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Novels Ghost Banishing 241011
In the dusky gloom of Arkwright Cemetery, amidst the whispering rain and the silent clash of wills against spectral mischief, a troupe of the living battles the inclinations of a playful yet menacing ghost. The ghost's manipulations are potent—conjuring childlike giggles from the ether, manifesting harp melodies that stir unbidden confessions, and evoking visions of long-lost loves to distract and divide. Silas, with his hands smeared with graveyard mud, clutches a coin, a totem against the unseen. Beside him, Dahlia battles her own uncertainty, her fears mingling with the spectral harp strings. Novel, erratic and vulgar, keeps a Bowie knife at the ready, his rants slicing the thick, supernatural air even as he struggles to protect the group from their own vulnerabilities. Irene, caught between skepticism and a haunting familiarity with the ghostly presence, flirts dangerously with the boundary that separates curiosity from prey.
As tensions within the group escalate, led astray by the ghost’s deceptions, Silas and Dahlia unite in purpose, endeavoring to complete a circle of protection within the mud—a barrier against the intangible. Their combined efforts, a blend of earthly elements and whispered intentions, call forth a swarm of butterflies, symbols of the soul seeking release or entrapment. Novel, combating both the spectral manipulation and his own tempestuous nature, aids in this climax despite his earlier melee with Irene, whose misplaced trust in the ghostly illusion leaves her chastened. The spiritual maelstrom culminates with the banishment of the ghost, the butterflies scattered, their temporary cohesion as a feminine specter dissolved. In the aftermath, the graveyard returns to its melancholic stillness, leaving the group to ponder if the absence of the ghost's eerie whimsy has not somehow rendered the night less vibrant, less alive. The encounter concludes not with triumph but with a reflective somberness, a recognition of the thin veils that separate joy from despair, reality from illusion, the living from the dead.
(Novel's ghost banishing)
[Thu Oct 10 2024]
On the Sprawling Hillside of Arkwright Cemetery
It is afternoon, about 51F(10C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds. It's raining.
Child-like giggling begins to fill the graveyard, it comes from everywhere, filling the minds of the small gathering here only to suddenly cut off, leaving everything dead silent, not even the wind makes a sound, the distant cars passing the graveyard have been muted. Only local voices can be heard by one another.
"Oh hell no," Silas says as he hears the childlike giggling fill the air and then the sound is gone. The wind, the rain, nothing is making noise anymore, even as the rain patters all around them. He rises up from the nearby grave, hands muddy as he starts to look around, stepping closer to Dahlia, "Stick close. This... can't be good."
Whatever the others' motive is in being here, Irene apparently is rubbernecking. The sound of eerie giggling has her look discernibly spooked, and she takes a slight step back, turning her head this way and that to try and identify the source of that sound. She doesn't run, though -- she just doesn't look like she knows what she's doing.
Whether Irene seems to think Silas's crazy or not, she ends up deciding to hedge her bets with this man, and starts cautiously backing up towards him.
Dahlia eyes Silas a moment, though her attention quickly shifts as she starts hearing giggling. "What do we do?" She asks, staying close to Silas but also looking toward Novel and Irene as well...though maybe moreso to Novel. Clearly she doesn't know that much about dealing with ghosts.
The sound of a harp echoes nearby, and the tune is hauntingly familiar. For just a moment, you feel an overwhelming urge to confess your deepest feelings to the nearest person.
Novel wanders over and kicks a grave with a booted THUMP in response to Irene instead of giving a decent answer and then, suddenly - it happens. He shrugs back at Irene. "Yeah, weird shit, right? God I -hate- children ghosts. They're not even alive anymore so they don't go far when you punt them and children are always weirdass fucking sociopaths who have the most CREATIVE shit. You know I bet every parent in the world would be dead if our babies weren't physically incapable of getting up to shit," the man goes on a tangentially related rant as a huge bowie knife appears in his hand. Uhm.
"You three? I dunno. People usually start gesturing, or mumbling -" His voice, loud as usual, projects and fills the entire space, even the normal rapport of rain washed out by the unnatural silence. He turns his back to the trio, stepping backwards and inching back to fortify. Casually, he remarks, "Though for me I just do what comes fucking naturally, since I just feel like stabbing everyone all the goddamn time anyway. Some people get morning boners, I get morning murderboners."
Silas digs into a pocket, mud be damned, and he pulls out a coin which he begins to grasp between fingers. He moves it around, coating it in the mud as well as he hears more sounds coming nearby, a harp echoing in the distance. He looks around at Novel, Irene and Dahlia, turning towards Dahlia he says, "I've been "
"I've been," Silas says to Dahlia, "Lost for a while, but now it feels like I'm at least walking a good path now."
