2020-08-13 - Castles In The Sand

Gray Harbor's beaches may not be known for strips of sand, but there is a cove some distance down the strand that has enough to build a few dozen sandcastles on. It's in this spot that the National Park Service has set up Sandcastle Festival. There's a half dozen or so park employees in their distinct uniforms and hats, and a handful of volunteers wearing t-shirts. There's a cookout with hot dogs, hamburgers and veggie burgers by donation, a stand with information about the Olympic National Forest and summer programming (plus information on passes) and a face painter. In the waves a short distance away, basic surf lessons are underway in the gentle surf.

The main event though, is the sandcastle competition. People have been working on their masterpieces for about an hour now, with around 30 minutes or so left before the deadline. Everyone has a National Park branded bucket set up with a number painted on it where people can deposit tokens to vote for their favourite for the peoples' choice category. The castles range from the fun and whimsical (families creating bizzare and slightly uneven creations together) to the truly epic. The most impressive one so far is a nearly life-sized DeLorean created by local students.

On such a sunny, beautiful day, even Ravn Abildgaard has swapped out his customary turtleneck for a t-shirt -- black, with no print -- under the usual black blazer instead. He wanders along the artworks in progress, stepping out of the way of curious tourists and children, watching and admiring; some people have the kind of artistic talent that lets them create shapes out of something as coarse as sand. His hands are definitely not the kind of hands that create sculptures. At best, he might be able to turn a bucket over and not have the little sand tower collapse right away.

Maggi had originally been less than enthused by the idea of participating in an outdoor community event, but Leon had insisted that one: they needed to blow off steam doing something aside from working and two: they lived in a place called 'harbor' so outside beachy activities were required. In true Maggi fashion, she was ready as for fun in the sun as a Beatle Juice extra. An over sized black sunhat shields her ghostly skin and a batkini top with vintage high waited bottoms. A sheer black sarong is tied at her hips. She was working fervently in an overly serious manner on some sort of snow man with Leon. Pushing herself to create the right level of irony for the event. Though they were most definitely not going to win, it would be dangerous to tell her this. One may be devoured with the same ferocity a burger had only a short time ago.

Leon had thought this could be a fun date activity, so he'd gotten Maggi away from the bar for a day, put his calls to an answering service, and donned some black to white ombre'd board shorts, grey A-shirt, and some flip flops. It was a mix of amusement and judgement on his face as he'd watched Maggi go about the festivities. The face painting in particular had resulted in a crossed arm and a fist under his nose, trying not to snicker, and managing. When it came to the sand castle building event, Maggi had of course come up with her plan, and he'd gone along with it, lugging the props from the Wrangler they'd parked nearby, as well as a couple spackling tools. The heat of the day had led to the removal of the tank top, and his multiple vulture tattoos were on full display. Besides the usually visible left arm tattoo, there was an artfully depicted bearded vulture covering most of his shoulderblades, with a wing around one shoulder. Perched atop a skull on his left pectoral is a black vulture, and just above his waistband on his lower right abs is a griffon vulture. Not a bird, but notable on his right shoulder was some sort of shield-shaped insignia. He was working hard to help bring Maggi's artistic vision to life, laughing and generally joking.

Itzhak is working on a giant snake, of course. He has no idea how sand sculptures work, or how people get sand to like, stay in place. So he miiiight be cheating a little: the sand stays where he puts it even though he has no assisting substance. He just pats it into place and it stays. The snake is not particularly good but he's also building a sand castle for it to wind around and that's turning out a little better. He seems to be really into it, sunk deep into whatever silly vision he has and into the tactile experience. Also he's wearing magenta paisley swim shorts. This from the man who gave Aidan shit last night for the flamingos-wearing-sunglasses shorts.

There is one of the park rangers who stands out from the others. He's tall and darker, yes, but he's also somehow making the admittedly dorky ranger uniform look a little more stylish. Part of that is the way he's cuffed the shorts, and part of that is how he's set his hat back far on his head so it creates a halo shape rather than the traditional Smoky the Bear silhouette. "Twenty minutes, folks! Twenty minutes!" That's the other distinct thing. He doesn't sound like he's from 'round these parts. If you need help with running water up, we've got some young'uns who'd love the job, ay kids?" Some children with colourful buckets and slightly smeared face paint make screeching noises and jump up and down.

