2021-01-02 - Just Gonna Keep On Walking

When the sun comes through the curtains
That I turned into bars
You'll be thinking to yourself
How did he escape

A silly Danish pop song from 1994. A bottle of red wine -- not too cheap, but cheap enough to buy at the grocery store. An impending sense of dread. Normal. Par for the course when you live in a town that doesn't so much flirt with the Veil as wrap itself up in it like a burial shroud.

"It's not really a friendly neighborhood. You should be careful, walking alone." Alexander Clayton, upon learning Ravn Abildgaard's choice of residence for the winter. "I know what a deal looks like, and to just cross the street and mind my own business," was Ravn's response.

It's not a fear of drug dealers or thieves that keeps him awake on nights like this. He was born into privilege but he spent most of his teenage years trying to escape that privilege. At twenty, he was a skilled pickpocket and hustler -- and enrolled in Copenhagen University with a promising future in academia. Nothing sums up the man's life like that screaming disparity between living at the very bottom of society or at the very top, but never in the middle. Ravn knows when to look away, when to keep quiet, and when to stay on his own side of the road. He's spent too much time roughing it in bus stops, hostels, and on the borrowed backseat of somebody's car to be afraid of the dark.

In Gray Harbor, the dark is something very real that will come right at you. It will drag you off into the woods, break your mind to bits, and toss you away like a cat wanders off from a chewed-up catnip toy when it's run out of the good smell. Ravn is conscious of it, in the fashion of not sticking your head into the maw of a wild lion if you want to survive the safari. He respects the dark. It's out there, it's real, and yes, it does in fact want to bleed you dry. Don't play in traffic if you don't want to get run over.

You had such a strong grip
You had me eating from your hand
You had a trained monkey
How did he escape

He hums along with the tune on his earbuds. It's just an old pop hit but it speaks to him even if he was only four years old at the time it came out. It talks about the kind of dark that Ravn does fear. The malevolent terrors of the Veil are horrifying, but they don't make things personal. His fear is personal. It sent him running for three years straight, bumming his way through Europe and then on to the US to keep right on running. Never staying in one place. Never looking back. Never wanting to see what might be there, behind him.

She died in 2015. Killed herself drunk driving at a hundred twenty miles an hour, down a narrow, winding country road. Rammed a tree. The paramedics had to cut her apart to get her out of the car wreck, but she was already dead.

Ravn sees ghosts. He always has. He was never afraid of them. Not until that one -- the one who blames him for her death. The one who died because of him. He left her behind in a country on the other side of the planet, and she followed him all the way from Denmark to the very south tip of Europe. She follows him still.

On a night like this, sitting on the step to the Airstream he rents from Vic Grey, he feels Benedikte, out there. Behind him. Coming. Catching up.

Who's gonna help you
Tie your shoe lace
Who's gonna give you that
Sadistic look on your face
Well, it won't be me

He stumbled into Gray Harbor in late August. It is January now. He's stayed still for far too long. Made himself easy to find. Ravn pictures the Veil and the creatures in it, the beings in there who thrive on human suffering. The ease with which they wield a man's fears and wounds against him. The obvious pleasure they take in doing so.

It's only a matter of time.

I'm gonna keep on walking
I don't know where to
I just gotta get away from you

The song ends, and Spotify offers up a cheerful love song next. Ravn isn't listening. He cradles his wine glass in his gloved hands and replays those last three lines in his mind. Gray Harbor has its claws in him deep and good and there is no running now. No more don't get attached, just keep on walking. He has settled in. Made friends. Put down roots.

Back a rat into a corner, the rat will fight.

He thinks about throw-away lines, observations made by others in passing. There are people in Gray Harbor who can step across to the other side. There are people who can manipulate the dark, make it theirs, force it to obey. People who have the same gift that Ravn himself does -- only where he is a match lit in the dark, they are suns.

He thinks of August Røn who showed him his first real glimpse into that other world. Alien life forms going about their business in a strange forest biome that never existed on Earth. Hummingspiders. The man whom everyone and their grandmother in Gray Harbor will tell you knows how the Veil works -- insofar that anyone knows how the Veil works. He thinks of Itzhak Rosencrantz of whom the locals say that he can walk in and out of the Veil as he pleases; it cannot trap him and hold him. And he thinks of Gina Castro, of whom residents of Gray Harbor claim that she's likely half Veil creature herself.

The Dane gets to his feet. The night is young and the Black Bear Diner keeps blue-collar workers fed 24/7. He starts walking.

Or thinks that he does, at least. Because this is Gray Harbor, and the Veil will indeed drag you off into the woods, break your mind to bits, and toss you away like a cat wanders off from a chewed-up catnip toy when it's run out of the good smell. Don't think anything that can be used against you, because it will be used against you.

There is a woman walking through the woods on the outskirts of town. She does not know where she is, but she knows why she is there. Following the light. For the longest time it stayed ahead of her, always just over the horizon. But recently, it has stayed in one place and she is catching up.

She is wet and bedraggled and her clothes look like she has been under water for some time. It's all a little unclear to her. She dove off the cliffs of il-Mara at the south end of Malta, into the Mediterranean Sea. She kept walking, following the light west. Time lost its meaning.

How she got here does not matter. It is easier to walk on the land than the sea floor and where she is exactly makes no difference. The man she keeps walking for is nearby, and she is very, very tired.

Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, an average of four weeks a month, twelve months a year. Ever since it's re-opened under Gina Castro, the diner is rarely closed. And it is even more rarely ever alone: there's always someone, and usually more than one. A cook, a waitress, a busser: a customer, no matter what the hour or type. The bears, too, have their own presence. It's their place, after all - they have seniority over even the owner.

