//------------------------------// // Act Thirteen: No Flash Photography, Please // Story: Delinquency // by Daemon McRae //------------------------------// Act Thirteen: No Flash Photography, Please What is it about children in a horror setting that people find so disturbing? Could it be the obvious corruption of innocence? The natural protective instinct in adults to protect the younger generation? Surely seeing a child suffer would cause great pain for most people. To see an adolescent, a toddler, a child of any age, be taken by something evil, malevolent, and used for some dark malicious purpose is a great source of discomfort and turmoil for adults. Many may feel that they had failed in their natural responsibility, their evolutionary drive, to protect the young in the tribe, to ensure the survival of the species. There is a more sinister possibility. Many postulate that children are the pinnacle of innocence. That we only grow corrupt and evil thanks to the world around us. Some children may just be born bad, of course, but what if they weren’t the exception? Is it possible that the innocence we so blatantly cherish is, in fact, a result of the nurturing behavior of their guardians? If it were possible to raise a child successfully, with no emotional motivation or input whatsoever, would they still be the sparkling gem of untouched joy we so ignorantly assume? Or would they turn out just like all of those ‘bad kids’ who ‘never had a chance’? What if the malevolence and insidious behavior in horror movies that so disturbs us is just a glimpse into the true nature of humanity, before we stamp it out with ‘good behavior’? “You know, we really should have stopped to use the restroom before we left,” Treble remarked. Even as he spoke, all of his emotion and reason seemed to whoosh out of him in a heavy sigh. One that said ‘Why me, God? I said I was sorry.’ Twilight took a few steps back towards the door, her back hitting the wood of the door frame. This struck her as curious for two reasons. One, she didn’t remember the door being closed. Two, the doors opened into the library. She spun on her heel to see that the door had, indeed, closed behind them. Not with a great whoosh and bang, but so quiet as to be almost courteous. “What?!” she shrieked. “Lemme guess. Door’s closed?” Dusty asked, not turning around. Twilight shook the handle voraciously. “Yes!” Spooks heaved a sigh much like Treble’s. “And it’s locked, isn’t it?” She gave one last jerk, falling back a step as she lost her grip. “Also yes! Is this… normal for you guys?!” “Yes,” the three said in unison. Everyone stood rather still for a second. When none of the heads moved, save for the flickering of the lights in their skulls, the group slowly made their way further into the room. Twilight had stepped quickly to stand between the boys, who had unconsciously closed in around her in a protective circle. “Dusty, tell me you brought something heavy and swingable,” Treble asked in a small, uncharacteristic whisper. “Always,” DD responded, pulling a large wrench out of the bag. Twilight eyed the weapon for a second. “Ok, not that I’m complaining about you having something nice and heavy and metal to swing at… whatever there is to swing at, but why is it a wrench?” Spooks glanced over his shoulder. “He once took it as an impromptu weapon into the boiler room of the school when we were fighting a warg, and ended up knocking a steam pipe loose. And then immediately fixed it. Now it’s his favored weapon. Seriously, I think he has all the necessary proficiencies for it.” Dusty just chuckled unevenly, both amused and highly put-off. “I’d say we should split up, but I could feel my body rejecting the words even as I said them.” There was a general murmur of agreement, and the group seemed to shuffle, massed together, down the center of the library. The middle of the room seemed to be perfectly framed to guide newcomers to a large wooden desk. In any normal library, this might be a receptionist’s desk, but in this private library, it seemed to simply be a reference desk, with a great card catalog to ease what would normally be a great chore of finding one book amongst the many. Almost literally a needle in a needle stack. Twilight rounded the side of the desk quickly, giving a large berth to the child’s head lamp at the end. She tried not to look at it, but as such things went, she saw more that she would have liked. The ‘lantern’ was little more than a face. No eyes, no teeth or tongue in the mouth. As if a small mask with short brown hair had been stretched over a hollow sphere with a light in the middle. The eyes cast small beams of light like an unearthly gaze, even as the mouth gave the illusion of screaming light. Tearing her eyes away from the awful sight, she moved quickly to stand behind the desk and rifle through something she finally understood in this giant mess: the Dewey Decimal System. In the meantime, the boys had taken up post around the desk as Twilight went to work. As the desk was effectively a circle with an opening at each side, and a generous amount of room to move around in the middle, Treble and Spooks had taken one side while Dusty stood guard over the other. Of course, this put him closest to the hollowed out head, and he debated whether turning it away from him was worth touching the damn thing. Visibility in the library wasn’t exactly limited, as the lights, such as they were, still seemed to cover every corner of the room. Which could also mean that, should someone be looking through those children’s eyes, they could see everything going on. “What are you even looking for?” Treble grumbled at Twilight, after a few minutes of quite shuffling and fussing about. Twilight pouted at the catalog almost childishly. “Honestly, I only have a general idea. Mainly books with weird titles like your… Crow’s Hand or whatever. Or anything with the Bones name on it. Something that falls in with all the weird stuff we’ve put together since we got here. It’s not exactly like we’ve found any kind of paper trail.” “That’s true,” Spooks muttered. “Besides my grandfather’s text, we haven’t found anything exactly newsworthy. I mean besides the weird shit going on. Normally people in horror movies find like, a suicide note or some incriminating letter or something tucked away extremely convenient. I don’t suppose they’re a loose envelope or postcard floating around back there?” Twilight coughed. “Hardly. Besides