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Post by 0 on Feb 27, 2017 11:54:07 GMT
Doppler watched as she snatched up the night goggles, and although he could agree with her statement on the goggles being easier than a flashlight, he also knew what batteries they took, and just how fast they went through them -- besides, he liked the spooks that came with using a flashlight...in his mind, if anything, flashlights drew out the bold ghosts (though, quite possibly did scare away the more timid ones), and those were the sorts of ghosts that he would be more likely to catch evidence of!
He didn't exactly want to burst her bubble either, however; hopefully she would figure it out on her own, anyhow.
Sure, it was his stuff, but he also wasn't her babysitter!
Doppler nodded as he listened to Arden, double-checking all the equipment on him to make sure it all worked.
Seemed just dandy, and so, in haste, after switching his flashlight back on and hooking it to his belt (sending a beam of light wobbling halfway between ground and sky), he grabbed another camera and its stand, along with a microphone, and followed after Arden.
"Aye," he said, grinning, entering through the door after Arden had opened it, pulling the dopey doberman alongside him.
It was very dark inside, his flashlight barely lighting up what appeared to be a long, wide hallway at the end of an equally large, tall-roofed foyer.
He skirted along the front wall over to a corner, where he set down the camera, plugging in the microphone and setting it to the top of the camera.
Grabbing the flashlight back up and hitting the record button all in one go, he returned to Arden's side.
He shined the light around, mostly for himself, seeing as how Arden was still donning the goggles.
The foyer was definitely big, but almost entirely empty.
It went on for quite a long ways, the ceiling dropping and melding perfectly into the long hallway, his flashlight's beam not even casting across any walls but for what were to either side of them; two more similar, though slightly narrower, hallways led off each of the remaining two side walls.
There was a tall, old desk immediately to the left, whereupon swinging around it, he found nothing but a couple dry ink pens; there were no drawers and nothing underneath it that he could see.
There wasn't even a chair.
For shame.
Besides the hallways, all that was left within the immediate vicinity was a wooden door just past one of the side hallways, which, upon approach, he could see had some tinted windows pushed into the inner confines of that hallway, including a slot where, presumably, things were once exchanged between staff, students, and visitors.
He tried to peep through that little hole, which held a countertop on either side of it, and could see some papers within, just out of his stubby child's arm's reach.
Moving closer to the door, he paused to check around for Arden's position, shining the flashlight around in search for her.
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Post by Nivei on Feb 28, 2017 10:52:59 GMT
Arden was still kind of trying to figure out how to operate the goggles, as she was pretty horrible with technology, and ended up deciding to push them up on her forehead rather than keep fiddling with them. Sure, she'd have to use a flashlight, but they were still a killer fashion statement. She flicked on the light she had grabbed, one of the smaller ones, since she could see passably in the dark and wanted her eyes to be adjusted well enough so see okay in the shadows. She saw that Doppler went to investigate the door and looked down one of the hallways. There wasn't anything immediately interesting, so she went to see what was down the other hallway, which looked basically the same, but this time she headed inwards.
She tried the first door she came to and it opened with a creak. She looked in and immediately sneezed, since her use of the door had kicked up some dust. It was just a generic classroom, though it was in a state of disarray. Time had caused some of the desks to become quite rusty, and when she poked at one, a screw stopped working right and the table part leaned forwards. "Huh." she said, moving on to the teacher's desk. There was a decrepit stapler with no staples and some chalk in one drawer and a pad of rotted paper in another, but nothing of note. This deak did have a chair (and a pretty nice one) that she couldn't resist sitting in, but it was weak and one of the legs snapped off. She was back on her feet in a flash and caugh the chair before it could tip far enough to make a loud sound. She leaned ot against the desk and picked up the fallen leg.
There wasn't anything wrong with the leg iself - the wood had lasted pretty well - but the pieces attaching it to the chair's set had probably been cheaper wood and un treated and had given out. she grabbed the foot and found that it made a pretty nice club. She'd actually be using it as a poking stick, but hey. It was pretty well balanced for a chair leg.
