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31_days2012-06-18 03:56 pm
insaneladybug.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2012-06-18 03:56 pm
[June 18th] [Perry Mason] Lux Aeterna, 18
Title: Lux Aeterna, scene 18
Day/Theme: June 18th - The Hidden Paths
Series: Perry Mason
Character/Pairing: Lieutenant Anderson
Rating: T/PG-13
Takes place after Brice is injured. This is the creepiest installment so far, with some elements lifted from eerie dreams I have that generally include some of these elements. I find it even creepier since I dozed off while writing it and had another one. And the split marker is real, or at least, based on a real one I've seen up close and personal.
Lux Aeterna is truly an ensemble piece. While The Broken Ties and its missing scenes were really largely Hamilton's story, I'm not sure any one character is the star of this theme set. Andy is the featured character this time, in honor of Wesley Lau's birthday today.
By Lucky_Ladybug
Andy was still fighting against the idea that Lieutenant Tragg was dead.
Oh, not that anyone had really accepted it, but it was difficult not to at least consider it could be true. Andy was guilty of that himself. And as the days and weeks went on, it was clear that some of the others were beginning to lose hope. Hardly anyone even looked for Tragg anymore; they just sat and waited for him to either come back or for a report to come in that his body had been found.
Andy himself did not go out as much as he had used to. He was busy with work and with the rebellion, and well, he could not deny that he was tired of going out, searching in all despair and desperation only to find nothing.
But he was out this night. Sergeant Brice was still lying in the hospital, critically ill and mostly unconscious, and Andy was alone on patrol. As soon as he was off-duty he had gone back to the station and retrieved his own car. Now he was heading in determination to . . . he didn’t know where, but at least it would be another place to look.
Despite the late hour, he headed into the canyons. Strange things had been happening up there since Florence’s take-over. An old church had been found abandoned in the woods. Della had had an experience involving a mysterious woman and a trail lined with angry trees. Mr. Burger had nearly been led to his death by a deceptive light. Perry had finally decided the forest was too unpredictable to consider having a hideout there.
But what if Lieutenant Tragg had gone to that forest to escape Florence’s men and had become trapped? Of course it had been searched before, but if it operated on such an entirely different set of rules, there was surely a large chance that Tragg could have been overlooked.
Andy felt it was worth a try. No one had dared check it at night. And maybe that was when it behaved stranger than ever. Maybe that was when it would even yield up its possible captive.
Listen to him, accepting that magic and fairytales seemed to be real. When confronted with that as the only genuinely logical explanation left, there was not a lot he could do but accept it.
Della had been with Tragg the day she had stumbled on the eerie road. Nevertheless, she had not told him about it. She had only told Perry at first. Then, when Andy had recently asked why Perry had decided not to keep looking for a meeting-place in the canyons, Della had relented and told him as well.
They had bonded a bit more since their odd experience under Vivalene’s spell. They had been separated from the others at first, both dropped into an unsuspecting elementary school in the Valley. Upon finally coming back to themselves, they had felt closer to each other than before.
Della had still been uncomfortable talking about her misadventure in the canyons, however; she had only done so because she had sensed why Andy was asking and how he longed for another place to look for Tragg. She would be alarmed if she knew he was coming here at night and all alone.
Andy frowned. It really wasn’t a good idea. Maybe the sheer fact that he, a normally level-headed person, was doing this meant that he didn’t fully believe after all. He did not want to go missing too.
Maybe he didn’t want any other innocent parties to vanish, either. But it would not help anyone back in the city if they found he was gone the next day.
He pulled off to the side of the road and drew his phone out of his pocket. Within five minutes he had called his home and left a message on his own answering machine. If he did go missing, his house would be checked and the message found. At least they would know where he was. If he came back alright, he could simply erase the message.
The forest was quiet tonight, rather oddly so. Crickets should be chirping, if nothing else. Andy opened the door, just waiting and listening. But it was in vain—there were no crickets, no frogs, no owls. Even the plant life was perfectly still.
Andy was thoroughly disturbed now. He took his flashlight out of the glove compartment before slowly rising from the car to begin his investigation. It was like being in a tomb. Which certainly wasn’t the greatest comparison he could have made, but it seemed to fit.
He was deep in the forest as it was. As he selected a particular path and advanced, reality fell further and further away and left him stranded in this bizarre Netherworld.
Why was he calling it that? Nothing strange had even happened other than the total silence. And yet somehow, Andy had the feeling that that was the strangest of all.
The sight of an old and skinny slab of stone caught his eye enough that he backed up to see it through the foliage of his trail. Was that a marker? His heart dropped. It was. And there were others nearby, on both sides of the path. He was in a cemetery, one that had probably been started by the old settlers to the area.
