Haunted (Patreon)

Daniel's POV is a slightly different variant this time. Instead of seeing an event in the game through his eyes, this time we will re-examine another Lore post. Why? Because it's interesting, because Daniel's thoughts are rather open in game, and because it's soon Halloween.

I suggest re-reading this post first: "West Coast Mysteries and Murders, season 2." 

Enjoy!

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A small office building on the outskirts of southern Los Diablos, dirty windows, shelves stacked with books and papers. The name on the front door is an anonymous acronym for a production company few would recognize. Those who would, might associate it with their most popular show so far, the "West Coast Mysteries and Murder." Daniel Sullivan knows it, of course, as he knows that they would afford to move to a better office by now. He suspects that Marek is either too cheap, or doesn't want to face the effort it would take to move several decades of research. It's not the sort of thing you would entrust to a moving company.

"I didn't expect you to drop by in person," Marek says, gesturing to the crowded office. "Excuse the mess."

"I'm sorry I didn't call first," I lie politely. "But I know how much you detest phones."

"Too easy to tap," he agrees. "Why are you here, though? The tapes were delivered yesterday unless the courier lied through his teeth to me?"

"They arrived. And the reason why I am here is because I want to talk to them." I choose my words carefully, not phrasing them as a question. It's never nice trying to channel my father, but I know that's how things gets done. 

"You know I normally don't allow that." Marek spoke the word normally in a way that made it clear that everything could be arranged for a price. 

"And you know I normally wouldn't ask." I add the smile now, soft and convincing. He has nothing to worry about, I'm not here as a Ranger, not here to cause trouble. I'm just a young man with a lot of money, too curious for my own good. "Please make an exception this time."

"My staff likes their anonymity," Marek says, ignoring the fact that both Bennet and Perry were celebrities to everyone who followed the show.

"So do I." My voice is hushed, private, worried. "You know why I am just an anonymous sponsor. If it came out that I'm funding your show I would be the one in trouble. Not you." I'm handing him a loaded gun and pray that he's smart enough to see that. And smart enough not to use it needlessly.

"That is true." Marek rubs his chin, watching me thoughtfully. "And I have been very grateful for your patronage and occasional... tips." Ah. Yes. He saw the gun, picked it up and checked that it was loaded. At least now we understand each other.

"So now you know that I wouldn't upset our relationship needlessly." I straighten my back and my smile, making myself as serious as I can. The same reason I wear a suit to our meetings. A reminder to be the kind of man he would obey. Or at least respect.

"There were... complications after the last recording." His eyes shifts nervously, this is no faked worry, this is real.

"I did think that the footage cut off rather briefly," I say, keeping the smile. "And that there were sections removed in places. I thought we agreed that I would have access to all the rough cuts." I never took the film studies that serious, but I did pay attention enough to recognize someone trying to hide cuts.

"It's not what you think." Marek is sweating now, small beads on his forehead that I do my best not to stare at. His office is stuffy and cramped, but right now he is the one that feels trapped. Not me.

"I haven't told you what I think yet." I let myself lose the smile for just a moment, then once he has noticed, I put it on again. "But I would like to see it. Before I talk to them."

"Niech to szlag trafi," he curses, but I know I've won. He's looking at the door to the editing room.

"Please," I say, as sweetly as I can.

"Fine. But don't ask me for explanations. I don't have any yet." He gets up and gestures to the door. "Don't knock anything over in there."

Once we have crammed into the small room, I do my best to ignore the stacks of tapes looming on the shelves, the folders brimming with paper and other things. A legacy of decades of work, most done before things went digital. There's a layer of dust on some of them, as if they haven't been touched for years. It's claustrophobic, and I wish I could spend a week cleaning this room, reading everything and sorting it properly. How can he find anything here? How can he work here?

"Only got one chair," he says gruffly, sinking into it as he starts up the monitors. 

