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August Mini Event - House Calls

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This Place is Not a Place of Honor

“The house does not just come up out of the ground, it has roots, but not that kind, roots to its surroundings and its past as another form. As with our skin and our DNA it came from a past that will always be embedded into it.”
-Tori Hamatani, “Body-House Analogy”

Janine and Thacker Treadwell were not among the first to come to Marrow Island, but they were early enough to be established when the island’s weirdness made itself known. Janine had come with her parents as a young woman, her father looking for suitable matches for his quiet, thoughtful daughter. Thacker had arrived on his own, a young man seeking his fortune. They met, fell in love, and built a home together, as so many couples did. They had children, Elva and Kip. And, also like many families around them, they suffered and died as the curse of Marrow Island settled in around Pumpkin Hollow like a heavy fog.

This story both is and isn’t about them.

Really, it’s about their house, the last one on the end of its tucked away street, which sits somehow looking like the stray dog in a shelter that has given up completely. Paint on the outside has faded from a daring peacock blue to a washed-too-many-times denim, with pied patches of mold and shutters hanging haphazardly off a few of the windows. The once-vivid garden tended by Janine became an overgrown tangle. It was, in a word, a mess.

Children, however, love a mess, and when teenagers discovered the house hidden behind foliage during flood cleanup in the springtime, several made a point of sneaking in to see what was inside. It wasn’t particularly hard to get in.

The trouble was that the house didn’t want to let them go.

And so notices have been posted on the bulletin board, helpfully warning people not to go inside, and asking people to go inside. Or rather, asking adventurers to go inside. They’re not really people, are they? Death will not stop them from continuing to live and to adventure, will it?

No Highly-Esteemed Deed is Commemorated Here

While those who choose to enter have been warned of the possibility of a ghost, the only haunt happening here is a house that was loved dearly, one whose walls sang with laughter until it did not. Janine was not a mage in the formal sense, but she practiced Practical Magic in her kitchen, where recipe cards for potions are in the same box as recipes for sticky buns and cabbage soup with goat broth. It is perhaps her little hearth workings that began to seep into the foundation of the house, awakening it and making it such a protective and lively home.

Thacker, meanwhile, was no mage, but a woodcarver. His work is throughout the entire house, from a rocking horse in the sitting room to the banisters on the staircase being carved with nature motifs like pinecones and acorns. The house has some control of these; the horse might rock itself, making creaking sounds one can hear down a hallway. A door might slam itself, leading to a loud noise.

As for the children, they were eleven and seven, when they died. Elva was a voracious reader and an avid artist. A sickly child from the beginning, most of her time was spent at home. Art supplies litter her room, but they also spill out into the common areas; be careful you don’t step on stray pencils and fall. Kip, meanwhile, was adventurous and bold. One of Elva’s drawings shows them with a cast and crutches. They had collections of shiny rocks and colorful feathers and other childhood treasures aplenty.

Nothing Valued is Here

The layout of the house is simple. Sitting room, kitchen, parlor and a half-bathroom on the first floor. Upstairs, there’s a master bedroom, one bedroom for each child and two full bathrooms. This space is open for exploration–though that certainly doesn’t mean it’s entirely safe.

Do not concern yourself with being accurate to the other threads that take place in the house. If there are differences, perhaps part of it is that the house itself struggles to remember exactly how it was, when it was a home; exactly who its people were, when it had a family. Please do not feel like you need to reach out for every detail to accurately run your own threads. This is a sandbox.

