India gently out of the way and sets the board down glancing to either of them, "Tell me, are either of you familiar with Latin? I've been thinking about our riddle while you've been resting. Please, help yourself to coffee if you wish. I left some in the carafe there."

Uncle Allen writes a phrase on the chalkboard filling up the page. "Well that message you both found when they went missing we have been looking at as 'Multæ tribulationes justorum. Nos agere.' Or: Our souls wait; then we act. But I want you to come take a closer look." He takes the cloth laying nearby and starts erasing the last word. Looking up to Adam he says "Yes, good. Thank you." Looking back to Jewelia he motions for she and Adam to lean forward. "Id we erase the last words here and go with their homonym cousin you'll find we're getting a bit of a different... message." And as he writes the chalk dust seems to hover slightly above the board curiously as he correct their initial impression. "I'm afraid we'll be relying on Professor Hading's linguist skills, but my Latin, was fair last I had to use it." Leaning forward at this proximity there is a captivating pull as if it , what? wants to be understood?

It's important.

It's screaming of fantastic imperative truth to her drawing her attention close to it. Adam will find something in this sounds like evidence and clues snapping pieces together that should have fit before but with that feeling of matching the wrong sides.

As he leans forward and erases the last of it he changes the words finishing this as if something locked into place and the world seems to pull a fissure in this surreality. " If we change it to Multæ tribulationes justorum. Audi nos' it changes to we wait, we listen" His hand freezes and the world changes for both

Jewellia leans close enough to hear the words "Listen... listen....listen.... listen..." as if they break away from their uncle and sound distant like an old phonograph. Looking up Uncle Allen is not moving and the room feels suddenly cold. Looking to Adam she will find his eyes glazed pale white and his skin, like their Uncles, an ashen grey; his hair frosted with rime, arm still extended as if in warning, or just where he was.

What Adam sees, however, is Jewellia lean too far forward way too fast towards the table but she pauses as if every muscle in her body has seized. the words trail off their Uncle's observation, "Listen... listen....listen.... listen..." but with a voice that's smaller, younger, that of a child hiding in the room whispering some warning or some joke. In a glimps he can see there's two of them and they look, for all the world, like he and Jewllia looked as young children; she no older then 5.

Whatever has happened they are the only animate beings in their world.

No one is moving in anyone's reality except themselves and that one, very animate something.

Jewellia can lake it out: 'listen...listen...listen....listen...listen..." like the needle scratching on a record. It draws her attention down into that den in the wide half flight of stares; walls lined with wood shelves with volumes old and new in there. The large banker's desk sitting wide lie a command console in the middle of the room and the green glass lamp, on and keeping the middle of the room a lit in a warm glow in contrast to the frost she feels and the ice forming in her breath. Standing on one side of the desk is a tall globe stand (thankfully not spinning), bot on the other is a phonograph antique and well cared for, standing on a filigree brass stand with the turntable rotating around and around and around, playing over and over distantly the scratchy sound of a man's voice; 'listen...listen...listen....listen...listen..."

In Adam's world Jewellia doesn't move but the tittering of the two children seem to be playing hide and seek. The room spins and it's hard to hold onto is this mocking laughter? There's a small voice that says "No time for an old man nap. Come play. Did you forget how to play?" The voice of the much younger boy who from the corner of his eye feels like it looks like him says "He can't. He forgot how." There is, from the statement and the room when Adam puts his hand down a feeling. Disappointment? Sadness? More things are flickering than they should. There's two people here, but they keep flickering from view. Uncle and Jewellia remain frozen in place.

The voice of what might be his younger self stops talking and flickers into view. He points to Jewellia and tilts his head. "She's stuck. . Why is she sleeping?" Young Adam looks at him curiously and asks, "Why are you sleeping?" It's a dramatic sigh of a child from the stairs saying "he can't listen." Still in his PJ's Adam's younger self, hair a mess asks his older self warily, "We're going to find the answer. Watch."

with the needle almost off the edge of the album on it as if it were playing in reverse: arm moving from inside to out instead of outside to in. The voice crackles and it's... a voice mail? It's the voice of the Professor Hading; scratchy and recorded long ago, but a message left for them tonight?!

"Hello? Alan? It's Thomas. I'm calling from the road.
I've tried to make it up to the house but something funny's going on.
It's all boarded up from the outside.
I tried the key but it wont work.
I tried to call up to the house and bang o the door,
but no one would listen...listen...listen...listen..."

And the needle is back to skipping in place.

When Jewellia and Adam look around the first thing they both notice is that their Uncle is missing and there is an uncomfortable quiet in the room. Both of them, however, can feel ... something. Something in the wood, the tile, the air in the closed up house with the warm inviting light and thick black shadows. There is a palpable hunger though that they are picking up, second hand, as if standing inside a great living thing. Something, something close, like a cold breath leaving the chill of ice water in their veins, is waiting.

The front doors are, of course, shut tight. They don't even budge.
Isn't that the way these things always go?

Like Jewel was was told in the cryptic message in her fugue state everything is shuttered up. The rain is a distant ambient noise on the other side of what seems like solid wall. The windows when examined, pulling back the damask curtains reveal that those too have been shuttered up.