A pensive look floods Irene's ordinarily stoic features at the sound of the harp. It's likely not her cousin buried here (being a newcomer in town), but she tenses up and (wrongly) then asserts, "No, actually ... I think this ghost is meant for me. I ... I've heard this song before, it reminds me of ... the massacre, the one in ..." She trails off, stealing a look of confusion mixed with shock towards Novel. "I don't know what I'm doing here, I'm out of my depth. I've never hunted ghosts before, I really feel like such an impostor."
Dahlia tries to keep up with navigating Novel's rant, half distracted, looking toward Silas as he speaks and her lips part as if to say one thing but then instead, "I don't think I'm ever going to get better but I feel hope for the first time in a long time."
Incredibly out of her depth, Irene looks at the others with creeping disgust and asks, "Why are you telling me this? I don't know any of you. Why are ..." Oh, shit. Her eyes widen with the realisation, and then she shakes her head. "Why are any of us telling each other this? Do you know these people? The ghost." She points towards the vicinity of the spirit, for though she doesn't know what she knows, she seems at least able to sense its exact location, somehow ... "It's manipulating us."
A soft giggle echoes in the air, followed by the scent of roses. For a brief moment, the face of a lover or crush you havent seen in years flashes before your eyeswas it real, or just a trick?
There's a clearing of Dahlia 's throat, touching a hand to her forehead as she tries to reorient. "So you just stab-...it?" She starts to ask Novel but trails off, blinking rapidly. She rubs at her eyes mumbling something about, "...Lenny..?" Then she shakes her head head, looking to Irene, "I don't know what's really going on, but it's definitely fucking with us. So do we just shout at it to leave?"
Novel has feelings. Deep feeling. Problematically, for everyone around him, they're all terrible. It seems like he's barely listening to Silas, Irene, and Dahlia, as he keeps his weapon drawn and ready. "No, it isn't meant for you, Tits, it's -" And then Irene fills it in. He sort of sighs. "Yeah, they do that sort of shit, they get in your head and make you do stuff. Could be worse. Could be a really STRONG ghost. Get in your body. Make you do whatever it wanted." He flashes a grin, full of maniacal glee to Irene. A flicker of consternation - of brief pain, and deep, savage anger, his mouth opening and closing with a subtle clack noise. And then his gaze tears away, looking out across the graveyard scenery for a fight. Something to hit.
"Anyway we can talk about names and shit later. Focus on kicking the goddamn ghost out. And YEAH usually stabbing is my go to when there is SOMETHING TO STAB," He says, jabbing at the air viciously.
"T...tomer? It is you." Taking in a shallow breath, Irene opts to ignore her own advice, and then also Silas's prior advice to stay close. Her face softens into a smile, and she starts inching closer towards the source of spiritual energy, reaching out with her fingertips as if to try and touch it. "You called me here ... I knew I felt something. I knew I wasn't imagining it. How are you here? ..." Her smile falters. "Why are you here?"
"I know, and it feels alright, doesn't it? For once," Silas says to Dahlia before making a face at what he might see in front of himself. His eyes narrow some after taking in Irene's comments and that coin he is holding begins to hover above his palm before muddy hand moves and with that movement, more mud flies up to gather into his palm. He grips a good handful of it and starts to crouch down in the rain, squishing his hand and the coin into the mud beneath himself, looking around now with eyes flitting about, "Waiting to see this damn thing and then we'll see what we can do..." He starts to speak, soft, murmured words, "Laugh all you want, but you're in between death and life, stuck here, hurting people. Play with us all you want, but in the end we all know you're lonely, spiteful, hateful."
"I know this ghost," Irene informs the others with another little shake of her head, facing the unseen, but intensely felt spirit with enough curiosity to kill this cat. "He isn't here to harm us." (Dear reader: the spirit almost definitely was here to harm us.)
Dahlia watches Silas and Novel, briefly checking her pockets (again?) to see if anything useful has manifested itself. It hasn't. So she just sort of holds her hands out in the rain, in a vague nearby direction. "Whatever you're seeing-don't trust it." Dahlia tries to warn Irene. She focuses again, "Leave here! Your presence isn't wanted!"
A soft giggle echoes in the air, followed by the scent of roses. For a brief moment, the face of a lover or crush you havent seen in years flashes before your eyeswas it real, or just a trick?