"Don't worry about me," I reply, hovering next to him in a sitting position. It unnerves him, I try to do it sparingly, but right now I don't care. "Did you go analog?"

"Of course." Marek gestures to the cassette piles. "Betacam still has the best chance of picking things up. Digital is shit. I don't need any computer to tell me what the film is supposed to show."

"There's been some interesting digital footage lately, though..." I note that there are four tapes marked with the current session number. A lot longer than the footage I was shown.

"And you have no idea if it's a digital artifact, or the camera trying to help you," he scoffs as he loads one of the tapes. "I tried to film that red sky a couple of months back on digital. You know how it came out? Blue! Because that's how the sky is supposed to be."

"So what are you going to show me?" I say, interrupting him before he starts to ranting about government control mandating digital products that only show what they want you to see. I've heard it before.

"Most of it is just filler. You know how it is. Walking. Setting things up. The boring stuff."

"You know I like the boring stuff," I say, not bothering to censor my disappointment. "I thought we agreed that I would see the entire raw copy. Including the boring stuff." Most people never see the forest for the trees, and I want to see everything in context. Not just the curated parts.

"Fine, I will furnish you with a full copy later. But that's not what I wanted to show you now." Marek pushes in a tape and fast forwards. Without picture. You can see numbers on a pad in front of you. How many times have he watched and rewound already? "Maybe I hoped you would drop by and question me." Not a lie. Interesting.

"Is this tape one?" I ask, making a guess. "That early?"

"Yeah." The tape stops, revealing Bennet and Perry sitting at a dusty table. The camera must be on a tripod, catching them both in the shot. Too still to be a third party. "Still a block away, right within the edge of the exclusion zone."

"Huh." I frown, trying to pinpoint what bothers me about the shot. It's standard fare, they are talking about the background of the place, about the history, about Heartbreak. "Why didn't you show me this?"

"I wanted to check some things out first," he says evasively. "Do some research on what the place looked like before."

"That wasn't our agreement," I say pointedly. He tried to do the same with the footage from the Void expedition. 

"You would have seen it eventually," he defends himself. "And you're watching it now."

"Where are they?" I decide to let it go for now and focus on the tape. It looks like they are sitting in deserted fast food place. Maybe. The colors were once bright but now faded, the furniture looks to be red plastic, and the lamps are dark and dusty. The daylight through the windows are shafts of dusty brightness, and I find myself wanting to paint Bennet where he sits. There's an uneasy peace on his face as Marek pauses the tape to look it up.

"According to their notes it was a small arcade hall and fast-food place. It wasn't directly affected by the attack, but it was close enough that the customers dried up. Perry thought it would be a good backdrop to the introduction, the door had been broken down so she didn't think they'd get in trouble."

"Looks spooky," I agree. They rise from the table, and Perry grabs the camera to pan around. There's something unnerving about the shadows, with stark light near the windows and deep inky blackness at the back. There are murals painted on the walls, at one time they were bright and happy, but now they only add to the dilapidated ambiance. 

Perry films as Bennet walks around, arms wrapped around himself as if he's afraid to be touched. He watches the murals, and I follow his gaze. Primitive. Probably made after a projected image on the wall, someone painting by numbers not caring how things came out. The elephant is unnaturally blue, ears large and flappy. The clowns look alien in the shadows, their large eyes inhumanly black. Someone has painted a cigarette in one large mouth, another has added a knife to the hand that's holding the balloon. 

"Stop," I say, spotting something. Marek obeys, he already had his finger on the button and I realize that he was watching me to see if I saw it too. "What is that?"

"I don't know." At one edge of the shot, near a ruined pinball machine, there's a shadow that shouldn't be there. It feels as wrong as the perspective on the clown pictures. Marek lets the tape roll again, and it's obvious Perry doesn't notice, she just pans the camera around the room before returning to Bennet. The shadow is still there, behind him to his right.

