Carpe Noctum: A Mythos Tale

[Masqueofcrump]

Yes, I crossposted this from the originals forum. I figure since this is a mythos story, or at least along the lines of one, it is close enough to go in fan fics, but oh well. As stated in the other thread, if you pick up on where this is before the chapter I drop the name of the city, you get a cameo.

Carpe Noctum
Chapter One: Arrivals


A cold breeze blew stiffly down the street, carrying the debris of city life with it: a handful of newspapers, some shreds of a plastic bag, and a rolling beer can. A life of homeless wanderings had left the old man who was getting off the bus used to living with that sort of thing. His clothes were dirty and disheveled, as was his beard and the hair that hung from around the hat that he wore. During the day, he would have been too hot, as summer was just starting to cool down, but homelessness was often synonymous with being cold, so he kept his warmer clothing on regardless wearing them on his body to make certain they were not stolen or lost. He carried with him a bag that might have been used for such a purpose, had it not been rather full. It seemed to be an old library bag, a burlap sack that was both well worn and dirty. As he got off the bus at the last stop, the stop at the very top of the hill, he looked around. He smelled the rain, heavy in the air. He heard the familiar sounds of a college town going on around him. He felt the cool breeze on his skin. Most importantly, he felt the tingling in his spine he hadn’t felt in what seemed like ages.

“So… it’s here… after thirty long years of searching… I have caught up,” Wheezed the old man. He gazed out into the night, and wondered how far things had progressed. If he was too early, he wouldn’t be able to track it, and the thing might surprise him, or run off when it encountered resistance. If he was too late, this was futile, and might get him killed for naught. Regardless, the Outcast made his way into the bus station, and set his back to a wall. He curled up, and prepared to fight a losing battle against weariness, his mind throbbing with the nervous energy of having at last found his query.

***************************

James walked up the stairs, his running shoes beating a steady rhythm as he moved upward. He passed two people coming down; one a man on his cell phone, the other a young lady in pajamas, heading down to the laundry room in the basement. The first he greeted with an absent minded nod, the second with a smile and a soft hello in response to her own greeting. He exited onto the second floor, pulled his keys back out, and made his way to his door, which was across from one of the floor’s two bathrooms. He entered, and dropped his bag by his desk. His roommate wasn’t in. That was good. He took a moment to breathe, and sat down on his bed.

He wasn’t really tired. Class hadn’t exactly been hard, and he had already tackled all of his homework. James lay back onto the bed, and stared up at the ceiling, before shifting his gaze to the window. He looked out at the construction site across from him, and watched as it got darker. The sun was setting. That meant it was almost time. He waited until he had just enough light to arrive at his destination without looking suspicious. He got up, and changed from his school clothes to a T-shirt and some athletic looking shorts that revealed his long, muscular legs. He grabbed a gym bag that had waited for him in his closet since last night, when he had made his decision final. He tossed his keys inside the bag, and left his cell phone and wallet on the table. As he left his room, he saw his roommate coming out of the stairwell.

“I’m hitting the gym,” James said with a smile, “so, I’ll see you later, okay?” His roommate nodded and mumbled something halfway coherent. His English was better than James’s Japanese though, so he really couldn’t fault the guy. He made his way back down the stairs, and headed out the back door, past the first pair of security cameras. He promptly turned as he reached the end of the parking lot, and headed in the opposite direction of where the gym was.

He took a few odd turns as he passed by the sorority houses, doubling back around parking lots to make certain he wasn’t being followed. He avoided the buildings and areas he knew security cameras were watching, and made his way down to where the walking trail was, as the light faded more and more quickly. He took the path parallel to the train tracks, and passed through the small strip of forest that buffered the creek and the trail from the surrounding city. As he reached the bridge that passed above the water, he was grateful the train had already run, as the tracks next door made him somewhat uneasy. He slipped across, marking the graffiti that layered the signs and the bridge’s structure itself. He followed the winding path down to the bridge’s underside.

The graffiti was even worse here. People who walked the trail at night tended to cut through the street to avoid this part of the trail, for obvious reasons. In a few minutes, it would be almost pitch black under the bridge. James marked the rock that made it the underside of the ridge. It was black and flaky, and seemed to slake off in massive piles around the side of the hill. He assumed they were sharp, and made a note to avoid falling on any of them, although they might prove useful later. He hopped off the trail into the nook created by the bridge crossing over it. He held a commanding position over anyone making his way across the path.

“I feel like a troll.” James breathed, as he unzipped the bag. He quickly made a second wardrobe change in the failing light. First, he put the gloves on. They were the kind bikers wore, the kind with the plastic around the knuckles that were useful for cracking people in the head. Then, he switched out his white socks and light colored running shoes for darker colored (and steel-toed) counterparts. He slid on a pair of black pants, and pulled on a ski-mask, and then put on the black trench coat. He turned to the bottom of the bag, and pulled out the last piece of wardrobe he would need for the night. The face was made of a hard plastic, and it was black, with a few speckles of white pinpoints on it. He strapped it on over the ski mask, completing the effect.

