Plotlogs
The Devil Dreams Of Clemmons Reed Sr Jack
In White Oak's clinic, students Tabitha, Charlene, and Casey gathered in the isolated diagnosis room housing the comatose Clemmons Reed. The room's ambiance was something out of a nightmare—a place where soft lighting clashed with haunting iconography.
Amidst whispers of witchcraft, Tabitha, Charlene, and Casey recognized an urgent need to intervene before faculty attempted any extreme measures on Clemmons. The halls themselves suggested an ominous narrative, with crosses peering down as the trio conspired to slip into Clemmons' dreams and rescue him from a fate worse than their darkest fears.
As the trio prepared for a ritual designed to enter Clemmons' tortured dreamscape, they found themselves quickly confronted by a stark reality—the mist-shrouded room was an easy veil for Clement's pleas in Enochian and his shivered sleep hinted at nightmares beyond their wildest imaginings. Blood was spilled, hands were joined, and the forbidden incantation ushered them into a realm where the laws of nature and man turned to embers at their very touch.
Without hesitation, the void embraced them, as they descended into Clemmons' dreams—a morbid expanse painted red and black by war and whispers of dark powers with authority over the sleeping. It was Charlene's realization of a cross transformed into the dreams, a supposed beacon of salvation against the unspeakable entity preying upon Clemmons' vulnerability.
The travesty unfolded before them. In a showdown reeking of brimstone and malice, they faced what could only be described as the Devil incarnate: Prince Samael—a malevolent force that towered over Clemmons and spoke of deals and desires embraced in moments of weakness. Casey suggested that the entity craved to use Clemmons as a bridge to their world, and so they strategized with desperate fervor. To engage in cosmic combat with a devil, however, was beyond their grasp. Though they grappled with the repercussions of abandoning Clemmons to his fate, self-preservation and rational fear ruled. They dreamed themselves back into the cold grasp of reality, their intervention leaving behind naught but chalk lines and a youth possibly suspended between life and lucidity.
The wicked truth of White Oak's whispered rumors became a shattering revelation to the students. While Charlene quickly dismounted the ceremonial cross as though to erase their presence, Casey contemplated Father Jack's potential perceptions of their esoteric chalk expressions. And in the aftermath, the collective whispers of Enoch were replaced by a silence even more ominous than screams—a silence that cradled Clemmons in a limbo birthed from his own misplaced desires. Conceding the field for the moment, Tabitha left to recount their harrowing tale to Father Jack, perhaps the only one with exorcising expertise that could still save Clemmons.
In the end, as the students parted ways with the burdens of their trial, the White Oak moon observed their departure, offering no guidance nor solace, only the immutable truth that sometimes heroism is knowing when the fight is beyond one's might.
(The Devil Dreams of Clemmons Reed(SRJack):SRJack)
[Fri Dec 22 2023]
On a Diagnosis Room shadowed in Eerie Mist
This small diagnosis room is efficiently laid out with essential medical equipment. An adjustable examination table sits at the center, with a computer workstation nearby for accessing patient records. The room includes standard medical instruments like a blood pressure monitor and a stethoscope, all arranged on a compact trolley. Soft lighting and neutral wall colors create a calming atmosphere, while a small seating area for family members adds a touch of comfort.
In the center of the room is a gurney, with medical devices hooked up to it.
It is night, about 39F(3C) degrees, There is a waxing gibbous moon.
OOC: Just getting set up.
OOC: Just getting set up!
Casey falls over, dead.
OOC: If you all want to meet up in the clinic, the news is that new student Clemmons Reed is in the clinic, not well.
Tabitha looks as if she's just come out of the cold, her jacket having just been removed and folded over her arms. She has a look about her, flushed, and frustrated. A fair bit confused. "Oh... Hey," she says to some familiar faces, such as Casey and Charlene. "How're you two?"
"Anyway, I met him the other day in the library and he was looking at some really spooky books," Charlene explains to Casey while she steps inside, pulling her hands out of her jacket pockets. "So maybe that's what got him. Hi Tabs! You here to chck on that new guy, too?"
Casey had just stepped out of one of the rooms in the clinic, tugging up the sleeves on her sweater. "What new guy?" Casey says, looking first to Charlene, and then to Tabitha. "I'm doing... okay. Are you two doing alright?" she asks.
"His name's Cleatus or something." Charlene shrugs uncertainly and tucks her hair behind her ears while she looks around. "I'm doing good."
"Yeah, Father Jack texted me and asked that I swing by to do so." Tabitha says to Charlene, slipping her phone into the tight pocket nearly hidden on her yoga pants. "What sort of books?" She looks about the area, chewing her cheek slightly. "Only okay?" she asks Casey, her furrowed expression slipping to concern. "Well, text me later and tell me what's up."
Like it says on the tin: Clemmons Reed, who arrived last week, was found in his dorm room earlier today, sleepless and completely insensate. He was brought to the clinic, where he is, by all accounts, lying in a gurney, completely lost to the world. The nurses are rumoring, perhaps predictably, that it is witchcraft, but then this is White Oak, isn't it? Everything is withcraft.
Everything.
The challenge, though: all too often, it really is witchcraft behind things. Now, the Faculty have their own solution, but it is often terrifying and awful, and so when students get too far into things they ought not there is a quiet agreement amongst them to do what they can to rescue them before they are hauled to a room to be forcibly remade into God's perfect image.
"Well," Casey says to Tabitha. "Oh, /that/ Clem," Casey says, glancing from Tabitha to Charlene. "We were going to try to wake him up before the nuns and priests... 'help'... him?" she says, making airquotes.
"Well?" Tabitha asks Casey, waving it off. "I'm assuming that is what needs to happen. But Father Jack did say that he could not get hold of any orderlies, so it sounds like maybe we have time to get to him before they do."
Here in this part of the clinic, the halls are white and sterile. There are crosses everywhere on the walls; most of them are plain, but no small few have Jesus, staring down at the students as they gather from his agony. White-dressed nurses breeze by; everywhere in the world, scrubs have become the default medical wear, but somehow in the Webster Clinic there is a subtle oppression that pushes people towards the 'traditional'.
"It had something to do with dreams and, like, the world of dreams," Charlene says without a great deal of certainty, keeping her voice low in spirit of the illicit mission. Looking around furtively, she nods to Casey. "Yeah, especially since he's the new guy. Imagine getting an exorcism in your first week. Remember Liv's exorcism?"
"I saw Liv post-exorcism, at least," Casey says to Charlene. "But yeah," Casey says, patting at her pockets. "I'd trust your leadership in something like this, Tabitha. Are we gonna have to like... figure out 'witch'... way to go?" she says, lifting her eyebrows at the double entendre.
As the students talk, they draw nearer to Clemmons' door. Just beyond, he lies slumbering on a gurney. If one of the girls peeks, they might be able to see him there through window in the door the nurses periodically use to check on patients.
Tabitha blinks at Casey, "My leadership? Man... we're all screwed, probably." she chuckles faintly. "Well, we could try to dream invade him," she suggests to Charlene and Casey. "Pull him out. But --" She pauses, and spreads her hands, a little helpless. She peeks into a few windows as she goes, expecting others to point out Clemmons. "That could be dangerous too. I'm not even sure where we could go that is secretive enough her to perform a dream circle."
"I'm not real good at that stuff, so if Casey says you're the leader, I'm voting with her," Charlene remarks and gets up on her tiptoes to look through ine of the door-windows. Inhaling sharply she ducks away from it again and turns to her friend to whisper, "That's him in there!"
This is a secluded enough quiet corner: there's not much for them to do with Clemmons, at least not until some breakthrough happens. If someone were to cover the window? Why, there might be a few hours where his hospital room is unmolested, unchecked by those going by.
"Well, I know a little bit of this stuff, but..." Casey says, lifting her chin as she looks to Tabitha. "... I can help support you, if you want to..." she says, making a small gesture with her hands, turning her voice down. "I say we go for it, try to do the dream-circle in his room," she says.
"It may take a little bit to find where exactly he is. There are many different doors." Tabitha says to Charlene and Casey, "But we should try, at least. I'd hate to see him turned into meatloaf." Not that that happens...
Inside, through the window, Clemmons seems to turn just a little in shivered sleep. If he made a noise, it can't be heard from outside.
Tabitha tries the handle of the door to see if it is locked, or open for them to just creep themselves into the room.
"It's that one, Tabs. I just saw him through the window," Charlene hisses, nudging the door with her elbow while she keeps watch of the hallway in case of nuns. "If you can't get it open, I can try and jimmy the lock. I do that to get into Liv and Belle's room when Sam is making out with Harry in ours."
It's locked, to be sure, but Charlene should be able to get through it. These clinic locks are jokes.
"If that doesn't work, we can break the glass. I think we should go all in on this," Casey says, her tone of voice hushed. With the other two strategizing, she was making sure she was a lookout.
Tabitha steps away from the door, and gestures to it, "Have at it, you cute little delinquent." She leans against a wall, looking as casual as one can.
"Idiot, we're trying to be sneaky here. They'll hear it if we break the glass." Charlene rolls her eyes at Casey and squats down in front of the door, rummaging around in her jacket pockets. She gets out a bobbypin and her driver's license and gets to work, and after a little while, the door clicks open.
Once Charlene opens the lock, it's easy enough for her, Tabitha and Casey to creep into Clemmons' room. It's a hospital room like most others in the clinic, white-sterile, with some beeping machines. On the wall is a cross, and from it, Jesus stares down with judgment in his eyes. Was he watching Charlene while she picked the lock?
For Casey, the lookout, the coast seems clear. She hasn't even seen a nurse walk down here in the last twenty minutes or so. It seems as if they've forgotten about poor Clemmons, which begs the question: how many students end up like him, and how much does White Oak really care about the 'lost souls' that end up here in the clinic?
Inside, Clemmons lies on the bed. He is tossing and turning, and up close they can now hear low muttering in a tongue that is entirely not English.
Tabitha may recognize the language: Enochian, the tongue they say of angels or demons, though others say it was all a hoax.
