2021-11-09 - The Basement Spelunkers

(TXT to Perdita Alexander) Ravn : So, when are we exploring and mapping your new basement, disposing of the bodies and digging up the pirates' treasure?

(TXT to Perdita Alexander) Ravn : Yes, I included Alexander right away because when he hears 'basement', 'exploring' and 'bodies' he'll be there like he teleported in.

(TXT to Perdita Ravn) Alexander : I'm in.

(TXT to Ravn Alexander) Perdita : That sounds like a horrible idea, sure to bring death and destruction upon the entire city. I'm finishing an exfoliating scrub face mask, give me at least half an hour because if I die I want my pores to be flawless, at least.

(TXT to Perdita Alexander) Ravn : You do that. I'll pick up an armful of sandwiches and a torch. Meet you at your front door in half an hour!

(TXT to Ravn Alexander) Perdita : I have a flashlight and a couple water bottles. Why do I feel like I should bring my kit?

(TXT to Perdita Alexander) Ravn : Because we're in Gray Harbor. I'll bring the first aid kit.

(TXT to Perdita Ravn) Alexander : I'll be there. You should probably have a weapon, just in case.

(TXT to Perdita Alexander) Ravn : ... I suppose I could bring the little Glock Seth Monaghan gave me. I thought you were firmly anti-firearms, Alexander?

(TXT to Ravn Alexander) Perdita : Uh... I think I have a taser and some bear spray.

(TXT to Ravn Perdita) Alexander : That works.

The Leontes building.

It sounds very nice, and Ravn makes a mental note to keep referring to it as such even as he strolls up to the multi-storey downtown building. It's from the first half of the twentieth century, that much is obvious; and once upon a time, it has been a grand Art Noveau affair. It's probably been stripped on the inside and turned into apartments in the sixties, he reflects; these things almost always have.

The duffel bag over one shoulder is heavier than usual; true to his word the folklorist has packed the 9mm Glock Seth Monaghan gifted him with last year, in its box. He doesn't have a concealed carry permit and being the adamant anti-people walking around armed kind of European that he is, he isn't visibly carrying it either. As far as Ravn is concerned, firearms are a sometime necessary evil in this town, but he's not going to turn American enough to just tuck it into his belt and toss on a baseball cap.

He looks for a doorbell. Or a name plate. Or something to tell him where exactly to go -- because which floor is Perdita on again? Last he heard, she wasn't even sure if she owned or rented the penthouse or the entire building.

Alexander wasn't given an address for where Perdita lives. But that's okay, as finding addresses falls into his very specific set of skills, and isn't even that hard in a town this small, since she's an Outsider, and Outsiders are always subject of gossip, even before they get involved with suspicious lobster-fight-having Europeans. So he comes slumping up behind Ravn, looking like a hobo. "Hey," he says from behind. He's got an old backpack tossed over one shoulder with his own kit.

The building is studied impassively. "I think this is the woman who was handing out food to homeless people at the Boardwalk." A pause. "She tried to give me some."

Sweeping into the lobby wearing actual sensible clothing for once in her life is Perdita Leontes. Her long hair is in milkmaid braids wrapped and pinned tight to her head to keep them out of her way, (and make her hair less likely to be a weapon used against her)and she wears a sturdy leather jacket that's seen better days as far as fashion goes but looks quite durable, and a pair of denim jeggings that somehow look both incredibly durable and built for a flexible person to be able to move... and hiking boots. Why does she have hiking boots, the woman is afraid of nature. Slung over her shoulders, a small backpack that sticks close to her body without restricting her movement.

The main entrance to the seven story building features massive doorways... that have been conveniently resized to fit, well, normal human beings. She walks up, pushing the door open from the inside and gesturing grandly. The interior is... in need of TLC, but the architectural bones are impressive, despite the wear and tear. "Welcome to my ridiculously unhumble abode, because the me that was in charge while during the missing time doesn't know the meaning of 'laying low'."

"At least you didn't buy the Casino," Ravn murmurs, amused.

He's not really surprised at the idea that someone might try to hand Alexander a sandwich in the belief that he's another homeless man off the boardwalk. He is surprised that the person doing it might be Perdita. And then again, not really, because like himself, Perdita's lived on the street and seen some things, and that sort of life leaves its marks on the soul that no amount of moving up in society can really wash away.

"So, is your ridiculously unhumble abode known to be haunted or the site of a murderous cult in 1920, or are we having to go on gut feeling and hope for nothing too awful?" the folklorist asks with a grin to both; he knows how much Alexander loves a murder mystery. "Last basement I checked out was HOPE's and we found -- well, we found the missing butcher and his wife and his two friends, and finding them landed most of us in hospital for a while."

At the grand gesturing, Alexander sidles in, furitive, like he expects an ambush. And then he starts wandering around the lobby with far more curiosity than manners. "Hi," he tells Perdita, almost as an afterthought. "Rumored to be haunted," he says, after a moment. "Not with a humanoid sort of spectre, though. But in 1905, 1914, 1933, and 1954 there were a series of disappearances in the building. First a young couple who'd been known to have a strained relationship in one apartment. Cops decided he killed her and fled the town, although no body was found. In '14, a family's youngest child vanished from his bed and was never seen again. '33, the building was owned by a guy with connections with smugglers. Gave suspiciously low rent to a lot of well-armed 'friends'. Neighbors reported an argument and gunfire from inside one of the apartments. When the cops broke down the door, they found no one inside, just bullet holes and...a lot of blood in one of the bedrooms. '54, the residents in three different apartments stopped going to work at the same time. When they were reported missing, police entered their apartments, they all seemed to have packed up and left town. Found a detective's notebook that says that their beds were stained with blood, although not enough for a murder. It didn't make it into the official report."