The house is both mad at people intruding and looking at the wreckage of what-once-was and incredibly lonely, desperate not to be left alone and empty again. This leads to conflicting behaviors, where it might seem to attack or attempt to frighten those exploring, but also prevent them from leaving. While it cannot speak in words directly, it can do things like:

Manifest hot/cold spots
Create phantom smells, both pleasant (baked goods, flowers) and unpleasant (mildew, meat)
Control doors, windows, and anything inside that is carved from wood (many of which will create sounds like slams or creaks)
Light candles that were left in the rooms

The basement and attic are areas specifically to be explored in threads directly with the house, and will have a few extra interesting frights and goodies to discover. I will only do one thread per player with the house at a time. If you want to toss multiple characters off it, you'll need to finish the first thread before you start the second, for my sanity and bandwidth. I am also setting a loose endpoint of September 9th for starting any new threads with the house.

[ This month's mini event is brought to you by the lovely and incredibly talented Solstice! For any questions, clarifications, or words of enthusiasm, we'll leave the floor open for them. Thank you for putting this together! 🎃🧡 ]

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The garden hasn't been cut down in the least. The trails teens picked through to get to an open window on one side are not made for grown adults; the plants are the first thing that needs to dealt with for most people to get inside.

There is something about the house which pulls Martin to it. He's not sure why, he's never been anywhere close to what one might call an "adventurer," but when he sees the announcement, off he goes to check it out.

As soon as he's standing in front of it, though, he knows. He can feel it. This place echoes with the same hollow ache as his own chest.

Good thing Jon is at sea right now.

It takes ages to work his way through the plants, not really equipped for gardening and certainly much too big for the smaller trails. But with some patience and some careless stumbling here and there, Martin approaches the front door.

Does the handle turn?

The handle does not turn. It is cool to the touch despite summer's light being on the metal most of the day. There is a sensation of being Noticed. It's not quite Eye-level Watching, but the same wary look of a dog in the pound whose kennel you're outside.

Martin already has a penchant for talking to objects like they're people. His roller coaster relationship with tape recorders going from funny little friends to nosy menaces was one to behold. So him talking to the house is as natural as it is silly. "Oh, come on now," he mutters. "How has no one unlocked you yet? Ugh. Well you're not going to be rid of me so easily, I just..." He looks back out at the garden in disdain. "Well, I'm going to need a break."

Huffing out a sigh, he leans on the door and slides down onto the porch. "You were a pretty old thing back in the day, weren't you? Reminds me of my nan's place."

A little further down the porch, there's a creaking sound, from a rocking chair that's mostly covered in vines. It could be an invitation, or a request, or both at once. But that's all the response to his words.

Martin's attention snaps to the source of the sound. Oh hey, that looks pretty sturdy for its age. Martin pulls himself up with a groan and goes to check out the chair. It's still in decent shape, not threatening to break into splinters when he tests it, so... he sits down, and lets out a content sigh. "All I need now's a cup of tea and a book," he jokes. "Could probably sit here for hours. I wonder why no one's repurposed this place? ...Well. I guess that'd be the ghost, wouldn't it? But it's a haunted island, so."

For a while, he just... sits and rocks. Drinking in the lonely atmosphere and the silence. But eventually, he pats the arm of the chair and makes a move to rise. "Let's see about a back door, shall we? Not gonna get me climbing through windows if I don't have to."

The chair tilts backwards right as he tries to stand, like it's trying to keep him seated. It squeaks against the patio's surface, a silent moaning complaint.

"Woah!" Martin topples back into the rocking chair. "What the hell? Are you---"

Martin looks puzzled, staring down at the porch. The movie "Monster House" springs to mind--- a kids' film, set in America, about a house that was not haunted, but in fact possessed, so that the building itself became a body for the spirit within. Surely that's a bit too on the nose, though, isn't it?

He gets up anyway, but with some struggle. Whatever is going on, something in this house speaks to loneliness, and Martin is determined to find it. First he tries following the narrow path around the side, but when he has to continue on, it's another stumbling wrestling match with overgrowth. Eventually, though, he does find the back.

The back of the house is as poorly-tended as the front. There is a back door--it's also locked, but it looks less sturdy than the front door. There's also a doggy door in the bottom of the back door, but that won't fit Martin, even if he holds his breath.