There's something magenta and paisley hovering at the edge of Ravn's vision. It turns out to be a pair of swim shorts containing a pair of legs that seem vaguely familiar, mostly because they are attached to a man who was indeed criticising Aidan's fashion choices less than twenty-four hours previous. The Dane does not attempt to shatter the New Yorker's creative trance but he does have to hide a grin behind one gloved hand as he wanders past.

The tattooed man and the lady in the sarong he recognises as well. Pausing a while to stand and admire their work he upnods a friendly hello; on the whole, he seems quite content to watch and, in some manner, move in his own bubble, drifting through the crowds of tourists and sandcastle builders as if he's got one foot partially in another reality. One that's considerably quieter.

Seems Leon was quite oblivious to the DASTARDLY METHODS of his competitors. He heaps more and more wet sand atop the mound he and Maggi had constructed so far, using his own weight to really pack it downward so they could get carving done. Really, it was a super simple process once it was packed down enough, resulting in a lot of standing back to make sure it was more symmetrical and even. Carefully, he carves out a hole in the face and uses long bamboo skewers to really place the carrot and other pieces so they wouldn't fall off during judging and as the sand dried. The hat and sunglasses were a bit tricky to keep up as well without ruining the spherical modeling, but they managed.

Aidan makes up for Ravn and his blazer by having no shirt at all, partly because he was taking up the park service on that learn to surf thing before the castle-building proper started, and perhaps because it's summer and actually warm out and this is the beach, and he has the kind of complexion that doesn't start preparing to try to camouflage him in the Walmart Barbie aisle when it sees the sun.

He's wearing board shorts, even if earlier events have proven it was not due to his innate proficiency with boards, which means it's probably because he actually likes the bright pattern of hibiscus and pineapples and hula girls all over them. Very touristy-Aloha-shirt, except about two feet lower and less buttony. They actually do go pretty darn well with the flower-shelled turtle on his chest, though slightly less so with the fire that runs up his right flank. And the gauze wrapped around both arms from wrist to elbow doesn't really match anything, especially now that it's crackly with dried salt from his time in the water. But the duct tape at either end seems to have kept it in place. Probably isn't comfy, but he doesn't seem to mind.

His rainbow flipflops keep company with a very large and also rainbow towel a ways away, out of the castle-building zone, but an also very large cup of soda is keeping him company as he works on his creation, which appears to be... well, an octopus, that much is definite, and it's in a top hat, and if you know he's a magician you might guess what the magic wand and scarves are supposed to be, and the sort of 'ta da' configuration of a couple tentacles might make sense. He's nowhere near good enough to manage this with it standing up, so it's more of a 3D-relief sort of attempt against the ground. He's got an extra bucket that periodically he runs down to refill with sea water, because man the sand really sticks together better when it's wet. Alas, that's about as far as his Proper Sand Sculpture skills go. He's chatting periodically with a couple girls building a proper castle nearby, and pauses when he spots Ravn passing by to lift his-- no, that isn't a trowel, that is a cake spatula-- to wave at him.

Maggi had indeed paused long enough to have spider web lines with glittery accents artfully illustrated about her piercing eyes. She had previously been so focused on what she was doing that not only had she not noticed familiar faces, few children would come anywhere near the intense spider lady. She slipped the one brave kid who kept coming back at a swift pace with buckets a fiver though. He was going places.

Out of the corner of her eye she notices the paisley pants player pulling one over on them all, and not having to tip out any children to do so. She frowns biting her lip and slips the kid another dollar to 'accidentally' pour a bucket of water on the cheater, an evil grin spreading across her face.

Looking up she notices Aidan and Ravn waving now with congenial mischief in her eyes. She kisses Leon's cheek and sits back to watch smugly.

