• Published 31st Aug 2017
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Delinquency - Daemon McRae



The Rainbooms aren't CHS's only defense against the supernatural. Unfortunately, the alternative spends more time hanging out in abandoned buildings and landing themselves in detention than is normal for any teenager. At least they enjoy their work.

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Act Six: Scripture

Act Six: Scripture

The legacy of Buried Bones is both erratic and terrifying. Born to the owner of a coffin-maker in the early twentieth century, he lived most of his childhood and teenage years much like anyone else would at the time. He went to school, he helped his father with his work, and he even made time for friends. Not an unattractive boy, he had an active social life, popular with some, not with others. Until the day in his senior year when, sent to the mortuary by his father to gather some measurements for a local whose family had shown little interest in the funeral proceedings, walked into a room full of dead people.

Then one of them sat up and talked to him. The conversation lasted exactly one hundred and twenty-nine seconds, during which Buried informed the deceased that he actually was, in fact, dead, and the harvest had been good this year. With that, the man’s corpse said, “Oh good. I was hoping to get a nice pumpkin,” immediately lay down and rest for eternity. Buried knew the time because, in his inability to look away from the talking corpse, also had a decent view of the clock on the wall. After some simple math, then a brief self-examination to ensure he had not hit his head on the way in and hallucinated the entire thing, immediately ran screaming out of the room.

He made it two blocks before he remembered nothing was chasing him. After explaining to a passerby that he thought he’d seen a coyote in the nearby graveyard, and apologizing for his composure, he took several deep breaths, returned to the morgue to take the measurements, then ran back to his father at speed. Bone Rattle’s exact words, upon hearing his son’s fantastical tale of necromantic jaw-flapping, were “It’s about time he realized something was wrong. If he asked me about Grape Vine’s harvest one more time I was going to kill him again.

At that point Buried Bones realized his family had indeed had a long and colorful history of dealing with the strange and unnatural in very weird ways. His father took up coffin-making because he was the only person in town who knew how to make coffins that kept their corpses in one place without requiring special orders of military-grade steel.

They did make one like that, anyway, but only because the man’s will included having his coffin thrown over the side of the Grand Canyon in the thing, and he didn’t want to scare some poor burro-riding schmuck by popping out of the box too early. He was a very considerate, if flamboyant, client. Especially after he died.

Buried Bones found that he, in particular, had a special disposition that only a few others in the Bones family had inherited: he was an absolute super magnet for the freaky and monstrous. Of course the zombie was his first, but once that particular cork was popped, his cup runneth over. The last few weeks of his senior year were rather stressful, although the timing was better than it could have been. He graduated salutatorian (the last month of zombie-talking had affected his finals), and received a generous scholarship to a college that he made sure was built rather far away from any and all graveyards in the county.

This college, unfortunately, seemed to be a front for an ancient pagan cult who were training their students to spread the word of their false god throughout the business world so they could siphon the country’s finances into an expedition to raise his sunken cairn from underneath a mountain. Buried Bones had successfully transferred to a slightly less prestigious university. As it happened, the cult had been unearthed and their college rendered defunct within the month. Bones did have his pride, after all.

After graduating with a six-year degree in World Religions with Special Focus in Demonology, Buried decided to travel the country, both in learning more about the world he’d had revealed to him over the last several years, and in an attempt to find the one place in the country where the only things that could talk were the humans and nothing teleported into his kitchen sink at dinnertime. He’d made a note to never, ever adopt a blink dog again.

Unfortunately, the Bones family had a particular talent for attracting trouble where there was previously none. Which is why, for a time, Canterlot became somewhat of a hotspot for the strange and unnerving. This didn’t stop Bones from finding a beautiful girl, falling in love, and starting a family. Of course, his bride-to-be had been a vampire hunter from Trottingham who had mistaken his genetically-inherited diminishing appearance for the gaunt expression of the undead.

They were married in a church, for obvious reasons.

The rest of his life was spent in Canterlot, where he made a valiant attempt at being a teacher at he local university, teaching history to anyone who could stay awake through his talking, which was just enough that the board of directors paid little attention to him right up to the day he died. In fact, upon hearing about his death from his wife and child, the Headmaster had little more to say than “I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up tomorrow anyway. Looking exactly the same.”