And speaking o f the owner, it's a well-understood fact that, at any given hour, Gina Castro might be present. It is, after all, her diner. She needs no schedule to work, she has a key to every door, and everything in the diner is indelibly marked by her. Some might remember the old days, before Gina pressed her own mark onto the place, but nowadays, the diner and its...unique...atmosphere are almost synonymous. No one who knows of the diner would be surprised that at this post-dinner hour, they're open. An androgynous blond server leans against a table as they try to teach a tall, gangly mohawk'd redhead (who looks like he just stepped out of the 1980s London Punk scene but has only just brushed up against adulthood) some sort of hand-clapping game, while an older brunette delivers food to a booth full of teenagers, while at the same time holding a conversation with the person at the register - a man in a torn sweater working on painting his nails.

Then, of course, there is the person seated ON TOP of the long counter, pretty near the register, her back towards the room - by the rich, dark purple hair it's Gina Castro, dressed in a faded, dark red hoodie long enough to serve as a dress, the back of which has a picture of a faded pair of skeletal bird wings. You know, the goth version of angel wings that isn't as corny as bat wings. It's hard to tell much from the back, but she seems to be reading some sort of magazine, leaning back to put her weight on one hand with legs crossed - again, on the counter - a milkshake of some kind to her right, along with a plate that has a few pastries. One foot taps to the beat of the music being played inside the diner - currently, it seems the theme is oldies, as the song being played is currently The Shirelles's "Mama Said."

August's presence in the Diner is reason alone to suspect this might be a Dream. He's somewhat notorious for not eating in dining establishments; sure, he'll buy his employees waffles from the Waffle Shoppe, and every now and then some takeout from Thai Table and Golden Kirin, and if there's a festival on the beach or docks (like right now) he'll eat there. But dining out regularly? No. It's said he almost never even buys meat from stores. He hunts or fishes it himself, grows it himself, or doesn't eat it.

So here he is, in Gina's Diner, a sure mark something is off. Did he show up to argue about the name? Probably. That's the kind of thing he'd do. (He insists it's still Grizzly Den, flat out refuses to call it anything else, and if asked will say the Revisionist can shove it. But he did spend a few months getting dead plants, so perhaps that's a factor.)

He's sitting at the counter, an omelette in front of him, a cup of coffee to hand. He frowns, suspicious. Why did he order this? Did he lose a bet with Ignacio? He can't remember. Maybe he did. He's pretty sure it can't be as bad as people say, though isn't sure he wants to obtain his own, first-hand, eye-witness account.

The door to the diner opens. A unicorn steps inside, a tall slim leggy creature, jet black, dappled with white like a fallow deer. No--no, that's not a unicorn, don't be silly, it's Itzhak, his violin case slung over one shoulder. He swags on in and pulls up a counter stool next to August and considers the fact that August has an omelet in front of him.

"What, you lose a bet?" he says, nudging his friend with an elbow.

Dreams have perfect timing. The lead never sits around for forty minutes, checking their watch and playing Wordfeud while waiting for the rest of the cast to wander in. The supporting cast is already in place when the lead arrives on stage.

Get in place, supporting cast. Ravn wanders in not two minutes behind Itzhak. With the logic of dreams, he heads straight for the counter, instead of greeting his fellow violinist or the botanist confronting one of the diner's infamous omelettes. The Dane nods to Gina; the rest of her staff he ignores because Gina lets her employees do whatever they want. Working at the Bear must be great, he reflects. The retail slave's revenge on mankind. In some strange way it is liberating to watch. Like a soap opera, but without the silly bits. Or with all the silly bits but none of the soap.

"I'll take whatever sandwich the chef feels like surprising me with today," he says. "And a dose of Gina lecturing on the side. I need your advice on something Veil related."

Only then does he glance back and notice the other two men -- because this, too, is the logic of a dream. He upnods at them both before turning back to Gina. "A month or so I was -- the fire festival on the beach, I'm sure you remember that. I was taking a walk and I ran into someone else doing the same. We fell into chatting and since I was still very new in town, we talked about Gray Harbor and the way things work here. One of the things she said was that this place brings back your ghosts -- or at least a facsimile of them which is just as bad as the real thing, I imagine."

Ravn thinks of Olivia Kincaid on the beach, talking about the games the Veil plays with the minds of its prey. He shakes his head, dismissing the memory. Now is not a time for thinking about odd conversations and how he thought that she was some ghost risen from the sea. With the logic, still, of a dream he says, "It's going to happen. I can feel it. I've stayed too long in one place, and my own ghosts will find me soon."

And the camera of a dream pans.

There is a building in the forest. It sits next to the darkened road, shining like a beacon in the empty, unfamiliar forest. Warm light radiates from it like from a hot stone dropped into cold snow; the darkness melts away around it.

She stops walking. For a few moments she just stands there, watching -- overwhelmed. She has walked for so long. A year? Two? More? Following a small spark around the world. But this? This is no small spark. Something in there, inside this -- what is it even? Some kind of pitstop, like in an American movie? -- inside this house glows with the energy of a thousand suns. The light she followed is just a speck. She is looking at a supernova.

No wonder he went here, then. The light calls to its own kind, or at least she assumes that it does. She has no light. Just the cold emptiness inside that she needs that light to fill and thaw out.

She walks closer. Presses her face against a window. Looks in.

Gina maintains her position as people come in, facing the kitchens and the 'work' area, back to everyone, reaching to grab her drink and take a sip. All without looking behind her -- which in and of itself is a rather Gina thing. Other people never sit with their backs to a door: Gina leaves the whole diner behind her (though the highly observant may notice there are appliances in front of her - maybe not so blind after all). She snags a pastry as she straightens, milkshake in her other hand, foot still tapping, as she lets Ravn address her without interruption. Then again, it's also hard to tell if she's listening. The man doing his nails, however, glances over-- takes one look at Gina, tsks, and goes to put the order for food in.