She walked over to the file cabinet in the coner and pulled at the drawer, which didn't really want to open. She managed to pull it out away from the wall and used the chair leg to give her mote leverage pushing on the back of the drawer. It opened a bit, and she shined her flashlight inside. There wasn't much in there, but a couple of files looked to be in the back and she slipped jer arm in to pull them forward. They appeared innocuous, just old lesson plans. They had been spared some of the ravages of time because the metal drawer had protected them, and she was able to read some passages. They'd been reading and doing some math apparently, but nothing too crazy, and she got to work on the other drawers, which came up empty.
Done with this classroom, she headed back into the hall, sort of fiddling worh the chair leg. It was actually kind of fancy, there was some nice curving action going on, and someone had at some point painted on some nature stuff. Arden had noticed different patterns on the different parts of the chairs, and she guessed it had been seasonally themed, since this one was all wintery. "Must have been an artsy teacher..." she muttered, remembering that there had definitely been art mentioned in the lesson plans. Actually, come to think of it, the pad of paper had been square and looked vaguely like the kind meant for origami. "Yeah, definitely." she said, again to herself, and wrote it down in her notebook thing she'd picked up earlier.
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Post by 0 on Mar 1, 2017 1:35:02 GMT
A beam met his own, Arden having apparently given up on the goggles for the moment.
She moved down a hallway, and Doppler nodded, moving to jiggle the doorknob.
Yeah, splitting up always went well in the beginning in fiction...wait -- so, did that mean, NOW it was going to go bad?
...Neh.
After some clicking and rattling, he finally figured out that the door opened going OUT, not INwards, and so, it slid open into the hallway.
Slipping inside, the door slowly began to close on its own, as school doors so often did back in the good ol' days.
Shining the light around, he found that this was clearly the main office; of course it was...made sense.
Those one itchy-cushioned school chairs lined up along one wall, opposite a big desk across from them, with a door to the left, a door behind the desk, and the windows to the right.
A stool sat there beside the counter behind the glass, which, from this side, didn't seem as dark as they had in the hallway.
He always wondered how those windows worked; used to think it had something to do with lighting, but apparently these windows weren't exactly the two-mirror sort.
More the automobile kind, is all he could suppose to compare it to.
And there lay the papers; nothing but check-ins and check-outs.
Shouldn't this have been reserved for the security desk -- y'know, the one he'd skimmed, right by the front doors?
Ah, whatever.
There were a couple pages of name there, in addition to a specific date on top, which he quickly memorized.
He didn't want to carry the clipboard around with him, but, at least, if they ended up having to backtrack to it, then it was an easy spot to find again -- well, assuming the inside of the school wasn't an impossible maze, of course.
"Nineteen ninety-nine...three...three...," he mumbled, locking the date away in his short-term memory --or long-term--who knows how ya tell that past the passage of time.
Either way, it was a pretty easy date to remember: three times three equals nine!
And the current year is...well, not that.
He had to offer a sigh, however; if this was the last date the school was operational in some manner or other, then it was too bad that the date wasn't a thirteenth Friday.
Woulda been cool and spooky....
Doppler moved back over to the big desk opposite the line of chairs.
It was almost like a roll-top desk, in that it had a big hole in the front -- part of the counter -- with a slight overhang up top...but no actual rolling, or any fancy design work at all.
There was only a couple drawers, both of which had already not only been slid open, but fully removed and set on top of the desk.
Odd, but made things easier on him; there were places for locks on the drawers, and that could have been a problem.
Or not...as he peered in at the papers inside, flipping through scattered piles of files, he found nothing but boring, Boring, BORING office stuff that, somehow, he understood even less than the medical papers from before.
Doppler gave up on those and went to one of the doors instead -- the ones immediately behind the desk.
Nothing but an innocuous wooden door, and boy-howdy, was it LOCKED!
Probably just the principle's office anyways -- what could possibly be of interest in there?
...
...
(permanent records)
He made a mental note as he returned to the other door, which, alas, was also locked.
But this one had a window!
He cupped his hands around his face, shining the light as he peered in, before shifting the beam away when he found it only gave an overwhelmingly distracting reflection of his partially pudgy faux-preteen child's face.