As part of his last will and testament, and a favor to his son, he had asked for all of his notes, writings, and research to be consolidated into one location for his family to use for the rest of its generations. Which is one of the only reasons Spooky’s mother didn’t burn and toss the lot. That and she’d never seen her son cry before or since. Of course, given the wild and unpredictable nature of Buried’s lifestyle, despite his decision to spend his whole life in one city, and the slow degeneration of his brain cells due to a long life of horrid visions and disturbing occurrences, plus the occasional scotch to forget the worst of it, had left the latest and most informed of his work scattered to the proverbial wind. Even after picking up every last scrap of paper he’d ever written on into one room, it was still an ocean of madness and bad handwriting.

Until now. Until Dust Devil stomped into the sitting room of Inkwell Manor, carrying the largest, densest book they’d ever seen, and dropped it into Spooky Bones’ lap with much to do.

At first, Bones had little to no reaction, as the book had been dropped upside down. With an inquisitive glance at his friend, who simply stared angrily at him, unmoving, he turned it over. It was a testament to the gravity of the situation that, even for him, he noticeably paled. Then grew a very uncharacteristic shade of red.

Indigo and Inkwell followed Treble, carrying the bag, into the room just as Spooks started talking. Immediately followed by Treble leaving the bag on the floor and walking out of the room.

That crazy-ass cunt-punching cocksocket! I swear to fucking CHRIST I will dig his ass out of the GROUND and USE HIS RIBS TO CARVE HIS GHOST A NEW ASSHOLE! MotherFUCKER!” Bones spat. There was much more after that, but it fell into the background as Spooks stormed out of the sitting room and into the foyer, wherein Treble immediately returned to the sitting room, and sat in a rather comfortable chair far from the entrance.

Dusty’s angered expression had been wiped clean, replaced by one of shock and awe. One that he shared with the majority of people in the room. Rubble’s eyebrows had disappeared so thoroughly into his hairline that they looked burned off. Twilight had hidden behind her largest machine and was closing her ears tightly, and Miss Inkwell, still within earshot of the rampaging teenager, had turned a stunning shade of vermilion that would have made an artist beam with inspiration. Indigo had merely quirked an eyebrow and watched him storm off, then returned her attention to the room, where the various stages of shock caught her attention. “I… take it he doesn’t usually talk that way?”

She didn’t get a response right away. There were a few beats of silence before Dusty Devil said, in a tone much like awe, “I didn’t know he knew how to USE most of those words. I mean, he’s dropped the f-bomb before, but that was...”

“So… does someone want to explain why this book is such a big deal?” Indigo asked, picking up the enormous tome from the ground, where it had since fallen to the wayside of Bones’ tirade.

Rubble gestured to her, and Indigo handed over the book. He took one look at it, and glared darkly. “You’re fucking kidding me.” Turning his attention to Dusty, he asked, “Is this piece of shit for real?”

Dusty nodded. “Raven gave it a once-over, and it looks legit. There’s a few notes in it that match the old man’s writing. I mean, we’ve all poured over it enough. I haven’t had a chance to give it a thorough read, obviously, but given the prodigy’s reaction, I imagine he believes as much as I do that it’s genuine.”

“That WHAT’S genuine?!” Indigo barked.

Treble strolled back over to the group, and looked over Rubble and Indigo’s shoulders. “That book, the Encyclopedia Unnatura, is by all appearances a complete and organized collection of all of Spooky Bones’ grandfather’s work. His notes, his writings, his research.”

“And?” Indigo pressed.

Treble gestured to the trunk full of texts, the scattered journals, and the second to largest tome in the room. “Seventy-five percent of what you see there? That’s all in this one book. We have been using this… cesspool of scattered knowledge and flying by the seat of our pants for months, MONTHS, and less than ten miles away there was a single freaking text with every answer we had to find of our own volition and sweat and blood.” His temper was starting to rise, now. “I don’t know what ties this family has to the Bones, but it’s enough to keep one of the most important and comprehensive sources of supernatural knowledge we’ve ever heard of gathering dust on a shelf while people bleed in the streets because we couldn’t find an answer fast enough.”