"Well, sure," Casey says. "So lucky us that you could pick the lock then," Casey says to Charlene, casting her eyes briefly down to her as she filters into the room too after the other two. "... is that Latin?" she asks no one in particular.
Tabitha pulls herself off of the wall she'd taken a lean against, making a little sound in her throat, a hum, a mmm? Creeping in, and being the second, she has to look between Charlene and Casey. "I didn't bring my book of Enoch, but that doesn't sound like Latin. It might be Enochian. But -- I've only heard it a few times." She adds, "I don't think Google translate is going to help."
"Well, I don't speak any Pinocchian, so don't look at me," Charlene tells Tabitha, shrugging helplessly while she pads towards the gurney. She looks Clemmons over with a troubled frown and goes in search of a medical chart. "Tabs, do you have any chalk? In case we have to draw one of those circles, like at the museum."
As the Tabitha, Charlene and Casey fully enter the room, there's a decided sense of some kind of magic here. It pricks at the senses with a lulling, dreamlike sense. It's not overpowering, but there are some ways in which it is akin to the sleepiness some of the students may have felt when their... self-care... gets too caring on campus, but it has differences, too. There's a kind of spiciness to the feeling, along with the smell of brimstone.
The drifting words catch a moment of Tabitha's ears: it's almost like Clemmons' murmuring is two voices at once, having a conversation with each other. One of the voices is making words that sound like scared pleading.
"Don't look at me. I shoulda taken Enochian in high school, but I took French instead, and still don't remember much of it," Casey says. "Sacre bleu," she adds, with a small sound of bemusement again. "I might not be able to speak Enochian," she notes.
"... but I *have* exorcised a spirit or two in my time. Will it be any different, you think?" she says, with that smile quirking up. "Salt, and suffering."
Tabitha moves a mite closer to Clemmons, listening. She's waving off Charlene's talking with a flutter of a hand as she does. "I can't really hear what he's saying, but it's two voices." She turns back to the two, nodding to Casey, "Salt could work, anything to help bind the blood. In any case, we shouldn't need to draw a pentagram, but we do need a protection circle, no matter what."
"Well, I didn't bring any chalk, so unless you can draw a protection circle in lipstick..." Charlene ventures, scrunching her nose wryly at Tabitha. "Casey, do you see his medical chart anywhere? Just in case it says anything useful on it."
"Luckily..." Casey says, "I *did* manage to bring that," Casey says, bringing out her ghostbustin' bag, and drawing out a medium-ish bag of salt, shaking that. "Should have some chalk in here, if we need it too. Oh, a smudge stick!" she adds.
"If we need some smudgin', and I have no idea," she says. "Isn't it usually clipped to the bed or something on TV shows?"
"I'm sure the facility has salt. Salt is a natural antibacterial." Tabitha suggests to Charlene, "So you don't have to ruin your favorite lipstick."
Tabitha clears her throat, biting back a comment about smudged lipstick.
He does have a medical chart, sure enough: 'patient intake, cannot be woken. No medical cause identified.' The nurse's handwriting is a neat, easy set of blocked lines.
Then, beneath that, a darker scrawl, some practitioner whose handwriting is hard to read. 'Patient is transported to dreaming hell. Something is trying to get in. Order: wards of St. Michael, and replace standard cross with sanctified crucifix.'
"They put salt in our wounds here? Sheesh. Friggin' typical," Charlene remarks and yoinks the medical chart to decipher the handwriting. "It says he's in dreaming hell. Wards of Saint Michael?" She shrugs to herself and steps across the room to use the sheet to cover the window in the door, fastening it there with chewing gum.
Those with occult knowledge of any sort might guess at the implication of the darker scrawl: yes, Clemmons Reed is trapped in his dreams, but it's not whatever he is pleading with that trapped him there. It's White Oak, binding him in himself so that whatever is inside him cannot use him to escape.
"Well. Hell." Tabitha says. Hell, indeed. She taps at that last scrawl. "We go in, we might be bringing more than Clemmons out." She shifts her gaze between Casey and Charlene, worrying her bottom lip. "So we have to go in strong. Or..." She taps at her cheek in thought, again, an uncomfortable shift of her hips change her positioning.
"Do you mean I gotta...?" Charlene asks, glancing uncertainly at Tabitha.
"Gotta...?" Tabitha asks Charlene.
"Do the thing like at the museum?" Charlene explains, gesturing vaguely. "You said go in strong."
The ritual to go into Clemmons dreams is not hard: a little blood, a little chalk, and the right chant, and three young women could join hands around the gurney. It would take, in Tabitha's estimation, no more than a few minutes to slip into whatever dreaming torment the young man lies in.
On the gurney, he slips from Enochian to English. "Please," he says, almost a whisper. "This was a mistake. Please let me go."
"I mean, that's what we got to do, right? Bring whatever is in him out, and let Clemmons be okay afterwards?" Casey says. "We can go all biblical about it, too - got any pigs or goats?" she says, mostly just providing color commentary for the rest.
"Yeah, I always carry some livestock around, Casey." Charlene rolls her eyes emphatically at Casey.
"Iiiiiiiii...." Tabitha says to Charlene, shaking her head. "Wouldn't suggest that when we can reach his mind. We don't really know what has him, but White Oak seems to think its dangerous enough to bind him in this hell... So no. Don't attack." She holds out her hands, "Ladies. We sacrifice now. Blood to blood. I will begin the chant." She says, earnestly, "But we have to be careful not to break the circle, or our grasp."
Tabitha nods to Casey, "Did you find everything? I didn't bring chalk.... or ah... salt."
"I got some salt, yeah, but no chalk. We can use the markers they have in this desk, though?" Casey says. "But..." she says to Tabitha. "... it's not my first rodeo with that kinda thing," she says.
Casey was totally biting her lip at what Charlene says, looking as though she desperately wanted to say something, but wouldn't.
Looking a bit apprehensive, Charlene steps into the circle and takes one of Tabitha's hands while reaching for Casey with the other. "Is this safe, though?" she asks quietly. "What if it's like that movie where the evil spirit gets loose and then everyone's screwed?"
Casey's not wrong: there are black permanent markers in the desk. Those markers would work to draw a circle: sharpie on the floor may not be traditional in John Dee's day, but stranger things have happened on White Oak grounds. Besides, a ritual circle drawn in sharpie on the floor will be something particularly fun for the nuns to have to clean off later.
"Well, I saw some lubricant in that drawer too, in that case, Charlie," Casey says, moving to place the bag of salt at the foot of the bed there, bringing up her sharpie and waggling it in the air. "You want a standard circle? The sharpie will make it extra hard to break, too," she says. "So long as you guys don't smudge it or something when I'm putting it down."
"Might happen," Tabitha says to Charlene, in all seriousness, movie magic may be magic, but it gets some things right. She smiles at Casey, gratefully. "Thanks, Case. Marker would be perfect." She suddenly laughs, a side eye given to Charlene, "She said it better. We'd be fucked." Wow, language Tabitha.
Up on the wall, Jesus is staring at Casey, someone and Tabitha from his crucifix. When someone was reading the doctor's note, didn't it say something about replacing the ordinary cross with a more sanctified one? Regardless, he seems to stare down at the three young women. He is judging beneath the crown of thorns.
Up on the wall, Jesus is staring at Casey, Charlene and Tabitha from his crucifix. When someone was reading the doctor's note, didn't it say something about replacing the ordinary cross with a more sanctified one? Regardless, he seems to stare down at the three young women. He is judging beneath the crown of thorns.
Up on the wall, Jesus is staring at Casey, Charlene and Tabitha from his crucifix. When Charlene was reading the doctor's note, didn't it say something about replacing the ordinary cross with a more sanctified one? Regardless, he seems to stare down at the three young women. He is judging beneath the crown of thorns.
"What even is a sanctified cross, anyway?" Charlene asks offhandedly while she waits for the circle to be drawn. "It said on the chart that they had to get one of those. Does that mean it's creepier?"
It isn't hard for Casey to draw the ritual circle. It's like she said: she's done this before. This is a standard protection circle, scattered with sharpie-drawn sigils from a half-a-dozen human faiths, but as the circle is complete, there is a sudden sense of difference: when one of the women steps in or out of the circle, it's as if there is a change in the timbre of some unseen hum in the air.
The cross may not be creepier, but if Charlene were to look at it is definitely fancier: full of aged wood, with some kind of small glass reliquary in the center of Christ's chest. Inside that glass in turn is an even smaller sliver of wood.
"Standard circle, wide enough that we can lay down around him. Or I'm going to start chanting and we'll just fall... wherever. And it will be madness." Tabitha glances upward at the cross of Jesus, then lowers her eyes from it, down to the floor. "It probably was doused in holy water, and a prayer said over it."
As Tabitha plans her ritual, she can almost hear whispers on the wind, some kind of angry voice that's matched in tempo with Clemmons' muttering. Casey can hear it too, like an unsettling sound down the back of her spine.
"Maybe we should bring it, then. I mean into the circle," Charlene suggests, eyeing the cross warily. "It might help."
"Well, if it's keeping whatever locked in... maybe we should move it," Casey says. "And use it to protect us instead," Casey says, glancing between the other two women.
"It is possible that we can trap it within the circle.." Tabitha says, an air of ... who can say, she's a little daydreamy. "And step out in time before any of us become afflicted." Her knife is drawn across her hand, something that has been done numerous times before, as seen in the slashes that do not simply look like life lines. "Are we ready?"
Forgoing the cross now that Tabitha seems ready, Charlene takes a deep breath and nods solemnly to her friend. "You better tell us when to step out, then. I don't know any magic," she whispers. "Let's do this."
Tension in the air seems to build, as if the very room was filled with thickening molasses: and around the edges of the hospital room, it is as if the mists that so often shoot through Haven are building up. In the center of the circle, on the gurney, Clemmons tosses and turns again.
"It does not hurt to have the crucifix in the circle, Charlie," Tabitha says, the blood dripping to the floor, having near missed that was exactly what she was asking.
Casey makes a small sound, drawing a small dagger from her own fashionable jeans, bringing that knife to her palm. She liked to slit along the crease lines, herself. She looks to Tabitha, tilting her head just so," she says, drawing the tip down one of the creases to start the bleeding, a hiss coming from her before she tucks the knife away."