Up

up

there's a whisper that Adam hears of his former self answering something he can't hear "Yes. I like puzzles. Who are you?" Overhead Jewellia can hear the creaking of a floorboard of something, not large, running overhead.

Adam takes the chair from the writing stand in the foyer and pounds at the glass repeatedly. It cracks, then it splinters. Instead of the board breaking something that looks like... ink? Bubbles through the cracks made by the glass. As Adam continues to hammer away at the glass the lights flicker and the lights in Jewelia's study flicker and go out.

Thankfully Adam is right where where Jewellia left him. The light in the room they are in flickered but held, but shudders every time Adam tries to break through the glass. The glass ruptures as he hits wood that feels like hitting a solid tree. Maybe? Black ichor gurgles and burbles from the 'wound' in the glass. There is a whistling from beyond and Adam can see a hole in the shutters break though. There's o garden, no tree outside. No sky. There's just... a hollow nothing and darkness. The harder they fight the landscape the less of what should be real there becomes like this nightmare of a moment is fighting back.

Above they can both hear the sound of two children playing. A young girl of 5 says, "No, Adam, you're not doing it right. You have to say it doing the voice!"

As they ascend the stairs the silence is deafening broken only by the sound of their pulse in their ears. At the top of the stairs there is a is a door that opened right into a play room. The door is open and two children sit on teh floor. There's curtains up and there is a view of the night sky shining down in a square onto the middle of the floor. Small Jewelia is holding what looks like maybe an action figure of some sort and Young Adam seems to be narrating some great tale or explaining how the world works. You know, from his expert perspective of being older and taller.

It is a long slow walk up to the top of the stairs. The funny part is the faster the pair walk the more stairs there seem to be.

For all the world the children seem oblivious to any sense of danger the adults have.

What they see is brief. The room is impossibly grey, and the door slammed and flapped though it only made the quietest of taps against the frame caught in a breeze.

Young Adam can be heard telling the story, something lost? Something forgotten. "There's seven secrets, and these are important. See you forget them after you turn 12 and aren't a kid anymore. we have to promise not to forget, okay?" There is a nod in response.

The door bounces lazily open again against the frame. Young Adam continues the countdown, "The first truth is that animals can and do talk. Not like people buuuuut they do. The second is that your blanket is made from cloth so mighty that pulled over your head? It's like an impenetrable fortress and can make enemies not see you. Like the Harry Potter cloak." yes, all attention is on the storyteller.

The door... slams again and there is static in the air as they ascend as if through molassas, and a faint blurry image tries to form. Do they have something in their eyes? Why was the world not in focus?

There's information lost with the door slowly bounding. What they catch is the one child telling the other, "Monsters exist and can be both seen an done battle with. That's important."

There is a flash like the interior of the room they're trying to reach is flipping back and forth between the positive light and a strobe where they can see the room looking like a photo negative of itself.

"The most important thing adults forget is-"

The words are cut off, and the door closes with a slam bouncing back just a fraction. It isn't shut and a flash of pale green light is now the only colour, for the moment, in the hall from the crack around the door. One hand can easily breeze the door open on its hinges. Everything in the hall is still after that last flash of light. and they are able to reach the top of the stairs. What is new is what feels like a burning smell? Not that anyone can distinctly smell anything but something feels like standing in the aftermath of...something.

When Jewellia and Adam push the door open . The doorknob is cold and the barrier effortlessly gives away with a shift and no sound travels past a meter. The air is dead still and devoid of heat and cold. Their skin is not really picking up anything and their five senses find themselves somewhat, perhaps, in question.

The middle of the room before them is surreal. Where there was a girl and her brother is a scorch mark in the shape of some arcane rune. There is a thin being made of ink and shadow. Gaunt and translucent with eyes sunken into darker grey circles around them, and twisted spires of obsidian like horns extend up up up fron their head as their attention shifts.. Body bare of shifting ink their skin is etched with the same strange markings carved into it. They are a part of the creature.

Long, almost skeletal fingers wrap around a slate cube not much bigger than a Rubic's cube. While not recognizable they can feel it and know exactly what is in there. Eyes that shone like polished silver reflected in the tiny motes of light. "...yOu arEn'T suPposEd to bE here..." How fantasticly curious to find these two... here.

When Jewellia looks there is something expanding her sensesing all directions. There's no one downstairs. In this room there might be expected to find their younger selves? Uncle? No. there's something that borders on legion as the inside of the box in the creature's hand is teaming with the consciousness of thousands and thousands or more minds gibbering and it is jarring.

The boneless figure looks at Adam confused, and closes the distance without taking a step towards him. It is not human, nor was, nor will be. Not in this place. Humans have a gait when they moved This intruder bent like darkness around a beam of light, bring pale, scared fingers came up in front of him and nods.

One word comes. "...waKe..."

And they do. The image of eyes confused, detached, and filled with ...emotion and endless darkness in a blanket of stars burn into their temporary memory.
Soon after? just a feeling.

The room is cold.
They wake where they each slept in their own beds entirely whole, but not undisturbed, and certainly not unharmed.

The aftermath of the image of that box that consumed their once wiser selves burns bright in the mind like a star.
They can close their eyes.
They can find rest.

Neither will ever truly be able to be asleep again.
Not in Gray Harbor.