The light finally failed, and it was pitch black under the bridge, although James’s eyes quickly adapted to the darkness. The figure that strode out from under the bridge into the shadows was almost invisible, although anyone seeing such a figure would likely be terrified that a strange masked man was approaching them in an area that had been so marked by “gang activity”. That was precisely what James was counting on. He picked his spot, back across the bridge and in the bushes by the trail, dropping his bag next to him. He waited.

****************************
They arrived a few minutes later. By his count, there were four. One of them seemed to be the ringleader, and was markedly older sounding. The other three sounded young, but not too young. They were hanging out beside the bridge, as apparently the underside gave even them the willies. One of them was smoking, while the other three were sharing a bottle of what was probably whisky. They looked like the wannabe gang bangers common to the slums around the area. Not real serious, not too hardcore. Perfect for his first run. The older man was carrying a bat, which was probably wise of him as this wasn’t Texas, and toting around a gun was not exactly a swell idea if you weren’t serious about using it.

James chose his moment carefully, moving closer and closer to the trail. He waiting until one of them turned to almost face him. It was the young guy without the bottle or the cigarette. James moved quickly, taking his stance and issuing his kia, the quiet of the night punctuated by his yelling. A proper kia was important, as it prevented your opponent from knocking the wind out of you. He held nothing back from his first punch, driving his gloved fist directly into the man’s head. He would normally have used proper form, pulling back and not leaning so far into the blow, save that this was a surprise attack and he was confident in his ability to move more quickly than the men he was attacking.

The first guy fell hard, a cracking sound following the kia as he dropped roughly to the ground. The rest of the gang was surprisingly fast in their reactions. The second man stepped up, swinging the bottle of whisky at his face. James quickly ducked, and launched a snap kick at the man’s straightened knee. He felt it dislocate easily, and his sensei’s words about proper stance in a fight came back to him. It only took five pounds of pressure to dislocate an unbent knee. As the second man crumbled to the ground, yelling, the other two moved in opposite directions to surround him. James turned to the smoker coming towards him, and he caught the man’s first punch, dragging him forward. He slammed his knee into the man’s gut, and his elbow into the back of his head. The man went down, and the black clad figure turned to face his fourth victim. The man swung the bat at him, and James realized a second after he had committed to his block that stopping a bat with your forearm was probably not such a good idea.

Agony screamed down his arm, and he drove a sidekick into the man’s stomach. He then slipped around him, and wrapped his good arm into a blood-choke around the man’s neck, adrenaline and various other chemicals dulling the pain and driving him forward. As he felt the man’s neck pop after a good five or six seconds, he let him drop, worry coursing through him.

“Uh-oh. I hope I didn’t kill the guy,” James groaned. He moved past the men, and as he did so he took out each of their wallets, and pulled the money out, dropping them to the ground as he did so. When he was done, he moved past the groaning figures, grabbed his bag, and made his way further down the trail, back the way he had come.

As he did, he turned back to the fallen and called out “When they ask you who did this, tell them it was Nox.”

***************************

James sat in his room, eating a cup of microwaved ramen and continuing to rub icy hot on his forearm. It wasn't broken, but it jarred him with excruciating agony if he poked it too hard. He had the paper sitting out in front of him. He had made the front page, and had been featured in the crime beat. The three of the men were in the hospital while the last one was okay. They hadn’t been charged with anything, which was fine. They had been the guys tagging the area, but now he was fairly certain that they wouldn’t be out at night anymore. The man he had choked was suffering from unspecified complications and possible neurological trauma, although James didn’t care so much about that, now that he was certain that the man was alive. The ages though, he did care about: sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, and twenty-five. Two of those guys were younger than he was. That didn’t really sit right with James.

He reflected on why he had chosen to get into what he was going now. Around three weeks ago, the front page had been truly sensational. Apparently, some criminals had been disappearing, and spotted at the scene had been a man in a white mask. It had been a slow month news wise, so everyone from the papers to the six’ o’clock newscasters had been all over this one. “Police questioned about masked vigilante disappearing criminals”. That’s when the buzz had started. From all around the state, and even all around the country, news reporters showed. Granted, outside of the area news coverage hadn’t been huge, but people figured if a guy had actually snapped and started running around in tights and a mask while fighting crime, it was worth reporting. It really was a sensational story. James had been so impressed, he had decided to copycat this individual, whom the papers called Moonlighter. Granted, it was a lame name in his opinion, but it had stuck, so he had decided on another night themed name, one that pulled from Greco-Roman beliefs.