Casey makes a small sound, drawing a small dagger from her own fashionable jeans, bringing that knife to her palm. She liked to slit along the crease lines, herself. She looks to Tabitha, tilting her head just so, drawing the tip down one of the creases to start the bleeding, a hiss coming from her before she tucks the knife away.
"Hold out your hand, Charlie," Tabitha requests, her knife at the ready to pierce the younger woman's flesh.
"Okay, okay. I just didn't wanna mess up your magic," Charlene tells Tabitha and steps out of the circle with one foot, stretching out with a reaching arm to grab for the cross without fully moving away from her friends. She just barely manages to get it and hurries back to clutch it against her chest with one hand while holding the other out. "I hate this part."
Who doesn't hate that part? But while magic is many things, at its heart it is sacrifice: and the most essential sacrifice is blood. After Charlene cuts her hand, after she is able to link hands with Tabitha and Casey, there is a kind of electricity: a circuit, being joined, inside the protective power of the circle. Now, if one were to chant the final words of the ritual, all three might plunge into the terrifying depths of Clemmons' mind.
And then, with a flick of her wrist, Tabitha cuts through Charlene's palm, bringing for the blood. Her knife is put away and she holds her hands outward once more to take hold of her friends' hands. She holds her breath a moment, glancing between Casey and Charlene, and in Latin, those final words are spoken.
"I never took Latin. I figured it was pointless since the Latinos don't even speak it anymore," Charlene whispers, closing her eyes in anticipation while she stands with her hands joined in her friends'.
With her hands reaching out to the other two women, Casey lowers her head, chanting along with the other two women. Her eyes close, and she joins her hands with her two friends, Charlene's statement earning her a bit of a look from Casey as she peeks an eye open.
Charlene does her best to parrot Tabitha's foreign words, keeping her eyes shut. Her shoulders tighten with tension and her chest rises and falls steadily with her breathing.
As the final bits of Latin chant are spoken, all three women feel a strange wave wash over them: it starts at their extremities, as their toes tingle in their shoes, and then there is a little bit of strange electricity that runs up their calves, their thighs. It settles as some warmth in their core as their noses, too, begin to tingle, and then their lips, their cheeks, running down their torsos in a way that makes the skin prickle as if wind were on it. Soon, a numbness sets in, and then at last the only thing they can feel is their hands: Tabitha's, joined to Charlene and Casey. Casey's, joined to Tabitha and Charlene. Charlene's, joined to Casey and Tabitha. That's the sensation, the last sensation, until it seems suddenly as if their consciousnesses are falling, falling, falling down a deep pit.
Out in the room, no one can hear the sound of three young women's bodies collapsing to the floor.
Falling, falling, falling... For a moment, it seems all that Charlene, Tabitha and Casey are doing is hurtling down through the void, plummeting in endless, heart-rending descent. At first, it's purely blackness: each of them can still feel each other's hands, but they are different. This is their dream self: unclothed, perhaps, or dressed in the ideal of how they ought to be, formed in the ideal of how they ought to be. The only fundamental truth is that they are connected still with each other, hurtling through an endless, sightless void.
This felt easier than most times Casey had tried dreamwalking. She had two other souls to attach to, and Casey clutches Tabitha's and Charlene's hands, best she can throughout the dizzying descent.
Charlene lets out a startled shriek, squeezing her eyes shut and clutching her friends' hands too tightly to be comfortable. She looks like herself in the dreamscape, having possibly never ventured into it besides the benign dreams of natural sleep, but her image is projected in her pajamas of a tank top and underwear.
Tabitha sinks deeper, deeper, her forms shifting numerous times in this descent. Robes, none, angellic wings, serpentine, devilish tail, back to robes, flowing and black, a sheen to the material, glittering like a starry sky and stark against her red hair.
For quite a while, things are only blackness. Then, suddenly, the world lights up: there is a flash of red lightning that leaps from one cloud to another. Now it's clear, as lightning flashes against them, they are falling through clouds, a towering, impossible pillar of clouds, unending. The shock of lightning gets closer, as the smell of ozone fills the air, and one of the trio might note that these clouds seem eerily similar to those in the storm that battered Haven earlier in the week.
And for Casey's part, Casey was wearing a fluttering, glittering purple sequined dress that caught the starlight and glimmered, Casey's hair even longer and fluttering behind her as if she was submerged, her entire form more slender and sleek than typical. "That red lightning," she says. "Here again. I wonder if that's when whatever this is got out... and White Oak tried to put it back in again, hmm?" she says.
"I just hope that we find ground soon," Tabitha says, falling, floating, through the clouds, like a scene out of Lost Boys.
"Holy crap, you're prolly right," Charlene whispers after opening her eyes. Her features are scrunched up with fear, and she looks like she would rather shut them again as if this might make her safe. "What do we do now? How do we find Clem?"
"It's a dream," Casey says. "If we want ground, we can just... find it, right?" she says, tilting her head. "If we all three dream of it at once," she says. "I think, though..." she says. "Clem is where this all seems to be coming together," she says, lifting her chin towards the lightning in the distance.
"Focus on him." Tabitha says, murmuring after Casey's wise words.
Casey's intuition is a good one: as she starts to focus, there's a change in the clouds, and then they aren't in them at all. Instead, the sky is above them, lighting still cracking, but the three women go from falling to suddenly stepping through a craggy, shadowed wasteland. It is like every war movie of war-torn WWI battlefields, with craters who broken edges tower like knife's edges over the women and blasted trees. Everything is cast in colors of red and black, as the towering cloud seems ahead of them.
"Seriously, this is so scary. We gotta find him quick," Charlene says, keeping hold of Casey's hand even after finding firm ground beneath her feet. She gawks at her surroundings, scanning the inhospitable landscape. "If we all focus, do you think we'll be able to kinda feel which way to go?"
"There is a certain..." Casey says. "Power, I suppose, in a dream," Casey says. "Some creatures can manipulate it," she says. "We'll find Clem and the... demon's...? dream soon enough, perhaps," she says, her eyes glittering a bit - in here, almost literally, perhaps.
Is it mists or fog that cover this blasted hellscape? It's hard to tell: something acrid clings to the shattered landscape, and then, at the top of a broken crater, something seems to skitter and move across just outside of the trio's view.
"The rules in dreamworlds vary from dream to dream," Tabitha says to Charlene, though not necessarily to Casey, but looking to her to agree? "We may wander a while, but the nature of these worlds do bring our spiritual bodies closer. Continue to focus on Clem, and I think... maybe. We'll find him in no time."
"Okay, then. I'm focusing," Charlene promises, looking straight ahead with determination in her expression. She flinches a little as another sizzle of lightning arcs above the trio, but she regains her concentration again. "Maybe it's this way."
"I've always thought of it as... if you have enough power, you can exert yourself upon the world in some ways, but many of these things try to get you to... conform to it," Casey says. "So if you..." she says. "... are more powerful than the dreamer, you can change the dream. Vice-versa," she says. "So if you start turning into a chicken, Charlie - I hope that is your dream and not Clem's," she wiggles her brow.
"I never turned into a chicken!" Charlene tells Casey a bit defensively.
The thing on the rim of the crater seems to pause, as the girls' conversation is carried over the wind. It's mostly obscured by mists, but slowly, it turns its head to look at them: some kind of four-legged thing, with a broad collar around its neck.
Tabitha ceases to speak, and her clasp on Casey and Charlene, or rather their hands, grows hard. "We ... is that just the shape of a mountain?" She can't be sure.
"No. I saw it, too. It's a dog," Charlene whispers to Tabitha, squinting uncertainly into the mist. "It's gotta be a sign. It might lead us to Clem."
Overhead, red lightning jumps from cloud to cloud. The sound of it is titanic, a crash that seems to drown out conversation. Even though the storm rages, there is no rain: in fact, the Waste Land seems so dry as to make Tabitha, Casey and Charlene scratch at their skin and wish for moisturizer.
Tabitha whispers aside to Charlene, "You need to focus on the image of the cross you snagged. We can't take material items with us to the dream, but we can bring their likeness."
Up on the crater's edge, the shape seems to creep just a little closer. It would be a large dog, but it seems more like a lizard, with pebbled, black-and-red skin. It has a collar around it, a ruff: like a komodo dragon in size and shape, but with the jaws of a cobra and a strange, red-and-black patterened batlike sail around its neck. Red eyes stare at Casey.
"Oh, yeah! I have it here!" Charlene calls over the sound of thunder, and the cross sort of materializes in her hand where she had it back in the real world. She holds it out in front of herself, hair whipping into her face in the wasteland storm.
Casey tilts her head as she looks to the lizard, fan and all. "Are you the person who lives within Clem?" she says. "We'd like to get you out," she says. "In peace, yes?" she says, offering a smile. "The other option is... well... you stay here, and... White Oak has you then," she says. "Trapped forever in this mind," she says. "And if you aren't him... go run along and tell your master," she says.
As Charlene imagines the cross, there is is: in her hands, with Jesus staring out of it. Is it Charlene's cross that makes the lizard turn tail, disappearing into the mists? Or is Casey, sending the thing: that demonic thing, whatever it is, off as a messenger to its master? Up above, lightning cracks again in accompaniment to the disappearing demonling.
"That just feels tooooooo easy." Tabitha says. "I wonder what rules apply here... what exactly we can do. The power of three ... We are aligned with our guardian angels. Are we the guardian angels?" She asks these things, seeking out the answers on the red sky and crackling air.
"I told Harry she's my guardian angel the other day, but I didn't mean it literally," Charlene mentions to Tabitha, keeping the cross held out at arms length like a torch. "If we wait for that thing to come back, what if it just doesn't? We could be here forever and I'm really thirsty. We prolly ought to follow it."
Wherever this place is, there do not seem to be any angels here: but as Tabitha looks up, she sees something high in the sky. It's black-winged, crossing almost entirely out of view until some red lightning lights it from behind and unrolls the massive, city-block length of some mind-bogglingly huge draconic shape.
