[The Smoke-Darkened Hills] Ye Heralds, Ye Prodigies

Cthulhu_Wakes

Cthulhu_Wakes

Black Sun in a White World
Late Autumn, Caswell, Tennessee





The days are colder, shorter now.


Clouds have gathered, the fires guttered. Largely contained to several inexplicably fierce pockets, the flames are like the wild bonfires of summer children being stamped out. Swaths of the northern counties are blighted land now. The drive north is a bleak, carbonized panorama: mountains shaved bald, towns nothing more than burnt posts and scraped foundations. Grim tidings are found in every burnt town. National Guard work alongside firefighters in saving lives, recovering the dead. A state of emergency grips Eastern Tennessee.


Caswell is a port of call to this waste under dimming skies. That crisp late autumn chill your sea breeze. An ever present smell of woodsmoke permeates everything. Ash no longer falls from the sky, save in a strong wind. People carry on like their relatives and lives haven't been touched by the fire. But that's just one more way to cope with the surreal. Instead of the constant, hellish light engulfing the horizon, and, out there, the night is deep and forever and it seems the stars merge with where the ground should surely be.


A month has passed since the strange events at Professor Iverson's home and the strange revelations of Lily Foye. What then, in this cooling, slowing city, have all of you been doing? Many questions were left at the end of your ordeals, chilling secrets, and things that buckled the mind.
 
Cormac Cosgrave





The lights can never go off again. The moment dawn comes, curtains open.


Cormac has left only for the necessities; lectures, food, more books. He's maxed out all library privileges, scoured the internet - twice as much crap as useful information. Geoff has been his only outside contact, and even then mostly to bounce rambling ideas from.


He's tired, unshaven, unkempt. But hopefully closer to finding some goddamn answers amidst all the illuminati bullshit.


Music, too. The neighbours have complained. But the dark is too quiet. Watchful.
 
Violet Ingram


No answers of substance were given to her aunt's questions about the party. Descriptions of the food, other partygoers, and the statement that the professor who invited her had to leave suddenly. But the others were pleased with her presence, she reassured Stella, and they loved the pie. Some of the attending faculty knew Grandfather, and would like to talk about him again some time. They're interested in his research.


Such a pleasant, ordinary evening, with pleasant ordinary people.


In an effort to make sense of the night at Clancy's, Violet returned to her grandfather's office. If his research pertained to strangeness in Caswell, then perhaps she will find a name for this shadow somewhere in it.


But first she has to get to that internet connection. Yester-year may have been slowly modernised....but broadband is somewhat beyond its current state. E-mails to check, blogs to update, and contemporaries of her grandfather's to track down. The sudden...disappearance of Professor Wong brought about the realisation that she wanted to get to know this remote man, and there is now one less person to help.
 
Geoff Cardin


A month of bullshit. After the house party, it never got better. Weirder shit, weirder phone calls, weirder creepy old men on the other end of the line. It didn't make much sense. And Wong? The fuck was he? Nothing was adding up. It reminded Geoff, on occasion, of some of the writers in his Lit classes. Nothing that came out of their mouths made sense.


Speaking of, Cosgrave.


Poor man appeared to have gotten the worst of it. A month later and he was still a wreck, as far as Geoff could tell. Rambling phone calls and poorly-planned lectures were hardly in the man's nature, near as he could tell. The kid wanted little more than to ease his pain, but the mad rantings did little to allow him such access. At least he was scouring every resource available for information relating to this shit.


No matter how many times he failed, Geoff kept trying to find his way into the restricted stacks of the library. Maybe he could help, himself. Something Cosgrave must've missed in there. If he could just find it...


But try as he might, he couldn't even get through the door. And to boot, the Professor had used up all his privileges for the time being. Little to do but wait.
 
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Cosgrave


There are times, strange hours in the night, when you've noticed eyes peering out from the dark near the house. Something like the reflective eyes of cats or owls, but too steady, too watchful. Once in a while, an animal, wandering through the garbage cans or sniping mice, would be the owner of the glinting eyes. Other times...


There are doubts.


But there is illumination, too. You've stumbled across certain websites and forums dedicated to conspiracy theories and stranger discourse. Most of it's the usual internet trash and creepypastas, but certain of these threads have the tincture of truth tacked on to them. The descriptions of the paranormal, the strange man who walked into the club with a deck of death's head cards or the woman kneeling by a river talking to the woken corpse of a recent teen suicide.


There are others who know.