Nurse's room.
He wondered if it would be as shifty as the medical center -- probably even more so, being that the subjected VICTIMS would be mere, dumb, helpless students.
Come to think of-- he had no idea if this school was an elementary, middle, high, or what.
Could be a mix; from what he'd seen before, it was a pretty big school just on the ground floor, but it even had a second floor.
Coulda been fairly oversized, considering how small the town must have been at the time...and still technically was, least in the immediate area.
Recalling Arden's own moves with the stairway door at the medical center, Doppler moved to pick up a chair; to him, it was heavy, but to someone of Arden's size and apparent strength?
Probably be a piece of cake.
Huffing, he began swinging the chair at the window, which immediately bounced off, hit him the schnoz, and sent him spinning to the floor, head buzzing and eyes tingling from the impact to his skull.
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Post by Nivei on Mar 1, 2017 11:05:57 GMT
Arden heard a sort of thunk-crash sound and ran towards it's source. She hadn't found anything of much interest, just lesson plans and such, though she was quite fond of her chair leg, so she wasn't really upset by the interruption. She was pretty surprised to see an injured Doppler and a chair, but managed to guess what had happened.
"Did... did you swing a chair at the window?!" she exclaimed.
After about 5 seconds of concern, she broke out in a grin and wiped away a fake tear. "I'm so proud!" She giggled and helped him stand, giving him a pat on the back before turning and inspecting the window. There was a hairline crack, which was actually kind of impressive. That chair was like the same size as Doppler, and relatively nice chairs like that were heavier than whatever she'd picked up in the hospital. Or usually anyway.
In any case, this was clearly an opportunity to use her new weapon... Though she was a but worried it might break actually. She tried lifting the chair Doppler had been wielding, and it wasn't really a convenient weight, but she managed to sort of hook it around herself so she could just run at the door.
"Well you made a damn good effort for sure! Tip for the future: Don't try to swing something so heavy when it can be a battering ram!" Her face was half-lit by the flashlight she had set on a desk and her smile looked a bit creepy in the lighting. It would have looked a bit manic even without the dramatic shadows, actually, but in this lighting it looked a bit skeletal, if skeletons could look even the slightest bot freindly.
She ran at the window and missed once, breaking off a bot of the chair, but the second time she hit it straight on. It was a fairly sturdy glass panel, as schools usually have, but the glass was barely held together and easily finished off with her trusty chair leg.
"Would you like to do the honors? ... Actually wait lemme look at your nose and make sure it isn't broken." She didn't want to shine a full flashlight in his face, so the penlight returned to play.
"Dang, really did a number on you. I've never broken my nose, but i did manage to fracture my cheek bone once and that hurt like the dickens. You okay?" It hadn't been a bad fracture, but she'd read a bunch of medical pamphlets since the stupid place had basically no other reading materials.
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Post by 0 on Mar 1, 2017 12:28:52 GMT
Doppler was mildly surprised to see Arden come spinning into the office, swinging 'round a flashlight and what looked like a...club?
He might have made a yelp of surprise, were he not preoccupied with rubbing his entire face and squinting in pain.
The boy nodded sarcastically at Arden's bespoken pride; this certainly wasn't his own proudest moment.
Rubbing his schnoz, Arden helped him stand back up, then slammed her palm into his back, the boy's eyes widening and a strained squeak escaping from his lips.
GODDAMNITWOMAN.
He took a few steps as he watched her look between chair and door, only able to guess at what would-- a battering ram.
He blinked and watched her go, maniacal grin completing the picture as she slammed both chair and herself into the door, the child himself wincing upon sight of first impact.
After his meeting with the floor, DAMN did he feel that; unknowingly, he rubbed at his own shoulder, as though he were the one doing the action.
Second bam and the glass cracked with quite the audible sound, before she lifted her club and tapped it against the window, the shattered remains soon scattering between both rooms; Doppler lifted a barely-pumping fist in victory.
He waited momentarily as Arden came back over to examine his nose, lowering his hand to look at that instead.
Luckily enough, no blood; just a bit of mucus that had been expelled upon his impact with the ground.