"Well, it'll know we're here, if it's something of any power," Casey says. "And I'm not sure I'm up for an exorcism in the dreamscape against something that can cause thunderstorms in reality, are you?" she says. "And right now, at least, we can just... wake up," she says, peering up at the dragon-thing in the sky. "... we might not have that luxury later, mind," she seems to sing-song.
"It just vanished though," Tabitha says to Charlene. Then, with a snap, a compass forms in her hand. What is normally a point north is the name 'Clemmons'.
"We got the cross, though. It's gotta do something. Maybe that's what the creature was running away from," Charlene mentions, wagging the cross back and forth a little. "Casey, do you wanna hold it?"
A wind seems to kick up, shifting in character, and as the compass appears in Tabitha's hands it begins to spin, wildly. The wind, though -- the wind carries a whisper, and then all three can hear it. Charlene, Casey and Tabitha can hear pleading again, in English, as Clemmons begs to be let go, begs in an apology, and then a voice comes up in sibilant response.
"You opened the door for me," the voice says, powerful, male. "You asked me, and I answered, and now you are upset with the price?"
In the distance, Clemmons wails. "I didn't know!" The spinning compass stops spinning, pointing now straight ahead.
"Holy shit," Charlene hisses, looking around warily.
Also, bet Tabitha there are no angels, with shiver of her black starry robes, they turn white, and from her back there now are wings. It is a good thing she has not chosen the Ophanim.
"Well," Tabitha says to Casey and Charlene, "No time like the present." Her gaze steers to Clemmons, or at least his voice, and then she's watching the compass as she walks. "It seems like this world does not like the images of God and Jesus. I am willing to bet that a prayer to Saint Michael will also help free Clemmons."
"I don't know any prayer to Saint Michael. I don't even say grace," Charlene admits while she trudges after Tabitha, watching her surroundings unasily. "Don't tell Father Jack or Sister Abigail about any of this, okay? I don't wanna end up like Yasmin."
As the trio walks forward, the scene reveals itself: they cross the rise of a crater, and above the 'rred lightning is crackling with fierce force, lighting up the scene below. The crater is a small valley, and in the center of it stands a man -- a thing, really. A demon, perhaps seven feet tall, with goat horns that curl around his face and black fur that runs down his back and the reversed legs of a goat. He is male, obviously so, and around him flickers a corona of fire as he looks down at a figure kneeling in the black earth.
"What do you come with then to fight the Devil himself?" Tabitha asks Charlene with a hint of incredulousness in her tone. There is a shiver down her spine.
The words rush out from Tabitha's mouth in a whisper, "The Black Goat himself. Blackcoat."
"I didn't think we were gonna FIGHT the friggin' Devil!" Charlene hisses, and she lets out a startled gasp at the sight of the figure. Speak of the--you know. She grips Tabitha's arm and clings to it uneasily. "You know, we barely even know this Clemmons guy. Maybe if we just leave, we can say we did our best."
"Or something that looks like the devil," Casey says, her voice quiet as she squeezes the hands of the other women.
Tabitha closes her eyes and exhales. "Or something that looks like the devil. He has many demons beneath him, afterall. But none would dare to take his form, I think."
And then the words: it's someone on the ground, of course, begging. He's asking the demon to release him. "No," the demon says. "You asked for power, and I gave it to you, and in exchange I asked for a bridge, did I not?" he says. "I asked for a way in. And you gave it to me..." Pleasure. "And I rewarded you, and then you felt fear. You felt doubt," he says, spitting off the words. "And you ran to White Oak. Do you not understand?" he asks. "They are the Enemy. They are trying to keep you, keep all of us, from the birthright of our true creator."
And then the words: it's Clemmons on the ground, of course, begging. He's asking the demon to release him. "No," the demon says. "You asked for power, and I gave it to you, and in exchange I asked for a bridge, did I not?" he says. "I asked for a way in. And you gave it to me..." Pleasure. "And I rewarded you, and then you felt fear. You felt doubt," he says, spitting off the words. "And you ran to White Oak. Do you not understand?" he asks. "They are the Enemy. They are trying to keep you, keep all of us, from the birthright of our true creator."
Clemmons weeps, in response. "I am sorry, Prince Samael. I am sorry: I just was afraid."
"Okay, so what do you two want to do... We can't just stand here. So do we wake, or do we try to detach the devil from this Clemmons guy?" Tabitha asks.
Tabitha squeezes Charlene's hand.
Casey sticks her tongue against her upper teeth. "... well," she says. "We detach the devil, it gets out," she says. "And a bridge for a demon is just as bad. Could it be that what White Oak intends is actually the best outcome for him?" she says. "A burnt out Holy Roller is better than a burnt out Demon Bridge, after all?"
"What if we tell the demon that we'll smother Clem with a pillow and take away his, like, route into our town?" Charlene asks, looking back and forth between Casey and Tabitha. "Or is it too late for that? If there's already a portal or whatever, maybe we gotta find that and... I dunno."
The demon -- the devil -- Prince Samael -- steps closer to Clemmons, and then he seems to bend over, reaching out to him. There's a black hand, and it seizes hold of the young man's hair; fingers like talons seem to dig in, and he begins to haul Clemmons to his feet. "There is a price for failure. Your body will wither," he tells the young man. "Your dreams are gone. You belong to me," he tells him. "One more squirming, terrified lost soul."
Casey makes a small sound in the back of her throat. "A bad situation all around," she says. "Charlie's play is risky, what if he decides to ride one of us instead?" she says. "We have the protection circle and everything, buuuuuut..." she coos.
"I heard you gotta sign a pact before they get to, er, ride you," Charlene points out, scrunching her nose at that particular turn of phrase.
Tabitha mentions aside, "We are in his dream, if he dies ...." She glances aside to Casey for the answer to the unspoken part of the question. "We have the protection circle, buuuuut," she echoes, exactly. "If we go forth and try to pull him out, we pull Samael out, and he may be too powerful for our circle."
Casey rolls her shoulder. "I say wake up, regroup," she says. "But that's me personally," she says. "If either of you want to try to fight this thing, well... you only live once, right?" Casey says with a wryness.
"I'm with you. I think we wake, and try to figure out another way... Because if it is true and Clemmon's dreams die.. and we are here?" Tabitha says, shuddering.
"Then let's..." Casey says. "... wake up, and try to find some help."
"If it is true what Samael said, that is." Tabitha clarifies.
"I'm not fighting it. There's just no way that we could win," Charlene decides and nods emphatically to her friends. "Yeah, we'd get stuck here for sure. We figured out what's going on, so maybe now we can ask some people for help. I bet Harriet knows about this type of stuff."
Up ahead, in front of the trio, Samael is slowly lifting Clemmons up by his hair. The young man dangles now, his feet kicking, and then the demon reaches out to touch the young man's face. As he does, it changes: Clemmons' chin elongages, becoming more pointed, and it seems to pebble, black and red like that demon-lizard they saw earlier.
Casey gives her hands a tug back, that changing seeming to cinch it for her. "Yep," Casey says. "This is time to leave-" she says in a singsong, moving to start to dream herself away from this place, as quickly as possible.
Tabitha seeks to retreat with Casey and Charlene, seeking to move together hand in hand.
Nodding urgently, Charlene clings to her friends' hands and prepares to make her brave retreat.
And then all of a sudden, Tabitha, Charlene and someone are falling all over again, hurtling into the red lightning shocked void. Behind them, they can see the distant figure of Clemmons as Sammel seems to slowly, piece by piece, craft him into one of the lizard-things they saw before.
And then all of a sudden, Tabitha, Charlene and Casey are falling all over again, hurtling into the red lightning shocked void. Behind them, they can see the distant figure of Clemmons as Sammel seems to slowly, piece by piece, craft him into one of the lizard-things they saw before.
It is not long before Tabitha is suddenly bolting upright from where she had fallen into a deep sleep, gasping for a breath she may not have taken for some time.
Charlene lets out a frightened squeal, kicking haphazardly with her legs as she hurtles upwards.
Casey sits up straight, scurrying back from the circle, and grabbing her ghostbusting bag, turning her head as she looks towards the form on the bed at first, with wide eyes.
"... eek," Casey says, before she looks between the other two.
Charlene sits upright with a disoriented look, blowing some hair out of her face while she peers at her friends. "Holy crap," she breathes. "We definitely need to bring someone who's powerful next time. I think Clem's soul has been turned into a lizard, but maybe we can still save his life. It's just gonna be a bummer for him when he dies and his soul is like that."
Tabitha sits in the confines of the protection circle, breathing heavily once the initial intake of air is taken. She looks to Casey, Charlene, then Clemmons. "Yeah, I'm not powerful enough to fight the Black Goat."
All three of the women awake: shocked awake in the room, and then there's Clemmons. He's still just sitting there. Charlene has the cross in her hands, and what's perhaps more troubling, Clemmons has stopped muttering: now he just lies there, comatose and unmoving, in the center of the gurney in the room. He's breathing, at least, but barely, as whatever place he is in in the world of dreams is now far, far distant from his physical form.
"What's more... if this was some spirit, some minor demon, okay," Casey says. "But as is?" she says. "... I'm not really feeling *that* stuff," she says. "I'd like to help, but..." she crunches her face up. "... I guess sometimes, the rumors are true."
"Guys, he went all quiet. He ain't whimpering anymore," Charlene notes while she goes to hang the cross up where she took it from. "We better get outta here before anyone finds out and blames us for it. He could be braindead by now."
OOC: Any last things before I plot finish, guys, and summon you back? I hope you had fun. I think it's okay for things to end sometimes on a down note, but I'm sorry if you were looking for the win.
"And well, now that we have magic symbols on the ground. How magic-intune do you think these priests are? Do you think they'll know what we were trying, or..." Casey stands up. "Well... let's not find out," Casey says, reaching over to the bag to pluck up the salt from where she left it, tucking it back into her goodiebag.
And stealing the marker for good measure.
"It is not just a spirit," Tabitha says to Casey, combing her fingers through her hair, then trying to stand on unsteady feet. "I'll go to see Father Jack and tell him what happened here..."
Charlene is okay not winning, and maybe we can try to save him again another time! She's ready to be summoned away.