Ordinarily, Irene speaks with a distinct Hispanic accent: but whatever words come out of her mouth now, they are not Spanish, nor are they English. Too faint to be heard, by design, she whispers to the spirit in a foreign language, under her breath, barely audible even up close. And the gullible, amateur ghost-hunter is no longer terribly close to the living. It's the dead she seeks to speak to, to touch.
Novel has a very, VERY different reaction to seeing a lover and crush, a mixture of savage fury and pain fluttering his features as he reaches over to seize Irene's collar and haul her back to the group as a whole. Wide-eyed mania and violence, his knife held, for all the world looking like he's just about to assault her. But the words that come out through clenched teeth is, "There is no fucking friend. There is no family member. It is a bullshit fucking asshole trying to lure you out so they can wear your fucking body like a goddamn sleeve and NOT in a fucking fun way. Was your friend BURIED here. Would they try to lure you out, in the rain, in the mud, in gravestones where you could crack your goddamn head open?"
This time when the giggling echoes in the air, Silas seems to center in on the sound itself. He turns in a quickness, mud sliding and being kicked up towards where that echo might bounce of tombstones and the confines where corpses are kept. There is a darkness that flies with it along the edges of that mud trail and within the front of it is that silver coin. It blasts out faster now and shoots through the air before being pulled back towards him as he catches it and rises up, "Help me make a circle. Everyone gather around? This thing is hard to find, but we could bind it and banish it, maybe..." He starts to carve out that circle in the mud, starting with his portion of the graveyard, stepping and scooping mud up to create a route that rain seems to catch and begin to pool within.
Dahlia is momentarily caught off guard again, the 'leave this place' chant she's managed to find for herself cut off. Either by somethings he saw or by Novel's abrupt intervention with Irene. Circle...circle..."Circle! Got it!" She calls to Silas, moving to try and start digging out some earth.
The sound of a harp echoes nearby, and the tune is hauntingly familiar. For just a moment, you feel an overwhelming urge to confess your deepest feelings to the nearest person.
If the spirit's goal was to distract, confuse, manipulate, and potentially turn all the living here against one another: it has succeeded. While Irene's too enraptured by the fake ghost of her dead lover to notice Novel seizing her collar, when he yanks her back, knife in hand, she does not seem to take kindly to it at all. "Let go of me!" she yells, and then she does speak Spanish. Whatever she says, it sounds very rude. You don't have to speak Spanish to tell she's swearing at him. Snaking out a hand towards the knife, she tries to disarm him, although whether she succeeds ...
There is a potential fight breaking out now between Novel and Irene, but Silas still focuses on that circle. There is a lot happening all at once as he looks up towards someone, kicking and digging mud with a foot while moving closer to her as his half of the circle begins to complete itself and start connecting with hers, "This music sounds so familiar! Why can't we hear the rain anymore?" The rain is definitely there, creating a little moat from the dug circle they are making, "The days aren't bad with you around, feel like I'm seeing clearly for the first time in a long time and we need to complete this damn circle!"
"No you dumb bitch I'm not gonna fucking do that and LET GO OF MY GODDAMN KNIFE," Novel says with exasperation as they end up with a struggle over the weapon, his fist clenching tightly over it as he does his best to wrap an arm around Irene and fold his legs over her and then down into the mud they both go with a wet squelch and then two hands versus one and a painful yelp comes out of the man as she uses a hold on him that causes his limb to spasm and the knife to drop right into the ground but then he's opting to try seizing her with his whole body. Keyword is: Try.
There is a potential fight breaking out now between Novel and Irene, but Silas still focuses on that circle. There is a lot happening all at once as he looks up towards Dahlia, kicking and digging mud with a foot while moving closer to her as his half of the circle begins to complete itself and start connecting with hers, "This music sounds so familiar! Why can't we hear the rain anymore?" The rain is definitely there, creating a little moat from the dug circle they are making, "The days aren't bad with you around, feel like I'm seeing clearly for the first time in a long time and we need to complete this damn circle!"
Novel swears, very loudly, addressing Irene, "FUCK YOU REESE AND FUCK YOU I'M NOT GIVING YOU MY KNIFE YOU'RE NOT CARVING MORE FUCKING INITIALS INTO ME."
is trying to fight off the overwhelming urge to speak as she looks toward Silas. "I think I-" She is blessedly interrupted by Novel and Irene's tussle. "Fighting isn't helping!" Dahlia shouts as she digs. "We have to finish this before they kill each other!"
The sound of a harp echoes nearby, and the tune is hauntingly familiar. For just a moment, you feel an overwhelming urge to confess your deepest feelings to the nearest person.