Fuck-- did she see that?
He quickly wiped off his hand on his shirt, turning in a not-so-surreptitious way to do the same with his nose.
"Itsnvine," he said, turning back around, brow furrowed at the sound of his voice.
He hoped it wasn't going to sound like that the rest of their search through the school.
"Pobly jsutz bruryséd."
Doppler walked over to the window, staring up at it.
Standing on his toes, he tried to reach through, hand scrambling around for the doorknob, while trying to keep his arm clear of any stray pieces of glass.
Aha--...!
There was a click, Doppler removing his hand and pushing the door open, waving his hand and bowing his head in a dramatic flourish.
Thank you, prepubescent growth spurts!
He would wait to allow Arden the first step in, before following after her.
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Post by Nivei on Mar 3, 2017 8:28:50 GMT
"Alright, if you say so dude." Arden entered the nurse's office and poked around, partially looking to see of there was anything to help a bruised nose (hey, she'd injured herself plenty of times. She would deny that her recklessness was the cause but we all know the truth lol). There wasn't really, since, well, ice packs don't work after years left in a non-freezing place. Still, the room was interesting.
There wasn't anything particularly incriminating at first glance, and the most creepy thing was the needles. Arden wasn't terrified of needles but they were sharp and dangerous if used properly, so she swept the loose ones carefully into an empty drawer before she accidentally stabbed herself or something. She was pretty prone to that kind of accident. There were some basic school physicals and immunization forms in the desk, but they seemed innocuous (drat) so she left them alone.
Not that she believed anyone would leave that kind of stuff out in the open. So, she started knocking on the desk and drawers to see if there were any hidden areas or something cool like that. "You find anything over there?" She asked Doppler. "There's nothing over here unless I can find a hidden compartment, and a way to open it..." she heard a slightly more hollow area towards the top of the desk but couldn't find any triggers, and it might have been a fluke, but she figured she'd keep looking.
It was a bit drafty in the room, and she looked up. There were actually windows in this room! Well, actually only one. It was open and she wondered if the needles had been out because addicts had slipped in and used them. She was now much gladder she'd slipped them into a drawer rather than leaving them out. At the very least she would have gotten weird drugs in her system, and used needles could have some truly nasty dieseases on them. She shivered, and not from the cold. One of her classmates had gotten really sick and died from a dangerous habit like that. They hadn't been freinds, but she'd sent a card.
As she said, 'When people I know use drugs it stresses me out a bit - I wont judge but like you could die.'
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Post by 0 on Mar 4, 2017 6:55:18 GMT
Watching Arden go one way, Doppler went the other, turning right into what was sort of a separate room off the other; there was a wall splitting the two, as though it had been cut in half, but before said wall could meet any other walls, it stopped, leaving large entryways for anyone to buzz on through.
The area on the other side consisted mostly of a row of cheap beds against the far wall, white mattresses with white pillows and sheets on wiry metal frames.
A few chairs sat against the half-wall opposite side, with one of those motivational posters pasted into a frame above them (it was simply a picture of a mountain across a lake with the word "MOTIVATION" in bold lettering at the bottom).
This section was relatively empty, with only a couple nightstands, but nonetheless Doppler of course went to investigating what he could.
First he checked the drawer of both nightstand, wherein lay only some simple things like bandages, gloves, and thermometers, common objects the nurse might pull out if you were to be lying in bed, waiting for either a diagnosis or for someone to come and pick you up.
He glanced under each of the chairs, where naught but dust and mothballs made their home-- wh-- Doppler startled back at the sight of a mouse, only a brief glimpse before it had fled elsewhere in the darkness.
His light shone around in search of it, but very soon gave up the idea, though now he stepped a little more cautiously across the floor, afraid he might step on the mouse, or that it might crawl up his leg and bite him.
All the while he was checking around, sounds were going off on the other side of the half-wall.
"Eesh, are you looting or something over there, Arden?" he called out at one point, smirking at his own joke.
His second-to-last order of business was to start patting down the beds.