the dust it’s pretty immaculate back here. If we weren’t surrounded by god-awful monsters from beyond the grave I’d be very impressed. You guys didn’t see anything else the last time you were here getting that book?” “Besides a distinct lack of kid’s skulls with glowing everything?” Dusty chided. “No. Please, keep looking.” Twilight rolled her eyes and dove back into the catalog. In the corner of the room, a ‘lantern’ blinked. ----------------------------- Indigo looked around the girl’s locker room, relaxing in the absence of other people. She liked changing in private. Not that she was ashamed of herself. She took good care of her health, and like to think she was in great shape. No, she just preferred to avoid locker room chatter. For some reason, most of the girls she knew seem to take their mental filters off with their uniforms. Shuffling through her gym bag, she fussed over her tie and skirt, which seemed to have fused together into one great inconvenience. She was halfway through separating the two when she heard a locker door slam. Wonderful, Indigo thought. Hope they aren’t the chatty type. Digging her fingers into a particularly stubborn not, she jumped as she heard the same slamming sound, but closer. “Don’t tell me another club is coming in,” she groaned to herself. She paused to listen for the shuffle of footsteps and the chatter of teenage girls (a rather unmistakable sound), and was somewhat confused when she heard neither. Her second assumption was someone looking for something, but she heard nothing but silence. No ruffling of bags and equipment, no stomping about, no voices, large or small. She was about to write it off when she heard another slam. This time, it was straight down the bench from her. She looked up from her bag, her clothes temporarily forgotten, as she leaned to the right to try and peer around the edge of the row of lockers. She saw nothing, save for empty space. Although the far end of the room seemed a bit darker, as if a bulb had burnt out. Then it happened again. The slamming sound, and with it, the darkness seemed to lurch forward. She felt herself fall back on the bench, her rear end perched precariously on the edge of the seat. Another slam, and she slid off entirely, as the shadow grew closer, chasing the sound. Once her butt hit the tile floor, she instinctively scooted back to the wall, her eyes wide and heart beating in her chest in a painful attempt to burst out of her ribcage. The sound grew more frequent, the shadow creeping forward at an almost steady pace. Leveraging herself against the wall, she pushed herself up with what little strength was left in her legs, as the rest seemed to have left her in a more successful bid to escape the oncoming threat. She looked to her left and right, and saw, rather curiously, that either side was flanked by the same stale gray lockers. She felt a rush of air behind her, and stumbled as she turned around to see the rows extend far beyond her line of sight. A slam behind her made her turn back around, followed more quickly by another, then another. Whatever was coming after her was gaining, and she suddenly found the presence of mind to not be around when it got there. She turned tail and ran, a short moment of clarity bringing her back to the conversation about the boy’s track record of running away. She found herself making a mental note to not begrudge them their tactical cowardice. A loud chorus of slamming metal brought her back to her present, as the sound and the unseeable fury behind her advanced at an inhuman pace. Locker after locker blurred past her until the walls were little more than a metallic haze as she ran as fast as she’d ever gone before. Daring a look past her, she found an extra burst of speed as she saw, almost felt the darkness on her shoulders. Whipping her head back around to the front as she pressed herself even harder, she stumbled over her feet as the ground in front of her came to a halt, with nothing beyond. Unable to repress her momentum, she all but threw herself over the edge, and found herself falling into the pitch. ------------ Waking up in a cold sweat, Indigo panicked as she didn’t recognize her immediate surroundings, flailing wildly until she was quickly reminded of the pain in her shoulder. The sharp stabbing in her collarbone brought her back to reality. She forced herself back to her lying position, cursing her childish nightmares and exaggerated reaction. Rubble noticed her flailing, not that it was hard to miss, and gave her a concerned look. “I’d ask if you were OK, but despite popular opinion, there is such thing as a stupid question. Bad dream?” “Bad wake,” she groaned. “How long was I out?” “Probably not long enough,” came a familiarly distressed voice from the other side of the computer desks. Raven poked her head up from under the table the monitors were set up on, her hair frazzled even beyond the presence of the bandage on her head. “I’ve been trying to get a grip on some of the more complex machinery here, and I think I know one or two of the bigger ones now. Like this radar looking thing? It counts localized telemetric signatures. Basically it counts how many people are in the room, alive or not.” “Please tell me you’re just bringing this up as an anecdote, and that number is still three,” Zap groaned, settling her shoulder back onto the pillow and scolding herself for jarring the injury. “Mostly, yes,” Inkwell said, climbing back into her chair. “It still says three, but at least now I can tell you if someone, or something, creeps in here without us having eyes on it.” Rubble shifted his leg around to face the row of computers, and to get a better angle to lie down. “So what’s the other doo-dad you figured out?” Inkwell poked a big metal case with a few buttons, dials, and a bright green display. “This thing. It looks like that EMF meter Treble broke. I think it’s basically a more powerful version. Unfortunately, this one I’m bringing up because it’s relevant. It’s been going crazy for the last few minutes, and I’ve been digging around under the table trying to see if I’ve got a loose wire or something. No such luck.” Zap rolled her eyes in the general direction of Raven’s voice. “In layman’s terms?” “Something’s happening,” Raven said sourly, “It’s been happening for the last few minutes. And since none of us has seen or heard anything beyond a bad dream-” “The guys,” Rubble breathed. “Something’s going down in the library.”