He had acquired everything for his disguise with cash, so as to avoid leaving a money trail. He had gradually pulled out the money, a little at a time. James had spent the rest of the night wiping his gear of fingerprints and cleaning off any dirt on his shoes that could be traced back to the unusual soil by the bridge. Thoroughness was something James had always taken pride in. He had decided that he would take money from the wallets of the people that he jumped so that he could fund his future activities himself, without cutting into his school money. James knew that eventually he would need heavier gear to stand toe to toe with some of the scum around here. That meant maybe a Kevlar vest, and possibly a serious weapon. Oh well, he thought, for now, surprise and sheer ferocity would be his best weapons. Still, maybe an improvised bo staff would be useful. His father had made him learn to use one, saying it was the most practical weapon to train with, as it could be improvised almost anywhere with mundane staff-like objects.

He had just gotten to college, and he had been pretty down lately. It seemed like his life had been lacking direction, like he had no purpose. He supposed it was a natural side effect of moving into a new environment, away from home. He had made some friends here, although they were the distant kind. He slid off his chair, and picked up his backpack. Another day of class, then night would fall again. He would have to prepare more carefully this time to avoid another painful injury. He left the room, and quietly began speculating on the nature of his newfound role model's nature.

*************************

Jill calmly advanced on the sobbing man, her gaze as steely as the knife in her hand. She had decided to do this for reasons completely unrelated to the sensation she was feeling now. She had decided to do this because she was bored. The kinds of things she had started trying out in her life as a college student weren’t really much more interesting than the things she had done in high school. Joining a sorority had been interesting at first, with all the initiations, the events, the fun of Rushing, and it was clear that she would be getting in come spring, but the edge had worn off. So, when she had read in the paper that masked violence was in, she had decided to give it a try. It had to be better than sex, drugs, and alcohol if everyone was doing it now.

She had put her costume together from a combination of things she had bought from the various stores close to campus, and from props she had appropriated from the drama department on the sly. She had never quite figured out what color she wanted everything to be, or the exact design of her mask, so she had been flipping it around, much like she had done with her hair color for years. She turned her attention back to the man before her, snapping out of her reverie.

He was practically crippled, bleeding out along the floor. She had “invited” him to meet her at a lumberyard near campus, with promises of unspecified fun. Naturally, she had made sure to cover her tracks by disappearing the note she had left for him. His being a rapist, she knew unspecified fun was the kind of thing this guy was up for. When he had shown, she had surprised him, giving him several nasty wounds with the knife she had brought along. The knife was technically illegal, since people weren’t allowed to carry knives longer than their palm, but she highly doubted that anyone would be looking to arrest a cute girl for carrying around a self-defense weapon in a town known for getting a little rough sometimes around the college itself. She had bled the guy, and pursued him around, practicing her combination of aikido, capoeira, and general knowledge of knives. For a man who liked to prey on women, he wasn’t doing a very good job. Mostly, pleading for his life, and taking defensive wounds to the hands. This was a lot messier than she had thought it would be. Strangely, she found this rather appealing.

That feeling was what drove her now. This was how she would be getting her kicks. This was something that none of the things she had tried until now had given her. She descended on the man, delivering the coup de tat, blood spattering invisibly on her red clothing, the thrill of the hunt giving her a visceral kick that nothing could quite match. She needed more. Had to have more.

**********************************

Officer Rogers almost didn’t bother calling in the blood spatter experts, as the crime scene was too deteriorated for it to matter much. The perp had turned on the sprinklers, washing away a tremendous amount of forensic evidence and tainting the crime scene. The fire used to do so had also left a good chunk of the room charred, possibly destroying evidence vital to the case. One thing had convinced him to send for the blood spatter experts, and that was the writing beside the corpse. It was written in blood, identified as the John Doe’s own. It read “Luna wuz here”. Damn these mask people and their crazy names.

*******************************


Carlos strolled easily past the well-dressed man, leaving his place beside the man’s car. He had been waiting for a while. As he walked past the pimp, he turned to the man. “Excuse me, you dropped something.” The man turned, and as he did so Carlos drew his .22 caliber from hiding. It kicked twice, the suppressor limiting the noise, giving it the sound of a heavy book smacking a table. Not that it mattered: no one was near enough to hear it anyway. Perfect, he thought, the guy turned while I did it. Gave him two to the head, in slightly different places, from the same angle. Looks like a mugging gone wrong, victim tried to turn on the attacker, and ate lead.

Carlos knelt, and picked up the spent shell casings with his gloves. The gun wasn’t registered to him, but you could never be too careful. He stepped forward, and rolled the guy over. He drew out the man’s wallet, and took the cash out. He transferred it to his own wallet, and took it with him to throw in a dumpster later. No point in using the guy’s credit cards. The whole thing was designed to make it look like a mugging gone wrong, which was actually pretty rare in the area, and would doubtless make the news.

Of course, when the police did ballistics tests, they would realize that a string of killings of pimps and dealers had been committed with not only the same MO, but the same weapon as well. Carlos decided it was time to leave behind his calling card. He dropped it out of a plastic baggie where he had kept it sealed. It was a stylized playing card, with one word on it: Breeze. Yeah, that was a good name.

