Pay in to Paradise

Nicole looked at Twelve worriedly. "Are you alright, man? You don't seem to be doing too well." He then popped the top off of the soup can and laid it down on a coffee table. Turning back, he held the knife out to Twelve, handle side out.

At Twelve's request, Twocoats hurriedly rushed off to a side room. He came back shortly, huffing and grunting with the effort of carrying two large gallon-jugs of water.

Setting them down on the floor, he beckoned to the group. "We don't got no cups, so you all gotta share, somehow. An this is all I could find. I reckon we can head down to the river and get some more, though!"

He cast a glance outside. "Once it's not as dark, or something. I ah..."

Twocoats seemed to shutter. "I reckon there's something I ought to tell you folks about this place. It's a bad place, and..." Seeming to lose the fortitude to continue, Twocoats bit his lip in concentration.

Ignoring Twocoats' words, Twelve scooped one of the jugs off the floor and removed the cap in a single movement. He then proceeded to put his mouth to the opening and lift the jug over his head. He was halfway through the jug before he became aware of the group staring at him. Slowly lowering the jug, he shrugged in apology and replaced the cap. He was somewhat sorry for his chugging of a quarter of their water. Now, people who were worried about germs probably couldn't drink from the jug. He slowly placed the jug back on the ground and stepped back, hoping everyone's eyes would leave him. He wasn't used to such scrutiny. He proceeded to take his lighter from his pocket, lighting it, letting it go out, then lighting it again continuously.

Taking his mind off his lighter, Twelve spoke in Twocoats' direction. "What was it you were saying, kid?"

Nine drank the somewhat stale soup like one would water. He then poured a small amount of the water into the can of soup and drank it. The soup was salty, but filling, even when cold. He looked at Two worriedly. "What IS up with this place?

The girl - having poured herself a modest cup of water, for her hunger currently overpowered her thirst - wandered off as the boy attempted his explanations.

