2020-12-12 - Welcome to the Golden Hour

Insomnia is a hell of a thing.

Alexander is used to spending most of the night pacing from room to room, sometimes working on his research in the locked room or playing games on the computer or the Nintendo, until finally being worn down enough to catch a few hours of restless, nightmare-tossed sleep. Just enough to get him up and operating again. The sleep's been a little better since Isabella all but moved in; the quiet rise and fall of her body in the bed soothes him, chases the worst of the nightmares away - if not always the Dreams.

But tonight is one of the nights that not even that can soothe him. He extracts himself from the bed as quietly as he can, and walks into the living room. He intends to play the console; his trouncing at Abitha's hands has awakened in him a desire to play more fighting games - not to beat her, because Alexander recognizes a gaming monster when he sees one...but he'd at least like to be a worthy opponent. So he turns on the old, CRT TV with the intention of catching a few games before trying to sleep again. Being an older model, it doesn't default to the black of a smart TV, or the blue of a cable box tuned to an empty channel. Instead, it's the soothing white noise of an empty broadcast channel.

Usually.

Tonight, as the picture flickers to life, it comes not with static and snow, but a grainy but recognizable picture. Alexander rocks back on his heels, frowning at the screen. The camera pans over a beautiful seaside cliff at sunset, light twinkling over the water far below. Two people stand on the cliff, and the camera focuses on the woman. Her face is beautiful, heart-shaped and soft, with large eyes that would have been expressive if not for the fact that they were clouded with thick cataracts. It's odd enough that he rocks back on his heels, hand a bare inch or two from the volume nob. The sound is muted, so he can't hear what she's saying, only see the passion that moves her mouth. The camera never turns on the other figure, there's only the shot of a hand in a white glove as it lays itself against the side of her mouth. The woman is crying without shame, and casts a longing look at her partner and the camera.

Melodramatic, Alexander thinks, and is moving his hand to turn it off, when the woman takes a deep breath, turns her blind gaze to the setting sun, and steps off the cliff. He freezes once again as the camera follows her descent in a swooping shot that seems to go on too long. Far too long. He's expecting it to cut away, perhaps to a reaction shot to the actor on the top of the cliff. It doesn't. Even with the sound off, he feels the sound of the body hitting the rocks just by the way it lands. Only once it's completely still at the bottom of the cliff does the camera pan upwards, revealing that the other character has disappeared. The scene fades out on a splash screen: The Golden Hour will return...after these messages.

Alexander's hand twitches, and the picture goes black as he turns the television off. He's never heard of that television show before. But then, Alexander doesn't watch fiction. But something else nags at him about it, and it isn't just the macabre way the camera lingered on the character's death. He paces through the rooms, trying not to think about it, but his mind keeps coming back to that shot over the cliffs. Something...something...

It's not until an hour before dawn, when he's finally laying back down and slipping into sleep that it hits him.

He's seen those cliffs before, outside Gray Harbor.

Esme is annoyed and when she's annoyed, she can't sleep. Her brain is too busy working to rest. So instead? She knits. She knits and she watches mindless television. The detective is so absorbed in her knitting and her thinking on how she's going to nail some of Felix's minions with the information she's been given that the audible shift from some stand up show to...not stand up...jolts Esme from her thoughts. Eyes snapping up to the television.

Welcome to the Golden Hour

What was that? She'd never heard of it before - especially not on this particular channel. She slowly lowers her knitting project, intrigued and still confused, as the intro plays. It's all in black and white.

The intro fades and the scene pans to focus on a single blooming flower, a rose specifically. The black and white scenage continuing. The flower from the introduction, she realizes. The sound of heels on dry leaves are heard approaching the area. Coming into view, one high-heeled shoe carelessly crushes the rose and continues on its way. The camera stays on the crushed flower though.

Time passes by the movement of the shadows along the ground. A new set of feet appear. Barefoot, dirty. The figure they belong to leans down, wearing a cloak that hides their features. The hands that reach out to the broken flower are feminine. Her hands still and the rose begins to bloom again. Rising up from its trampled state standing tall and proud one again.

The camera zooms in on the flower a little closer and now it is evident that it isn't a simple rose at all but some kind of sprite. It looks confused, shocked, and then grateful. The language it's speaking sounds like gibberish but it's frantically pointing in the direction that the heeled person had left.

The hooded figure finally speaks. Her voice is soft, melodic even, with a haunting tone. "Don't worry, my child. Justice will be served." The camera finally pans up for a brief look at the hooded figure as she pushes her hood back. A dryad looking figure.

Then she lifts her hood back up and continues on the path, following where the heeled person had gone off. The camera starts to pan away, to the surrounding forest on a path back up towards the sky for some kind of cutaway. It's easy to miss (In fact, Esme does miss it. ) but in the distance of that forest shot? One could swear it looked like the abandoned saw mill. Before it was abandoned maybe.

It's a fantasy show, this much is evident. From the dryad overlooking the path, the camera pans towards the sky, passing over a forest that is entirely too familiar. You've walked past that treeline. You've had a picnic under those trees. You've run screaming among those trees in half-remembered dreams.