Hmm. Breaking down a door sounds like a really good way to piss off a ghost. But he's far too big for the doggy door and far too clumsy for the window. Maybe he can just... throw his weight into it and only break it a little?

Martin backs up a few steps, then tries to do exactly that.

The door completely collapses when he crashes into it, the sound loudly echoing down the corridors of the house. The silence has been broken. The door has been broken. There is no scream of pain, no complaint audible to human ears at the damage to door and frame, but the atmosphere has gone from calm, undisturbed to something else.

"Sshhhhit oh no," Martin despairs. "Oh that was so stupid. Oh my god. I'm an idiot. Okay, ahhh..."

There is a feeble attempt made to right the door as guilt pools in Martin's stomach. He's not even really sure why. No one even lives here. Part of it certainly is that he is a person who struggles with guilt very much, having lived the life that he has. Just another blunder on the endless list of Martin Blackwood's ill-conceived ideas. But there's something else to it, anxiety pooling in his gut like someone is going to yell at him. Or worse.

"Ooooh no no no, I didn't mean to--- I didn't think it would---" There is nothing that can be done for the door. He sets it aside, fretting, staring at the darkened interior of the house and trying to decide how to proceed.

All the other doors in the house suddenly slam shut, a cacophonous banging sound that echoes down the hallways. It sounds almost like an admonishment. But even with the doors closed, the hallways of the house stretch eagerly before him.

Admonishment is not something that Martin handles well, even if he doesn't completely understand that's what it is. He wrings his hands, but carefully steps inside. With the door broken, he supposes that at least there's no way to trap him here.

"Ah--- Hello?" Martin makes his way in slowly, watching every step carefully. "I'm--- sorry about the door. I really didn't mean to break anything, I just wanted to come in! If you're, um. Listening." The uneasiness is eating him alive. "Listen, I came because I want to help! Whoever you are, I can feel how lonely you are. That's- that's what I do, that's what I am. I felt it, and I came to help. Will you... let me try, at least?"

I can feel how lonely you are. It could sound like a platitude, in someone else's mouth, but somehow Martin is believable when he states that outright, so simply. Down at the very end of the hallway on the first floor, in the depths of the dark abode, a door creaks open.

The sound is not entirely unlike the plaintive mewl of an abandoned kitten.

There's an immediate wave of relief when the door opens. Maybe it's a trap, but... Martin has the distinct feeling that it's not.

At least, he hopes it's not.

Tentative, Martin makes his way to the open door, seeing himself in. What could be behind door number one?

Shen Qingqiu is a cultivator, and cultivators know -- well, not to be too trite about it, but they know how to read vibes. He puts his hand upon the listing gate, surveying the garden path, and sighs quietly.

"You seem so sad, grandmother," he says softly. "Is there no way to relieve your pain?"

A cold silence is the only response to his words. Not even the rustling of leaves answers him, as if something is holding its breath and waiting to see what he does. And perhaps it is exactly that.

He cups his hands, bowing deeply. "In that case, I will beg your pardon if I should make any mistakes." He puts his hand on the gate and opens it, carefully picking his way down the weed-choked garden path. His hem and sleeves trail slowly behind him, seeming almost to float on the air; they do not snag, no matter how thickly the garden presses in.

And the garden does press, hedges seeming to grow until they almost dwarf him. Branches almost seem to drown out the light of the sun. It almost gives the illusion of being swallowed.

Shen Qingqiu gives no outward sign that this might bother him, continuing to press ahead. "Did your family enjoy gardening?" he gently asks the house. "Did their children once play here? It must be saddening, to work so hard to grow all these greenery and then to have no one to appreciate it."

The breeze brushes against the bushes, allowing a peek at a deflated ball with leather panels that might once have been red, but now seem a sickly scab color. And further down the way, there's a peek at a floppy grey mass that might once have been a handmade stuffed animal.

Yes, yes, children once played here.