Dahlia too bad that interruption didn't help suppress the urge for long because as she continues digging she tells Silas, "I am terrified of fucking everything up, and making you hate me, and ruining what we're building." She lets out a frustrated sound afterward quickly trying to continuing digging out the circle while trying to keep a bead on Novel and Irene
So it's up to Dahlia and Silas to be the adults in the (outdoor) room in dealing with the manipulative ghost, evidently, because down in the mud with Novel Irene goes, still trying to wrest the knife from him. She also seems to decide this is a productive time to confess her deepest and darkest feelings, and just like his, apparently they are very bad, horrible feelings. They're a match made in heaven, or ... well, some sort of afterlife machinations, definitely.
Novel proceeds to unleash an absolute torrent of abuse on Irene, after these messages. "YOU DUMB WHORE IT'S THIS STUPID FUCKING GHOST THAT WANTS TO EAT YOUR GODDAMN SOOOOOUUUL AND I KNOW AN INSULT WHEN I SEE ONE I DON'T CARE THAT YOU'RE ACTING LIKE MY GODDAMN EX-" He's trying to get his hands around Irene's throat, rolling around in the mud and generally turning them both into messes with the struggling though his legs are firmly wrapped around Irene. It is the least sexy mud wrestling possible. "WHERE THE FUCK DID ALL YOUR BRAINS GO INTO YOUR GODDAMN TITS? I BET THEY WERE. I BET GOD SAID OH, SHE DOESN'T NEED BRAINS SHE JUST NEEDS TO WAGGLE HERSELF A FEW GODDAMN TIMES AND PEOPLE WILL BE FALLING ALL OVER EACH OTHER SO I SHOULD CRANK THE BRAIN-O-METER DOWN A FEW FUUUUUUCKING FEET AND GIVE HER SOME TONE AND NOW HERE I AM WRESTLING WITH YOUR DUMB ASS SO YOU DON'T END UP FELLATIOING A GHOST COCK AND THEN HAVE TO FIGHT YOU ANYWAY."
The circle begins to complete now and Silas looks up towards Dahlia from a spot he begins to move into and sits right at the center, "Fighting is not helping!" He adds onto it, but after listening to her he responds, soaked and muddy, "Everything is fucked around here already, Dahlia. We aren't fucking things up and you aren't fucking things up, we're fixing plenty, don't you worry." The coin is held in one hand now and he reaches out to try and steal Dahlia's hand, "Focus on it. Think about this thing being trapped and then, think about it being gone." He grows still there, his free hand slipping fingers deep into the mud beside himself and soon, the ground near that grave he was digging at begins to shift, as if something might be moving there, "See all these graves? They let go... and they're trapped here now! You will be as well if you don't fuck right off!"
A swarm of beautiful blue winged butterflies sweep into the area and move as one to form the shape of a curvaceous female form, it moves as if to dance whimsically across the grave and as easily as it formed the butterflies scatter into thousands of directions.
The swarm of butterflies comes rushing in, forming into that feminine figure but as the butterflies attempt to leave this time a few of them are caught in what seems to be a barrier within the circle, clashing with the outer edge of it as Silas sits in the center.
With the circle complete, Dahlia moves into the center too, taking Silas' hand and nodding at his words. "Everything's fucked, but we're trying to fix it." She repeats, like that will help. She gives his hand a squeeze, focusing on the coin and on the ghost that's around her somewhere. She tries to hold firm as the butterfly swarm appears and tries to escape. She uses her free hand to try and trace a particular shape in the mud, helping aid that idea of 'trapped'. "You are not welcome here!" She calls out.
"He was trying to give me a message!" the Hispanic lady insists to Novel as they wrestle. While Irene doesn't appear quite strong enough to break out of his pin, she lifts up her knee from underneath her red sweater-dress and brings it upwards into his crotch. Well, that definitely rules out any sexual escalation for their gross little horizontal tango now. Over his shoulder, she spies the flight of the butterflies ... which do not form into the shape of a 'he'. A look of frustration floods her features, eyelashes slightly damp, and she's perhaps realised now her own utter stupidity. It's a little late to say sorry now, though.
Novel writhes around like a snake, grunting in pain, but it's clear he's... unfortunately used to this sort of treatment. There's a momentary clench, a flutter of his features - and a subtle shift as his face looks more focused, listening to Silas and Dahlia's call as he turns his gaze over towards the female form. "THERE. FUCKING SEE. THROW THE GODDAMN KNIFE, TITS MCGEE. THROW IT RIGHT INTO THE FUCKING STUPID ASS GHOST SO WE DON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS BULLSHIT ANYMORE."