That fact only made him more leery and disturbed than ever.
“Hello? Lieutenant Tragg? It’s me, Andy.” He spoke cautiously, quietly, barely above a whisper. If he spoke loudly there would be trouble. He knew that without knowing how he knew it.
Part of him wanted to scoff. He had never been afraid of cemeteries. Well, maybe as a child, but certainly not as an adult. But the farther he traveled into this cemetery, the more his feeling of terror grew. It was palpable, restrictive, closing in on him like a vise. He wanted to bolt and run. His desire to find Lieutenant Tragg was the only thing that kept him going. It would be downright foolish to pursue this otherwise. What he felt was not in his imagination. It was real.
“Lieutenant, please!” he cried, in fear as well as desperation. “If you can hear me, if you can speak . . . !”
He trailed off. He had forgotten himself and had tried to yell. But what had come out was barely a yell. In fact . . . had he spoken at all? He had heard the words in his mind, but outside of it they were so quiet. Had his voice been stopped?
He gasped at the thought. And his blood ran cold. He had not heard even that. Was it his voice . . . or his ears? What created the silence of this place?
His eyes darted about. He was still in the graveyard; stone and wooden markers were on either side of the path. Some were leaning forward or backward, threatening to collapse to the ground. Some were so weathered they could barely be read. One wooden marker was split down the middle and completely devoid of any and all writing.
He tried to take another step forward. Now it was his mobility that was being taken away. His leg felt like lead.
Help! he screamed in his mind. Dear Lord, what if Lieutenant Tragg really did get stranded in this?! What if he’s somewhere on the path, unable to move or speak or anything else? If I can somehow manage to get free, how can I leave without looking for him? And how can I look for him when this sort of thing happens?!
He tried to move again. Instead his balance was altogether gone. He fell forward, crashing to the ground like a stone statue. He could only barely force his hands up enough to provide a smidgen of cushioning. But even after he collapsed he gripped the ground, shaking as he struggled to so much as crawl forward.
Perry was right. The canyons are too dangerous for anything, not just a meeting place!
If he attempted to turn around now, would the physical bindings be removed? Was it even possible to turn?
He tried it anyway. But it was like an old videogame; movement only went one direction. He could not go back. He could not even begin to adjust his position in that manner without feeling like an invisible wall was against his body. And he could scarcely go forward. It took every ounce of his strength to slide ahead one inch.
There were more markers up ahead, still occasionally dotting either side of the road. This cemetery was extensive. He could not recall having heard anything about such a place existing in the canyons before. Most graveyards of this nature were small. Why was this one so large?
Suddenly the other markers faded into the background. They were still there, but he could not focus on them. There was only one clear marker, right at the head of the road. As soon as he saw it he wanted to look away. And yet when he tried, he could not.
This evil, whatever it was, had its point of origin in that stone. It had to; nothing else felt as intense and dark as what he sensed from that object.
He clenched his teeth, forcing himself to move forward. One inch, two inches. . . . Somehow he would get to it. He would destroy it. Then maybe the hold over him would shatter.
How would he destroy it when he was moving like someone who had to relearn how to walk? He could hardly lift his hands, let alone his body. He could not smash it, or crash into it, or otherwise knock it to the ground. The closer he went, the more impossible it became to move at all.
There was a name carved into the ancient stone. He had not been able to read it from far away, but hour after hour, as he drew closer and closer, the writing slowly became legible. And the icy feeling in his veins was back in full force.
LIEUTENANT TRAGG
It was not possible. Tragg would not be buried here, even if he were dead. And if he were, if this was really a marker for his grave, why didn’t it have his full name?
In fact . . . what on earth was that date?
1176-1396
He was out of his mind. Or . . . no, his eyes were going now. Tricks were being played on them. Before long he would go completely blind. Then he would only be able to keep moving ever so slowly, unable to see or hear or speak. He would be entirely at the mercy of this incomprehensible evil.
His hands touched something other than the ground. He looked to his left with a violent start. It was smooth and cold and . . .
Bony.
There was a skeleton lying next to him, and another ahead of that one. On his other side there were more. They were all crawling, all looking as though they had died there fighting to move, just as he was.
Was he going to be just another corpse to add to the number? How could he rebel? How could he do what they had not done?
He had been going to destroy the marker, hadn’t he? All thoughts of that had fled away when he had seen the name and date upon it.
He could not destroy it. His mobility was completely gone. Now as he tried to go forward, it was just as it had been when he had attempted to go back. He was stuck.
And he was directly in front of the headstone. He could look at nothing else. He could not even turn his head or close his eyes. All he could see was that name and that outlandish date. And he was going to lie here for he had no idea how long, staring at it until he died, like all the others.
“NO!”