[Masqueofcrump]

Chapter Two: Meetings
Part 1

James rolled over, groaning as his alarm went off. It had been nearly a week since his first “nightly outing”, and it had gone mostly without incident. He hadn’t made any stupid mistakes since that first night. Honestly, he had gotten off inexplicably lucky: if there had been more actual oomph behind that swing, he could have expected a compound fracture. The pain had died down considerably, although it was still sore. He got up, and stretched out. His roommate was gone, probably off to class or the coffee shop he spent so much time studying in. It was perplexing really: why study in a coffee shop if you’re going to sit there alone, when you could just as easily sit alone in your room where it is much quieter.

He got dressed rather uneventfully, and decided that he would take today easy and ride the bus over to the mall, since he didn’t have any classes. He stumbled on his way down the stairs, but managed to regain his footing without anyone seeing. He left the Arkham building, and headed across campus to the bus station. He didn’t see anyone he knew on the way there, although he could have sworn some of the faces looked familiar. Maybe he was just getting used to this place. Oh well.

While patiently waiting for the bus to arrive, James consulted one of the handy pamphlets at the stop in order to figure out which one he needed to ride: it was the red one. As it made its way into the lot, he got on along with a rather large crowd of people. He was pretty sure a lot of these individuals weren’t students, but that didn’t matter because the bus service was free for everyone. It was rather crowded, but he managed to find a seat near the back. He was in a crowd of people who all seemed to know each other, which he found rather awkward. He managed to avoid touching anyone, and he sat quietly as the bus took off towards its destination.

After the first two stops, James decided to try and do something about the awkward silence near the back. He started looking at his palms, and tracing the lines with his fingers, waiting for someone to ask the inevitable question. Well, either that or assume he was insane. Eventually, the guy next to him took notice.

“Oh, those are some… nice palms,” Said the man sitting to James’s right. It was an odd conversation starter, but it worked for what James had in mind.

“Yep. I’m just reading my own future. Would you like me to take a look at your future?” He asked. The guy looked surprised, then took the earphone out of where it was hanging from one ear.

“Sure.” Replied the athletic looking guy. The events naturally seemed to attract the attention of his friends in the seats ahead of James, who turned back to look at them. James examined the man’s palms.

“The Life line forks. Two possibilities exist. Should you choose the path of love, you will live a longer life, but with less money. If you choose money, you’re looking at less love and a much shorter life. It will be a tradeoff sometime in the near future, when you come to a fork in the path,” James droned as he read the man’s palms. A fellow with dreadlocks in the next seat over from his subject watched this with interest.

“Hey Chantal, you should let this guy read your future,” said the guy. James realized that this seemed like a fun way to meet people. If I just make vague statements, they won’t call me out on my complete BS he thought. As the girl came back after the next stop and some people got off, he took her hand. It seemed somehow more… expressive, than the first.

“Your life can go in any one of three directions. Your love line splits three times, and leads to three different things. If you choose your first love, you can expect a lot of money. With the second, I foresee a long life. With the third, a much longer and deeper love, but life will be harder,” James said, surprising himself with how specific he was getting. He had thought he would be making certain that he was vague on purpose. However, they didn’t seem particularly bothered by this, and in fact it seemed that he had gotten lucky.

“Ooh, girl he’s got your number,” the first man said. “You know he’s talking about Tyrone and Michael, although I don’t know who that third man is.” The girl looked rather flustered, although her dark skin hid the blush at her cheeks. The man who had been watching from two seats down finally seemed to come to a decision at this.

“Would you mind reading mine?” he asked, extending his palm. James couldn’t say no. He bent over, and this time he heard it even more loudly and clearly.

“Your last relationship ended because of money trouble. Your heart will be repaired though, and you will find a new one. You won’t see money at first, but eventually you will find quite a bit later in life. Your life line and your money line intersect near the end, so it will be near the end of your life, although how that will be isn’t exactly clear. You can expect this relationship to be healthy and happy though, and to have many children,” spoke James, although by this time he was rather perplexed at where in the world he was getting all of this. The dreadlocked man stared at him for a moment.

“Oh my God…” he started, “how did you know? My last fiancé and I broke up over budget issues, and I’m in a new relationship. I never really believed in this stuff, but there’s no way you could have known any of that, or just guessed it randomly. How will I get my money? Do you know when I’m going to die?”

“Umm, I’m not exactly sure,” replied James. “Your life line and your money line run into one another, so it isn’t exactly clear which is which. That could mean positive or negative things, depending on the circumstances. As such, I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.”

“Read mine,” came a raspy voice to James’s left. He turned, and saw a homeless looking man sitting by himself in the seat to his left. The guy was more than a little grungy, and he had a burlap sack he was carrying with him. James decided there couldn’t be any harm in it, so he leaned over to look at the man’s palm. As he gazed down at it, the feeling of elation in his stomach turned into a knot of agony. He couldn’t stop himself. James screamed.


****************************

He awoke to the other passengers trying to revive him. He managed to start up to his feet, helped by the dreadlocked stranger. He looked around for the homeless man, but didn’t see him anywhere.

“Are you alright?” the driver asked him from the front. “Do I need to stop for an ambulance?”