Raven took a few wide strides across the room, and laid a comforting hand on Treble’s shoulder. “Look, as much as I wish I knew what was going on here, both with your friends and in this house, I DO know that there are answers. And none of us are going to find any of them by throwing bitch-fits and staring at unopened books. If this… Encyclopedia has the information you say it does, then it’s our best starting point for digging out whatever skeletons my family left in the closets to rot. So, as your elder, I offer my condolences, but as your employer, GET TO WORK.”

The group nodded in somewhat unison, as Indigo got up to coax Twilight out of her hiding spot, and Dusty fetched a slowly quieting Spooky out of the foyer. A few soothing words and stern employer-to-employee lectures alter, everyone had a book in front of them. Spooks, of course, was pouring over his grandfather’s work with an almost unnatural scowl, growling audibly at anyone who disturbed him. Treble had taken over reading the old master text, trying to find some reference to the family. Twilight had recruited Miss Inkwell and Indigo to manage the computers, explaining the functions of some of the more common devices, and the simpler ones she had invented herself, tasking them with divvying up the portable pieces among those present, so they could gather readings when they went back out to investigate.

Dusty and Rubble had retreated to a corner of the room with a stack of texts Buried Bones hadn’t had a hand in writing, mostly as an excuse to stay away from the angry little wraith in the high-back chair in the middle of the room. Someone had offered to move the chair to a more comfortable, ergonomic location, and he had tried to swing the book at them.

“Well,” Twilight said, after some uncomfortable silence. A few faces turned to look at her. “If it helps, I have some readings from the rest of the house, and from the… contact earlier.” A few more faces. The only one not looking at her, even side-eyed, was Spooks. “It seems that, while the doors and windows aren’t going anywhere, they are giving off interesting energy. Now, there’s a common belief that drastic temperature drops in supposedly haunted locations, also known as cold spots, are actually the local spirit or force drawing energy from the environment to manifest.”

A couple of the guys nodded, while Raven looked on with genuine interest. Indigo had checked out halfway through. “Yeah,” Treble replied. “That’s… ok, not common knowledge, but we’ve heard that theory a few times. What about it?”

“The doors and windows, like I said, are giving off an energy signature,” Sparkle continued. “Must be whatever the… entity is using to hold them closed. Now, that energy has to come from somewhere, so I decided to check the temperatures as far as my instruments can reach. And it seems that there are a few cold spots in the house, places where the building is drawing power, it seems.”

“Ok, now you have my attention,” Rubble said. “Are you saying we have like, actual targets?”

“Kind of. It’s not like they’re tiny little spots that you can just pick up and move around. One of them is the middle third of the courtyard. One of them is a large portion of the library, close to the door on the left side,” Twilight explained.

“And the third?” Treble asked.

Twilight pointed a finger at the center of the room. “Right there.”

Of course, the center of the room was where Spooks was sitting, seething in literary rage. After a few moment’s silence, he bothered to look up, seeing the majority of the others staring right at him. “Ok, what?”

Dusty walked into his line of sight. “You, out of the chair. Put the book down, walk around.”

“Why?” Spooks growled.

“Because apparently the ghost thinks you’re in his spot,” DD answered.

Rolling his eyes, Bones slammed the book closed, picked it up with a grunt of effort, and stomped over to another couch, near the window. Not waiting for an OK, he sat down and went right back to reading.

“...and?” Dusty asked Twilight, turning to look at her.

“Still cold. It’s not him. And it’s… kind of in the floor. I think there’s another room underneath this one. And whatever it is seems to be important to whatever wants to keep us around,” Sparkle added, punctuating her sentence with a flourish of keystrokes. “Yeah, there’s a hollow space underneath the floor. Although the blueprints don’t show anything.”

Raven quirked an eyebrow. “You have the house’s blueprints?”

Twilight smiled. “I have a lot more than that. Miss Spring Break ‘05.”

Raven Inkwell seemed to be a master of that particular shade of vermilion.

Author's Note:

I have a Patreon. Wink wink nudge nudge.

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