Casey crinkles her face up. "Well... why him?" she says, her jaw tight. But she nods her head, regardless. "It's better to get some help, and I guess he was an exorcist, once upon a yesterday."
Amidst whispers of witchcraft, Tabitha, Charlene, and Casey recognized an urgent need to intervene before faculty attempted any extreme measures on Clemmons. The halls themselves suggested an ominous narrative, with crosses peering down as the trio conspired to slip into Clemmons' dreams and rescue him from a fate worse than their darkest fears.
As the trio prepared for a ritual designed to enter Clemmons' tortured dreamscape, they found themselves quickly confronted by a stark reality—the mist-shrouded room was an easy veil for Clement's pleas in Enochian and his shivered sleep hinted at nightmares beyond their wildest imaginings. Blood was spilled, hands were joined, and the forbidden incantation ushered them into a realm where the laws of nature and man turned to embers at their very touch.
Without hesitation, the void embraced them, as they descended into Clemmons' dreams—a morbid expanse painted red and black by war and whispers of dark powers with authority over the sleeping. It was Charlene's realization of a cross transformed into the dreams, a supposed beacon of salvation against the unspeakable entity preying upon Clemmons' vulnerability.
The travesty unfolded before them. In a showdown reeking of brimstone and malice, they faced what could only be described as the Devil incarnate: Prince Samael—a malevolent force that towered over Clemmons and spoke of deals and desires embraced in moments of weakness. Casey suggested that the entity craved to use Clemmons as a bridge to their world, and so they strategized with desperate fervor. To engage in cosmic combat with a devil, however, was beyond their grasp. Though they grappled with the repercussions of abandoning Clemmons to his fate, self-preservation and rational fear ruled. They dreamed themselves back into the cold grasp of reality, their intervention leaving behind naught but chalk lines and a youth possibly suspended between life and lucidity.
The wicked truth of White Oak's whispered rumors became a shattering revelation to the students. While Charlene quickly dismounted the ceremonial cross as though to erase their presence, Casey contemplated Father Jack's potential perceptions of their esoteric chalk expressions. And in the aftermath, the collective whispers of Enoch were replaced by a silence even more ominous than screams—a silence that cradled Clemmons in a limbo birthed from his own misplaced desires. Conceding the field for the moment, Tabitha left to recount their harrowing tale to Father Jack, perhaps the only one with exorcising expertise that could still save Clemmons.
In the end, as the students parted ways with the burdens of their trial, the White Oak moon observed their departure, offering no guidance nor solace, only the immutable truth that sometimes heroism is knowing when the fight is beyond one's might.
(The Devil Dreams of Clemmons Reed(SRJack):SRJack)
[Fri Dec 22 2023]
On a Diagnosis Room shadowed in Eerie Mist
This small diagnosis room is efficiently laid out with essential medical equipment. An adjustable examination table sits at the center, with a computer workstation nearby for accessing patient records. The room includes standard medical instruments like a blood pressure monitor and a stethoscope, all arranged on a compact trolley. Soft lighting and neutral wall colors create a calming atmosphere, while a small seating area for family members adds a touch of comfort.
In the center of the room is a gurney, with medical devices hooked up to it.
It is night, about 39F(3C) degrees, There is a waxing gibbous moon.
OOC: Just getting set up.
OOC: Just getting set up!
Casey falls over, dead.
OOC: If you all want to meet up in the clinic, the news is that new student Clemmons Reed is in the clinic, not well.
Tabitha looks as if she's just come out of the cold, her jacket having just been removed and folded over her arms. She has a look about her, flushed, and frustrated. A fair bit confused. "Oh... Hey," she says to some familiar faces, such as Casey and Charlene. "How're you two?"
"Anyway, I met him the other day in the library and he was looking at some really spooky books," Charlene explains to Casey while she steps inside, pulling her hands out of her jacket pockets. "So maybe that's what got him. Hi Tabs! You here to chck on that new guy, too?"
Casey had just stepped out of one of the rooms in the clinic, tugging up the sleeves on her sweater. "What new guy?" Casey says, looking first to Charlene, and then to Tabitha. "I'm doing... okay. Are you two doing alright?" she asks.
"His name's Cleatus or something." Charlene shrugs uncertainly and tucks her hair behind her ears while she looks around. "I'm doing good."
"Yeah, Father Jack texted me and asked that I swing by to do so." Tabitha says to Charlene, slipping her phone into the tight pocket nearly hidden on her yoga pants. "What sort of books?" She looks about the area, chewing her cheek slightly. "Only okay?" she asks Casey, her furrowed expression slipping to concern. "Well, text me later and tell me what's up."
Like it says on the tin: Clemmons Reed, who arrived last week, was found in his dorm room earlier today, sleepless and completely insensate. He was brought to the clinic, where he is, by all accounts, lying in a gurney, completely lost to the world. The nurses are rumoring, perhaps predictably, that it is witchcraft, but then this is White Oak, isn't it? Everything is withcraft.
Everything.
The challenge, though: all too often, it really is witchcraft behind things. Now, the Faculty have their own solution, but it is often terrifying and awful, and so when students get too far into things they ought not there is a quiet agreement amongst them to do what they can to rescue them before they are hauled to a room to be forcibly remade into God's perfect image.
"Well," Casey says to Tabitha. "Oh, /that/ Clem," Casey says, glancing from Tabitha to Charlene. "We were going to try to wake him up before the nuns and priests... 'help'... him?" she says, making airquotes.
"Well?" Tabitha asks Casey, waving it off. "I'm assuming that is what needs to happen. But Father Jack did say that he could not get hold of any orderlies, so it sounds like maybe we have time to get to him before they do."
Here in this part of the clinic, the halls are white and sterile. There are crosses everywhere on the walls; most of them are plain, but no small few have Jesus, staring down at the students as they gather from his agony. White-dressed nurses breeze by; everywhere in the world, scrubs have become the default medical wear, but somehow in the Webster Clinic there is a subtle oppression that pushes people towards the 'traditional'.
"It had something to do with dreams and, like, the world of dreams," Charlene says without a great deal of certainty, keeping her voice low in spirit of the illicit mission. Looking around furtively, she nods to Casey. "Yeah, especially since he's the new guy. Imagine getting an exorcism in your first week. Remember Liv's exorcism?"
"I saw Liv post-exorcism, at least," Casey says to Charlene. "But yeah," Casey says, patting at her pockets. "I'd trust your leadership in something like this, Tabitha. Are we gonna have to like... figure out 'witch'... way to go?" she says, lifting her eyebrows at the double entendre.
As the students talk, they draw nearer to Clemmons' door. Just beyond, he lies slumbering on a gurney. If one of the girls peeks, they might be able to see him there through window in the door the nurses periodically use to check on patients.
Tabitha blinks at Casey, "My leadership? Man... we're all screwed, probably." she chuckles faintly. "Well, we could try to dream invade him," she suggests to Charlene and Casey. "Pull him out. But --" She pauses, and spreads her hands, a little helpless. She peeks into a few windows as she goes, expecting others to point out Clemmons. "That could be dangerous too. I'm not even sure where we could go that is secretive enough her to perform a dream circle."
"I'm not real good at that stuff, so if Casey says you're the leader, I'm voting with her," Charlene remarks and gets up on her tiptoes to look through ine of the door-windows. Inhaling sharply she ducks away from it again and turns to her friend to whisper, "That's him in there!"
This is a secluded enough quiet corner: there's not much for them to do with Clemmons, at least not until some breakthrough happens. If someone were to cover the window? Why, there might be a few hours where his hospital room is unmolested, unchecked by those going by.
"Well, I know a little bit of this stuff, but..." Casey says, lifting her chin as she looks to Tabitha. "... I can help support you, if you want to..." she says, making a small gesture with her hands, turning her voice down. "I say we go for it, try to do the dream-circle in his room," she says.
"It may take a little bit to find where exactly he is. There are many different doors." Tabitha says to Charlene and Casey, "But we should try, at least. I'd hate to see him turned into meatloaf." Not that that happens...
Inside, through the window, Clemmons seems to turn just a little in shivered sleep. If he made a noise, it can't be heard from outside.
Tabitha tries the handle of the door to see if it is locked, or open for them to just creep themselves into the room.
"It's that one, Tabs. I just saw him through the window," Charlene hisses, nudging the door with her elbow while she keeps watch of the hallway in case of nuns. "If you can't get it open, I can try and jimmy the lock. I do that to get into Liv and Belle's room when Sam is making out with Harry in ours."
It's locked, to be sure, but Charlene should be able to get through it. These clinic locks are jokes.
"If that doesn't work, we can break the glass. I think we should go all in on this," Casey says, her tone of voice hushed. With the other two strategizing, she was making sure she was a lookout.
Tabitha steps away from the door, and gestures to it, "Have at it, you cute little delinquent." She leans against a wall, looking as casual as one can.
"Idiot, we're trying to be sneaky here. They'll hear it if we break the glass." Charlene rolls her eyes at Casey and squats down in front of the door, rummaging around in her jacket pockets. She gets out a bobbypin and her driver's license and gets to work, and after a little while, the door clicks open.
Once Charlene opens the lock, it's easy enough for her, Tabitha and Casey to creep into Clemmons' room. It's a hospital room like most others in the clinic, white-sterile, with some beeping machines. On the wall is a cross, and from it, Jesus stares down with judgment in his eyes. Was he watching Charlene while she picked the lock?
For Casey, the lookout, the coast seems clear. She hasn't even seen a nurse walk down here in the last twenty minutes or so. It seems as if they've forgotten about poor Clemmons, which begs the question: how many students end up like him, and how much does White Oak really care about the 'lost souls' that end up here in the clinic?
Inside, Clemmons lies on the bed. He is tossing and turning, and up close they can now hear low muttering in a tongue that is entirely not English.
Tabitha may recognize the language: Enochian, the tongue they say of angels or demons, though others say it was all a hoax.
"Well, sure," Casey says. "So lucky us that you could pick the lock then," Casey says to Charlene, casting her eyes briefly down to her as she filters into the room too after the other two. "... is that Latin?" she asks no one in particular.