"There shouldn't be a shadow there." I make a mental calculation about possible light sources. Everything else in the shot lines up, but that shadow is cast without a light, or a form that would cast it.

"I know. And she panned the camera, so it's not a smudge on the lens."

"She didn't notice at the time?" 

"No. But they remarked that they felt followed later. I wonder if this is where they picked up their little hitch-hiker."

"Have you shown her?"

"Not yet. They both needed a couple of days to calm down before we put the episode together." Marek's face reveals a worry he hadn't let on so far. 

"You don't believe in ghosts," I point out.

"No, but I believe in weird boosted shit, and the Heartbreak site is as weird as they come. You know that, otherwise you wouldn't have pushed for us to go there. There's every chance this episode will get pulled the week after it airs."

"I told you I'll protect you," I say with as much authority as I can muster while trying to figure out the shape of the shadow. Is that a head? Arms? "And make it worth your while."

"You did come through last time we ended up in trouble," he grudgingly admits. "And I'm less worried about the cops than what might live there at this point."

"Live there." I keep the words neutral.

"That would explain everything, wouldn't it? Another weird boost, maybe as nuts as the Void was. Lurking at the site, driving people crazy."

"Are you implying another Dreamweaver situation?" I've only read about it, but it sounds plausible if less mysterious.

"I don't know yet. You know what we do, we ask questions. We don't provide answers. Those are up to our viewers."

"And you think the camera caught some residue of whatever this alleged boost is using to conceal itself."

"It wouldn't be the first time."

"So you didn't show me this with the raw footage because you thought it might prove that someone was physically there." I watch him watch the screen, fast forwarding through the rest of the scene. "You wouldn't have thought that unless there was more proof."

"Bennet told me that he thought that someone was following them. Someone that moved a backpack he had used to block the door to the roof." Marek pulls out another tape. Number four this time.

"I heard that discussion. It sounded like it spooked them both badly." I sigh, disappointed despite myself. Is this why Marek didn't let me see everything? Because he was worried I'd be disappointed about a possible physical explanation? That maybe I'd be less likely to fund them in the future?

"It did. Between you and me, I'm glad they got off that roof. Lot of people have fallen from it."

"And nobody would know if they were pushed." I frown. This is sounding more and more like something that might need to be dealt with. 

"Exactly. And then there is the camera at the actual site."

"A camera?" I lean close as he starts up the tape, Bennet pointing at something and Perry moving in with flashlight and camera. 

There it is. A small digital camera, new and black, like a shiny bug perched on the wooden barrier surrounding the Heartbreak site. Aimed towards the metal plate in the center.

"I was going to ask you about that." Marek looks over at me, and I realize that he's suspecting me. Or, not me, but the government. Is that why he wouldn't let me meet them?

"I don't know anything about this." I frown, the model is new and modern. Could it be LDPD? Military? The Rangers? I wouldn't know, I doubt Chen would tell me. "But I can look into it."

"Do that."

"Don't air it until I have." I chew my lip, wondering who I would dare to approach. Angie would be best, but we're not exactly on speaking terms right now. "If it's military I don't know what I can do."

"I'm not without friends of my own." He seems to debate whether to continue but eventually he pushes the button. "And you still need to see the last ten minutes."

"Roll the tape then," I say, angry despite myself that I didn't get to see this before. This wasn't our deal, Marek is not supposed to withhold information. Unless... "Oh."

I watch in silence as Bennet gestures to the camera, angry and upset. I know he took his medication not long ago, but his pupils are pinpricks despite the dark. He's worried about the military too, about finally having broken into a place that would land them in legitimate trouble. Perry tries to calm him, there are no witnesses, but there is a camera...

What comes next is so quick I don't quite catch it, and Marek pauses and rewinds.

One moment Bennet is standing upright, gesturing. The next he is on the ground, twitching like a marionette with his strings cut.