As Ravn explains why he's there, Gina pushes off and turns herself until she's facing the diner, booted feet resting on one of the stools. "Yeah. Ghosts are a thing. But I don't fuck with ghosts as much as I can help it. Probably the only shit more annoying than people is their fucked up leftovers." Ahh, Gina, so kind. Another long sip of her milkshake, then she puuuushes herself across the counter, until she's pretty much right next to Itzhak and August. And puts her feet on THAT stool, near them. And just... LOOKS at August and down at the omelette.

It's perfectly identifiable as a veggie and cheese stuffed omelette. Except, it's... well. It's a very... oozy omelette. Thin brown lines, like veins, show the contact points of the pan in circles, tracing over a damply shining surface of pale, bumpy yellows and whites that all blend together - like scar tissue. Really, it's surely topped with cheese that must have melted and resolidified, to produce such an effect, but it is all disturbingly egg-colored and gleaming. It doesn't help that here and there protrudes a bedraggled bit of green or orange, remnants of the center of the omelette poking through: the vegetables. Surely one can't ruin vegetables? Perhaps if they hadn't...dice and sliced them so much, so the center is only colorful squares of red, yellow, green and white sauteed to all somehow also have a uniformly tinged brown to them, perhaps-- possibly-- overcooked, and now just mysterious colorful blocks. Spinach has also clearly been added to it at some point, meaning there's bits of limp, curdled green oozing from one end. A trio of round, red cherry tomatoes serve as a bright contrast to the yellowed meal.

Any attempt to stab at the thing with a fork will reveal a far-too-smooth path through the omelette until you reach the bottom layer, which is...crisp. Somehow? It's certainly far darker than the top of the omelette.

Gina glances back up at August, raising both brows, and then adjusts her straw in her drink. SLUUUUUURRRRRP. She has no popcorn, but the milkshake serves well enough.

I'm sorry face in the window? Who cares about people. The show is here.

August glances up as Ravn and Itzhak both arrive, Ravn to discuss something entirely unrelated to...whatever this is, on the plate in front of him, Itzhak to inquire why, exactly, August ordered an omlette.

"I must have," he says, expression dubious and consternated. "And I'm pretty sure I plan to renege on holding up my end of it, too." He turns the Face on Gina. "Really, it's eggs, cheese, and vegetables. It takes work to make an omelette look like this. Real effort." He prods at it experimentally, winces at the weirdly oozing greens within. He's not one to shun spinach in an omelette, but...

...no. Whomever he made that bet with? They can pick something the hell else.

He shoves the omelette at Itzhak, bobs his eyebrows as the buck is passed. So then. Ghosts. "I've only heard tell of them, never run into one." He fails to see the face in the window, focuses on his coffee instead. Unlike the omelette, the coffee is decent.

"Ughck," Itzhak says when August slides the plate over to him. "I've eaten prison food way sexier than that." He in his turn slides the plate further down the counter, where maybe some kind soul will have pity on it and bury it at sea. What, that? That's not his.

Someone else is getting The Face though and that makes him smirk in one corner of his loud and mobile mouth. He spins the stool around to put his back to the counter, prop his fiddle case on his folded leg and flip the latches open. Ravn arrives and begins talking to Gina about ghosts, and in the manner of dreams, this seems perfectly logical to Itzhak. He upnods back to him but goes on with the process of getting his violin out.

Something--some note plucked, unheard by those without the Song--sounds in his inner ear, and Itzhak looks up. A face is at the window. He goes still, hands freezing in place hovering over his instrument, gray-hazel eyes widening.

Ravn sighs slightly as Gina rejects this opportunity to lecture. "I don't know what I expected here," he murmurs and turns toward the other two (and Gina since she already dodged him moving in that direction).

Then he nods at August. "I grew up with them. Quite a lot of them as it happens. Most were -- really just images trapped in time, not really sentient or aware, just doing the same thing over and over at specific intervals. A few were more aware, but they never really bothered anyone -- they were just there, sticking around for some reason or other. That's what you get for living in a house that's older than this country, I suppose. Have you ever watched that old Bruce Willis flick, The Sixth Sense? That's me as a kid except that the ghosts of my family's house don't really want anything. They're just there."

He folds his arms across his chest and spills the beans because that's what you do in a dream; one guy is staring straight at the shit that's about to hit the fan while everyone else blathers on, unawares. "What's troubling me about this is the Veil. I've spent so long just moving on, never staying place long enough for anything from my past to find out where I was and try to catch up. The last four months though? Sitting firmly on my arse here in Gray Harbor playing barback and making friends. Getting a life of a sorts. In a town that's literally run by some malevolent power that gets off on breaking people." The Dane glances at Gina again. "That's why I was hoping for a little advice, maybe. My real ghosts may never make it here but if Olivia Kincaid was right that day, then it won't matter -- the Veil will make them up."

There is a face pressed against the window. A nose pressed against the glass as if its owner can breathe through it. A pale face, framed in the matted, sea-torn remains of blond hair, with large, blue eyes that lock on Itzhak's face and alight with fury. Whoever or whatever this pale apparition is, it did not want to get noticed.

Her gaze wanders as the violinist stares; and with the flawless pacing of a dream -- or a really bad horror flick -- she looks over the other people present before anyone gets around to reacting. The seated man sending his food away. The tall man she followed here, back turned towards the window but it's him all right. The woman on the counter.

The woman on the counter.

Her lips curl back in a snarl, a grimace of hatred so strong that light glint in bared, snarling teeth. A wave of cold, blind hatred emanates from her slender frame even as she breaks the spell, the enforced silence of dreams. Her forehead slams against the window pane, alerting everyone inside to her presence even as the glass shatters and blows inward in a slow-motion shower of sparkles and glittering shards.

Gina actually looks momentarily... amused and disappointed, for a fraction of a second before The Face is leveled at her. Her response, however, is just to have another sip from her straw before pushing the plate of pastries closer to the group and saying, as if it's a perfectly casual and logical statement, "Cooks either can't make an omelette or hate making them. I just warn people before they order it - they make every other shit good enough." Don't look at her she just owns the place, she doesn't COOK. The music switches, continuing the 1960s theme: now, The Supremes's' Where Did Our Love Go.

