damned_institute | Night 65: Underground Lake

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Night 65: Underground Lake

[From here.]

This was all becoming a bit stale.

Especially the feeling of nausea that came with the transport. Harvey didn't want to think too hard on the implications of that. Just what exactly was done to their bodies when they were moved around like that? It couldn't be natural in any sense of the word, but it still beat trying to get down here the normal way.

His only real consolation was that he couldn't smell anything too well down here. It was a shame that they couldn't just keep on giving up that sense, but even Harvey realized how that wouldn't be "fair" according to Landel's rules. What really wasn't fair was the fact that they'd all been stuck in this place for weeks now, but...

Even he started to get sick of his own complaining, so he left it at that.

Once the other two seemed to have recovered, Harvey nodded toward the docks. "We know the drill by now, right? Let's make this quick." He needed to enjoy his voice while he had it, if that's what he was giving up.

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The bracelet upgrade meant S.T. wasn't having to cut himself every time they jumped, so he counted it a bonus. And the security guard had a pretty good sense of humor.

"Yeah." S.T. jogged over towards the dock, jumping over human skulls like a linebacker running drills through a field of used tires. "Hey, dead guy." He reached out a hand and bounced it on thin air. "Ka-bing. Customers. Let's get this party started."

Was it weird that the walking, talking skeleton was feeling more and more like just "one of the guys" the more they came down here?*

"What they said," said Scott, keeping pace with S.T. "Sense, boat ride, pick-a-door. Think we got it. Seems to be what works, so why mess with the formula, right?"

* - Spoilers: yes it was.

Charon slowly pushed himself up from the bottom of the boat, letting what sounded like a yawn escape from the bones that comprised his jaws. "Yeah, yeah, I hear ya'," he grumbled as he leaned against his staff. "Geez, cut me some slack here. 'Least you could do is say thanks for the bracelets, you know. It's not like I hand 'em out like candy."

Well, whatever. They wanted to pay the toll, so he was willing to accept it. "Well, then?" he asked, sounding a little impatient after having his nap interrupted so suddenly. "What's it gonna be tonight?"

So maybe they were being a bit demanding. Harvey didn't think that was a problem, seeing how they were already being good little soldiers and playing along with Landel's game. Besides, if it weren't for them Mr. Ferryman wouldn't have a single thing to do all night. So really, he should be thanking them.

Either way, now was the time to get all of the rules ironed out. Harvey took a step forward, realizing that he would have to take charge of things this time around. "We have a question first. We know that smell was a freebie, but how about the other senses? Are we only allowed to use each one once?"

He could hardly imagine that was the case. Five tries wasn't much to go on, especially with how difficult they made this whole process. But at least he'd pinned the skeleton down now. He wasn't going to let it wriggle out of giving a straight answer.

He thought he'd already made all this clear, but maybe not. It was harder to keep track of unimportant details like that when your skull was empty. If he'd any eyes, he would have rolled them.

"It wouldn't be a freebie if you could use all of them the same number of times," Charon pointed out. "So, no, you don't have to use each one only once -- except if you get bounced back here and try to pay with the same sense in a single night. In other words, I'm not gonna let Stinky and Mouthy pay with their sense of touch on the same night. That's boring, not to mention useless to someone like me. Got it?"

Tightening his bony grip on his staff, Charon tilted his head. "Now," he added with a note of finality in his voice, "what's it gonna be, kiddies?"

So that was how it worked. Harvey hadn't even realized that they might have to cross the lake twice in one night, but at least they'd cleared that up. It would have helped if the skeleton had told them this from the start, but Harvey wasn't too surprised that the ferryman hadn't been all that forthcoming.

Still, this meant that he had his choice between sight, hearing, touch, and his voice. In the end, his ability to see and hear seemed far more important than the other two, and after last night Harvey didn't think that giving up touch was a good idea, either.

That meant that he was sticking with his original idea, which was to give up his voice. "All right, then I guess it's your turn to sound like me," he said, squaring his shoulders as he took a step forward, offering himself up for the payment. It was going to be annoying having to write everything down, but he could rely on gestures too, at the least.

