peckenpaugh | THE UPPER LEVELS

up into the balconies

you climb The breathing boughs of that nightmare tree crowd into the upper balconies of the ruined auditorium. You have to duck and bend to get by them in places, sometimes through spaces that seem to grow smaller as you press through. These branches are warm to the touch, some of them uncomfortably so, pulsing with something that isn't quite life.

You've climbed these stairs more than once in your time here; to take your place after your sorting, to watch new students find their House, or perhaps just for an assembly. This building always seemed so sturdy, so safe. It was a place to go for shows, for celebrations, and hell, to just get out of class. Now, the floorboards creek precariously, split and splintering where vines have crept through. Benches are broken, overturned and tossed aside to make room for the auditorium's new king: the malignant maple. Up here, the glowing blue seeds hanging from branches are close enough to pluck. Those that have ripened litter the floor and railings, filling the balconies with an eerie blue twinkle.

The air is muggy, clogged by falling ash. It stinks of coal and sulfer. But you keep moving, anyway. Keep opening portals and pushing on. Just a little bit higher, and then maybe you'll be able to plunge into the depths.

and you fight By now there's a plan, and with it, a slowly growing brigade of people, of beings, of bugs, who are gathering to push back against inevitability.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Domestic scenes seem particularly intrusive to Ramona, although all the non-Muscheron memories she's walked through today have seemed to her to be suffused with sadness. It doesn't seem right to linger in them longer than she needs to.

"Let's just find the linchpin and go," she suggests instead of answering Presley's half-asked question. Her attention is more immediately drawn to the tape gun, and she carefully crosses the room to take it from Marilynn's hand.

Out the window, Winter spots a Camaro sitting silent on the sloping cobblestone streets of Elflock Falls' residential hillside. The boat of a car is almost too wide for the narrow old road. From up here, the winding Greentooth River is visible, the heart of town resting on its banks. There's scaffolding around several buildings, including the city hall.

Inside, Presley's hand passes over the items laid out on the dresser. The wand remains inert, but that jar of muggle change shimmers gold. The linchpin.

Ramona can easily free the tape gun from Marilynn's grip, but when she does something nearby makes a noise. A chitter, or a click, so soft it's hard to tell if it's just the sound of settling or something alive.

Either way, it's not a sound they should be hearing if the memory's frozen.

Edited 2020-06-10 14:41 (UTC)

Winter pivots away from the window, ears primed by now for any sort of quiet noise. "Did you h—"

The linchpin is glowing, now. They've found it, but the memory's not moving. Winter wanders carefully over to Presley, half expecting something to drop out of the ceiling or burst from a closet if she moves too noisily. She pokes the change jar. This isn't the first linchpin she's seen, but it's the first one that didn't solve the problem of being stuck. Of course it wouldn't be as simple as get and go in a memory as delicate as this one. "Why isn't it—Okay. Maybe...something in here's w-wrong and we have to...correct it?"

"Yet another prom party game," Presley says with a sigh. "You know, I was just in one where we all had to bleed onto paper to make a symbol. If all of this doesn't lead to us finishing a horrible cult rite, it'll be a miracle." He rolls the glowing change jar in his hand, wondering if it's another placement puzzle like the tarot cards in Wyatt's memory, but nothing obvious stands out. The only unfinished task he sees here is packing boxes, and he's not about to do Bryce's job for him.

He looks from Winter to Ramona (now holding the tape gun, if they honestly have to start packing boxes, he's going to scream), and back again. "Did you see anything outside?"

They don't have to pack his boxes for him, but things jolt forward eventually.

“Sorry! Sorry!” Bruno Ellerby shouts from the street, waving apologetically up at the window as he tries to climb out of a cramped Camaro. Behind him, Bryce can hear a gentle exhale. The closest thing to a laugh he’s heard from his mother in weeks.

“I’m not taking you away from them,” Marilynn continues as the sound of the horn continues to echo through the neighborhood. “I still love this town, I still want you to go to Peckenpaugh.”

“What if I don’t want to come back? You get to bail, why can’t I just go to Ilvermorny or something? Just,” he throws his hands up in a frustrated shrug, “leave all this shit behind?”

Marilynn doesn’t answer right away. She climbs to her feet, hefting the box up with a surprising strength. Then again, Marilynn Swint Qualls has always surprised people with her strength. “I don’t think you can, honey,” she answers, finally, as she moves to the door. “This holler is in your blood, and your blood is in this holler. It’ll call you back.”

Bryce doesn’t say anything. His mother clearly doesn’t expect him to. She takes the box out into the hall, but for everyone else it’s an exit to 2020.

THE UPPER LEVELS

MEMORY: Moving Out But Not On

MEMORY: Moving Out But Not On

MEMORY: Moving Out But Not On

MEMORY: Moving Out But Not On

MEMORY: Moving Out But Not On