Disinterested, she prods her drink and ice with the straw as August talks about ghosts, though her attention flicks to Itzhak getting out his violin, eyebrows rising. Reaching back, she pulls her cellphone out of her back pocket, swiping it open and fiddling with it while Ravn explains his ghostly habitations, adding after his talk of The Sixth Sense, "They irritate the shit of me." Before she has another sip of her milkshake, before turning to look at Itzhak as Ravn rambles on, lips parting to ask the glamorous unicorn something-- only to catch his expression. So, of course, she quite naturally follows his gaze, catching sight of the twisted, hate-filled face a fraction of a second before the glass shatters and falls in, crackling to the ground as the wind and rain outside are now far more audible, and Gina--

--Gina, well. Her eyes look the figure up and down, before she sets down her milkshake on the counter, unruffled, and looks around the rest of the diner to see how the others who were in were taking it - if they haven't already disappeared, as extras are wont to do. It's only a fraction of a second, before Gina exhales, and pushes herself off the counter, landing on both her feet.

Waiting. With eyes narrowed, and while her expression is neutral, she radiates displeasure herself.

August makes a low sound at Gina, accepting, or at least acknowledging, that omelettes and her cooks are not two great tastes which go great together. It's okay, he made it through college on coffee and an unpredictable temper. He even vaguely remembers how it works.

This turns out to be a good thing, because the only forewarning he has to the window exploding is Itzhak's expression, and even then it's not enough for him to do anything useful. He's half-turned that way when he hears it, that sound of glass shattering inward, and without thinking he's off his seat and half-way under the counter. It's instinct; windows exploding means shelling. Shelling means take cover.

But there's no explosion, and the ground doesn't rock, and the wall doesn't cave in either. No smell of cordite, no screams, no sirens. Just his body trembling with two decades of stored adrenaline. He stares at the face staring in at them, on edge, ready to retaliate if it so much as budges.

Itzhak's off his stool, the neck of the violin in one hand, other hand outstretched to ward off the flying glass. He lands on his feet in front of August, shielding him, his Song leaping in a silent shout. He can no longer throw someone else his shield, but he can throw his shielded self in front of them, and that's gonna have to do. (And actually he likes it but please nobody notice.)

"Whaddaya you want?" he growls at the ghost. Adrenaline is roaring in him like his Song, keyed up on the instant and ready to fight. This is his turf.

Ravn's back is turned towards to the window as he faces the others, and thus -- as dictated by any good, bad horror movie -- the Dane is the last person to realise that something is going down; he only reacts when the spray of glass shattering creates a tinkling noise not unlike rain falling on hot pavement. He blinks his blue-grey eyes owlishly at Gina as she suddenly stands up and looks -- no, feels -- like she wants to punch someone in the face. August dodges out of the way, and Itzhak dives in front, and Ravn wonders for a very short second if he said something to provoke such a reaction. Only then does he realise that whatever is going down is doing so behind his back, and turns around.

At some point later in his life, he's probably going to ask himself how the pale, bedraggled, wet woman walked in through the window. Even with the large glass panes of a commercial place such as the diner, there is frame work and steel and other contraptions designed to prevent any random elk from shoving his antlers through the glass, or the wind itself from breaking it. Walking through a window pane in a shower of crystalline sparkles is a Hollywood trope that very likely would just get you a broken nose in reality.

Maybe that's why it works now. Because this is not reality.

Lort.

Yes, that means exactly what you think it means. The Dane reacts instinctively, heading sideways and out of the woman's way -- maybe once he's had a moment to collect himself he might even feel bad about that, but for now? Sorry, Gina.

She's not a pretty sight. No one looking at this woman will be in any doubt whatsoever that she departed the realm of the living a while back. She is not badly decomposed, not at all -- in that regard, maybe just a few hours under, long enough that her skin is the sort of greenish-tinged white, waxy colour and texture one would associate with a dead person of Caucasian ethnicity. It's the rest -- remnants of a summer dress hanging in tatters and concealing very little of her small, but athletic frame. Hair that once was an attractive, blonde updo but now is a straggly, soggy mess obscuring half her face and sticking to her skin. Scars and scrapes and bloodless cuts on her hands and feet, as if she walked across unwelcoming surfaces for a long time, without any protective gear or care for how much she might injure herself in doing so.

Blue eyes that glow and burn like a gas stove, yet somehow managing to not actually light her face on fire. Cold radiating from her flesh in thick, pulsating waves. The sheer hatred in her expression as the dead woman heads directly for the small group of people, hands in front of her like so many angry claws.

Where are the diner's other employees now? Diving for safety out back, maybe, or simply exited from the stage like the good extras they are.

"Jeg slår dig ihjel! Forbandede luder!"

Whatever she's screeching at Gina, the intent is clear. This ghostly woman did not come here to talk.

"Calm your fucking tits. Drama queens don't get coffee." Gina calls out as she falls back, shifting in place as the woman approaches and taking a few steps to the side herself - away from the others. There's a bit of time, the woman must still navigate the tables to get to her, though it's not precisely a long walk. As the woman starts talking, her eyes flick towards the very brave Ravn, a stab of accusation eminently clear before her gaze goes right back towards the big danger. "And speak fucking English, or have public schools gone to shit in whatever frozen wasteland your ass crawled out of?" The odd thing is even now, Gina doesn't sound...angry, or afraid as the woman bears down. No, instead, it's the normal Gina ambiguity, though layered by her exasperation: is that razor-tinged humor? A taunt or straight-up malicious mocking? It's certainly a demand, as if Gina fully believes Benedikte is capable of speaking in English. There's a not-smile on Gina's lips as she prepares to dodge the claws, trying to put a table between her and it.