Edited 2012-08-21 17:03 (UTC)

Voice wasn't, technically, a sense. Sangamon weighed the benefits of being right over having to pantomime at Harvey. Easy choice. Besides, creepy basement-dwelling skeletons deserved to be able to talk. Harvey's face was halfway there. If the escape gig didn't pan out, maybe they could trade him for a monthly pass.

S.T. vaulted into the boat and put his feet up on the gunwale. "Less talking, more rowing," he said, smirking at Harvey.

"Good choice," said Scott to Harvey, unconsciously closing his bandaged hand. He was pretty sure none of them knew sign language, but communication difficulties or not, it was probably going to be better than what he had picked the night before. That and Two-Face could be scary enough sometimes, even if he was on their side. A Two-Face that couldn't feel pain? Major scary.

Scott followed S.T. into the boat, wishing he could look half so casual about it. "Yes, onward to adventure!" he said (albeit with some uncertainty), pumping his fist — and then pulling it back down with a quiet hiss when his fingers dug into the bandage. Ow, not the most thinking-est gesture.

Edited 2012-08-22 14:57 (UTC)

"Done and done." Charon brought his staff down against the bottom of the boat, and the sound reverberated off of the cavern walls. The next time the skeleton spoke, it was with Harvey's voice. "La la la! Hmm, not bad..."

It would be a fun distraction for the night, anyway. Too bad he couldn't have a collection of voices at his disposal all the time. A trick like that would be a hoot at parties!

Once everyone climbed aboard, the ferryman switched his staff out for a paddle. After dipping it into the gently lapping water, they were on their away across the dark lake. "Anyway, you'd better be careful what you wish for, Mouthy," he chuckled at Scott. "Adventure ain't always what it's cracked up to be."

And just like that, he felt a tightness in his throat which he was pretty sure meant that he'd just lost any ability to talk. Harvey couldn't stop himself from testing it, opening his mouth -- but not even a whisper came out. He glared at Sangamon's comment, since that was the last thing he needed at the moment. Scott was a bit more encouraging, and Harvey was starting to realize that Scott had been annoying him less and Sangamon had been annoying him more these past couple nights. It was like it went in waves.

Hearing that pile of bones speak with his voice was one of the more surreal things he'd experienced since coming to this place, and that was saying something. Harvey settled into the boat and then kept his eyes on his journal, not interested in listening too much to his own voice coming from something else or in watching the lake zombies trying to get a hold of them.

There wouldn't be much to say until they got to the other side, and so for the moment Harvey just sat there. It wasn't like he had much else to do.

"I'm cool with adventure. You just have to adjust your expectations." Not pharmaceutically. A few hits to relax and get to know your team were great, but he asked people if they were down with civil disobedience sober. Standards, man, standards. He had them, and they involved people knowing what they were getting into before the shit hit the fan. "Less glory, more guts. Saving the world by contracting explosive diarrhea." Or at least the Harbor. With Pleshy and Laughlin walking away in chains, the world wasn't a bad extrapolation. Definitely the reputation of one Sangamon Taylor, which wasn't a big deal to anyone else, but it was to him.

"I could do without repeating that one, though." The water running past the side of the boat looked black. Good for brooding. They were all bitchy tonight, including Harvey, who could express as many versions of fuck you with half a face as a six-pack of Massholes jockeying for pole position behind a floundering station wagon with out of state plates.

If tonight involved explosive diarrhea, Scott was pretty sure he wouldn't be cracking up the prospect of adventure too much anymore, now or ever. That was just nasty.

"Thanks for sharing," said Scott, shivering for the second time in less than a minute (the first being at Harvey's gravelly voice coming out of Skeletonface's mouth — oh hi future nightmares how are you?).

"Hah!" Charon's (or, rather, Harvey's) bark of a laugh bounced across the lake. They were approaching the torch-lit dock, but he didn't draw any attention to it. Instead, he looked back at the group with a hollow smile. "All right, then, Stinky. How about this?"

Without another word, the ferryman hefted the paddle up with shocking strength. Before anyone could react, he sliced through the air with the precision, water droplets flying in the paddle's wake. With one good whack! he smacked Stinky from the side, aiming to pitch him right out of the boat.

What was Sangamon even talking about? Harvey raised an eyebrow on the good side of his face, which was also the only side that was showing at the moment -- but he was sure it got the message across well enough. None of them had needed to hear that.

