peckenpaugh | Just before curfew tonight...

outside central classrooms tonight

what's up? It’s Spirit Week! As is tradition, Peckenpaugh’s cheerleaders meet after dinner to decorate Central Classrooms in the lead up to the big game this Sunday. It’s not all hanging banners and throwing glitter, though. There’s music and snacks and time flies by fast as the kids get distracted from dressing up the lockers of the school’s quidditch and quodpot players. By the time they’re done, it’s damn near curfew, and they all decide to leave in one big group to ensure everyone makes it where they need to go on time.

Leaving the well lit school halls behind the squads step out into almost total darkness. The streetlights that usually illuminate central campus’s cobblestone paths are dim and flickering, their usual golden glow somehow a sickly yellow-green, as though something is sapping them of power. It’s far too still, too. No wind. No sound. Just darkness and silence, or near silence.

Armani is the first out the door, and they come to a skidding halt at the bottom step. Several of their squadmates plow into the back of them and they almost topple over, pointing straight ahead and shushing their friends.

There’s something by the statue of Yalldive Peckenpaugh. Somethings. Two forms, crouched at her base, fiddling with the bricks while she flails and complains. They don’t seem to notice the gaggle of teenagers spilling out of the building before them, too focused on their work.

Thinking they’ve found two Malstrom students pulling a prank again, Willow approaches with their wand drawn, but it quickly becomes apparent that those are not students at the base of the statue. Each step Willow takes is harder to complete than the last, and whatever spell they were about to sling winds up caught in their throat. Hearing footfalls, one of the two figures looks up, gaze flashing with the eyes of a predator. Under that gaze, not a one of the cheerleaders can move.

The form at the base of the statue stands, slowly, wrongly, and steps out into the sallow light, moving as a spider moves. She is a woman, or a girl ⁠— the age is hard to pinpoint. Human, but wrong. Deeply wrong, as though plucked from the uncanny valley. Her clothes are dated, worn and patched, but clean. In her arms there are clumps of vines and purple flowers and after what feels like an eternity of silence, she makes a sound.

At first it sounds like she’s popping her shoulder, then cracking her neck and knuckles, but she’s not moving. The snapping and popping continues, coalescing into more complex sound. Words, though her lips are still. “Wood from the West... he... has gained. Three keys... yet remain.” Snap, pop, crack. Like tumbling pebbles. “_Tell… her. ^Warn her. Tell... her. Tell the thread that sews shut the maw. Tell the tailor. His garden… is... growing.”

The second figure, still fussing with the statue, stands abruptly and takes a step away, disappearing into the shadows down the path. Two silvery eyes blink from the darkness and then are gone, and suddenly the air seems lighter for it.

“Tell her,” rattles the woman. Is it a warning? A threat? Hard to say, but it’s difficult to feel as though her presence could mean anything good, the way she skitters back toward the dark like a bug, disappearing suddenly as her companion had.

Once they’re gone, each student feels starkly as though they’ve just surfaced from a long dive in cold water. Lungs burning, heads clearer, and each feeling acutely the desire to return home to their beds. Within seconds, all the lights buzz, burning brighter suddenly before returning to their usual golden glow. Adrian, startled, lets out a loud shriek that scares the hell out of everyone around them. With the paths lit again, the coast seems clear, and no sign of those two figures remains.

Now what...?

how this works! ⬥ This event is open to House and school cheerleaders, but is not mandatory. If your cheerleader sat this one out, that's fine, too!

⬥ Feel free to thread or search/investigate under the "LATE: NOW WHAT?" section. For the next couple of days, a mod will get back to you if your comment necessitates a response.

⬥ Students left Central Classrooms at quarter til 10PM.

locations! ⬦ EARLY EVENING: IN CENTRAL CLASSROOMS: The music echoing through the halls of Central Classrooms ensures the academic building is slightly less eerie than a mostly empty school can be after sundown. Club Room 1's doors are thrown open and snacks and drinks have been set out besides the materials you'll need to decorate halls and lockers tonight. You haven't been spooked yet. Why not enjoy it?

⬦ LATE: NOW WHAT?: The two figures are gone and that oppressive feeling with them. Standing outside Central Classrooms, what will you do?

⬦ LATER: BACK HOME: You've made it back to your House, but can you get to sleep?

⬦ OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Maybe we need to tell Taylor Swift," she suggests. "Just spam her insta."

"I sew," he offers meekly. They weren't talking about him but also what if they were and everything's about him, always??

"It's not allowed to be you." Chanel informs him, because you know what? It's not. This sounds dangerous.

"Maybe it's the Goodliffes?" he tries again, pantomiming pulling a thread out from beneath his chin. "You know, when you suture the mouth shut before the viewing?"

Edited (turn order what's that) 2020-03-09 23:43 (UTC)

"I actually did wonder about that." It's where maw-sewing imagery goes, immediately. Her twin is a genius. "I mean. They're not exactly the thread, but maybe close enough?"

"Would the garden be the graveyard?" Mary Grace isn't 100% on board with this theory, but it ain't like she's got one of her own. "I mean, if there's been an uptick in deaths the paper ain't noticed, but." She shrugs to finish her sentence. Draw your own conclusions as to why that would be.

"Maybe because they forget about the deaths after they've happened..." Oh, time for CONSPIRACY THEORIES. "Nobody can tell us anything about Mr. Qualls with any certainty. Isn't that suspicious??"

Mary Grace starts digging in her pocket for her phone. She usually only uses it to record lectures in class, but sometimes she likes to bring it along to take pictures of her cheerleaders looking way cuter than everyone else.

"I'm gonna take notes, we should record our impressions now." She whips her old iPhone out of her bag and pulls up her audio recorder. "Fuck memory, we're living in the digital age."

When one person whips out a phone, Chanel's going to, too. She opens her notes app to furiously record. "And the cicadas...mine did...had things about Qualls. Could they be the keys?"

This is a stretch. Maybe.

"They made of wood?" Mary Grace asks, and even if it's not a real interview question she's shoving her phone toward Chanel anyway. Just in case she has anything of interest to say. "You been taking notes on your necklace thing?"

Armani has a phone, too!! He takes it out but does nothing with it. He just wants to feel included.

"No. But they react to different elements. Maybe we're supposed to be doing something with wood." This isn't exactly right. But it's a lead. "There hasn't been much to take notes about. It's mostly just been gold."

"But wood's done with, didn't she say that?" Ugh, she hates when people speak in riddles. "If there's three others then maybe one of them's the gold from them thar hills."

"Might I suggest," says Presley, "that we move this discussion inside, where we might not all get murdered?"

Mary Grace hops on the balls of her feet, too jazzed up to even give Presley that hard of a time right now. "Gotta get back to our dorms somehow, don't we?" she says with a shrug. "Which direction they go in anyhow? Who's headed that way?"