Itzhak's castle is turning out a lot better than his snake. Organic forms, man, so difficult to get a grasp on, he's better with geometry and math. So the poor snake is rather lumpy, and he's annoyed about it, not able to figure out WHY it's lumpy, but the castle is kinda baller. He can make improbably thin spires and flying buttresses and cool stuff like that. Eventually he sits back and wipes his forehead, leaving a smear of damp sand on his face, and looks up. The mirrored aviator sunglasses he's wearing flash in the sunlight. He spots Aidan, Ravn, Leon he recognizes because he's huge, tosses them an ironic salute. Yes, his legs might be familiar; like the rest of him, they're very long and although it's not like he's got no muscle, he's got a dece amount of it, he's just the kind of guy who is skinny for life. Maybe that's why he never wears shorts. Embarrassed about his skinny legs. Like a huge dork.

Ravn finds himself a fence post to lean against, folding his arms across his chest and looking quite comfortable as he watches, even if he clearly hasn't gotten into the spirit of things; no colourful costume, no face paint, not even a popsicle. He waves back to Maggi and indeed to Itzhak and settles in to watch the war that's bound to commence now -- he at least noticed the transaction taking place and the kids sneaking up on Itzhak's creation. Dis gun be gud.

As the clock ticks down on the last few minutes before buckets down, there's a flurry of activity. There's a veritable stampede of children running back and forth from the water or from other places on the beach. But then, there's a strange scent that wafts in from...somewhere. All but Itzhak and Niall can tell that the scent seems concentrated under one edge of his snake. The ocean tends to smell a little funky on good days, but there's a whiff of something definetly out of place about the pungent scent.

Leon stands back from the relatively simple, but at least carefully constructed sculpture they'd managed, dusting his hands free of sand and observing. He seems to catch a whiff of something and a brow rises, glancing around, the wind carrying something...

"Hey, Rosencrantz!" Yeah, Leon knew him, from the gym, probably from working around town, or making keys to cars. "You trying to get some extra creative edge over there?" He illustrates by waving a hand in front of his face and scrunching his nose.

The dark haired boy does his best to sneak, but he's also like seven. In the end he is about to toss the bucket when his tiny nose gets a whiff of the stench near the man. A hand flies up to his nose and the bucket pours out, only a few drops hitting Itzhak. "Mr. You need a Bath!" The child asserts, and then runs away. An empty bucket flailing in the wind in one hand and pinched nostrils in the other.

Regardless of success this is still an amusing outcome to the scary spider lady who is howling with laughter to the point of almost rolling about in the sand. This only allows the smell further into her nose however, and Maggi begins both laughing and coughing at the same time. Leon might be the only professional left on their team.

One of the characteristics of being Danish is that you grew up in an archipelago in which there is no place in the entire country that you can manage to be an hour's drive away from some coast or other; even on Greenland, people don't live inland (for somewhat obvious and rather chilly reasons). Ravn knows what ocean smells like. The scent of decomposing seaweed, of salt and seagull droppings and wet sand, is all but second nature. And what's coming from over there is neither; he quirks an eyebrow and glances in the direction he perceives the odd pungency to originate from, wondering quietly if someone added a dead cat to the exhibition in some bizarre artistic statement. A guy once got (in)famous for exhibiting tinned, dead puppies at Danish art galleries; never say never.

Oh well. Maggi's laughter is catching and Ravn did indeed see Rosencrantz get mortally insulted by financially enterprising pre-teen. He cracks a crooked smile at the scene, hiding it behind one gloved hand -- not very successfully.

Itzhak kneels back in the sand, pulls his pack of cigarettes out and lights one up, so no wonder he doesn't smell whatever's going on with his poor lumpy snake. He inhales to make the cherry glow, exhales, and squints through the smoke at Leon. "What?" he calls back, frowning in confusion at him. The future entrepreneur insults him and runs off and he stares after the kid with an expression of total bafflement.

As Itzhak kneels, the scent becomes harder to ignore, even over the cigarette. And there also appears to be something in the sand. A bit of green fabric? Hard to tell. The sand has all sorts of bits in it, so finding a bit of trash is sadly not uncommon. It's also under one of the more successful detail bits of the snake. To pull or not to pull?