This is all fired out at a steady pace, Alexander hardly even needing to think about a record of suspicious activity before rattling it off like the world's most creepy encyclopedia.

"What would I do with a casino? Stealing money from people when they know you're stealing it is no fun." She grins, though... though it swiftly fades when Alexander starts explaining the history of the building, both brows raising slightly as the litany of missing persons continues. Dita glances from Alexander to Ravn, raising an eyebrow as if to ask 'is he serious?' before deciding that, yeah, no, he is.

"I'm... still not sure if the entire place is mine or just the penthouse, but the basement isn't locked, and I've not seen any other tenants anywhere, so..." she shrugs slightly, then moves to re-secure the main doors. "Seriously, though, what is it with this town and bloody histories? I'd ask if it was built on a Native American burial ground, but..." she gestures toward the outside world with grace and flare, "Ladies and Gentlemen, America."

"And people tell me I'm a know-it-all," Ravn observes, green eyes glittering with amusement. Oh, how he can relate. Not to criminal and homicide history per se, but to the glee of diving deep into a story and learning all the things about it? He's on a first name basis with half the ghosts of his home municipality, and can tell you who's buried in most of the Bronze Age grave mounds. In some cases he can introduce you to the guys who are buried in the Bronze Age grave mounds.

"Built near a tear in the Veil that works like a free buffet to creatures who feed on human misery," he murmurs instead because Perdita knows this, he knows that she knows it, and look, no reason to interrupt a good grumpy rant. This town, man. "So, in other words, nothing stops us from going basement spelunking, and we don't even need to pick the lock first. I had Leon Gyre over to open the locked doors at HOPE but then he got abducted by the Veil and didn't come back for a month so... I picked the locks."

"If it makes you feel any better," Alexander tells Perdita solemnly, "That's only about twenty percent higher than the unexplained disappearance rate in the average Gray Harbor apartment building. I could give you murders and suicides, as well, but those are actually fairly in line with local statistics. Still elevated from national trends. Of course. And they were mostly boring." A flick of his eyes towards Ravn. "You said something about a butcher? Was there a serial killer in the basement?" The sad thing is that he sounds far more interested in that possibility than worried about it.

"You are a know it all. It's one of the things I find charming about you." She winks at Ravn, before turning to start leading the way through the building, which has, uh... scattered furniture from at least two failed restaurants that used to be in first floor spaces along the side. "If anybody needs a Formica dining table and chairs, I think you could smuggle half of them out before anyone noticed."

"Only twenty percent higher? I guess since it's such a tall building that makes it understandable." The fixtures in the building seem to be original to when it was wired for electricity, with what once may have been grand but now seems in desperate need of either replacing or repairing. "I'm sure I picked this place for a reason, but..." she shrugs slightly, "I'm not sure what it was... You... said there were smugglers? Maybe it has something to do with that... I have to assume I made decisions that were within or at least near my usual reasoning when I lost time, so that means there's some sort of advantage to this building besides a gorgeous view from the rooftop garden and an amazing old school kitchen."

"We haven't confirmed that he was a serial killer as such," Ravn replies and adjusts his duffel bag -- there's more in it than a pistol in a box, from the looks of it, maybe he did actually go for sandwiches too. "The building was for sale because the butcher family that owned it -- disappeared, some ten or eleven years ago, and you know the people of this town: They smell suspicious, they wisely stay the hell away. So we went snooping inside while restoring and repairing, and sure enough -- butcher and wife were in the basement, trying to kill us. Had a few undead friends over too."

He glances back at Alexander. "I wouldn't be surprised if you were to go through your extensive notes only to realise that the random disappearance rate in Gray Harbor dropped after the guy vanished. The only thing that's missing in that haunted butcher shop's tale is a punchline going and then they realised it was all human meat. The Veil does love its tropes. Also, any furniture you don't want, drop it off at HOPE -- if we can't use it, we can pass it on to a charity that can."

He dips into his duffel bag long enough to take the Glock out of its box and tuck it in a jacket pocket, safety on. From the looks of it, the last six months or so has seen Ravn gain some experience with firearms at least. It's what you get from being friends with the mob.

Alexander studies Perdita with more interest. "Are you particularly interested in smugglers, then?" he asks, with that lilt to his voice that suggests she might end up on some sort of internal list if she says 'yes'. He follows through the building, his fingertips reaching out to brush against a piece of molding here, a cracked tabletop there. He does not appear to be carrying a gun.

And, when he notices Ravn pull one out, his lips twist into a grimace of disapproval. He eyes the pocket where it disappears, warily. "There's always another serial killer to take the place of one. But I'm sorry you were attacked. This town sucks." He adjusts his own shoulder strap, but doesn't take out any weapons. His knife is in a concealed sheath at the small of his back, covered by all the layers of oversized clothing he wears.