She discovered that a side-chamber of the building house a great many books, seemingly geared towards the practicing and interpretation of law, though several historical documentaries were included. She plucked an article entitled 'The Donner Party: A Glimpse into the Mind of the Human Animal' from a low-lying shelf and began to read. Perhaps something could be learned of this strange place in which the group seemed to have found itself.

~~~

Twocoats seemed to shrink visibly; were he a tortoise, perhaps he would have retreated into the depths of his shell, or be he a possum, he might have feigned death. His eyes jumped from side to side as he licked his dry lips and opened his mouth.

"It's... I don't really know how to... See, it come at night, see, and it's horrible! It's just horrible. You'll, you'll all see tonight. When it come."

As if this explained the matter in its entirety, Twocoats' head wilted to stare at his shifting feet.

"That certainly sounds unpleasant. Anyone in favor of having a watch rotation, or something? Some form of safety would work best, I believe, and it's in our best interests to stay alive, for obvious reasons." He got up and walked to the wall, leaning against it with one foot on it and with the crucifix in his mouth.

Twocoats perked up visibly at this idea. "Yeah! Yeah yeah yeah, we'll have a watch, and and they'll make sure everyone's safe. We can have a leader to appoint the watch, too! Then the thing won't come, thing'll stay off."

A storm was clearly brewing outside. As the pitter-patter of rain bounded against the thin glass windows of the hall, sunlight appeared to disappear entirely - it had gotten dark in a surprisingly small window of time.

The fur-clad boy sniffed. "Guess... Guess we're sleepin' here. Maybe the thing won't come, cause, the beds and things were in the buildin' cross the square!"

"I've got a thing set up in the offices." Nicole walked out at that. He stopped and stood by the door outside, feeling the rain come down, pleasant and cold. Thunder cracked in the distance, and the shocking illumination of lightning showed at irregular intervals the thin boy standing there, alone in the rain.

Threeblade twitched at the mention of a “thing” that might or might not come tonight. Some part of her was desperately hoping that whatever it was, it wasn’t any form of canine. The faint image of flashing fangs and frantic shouts pounded in her skull, causing her to pull her arms in closer to her body. She was right to have been uneasy earlier. This whole world was probably one big death trap just waiting to spring.

One of the boys, that one named Nicole or something, walked out of the room after mentioning something about an office. Lightning flashed and thunder cracked outside. She could imagine the house creaking as it was forced to weather the strengthening storm. Though it was probably only her overactive imagination, she could barely see glimmering eyes out in the distance. It was probably nothing though…

“I can take whatever watch you’d like me to,” she said, loud enough to be heard, “I’ll be sleeping in here with all of you, no need to be spread too far.”

With Ninestone's disappearance, the mood in the dim hall became one of hopeless resignation.

Twocoats, Threeblade, and Twelvecig stood alone in the center of the tile floor. The former stood about awkwardly, shifting his feet, as if unsure of how to proceed. At length, he lifted his head to respond to Three.

"Sure, sure," he croaked, having become ill at ease with the irregular marks of thunder and lightning that illuminated the room periodically in eldritch light. Moving to fetch some blankets from an antechamber, Twocoats jumped three inches in the air when a piercing scream split the awkwardness like a sword through cardboard.

The girl with the hat stumbled forth from a side-room, wide-eyed and mumbling madly about spiders, with one hand to her mouth.

Nicole was vaguely aware of a scream inside the building. He circled around to a window near where they were, and wiped off some of the rain. He made 'binoculars' with his eyes and looked through the window. What he saw was surprising, when the other girl stumbled in and seemed to be mumbling about something. He walked back over to the door and knocked.

Threeblade reacted in a similar way to Twocoats when the girl came bolting into the room. She visibly jumped, although rather than jumping straight up, she went backwards. Given that she had been leaning back against a wall, this led to her bumping both elbows and the back of her skull. It was probably a good thing no one could read her mind because the thoughts that filled her mind were not at all the pleasant sort.

Biting her lip, she rubbed each elbow with the opposite hand, eyes slightly wet at the corners. "Ah damn," she breathed, "This whole place is a mess..."

At the mention of a "thing" coming in the night didn't sound very good to Twelve. He'd started to feel a certain weight, like he was underwater or something, as soon as they got a few yards away from that strange white arch. For some reason, he'd felt safe there... but out here, his pessimistic thoughts were beginning to override all else. When a high pitched scream hit his ears, his reaction was to immediately run. A few moments after he'd jumped nearly out of his skin and rushed to the door out, he collected himself enough to return to the small group. Besides, there was this creepy black haze outside... it made him feel even worse than before...

After returning from the hazy wilderness of a few feet out the door, Twelve tried to figure out what had happened, since he'd spaced out for a minute. Okay, the girl with the weird hat had screamed and was now mumbling incoherently, the other girl had fallen and probably bruised her elbows, and Twocoats was shuffling his feet worriedly. He rushed over to the girl who had screamed and tried to ask her what was wrong. He felt slightly embarassed over his puss-out moment of running for his life, so he stuttered a bit.

"Uh, w-what is wrong? What just happened? Why did you scream?"

The girl stared blankly into Twelve's eyes, as if her mind was still in that moment of terror.

"Spider," she stated. "I dozed, and there was a... Big spider."

There was a beat of silence.