Despite how much it drives August crazy that Itzhak is bound and determined to take every bullet fired at someone, he's rattled enough in this moment to appreciate the gesture. It's calming, in its way. He's not alone here under the r--

No, no, he's in Gina's diner (the Grizzly Den Diner), under assault by...

...by...

The woman, or ghost of a woman--ghoul? zombie?--says something in a Scandinavian-sounding language, and though she's addressing Gina it's Ravn he looks to. He's not one to assume all Scandinavians know one another, just asks, "Was that a 'fuck you' or did she say something important?"

The zombie/ghost/whatever advances on Gina, causing August to act on instinct; no asking for permission, he just tries to shield her. She can yell at him about it later.

And Itzhak? He gets in the ghost's way, stepping right into her path with feral grace. She's not getting to Gina, August, or Ravn without going through him first. His Song uncoils in him with a non-sound like piano wire snapping in vacuum as he clenches his fists. The look on his face is a warning, barely-leashed fury.

"You get the fuck outta here," he snarls at her.

Ravn's scramble off to the side is more a frantic attempt to get out of the way than anything remotely resembling actual offensive capacity. He makes a half-assed attempt to throw a chair between himself and the approaching ghost, zombie, woman -- whatever she actually is. The fact that she in turn barely notices, much less is slowed down by it, registers vaguely as the Dane tries to process what's going on. He was, after all, the last person to get the memo.

He manages to get himself turned around and pick up on what August is calling out in his direction. "That was definitely a fuck you," Ravn calls back, pale as a sheet.

A pale hand -- upon the fingers of which were once finely manicured and painted nails but which is now graced with long, sharp, and ragged claws -- shoots out. The dead woman snarls as she aims her swipe at Gina's face -- and then again as her claws drag ineffectively across a combination of quite indifferent shirt and the psychic shield. She screeches in outrage and glares at Rosencrantz as if she's entirely willing to deck a motherfucker, as a New Yorker might say.

She keeps screaming. Some of it are words, though definitely not English words. None of it is graceful. The meaning does not require access to a dictionary. Gina is the enemy here, and her crime --

Standing between screaming dead woman and Ravn.

The man in question swallows hard, and faces the bedraggled apparition leaving wet footprints and bits of seaweed all over the diner floor. "Benedikte! Du har misforstået det hele! Jeg kender hende dårligt nok!" Words that, for all their definitely not being English, are not hard to translate; he is making a desperate attempt to assure the dead woman that this is not what she thinks it is. Yes, exactly that way. Reaching for her, he clearly intends to try to reason with her, get her to stop whatever she is doing. It's probably not the best idea any man ever had when it comes to 5'5 of very angry ghost, but then, Ravn is no tactician.

Perhaps Gina would be glaring at August-- perhaps she will, later, but right now, the shield is likely a blessing, as barely manages to avoid getting her face messed up, and is only grazed. She keeps moving, sidestepping as much as possible while her mouth just-- continues to run. Maybe she knows of Itzhak's determination and is going for getting rid of the other high-physicalist in the room by making him play white knight? "Seriously? Back from the dead and playing the jealous bitch? It's a new millennium, get off his dick already, it's not plated gold." As she moves she runs her free hand over the injured one, a quick physical check of the injury without looking at it, eyes on Benedikte and her wild screraming. "Go suck his balls for all I care, just--" One hand has been grasping at the counter, and finally she grabs a plate at random, and tries to slam it into Benedikte's face, a mostly wild shot: she mostly just wants to keep dodging and talking, "Shut-UP and Calm. Your. Thirsty. Ass."

Sure, that'll help, Gina.

August lets himself breathe when the ghost's claws bounce off the shield he's placed on Gina. No telling how long it will hold, and he'll be happy to listen to her bitch him out later, as it will mean she's alive with her face intact. Now if only either she or Itzhak could dent the damned thing. And maybe he can help out there. He focuses on the shape of her, the space she occupies, the way she occupies it, and tries to weaken it, make it more susceptible to Gina and Itzhak's Art. Then if--

--wait. Is Ravn moving towards her? August isn't having any of that; he reaches out to grab Ravn by the arm and haul him back. "No placating, let them handle her," he says. August is physical fit and hardy, but he's not especially strong or any good at man-handling people. Fortunately, Ravn's a delicate Scandinavian flower, and August is used to handling long, ungainly objects.

Itzhak isn't actually paying that much attention to what anybody else is doing except the furious ghost. He shifts to stay in front of her, like the matador taunting the bull by pulling his jacket open and inviting a strike to the heart. "You come to my town and start shit, you deal with me!"

Call him a white knight or call him a devoted protector or just call him an idiot, this is what Itzhak does. Nobody can make him do exactly what he's doing, which is throwing himself in the line of fire. He does it all on his own. Other Dreams, other standoffs flicker through his mind, nearly visible (Itzhak punching zombies to pieces while "Sinnerman" plays; Itzhak fighting Joey Kelly in earnest, not any kind of friendly training bout in the ring, Kelly is coming for blood; Itzhak performing a thousand tiny acts of protection that can easily look like him clowning or arguing, taking every kind of stand he can in every way he can).

He lunges at Benedikte, still the matador--still getting her to aim at him, not August or Ravn or Gina. At least, that's what he's hoping.

It's almost comical to behold, the way that Ravn tries to step in front of the dead woman heading for Gina, in an attempt to slow her down or distract her, or otherwise keep her from reaching her target. Maybe Gina's quick observations about his anatomy caught him off guard (and rightly so, having a gold plated dick sounds like something that might be quite painful, particularly during the application process of said molten gold). Maybe it's the plate that goes flying past his face, towards the ghost, along with the cheeseburger that was sitting on it. Neither of them hit their intended target; if anything, the dead woman looks even more furious that her intended prey dares to fight back.

Maybe it was more the fact that August all but tackled him. Ravn shies away from the other man's touch instinctively, which is no small part of why he ends up flailing like a woman named Karen trying to argue with mall security. Neuropathy is a bitch, and delicate Scandinavian flowers aren't very difficult to move out of the way. Shoved aside like 6'3 of irrelevant obstacle the Dane just flails.