"Man, am I glad I grew up in a normal town with racism and classism instead of, you know, crazy murder butchers." Dita mutters, mostly to herself, as she pauses briefly, trying to get her bearings. The building seems almost larger than it should, somehow, at times. And eerily empty. She finally finds the door leading to the basement, which is marked 'EMPLOYEES ONLY', predictably enough. Seeing Ravn pull out his gun she looks a little wary, but nods. "If I get knocked out, bear spray is in my left pocket, stun gun in my right." she pats her jacket, indicating the pockets.

"I'd ask why we're all arming up for war, but it's not like there's going to be My Little Ponies down there... or if there are, Twilight Sparkle will try to gore me with her horn."

"I hate having to carry a weapon as much as anyone else here," Ravn murmurs. "I'd much rather tell you both that the only thing to fear is what we bring ourselves, but this isn't Dagobah, and that butcher damned well near killed five people. Vydal was in hospital for weeks. My ears are still ringing from the crack in my skull. But let's agree to not draw first, at least."

He hoists the duffel up. "Brought a few toys though. Salt, silver, wolfsbane, you know, the usual." If a year in Gray Harbor has taught a folklorist anything at all, it's that there is a maniacal axe murderer in every basement and a child eating monster under every bed.

Alexander smiles. "We have those, too," he tells Perdita. "Ask me about labor struggles, the Addingtons, and the lumber industry, sometime." It probably doesn't need to be said that sometime should only be if Perdita is prepared to be drowning in information by the end of it. He looks completely blank at the mention of Twilight Sparkle, but does add, "Better to be prepared. Might be nothing more than spiders. Even in Gray Harbor." And yet, he immediately undermines that attempt at reassurance by nodding in approval at the kit Ravn's bringing - minus the gun, of course.

When they reach the door, he says, "Let me go first. I suspect I have the hardest skull of anyone here." Now he does root through his backpack to get his own flashlight, a sturdy thing with a bright beam. If allowed, he will lead the way down the stairs with it.

"Witches, vampires, werewolves... did you bring anything for the vampire squash?" Why does she sound both teasing and at least minorly afraid of it being true at the same time?

"Oh, I'm aware of the racism and classism." She gestures at herself with a tilted head toward Alexander. "Security followed me around in Walmart the other day. Yes, I was in a Walmart, Ravn. I don't want to talk about it, it was horrible."

When Alexander offers to go first, Dita shrugs and gestures toward the stairs, "By all means, just, uh... mind the stairs, I'm not sure how old they are or if they've ever been repaired and also if I have insurance on this building so... don't break yourself."

"Sharp knife." Ravn sounds entirely serious even as he steps aside to let Alexander step up in front. "Vampires are compulsive obsessive -- slash the squash, the other vampire squashes will have to stop and count the seeds inside. There are a fascinating amount of tales about pumpkins and other vegetables turning into vampires, actually. But the key factor here is, they have to count everything. Hence, Count von Count, not a coincidence they picked a vampire for the maths muppet. I have a pocket full of uncooked rice for the same reason."

Does Ravn seriously believe in vampires?

It's Gray Harbor. He believes in anything the human mind can think of and the Veil can conjure up in response.

"... Also, what's wrong with going to Walmart?"

"I've never heard of vampire squash. I read a book about a vampire rabbit once, though. It was very unrealistic." Alexander passes judgement as he carefully descends the stairs, and somewhere, Bunnicula cries a single tear. A couple of times, he has to adjust where he steps when he feels an ominous crack under his weight; he points these places out to the others. At Ravn's last question, he stops, turns around, and stares at the Dane for a moment. "It's racism," he says, bluntly, then turns back so that he can make it the rest of the way down, and shine a light around the interior of the basement.

Perdita is careful as she walks down the steps, holding onto the ancient hand rail as she does. The thing feels like it might give out with a solid tug, but it at least offers a bit more balance. "Well, first of all, the staff all stared at me like I was from Mars. I mean, yes, I was dressed up like Elvira, but then the security guy was following me and it's not like I had anywhere to hide things if I shoplifted in that dress, except maybe my wig. Secondly, all of their 'Made in America' items are made by prisoners making like a dollar a week in the prison-industrial complex, and the rest of their items are made by sweatshops exploiting Bangladeshi children for pennies on the dollar. Also... their clothes are ugly and they never fit me well. But I needed candy for the HOPE party."

"Vampire squash are actually something you can thank my parintêngo for. There's a belief among my people that inanimate objects left out during a full moon will become vampires. I don't know how true it is, so I'm only half laughing because it sounds ridiculous but it's probably true."

"Following Perdita around Walmart because she looks Latina is racial profiling and racist as hell." Ravn looks genuinely confused a moment. "I'm well aware that prison labour laws of the US are insane, and child labour is something most multinational corporations wish we'd stop talking about. But I didn't realise that going to Walmart as of in itself is racist -- just, well, god-awful in the way of cheap, exploitative places like that anywhere."

Maybe it's nicer in Europe. Maybe he just never went looking.

Safer subject. "There are a lot of origins myths for vampires and other revenants. Most of them have to do with infectuous diseases -- a vampire will usually come back to bring the rest of its family over, for instance. Which makes perfect sense when you consider that most people believed to be vampires were in fact consumptive or dying from malnutrition. There's also a strong element of social control -- misers, abusers, and illegitimate children can become vampires. The only vampire myth that really doesn't have a lot of basis in actual folklore is that of drinking a vampire's blood to become one. That's modern fiction."