Whether because she's gone far enough of is simply starting to wise up ... Irene lays there in the dirt, catching her breath, and then sits up to throw the knife towards the ghost -- although she aims away from Novel and Dahlia.
As the games come to and end and the spirit is banished, the whimsy and all its charms seem to fade away. Bringing a barren, dull feeling to the graveyard once again. Wasnt it better before?...
As tensions within the group escalate, led astray by the ghost’s deceptions, Silas and Dahlia unite in purpose, endeavoring to complete a circle of protection within the mud—a barrier against the intangible. Their combined efforts, a blend of earthly elements and whispered intentions, call forth a swarm of butterflies, symbols of the soul seeking release or entrapment. Novel, combating both the spectral manipulation and his own tempestuous nature, aids in this climax despite his earlier melee with Irene, whose misplaced trust in the ghostly illusion leaves her chastened. The spiritual maelstrom culminates with the banishment of the ghost, the butterflies scattered, their temporary cohesion as a feminine specter dissolved. In the aftermath, the graveyard returns to its melancholic stillness, leaving the group to ponder if the absence of the ghost's eerie whimsy has not somehow rendered the night less vibrant, less alive. The encounter concludes not with triumph but with a reflective somberness, a recognition of the thin veils that separate joy from despair, reality from illusion, the living from the dead.
(Novel's ghost banishing)
[Thu Oct 10 2024]
On the Sprawling Hillside of Arkwright Cemetery
It is afternoon, about 51F(10C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds. It's raining.
Child-like giggling begins to fill the graveyard, it comes from everywhere, filling the minds of the small gathering here only to suddenly cut off, leaving everything dead silent, not even the wind makes a sound, the distant cars passing the graveyard have been muted. Only local voices can be heard by one another.
"Oh hell no," Silas says as he hears the childlike giggling fill the air and then the sound is gone. The wind, the rain, nothing is making noise anymore, even as the rain patters all around them. He rises up from the nearby grave, hands muddy as he starts to look around, stepping closer to Dahlia, "Stick close. This... can't be good."
Whatever the others' motive is in being here, Irene apparently is rubbernecking. The sound of eerie giggling has her look discernibly spooked, and she takes a slight step back, turning her head this way and that to try and identify the source of that sound. She doesn't run, though -- she just doesn't look like she knows what she's doing.
Whether Irene seems to think Silas's crazy or not, she ends up deciding to hedge her bets with this man, and starts cautiously backing up towards him.
Dahlia eyes Silas a moment, though her attention quickly shifts as she starts hearing giggling. "What do we do?" She asks, staying close to Silas but also looking toward Novel and Irene as well...though maybe moreso to Novel. Clearly she doesn't know that much about dealing with ghosts.
The sound of a harp echoes nearby, and the tune is hauntingly familiar. For just a moment, you feel an overwhelming urge to confess your deepest feelings to the nearest person.
Novel wanders over and kicks a grave with a booted THUMP in response to Irene instead of giving a decent answer and then, suddenly - it happens. He shrugs back at Irene. "Yeah, weird shit, right? God I -hate- children ghosts. They're not even alive anymore so they don't go far when you punt them and children are always weirdass fucking sociopaths who have the most CREATIVE shit. You know I bet every parent in the world would be dead if our babies weren't physically incapable of getting up to shit," the man goes on a tangentially related rant as a huge bowie knife appears in his hand. Uhm.
"You three? I dunno. People usually start gesturing, or mumbling -" His voice, loud as usual, projects and fills the entire space, even the normal rapport of rain washed out by the unnatural silence. He turns his back to the trio, stepping backwards and inching back to fortify. Casually, he remarks, "Though for me I just do what comes fucking naturally, since I just feel like stabbing everyone all the goddamn time anyway. Some people get morning boners, I get morning murderboners."
Silas digs into a pocket, mud be damned, and he pulls out a coin which he begins to grasp between fingers. He moves it around, coating it in the mud as well as he hears more sounds coming nearby, a harp echoing in the distance. He looks around at Novel, Irene and Dahlia, turning towards Dahlia he says, "I've been "
"I've been," Silas says to Dahlia, "Lost for a while, but now it feels like I'm at least walking a good path now."
A pensive look floods Irene's ordinarily stoic features at the sound of the harp. It's likely not her cousin buried here (being a newcomer in town), but she tenses up and (wrongly) then asserts, "No, actually ... I think this ghost is meant for me. I ... I've heard this song before, it reminds me of ... the massacre, the one in ..." She trails off, stealing a look of confusion mixed with shock towards Novel. "I don't know what I'm doing here, I'm out of my depth. I've never hunted ghosts before, I really feel like such an impostor."