And more than that, it apparently offended their ferryman enough that he took drastic action, as without much warning he smacked Sangamon with the flat side of the paddle, sending him toppling out of the boat.

Harvey didn't think much at all before he reacted. He was on his feet in seconds, which only disturbed the weight of the boat, almost sending him off-balance. He realized he was trying to yell something, but he wasn't making a sound. The idea of trying to reach over and heft Sangamon back up into the boat seemed like a monumentally terrible idea, so in the end Harvey forced himself to sit back down and gave Scott a look. A, "what the hell just happened?" look.

S.T. had all of a split-second to gulp air before he went over the side of the boat, arms windmilling. The pipe dropped into the bilge with a thunk. The cheap plastic seals on the flashlight held up. It glowed even as he went completely under, like those freaky candles in Tolkein. S.T. kept his mouth slammed shut, and blew air out. Skullhead had warned him about the water. It didn't smell like anything, but this place had an inside track on his nightmares. Talking about projectile vomiting might have been his downfall.

The bottle of antihistamines in his pocket wouldn't even make a dent if it was really contaminated. So he just wouldn't drink any of it. Not that Debbie hadn't known the same thing. At least he wasn't handcuffed.

Sangamon drifted for a second, looking up at what little light there was bouncing off the underside of the water/air interface. It took a lot of guts to not immediately fight for the surface. Or experience, which Sangamon definitely had. The black shape was the bottom of the boat, directly over his head. A big frog kick and a pull, and his head popped up just alongside Harvey, who was gaping like a fish at him. Yelling. Aww, maybe he did care. He didn't offer a hand, which was probably good, as pulling someone back in a boat was harder than it looked. Instead, he made shooing motions at both him and Scott.

Then he tossed the flashlight down to join the pipe. It flickered and died, water finally creeping in somewhere. Then he pulled himself up until his gut was even with his hands. Undignified, but effective. He could just pitch over and land in the bottom, splashing eau de dead guys all over everyone.

Scott jolted back from the flying water as the paddle passed near his head, doing his share of nearly throwing the boat off-balance. One second S.T. was in the boat, then there was a giant "WHAP" and the next second, he was out of it. "Whoa!" Scott gripped the sides of the boat in a frantic attempt to keep them from rolling over. Somehow, between Harvey's flailing and his, the thing stayed afloat. Thank dumb luck for that, but what about S.T.?

"What the hell, man?!" Scott vocalized for both himself and Harvey, looking back and forth between the murky water and the smirking skeleton. "Are there voice refunds on the Lake of Death and Drowning because I'd say that qualifies as some crappy customer service right there!"

Oh good, here came S.T. now. "Dude, are you okay? Are you decrepit? Zombiefied?" he asked, having flashbacks to Disney's Hercules.

"Hey, hang on there!" Charon warned as the boat rocked back and forth. Thankfully, the guy had some sense, and settled down after a moment. Mouthy took a page out of his book and sat tight, too.

"What do you mean, refunds?" the skeleton cackled. "Prince Charming here was the one who paid up. As far as I'm concerned, you two clowns are just along for the right. And if there's anything I don't like, it's an obnoxious clown."

And speak of the devil -- there was Stinky. The ferryman leaned to the side as he observed him a moment. "Well, whaddyaknow," he remarked with a small snort. "You've got luck on your side tonight. I'm impressed."

With that, he dipped the paddle back into the water and began to row toward the dock as if nothing had happened. "You'd better hope you didn't spend it all up just now, though," he added in his own gravelly voice as an afterthought.

In the end, Sangamon was able to find his way to the surface and pull himself back onto the boat. He looked like a drowned rat, but he wasn't dripping with the remains of waterlogged corpses, so that was something. Or at least, Harvey hoped he wasn't.

That didn't stop him from flinching back when some of the water came splashing his way, but he figured that was a pretty natural reaction.

More than that, the ferryman didn't have much of an explanation for them. In fact, he even said that Sangamon had lucked out. Did that mean that there had been a chance that something worse would have happened to him in the water? Harvey frowned, not liking the sound of that at all. At least he wasn't the one who'd been pitched over.