"Sometimes the Veil affects objects. Makes them strange. Cursed, I guess. Vampire squash could happen, I guess." Alexander frowns as he looks around. The basement is, unsurprisingly, dusty as hell, and his sneakers squelch on the floor...there's probably a leak in the foundation that will need to be attended to. Ancient boxes, furniture, and shelves are covered in dust, and cobwebs teem in the darkness, gleaming under the light of the flashlight.

It smells like damp, rot, and dust. Alexander coughs a little and waves away a spider web before it can affix itself to his face.

"Going to Walmart isn't inherently racist, don't worry. It's just... supporting a company that is, so... it's better to shop local if you can." Dita offers up to Ravn... and of course, it's wet.

"Are you kidding me? This is going to cause black mold if it isn't already in here..." she begins cursing under her breath as she steps into the water with a grimace.

"I would really rather not run into any kind of undead, frankly. Or more goblins. Maybe we'll just get lucky and find a nice entombed corpse in the wall. Did I not walk around down here?" she pulls out her cellphone, holding it in one hand and her flashlight in the other.

"I usually shop right here in Gray Harbor, down to and including getting pretty much everything non-edible from the secondhand shops," Ravn murmurs. "Yes, I'm stingy like that, and also, I live with a guy who can repair anything so well it never breaks again."

He pauses in praising Aidan Kinney's abilities just before getting to the part where said Kinney also loves combining unusual style choices to a point that their shared Oak Street residence already looks like a bizarre art gallery slash museum of contemporary arts, and looks down. "Is the Rat King part of the previous owner's decorative choices, you think?"

It's a good question. That's a perfect circle of seven little rodent skeletons with their tails apparently tied together, after all.

"Maybe, whatever reason you bought this building was too important to be put off by a little water," Alexander suggests. He eyes the shadows warily, then frowns when Ravn calls out the arrangement of corpses. He shines his light on it. "Huh." It's thoughtful rather than disgusted. "Poor bastards." He crouches down by the nearest skeleton and his fingers hover above the sad little arrangement of bones. "I can see if I can read it. If you want."

"... awww, poor little mice, they must have been so scared..." Perdita's lower lip actually wibbles a little, and she looks away quickly, before she starts crying. She doesn't even like mice, but that's really sad all the same. "I'm going to guess that it was just... a disturbing coincidence." She swings her flashlight over the old basement, which is, of course, full of shadows and cobwebs and rotting old furniture from a century's worth of failed businesses.

"Huh... some of this stuff might be worth restoring, at least... providing it isn't completely ruined... Wait, is that..." She starts wandering off, pausing in front of... a very large enameled metal object, running her hand over it... only to see traces of what looks like fingers doing it previously in the dust. "Ravn, this is a Diebold 1872 Cannonball safe... You can fit over two hundred thousand dollars in cash in this baby..." She's biting her lower lip as she wanders around it, forgetting the water, forgetting the mice, forgetting everything except the utter beauty that is 1800s craftsmanship. "Triple timelocks... nickel plated... What the hell is it doing down here?"

"Waiting for you and me to fight over who gets to try to open it?" Ravn glances Perdita's way before his gaze drifts back to the little corpses and Alexander. "I read somewhere these things aren't as uncommon as people think. They used to be shown off in circuses -- people called them rat kings. As in, they were believed to be one rat, like a giant... Siamese rat thing. But what actually happens is that their tails get intertwined as infants and they grow up like that. They can apparently survive for quite some time if there's plenty food, because rats are very cooperative animals."

He looks over at the safe. "Ladies first. Do you need us to shut up and admire you while you work?" Is he grinning? He's grinning. It takes a thief to understand the glee of a safe begging to be cracked. A thief, or perhaps a museum worker.

Alexander lets his fingers dance away from the rats, and stands up at the mention of the safe. His eyebrows go up, and he examines it from a distance. "Maybe the smuggler guy had part of his stash down here. Good thing about an apartment building is that people can go in and out and a lot of people don't notice individuals. Assume it's someone visiting another resident." His mouth twitches upwards at the two's enthusiasm, but he's far too nosy to not be intrigued. "Can you two get it open?"

"I swear, if I open it and it's full of another pile of mice..." she mutters, glancing back to Ravn and Alexander, before licking her lips. "I didn't bring my safe cracking gear, but..." Perdita gestures Ravn toward the safe, grinning, "I mostly got into safes using my powers. If you can do it without, I think this beauty deserves the touch of a master rather than a grifter who knows her way around a regular lock." With a bit of concentration, Perdita summons a bit of ambient energy that coalesces into a fairy light that she casts to float up above her, rather like a halo.

Looking to Alexander, Perdita favors him with a smile that's very... Cheshire Cat, and maybe just a bit flirtatious, as she leans against the safe. "If he can't, I can, don't worry. I'm curious too."

Ravn in turn leans against somebody's old wardrobe and folds his arms across his chests. "Actually, I wouldn't mind seeing you do that? Also, I have my usual lock picks on me, but this would take a while and a fair amount of whispered sweet nothings. The whole point of those things was to make it difficult, after all. She's a pretty girl but, you saw her first."

What is it with thieves and locks?

He glances back at Alexander. "Wouldn't be surprised if smugglers used a place like this. Might even have been some kind of low key speakeasy here -- would explain a lot of the old stuff. And then the place just got used as a convenient storage space for whatever was too inconvenient to drag out to the curb. Kind of like sediment building up over time -- maybe we should call ourselves urban archaeologists."