Tabitha pulls herself off of the wall she'd taken a lean against, making a little sound in her throat, a hum, a mmm? Creeping in, and being the second, she has to look between Charlene and Casey. "I didn't bring my book of Enoch, but that doesn't sound like Latin. It might be Enochian. But -- I've only heard it a few times." She adds, "I don't think Google translate is going to help."
"Well, I don't speak any Pinocchian, so don't look at me," Charlene tells Tabitha, shrugging helplessly while she pads towards the gurney. She looks Clemmons over with a troubled frown and goes in search of a medical chart. "Tabs, do you have any chalk? In case we have to draw one of those circles, like at the museum."
As the Tabitha, Charlene and Casey fully enter the room, there's a decided sense of some kind of magic here. It pricks at the senses with a lulling, dreamlike sense. It's not overpowering, but there are some ways in which it is akin to the sleepiness some of the students may have felt when their... self-care... gets too caring on campus, but it has differences, too. There's a kind of spiciness to the feeling, along with the smell of brimstone.
The drifting words catch a moment of Tabitha's ears: it's almost like Clemmons' murmuring is two voices at once, having a conversation with each other. One of the voices is making words that sound like scared pleading.
"Don't look at me. I shoulda taken Enochian in high school, but I took French instead, and still don't remember much of it," Casey says. "Sacre bleu," she adds, with a small sound of bemusement again. "I might not be able to speak Enochian," she notes.
"... but I *have* exorcised a spirit or two in my time. Will it be any different, you think?" she says, with that smile quirking up. "Salt, and suffering."
Tabitha moves a mite closer to Clemmons, listening. She's waving off Charlene's talking with a flutter of a hand as she does. "I can't really hear what he's saying, but it's two voices." She turns back to the two, nodding to Casey, "Salt could work, anything to help bind the blood. In any case, we shouldn't need to draw a pentagram, but we do need a protection circle, no matter what."
"Well, I didn't bring any chalk, so unless you can draw a protection circle in lipstick..." Charlene ventures, scrunching her nose wryly at Tabitha. "Casey, do you see his medical chart anywhere? Just in case it says anything useful on it."
"Luckily..." Casey says, "I *did* manage to bring that," Casey says, bringing out her ghostbustin' bag, and drawing out a medium-ish bag of salt, shaking that. "Should have some chalk in here, if we need it too. Oh, a smudge stick!" she adds.
"If we need some smudgin', and I have no idea," she says. "Isn't it usually clipped to the bed or something on TV shows?"
"I'm sure the facility has salt. Salt is a natural antibacterial." Tabitha suggests to Charlene, "So you don't have to ruin your favorite lipstick."
Tabitha clears her throat, biting back a comment about smudged lipstick.
He does have a medical chart, sure enough: 'patient intake, cannot be woken. No medical cause identified.' The nurse's handwriting is a neat, easy set of blocked lines.
Then, beneath that, a darker scrawl, some practitioner whose handwriting is hard to read. 'Patient is transported to dreaming hell. Something is trying to get in. Order: wards of St. Michael, and replace standard cross with sanctified crucifix.'
"They put salt in our wounds here? Sheesh. Friggin' typical," Charlene remarks and yoinks the medical chart to decipher the handwriting. "It says he's in dreaming hell. Wards of Saint Michael?" She shrugs to herself and steps across the room to use the sheet to cover the window in the door, fastening it there with chewing gum.
Those with occult knowledge of any sort might guess at the implication of the darker scrawl: yes, Clemmons Reed is trapped in his dreams, but it's not whatever he is pleading with that trapped him there. It's White Oak, binding him in himself so that whatever is inside him cannot use him to escape.
"Well. Hell." Tabitha says. Hell, indeed. She taps at that last scrawl. "We go in, we might be bringing more than Clemmons out." She shifts her gaze between Casey and Charlene, worrying her bottom lip. "So we have to go in strong. Or..." She taps at her cheek in thought, again, an uncomfortable shift of her hips change her positioning.
"Do you mean I gotta...?" Charlene asks, glancing uncertainly at Tabitha.
"Gotta...?" Tabitha asks Charlene.
"Do the thing like at the museum?" Charlene explains, gesturing vaguely. "You said go in strong."
The ritual to go into Clemmons dreams is not hard: a little blood, a little chalk, and the right chant, and three young women could join hands around the gurney. It would take, in Tabitha's estimation, no more than a few minutes to slip into whatever dreaming torment the young man lies in.
On the gurney, he slips from Enochian to English. "Please," he says, almost a whisper. "This was a mistake. Please let me go."
"I mean, that's what we got to do, right? Bring whatever is in him out, and let Clemmons be okay afterwards?" Casey says. "We can go all biblical about it, too - got any pigs or goats?" she says, mostly just providing color commentary for the rest.
"Yeah, I always carry some livestock around, Casey." Charlene rolls her eyes emphatically at Casey.
"Iiiiiiiii...." Tabitha says to Charlene, shaking her head. "Wouldn't suggest that when we can reach his mind. We don't really know what has him, but White Oak seems to think its dangerous enough to bind him in this hell... So no. Don't attack." She holds out her hands, "Ladies. We sacrifice now. Blood to blood. I will begin the chant." She says, earnestly, "But we have to be careful not to break the circle, or our grasp."
Tabitha nods to Casey, "Did you find everything? I didn't bring chalk.... or ah... salt."
"I got some salt, yeah, but no chalk. We can use the markers they have in this desk, though?" Casey says. "But..." she says to Tabitha. "... it's not my first rodeo with that kinda thing," she says.
Casey was totally biting her lip at what Charlene says, looking as though she desperately wanted to say something, but wouldn't.
Looking a bit apprehensive, Charlene steps into the circle and takes one of Tabitha's hands while reaching for Casey with the other. "Is this safe, though?" she asks quietly. "What if it's like that movie where the evil spirit gets loose and then everyone's screwed?"
Casey's not wrong: there are black permanent markers in the desk. Those markers would work to draw a circle: sharpie on the floor may not be traditional in John Dee's day, but stranger things have happened on White Oak grounds. Besides, a ritual circle drawn in sharpie on the floor will be something particularly fun for the nuns to have to clean off later.
"Well, I saw some lubricant in that drawer too, in that case, Charlie," Casey says, moving to place the bag of salt at the foot of the bed there, bringing up her sharpie and waggling it in the air. "You want a standard circle? The sharpie will make it extra hard to break, too," she says. "So long as you guys don't smudge it or something when I'm putting it down."
"Might happen," Tabitha says to Charlene, in all seriousness, movie magic may be magic, but it gets some things right. She smiles at Casey, gratefully. "Thanks, Case. Marker would be perfect." She suddenly laughs, a side eye given to Charlene, "She said it better. We'd be fucked." Wow, language Tabitha.
Up on the wall, Jesus is staring at Casey, someone and Tabitha from his crucifix. When someone was reading the doctor's note, didn't it say something about replacing the ordinary cross with a more sanctified one? Regardless, he seems to stare down at the three young women. He is judging beneath the crown of thorns.
Up on the wall, Jesus is staring at Casey, Charlene and Tabitha from his crucifix. When someone was reading the doctor's note, didn't it say something about replacing the ordinary cross with a more sanctified one? Regardless, he seems to stare down at the three young women. He is judging beneath the crown of thorns.
Up on the wall, Jesus is staring at Casey, Charlene and Tabitha from his crucifix. When Charlene was reading the doctor's note, didn't it say something about replacing the ordinary cross with a more sanctified one? Regardless, he seems to stare down at the three young women. He is judging beneath the crown of thorns.
"What even is a sanctified cross, anyway?" Charlene asks offhandedly while she waits for the circle to be drawn. "It said on the chart that they had to get one of those. Does that mean it's creepier?"
It isn't hard for Casey to draw the ritual circle. It's like she said: she's done this before. This is a standard protection circle, scattered with sharpie-drawn sigils from a half-a-dozen human faiths, but as the circle is complete, there is a sudden sense of difference: when one of the women steps in or out of the circle, it's as if there is a change in the timbre of some unseen hum in the air.
The cross may not be creepier, but if Charlene were to look at it is definitely fancier: full of aged wood, with some kind of small glass reliquary in the center of Christ's chest. Inside that glass in turn is an even smaller sliver of wood.
"Standard circle, wide enough that we can lay down around him. Or I'm going to start chanting and we'll just fall... wherever. And it will be madness." Tabitha glances upward at the cross of Jesus, then lowers her eyes from it, down to the floor. "It probably was doused in holy water, and a prayer said over it."
As Tabitha plans her ritual, she can almost hear whispers on the wind, some kind of angry voice that's matched in tempo with Clemmons' muttering. Casey can hear it too, like an unsettling sound down the back of her spine.
"Maybe we should bring it, then. I mean into the circle," Charlene suggests, eyeing the cross warily. "It might help."
"Well, if it's keeping whatever locked in... maybe we should move it," Casey says. "And use it to protect us instead," Casey says, glancing between the other two women.
"It is possible that we can trap it within the circle.." Tabitha says, an air of ... who can say, she's a little daydreamy. "And step out in time before any of us become afflicted." Her knife is drawn across her hand, something that has been done numerous times before, as seen in the slashes that do not simply look like life lines. "Are we ready?"
Forgoing the cross now that Tabitha seems ready, Charlene takes a deep breath and nods solemnly to her friend. "You better tell us when to step out, then. I don't know any magic," she whispers. "Let's do this."
Tension in the air seems to build, as if the very room was filled with thickening molasses: and around the edges of the hospital room, it is as if the mists that so often shoot through Haven are building up. In the center of the circle, on the gurney, Clemmons tosses and turns again.
"It does not hurt to have the crucifix in the circle, Charlie," Tabitha says, the blood dripping to the floor, having near missed that was exactly what she was asking.
Casey makes a small sound, drawing a small dagger from her own fashionable jeans, bringing that knife to her palm. She liked to slit along the crease lines, herself. She looks to Tabitha, tilting her head just so," she says, drawing the tip down one of the creases to start the bleeding, a hiss coming from her before she tucks the knife away."