As for being called "Prince Charming," he had no idea where that came from, but with the inability to speak it was easy enough to ignore it. Harvey kept his gaze on the approaching shore, figuring that Scott and Sangamon could handle the questions if they wanted to try and get anything out of the skeleton on what all that had been about.

S.T. sprayed spit (over the side of the boat) and looked around for something to wipe potentially-hazardous effluvia on. Not Harvey's shirt.

If it wasn't burning or itching by now, it was going to kill him slowly or not at all. Time to let it go. It wasn't like they hadn't been dropped in what might be the same water last night. He ignored the voice that sounded exactly like himself in full-on science nerd patter, droning about statistics and repeated exposure. Clean living made up for a lot, and he had an all-hours shower-access pass.

Instead, he pulled his shirt off, wrung it out, and then used it to towel his head off. "Nah, no refunds." His voice was muffled by the shirt. "Nice night for a swim. Most people stick to threatening to throw me off." Then he usually pointed out that it was his fucking boat. Or if not, that he wouldn't wish that water on his worst enemy, which got them all talking about the creeps they were really going after. "Landel tell you to do that once in a while, or was that just for kicks?"

Luck on his side? Scott didn't like the implicit implications behind that statement. Remind me not to piss off Bone Jangles on future boat rides, he thought with a gulp, the words "obnoxious clown" ringing ominously in his brain.

Not that it might have done any good to think that anyway, as S.T. pointed out. If the ferryman just did the whole boat tossing thing randomly and not because someone had eyed him the wrong way, there wouldn't be much they could do other than watch that paddle like a pack of hawks. Either that or just not get in the boat again. But that would just be silly. You'd think they valued their lives or something.

In either case, they wouldn't have to worry for much longer; the dock was in sight now, and they would be on dry land again in minutes. Scott looked over at Harvey, shifting towards the front of the boat. As soon as they landed, he wanted to be up and moving. The less time they wasted sitting around with their generous chauffeur, the better.

"Wow, you think Landel would actually tell me to dump people out of the boat for no reason?" Harvey's laugh echoed across the lake before Charon suddenly grew sober. "Well, yeah, I guess he would be weird enough to do that, but!"

He gave a good, strong row with his paddle to emphasize his words.

"Nah, I just do that if I feel like it," he explained. "I mean, a guy like me, working in a place like this seven days a week? You do realize we don't have television or anything down here, right?"

Sheesh. Leave it to these guys to make everything more complicated than it needed to be. Thankfully, they reached the dock, which meant they were officially out of his hair now.

"All right, you crazy kids," he said, waving them off. "Don't do something stupid and die, now."

It was completely surreal to hear his own, derisive laugh coming out of someone else's throat. Or lack of throat, rather. Harvey felt a sharp shiver go down his spine as the skeleton kept talking with his tone, the inflection and word choice not accurate in all the places it should be, which just made it stranger.

Since the ferryman was mainly just spouting off useless information, Harvey tried his best to ignore it, and he let out a silent sigh when he realized that the boat had finally docked. That had definitely been the most harrowing passage they'd made so far. Was it only going to get worse from here?

He moved off of the boat and examined the nearby shore, taking note of where the rotting corpses were laid out so he could avoid those areas, if only to save his nose. Once the other two joined him, Harvey gestured toward the door they'd picked last night. Might as well stick with what they knew, right?

"You think there's more to it?" S.T. almost smacked himself. Yes or no questions only for Harvey. Pantomime got old in third grade.

He didn't bother to try to see if Harvey was answering. Instead, he shrugged, and turned to Scott. "Devil we know or new and exciting ways to die?"

Scott had been just about to say to the skeleton's first point that yeah, Landel would probably give orders exactly like that, and more likely than that, there would be some sort of traumatic shadow creature or random portal or sea gnome or whatever snapping right at their heels after them. Honestly, the fact that S.T. had gotten away with just getting drenched in dead juice was kind of a miracle, all things considered.

If they were going to keep up that kind of luck, Scott could only see one answer to S.T.'s question when they reached the doors. "Devil we know. Definitely devil we know," he answered, following Harvey's gesture and starting to open the same door from the previous night. "We know we won't die once we get to the end of this one, so that's at least five more minutes we can be guaranteed to stay breathing tonight." Provided there was a way out of that pool of water once they got to that point, anyway. Fingers crossed.

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Night 65: Underground Lake

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