"It talked," she insisted, as if to justify her scream.

Twocoats - having given a grim nod to Three's observation - bent his head and turned away. It had begun to rain, and the rhythmic beat of droplets on the windows seemed to be much, much louder than logic would dictate. Something - most probably the wind - howled and thrashed with feral anger among the distant hills and forests where the imagination created things of terrible nature.

The girl moved to a corner of the hall and sat down limply, her face retaining the same empty expression. Twocoats cleared his throat to break the silence. "I guess... I guess we'd all sleep in here, and if we see any spiders or things, we can team and, and... kill 'em!" These final words Twocoats attempted to punctuate by slamming his fat little fists together, but only succeeded in making the statement seem more helpless.

He picked his own wall and sat, hugging his knees to himself. "Three, you can be first watch, and... an' I'll be second."

Nicole watched the happenings and then decided to speak up. "I... I think I'd prefer to be with you guys if anything happened. Much better that way, huh?" He then went over to the corner and leaned back, arms crossed, surveying the room.

A big, talking spider definitely didn't sound pleasant, but considering the girl had been dozing, Twelve's belief was that she had dreamed this magical talking spider. Still, the scream had made everyone very uneasy, including himself. So, when Twocoats brought up smashing these spiders and telling the other girl, Threeblade, Twelve spoke up, trying to be a bit of a nice guy.

"Uh... I, I don't think anyone should keep watch before I do. It looks to me like I'm about the best fighter here, I got a knife, is more than anybody else can say. So, I think I should take first watch. I'll stab those spiders for you, miss." To emphasize, he grabbed his knife and tapped it against the back of his hand.

Outside, the haze seemed to be growing, getting closer to the windows... It made Twelve feel queasy.

After observing what had just happened, Nicole slid into a sitting position. He curled his legs up to him and began rocking back and forth, repeating in a low murmur, "This is not going well. This is NOT going well..." He scanned the room nervously, staring back and forth. With the haze outside and the apparent insanity inside nothing was as it seemed.

Talking spider? What the… it was probably just a dream; yeah she probably just dreamed it… perfectly normal given the stress we’re all under.

Threeblade glanced over at Twocoats as he attempted to console the obviously frightened girl. Either she had some sort of fear of spiders to begin with or she wasn’t telling the whole story. Something more than a simple talking spider would have to have appeared to illicit that sort of reaction from someone. Then again, who was she to judge? She’d been unnerved by a bit of rain and darkness outside the windows.

She was open to taking first watch, it would possibly be lighter then, but then Twelvecig spoke up and said it would be better for him to take it. He had a blade and was confident; both were good things for a watchman in this environment.

“Alright, that’s fine with me,” she said, “I probably won’t be able to sleep much, so I’ll just sit over here…” she pointed to a wall across from a window, “good viewpoint of the window.”

Nicole slowly calmed down and was beginning to fall asleep when all time seemed to stop. He was paralyzed, and all that was moving were his lungs and heart. Even the raindrops on the window had stopped moving. His eyes darted to each frozen figure. Soon, his eyes returned to the window. Then, he saw it. The hand. The emaciated, black shining hand, the mist obscuring the arm and body. It curled into a fist and scratched five lines into the raindrops. It then spoke, directly in his mind. "Kill them. Gain their trust and kill them in preparation of the queen's coming."

Suddenly, he seemingly woke up, terrified, and began shouting. "It's outside! The hand! I saw it touch the window! It's an insect! It sai something..." He began rocking back and forth with increased frequency.

Twelve whipped around at Nicole's voice, looking to the windows and listening for any kind of voice. His knife was held in a basic stance designed to discourage any assailants from proceeding, holding the knife away from himself to stab. He waited for a few seconds, which dragged into minutes. Nothing appeared, and there was nothing indicating there had ever been anything near the windows. Returning to his standing position, Twelve walked carefully over to Nicole, stepping lightly so as not to disturb him in his rocking.

"Kid... Nicole... There's nothing there... You don't hafta be all rocking like a psycho."

Twocoats - who had been reacting with the utmost passivity out of barely-suppressed terror up to this point - could do little more than bury his face in his arms, crossed over his tucked knees, and bite his lip in an effort to hold in tears. The knowledge of the demon's indebatable existence bit at him like a physical thing, hungry for his fear. He fought sleep with all of his willpower.

The as-yet-unnamed girl shifted closer to Ninestone and placed a hand on his shoulder. The room was, for a long, long moment, disturbingly quiet as the minds of those present - both affected and unaffected by the monstrous visions - swam in a sea of horrible imagination that threatened their respective sanities.

If only their combined willpower was enough to banish the night and return the outside world to its previous state - mysterious in a sinister way, yet certainly preferable to the stark horror that sloshed heavy raindrops at the windows, cackled evilly across the distant sky in bursts of unnerving whiteness and unbearable noise, and shrouded from view all that lay outside the thin, rattling windows of the town hall.

It was now far too dark to see inside the building, and as stillness settled upon those present, Twocoats was the first to fall into a deep, possessive sleep - to be plagued, yet unwoken until morning, by the unspeakable monster that had been stalking his thoughts ever since his first night.

The girl in the hat followed suite shortly after.