Casey makes a small sound, drawing a small dagger from her own fashionable jeans, bringing that knife to her palm. She liked to slit along the crease lines, herself. She looks to Tabitha, tilting her head just so, drawing the tip down one of the creases to start the bleeding, a hiss coming from her before she tucks the knife away.
"Hold out your hand, Charlie," Tabitha requests, her knife at the ready to pierce the younger woman's flesh.
"Okay, okay. I just didn't wanna mess up your magic," Charlene tells Tabitha and steps out of the circle with one foot, stretching out with a reaching arm to grab for the cross without fully moving away from her friends. She just barely manages to get it and hurries back to clutch it against her chest with one hand while holding the other out. "I hate this part."
Who doesn't hate that part? But while magic is many things, at its heart it is sacrifice: and the most essential sacrifice is blood. After Charlene cuts her hand, after she is able to link hands with Tabitha and Casey, there is a kind of electricity: a circuit, being joined, inside the protective power of the circle. Now, if one were to chant the final words of the ritual, all three might plunge into the terrifying depths of Clemmons' mind.
And then, with a flick of her wrist, Tabitha cuts through Charlene's palm, bringing for the blood. Her knife is put away and she holds her hands outward once more to take hold of her friends' hands. She holds her breath a moment, glancing between Casey and Charlene, and in Latin, those final words are spoken.
"I never took Latin. I figured it was pointless since the Latinos don't even speak it anymore," Charlene whispers, closing her eyes in anticipation while she stands with her hands joined in her friends'.
With her hands reaching out to the other two women, Casey lowers her head, chanting along with the other two women. Her eyes close, and she joins her hands with her two friends, Charlene's statement earning her a bit of a look from Casey as she peeks an eye open.
Charlene does her best to parrot Tabitha's foreign words, keeping her eyes shut. Her shoulders tighten with tension and her chest rises and falls steadily with her breathing.
As the final bits of Latin chant are spoken, all three women feel a strange wave wash over them: it starts at their extremities, as their toes tingle in their shoes, and then there is a little bit of strange electricity that runs up their calves, their thighs. It settles as some warmth in their core as their noses, too, begin to tingle, and then their lips, their cheeks, running down their torsos in a way that makes the skin prickle as if wind were on it. Soon, a numbness sets in, and then at last the only thing they can feel is their hands: Tabitha's, joined to Charlene and Casey. Casey's, joined to Tabitha and Charlene. Charlene's, joined to Casey and Tabitha. That's the sensation, the last sensation, until it seems suddenly as if their consciousnesses are falling, falling, falling down a deep pit.
Out in the room, no one can hear the sound of three young women's bodies collapsing to the floor.
Falling, falling, falling... For a moment, it seems all that Charlene, Tabitha and Casey are doing is hurtling down through the void, plummeting in endless, heart-rending descent. At first, it's purely blackness: each of them can still feel each other's hands, but they are different. This is their dream self: unclothed, perhaps, or dressed in the ideal of how they ought to be, formed in the ideal of how they ought to be. The only fundamental truth is that they are connected still with each other, hurtling through an endless, sightless void.
This felt easier than most times Casey had tried dreamwalking. She had two other souls to attach to, and Casey clutches Tabitha's and Charlene's hands, best she can throughout the dizzying descent.
Charlene lets out a startled shriek, squeezing her eyes shut and clutching her friends' hands too tightly to be comfortable. She looks like herself in the dreamscape, having possibly never ventured into it besides the benign dreams of natural sleep, but her image is projected in her pajamas of a tank top and underwear.
Tabitha sinks deeper, deeper, her forms shifting numerous times in this descent. Robes, none, angellic wings, serpentine, devilish tail, back to robes, flowing and black, a sheen to the material, glittering like a starry sky and stark against her red hair.
For quite a while, things are only blackness. Then, suddenly, the world lights up: there is a flash of red lightning that leaps from one cloud to another. Now it's clear, as lightning flashes against them, they are falling through clouds, a towering, impossible pillar of clouds, unending. The shock of lightning gets closer, as the smell of ozone fills the air, and one of the trio might note that these clouds seem eerily similar to those in the storm that battered Haven earlier in the week.
And for Casey's part, Casey was wearing a fluttering, glittering purple sequined dress that caught the starlight and glimmered, Casey's hair even longer and fluttering behind her as if she was submerged, her entire form more slender and sleek than typical. "That red lightning," she says. "Here again. I wonder if that's when whatever this is got out... and White Oak tried to put it back in again, hmm?" she says.
"I just hope that we find ground soon," Tabitha says, falling, floating, through the clouds, like a scene out of Lost Boys.
"Holy crap, you're prolly right," Charlene whispers after opening her eyes. Her features are scrunched up with fear, and she looks like she would rather shut them again as if this might make her safe. "What do we do now? How do we find Clem?"
"It's a dream," Casey says. "If we want ground, we can just... find it, right?" she says, tilting her head. "If we all three dream of it at once," she says. "I think, though..." she says. "Clem is where this all seems to be coming together," she says, lifting her chin towards the lightning in the distance.
"Focus on him." Tabitha says, murmuring after Casey's wise words.
Casey's intuition is a good one: as she starts to focus, there's a change in the clouds, and then they aren't in them at all. Instead, the sky is above them, lighting still cracking, but the three women go from falling to suddenly stepping through a craggy, shadowed wasteland. It is like every war movie of war-torn WWI battlefields, with craters who broken edges tower like knife's edges over the women and blasted trees. Everything is cast in colors of red and black, as the towering cloud seems ahead of them.
"Seriously, this is so scary. We gotta find him quick," Charlene says, keeping hold of Casey's hand even after finding firm ground beneath her feet. She gawks at her surroundings, scanning the inhospitable landscape. "If we all focus, do you think we'll be able to kinda feel which way to go?"
"There is a certain..." Casey says. "Power, I suppose, in a dream," Casey says. "Some creatures can manipulate it," she says. "We'll find Clem and the... demon's...? dream soon enough, perhaps," she says, her eyes glittering a bit - in here, almost literally, perhaps.
Is it mists or fog that cover this blasted hellscape? It's hard to tell: something acrid clings to the shattered landscape, and then, at the top of a broken crater, something seems to skitter and move across just outside of the trio's view.
"The rules in dreamworlds vary from dream to dream," Tabitha says to Charlene, though not necessarily to Casey, but looking to her to agree? "We may wander a while, but the nature of these worlds do bring our spiritual bodies closer. Continue to focus on Clem, and I think... maybe. We'll find him in no time."
"Okay, then. I'm focusing," Charlene promises, looking straight ahead with determination in her expression. She flinches a little as another sizzle of lightning arcs above the trio, but she regains her concentration again. "Maybe it's this way."
"I've always thought of it as... if you have enough power, you can exert yourself upon the world in some ways, but many of these things try to get you to... conform to it," Casey says. "So if you..." she says. "... are more powerful than the dreamer, you can change the dream. Vice-versa," she says. "So if you start turning into a chicken, Charlie - I hope that is your dream and not Clem's," she wiggles her brow.
"I never turned into a chicken!" Charlene tells Casey a bit defensively.
The thing on the rim of the crater seems to pause, as the girls' conversation is carried over the wind. It's mostly obscured by mists, but slowly, it turns its head to look at them: some kind of four-legged thing, with a broad collar around its neck.
Tabitha ceases to speak, and her clasp on Casey and Charlene, or rather their hands, grows hard. "We ... is that just the shape of a mountain?" She can't be sure.
"No. I saw it, too. It's a dog," Charlene whispers to Tabitha, squinting uncertainly into the mist. "It's gotta be a sign. It might lead us to Clem."
Overhead, red lightning jumps from cloud to cloud. The sound of it is titanic, a crash that seems to drown out conversation. Even though the storm rages, there is no rain: in fact, the Waste Land seems so dry as to make Tabitha, Casey and Charlene scratch at their skin and wish for moisturizer.
Tabitha whispers aside to Charlene, "You need to focus on the image of the cross you snagged. We can't take material items with us to the dream, but we can bring their likeness."
Up on the crater's edge, the shape seems to creep just a little closer. It would be a large dog, but it seems more like a lizard, with pebbled, black-and-red skin. It has a collar around it, a ruff: like a komodo dragon in size and shape, but with the jaws of a cobra and a strange, red-and-black patterened batlike sail around its neck. Red eyes stare at Casey.
"Oh, yeah! I have it here!" Charlene calls over the sound of thunder, and the cross sort of materializes in her hand where she had it back in the real world. She holds it out in front of herself, hair whipping into her face in the wasteland storm.
Casey tilts her head as she looks to the lizard, fan and all. "Are you the person who lives within Clem?" she says. "We'd like to get you out," she says. "In peace, yes?" she says, offering a smile. "The other option is... well... you stay here, and... White Oak has you then," she says. "Trapped forever in this mind," she says. "And if you aren't him... go run along and tell your master," she says.
As Charlene imagines the cross, there is is: in her hands, with Jesus staring out of it. Is it Charlene's cross that makes the lizard turn tail, disappearing into the mists? Or is Casey, sending the thing: that demonic thing, whatever it is, off as a messenger to its master? Up above, lightning cracks again in accompaniment to the disappearing demonling.
"That just feels tooooooo easy." Tabitha says. "I wonder what rules apply here... what exactly we can do. The power of three ... We are aligned with our guardian angels. Are we the guardian angels?" She asks these things, seeking out the answers on the red sky and crackling air.
"I told Harry she's my guardian angel the other day, but I didn't mean it literally," Charlene mentions to Tabitha, keeping the cross held out at arms length like a torch. "If we wait for that thing to come back, what if it just doesn't? We could be here forever and I'm really thirsty. We prolly ought to follow it."
Wherever this place is, there do not seem to be any angels here: but as Tabitha looks up, she sees something high in the sky. It's black-winged, crossing almost entirely out of view until some red lightning lights it from behind and unrolls the massive, city-block length of some mind-bogglingly huge draconic shape.
"Well, it'll know we're here, if it's something of any power," Casey says. "And I'm not sure I'm up for an exorcism in the dreamscape against something that can cause thunderstorms in reality, are you?" she says. "And right now, at least, we can just... wake up," she says, peering up at the dragon-thing in the sky. "... we might not have that luxury later, mind," she seems to sing-song.