And there is Itzhak Rosencrantz instead, leaping in front of them all like a Spanish toreador, the power of his mind lashing out like a sledgehammer, ramming the dead woman in the face so hard that while he never actually touched her, she visibly reels from the impact.

The camera of a dream slows a moment, allowing our audience to watch her stagger; hair fanning out in a wet, bedraggled mess as she almost is knocked off balance, sending a spray of cold, salt water away from herself like a shower of glittery diamonds that burst upon impact with the floor and the table next to her.

She shifts her focus. Ice blue eyes burn colder yet as the ghost's attention switches from Gina to Itzhak. She snarls. She looks him up and down. She does an entirely wrong piece of math in her mind. She snarls louder.

Ravn continues to try to get the woman's attention as she turns upon the New Yorker in a rage of claws and bared teeth. It becomes clear from his words that the woman's name is Benedikte -- and that Ravn very much would like for her to stop attacking people. Truth is, he should probably pick up the nearest blunt object and help whaling on her if he wants to achieve that, but maybe the obvious history between the two of them did not include him beating up his girlfriend -- lover -- whatever she's supposed to be. Or was supposed to be before she died, because alive she is certainly not. Just very, very dead, and very, very angry.

As her plate goes wide, missing the ghost, Gina's eyes narrow-- but then there is suddenly no more Benedikte in front of her, and she straightens, taking a few farther away and moment to glance at her arm and see the injury (non, really - her hoodie is torn). She slips back into her prepared stance when the ghost begins to snarls once more and then moves-- to Itzhak, after his brave speech.

And for a moment, it's there. The measuring look. Gina hasn't panicked or gotten truly upset, all this time: irritated, perhaps. But at this moment, she seems to be considering her options, gaze flicking towards Ravn and August, before settling back on Itzhak. An eyebrow may twitch up as he declares it his town, but she doesn't argue. Instead, she collects herself, tugs on her sleeve helplessly, before she grabs another mug from a table and flings it. "I wasn't done talking. Rude." Her eyes go back up to Itz and she shrugs, as if to say she's doing her best. "You got this, Rosencrantz?" Gina asks, not quite stepping forward again after throwing a mug to the ghost's head.... again.

Success! August has prevented Ravn from being shredded by an angry woman named...Benedict? Well, he can't judge, he's named for a month. "What the hell are you doing," he growls through clenched teeth, dragging the flailing Ravn. "Taking lessons in being a punching bag from Joey Kelly doesn't mean you should charge a ghost. Especially not one that looks like that." And maybe this is why he fails to weaken Benedikte, or maybe it's that ghosts are made of sterner stuff. Either way, he feels her molecular energy slip through his fingers, eely and resistant.

Fine then. He can do this another way.

It's not Itzhak whose power he amps, but Gina's, and in a move sure to make her like him even more than she already does, it's done without asking. There's a bit of a jolt in her Glimmer, like taking a drink of particularly potent coffee, and August says, "Are you gonna just let her fuck up your diner?"

Itzhak didn't even grow up here and he's saying it's his town. Rude!

"That's right, sweetheart, eyes on me." Eyes locked on Benedikte, he talks in a low, dirty tone to this violent apparition, as if trying to seduce her into sneaking out back into the alley with him. "Right here. I'm the one you want. Castro do I look like I got it?" Itzhak's tone doesn't change, so now he's crooning dirtily (and sarcastically) and attempting a conversation with Gina. "Do some fuckin' damage, will ya?"

Nails the colour of old, sea-polished glass rake across the abdomen of the lanky New Yorker, tearing fabric and skin alike. The ghost continues to wail -- a keening barrage of insults and accusations in a language only one other person in the room understands (and he seems to be a little too busy to translate at the moment). It is not entirely clear what Itzhak Rosencrantz is being accused of -- possibly it is everything. An entire world of ghostly suffering and rage, which the man not only accidentally got made the target of -- he invites it, taunting her, keeping her attention, seducing her.

Maybe it's that last part that causes at least Ravn to stare blankly. Of all the reactions he'd expect to a scenario like this, that one was not on the list.

Maybe Benedikte did not expect it either. She certainly did not expect the coffee mug that hits her directly in the chest, splattering scalding hot coffee. Her skin, pale and clammy, blisters and boils, and the ghost recoils in pain and anger.

The lights flicker off and on. Twice, in rapid succession. And then, with the graceful, slow camera handling that this dream experience seems to have picked for a brand, the glasses on the shelves along the counter explode. One by one, like a chain of dominoes, bursting in showers of razor sharp sparkles. The plates are next -- falling down, flying around like confused UFOs, before smashing into things. Then, the light bulbs start to pop.

The blue fire in Benedikte's eyes burns white-hot at the sight and smell of the blood of her prey. She looks from Itzhak to Gina. From Gina to Itzhak. Ravn and August seem entirely irrelevant to her at this time. The smell of blood makes the decision for her in the end, possibly combined with the fact that Itzhak is doing the equivalent of mooning a Spanish fighting bull. She lounges for him, recklessly, hungrily, claws first, teeth bared, still screaming obscenities and insults in a fashion that is both unintelligible (to most people present) and decidedly not lady-like.

Ravn in turn glances helplessly to August because the man is not wrong; getting himself shredded by angry sea zombie won't do anyone any good, least of all himself. He quickly runs through scenarios in his mind --

-- salt stops the undead, except she's covered in salt water and doesn't exactly look like it slowed her down --
-- crosses? she's not religious, and neither am I, not going to work --
-- garlic? she's between me and the bloody kitchen --
-- cold iron? never a handy horse shoe around when you need to brain somebody with one --
-- seeds -- seeds might work, she's probably not a vampir but it's the best I got --

-- and swipes the small basket of condiments, tooth picks, and more importantly, sugar, salt, and pepper paper packets from the nearest table. He throws the entire collection at the ghost's feet and yells, "Count them!"