"I'm saying your shit stinks." Leon calls across, still making a face. But otherwise tucking his hands in the pockets of his trunks. Maggi's antics had resulted in that typically sphinx-like bemused grin, watching the kid run for the hills with a snort. Leon's eyes trail to the sculpture, did he see that green bit? His eyebrows furrow, but he at least tries to clarify, "And I'm not sayin that I hate your art. Like it smells like shit. What did you bury there, man?"

"Goodness, smells like something crawled up that snake and died," Ravn murmurs and nods at Leon before looking back at the New Yorker. "He's not kidding, it smells like you dug up a dead harbour seal or something."

Itzhak looks down at that bit of fabric sticking out from under his sculpture. Enough time in Gray Harbor makes anybody twitchy; he flinches. Then without a single bother to give about his lumpy snake and pretty bangin' castle, he grabs the fabric and yanks. Even though it's probably going to be super gross. He's taking the same philosophy as turning on the light in a horrible dark smelly basement that you just know is full of zombies.

The mixed fit of bemusement has turned to just straight coughing at this point. Maggi rises to her feet to go grab something to drink, hoping to suppress to smell and her reaction. She would stand in line for a few moments and return with two cups of water, handing one to Leon.

Finally the visceral reaction to the smell ends, but she is still watching skeptically. Her nose scrunches.

Niall approaches Itzhak, spots the bit of fabric, sniffs. Then his leadership abilities kick in and he has a few quiet words with one of his staffers. Said staffer breaks out a guaranteed distraction - a basket of water guns, and starts to herd the children present further off down the beach.

By now, the scent is obvious to everyone still in the area. It's the scent of decay and bile.

The bit of fabric only moves a little, but it's enough to reveal that the fabric is covering something distinctly leg shaped. There's a slashing cut in the fabric, revealing decaying flesh. Most disturbingly, it looks like something was carved into the skin, not just slashed haphazardly.

From his well groomed, slightly vain looks, Ravn is really not the kind of man you'd expect to just watch -- but he is neither throwing up in a bush, screaming, flailing or otherwise appearing particularly disturbed. He helps herd the last miniature stragglers away before they catch a real look -- "It's just a seal, it was very old and tired, it's in a better place now" -- and then saunters back, hands in jeans pockets, glancing at the park employee. "Guess that's not really part of the scheduled entertainment," he murmurs.

Upon seeing what was revealed, Leon seemed to have the same idea as Ravn, stepping over and trying to usher children away from whatever that bodypart was. He'd even employ a little gentle brush of his mind to really urge any of the smaller minds away from curiosity and maybe giving them hunger or thirst instead. Can't look at body parts if you're bothering your parents to buy you a hot dog or something. He gives Ravn a brief look and a nod, confirming he'd had the best idea currently.

"Oh what the everloving fuck," Itzhak says in horrified awe, thus proving everybody right to have herded the kids away. He thwaps his sand sculpture with the back of his hand, smacking it pretty good but not hard enough for what happens, which is that the entire structure slumps over and returns to being crumby piles of damp sand. He's glad for his cigarette--tamps down nausea.

There is very little in the way of horror based things that freaks Maggi out, and this is not one of them. Leon was ushering kids, so she would be doing her part by stepping closer to Itzhak. If you grouped all the cursing, smoking, scary stuff in one place there was less to direct children around right? She lights her own cigarette, having retrieved it from her batkini top.

Taking a deep inhale she looks down at Itzhak. "Shitty place to hide a body, your own sand sculpture..." She remarks wryly on an exhale. Maggi is mentally studying the markings on the flesh, trying to make sense of them.

The crumbly, damp sand settles over the body - and is definitely is a body. The figure is face down, but seems to be deliberately arranged in a starfish shape. But that's not the only thing decaying under the sand. There is now, an obvious undertone of sea to the stench of human decay. Where the head should be, there is an especially large octopus. The figure's clothes have been cut into, and there are deep red marks that appear to be trying to form symbols, but they're clumsy, half-obscured by clothing, gore and sand.