"Then someone here really, really liked mice." Alexander pauses. "Or really hated them. It's airtight." His eyes flick back and forth between the two of them, one eyebrow raised. "Maybe you two should work together. So that you don't have a knife fight over it, or something." Is Alexander making a joke? It appears so, if the uplift of his mouth and faint twinkle in his eyes is anything to go by. Either way, he's clearly not going to get in the middle of it...not least of which because the investigator is definitely no safe cracker.

"So what I'm hearing is that you like to watch two beautiful girls go at it?" Dita asks with an arch expression. She places one hand against the door itself, her eyes going unfocused and distant as she focuses on the mechanisms inside the door, reaching out with her mind. "Oh, you beautiful work of art... the wheels are hand crafted, the drive cam is like new and the fence... I may need a moment alone... Spindle's a little... tricky..." she sounds like she's seconds away from reenacting the Diner Scene from When Harry Met Sally.

After a few more seconds of internal finessing, Perdita lays one hand on the lever and twists it, stepping to one side and swinging the door open ala one of the models on The Price is Right, looking very pleased with herself as she does, and revealing...

"Well, I don't know about you," Ravn murmurs to Alexander, "but as far as I'm concerned, I could watch this show for a while." Steel grey eyes sparkle with amusement. And he's not usually one to take innuendo and run with it, either.

The audience holds its breath.

... revealing bottles.

A kind of disappointing treasure at first -- until, perhaps, one remembers that Prohibition Era Americana is a valuable area for collectors, and valuable whiskey in valuable bottles with a fancy origin story (found! in an abandoned and forgotten safe! in a basement! after a century!) are definitely collectors' items.

Score.

"I'm not hating it," Alexander agrees, although his voice is bland, so it's hard to tell how much he's going along with the joke as opposed to just making an observation. His eyes are mostly on the safe, and his stance shifts a little, as if he fully expects something horrific to pop out of it. When nothing does, he lets out a relieved sigh. "What are those...ah. Illegal giggle juice." Another twitch of his lips. "That's not a bad find, and it doesn't involve bones or rats or ghosts."

Ignore the fact that he sounds just a /bit/ disappointed.

"Is that... century old booze?" Dita asks, quirking her eyebrows as she peers into the safe. She doesn't reach into the safe, just yet, almost like she, too, is waiting for a facehugger to leap out of it or something... but the inside of the safe doesn't look like it's been opened since the prohibition era. "What is your story..." She glances back to the men, tilting her head slightly, before she smiles, "I... imagine this is worth something to someone..." a sidelong glance at Ravn, then to Alexander. "We should probably close this back up for now and continue on. But first..." she shrugs out of her pack for a second, pulling out a notebook and carefully writing down the combination in it, replacing it in the bag... and then backing the combination up on her phone, too. "There."

"Hey, I'll take a bottle off your hands later just to try it." Ravn grins slightly. "We've found the rats and the bones already. I guess we're missing the ghosts."

He purses his lip into a small, wry smile. "Well, the hostile ghosts, anyway. Hello, there."

Hello, empty bit of floor next to the safe.

"It is. I wonder if any of it is still drinkable." Alexander hums to himself. "Probably. A safe isn't a bad place to keep it. And it's not wine." He shakes his head, dismissing the thoughts. His fingers twitch again, as if he'd like to touch the bottles and read their stories. But whatever impulse that is, it's put away when Ravn says hello, there. Alexander's free hand goes to his back, and he pulls out a wicked-looking knife, turning his attention to that empty space. From his scowl, he doesn't really believe in non-hostile ghosts.

"General Kenobi!" Perdita responds, almost immediately, even as she follows Ravn's gaze to the floor, her head tilting slightly as she looks, both eyebrows raising.

To Alexander, she turns and smiles, "It's either drinkable or it's jet fuel, one." She doesn't miss the finger twitching from the man, and her smile softens sympathetically. "I promise to let you take a look before we leave, either way."

Ravn in turn does not look very worried, and he's not going for his firearm in his coat pocket, either. Might be he's making a mistake -- heaven knows things of an ethereal nature sometimes turn out to hide a lot of sharp teeth behind innocent faces -- but it's a mistake he's determined to keep making because damnit, he's not going to be the guy who points a gun at innocents unprovoked.

He just keeps smiling at nothing.

After a moment or two, it becomes obvious there's a shadow there. A faint, sepia outline, like a very old and faded photography -- only it's moving a little. It's a boy, maybe some eight or ten years old, stepped right out of history -- in his shorts and spats and little tie he looks decidedly time lost. And a bit scared, of the man with the knife.

Or maybe he's a demonic incarnation waiting to pounce the instant Alexander lowers his guard. It's Gray Harbor, one can never be sure.

Alexander? Alexander is totally okay with being the guy who points a knife at innocents, as he maneuvers himself into a defensive position between Ravn and Perdita and the....small ghost child. Alexander frowns at the boy, but at least doesn't try to lunge at it, or even threaten it. He just lets out a distrustful huff of air, and mutters, to Perdita. "Thanks. It's probably not his," a nod to the dead kid, "if it makes you feel better." That doesn't seem to be a joke.

There's a little gasp from Perdita, and she's smart enough to let Alexander get between her and the child, her hand moving quickly to the unicorn pendant around her neck, holding the religious icon on the other side firmly in her hand as she whispers a prayer to Saint Sarah la Kali.