“No,” James replied wearily, in spite of feeling somewhat ill, “I’ll be fine. I think whatever it was has passed.”

“Well, alright,” said the driver, as he turned back to the road.

“How long was I out?” James asked the man who had helped him up.

“About one stop. We made the guy get off,” dreadlocks replied, “We figured he had done something to you or something. Or maybe it was just your gift. I don’t know. This is my stop though. If you ever need anything, I work down at the Bass Pro, so you can give me a call, okay?”

“Alright,” James agreed. He retook his seat, trying to ignore the stares of the other passengers, and got out at the next stop in front of the mall.

*****************************

The Man sat in a cluttered room, at a large antique table. The mess that surrounded him appeared to be mostly antique objects or novelties of some sort or another. The man wore a single glove, and he dealt out a hand of tarots in a very non-traditional way. Lying next to one another were three cards: The Fool, The Moon, and Strength. Apart from the two were two other cards: the Hermit inverted was closest, and next to him was the Devil. Hanging over all of there heads was Judgment.

None of this really surprised The Man. His olive skin already glistened with sweat from the effort of previous divinations. There was nothing wrong with double-checking though. So, the ritual has worked correctly, he mused. The Actors, save one, had all taken up their masks, and the Play had begun in earnest. This is good. I have taken such time to prepare a stage for the performance, and it would be a shame if they had not risen to the task. Luckily, they had made their way from the audience to center stage, and now they were ready to be called upon. The chorus is prepared for their role, thought The Man, and I… I am the Narrator. So the story goes, and the game begins.

The Rite had worked wonders already. He had to hand it to the sorcerers of the Cult of Bacchus: they had rediscovered something very potent that was certainly worth tapping into. It had been used before, although when utilized incorrectly it was just an invitation to let something in. Now though, it was being directed properly, and fueled by Actors thoroughly groomed for the roles they were to be playing....

[Masqueofcrump]

Meetings Part Two

***************************

James sat in the food-court, his head still ringing. The pain came and ebbed in waves. He considered the wisdom of drinking the fruit drink he had bought at one of the places that ringed the tables he sat amongst. Families, couples, and groups of individuals all mingled around him in the busy mall. He stared off into space, considering the events that had just occurred to him. Okay, I can try and rationalize this all away. I can come up with some contrived series of events that explains everything, even though the notion of all of those things happening at once is ridiculous. First, let’s review the facts. Fact one: I had been reading palms on a bus, which is just a parlor trick to break the ice. Fact two: by all accounts, I was very accurate, and I felt funny while doing it. Fact three: I passed out in raw terror after seeing the palms of a weird homeless guy who seemed to know more than he was letting on.

Granted, a combination of exhaustion from sleepless nights, stress, and sheer dumb luck could account for what had happened, but that was pretty contrived. James wasn’t prepared to condemn the notion of ESP out of hand. In fact, it was something that supposedly ran in his mother’s side of the family. His father had called it their Gypsy senses, at which point his mother usually jabbed the man’s side and denied it vigorously. Apparently, from where they came from being Gypsies had a lot of negative connotation. The simplest explanations are often the best, and the simplest explanation was that James had experienced something uncanny. Okay, so what to do about it, he thought. My life is complicated enough as it is. Do I really, really want to deal with this on top of it? More importantly, do I even have a choice? Is this a one time, one off deal, or is this going to start being a frequent thing?

As James sat lost in internal reverie, Jill started to feel rather uncomfortable. That guy sitting alone with the Fruilatte drink was staring at her with a blank look. Granted, it wasn’t that uncommon for guys to stare at women, especially not for her, but she was starting to get uncomfortable. Weirdo, she thought. She scowled at him.

James chose that moment to pay attention to his surroundings, and he noticed a girl sitting across the food court, scowling at him. She was a short and slender brunette, cute but kind of flat, and definitely lacking in curves. If she dressed up a little, she would have gone past cute and into pretty, but not much further. He wondered what he had done to draw her death gaze. James decided that he would walk over to the bookstore and do his thinking there, surrounded by aisles of paperbacks. He always felt pretty relaxed in bookstores for some reason.

The fastest way to the bookstore was past where the brunette had been sitting, but James decided the most politic way to go was to walk around to avoid her. He tried to make his way around without seeming to look at her, but out of the corner of his eye noted that her death gaze swiveled to follow him as he passed out of the food court and into the main part of the mall. Oh well, it wasn’t like he would see her again anytime soon.

*****************************

Jill sat on the bench at the bus stop in front of the Mall, thinking about what she was going to do. She had considered taking medicine for it, but she had seen the effects that it had on her brother. He walked around like a mindless zombie these days. She missed his spunk. Of course, she hadn’t been tested: the doctors had said the disorder was more common in young men than in women, and anyway if there were any sudden changes in her behavior someone would take note. That was a laugh. She had always been so good at hiding her excesses from her parents. If she hadn’t been, they probably would have done a whole lot more to shelter her, which of course would have made her rebel all the harder. She would have done so secretly, of course.