Shen Qingqiu shakes his head with a woeful sigh. "How sad," he murmurs. "How very, very sad...you must miss them terribly, poor thing..."

He gathers his skirts close around his legs and moves on, still making for the house.

The house waits patiently for him, though he'll still need to decide on an entry route. Locked front door? Window? Back door? Shimmy down the chimney like Santa?

Will the front door stay locked, he wonders, if he walks up to it and politely knocks? Let's try it and find out. He does not want to present himself as an invader, but as a courteous guest, here to offer whatever assistance he can.

Well, the call had been made to adventurers. For whatever Laios was still worth as one, he might as well check it out, right?

It's in the dimming light of the evening that Laios finally arrives at the overgrown yard, and with a heavy backpack in tow, he carefully opens the gate. He eyes everything with a keen interest. Maybe, after all his time in the dungeon, he's gained a soft-spot for places so clearly left behind by the people who lived in them. He wanders the yard with care, his broad hunting knife carefully used to cut a path just wide enough for him to wade through.

He's thankful those teens left that path, or else he may not have even noticed the window. He hums thoughtfully, eyeing the opening warily.

"...Man, can I even get in there like this?" He sighs, prattling to himself as he's so prone to when in thought, stowing that knife away on his hip once more. He shuffles off his backpack, and with a bit of reaching up, hefts it into that open window, patting the house's siding gently. "Can you hold that for me for a minute? I just gotta figure out what I'm doing here."

There is a soft creak as the window sinks down just a couple inches and then stops. Yes, holding it for a minute, though perhaps it'll come down on him when he's halfway inside. Wouldn't that be an indignity for him to suffer?

Rue isn't exactly an Adventurer, but she is two things:
A) bored out of her mind, and
B) incredibly curious.
Which is really all the requirements for adventuring covered.

So here she is, humming under her breath to sooth herself and anything that might be listening, and picking her way ever so carefully through the garden attempting not to crush any plants on her way to the front door. She's small enough that the already beaten paths might be serviceable, but she doesn't want to sneak in through a window. That feels rude.

If the plants pose no threat bar the time consuming obstacle, she'll knock politely on the door.

There is no answer to her knock, at least not an answer that a normal sentient being would have to that action. Everything is still. Everything is silent. Even the birds hold back their song expectantly.

Ohh the birds have gone quiet, that's not a good sign. This was a bad idea, wasn't it? It's too late to turn back now. Probably. That's what Rue's telling herself anyway.

"Um, hi," she says to the door and by extension the house, as if that's entirely normal, "There's been warnings put up about you, and I thought, maybe I could help? Maybe there's something that can be fixed to make things less dangerous, and then you wont be disturbed as much. Or you could have more visitors if that's what you want!"

She frowns, this is getting away from her a bit and she hasn't even gotten inside yet.

"Anyway, um, I'm gonna try to open the door now, and it would be great if that worked. 'Cause I'm gonna have to go through a window if it doesn't, and I don't think either of us is gonna enjoy that"

She counts four beats softly against her thigh, and tries the door just as she said.

She is a later arrival, after others have broken through the plants and the windows and whatever else there might be. Perhaps she shouldn't be here at all, having been out for a long walk in the autumn air. But also, perhaps something in her very soul drew her to the house. Her cane taps to give her a sense of the way, and by the time she stands inside, something in it is aching familiar.

Like the Manor, but not. Something that rejects, but envelops. It might not be safe in the slightest, but she wants to press on. It's her own choice, after all, and laying her hand on the banister as she starts up, her thumb strokes over the carvings there, tracing shapes. Someone poured theirself into the house, she can tell. Someone who thought of the little details.

Her thumb catches on the fang of a fox carved into the wood, almost-but-not-quite sharp enough to claim a taste of her blood. There's a lingering musty odor--not rot, not mold, but the way the dwarves' house in the animated Snow White must have smelled before some little princess took over with her friendly woodland creatures. The floors have that wear wood gets over time when people step in the same places in the same way over and over and over and over and over and over again.