"Um... Hi there..." she smiles from around Alexander at the child, after a few seconds of prayer, clearly having regained control of herself. "Nobody wants to hurt you... are you lost?"

The kid looks at the safe. He looks at Perdita. He looks at the safe. He looks at Perdita. There's something slightly mechanical about his movements, or possibly something unaccustomed -- as if he has kind of maybe sort of forgotten how to move. His features and expression are a bit nondescript, blank even. One could be forgiven for getting the impression that this entity was well in the process of just -- fading away, when disturbed. Another century, it'd probably have dissipated altogether.

"When did you say that kid went missing again, Alexander?" Ravn glances at the older man and quirks an eyebrow. "Nineteen thirty something? I'd say that qualifies as being pretty lost."

"1914," Alexander says, promptly. "1933 was the smuggling shootout that disappeared." He may look like he doesn't know how to brush his damn hair, but when it comes to crime? Mind like a steel trap. He continues to eye the kid with far more distrust than pity. Still, as Perdita tries to make friends, he lowers his knife about...an inch. Just enough to make it clear that he's willing to place nice (sort of) if the kid doesn't grow a maw of fangs or start flinging lightning and trash at them.

"I'm... afraid I don't understand." Perdita tells the kid, tilting her head to the side slightly. "Is there something in the safe... or..." she frowns, looking at the ground around the safe as her full lips go thin with pursing, "If we move this safe, are we going to find a little boy's body in the cement or something...?" she asks no one in particular, bringing her hands up to hug herself to ward off the shiver that just ran through her.

"Or there's something in one of the bottles, or there's a letter below the bottles, or he got lost down here because of the bottles, or he drank one of the bottles and died from alcohol poisoning," Ravn murmurs -- not callously as much as, well, as someone who's heard a lot of these stories. Someone who's heard these stories his entire life, and knows that in this town in particular, the more awful and tragic and pointless a death seems, the more likely it is that it happened exactly that way.

He shakes his head. "Might not even be conscious of us. A lot of these things are just... memories. Not conscious and aware beings, just imprints."

Alexander looks briefly intrigued by the idea that there might be a kid's body under the safe. As Ravn speaks, he says, "Or it could be a trap." Because someone has to be the optimist! Still - the ghost kid isn't trying to eat anyone's faces, so even Alexander relaxes fractionally. He starts to walk around the safe as best he can, examining the outside for clues, then approaching the interior and looking it over carefully for anything that might identify the link between the child and the hooch.

"Well... be my guest." Dita gestures to the bottles, stepping completely away so Alexander can do his thing, watching the child closely to see what his reactions will be to Alexander interacting with them.

"I can't help but feel bad for him, he was so young..."

It's a very nice piece of mechanical Art Nouveau. Apart from that, though, the safe is too small -- probably -- to contain a child's body. More so because it visibly contains a number of bottles instead. It's possible, of course, that the bottles do in fact not contain moonshine. Ravn makes a face as the thought occurs to him. He chooses to not voice it because ugh. Every inch closer Alexander gets is mirrored by the boy in sepia. Still expressionless, still mask-like, it -- he -- flickers and moves jerkily, like an old movie projection with a faulty power supply.

There's an old envelope tucked in between the bottles. It was probably brown to begin with, and it hasn't turned any less brown with the century or more that's passed since. Upon a closer look the building's address is written in faded ink on the front -- just the address, no name. Upon examination it contains papers -- hand written receipts, for whiskey delivered, 'tax free'.

There definitely has been some kind of speakeasy here, or at the very least a smugglers' den, supplying one.

"It's always a tragedy, when a child dies," Alexander says. It's perfectly serious, but also resigned that this is simply the way of the world. He keeps a wary eye on the ghost, his hand tightening on the hilt of the knife as it inches closer. But when he sees the envelope, he focuses on that, instead, pulling it gently away so as not to disturb the rest of the bottles. He holds it by the very corner, trying to contaminate the evidence as little as possible despite his black leather gloves. The brown, delicate paper is opened carefully, and the papers within examined. "Hmm. Receipts." He offers them to Perdita. Then turns back to the safe.

Something catches his eyes, and he moves to start removing bottles. They get set up carefully to one side, until he can unearth something. It's a tin sheriff's badge, wedged between the bottles. It's not a real one, of course, but a small, cheap toy. He picks it up, shows it to the ghost. And as he does so, the other two might feel a shiver of power as he reads it. Because Alexander is a glutton for punishment.

Rather than touch the receipts with her bare hands, because, well... evidence... Perdita lets the paper hang in the air suspended for several seconds while she pulls a thin pair of gloves out and slips them on, before taking the receipts into her hands. She then holds the paper with all the delicacy a trained thief can manage. The tin sheriff's badge catches her eye, too, and she tilts her head slightly... and winces at the surge of energies, the light she's conjured flickering slightly, like a lightbulb on a shared circuit with an appliance kicking on... or perhaps it's just a sign of her distraction.

Ravn's attention whips to Alexander a moment -- and then he realises what the other man is doing. That's something he cannot do, nor even really begin to understand; but what he can do, in the meantime, is be the guy still keeping an eye on everything else. He glances at the papers as they're hanging there (he'd be able to do that at least!) but his focus is on the kid, and on the shadows.