He found: two chewed-up pencils, three gelatin pens, what appeared to be the bleached, fingertip-sized remains of a once giant pink rubber eraser, and a note that had been slipped into a pillowcase, which read: "BEWARE: THE NURSE IS INFECTED." with a terrible graphite sketch of, from what he was able to decipher, some monster nurse with tentacles coming out her ears and mouth.
Clearly, it had to be a long-lost joke.
Regardless, Doppler slid the note into his pocket, just in case a beast of a ghost came looking for it (maybe the kid who'd wrote the note was killed by aforementioned mutated nurse, and now his ghost roamed lost, afraid, and starving for the taste of living flesh?), and grabbed the bigger of the two pencils, plus the three colorful pens (which he had no idea whether or not their ink would be dried out by then), before moving on to the other end of the room.
Partway there he got the idea to check the poster, pausing only to drop the items on a windowsill-- window-window-- WINDOW WHAT??
Doppler gaped at the perfectly clear glass of the window, his reflection from the beam of his flashlight on it looking particularly menacing in the glow.
Clearly, Arden was not perturbed in the least, giving it a mere glance before continuing on her own business.
A wind stirred through the half of the window that was open, and he peered through it to see grass on the outside, maaaybe some walls way over on the other side, but it was difficult to tell -- his flashlight's beam only reached so far...and, as for his night goggles, the distance would have been cut even shorter.
"The school goels on past here," he said, turning to Arden.
Thankfully, his voice had returned (mostly) to normal.
"Ib'm sure ov it."
He shone the flashlight around through the window again.
Some sort of enclosed courtyard?
"Oh, uh-- here--" he pointed to the items on the windowsill
"Found theez, could be a good back up if yoursu, uh...stops working."
Whether breaking, the led running to a nub, or it simply getting lost.
He'd actually completely missed her question on whether he'd found anything, yet the echo remained in his mind.
Besides that, one of the pens went rolling off the sill, into the apparent outside.
Obviously, the answer to both of these occurrences had to be "because ghost".
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Post by Nivei on Mar 4, 2017 22:45:11 GMT
"If I can break into this desk I sure as heck will be looting it, who do you take me for?" Arden joked. She had poked most of the available spaces on the desk near the hollow sound, and nothin had happened, so she pulled the chair out of the way and looked at the underside of the desk. she managed to pull away a loose bosrd, but it looked like the hollow space hadn't been for hiding secrets. "Aw, it's just a normal desk." She said, a bit disappointed. It hadn't even been a sturdy desk when it was new, based off of the state of the thing, so sue wasn't sure exactly what she had been expecting anyway.
"Do you want to go explore the rest of the building then?" She asked, taking the light Dopper handed to her. "It looks like this window opens further." She put her flashlight down on the desk, pointing at the window and went to pull it open farther. It resisted, but eventually opened far enough that either of then could probably fit through if they squeezed. The light shining off of it didn't really bother her, since she was at the wrong angle to see any reflection. She stuck her hand theough the window and found herself patting the ground. "Man, I knew we were on the ground level, but i didn't think that was literal!"
The window wasn't very high off of the floor, so after hrabbing her light, shenwas able to shine it outside and... there wasn't much to see. A few buildings maybe? She wasn't sure what she was looking at, though clearly it wasn't just an infinite plain of grass or anything. "Phoo, it got colder out!" she commented. It wasn't to the point where anyone would freeze, but it was past the point of being super comfortable for most people. Probably... 55? 60? degrees. Well, it felt about that, but the breeze wasn't helping so it might have been warmer. Arden wasn't really sure one way or the other. She didn't mind the cold, but it was definitely a bit of a temprature drop from being inside, and she pulled her arm back.
"Well. I at least looked into most of the rooms in the other hall... D'you want to go?" She said with a gesture to the mostly open window. "Its a bit of a squeeze, but not too bad."
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Post by 0 on Mar 6, 2017 18:34:59 GMT
Doppler pondered Arden's question as she began to pull open the window; once it was fully open, it would seem they might be able to fit through.
Explore the rest of the building?
There was also the probably-the-(former) principle's office...he wondered if Arden could pick that door's lock, too.