The forest is alive.

It's beautifully done, one must admit. Rather than blow the entire season's budget on CGI and have the trees walk around like second generation ents, the Golden Hour opts for subtle. Eyes that flicker open in the dark, and then are quickly gone. Movement, at the corner of an eye. The camera pans around in a first person view, and as it makes a full circle, it becomes obvious to the observant that the trees that were over there are now over here.

Resin glints on the bark of tall spruces; but where resin should gleam golden in the last rays of the dying son, there is a reddish tinge.

And then something is running in the woods. Unseen as of yet, something large crashes through the undergrowth, causing a murder of ravens (and a number of their cheap cousins, the magpies) to take off from the high branches and rise up against the darkening sky in hundreds of little flapping silhouettes. The trees stiffen; the forest holds its breath.

A quick cut to the dryad on the hill; Something is coming. And back to the darkened wood, with its sawmill that has spawned so many horror stories -- some less fictional than others.

This is when Ravn Abildgaard tabs out from streaming on his laptop. He's not one for watching TV much, and while the premise of the show sounded interesting at first, it's clear to the folklorist that it's just another fantasy hodgepodge of authentic legends saturated in Hollywood's need to make money.

He watched the History Channel's Vikings. You probably don't want to get him started on all the things he thought was wrong with it.

The body needs sleep, and there is only so much that caffeine will do even in copious amounts, and all nighter's make Seth drowsy. When staying over at a friend like Ravn's place to watch over a wounded friend and the coffee high wears off the alternatives are few and far between to try and stay awake.

Seth glances over to the sleeping Vic, and further down the airstream towards where Ravn is resting before he takes a chair and sets it down in front of the little TV in the corner to turn it on to whatever channel comes in clearest over the airwaves. After futzing around with the bunny ears for a bit and flipping through a few channels a clear picture finally emerges from the glowing screen of the TV set.

Welcome to the Golden Hour

The scene on the TV opens up on a wide shot of a circle of robed figures surrounding a bonfire on a beach at the base of a cliff. It is pre-dawn, the sky lightening before the first true rays of sun peak from over the horizon to provide warmth and comfort, but not yet...not yet.

The robed figures chant as the camera pulls in closer, their dark forms hidden behind the flowing black fabric with their faces obscured by shadow even though the fire should illuminate them. As the wind picks up, the chanting grows louder and louder still as the bodies of the robed figures start to writhe in place in some sort of twisted dance, undulating to some unheard beat as the wind whips at their robes.

The camera presses in closer, spinning around one particular robed figure as the hood falls away, giving the viewer a glimpse of a gilled throat as it shifts to behind the figure to give the view from the figures' own eyes. Eyes that peer out towards the sea.

Eyes that peer out to the large yellow eyes that snap open at the crescendo of the chant. Eyes of the creature emerging from the ocean, seaweed dangling from it in long dripping strands.

The chant continues. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh..."

click

Seth Monaghan turns off the TV with a shake of his head as he mutters to himself "Bad effects. No wonder I have never heard of it," as he pulls out his phone to play Candy Crush instead.

Isolde was still trying to decide if she liked this new her. It was a better her. A more coherent, less paranoid her. A clearer thinking her. And yet, sometimes she found herself staring at her reflection and not really recognizing herself. Her therapist assured her this wasn't unusual. After spending your entire life in a particular state of being, turning a new leaf might make you think of yourself as a stranger. She didn't like it.

She had been sitting on her bed, watching Youtube videos for a class, reclining against her giant stuff frog, that one of these self-reflective bouts had hit her. And when she came out of it, she realized that the auto play had taken a weird turn. But there was a frog on the video, and that caught her attention. She hit the 'reply button' to start the video from the beginning. The title of the video was 'Creepy Bog Monster Special Effects' and the description said something about 'The Golden Hour'. A show or a movie maybe?

The camera was centered on what appeared to be some kind of body of water. Trees scattered about, a thick fog rolling in. Isolde was pretty sure that wasn't actually a bog. There was the faint ribbit of a tree frog as the camera panned towards the bank of the water, to the frog. Then another, and another. A chorus of ribbiting that Isolde thought was pretty dang adorable and reminded her of that one night in the woods with Alexander and the frogs covering her.

Through the ribbiting, something else could be made out. A strange chanting sound in a foreign language? Or maybe it was just gibberish. They usually were right?The chanting grew louder "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh..K'nar'st.." taking over the ribbiting sound, though it still felt distant. The camera panned up to the water as the thick fog lessened. enough to see the water stirring. An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of Isolde's stomach, unable to look away.

A large being abruptly began to rise out of the water with a strange lion-like maw and three tongues. Numerous arms following it. Isolde didn't want to see the rest. She quickly closed out of the video, that uneasy feeling over taking her and in that unease she realized something. That definitely wasn't a bog. Though the body of water was bigger than usual, the area was unmistable.

Gray Pond.