Dahlia tries to keep up with navigating Novel's rant, half distracted, looking toward Silas as he speaks and her lips part as if to say one thing but then instead, "I don't think I'm ever going to get better but I feel hope for the first time in a long time."
Incredibly out of her depth, Irene looks at the others with creeping disgust and asks, "Why are you telling me this? I don't know any of you. Why are ..." Oh, shit. Her eyes widen with the realisation, and then she shakes her head. "Why are any of us telling each other this? Do you know these people? The ghost." She points towards the vicinity of the spirit, for though she doesn't know what she knows, she seems at least able to sense its exact location, somehow ... "It's manipulating us."
A soft giggle echoes in the air, followed by the scent of roses. For a brief moment, the face of a lover or crush you havent seen in years flashes before your eyeswas it real, or just a trick?
There's a clearing of Dahlia 's throat, touching a hand to her forehead as she tries to reorient. "So you just stab-...it?" She starts to ask Novel but trails off, blinking rapidly. She rubs at her eyes mumbling something about, "...Lenny..?" Then she shakes her head head, looking to Irene, "I don't know what's really going on, but it's definitely fucking with us. So do we just shout at it to leave?"
Novel has feelings. Deep feeling. Problematically, for everyone around him, they're all terrible. It seems like he's barely listening to Silas, Irene, and Dahlia, as he keeps his weapon drawn and ready. "No, it isn't meant for you, Tits, it's -" And then Irene fills it in. He sort of sighs. "Yeah, they do that sort of shit, they get in your head and make you do stuff. Could be worse. Could be a really STRONG ghost. Get in your body. Make you do whatever it wanted." He flashes a grin, full of maniacal glee to Irene. A flicker of consternation - of brief pain, and deep, savage anger, his mouth opening and closing with a subtle clack noise. And then his gaze tears away, looking out across the graveyard scenery for a fight. Something to hit.
"Anyway we can talk about names and shit later. Focus on kicking the goddamn ghost out. And YEAH usually stabbing is my go to when there is SOMETHING TO STAB," He says, jabbing at the air viciously.
"T...tomer? It is you." Taking in a shallow breath, Irene opts to ignore her own advice, and then also Silas's prior advice to stay close. Her face softens into a smile, and she starts inching closer towards the source of spiritual energy, reaching out with her fingertips as if to try and touch it. "You called me here ... I knew I felt something. I knew I wasn't imagining it. How are you here? ..." Her smile falters. "Why are you here?"
"I know, and it feels alright, doesn't it? For once," Silas says to Dahlia before making a face at what he might see in front of himself. His eyes narrow some after taking in Irene's comments and that coin he is holding begins to hover above his palm before muddy hand moves and with that movement, more mud flies up to gather into his palm. He grips a good handful of it and starts to crouch down in the rain, squishing his hand and the coin into the mud beneath himself, looking around now with eyes flitting about, "Waiting to see this damn thing and then we'll see what we can do..." He starts to speak, soft, murmured words, "Laugh all you want, but you're in between death and life, stuck here, hurting people. Play with us all you want, but in the end we all know you're lonely, spiteful, hateful."
"I know this ghost," Irene informs the others with another little shake of her head, facing the unseen, but intensely felt spirit with enough curiosity to kill this cat. "He isn't here to harm us." (Dear reader: the spirit almost definitely was here to harm us.)
Dahlia watches Silas and Novel, briefly checking her pockets (again?) to see if anything useful has manifested itself. It hasn't. So she just sort of holds her hands out in the rain, in a vague nearby direction. "Whatever you're seeing-don't trust it." Dahlia tries to warn Irene. She focuses again, "Leave here! Your presence isn't wanted!"
A soft giggle echoes in the air, followed by the scent of roses. For a brief moment, the face of a lover or crush you havent seen in years flashes before your eyeswas it real, or just a trick?
Ordinarily, Irene speaks with a distinct Hispanic accent: but whatever words come out of her mouth now, they are not Spanish, nor are they English. Too faint to be heard, by design, she whispers to the spirit in a foreign language, under her breath, barely audible even up close. And the gullible, amateur ghost-hunter is no longer terribly close to the living. It's the dead she seeks to speak to, to touch.