She has to check her thumb - no cut, not really, but very close. Some lingering sharp edge here, in this place that feels like it's been locked up for ages. No sunshine, she thinks, no open curtains. But up she goes all the same. This house was once lived in, but where did they go, once they left? Are they buried in the graveyard with the others?

Questions to have, as she keeps on going up, letting impulse guide her as she drifts into a bedroom. Her hand rests on the wall at points, and she traces it, trying to see if she can make her way to a window. Light, air - how long has it been, since this place felt it? Feeling the frame, she finds a latch, but it's stubborn.

Come on. Just a little nudge. It's for your own good.

The window opens, but the frame squeaks a complaint the whole way up. Lubricant would have been nice, but Helena's likely to struggle finding it if such a thing is here. Still, air. It bothers the dust that's gone undisturbed for a While.

The dust picks up, and she sneezes, but then breathes in the fresh air. She'll fix it later, but for now, the room can feel it too, outside air. It cannot chase away the neglect and way that everything is at present, but it's a change, and she lays a hand on the bed before she leaves to feel the cover. She has to be careful, nearly completely falling on a pencil under her heel and having to catch herself on the wall.

The next door, stuck but yielding to pushing - and she remembers someone distantly telling her once that wood swells when the weather changes, so that's why doors stick - stairs that creak when she walks up. And a change in the sound, and it tells her she's made it to the attic, when it opens up. Dusty up here, too - she can practically smell it.

Watson pushes some of the bushes away, experimentally, with his cane.

Foolish to be here. He's bound to get himself in trouble. And yet, where else would he be? He's spent far too much of his life chasing after mysteries to not chase this one too. Anyway, he might not go in. He might just go have a peek. Surely that's allowed.

The thick branches and vines serve as a literal stumbling block, complicating his path to the door, but not forbidding it completely. Perhaps in the springtime it had flowered, this once-a-front-lawn with once-a-garden. There's patches of plants similar to one another that suggest that idea.

It must have been lovely, once. Watson thinks he can see that, still, or at least the remnants of it. How quickly that order falls apart.

He picks his way across the lawn carefully, making his way to the house itself. He tries to keep an eye out for footprints other than his own, though whether he ought to expect any is something he can't answer.

John is, I am now declaring, not the first to explore the house. There are footprints, both from the teenagers who had been here before and other player characters. Mud tracked in mindlessly, people giving the abandoned locale the consideration they see it as deserving.

Ah, the other extreme of footprints: too many to be useful. He knows about that.

Watson peers carefully into the window, shading against the glare of light on the glass. Does he feel silly? Yes, a little bit. Is this the first time he's crept around in bushes looking for mysterious things as a grown man? Not remotely.

For all his height, Jeff's roughly teenage shaped, so he's definitely just going to try and use the already existing, adolescent-sized path to the window. Why do more work than he has to?

Besides, he's used to sneaking into abandoned buildings, so how hard could this be?

It's a long time by the time he makes here, after many others. If asked why he bothered, he'd say something about wanting to keep tabs on the going-ons of the island as a community leader. Truthfully, it is something like that, but there are others. Vague ideas of spirituality, notions of care. Plain old curiosity.

He shows up on the front path in plain clothes and a satchel. He stands there, then leaves.

He comes back an hour later, nothing visibly different, though he eyes the path through the plants that's been cleaved by the adults before him. Walking forward, he stops again when he places a foot on the porch.

He's not usually that superstitious in this sense, but he knows the invisible prickle of being watched by Something Besides. They say this place is haunted. The whole island is haunted. It's hardly superstition at this point.

"Hello," he greets. "I've come to see you. May I come in?"

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August Mini Event - House Calls

THREADS DIRECTLY WITH THE HOUSE

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i'm laaaate

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