Niall stands nearby, frozen on the spot. "Jesus," he mutters. Most disturbingly? The figure is wearing a Park Ranger uniform, though it's so filthy and torn that it's only obvious by looking between the body and the living ranger.

Aware that he's the new kid in town and that this is apparently entirely normal for Gray Harbor, Ravn wanders closer to the destroyed snake but remains on the periphery; somebody needs to make sure no curious kidlet sneaks back when its mum is looking the other way or complaining to the park rangers that the bears aren't properly trained to turn up and beg for hot dogs like the brochure said -- the brochure which she has forgotten in her car but it absolutely said that, she was promised bears.

"Not a good time," Ravn murmurs and herds the little girl back to her mum. He pats the lady lightly on the shoulder and says, "Ma'am, I think you dropped these."

It's her car keys. Which he absolutely did not lift from her bag.

Cue woman dragging kid off in a huff, which is what the Dane intended. He wanders back, having very obviously assigned himself the duty of running interference so that more knowledgeable locals and park rangers can focus on the actual work at hand.

Itzhak shoots Maggie a glare, unamused by her joke. You'd think he was sensitive about the topic of accidentally building a super awesome sand castle on top of some kind of fucked up Cthulhu corpse. He gets to his feet, a twisted scowl of disgust on his very expressive face, highlighting all the lines he has on that face. Too many for some years under forty, those. "Yo, folklorist guy!" he calls to Ravn. To Niall he says, "That guy knows a bunch of weird shit, he can figure it out." Ravn is getting voluntold.

Content that kids, at least, were clear of the area, Leon comes back to the scene with the body. His eyes go to Niall, note the uniform, then look to the body. "My first urge would be to call authorities, but..." Leon's eyes go to each person now standing near the bodies, each person that has the glow to them. "This isn't looking like a thing normal authorities are going to be dealing with." He does defer to at least the one uniformed authority on sight though, he makes a motion as if in askance that he inspect the body, and if Niall were to nod, he'd squat and look. He'd seen plenty of dead bodies in his time, twisted, cut. Ranger training even meant he had some light Corpsmen training. Insurgents liked leaving messages. Leon would hold a hand out over the corpse, attempting not to touch, but to Read, his eyes going closed for a moment.

Maggi rolls her eyes dramatically and starts muttering something about how she has a wasted Masters in Parapsychology, but sure, ask the other emo kid on the beach. Taking another drag from her lit cig, she crouches down to take a few pictures of the markings on her phone before she could possibly be shooed away. Though morbid, in her opinion this was just freaking cool. Perhaps it would be less so if the person was easily identified, but for now they were just Squidward.

Ignoring Itzhak's dismissal, she tries to decide if there is enough green fabric or significance to it to attempt to reconstruct it. "Do we care about piecing the fabric back together? Does the head look transformed, or Frankensteined to you folks?"

So much for trying to act responsible, Ravn thinks to himself and walks over to the sorry remains of the snake sculpture and the decomposing body it was trying to hide. Glee.

He quirks an eyebrow and tries to get a look at whatever remains down there in the sand; decomposing, rotting flesh, yes, but more importantly -- his eyes were fooling him from a distance, or it had some kind of markings. "Let me guess -- you didn't notice this reek at all when you were building your sand snake. That doesn't make a lot of sense. The stench reaches all the way over there now, there is no way you could not have smelled that when you were literally sitting on top of it," he murmurs to Itzhak and anyone else within earshot. "Is it time for us to start pinching our arms to see if we're awake yet?"

Niall is trying to contain the nausea that threatens to overcome him at the sight of the decaying and defiled corpse of one of his colleagues. He reaches for his clip on radio and fiddles with the button, but doesn't press it yet. He pauses a moment, looks at Itzhak, then at Ravn. "I'm going to go over there a moment and make sure the children are evacuated. And then I'm going to come back here and ask you all to move up to the parking area and wait for police to take your statements." The Kiwi's brows go up, in a 'see what I'm saying?' expression. "Don't touch the body." But if someone takes pictures and examines things for further occult research that the police aren't going to do, weelllll...