Anglerfish are a thing. What better bait than a sad kid ghost while something else moves in? Alexander is not the only man in Gray Harbor who expects the worst and prefers to be relieved, rather than disappointed, when it turns out it wasn't quite so bad after all. "It's not really any great surprise a place like this -- this old, I mean -- has a few ghosts," he murmurs.

The flickering child reaches for the badge. But, of course, he can't touch it. His small fingers go right through the metal - and Alexander's fingers, which makes the investigator shiver. "I don't...think the smugglers killed him," he murmurs. His eyes are distant, locked on something the badge is showing him. "I see a man picking it up, but he's not frightened or angry or guilty. Confused. Suspicious. They search while he polished it on his trousers. It was tarnished, dusty." His head cocks to one side. "There's a shout from a corner. Old Zak's the one who finds him, curled in the corner, with spiders in what's left of his hair and rats in his chest." His nose wrinkles. "How'd a kid even get down here? How'd no one find him? Fuck." As he talks, Alexander's voice is changing tone and cadence a little, absorbing the memory. "Sure as hell can't call the cops, and I ain't gonna risk someone noticing us carrying a kid's corpse out of the fucking basement. Do we have any shovels? Pickaxes? Anything?"

Alexander rocks back on his heels, blinking a couple of times as he stands up, slowly. Like he has to remember how his body works. "That's all. I think he put the star down while they found a place to stash the body. Somewhere down here, probably."

"Oh, you poor thing..." Perdita whispers to the ghost, then frowns. "He... probably fell. I think I saw a dumbwaiter on one of the floors when I was wandering around the other day, or maybe it was a mail chute... Could be he got curious. " she suggests, moving to set the papers back into the safe, now that Alexander has the star.

"We've got to find him. He deserves to be laid to rest, properly, and any family he still has notified." She approaches the figure, at last, hesitant as she kneels before him. She's clearly still frightened of the apparition. Superstitions run deep in her family, from what she's said in the past. "Either they dug up the concrete... or they stashed him in some of the furniture. Shit... His poor family." She reaches out, hand hesitating just short of touching the ghostly child. "We'll find you."

Ravn studies Alexander's face as his bearing and tone change; obviously channeling someone else, a long time ago. Then he glances at the ghost's flickering sepia form and winces. "Lost in the basement, door locks from the outside, dies from thirst and exposure because the smugglers don't check in on their stash often enough that they find him in time. A very lethal game of hide and seek."

He reaches down and -- rather uncharacteristically for him -- brushes fingertips across Perdita's shoulder. "Don't touch him. Some ghosts, friendly as they may be, are a void, they'll draw your life force right out of you whether they want to or not."

Then the folklorist straightens up and looks around. Plenty large pieces of furniture something could be hidden inside -- including the wardrobe he's leaning against. "I imagine that a decomposing body would -- smell. If these blokes knew what they were doing, odds are he's under the floor somewhere. You don't need a shovel or pickaxe to open a dresser." He looks at Alexander. "You're the police procedure expert. Do we ... look for anything off in the floor, and then call the GHPD to come take a look? We have evidence enough in the bottles, to at least be able to explain why we might have searched the place for other curious and valuable old smuggler's loot. Don't need to mention ghosts to the unbelieving."

"Under the floor is the most likely," Alexander says, absently twirling the star between his fingertips as he studies the dark, gloomy basement. "The department would come out for an actual body, but not just for 'we think maybe some kid was buried down here seventy years ago', unless there was still an active case. Or you called in a favor," he adds, a bit dry. "The Chief might send someone. If he thought it was a real thing."

He hums a bit, studying what he can see in the sweep of his flashlight. "The kid was found in that corner, I think." He shines the light to show which he means; there is probably a corner under all that junk. "I don't think these guys would have wanted to carry him far. I'd suggest we start looking there, and fan out to the rest of the basement as needed. They probably came back and added concrete to make sure no one stumbled over the kid while looking for a box, so look for mismatches in the concrete mix. Different color, different texture, different patterns of wear."

"That corner, there?" Dita gestures to the pile of junk as she stands, looking up at Ravn. Her eyes are shining bright. She's not going to cry for a child lost a century ago, but she wants to. So, instead, she channels that emotion into action. The first to go skidding across the floor is an old dining table with one or two chairs stacked on top still, wobbly and broken, from the restaurant upstairs. They bump against another pile further away with a good bit of speed and force behind them.

More chairs swiftly follow, a vanity that's water damaged but halfway decent gets slid another direction.

Furniture continues sliding or actually flying away as Perdita expends a good bit of telekinetic strength, clearing out a path faster than any two of them could, working together, the fairy light floating above her flickering like a candle as she works, until she finds herself confronted, finally, with an old armoire too heavy for her to lift or drag, even with her much more impressive telekinetic strength. "He's either in it... or under it, I imagine." she's breathing hard, like she's been physically moving the items, or from the strain of moving that much, that quickly... but the way is clear.

"Think we may have to use our hands," Ravn agrees because Perdita may be able to throw furniture around by the force of her mind but he isn't. "We don't have to -- dig up everything. If we can just find a -- bit, then we can call in the forensics. I don't want to pester de la Vega if we don't have to -- get the feeling sometimes Gray Harbor keeps him very busy having to explain strange stuff as it is."

Somebody's bobby pin appears out of a sleeve -- that's not Perdita's, is it? It definitely isn't -- and it doesn't take Ravn many seconds to open the very simple lock mechanism on the armoire; a well aimed kick could have achieved the same thing but the armoire might be a valuable antique and he sees no reason to damage property when there is another way.