But this window into the outside, hm...it was far more an exciting prospect, seeing as how he didn't even know the space beyond existed -- sure, there would probably be little to nothing out there, but the same could be said for the remainder of the school.
And what if it was some random, secret temporal portal into the afterlife!
What if, when they left the room and came back, the window up and vanished?
This could be their only chance!
...But if that was the case, who's to say that window wouldn't close upon their going through it.
Ah, heckie-- there was always a way out!
The movies said so!
"Yeah," he nodded in response to Arden's last question.
"Sure, let me just--" Doppler blinked.
His hand went to his belt, patting himself down, before his eyes were cast quickly around the room.
He was about to say, 'let me just take care of Pop Rocks here', or something else along those lines, intending on either tying the dog up, letting him roam free, or trying to shove him through the window, but...well, both leash and dog were gone -- all that remained was a single metal loop, to which he had affixed the dog's chain, but now sat with a bent, crooked opening.
"When did--?" Doppler began, before his mind flashed back to the memory of falling after ramming himself into this room's door.
That was probably it.
His head buzzing, ears ringing -- too excited to explore the room upon their opening of it...no wonder he'd completely forgotten about the dog to such a degree, that he paid no heed to the lack of claws tapping on linoleum.
Now his thoughts went to finding the dog, but a second later he was shrugging it off, and pushing himself through the window, flashlight rolling all over the place as he clambered through and tumbled out onto the previously eye-level ground, grumbling "Aw, fudge it...," along the way.
Just cause he had been put in charge of watching the mutt, didn't mean he had to keep a constant eye on him ALL the time, right?
He was sure the dog would turn up again sooner or later, whether here or elsewhere.
If not, he could slap up posters and ought...or take the quicker route and just travel back in time to snatch the mutt off just as he'd wandered off -- as this particular idea flickered between his ears, he gave a curious glance at the darkness around him, and especially through the window he'd just come through, wondering if maybe his future self would turn up right at the moment and give him a wave.
No such luck, apparently.
Either way, he'd worry about it AFTER they were through with this hunt.
He just plain didn't feel like taking a break from this budding adventure.
Doppler shone his flashlight around, but again could see barely anything from his current position: nothing but grass and distant muddled shapes -- not even the moon or stars seemed to be shining through the shadows...it was so dark, in fact, he almost wondered if some paranormal fog of blinding enshrouded this very spot.
"Dunno how big this area is; think we should stick together for a brief while?"
He tugged on his leather jacket with a shudder; it really had gotten cold, and it was too bad that the fake fur of his clothes did little to help him out.
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Post by Nivei on Mar 14, 2017 16:31:11 GMT
Arden glanced around at their foggy surroundings. "Yeah, we should stick together. It'd be hard to find each other in this weather and I don't have a great sense of direction." She said, standingg next to Doppler. "I don't think it was this hard to see when we were outside before. Weather sure can change fast!" She said, oblivious to the missing dog and strangeness of sudden fog.
She began to walk a little way down along the wall. "We can follow this wall first to not get lost. Plus there might be more windows aling this wall or something." She said, poking along and keeping track of where she was stepping. She shivered a bit in the dampness, but she had a decent jacket on and her legs were covered so she was nostly fine. The humidity was just a bit annoying. She swore she could feel her hair struggling to free itself from the braids and she patted her head to check that everything was still in order. It was.
She paused briefly to clear her glasses on her shirt and noticed a small patch of wild flowers. She couldn't tell the species but they looked nice so she bent down to examine them. They were a washed out purple - or maybe blue? something like that. They were too greyed ... by the fog probably. There wasn't much light to begin with and that, fog made it all even darker. Truly the kind of place you'd expect to find ghosts.
Finding the flowers wasn't that interesting, so she stood back up and turned to check that Doppler was nearby.
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Post by 0 on Mar 18, 2017 18:53:58 GMT
Doppler followed after Arden as she began to pass along one of the walls, keeping a fair distance from her so that he could watch one part of the grounds, while still being able to parse her figure through the fog.