As for the stench being fairly new? Well, that mystery might end up being solved by the fact that the more people who crowd around, the more unstable the sand under their feet gets. There seems to be a trickle of water coming from higher elevations that cuts through and under Itzhak's structure. The corpse was decaying, but it wasn't wet. The wet part is new.

"Roger that," Itzhak mutters to Niall. He has no interest in touching the poor mutilated bastard.

He will, however, poke it with a stick. Which he does, squidging aside the poor dead octopus just a little, just far enough to glimpse what's under it. (What did an octopus ever do to anybody?) Seeing that the neck stump (UGH) is actually cauterized, he lets the octopus back down and throws the stick into the ocean. "Definitely an aftermarket addon," he tells Maggie, scrubbing his palms vigorously on his shorts.

Leon's eyes open again, but he remains tight-lipped about whatever had happened between his glowing and now. He stares down at the corpse for a long moment, collecting himself before he finally stands again. He steps over to his and Maggi's piled belongings near their sand sculpture, retrieving his camera and snapping a few pictures of the scene. It would probably be useful to the others later. Itzhak gets a dissaproving side-eye on the actual fucking stick poking, brow cocked, as if asking 'Are you actually kidding me?' non-verbally.

Masters degree in Parapsychology said the girl whom Ravn otherwise only knew as the bartender at the Pour... Poor... That nice bar that looked like a dive bar back home in Copenhagen. He takes a mental note, talk to her later.

Meanwhile, his fingers silently acquire a wallet from the dead person's pocket while no one's looking -- not even Ravn himself. It's the sort of thing they just do sometimes, and it's quickly disappeared into the pocket of a blazer. He's going to regret that later because it smells just about as bad as its owner -- and now, so does that blazer and that glove. "Might be I should nip by the bar later," he murmurs to Maggi in particular, though he doesn't try to keep his voice too low for anyone else to hear. "Pool our resources and our degrees, something. Pretty sure this fellow didn't just die from an inconvenient heart attack, then bury himself as a cute kiddie surprise at the sandcastle contest."

True to his word, the tall Ranger starts to make his way back down the beach, looking spooked and worried. Niall stops a few feet back from the gory scene and then puts on his interpretive voice, which booms and demands attention without sounding like he's trying to order people around. "All right ladies and gentlemen, please step back from this scene. The police have been called and this event is now over. Please proceed to the upper parking lot area and wait for the police who will be collecting your statements." And they'll probably be waiting awhile, considering the police need to secure the scene before they can do anything.

Itzhak makes a face at Leon. What, so he's poking a mysterious corpse with a stick! Don't judge! He lets himself be herded away, lighting up another cigarette to drown out that SMELL.

Ravn wanders as herded; talking to policemen isn't something he's fond of, but being someone who's lived as a drifter, busker, and general nuisance for a couple of years, it's certainly not the first time, either. He gives his statement, entirely truthfully -- except the bit where the dead man's wallet is in his pocket. He feels a little guilty about that but hey -- if his hands didn't think it was important, they wouldn't have grabbed it.

Leon makes a face at Itzhak's face, making a motion with an open handed palm most slapstick types like military, New Yorker's, or at least NCIS fans recognized as 'I will go upside your head'. It was all in bluff, of course, something familiar in a stress-filled situation. Leon gives one wary glance back toward the corpse as Niall ushers them off, and is quick to carefully unload and stow the film from his camera so he wouldn't have to turn it over to police. He takes Maggi's hand as the climb to the parking lot, still trying to sort what had passed through that moment of his mind.

Maggi looks on in fascination at the advanced tactics Itzhak had deployed, yet they were effective. Cauterized squid...Calamari? She was pretty sure she recognized one of the symbols, but she wasn't sure enough to say it out loud. She eyes Leon in a concerned fashion before she sees he is actually okay, the caution seeping into her tone.

"I agree we might need to look a little deeper into the matter of 'Squidward'. Feel free to come by for a drink." She nods at each of them, not really wanting to have a statement taken or have Leon forced to stand too near a dead body for long. Also yes, she was going to make the vulgar nickname stick. She gives a parting serious look to Itzhak. "Your sculpture wins, totally the most interesting."