"Part of me really hopes there's not a dead kid in here," he murmurs and opens the door. Light seeps in, from torches and shine alike -- revealing a large, old carpet, rolled up and secured with somebody's leather belt. Just large enough that there could be a small body concealed inside.

Alexander's eyebrows go up as Perdita starts hauling furniture left and right with her mind. "Nice," he murmurs. "You should talk to Itzhak. You're strong." He frowns at the armoire, keeping the light steady on it as Ravn goes to work. When the door pops open, and the carpet is revealed, he sucks in a breath. Then says, "There's something dead in there." He steps forward, focusing the light on the bottom of the rug, and the wood. "Old signs of putrefaction," he murmurs, like that's a totally normal thing. He leans in to sniff the area, his nose almost touching the old fabric. "Yes. Old decay." He steps back. "We could cut through the belt, but...I strongly suspect there's a dried corpse in there."

"... We're going to have to notify... the cops." Dita says softly. She grimaces slightly as she says it, a slight shudder of distaste. Career criminal, after all. "All of this is a crime scene. We should probably... back out of here and leave the rest of it to the forensics team. I doubt they'll find anything that can solve a hundred and five year old crime, but I don't want to be the one to... contaminate it further." Her prints aren't on file anywhere, thanks to carefulness... and the help of a certain Enby Hacker friend, but... "Help is coming, little guy. Help is coming."

She grimaces as Alexander starts sniffing the old fabric. Off comes the backpack, and the freshly found booty is documented with her cellphone, before the bottles are slipped into the pack. She's worried about getting the kid to a final rest, but... she's also a pragmatist. Those bottles are worth something, and she doesn't need them confiscated by cops as evidence. The receipts go in after, and the safe, now emptied, is shut back up after a quick wipe down of the inside.

Ravn nods his agreement. "Probably best to not try to -- unroll it, let the forensics handle things. Whatever did happen, happened a century ago. But I guess you get to update your notes on the 1914 kid at least, Alexander."

The Dane glances at Perdita. "You all right? Under the circumstances? Buying a new house and finding a body is not the greatest start of a week."

Did he spend the first week in his new, old house on Oak Street looking into everything just in case something like this might be the case? Absolutely.

"Unrolling it would be ill advised," Alexander agrees. Although not without a certain bit of wistfulness. It's not every day you see an actual body wrapped up in a carpet, after all. Much less one from the early 20th century. But he steps away and helps to put things in order. "And I do get to update my notes. That will be satisfying." He glances at Perdita, says, "I'm sorry that your building has corpses in it," then looks around for the ghost.

"I'll be fine. I knew people had died in the building when I bought it, I assume. I mean... it's over a hundred years old, right? Someone's bound to have died here back when it was apartments, hell, people are bound to have died with it being office spaces." She doesn't look like she'll be fine, though. She smiles, glancing back toward where the ghost was... is? and shakes her head.

"Whether he's just an echo of something that once was, or his actual spirit, he deserves to be laid to rest, and we're making that happen. That's something to feel good about, I think. If either of you want to head out before the police arrive, I'm going to head up, drop these off in the penthouse and then... let the cops know I'm doubling their workload for at least a week... annnnnd then I'm going to try and find a plumber to deal with this water damage... and open a furniture store on the first floor, I swear. Get my brother to come to town and fix this shit up." she laughs, shaking her head slightly, but she still looks... haunted.

"I don't mind sticking around," Ravn murmurs and glances at the sepia flickering ghost. "It's not like any of us have actually committed a crime. And I could do with a cup of coffee."

And with making sure you're all right, Miss Home Owner, and that the kid ghost doesn't suddenly do something weird. He leaves those parts unsaid, though. "What do you say, Alexander? I don't imagine it's all that new for the forensics to find you got there first."

"It's not him," Alexander says, like this should be reassuring. "Ghosts aren't real. They're just...imprints. Memories that act out, one way or the other. They borrow power from those of us who," he waggles his fingers, "stand out. But I'm sure the boy's soul will be happy that he was found. Wherever it is." He eyes her, thoughtfully, then looks back to Ravn. "I can stay. If you want."

"I'd... like that. Ravn, do you mind calling it in? I'll... bring down the coffee maker on my way back, and we can at least make the forensics teams' lives a bit easier, too." And take a second to collect herself, probably. If Dita's shaken enough to not be able to mask how shaken she is, something's up, because that was literally her job before she came here. She doesn't really wait for the others, picking her way across the water even as the little light she was conjuring seems to sputter out on its own entirely before she's halfway up the stairs. "Shit." The flashlight clicks back on a second later, and she trudges her way up the stairs, picking her way carefully.

Ravn doesn't.

He doesn't really know what to say, either, but fortunately he doesn't really need to say a lot -- it's kind of amazing how interested the operator gets at the words 'dead body'. He has to explain a couple of times how he and a friend were helping a mutual friend look over the basement of her newly acquired town house when something looked and smelled wrong -- yes, he's pretty sure, look, my buddy's Alexander Clayton, yes, that Clayton, yes, he's seen a homicide before -- and they decided to call it in rather than mess up a potential crime scene. No, it doesn't look recent. No, not at all -- yes, Clayton thinks 1914. Yes, amazing, that man's encyclopedic mind. Right. We'll see you soon, then. No, no, not touching anything.