Novel has a very, VERY different reaction to seeing a lover and crush, a mixture of savage fury and pain fluttering his features as he reaches over to seize Irene's collar and haul her back to the group as a whole. Wide-eyed mania and violence, his knife held, for all the world looking like he's just about to assault her. But the words that come out through clenched teeth is, "There is no fucking friend. There is no family member. It is a bullshit fucking asshole trying to lure you out so they can wear your fucking body like a goddamn sleeve and NOT in a fucking fun way. Was your friend BURIED here. Would they try to lure you out, in the rain, in the mud, in gravestones where you could crack your goddamn head open?"
This time when the giggling echoes in the air, Silas seems to center in on the sound itself. He turns in a quickness, mud sliding and being kicked up towards where that echo might bounce of tombstones and the confines where corpses are kept. There is a darkness that flies with it along the edges of that mud trail and within the front of it is that silver coin. It blasts out faster now and shoots through the air before being pulled back towards him as he catches it and rises up, "Help me make a circle. Everyone gather around? This thing is hard to find, but we could bind it and banish it, maybe..." He starts to carve out that circle in the mud, starting with his portion of the graveyard, stepping and scooping mud up to create a route that rain seems to catch and begin to pool within.
Dahlia is momentarily caught off guard again, the 'leave this place' chant she's managed to find for herself cut off. Either by somethings he saw or by Novel's abrupt intervention with Irene. Circle...circle..."Circle! Got it!" She calls to Silas, moving to try and start digging out some earth.
The sound of a harp echoes nearby, and the tune is hauntingly familiar. For just a moment, you feel an overwhelming urge to confess your deepest feelings to the nearest person.
If the spirit's goal was to distract, confuse, manipulate, and potentially turn all the living here against one another: it has succeeded. While Irene's too enraptured by the fake ghost of her dead lover to notice Novel seizing her collar, when he yanks her back, knife in hand, she does not seem to take kindly to it at all. "Let go of me!" she yells, and then she does speak Spanish. Whatever she says, it sounds very rude. You don't have to speak Spanish to tell she's swearing at him. Snaking out a hand towards the knife, she tries to disarm him, although whether she succeeds ...
There is a potential fight breaking out now between Novel and Irene, but Silas still focuses on that circle. There is a lot happening all at once as he looks up towards someone, kicking and digging mud with a foot while moving closer to her as his half of the circle begins to complete itself and start connecting with hers, "This music sounds so familiar! Why can't we hear the rain anymore?" The rain is definitely there, creating a little moat from the dug circle they are making, "The days aren't bad with you around, feel like I'm seeing clearly for the first time in a long time and we need to complete this damn circle!"
"No you dumb bitch I'm not gonna fucking do that and LET GO OF MY GODDAMN KNIFE," Novel says with exasperation as they end up with a struggle over the weapon, his fist clenching tightly over it as he does his best to wrap an arm around Irene and fold his legs over her and then down into the mud they both go with a wet squelch and then two hands versus one and a painful yelp comes out of the man as she uses a hold on him that causes his limb to spasm and the knife to drop right into the ground but then he's opting to try seizing her with his whole body. Keyword is: Try.
There is a potential fight breaking out now between Novel and Irene, but Silas still focuses on that circle. There is a lot happening all at once as he looks up towards Dahlia, kicking and digging mud with a foot while moving closer to her as his half of the circle begins to complete itself and start connecting with hers, "This music sounds so familiar! Why can't we hear the rain anymore?" The rain is definitely there, creating a little moat from the dug circle they are making, "The days aren't bad with you around, feel like I'm seeing clearly for the first time in a long time and we need to complete this damn circle!"
Novel swears, very loudly, addressing Irene, "FUCK YOU REESE AND FUCK YOU I'M NOT GIVING YOU MY KNIFE YOU'RE NOT CARVING MORE FUCKING INITIALS INTO ME."
is trying to fight off the overwhelming urge to speak as she looks toward Silas. "I think I-" She is blessedly interrupted by Novel and Irene's tussle. "Fighting isn't helping!" Dahlia shouts as she digs. "We have to finish this before they kill each other!"
The sound of a harp echoes nearby, and the tune is hauntingly familiar. For just a moment, you feel an overwhelming urge to confess your deepest feelings to the nearest person.
Dahlia too bad that interruption didn't help suppress the urge for long because as she continues digging she tells Silas, "I am terrified of fucking everything up, and making you hate me, and ruining what we're building." She lets out a frustrated sound afterward quickly trying to continuing digging out the circle while trying to keep a bead on Novel and Irene
So it's up to Dahlia and Silas to be the adults in the (outdoor) room in dealing with the manipulative ghost, evidently, because down in the mud with Novel Irene goes, still trying to wrest the knife from him. She also seems to decide this is a productive time to confess her deepest and darkest feelings, and just like his, apparently they are very bad, horrible feelings. They're a match made in heaven, or ... well, some sort of afterlife machinations, definitely.