As they moved along, the child just barely keeping an eye on Arden's precise whereabouts, he began to wiggle his flashlight around, faintly entertained by the way the beam whizzed through the air, hardly slicing up the chilling cloud around them.
He didn't notice as he went on ahead of Arden, whom had stopped to oggle some flowers (psh...GIRLS, man); the brick wall was to one side of him, and he figured that's all that really mattered, as Arden wouldn't be too far behind.
At one point his flashlight flashed light over something in the distance -- a strange shape.
Of course, he went ahead and darted towards it without thinking what it could even be.
It was tall and crooked, wiggled a little in the wind, and it was just a big dumb stupid ass tree.
A creepy-looking tree, sure, but just a simple tree nonetheless.
Doppler scoffed at it, before realizing the wall he had been watching was out of view.
Well, no matter; it was just a straight shot...that...way...probably.
He looked back at the tree, examining the trunk, running a finger across it.
Something was carved into it, but it was difficult for him to read.
Some letters with a big X through them -- or maybe that "X" was just part of the bark itself?
Who knows.
Probably just meant "JERRY TIMES JIMMY FOREVER BRO".
Gggaay--
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-FUCK!" he screamed, before choking on his breath.
The child hacked and punched his throat as he leapt back, scraping his arm across a twiggy limb, and swinging his light up into the branches of the tree.
O-oh...it was nothing.
Warmth spread fast across his cheeks, hoping Arden hadn't heard and WASN'T heading his way, assuming she wasn't already there, behind him, laughing.
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Post by Nivei on Mar 19, 2017 4:25:54 GMT
Arden hadn't noticed Doppler wander off, and so was understandably concerned when she couldn't see where he'd gone. She was, however, able to see the beam from his flashlight, so she headed in his direction.
When she heard him scream, she started running, but stopped when she saw that he was ok. The tree spooked her a bit, and she could have sworn she saw something moving in the branches, but when she shone her light at it there was nothing there. She passed it off as just some shadow, but decided to keep an eye out.
"You ok dude? That was some scream." Arden said, giving him a quick once over. Ahe couldn't figure out what had startled him so much - there wasn't any strong wind, and it didn't look like anything had happened at all. Maybe it had been ghosts....? Eh, ghosts weren't real though. Probably.
Huh. When she looked closer at the tree, there was some kind of writing, the cheesy typical 'someone x someone' type probably. She wasn't really sure, but honestly she was more interested in the tree itself. It was pretty spooky after all. She could appreciate the aesthetic.
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Post by 0 on Mar 21, 2017 0:33:38 GMT
Doppler brushed a hand over his chest and pinched his arm, just to make sure his heart was beating (it was still fluterring a bit fast), he could still feel pain, and he really hadn't died from shock or tearing a lung in half or something.
Everything checked out, and he breathed a sigh of relief, before biting on his tongue after jumping forward with a yelp.
Arden had come up from behind him, her footsteps loud and hasty, shining a light around, asking if he was okay, and what the frig was wrong with him-- he was the PROFESSIONAL here!
Letting a little fog and spooky tree, of all things, get to him.
Maybe he just had the most hated phobia of all: the fear of creaking wood.
Taking a few quick, deep breaths to steady himself, he turned back around to address Arden's question, starting off in a high-pitched squeaky tone before managing to bring it to normal levels:
"Yeah-yeah, I'm fine.
Just thought I saw...never mind," he mumbled.
It didn't matter what he thought he saw, because that was just it: he THOUGHT it saw it.
It wasn't like it was real or anything.
Just some dumb branches.
Doppler was ready to be done with the tree, but thought it was better to be safe than sorry.
He almost wished he'd brought a camera with him, though, just in case he really hadn't been imagining things...maybe he'd set one up here later.
Instead, he settled for slipping on his night goggles (his hand had reached into his pockets for the black light, but only briefly, as he soon after realized that a black light outside would probably be useless -- all manner of things happened beyond buildings, after all, and it would be difficult to determine what this or that spot was...unless you were a ultraviolet analyst professional or something, Doppler had no idea how that might work).