"Hahaha... Rocking like a psycho... That's rich, y'know? Because I know what I saw. I saw it, and you probably didn't because the whole world stopped, just then. Nothing was moving but him, and you'll see something too once you try and sleep, that's when it happens. I'm not falling for it, not again..."
At that he ceased his rocking and instead cradled his head in his hands as if covering his eyes. "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil..."

[[Feel free to describe your encounters with demons in depth now, if you folks wish to do so :3]]

Twocoats' visions were, if anything, more fantastically horrid than before. The thing came in all its grotesque glory, murmuring deceptive and soothing half-truths.

There was no one else in the room. Twocoats was paralyzed as it slid with unearthly sounds of slimy friction across the neglected wooden boards. If it had eyes, Twocoats was sure that they would be fixated on him.

"Relax," it crooned, eel-like lips frothing with blood and seeming to move according to some unnatural hinge of nature, "there is no harm in my presence. You are safe here."

Twocoats could do naught but stare in the utmost regions of fear at the thing's hideous form, towering over him. It leaned in close - so unbearably close.

"I will protect you," the motherly wail promised, "against those that would hurt you. You are entitled to your wishes, your desires - these that would be stolen from you by your companions."

The face adopted a curious posture, one that seemed to permeate the very soul with all the disgusting aversion it was capable of adopting, and then some - Twocoats saw that the demon smiled.

"You are an intelligent boy, you know this to be true. What manner of psychology are you bound to, thinking such that the circles of men are defined by companionship over competition, friend over foe? There will be blood - it is only right and truthful to spill it first. Evade your enemies, starve them, give them nothing."

The room darkened imperceptibly - the thing gave a tremendous leap, back to the window from whence it had came.

"NOTHING."

Nicole finally began to come down from his panic attack. As he did, he noticed a disturbing soreness and dryness in his mouth. The constant muttering had dried his throat, made his vocal cords raw. He went to get a bit of water.

Twelve sat hunched over, his head between his legs and his hair falling upon his lap. Either they were all going crazy, or something was going on. He was starting to think it was some sick experiment, testing a weapon or something on them. Who was doing the experimenting, he didn't know, but that haze outside looked unatural, like it was created. Maybe some kind of machine or something, although he couldn't remember place what caused this thinking. He lifted his head, which brought on a feeling of dizziness. He dug out his lighter, grabbed a cigarette, and lit it. He felt a little better, now that he'd gotten a fix of nicotine, feeling the euphoria, practically drunken on it.

The smoke lingered above his head, dark and heavy like the haze outside. Twelve stared up at it, remembering a tiny memory of a dark cloud above a small man's head, the cloud raining water and lightning down upon him. This cloud of smoke wasn't doing that, but if it were, it wouldn't surprise him... strangely enough.

The tiny illumination of his cigarette was barely enough to see anything by, since he had nothing else but his lighter, he dug it back out and started flicking the fire on and off as he had done earlier. This extra illumination cast large, frightening shadows about the room, but Twelve, oddly enough, felt no fear from them. They were only shadows after all.

His left hand, the one holding the cigarette, moved away from his mouth, moving the cigarette as well. He breathed out a big gasp of smoke, which looked even darker than the rest of the smoke amassing above his head. He tried to listen yet again for the voice that Nicole had spoken of, and he looked to the window once more. He saw nothing. He turned his head to the spot Nicole was sitting, but what he saw was, once again, nothing. No Nicole, no evidence he'd ever been there, nothing. Not even a particle of dust seemed to be there, on the floor, on the wall, nothing. Twelve swung his head to look for Twocoats, and saw the same thing; nothing. He looked for the girls, but he suffered the same result. Nothing. Nobody. No cans. No water jugs. Nothing.

In a moment of panic, Twelve backed into a corner, trying to find his knife. It was gone as well. Had they all left him here in the middle of the night, taking his only weapon with him? He was trying to think of the plotter who'd thought this whole thing up, but before he came to a conclusion, he heard something.

"They don't trust you..." "They don't want you to live..." "They hate you..." "Thye never trusted you... " "You'll never survive if they leave you..." "They'll take all the food, all the water, they'll lock you in..." "Don't trust them..." "They'll take the only things you have..."

Voices... Voices... Whispers, malevolence weaved through the words, whispered into his mind. Trust... Don't trust... Don't trust... They'll take your things... Take away your only happiness... Take away your cigarettes... take away your knife... The whispering... The whispering kept growing, growing in volume, growing in accusation, growing in malevolence. Twelve tried to shut the words out, tried to focus on anything he could see, anything he could hear, anything... He tried to flick his lighter on, his hand unsteady as the force of the words grew in a crescendo that would probably never reach its climax. His thumb slipped again and again, his hands drenched in sweat. He couldn't tell, but he began to cry as the voices grew so loud as to hurt his ears immeasurably.

His thumb fumbled once more with the lighter... then the light drowned out all else. Flames seared him, burned his flesh, filled his lungs with more smoke than he could take, and finally, after reaching deafening volumes, the voices fell away. One voice remained...

"You must save yourself... You may remember things... slowly... but you will remember... You have lost your life... but you can have it back... Make those who do not trust you feel pain. Feel your pain. Burn them."