As distractions go, it's probably not his finest.

Is it August's shout? Is it the glasses that start to shatter and pop? Is it the sound of shredding cloth and skin? Either way, Gina stops moving, tilting her head as things pop-pop-pop, her irritation fading into... expressionlessness. That expressionless attention snaps towards Ravn when he also beings throwing things, looking at the stuff left at the ghost's feet then looking back at Ravn, both brows rising slightly. And then Gina's jaw sets.

It's like when an elevator drops too quickly. for her, or like an explosion underwater, sensed more than heard - for Gina, it's always the Deep and Low, the darkest and deepest depths, and it's there she sinks, before she lets her power ripple out from her, pouring it carefully in delicate tendrils that sweep out from her, collecting broken fragments of glass and porcelain and thin shards of metal - everything is already well under way, too much has already begun flying around for her to stop, but she CAN collect them after they crash, right after they collide, and does so now, even as she sweeps her power along the ground to pick up the debris and bring it up, to dangle in the air. Gina watches the ceiling of the diner as she does this, bringing up the shivering fragments, before she drops her gaze on Benedikte.

And the shards shake, before one after another they follow her gaze, zooming right for Benedikte like small, eager kamikaze meteors.

It's probably a complete mistake that Ravn is also hit in the face with a few packets of pepper. There's a lot going on.

August flinches when Itzhak's hit again, harder this time. He barely manages to focus on strengthening Gina. It helps, though, or maybe he just wants to think it does. Either way, Gina seems good and pissed now. And hey, so is he.

He groans as Ravn yet again goes after the ghost...by throwing things on the floor for her to count. "What are you doing," he repeats, but this time instead of grabbing Ravn, he goes right for tearing Benedikte's ghostly molecules, such as they are, apart. It's not flesh he's acting on, which makes it easier. There's no emotion pouring out at him the way it would with a person. All that's there is a ball of rage and frustration, which is much easier for him to dismantle in this context. Especially since, Gina, Ravn, and Itzhak are all under threat. Bitch can take a hike.

Itzhak yells as he's blooded. Benedikte's claws come away trailing shreds of his shirt and his flesh and blood, in that hyper-real slow motion, red streams floating through the air. He yells in pain, and he laughs a madman's laugh.

"That's what I like! Gimme some more!" Where did the brass knuckles come from? They're on his left fist, shining in the light for a flash of a second before they're in motion. DOWN says the ink on that hand, coming in a straight line from Itzhak's broad shoulder to Benedikte's face.

She screams out her rage at the unfairness of her life being cut short, putting her in the grave at the age of twenty-three. At how he put her there -- not with a dagger to the heart but with his indifference. Her fury at having walked halfway around the planet to find him and where is he? Chatting up that purple-haired hussy, and then, that lanky asshole with the New York accent all but pulling down his pants and shoving his machismo in her face.

There are not words in any language known to man able to convey the rage of Benedikte, and so she screams without them.

Fragments and shards of glass and china leap back up from where they shattered; a storm of broken, sharp objects coalesces on the dead woman, tearing and ripping. Half a broken juice glass embeds itself in her eye, and she staggers; with her remaining vision she sees him reeling away. She takes a strange pleasure in that sight, even if it is the last thing she sees before a flying fork does her other eye in.

I could have told you that these people would betray you. I'm the only one you could ever trust. And you got me killed.

She never speaks the words; even if in her rage she had managed to put them into understandable English -- or even just Danish -- she would not have managed; even the dead need air to push past their vocal chords, and Benedikte has none. The storm of cutlery and shards that Gina Castro conjured up may have the better visuals, but the raw anger of August Roen punches through her chest in the short, perfunctory, no-arguments-necessary fashion of someone who turns a flame thrower on someone covered in gasoline. It's messy, it's brief, and the visuals are reminiscent of a ketchup factory exploding in slow motion.

Never before have the words 'clean up crew required in isle five' rung so true.

Ravn tries to dodge the onslaught of flying sharp objects, and he mostly succeeds -- a few packets of condiments slap his face but do no lasting damage; one breaks, rendering him literally salty but otherwise unharmed. Having a literal first row seat to the show the Dane concludes in short order that whatever Benedikte is, she is not compelled to stop and count whatever is thrown at her feet like the undead of Slavic traditions in particular; that watching someone's face and body being ripped to shreds by a whirlwind of debris is a gruesome sight; that watching their chest and ribcage explode out their back, painting the far wall and the window in shades of crimson, is a gruesome sight.

And then, in a flash of brass slammed down and through the remains of the ghost's upper body, shattering what remains of her strangely still-beating heart, the hand that reaches for the New Yorker is feeble and has no strength.

Parts of that heart beats a few times more. Itzhak Rosencrantz gets to admire the cinematic effect up close; his is the hand that those shreds are stuck to, in a mess of blood and fibre and ligaments.

Badum. Badum. Ba. Dum. Ba.

Silence.

When the body collapses there is not much left of it but arms and legs. It'll certainly not be walking again, unless it manages to rise in a more ethereal form. It no longer bears much resemblance to anything human.

It's only fair; after all, the diner no longer bears much resemblance to a diner, either. Going to need some serious elbow grease, getting the blood out of the curtains and the tablecloths. Several people present might also want to consider just burning their clothes.

Ravn's thousand-mile stare is that of a man who's just watched his ex be turned into puree. He blinks several times and reaches up to brush a blood-stained lock of hair out of his face -- which only serves to spread the blood stain further -- and then takes a few steps backwards as if worried that the body (or what's left of it) might suddenly get back up. He's sheet white (except where he's crimson) in the fashion of someone who's genuinely horrified (rather than in the slightly green fashion of someone who's about to faint) as he looks at the other three.

"I was trying to distract her," he murmurs rather belatedly in response to August's question.