Novel proceeds to unleash an absolute torrent of abuse on Irene, after these messages. "YOU DUMB WHORE IT'S THIS STUPID FUCKING GHOST THAT WANTS TO EAT YOUR GODDAMN SOOOOOUUUL AND I KNOW AN INSULT WHEN I SEE ONE I DON'T CARE THAT YOU'RE ACTING LIKE MY GODDAMN EX-" He's trying to get his hands around Irene's throat, rolling around in the mud and generally turning them both into messes with the struggling though his legs are firmly wrapped around Irene. It is the least sexy mud wrestling possible. "WHERE THE FUCK DID ALL YOUR BRAINS GO INTO YOUR GODDAMN TITS? I BET THEY WERE. I BET GOD SAID OH, SHE DOESN'T NEED BRAINS SHE JUST NEEDS TO WAGGLE HERSELF A FEW GODDAMN TIMES AND PEOPLE WILL BE FALLING ALL OVER EACH OTHER SO I SHOULD CRANK THE BRAIN-O-METER DOWN A FEW FUUUUUUCKING FEET AND GIVE HER SOME TONE AND NOW HERE I AM WRESTLING WITH YOUR DUMB ASS SO YOU DON'T END UP FELLATIOING A GHOST COCK AND THEN HAVE TO FIGHT YOU ANYWAY."
The circle begins to complete now and Silas looks up towards Dahlia from a spot he begins to move into and sits right at the center, "Fighting is not helping!" He adds onto it, but after listening to her he responds, soaked and muddy, "Everything is fucked around here already, Dahlia. We aren't fucking things up and you aren't fucking things up, we're fixing plenty, don't you worry." The coin is held in one hand now and he reaches out to try and steal Dahlia's hand, "Focus on it. Think about this thing being trapped and then, think about it being gone." He grows still there, his free hand slipping fingers deep into the mud beside himself and soon, the ground near that grave he was digging at begins to shift, as if something might be moving there, "See all these graves? They let go... and they're trapped here now! You will be as well if you don't fuck right off!"
A swarm of beautiful blue winged butterflies sweep into the area and move as one to form the shape of a curvaceous female form, it moves as if to dance whimsically across the grave and as easily as it formed the butterflies scatter into thousands of directions.
The swarm of butterflies comes rushing in, forming into that feminine figure but as the butterflies attempt to leave this time a few of them are caught in what seems to be a barrier within the circle, clashing with the outer edge of it as Silas sits in the center.
With the circle complete, Dahlia moves into the center too, taking Silas' hand and nodding at his words. "Everything's fucked, but we're trying to fix it." She repeats, like that will help. She gives his hand a squeeze, focusing on the coin and on the ghost that's around her somewhere. She tries to hold firm as the butterfly swarm appears and tries to escape. She uses her free hand to try and trace a particular shape in the mud, helping aid that idea of 'trapped'. "You are not welcome here!" She calls out.
"He was trying to give me a message!" the Hispanic lady insists to Novel as they wrestle. While Irene doesn't appear quite strong enough to break out of his pin, she lifts up her knee from underneath her red sweater-dress and brings it upwards into his crotch. Well, that definitely rules out any sexual escalation for their gross little horizontal tango now. Over his shoulder, she spies the flight of the butterflies ... which do not form into the shape of a 'he'. A look of frustration floods her features, eyelashes slightly damp, and she's perhaps realised now her own utter stupidity. It's a little late to say sorry now, though.
Novel writhes around like a snake, grunting in pain, but it's clear he's... unfortunately used to this sort of treatment. There's a momentary clench, a flutter of his features - and a subtle shift as his face looks more focused, listening to Silas and Dahlia's call as he turns his gaze over towards the female form. "THERE. FUCKING SEE. THROW THE GODDAMN KNIFE, TITS MCGEE. THROW IT RIGHT INTO THE FUCKING STUPID ASS GHOST SO WE DON'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS BULLSHIT ANYMORE."
Whether because she's gone far enough of is simply starting to wise up ... Irene lays there in the dirt, catching her breath, and then sits up to throw the knife towards the ghost -- although she aims away from Novel and Dahlia.
As the games come to and end and the spirit is banished, the whimsy and all its charms seem to fade away. Bringing a barren, dull feeling to the graveyard once again. Wasnt it better before?...