Books have been your greatest source after digging around in the Archive. Not even paying attention to local history, but digging more into the old manuscripts dating back to the '20s and earlier. Snippet interviews of survivors of the fire that swept through Caswell in the early days of the city's industrialization. The anti-natalist cult that was uncovered and destroyed in 1919 and the horrific, unexplained events that followed (a small outbreak of Plague, among other things). The Field Man in the '60s. This city is seeped in strange phenomena not too far removed from the events at Iverson's party.


But perhaps the greatest lead you've obtained in the past month has to do with the families of Caswell. The old money. The Larue and company. Miss Ingram's ilk. Despite your habits, you've noticed her once or twice on campus, usually heading toward the library or cafe...
 
Cormac Cosgrave





Cormac manages a shave. A shower. He stares at himself in the steam-free patch of mirror, grimly decides a haircut wouldn't hurt, either.


Later, the coin in his breast pocket, Cosgrave settles into a seat in the campus cafe and tries to look like the man his students remember, sipping tea and leafing through notes. Maybe Miss Ingram will come here, maybe he'll have to go find here. It's afternoon, and well-lit. Voices all around.


Safe enough, for now, but Clancy's party was no different.
 
Geoff Cardin


By this point, it was distinctly clear that little further progress would be made by sitting around with a stick up his ass. Geoff knew he had to do something. Fuck all if anyone knew what. But anything was better than sitting around and waiting for whatever the fuck that old man meant to show up and eat another person. Dreams of normal days were long gone and meaningless. Nightmares of days to come were certainly in vogue.


The cafe was one of the few places that the Professor seemed to be willing to meet him. It was well-lit, highly inhabited and noisy, sure, but hardly a place to talk about the events of Clancy's party. But he obliged the man regardless. They'd seen some shit, and safety--real or imagined--was good.


But today is not one of those days. Class is over, and it's meal time. Geoff does a double-take as he stumbles across the clean-shaven Professor--willingly out and about, as if back to his old self. Or trying. He drags up a chair at the table. "Uh, glad to see you're not so...gruff, Professor. You know, some of the students were thinking you went crazy, what with all the unkempt beard and hair going on." He laughs nervously to himself.
 
Cormac Cosgrave





Cormac manages a thin, grim smile. "Going mad would, I think, have been a mercy. Wouldn't you prefer to blame it on hallucinations?"
 
"Yeah, I guess, but at the same time, I'd prefer that everyone thought I at least had my faculties in order." He sighs, shaking his head. "I don't know. I would rather be sane and thought crazy, than crazy and not in control of myself."
 
Cormac Cosgrave


"There you have it," Cormac replies. "Have you dug up anything about it, or have you been trying to keep your head down?" He asks, and sips his tea. "I've found... quite a bit."
 
Geoff Cardin


"I had a run-in two weeks ago with someone that reminded me a lot of a guy I know. He called me. I've got no idea why, either. But... He told me some things that... I think I'd rather not have known." He lowers his voice, knowingly dipping to a conspiratorial tone. "He told me about the ancient families of the area, and how Iverson's was the first act of a war between them. Wong was just the first victim to be claimed."
 
Violet





Stella has taken to walking the grounds more and more, going into town with you (or simply with Andy and Missy), and all around being a livelier gal. She laughs more, stays up later into the night. Your trip here has revitalized the old gal. She's currently fussing over the outbuildings, cutting from the walls the winter-withered kudzu and honeysuckle; her entire body shaded by that outrageous woven hat of hers. Andy daintily plucking up the discarded vegetation. The smell of baking pies has virtually replaced the smoky chill of winter around Yesteryear. Missy's industry knows no bounds.


That was this morning. You're off for the cafes and libraries on Morrs' campus. There are things you're beginning to discern from your Grandfather's ridiculous study. One being this Mecklenburg Society, the charitable foundation of which he was a privileged member--the connection of the woman, Esmi, to whom he wrote.


A bright spot on this blustery day of musing, though, is a rare appearance of Professor Cosgrave and Geoff when you arrive at the cafe.
 
Jen Pyon


Her legs were frozen from the horrid windchill, yet Jen was still tenacious enough to insist on wearing shorts to show off her ink. If anything had changed since that night, it was a sense that she had stood up up to something greater than herself.


Months back in the vault, Jen had run and nearly got screwed over for doing so. But that party... Even thinking about it now as she stomps toward her favorite cafe, kicking piles of ignored ash aside, filled her with pride and bravado. The things that went bump in be night could be hurt just as easily as they could hurt her.