She checked her watch, and saw that the bus was due any minute. She noticed someone walking towards her. He was reading a book while walking, and had the empty plastic bag the store clerk had given him hanging from his wrist while he held the novel out in front of him. He sat down in the warm grass next to the bench, not infringing on her space. Oh God, she thought, it’s the creeper from the food court. He just had to be going back to her campus. He just had to be riding the bus at the same time as she was. Maybe he was a stalker. That kind of thing happened around colleges.

James, however, completely missed picking up on her discomfort, or even the fact that she was the same girl as before. He was losing himself in a book, which was his favorite thing to do whenever he was stressed out. Already, his desk and drawers were lined with novels he had finished in brakes between classes. He looked up and saw the bus coming. He sighed, closed the book, and put it in the plastic bag he had brought with him.

As the bus rolled up to the stop, James allowed the lady getting up from the bench to go on first, and then followed absent-mindedly. Oh, that Harry Dresden is in trouble this time, he thought. His mind was already locked firmly on the case the wizard-detective was going to be working, and he tried to see plot twists coming via foreshadowing and general genre savviness. Sadly, his current state was keeping him preoccupied from enjoying his book fully. He chose to take a seat near the back, by the second door. He had the entire space to himself, although he chose to make room in case anyone wanted to sit beside him, although that was unlikely on a bus with this much room inside.

Thank God he didn’t sit beside me, thought Jill. She had picked a place close to the front of the bus. Wait a minute, why am I afraid of a stalker? I’ve been brutally murdering criminals for almost two weeks. This guy is nothing. On some level, Jill realized that a part of the reason she was frightened was the fact that she was coming down off the high, and she knew that in a few weeks she would hit her low. The idea of taking on a deranged maniac just didn’t seem as good an idea to her as it did when she wasn’t thinking clearly: those times of the month she got really excited about really bad ideas. Oh well, she thought, maybe he’s just going the same way I am.

***********************

As they pulled into the station, Jill hopped up, and shouldered her way through the people in her way. She could hear the guys voice behind her, politely saying things like “excuse me” or “go ahead”. She knew she would leave him behind easily enough. Unfortunately, she miscalculated his stride, and their relative proximity to the doors they were both coming out of. The creeper made it out of the side door before she had made it out the front, but fortunately for her he seemed to be heading in a different direction, taking a route that seemed to put him further toward campus than she was going. Good, she thought, turns out it was nothing.

She made her way back to the Arkham building without incident. She returned the RA’s greeting with her own, and walked to the elevator, bags in tow. She pushed the button. She heard it moving, and then the doors clicked open. Inside stood the creeper, still reading his book. He looked up and smiled at her.

“Third Floor?” James asked good-naturedly. Oh God, he’s gotten into the building, Jill thought. She immediately stepped away, and waved her fob at the stairwell entrance. She decided she would rather take the stairs and avoid this weirdo than risk going toe to toe with him in close quarters.

Weird, thought James. There was something wrong with that girl. That and she looked very familiar. She’s probably just anti-social, he thought. The doors closed, and he got out on the second floor of Arkham Hall, and headed to his room.

[Masqueofcrump]

Third chapter. The Mythos elements come to the fore here.

Chapter Three: Sightings

The Outcast sat in an alley, the remains of a squirrel sitting a few feet away. It had been put through a process similar to being drawn and quartered. A silver knife had been used and the ringing of copper bells had pervaded the ceremony. For its part, the squirrel had remained rather quiet and rigid during the whole thing, in large part due to the fact that it had been drugged with sacred mistletoe, and in part because it was, on the whole, rather docile. Most squirrels that live on campuses tended to be.

He was huddling down for the night, the circle completed at dusk, just as the spell had proscribed. As was his customary practice, he unzipped his jacket in order to visibly expose the various amulets of protection that adorned his neck. One could never take too many precautions against the terrors of the night, although one did well to avoid attracting their attention. Besides, he had chosen to bunker down right next to the place that had been marked. He would get to see a show tonight, and it would be good if he were able to avoid becoming a part of it. He sat, waiting for events to begin to unfold and the game of life and death to play out before him.

*****************************

Field stripping a revolver while sitting in a dark closet hadn’t exactly been Carlos’s idea of a hot time, but it was how he was choosing to spend his night. Earlier in the day, it had hit the news that a one Adam Johnson had escaped from a nearby prison and was at large in the area. The police were looking for him. Carlos had decided that this was his big chance to bag a high profile suspect, and after a quick series of background checks performed on a seedy website, he had found an old home an uncle of Adam’s owned in the area. It was abandoned. Carlos knew that because the uncle had a newer, and much nicer place of residence out of town, and he knew that Adam would know that. That’s why he had slipped in the back, searched the home, and then curled up in a closet, door slightly ajar, waiting for the runaway to enter.