Gina has been the farthest from Benedikte the whole of this - she's maintained a distance, and even now she stands, both feet firmly planted, hands in the pockets of her hoodie, looking on the whirl of violence and the destruction of meat and flesh with her usual hard-to-read face, the only emotion quite clear being....mild irritation. No blood has touched her: oh, blood has splattered AROUND her, behind her, but she herself is unbloodied save the cut on her arm. The fragments of porcelain and glass and dirty cutlery also don't stop, once Benedikte is in shreds: no, they only slow, moving in a gentle swirl that pulls and returns like objects caught in a small wave. But Gina just ignores that all to look at the viscera pile and limbs left over. "What a bitch."

And then, of course, the sharper objects held up streak down and skewer the limbs on the ground, even as Gina moves her attention towards Itzhak and August. She just... stares for a moment, before she sets her jaw and reluctantly sighs, before she looks at Ravn, "So was I. Think I did it more effectively." She drawls dryly, "Lucky for both of us November and Rosencrantz are strong and still mentally in shape. Couldn't really get much force behind my shots when stressed. So out of practice." Gina says, sighing to herself as she waves a hand and the items still floating all gently fall.... in a circle around Ravn. He's trapped behind all these sharp shards, guys! And-- is she really handing all credit towards August and Itzhak? Looks like. She was just a distraction! Trust her, she was only trying to distract Benedikte: it was so fast, after all, who had time to notice how much damage her little shards did before August and Itzhak tore the ex-girlfriend to shreds?

"Also? Your girlfriend, your nonsense, you clean." She tells Ravn. No wonder she surrounded him in shards. IT IS A TRAP!

Benedikte is torn apart, from without and within, and August has to tell himself, over and over and over, that it's not real, that she's a ghost. His stomach turns in defiance, reminding him how many times he'd seen this sort of thing. Her rage, then, helps ground him: Ravn's indifference cut her life short? She followed him halfway around the world?

He stands there, trembling, sweating, but also not throwing up. He arches an eyebrow at Gina. Maybe he believes her...or maybe he figures he can't get the truth out of her no matter how hard he tries.

Instead, he turns to Ravn. "She would have torn you to pieces," he says. "There aren't a lot of times I like to let Itzhak run out in front of shit, but trust me--that's a time you can bank on."

Speaking of whom. He moves over to Itzhak, peers at his chest with an annoyed look. How dare he get injured by the ghost of Ravn's bunny boiling ex. "Want me to heal it up, or..."

Itzhak goes, "guh," and turns rather green around the gills, standing there with ghost innards dripping off his fist. But he manages not to throw up, either, and shoots August a kind of grimly amused look. "...maybe? Christ, it hurts." His right hand goes to his belly and comes away covered in blood. "Uh. Is anything hanging out? I sure as fuck hope not."

Gina's big statement about how it's a good thing he and August are the real heavy hitters here gets another cockeyed look from him, as he sags against the counter. No sharp shards for him, they just sweep out of his way, politely. But he doesn't argue. Instead, there's another face in the window, and Itzhak snaps his gaze there, ready to fight on the instant. What he sees makes him pale, which can't be good for the amount of blood he's losing. "Bubbe," he mutters.

Ravn stares blankly at the mess that used to be Benedikte -- until Gina's voice breaks him out of his trance. Or maybe it's the fact that he is finally noticing that while the rest of the fight may be over, he is trapped behind flying debris as if he's about to be next. He looks back at Gina. And then at the remains of the ghost that's generously littered all over the floor and walls. The fact that other people are injured have not dawned on him yet -- possibly because it's hard to tell which blood came out of whom, and on some level, maybe, he is possessed of the not entirely correct assumption that these three other people are all pretty much untouchable.

For a moment he wavers on how to respond. Then his good upbringing -- or his apathy -- wins out and he nods at her. Because of course it's up to him to clean up after Benedikte. Nothing new under the sun, ever.

He looks back at the body a moment, though. "Do you think -- she was real? That this was the end of it? Or is this just the Veil screwing with my head and conjuring her up for shit and giggles?"

It's an important question. After all, the real ghost may still be coming. Some day.

"Already said. Fucking hate ghosts. Annoying little shits." Gina isn't looking towards the window, not at the moment-- she's looking around her diner with her lips pressed into a thin line. Nothing is flying around under her power, now - the shards have "entrapped" Ravn, forming a neat circle around him on the floor, of jagged edges he can just-- step over.

Ravn's question about Benedikte's realness just has Gina raising both her brows at him, before she asks, in a mild tone with traces of...amusement? Mocking? But just a trace, otherwise she makes it sound like it's just another academic query, "Does it matter? If she was real enough you think it's her, she's huge fucking bitch who attacks other people like a rabid dog. If it's the Veil screwing with you, you'll learn sooner or later if and when she reappears, if and when you still empower the bitch she is. She's just ground beef now, though." A careless shrug, "That's why the wild boys creep me the fuck out." Her eyes move to look at August for a long moment, no actual appearance of being creeped out on her face, before she rolls her eyes-- and only then does she notice the face in the window, and she pause in place, looking at the old woman, "Diner's closed for repairs and cleaning. Still got some food if you want, but there's no coming in, now."

Lest anyone think August is The Adult Here, he rolls his eyes right back at Gina. To add to the whiplash effect, he then leans to examine Itzhak's injury. "No, nothing ah, that bad. You're gonna have some great new scars though." He dredges up a grim smile. "Trying to catch up to me?" And with that, he gets to healing what he can. At least he can prevent an infection or internal bleeding, which is something.

"The definition of 'real' is kind of squishy when it comes to this place," he adds to what Gina's said. "Doubly so for ghosts, I bet. Near as I've heard tell, you can only get rid of them by 'sending them on'." Which begs the question of what precisely this involves, if not putting said ghost through the Glimmer meatgrinder.

He glances up when Itzhak pales. "Hey, you okay?"