"It just vanished though," Tabitha says to Charlene. Then, with a snap, a compass forms in her hand. What is normally a point north is the name 'Clemmons'.
"We got the cross, though. It's gotta do something. Maybe that's what the creature was running away from," Charlene mentions, wagging the cross back and forth a little. "Casey, do you wanna hold it?"
A wind seems to kick up, shifting in character, and as the compass appears in Tabitha's hands it begins to spin, wildly. The wind, though -- the wind carries a whisper, and then all three can hear it. Charlene, Casey and Tabitha can hear pleading again, in English, as Clemmons begs to be let go, begs in an apology, and then a voice comes up in sibilant response.
"You opened the door for me," the voice says, powerful, male. "You asked me, and I answered, and now you are upset with the price?"
In the distance, Clemmons wails. "I didn't know!" The spinning compass stops spinning, pointing now straight ahead.
"Holy shit," Charlene hisses, looking around warily.
Also, bet Tabitha there are no angels, with shiver of her black starry robes, they turn white, and from her back there now are wings. It is a good thing she has not chosen the Ophanim.
"Well," Tabitha says to Casey and Charlene, "No time like the present." Her gaze steers to Clemmons, or at least his voice, and then she's watching the compass as she walks. "It seems like this world does not like the images of God and Jesus. I am willing to bet that a prayer to Saint Michael will also help free Clemmons."
"I don't know any prayer to Saint Michael. I don't even say grace," Charlene admits while she trudges after Tabitha, watching her surroundings unasily. "Don't tell Father Jack or Sister Abigail about any of this, okay? I don't wanna end up like Yasmin."
As the trio walks forward, the scene reveals itself: they cross the rise of a crater, and above the 'rred lightning is crackling with fierce force, lighting up the scene below. The crater is a small valley, and in the center of it stands a man -- a thing, really. A demon, perhaps seven feet tall, with goat horns that curl around his face and black fur that runs down his back and the reversed legs of a goat. He is male, obviously so, and around him flickers a corona of fire as he looks down at a figure kneeling in the black earth.
"What do you come with then to fight the Devil himself?" Tabitha asks Charlene with a hint of incredulousness in her tone. There is a shiver down her spine.
The words rush out from Tabitha's mouth in a whisper, "The Black Goat himself. Blackcoat."
"I didn't think we were gonna FIGHT the friggin' Devil!" Charlene hisses, and she lets out a startled gasp at the sight of the figure. Speak of the--you know. She grips Tabitha's arm and clings to it uneasily. "You know, we barely even know this Clemmons guy. Maybe if we just leave, we can say we did our best."
"Or something that looks like the devil," Casey says, her voice quiet as she squeezes the hands of the other women.
Tabitha closes her eyes and exhales. "Or something that looks like the devil. He has many demons beneath him, afterall. But none would dare to take his form, I think."
And then the words: it's someone on the ground, of course, begging. He's asking the demon to release him. "No," the demon says. "You asked for power, and I gave it to you, and in exchange I asked for a bridge, did I not?" he says. "I asked for a way in. And you gave it to me..." Pleasure. "And I rewarded you, and then you felt fear. You felt doubt," he says, spitting off the words. "And you ran to White Oak. Do you not understand?" he asks. "They are the Enemy. They are trying to keep you, keep all of us, from the birthright of our true creator."
And then the words: it's Clemmons on the ground, of course, begging. He's asking the demon to release him. "No," the demon says. "You asked for power, and I gave it to you, and in exchange I asked for a bridge, did I not?" he says. "I asked for a way in. And you gave it to me..." Pleasure. "And I rewarded you, and then you felt fear. You felt doubt," he says, spitting off the words. "And you ran to White Oak. Do you not understand?" he asks. "They are the Enemy. They are trying to keep you, keep all of us, from the birthright of our true creator."
Clemmons weeps, in response. "I am sorry, Prince Samael. I am sorry: I just was afraid."
"Okay, so what do you two want to do... We can't just stand here. So do we wake, or do we try to detach the devil from this Clemmons guy?" Tabitha asks.
Tabitha squeezes Charlene's hand.
Casey sticks her tongue against her upper teeth. "... well," she says. "We detach the devil, it gets out," she says. "And a bridge for a demon is just as bad. Could it be that what White Oak intends is actually the best outcome for him?" she says. "A burnt out Holy Roller is better than a burnt out Demon Bridge, after all?"
"What if we tell the demon that we'll smother Clem with a pillow and take away his, like, route into our town?" Charlene asks, looking back and forth between Casey and Tabitha. "Or is it too late for that? If there's already a portal or whatever, maybe we gotta find that and... I dunno."
The demon -- the devil -- Prince Samael -- steps closer to Clemmons, and then he seems to bend over, reaching out to him. There's a black hand, and it seizes hold of the young man's hair; fingers like talons seem to dig in, and he begins to haul Clemmons to his feet. "There is a price for failure. Your body will wither," he tells the young man. "Your dreams are gone. You belong to me," he tells him. "One more squirming, terrified lost soul."
Casey makes a small sound in the back of her throat. "A bad situation all around," she says. "Charlie's play is risky, what if he decides to ride one of us instead?" she says. "We have the protection circle and everything, buuuuuut..." she coos.
"I heard you gotta sign a pact before they get to, er, ride you," Charlene points out, scrunching her nose at that particular turn of phrase.
Tabitha mentions aside, "We are in his dream, if he dies ...." She glances aside to Casey for the answer to the unspoken part of the question. "We have the protection circle, buuuuut," she echoes, exactly. "If we go forth and try to pull him out, we pull Samael out, and he may be too powerful for our circle."
Casey rolls her shoulder. "I say wake up, regroup," she says. "But that's me personally," she says. "If either of you want to try to fight this thing, well... you only live once, right?" Casey says with a wryness.
"I'm with you. I think we wake, and try to figure out another way... Because if it is true and Clemmon's dreams die.. and we are here?" Tabitha says, shuddering.
"Then let's..." Casey says. "... wake up, and try to find some help."
"If it is true what Samael said, that is." Tabitha clarifies.
"I'm not fighting it. There's just no way that we could win," Charlene decides and nods emphatically to her friends. "Yeah, we'd get stuck here for sure. We figured out what's going on, so maybe now we can ask some people for help. I bet Harriet knows about this type of stuff."
Up ahead, in front of the trio, Samael is slowly lifting Clemmons up by his hair. The young man dangles now, his feet kicking, and then the demon reaches out to touch the young man's face. As he does, it changes: Clemmons' chin elongages, becoming more pointed, and it seems to pebble, black and red like that demon-lizard they saw earlier.
Casey gives her hands a tug back, that changing seeming to cinch it for her. "Yep," Casey says. "This is time to leave-" she says in a singsong, moving to start to dream herself away from this place, as quickly as possible.
Tabitha seeks to retreat with Casey and Charlene, seeking to move together hand in hand.
Nodding urgently, Charlene clings to her friends' hands and prepares to make her brave retreat.
And then all of a sudden, Tabitha, Charlene and someone are falling all over again, hurtling into the red lightning shocked void. Behind them, they can see the distant figure of Clemmons as Sammel seems to slowly, piece by piece, craft him into one of the lizard-things they saw before.
And then all of a sudden, Tabitha, Charlene and Casey are falling all over again, hurtling into the red lightning shocked void. Behind them, they can see the distant figure of Clemmons as Sammel seems to slowly, piece by piece, craft him into one of the lizard-things they saw before.
It is not long before Tabitha is suddenly bolting upright from where she had fallen into a deep sleep, gasping for a breath she may not have taken for some time.
Charlene lets out a frightened squeal, kicking haphazardly with her legs as she hurtles upwards.
Casey sits up straight, scurrying back from the circle, and grabbing her ghostbusting bag, turning her head as she looks towards the form on the bed at first, with wide eyes.
"... eek," Casey says, before she looks between the other two.
Charlene sits upright with a disoriented look, blowing some hair out of her face while she peers at her friends. "Holy crap," she breathes. "We definitely need to bring someone who's powerful next time. I think Clem's soul has been turned into a lizard, but maybe we can still save his life. It's just gonna be a bummer for him when he dies and his soul is like that."
Tabitha sits in the confines of the protection circle, breathing heavily once the initial intake of air is taken. She looks to Casey, Charlene, then Clemmons. "Yeah, I'm not powerful enough to fight the Black Goat."
All three of the women awake: shocked awake in the room, and then there's Clemmons. He's still just sitting there. Charlene has the cross in her hands, and what's perhaps more troubling, Clemmons has stopped muttering: now he just lies there, comatose and unmoving, in the center of the gurney in the room. He's breathing, at least, but barely, as whatever place he is in in the world of dreams is now far, far distant from his physical form.
"What's more... if this was some spirit, some minor demon, okay," Casey says. "But as is?" she says. "... I'm not really feeling *that* stuff," she says. "I'd like to help, but..." she crunches her face up. "... I guess sometimes, the rumors are true."
"Guys, he went all quiet. He ain't whimpering anymore," Charlene notes while she goes to hang the cross up where she took it from. "We better get outta here before anyone finds out and blames us for it. He could be braindead by now."
OOC: Any last things before I plot finish, guys, and summon you back? I hope you had fun. I think it's okay for things to end sometimes on a down note, but I'm sorry if you were looking for the win.
"And well, now that we have magic symbols on the ground. How magic-intune do you think these priests are? Do you think they'll know what we were trying, or..." Casey stands up. "Well... let's not find out," Casey says, reaching over to the bag to pluck up the salt from where she left it, tucking it back into her goodiebag.
And stealing the marker for good measure.
"It is not just a spirit," Tabitha says to Casey, combing her fingers through her hair, then trying to stand on unsteady feet. "I'll go to see Father Jack and tell him what happened here..."
Charlene is okay not winning, and maybe we can try to save him again another time! She's ready to be summoned away.
Casey crinkles her face up. "Well... why him?" she says, her jaw tight. But she nods her head, regardless. "It's better to get some help, and I guess he was an exorcist, once upon a yesterday."