As he serviced his .22 caliber, he wondered idly when he would have to switch weapons. He could always switch over to a bow. That would be fun: he knew how to fletch his own arrows, and he could give the police a nightmare of trying to track him down, since he wasn’t purchasing any ammunition. As it was, he was using stuff he had bought out of state at a gun show. Naturally, he had “allowed” a friend of his to persuade him to go to one, and then he had bought everything on the sly. He didn’t drive back with it, because the last thing you want to have in the car, as a young Hispanic man, is an unregistered and unlicensed handgun with bullets and several silencers. They hadn’t been pulled over, primarily because it was a white guy driving all the way home.

He finished cleaning the weapon, and quickly reassembled it. He had been there all day. It had been a big gamble. There must have been a reason the police didn’t have this place watched. Maybe they didn’t know about it, or maybe they did but lacked the manpower or had a better lead. Or perhaps, just perhaps, they were spending those people looking for himself and the other people emulating the guy everyone called Moonlighter. That was a lame name. The press wasn’t exactly creative with the things they came up with though. That’s why he and the other copycats had picked their own names… or so he guessed. He didn’t really have a clue who the others were. So long as they didn’t step on each other’s toes, he supposed it might be a smart idea to stay distant.

He heard a slight groan from the boards down the hall. So, he did come in the back, Carlos thought. No matter how quietly the initial break in had been, that board was going to creak under the weight of anything heavier than a small cat. Carlos waited several seconds, his ears straining in the silence to discern breathing. He heard nothing. He slid open the door and pointed his gun out into the hall opening away from where he had been able to peer out. Moving silently down the hall, gliding on the balls of his feet, he cut through the darkness like the prow of a ship. That’s why breeze is such a fitting name, because I’m as quiet as one, Carlos thought. His mask hugged his face tightly, and left his eyes exposed, though his features were veiled from view.

It took him several seconds to realize that he was holding a figure at gunpoint. If it hadn’t been for a slight movement of the man’s coat, he wouldn’t have realized it at all. Standing before him was a tall man clad in all black. His face was also covered in black, save for several pinpoints of white along the mask’s surface. Breeze realized that the man before him fit the paper’s description of Nox .

“What are you supposed to be?” whispered James. “Some kind of highly visible shooty ninja?” Carlos scowled.

“What are you supposed to be, some kind of weirdo in a mask?” he retorted.

“The pot calls the kettle black… or it would, except the pot is running round in light blue, which is considerably more visible than black at night,” James said softly, his voice rising.

“I caught you of guard, didn’t I?” replied Carlos smugly. “Besides, I’m going for style, not stealth.”

“That will probably get you killed,” stated James evenly.

“Eh, I can always tone it down to dark blue,” Carlos conceded. He eyed the man before him. “You looking for Johnson?”

“Yeah, that’s what a guy popping out of a closet wearing a stylish mask says to another,” quipped James jokingly. Carlos rolled his eyes. “Yes, I’m looking for the runaway. High profile case, big chance to put me on the map, get Moonlighter to notice me.”

“Have you bumped into the guy yet?” asked Carlos.

“No, he’s pretty elusive,” sighed James. “It isn’t for lack of trying though.”

“Yeah, me neither,” said Carlos. “So, you want to wait for him together, or pick another spot?”

“Eh, I wasn’t even sure if he would run here. How did you find this place anyway?” queried James.

“Internet,” Carlos stated flatly.

“Same,” replied James.

The two of them were interrupted by a crash at the front door. They both fanned out along the hall, and headed into the room where Carlos had come from. Sprawled across the ground was one Adam Johnson. He was bleeding from a severe leg wound, where something had slashed across one of his arteries. As he rose from the wreckage of the door, he looked at the two men with the wild eyes of a rabbit, then started to turn back to where he came from. He never got the chance to bolt though, as Carlos popped two rounds into his torso.

-FWAP- -FWAP-

Johnson wilted, dropping to the ground. As he did, a second figure entered behind him. Framed by the pale moonlight, a slight figure entered the room. Cloaked in red, Jill had tracked her query here, and made sport of harrying him as he made his way to the place. A rather large yard, longer than it was wide several times over, had forced the man to cross a lot of ground on his way to the potential hideout. Jill had let him make it about a quarter of the way before she had let him see and hear her, and around halfway before she had given him the nasty leg wound, the thrill of the hunt driving her like some kind of wiry jungle cat. She had been surprised when her query had suddenly been brought down by what sounded like someone dropping a textbook down some stairs. It took her a few moments to realize that it had been a gun, and even as she processed it she came face to face with the two figures in the home.

James wasn’t really sure what to think of the figure before him. It had a lot in common with the guy who had just popped out of the closet. Both of them were slight, although he was guessing they were both wirier than they looked. A knife was held in the masked man’s hands, and for some reason the gaze behind the pale mask’s visage felt familiar. He stepped forward, showing that his hands were empty. At once, the figure put the knife between them and settled into an unfamiliar stance. James wondered what kind of technique the guy used, since he was familiar with most stances common to karate and Tae Kwon Do, which tended to be very similar to the stances of other hard styles. He probably compensates for his small frame by using a soft style, thought James. Something like Aikido.