"A stroke?" I ask, because it looks like nothing I have seen before, the closest would be one of Ortega's epilepsy attacks, but that was different, Ortega had the time to make half a joke, warn that things might be going badly because he had started to see colors.

I see colors now, as Marek rewinds a third time, slowing down the tape to a crawl. Step. Step. Green shadows from the low-light equipment. Step. Step. Step. Bennet stands upright. Step. His eyes go from pinpricks to full black in one frame. No shifting lights elsewhere in the scene, no need for his eyes to react like that. I shiver, he's looking straight at me, one hand reaching out as if asking for help.

And then he falls. On his back. Not slumping but falling, his legs knocked out from under him. I can see it, his feet literally yanked off the ground, and he hits the concrete back first. His head makes no sound as it hits. No sound in the slowed film. Step. Legs. Step. In the air. Step. Slam. Perry's camera shifts down as if she can't quite believe what happened.

Bennet is twitching on the ground. Muscles spasming. Eyes staring blindly at the sky.

"There." I point at the screen, but Marek already knows. Has already paused.

Bennet's face is twisted, but the light of the camera reveals the truth clearly. Blood. Not from his nose and mouth, but from his eyes. And more, there are... marks blossoming on his throat. It's impossible to see if it's bruises or shadows from... indentations.

"My guess is telekinesis." Marek shivers. "He had bruises all over his throat afterwards. Couldn't speak louder than a croak. Eyes were okay though. Just some small bleeds."

"It's not the first site where you've documented psychokinetic abilities," I suggest. "Remember the rattling pebbles at the old asylum?"

"Perry chalked that up to heavy traffic. Not ghosts."

"And the chains moving at the Void compound?"

"I have no idea what the hell that was, could have been a draft."

"So you think there's a boost haunting the old Heartbreak site." I try my best to read him, to try to temper my own feelings and expectations. No preconceptions. Look at the facts.

"Yeah." Marek pulls out the tape. "But I'm not going to say that on air. If I cut away the camera it will look spooky enough on screen."

"Bennet looked possessed." I stop hovering and stands upright once more. I remember watching the Exorcist as a kid, terrified, and Josh pretending to be possessed afterwards. The way he grimaced. Lips pulled back. Gums showing. He kept doing it for weeks, chasing me as I ran.

"He doesn't remember anything. Just falling." 

"Maybe you're right." I walk out into the office with a sigh of relief. "Maybe I should let him recover for a few days."

"Would probably be smart. Think he might have got a concussion."

"Is anybody taking care of him?" I'm haunted by the vision of Bennet, alone, staring out the window, seeing... No. There's no need for me to make up horror stories on my own. There are enough in this city as it is.

"Yeah. He still lives with his mom, you know? Don't tell him I said that when you meet. I don't think he'll come back to Los Diablos soon though."

"I don't mind traveling out of town." I smile, in that way my powers are a constant comfort. Traveling made easy, if I could I'd take a year off and just explore the coast. Just be.

"Didn't think you would. But, I'll make you a copy of the full tapes. Make sure you let me know if your contacts catches any military scent on this, if not I'll re-cut it without the camera addition. One of our best hauntings so far."

"Even if you think it's not."

"Why would we need ghosts in a world as crazy as this one?" He gestures to the window, where you can see Los Diablos in all it's grimy glory. 

"What makes you sure that there are none?" I reply, with my friendliest smile. "In a world as crazy as this one?"

"Touche." Marek chuckles. "Now get out of here, I've got work to do."

"The check will be in the mail as usual." I turn to leave, but spurred by something I can't quite name I pause before I open the door. "Would it be possible to bring someone else to meet them?"

"Normally I would say no." Marek sighs. "Are you talking about one of your hero friends?"

"Close enough." I lower my voice. "I would make it worth your while."

"I'll think about it." A moment's pause. "And I'll ask Bennet. It's up to him."

"Tell him I'll make it worth his while too." I open the door, not letting Marek get the last word in.

It's better to leave him thinking about the money.