The cafe door rings as Jen pushes in, eyes darting to her usual spot. Oddly enough it was taken and even stranger was the fact it was occupied by people she had done a decent job of staying away yet remaining cordial to. The Professor and Geoff. That Violet woman was there too. Jen half way considers leaving before her improved audacity starts up again. Taking a deep breath she plunges forward, inserting herself neatly into the conversation.


"Are we talking about what happened yet?"


Maybe it wasn't so neat..
 
Geoff, Jen, Violet, Cosgrave


There is a somber notion to everything today--perhaps it's the weather. The campus has been gathering cans and food donations for affected families of the fires north of the city, several such families are enjoying a meal gratis from the cafe's manager. The nested HD (of which the owner is very proud) TV is all talking heads and scenes of destruction. The only thing the news has focused on for the past few weeks, the aftermath, missing persons, the vanished fire crew. The manager turns it up, wanting to hear about the vanished firefighters. A short burst of static, then:


"The Harvest is nigh," Al Napier, the reporter on TV, says, "the spark of flame touched here was but a consecration of designs to come."
 
Violet Ingram


While Jen's sudden insertion into the conversation may not exactly have been neat, it served as the perfect icebreaker to what had, up to that point, been mostly small talk. Even Violet can be brought to realise you can't hide behind polite conversation forever...


As she opens her mouth to make some response, the burst of static distracts her momentarily, and her brows furrow at the strange message that follows.


"Did...did anyone else hear that...?"
 
Cormac Cosgrave





Cormac lays his head in his hands, eyes closed, shoulders hunched.


"Yes. I heard it." He looks up, staring at the apparition on the television. "I think we all heard it."
 
Geoff Cardin





"I wish I hadn't heard that." He presses his thumbs against his eyes, rubbing them quickly. "Too many strange things lately. And now this..."
 
Jen Pyon


" Annnnd I'm taking that as a yes. but that was Probably someone just fooling around with the station signal. If not...well we can handle it just as easily as we did at the party. Stock up on generators and lightbulbs" Jen smiles and plants herself down beside Geoff, who other than a few texts hadn't really shown a ton of interest in her. Jen blamed the soul swallowing apparition on that though.


"But just in case that was real, what does this all mean?"
 
Geoff Cardin


A sideways glance and a faint smile is all Jen gets at first. He pats her lightly on the shoulder and leans in, whispering, "Sorry I haven't responded much. Been crazy lately... I think you'd understand that bit."


To the rest of the group, he says, "I don't think it'll be as simple as last time. Between the Professor and I, we've found out some upsetting news." He looks to Cormac to start spilling the beans.
 
Cormac Cosgrave





"Nothing as useful as you might think," Cormac says, about to pick up his mug, deciding his hand might shake too obviously, and setting it down again.


"But there's no shortage of stories about this kind of thing in Caswell. Occult nastiness going back generations." He looks in the direction of Miss Ingram. "Especially generations of families like the Larues."
 
Geoff nods, clearing his throat. "I had a run-in with some of this shit about two weeks ago. Had a man describe what The Prof. just said, but also mentioned something about a war. There's soldiers in the street; people we wouldn't even recognize as fighting a damn war. And we're caught in the middle of it. What happened at Prof. Iverson's was just the beginning. The problem is... We don't know what happens next."
 
Jen Pyon


"There was this old reel I saw once. It might have been what happened next. Just these...shock images and then something came after me. I shut it off and ran, never found the film ever again. It was a lot like what happened at the house. But what happens next doesn't matter if we don't know how to fight it or what it is? Shouldn't we tell somebody?"
 
Geoff Cardin


"Who do we tell? Cops? Why would they believe us? I guess we could always go to a church. But I feel like most of the places around here would just laugh at us. We could always try Catholics. That works in all the old exorcism-type movies, right?" He sighs, shaking his head.
 
Violet Ingram


"I don't think," she begins hesitantly, "that the police would be of much help. What we experienced should frankly be impossible, and they're unlikely to give us the time of day."


She clears her throat a little.


"As Professor Cosgrave helpfully pointed out; my family name has come up in some of the folklore associated with Caswell, and I have reason to believe my grandfather was looking into some of the more...irregular occurrences here, though I can't say I can make much sense of his documents..."
 
Cormac Cosgrave





"Could I look at them?" Cormac asks, eyes fixed on Violet as if nothing else matters now. "I might be more helpful with that information to hand."
 
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