Carlos coughed slightly, motioning with the gun pointedly. “So, gentlemen, here we are. Isn’t this… awkward?” He began. James and Jill both followed his words, taking some of their attention off one another. Jill was a bit flustered at being mistaken for a man. It’s because I’m flat, she thought. She said nothing.

“Well, I for one think this is a good thing,” James said. “We all get to take credit for this one… well, except me. I wasn’t really looking to kill him. I would probably have just knocked him unconscious, and left him in a public place. You know… alive.” It was his turn to draw the stares of the other two. “I mean, don’t you guys think it is a little bit extreme to kill just about everyone you apprehend, instead of just giving them a sound drubbing?”

“What would that accomplish?” replied Carlos. “Getting beaten up and left in front of the police station doesn’t lead to an arrest. It leads to getting checked out by an ambulance and escorted home, unless you’re carrying contraband on you at the moment. I mean come on; this isn’t a Saturday morning cartoon. The only thing that might accomplish is instilling terror in someone, and convincing him that maybe doing what they do isn’t such a good idea. For the low hanging branches, that’s just fine, but for the hard cases like this guy, you have to be a little more extreme, ya know?” Jill stood quietly, trying not to betray her gender with her voice. At the last comment though, she just had to add something of her own in.

“Yeah, what are you, stupid or something?” asked Jill in her manliest voice.

“Whoa, you’re a girl!” exclaimed James and Carlos at the same time. Damn it, she thought. Oh well. At least she knew they were both men, and they wouldn’t be mistaking her for a guy anymore. You could only rub it in so many times before her nerves got raw. Yeah, I don’t have curves, she thought.

“Well, that cat’s out of the bag,” Jill sighed.

“I knew it,” shouted Carlos. “Luna is such a girl’s name.”

“Huh, no it isn’t,” James replied sheepishly. “It’s gender neutral.”

“No man. The A at the end signifies the feminine in Spanish,” Carlos explained. “Luna comes from Latin roots.”

“I thought it was German.” James retorted.

“You’re both wrong, it’s Greek,” Jill said as she joined in. She stepped carefully around the blood pooling out of the man’s wounds. “Let’s get out of here, shall we? I for one don’t want to get caught out here over this guy’s dead body.”

“Yeah, I’m beat. Night you guys,” said Carlos, as he dropped to pick up his shell casings.

“May I suggest we exit from the rear?” James began. “There is a deer trail through the woods that leads out near a neighborhood close by. We can go out that way, and split up from there.”

“I like your thinking,” replied Jill.

The three figures, one black, one blue, and one red, made their way out the rear window of the home and out onto the trail behind the house.

***********************

Willy stumbled down the sidewalk drunkenly, his body reeling from the impact of his soles on the ground. Or maybe that was just his dementia. Either way, he wasn’t exactly steady on his feet. As the Outcast watched from the heavily warded alleyway, it occurred. A figure seemed to move from the air behind Willy. It wore a black trench coat, and a white mask covered up its face. It had black hair, but it was of a moderate length that failed to indicate gender. Willy turned, an instinctive fear welling up inside of him.

The one the town had dubbed Moonlighter had popped out from a gap that seemed to bend between the windows of the darkened shop nearby, yet no such opening existed. It hurt the Outcast’s head to even look at the thing, it’s non-Euclidian geometries bending in a way that simply didn’t make sense. He could have stood it for a while though, as the human mind is considerably more resilient than most people gave it credit for. It opened with an appearance that looked like the sound of children shrieking… somehow. It was like watching water ripple, except that it seemed like everything else was rippling instead.

The figure made its way forward, and grabbed the man by the wrists. Willy began screaming, his altered state of consciousness sufficient to grant him some measure of insight into the nature of the figure before him. If he had been able to see in one hundred and eight dimensions simultaneously, he would have had a clearer notion of where it was he was being pulled into by the inky blackness within the man’s coat, and he certainly would have been far more terrified of the writhing horror that awaited him in a place far beyond sanity. As Willy vanished into a gaping maw that was and was not there, the figure turned to gaze blankly upon where the Outcast was hidden.

The bearded man shuddered. Last time, it came in the guise of a hunter. This time, it was something else entirely. He prayed that before this was over, he would be able to complete the ritual before the thing shed its guise, and walked the Earth in a skin more closely related to its true form. He shuddered as the figure found its way back into another gap in reality, and an inky blackness seemed to cling even after the figure’s exit, profaning reality with it’s blasphemy against the law’s of nature. A smell permeated the air. It seemed that it was spreading. It had started out low, and was working its way higher and higher up the chain. It should have started with the homeless already though, thought the Outcast. That meant its meal just now had been solely for sustenance, or maybe pleasure, rather than a function of what it was doing. Then again, ascribing human motivations to it was a flawed notion in and of itself. Or, he thought, maybe it is having to reiterate it’s previous meals because the order is getting slippery. Interesting.