The world lit up in a grayscale haze, the fog a dark blob constantly at the edges of his vision, and the flashlights a bright beam that hurt to look at; he turned his off and stuffed it into his back pocket as he went around the tree, making a point of examining the branches, before looking down amongst the roots for, say, snake holes or more secret notes.
Coming full circle around the trunk, his gaze glanced across the letters that had been scratched into the tree.
Without the extreme contrast of the flashlight's beam and shadows playing on the carvings, he could read them a little better:
"JOHNNY B. GOODE" (he whispered as he read) with that same big ol' X, which he could now see was too straight to be any normal fold of bark, crossing out the entire..."message".
Even Doppler could recognize the reference here.
No idea why it would be crossed out, though; maybe someone didn't like that song?
But then where was the "fuck" before it?
Pushing his night goggles back up over his head, he retrieved his flashlight and shone it towards where he'd last seen Arden.
"Finding anything interesting?"
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Post by Nivei on Mar 26, 2017 4:36:02 GMT
"Well I found this tree." Arden joked. "But no, this place is spooky but i haven't really seen anything. Low visibility isn't helping really. I thought I saw some edible flowers back there but nope." She always appreciated food, but sometimes flowers are just flowers.
She turned to go back to the wall, shining her light into the fog. It seemed to be getting a bit thicker, but that made sense since it was getting later, and a bit chillier. She couldn't quite see the wall, but she knew what direction she'd come from so it didn't mattrr much. "Bleh, it feels like I'm breathing water." It made her nose feel a bit wierd, but it wasn't too bad, just annoying. She headed back towards the wall, shining her flashlight around to see if there was anything interesting she'd missed.
The yard seemed pretty plain, so she just kept going until she could see the building again. Maybe there'd be graffiti there too. It was cool to see stuff people had put up in the past. She didn't have the patience to put it together and understand past generations or anything, or the inclination really, but the snippets were kinda interesting. She wasn't sure when the school had closed - maybe when her parents were young, or maybe her grandparents or something. Still, she liked to think it made her closer to those generations past.
It didn't. But it was a nice thought, which was all she cared about.
"I wonder why there aren't any windows... Just that one from the nurse's office."
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Post by 0 on Mar 28, 2017 5:13:32 GMT
Doppler rubbed his nose and tugged on his jacket.
Was the fog getting thicker?
The air was certainly getting colder.
He grinned at the joke, nodding at her admittance, then squinting at the explanation.
"There are edible flowers?" he wondered.
Who'd-a thunk.
At Arden's comment on breathing water, he opened his mouth, as if to try and blow bubbles, before shutting it again.
Didn't work.
Woulda been neat.
He followed after Arden as she began to retreat back to the wall they'd come from, shining his light around every other way, just in case they'd missed anything on the way over to the tree.
Eventually, the building came back into view, and it seemed they were soon off to trekking along the perimeter again.
Arden mentioned the oddity of there not being any windows, besides those from the nurse's office.
"Yeah...," he mumbled, thinking.
That IS weird.
He added, "Haven't seen a door yet, either."
Which was even stranger.
As they moved along the wall, Doppler started to make periodic glances over his shoulder, or swing his light all at once in an entirely different direction.
He could swear he was hearing something...it sounded like paper in the wind.
But the darkness was only growing, the fog closing in around them; he couldn't see anything but shadows.
Even if they were to pass by it, he wouldn't have been able to spot the silhouette of that creepy tree anymore.
He began having to draw closer to Arden, just so that they wouldn't lose each other.
Not that it mattered, he supposed; they could just shout for each other, and everything would be fine and dandy.
Actually, if they lost the wall, that would work out just as well; simply make a straight shot one way and you'd hit the building eventually.
Or, at least should.
He didn't know this enclosed yard was here in the first place; who knows, could even be a secret outside corridor leading to...well, who knows where.
Still, he figured it'd be a good idea to at least finish up the perimeter first, just so that they knew with certainty whether or not there were any other windows or doors.
At one point Doppler paused and swung his light in a full circle, even shining it upwards towards the building's roof.
He then turned to Arden, picking up his pace to catch up with her if she herself hadn't stopped.
"Do you hear that?"
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