The voice was loud, booming, cutting through the silence that had reigned for hours. And he gasped, rocking back as he realized it was audible.
The voice was his. The spell was broken.
And so was the stone. Cracks formed and snaked across it as if by magic. It shook, and the ground shook, and Andy fell flat on his stomach as the otherworldly earthquake intensified.
Then it was all over. The marker lay in pieces near his fingertips. He looked up, slowly, cautiously, still not quite able to believe.
The name, now also in fragments, was no longer Tragg’s. It was something strange and unheard-of, something that sounded as though it belonged in a book and not in real-life.
The date was the same.
Andy pushed himself to his knees and then to his feet. Movement was easy. And the horrible, tangible terror was gone. He felt no crushing outside feelings now; only his own bewilderment, worry, and fear.
“Lieutenant?” he called. His voice was normal. “Lieutenant Tragg, are you here?”
There was no reply. Andy walked back to where he had dropped his flashlight when he had fallen. It was not more than several yards from where the broken marker lay. That gave him another chill.
He searched the old graveyard for the better part of an hour, with no success. At last, when he reached what seemed to be its boundaries, he sighed and turned, more than ready to leave.
For once, perhaps, he was grateful he had not found any trace of his mentor and friend. The thought of Tragg being stranded here filled him with a new horror.
What was this place? Whose grave was this, really? How had he shattered the spell by simply being able to finally cry out? Why had he been able to cry out?
He was not sure he even wanted to know the answers.
With everything back to normal he was not quite willing to run, but he certainly walked briskly to the head of the trail and back to his car.
Day/Theme: June 18th - The Hidden Paths
Series: Perry Mason
Character/Pairing: Lieutenant Anderson
Rating: T/PG-13
Takes place after Brice is injured. This is the creepiest installment so far, with some elements lifted from eerie dreams I have that generally include some of these elements. I find it even creepier since I dozed off while writing it and had another one. And the split marker is real, or at least, based on a real one I've seen up close and personal.
Lux Aeterna is truly an ensemble piece. While The Broken Ties and its missing scenes were really largely Hamilton's story, I'm not sure any one character is the star of this theme set. Andy is the featured character this time, in honor of Wesley Lau's birthday today.
Andy was still fighting against the idea that Lieutenant Tragg was dead.
Oh, not that anyone had really accepted it, but it was difficult not to at least consider it could be true. Andy was guilty of that himself. And as the days and weeks went on, it was clear that some of the others were beginning to lose hope. Hardly anyone even looked for Tragg anymore; they just sat and waited for him to either come back or for a report to come in that his body had been found.
Andy himself did not go out as much as he had used to. He was busy with work and with the rebellion, and well, he could not deny that he was tired of going out, searching in all despair and desperation only to find nothing.
But he was out this night. Sergeant Brice was still lying in the hospital, critically ill and mostly unconscious, and Andy was alone on patrol. As soon as he was off-duty he had gone back to the station and retrieved his own car. Now he was heading in determination to . . . he didn’t know where, but at least it would be another place to look.
Despite the late hour, he headed into the canyons. Strange things had been happening up there since Florence’s take-over. An old church had been found abandoned in the woods. Della had had an experience involving a mysterious woman and a trail lined with angry trees. Mr. Burger had nearly been led to his death by a deceptive light. Perry had finally decided the forest was too unpredictable to consider having a hideout there.
But what if Lieutenant Tragg had gone to that forest to escape Florence’s men and had become trapped? Of course it had been searched before, but if it operated on such an entirely different set of rules, there was surely a large chance that Tragg could have been overlooked.
Andy felt it was worth a try. No one had dared check it at night. And maybe that was when it behaved stranger than ever. Maybe that was when it would even yield up its possible captive.
Listen to him, accepting that magic and fairytales seemed to be real. When confronted with that as the only genuinely logical explanation left, there was not a lot he could do but accept it.
Della had been with Tragg the day she had stumbled on the eerie road. Nevertheless, she had not told him about it. She had only told Perry at first. Then, when Andy had recently asked why Perry had decided not to keep looking for a meeting-place in the canyons, Della had relented and told him as well.
They had bonded a bit more since their odd experience under Vivalene’s spell. They had been separated from the others at first, both dropped into an unsuspecting elementary school in the Valley. Upon finally coming back to themselves, they had felt closer to each other than before.
Della had still been uncomfortable talking about her misadventure in the canyons, however; she had only done so because she had sensed why Andy was asking and how he longed for another place to look for Tragg. She would be alarmed if she knew he was coming here at night and all alone.
Andy frowned. It really wasn’t a good idea. Maybe the sheer fact that he, a normally level-headed person, was doing this meant that he didn’t fully believe after all. He did not want to go missing too.
Maybe he didn’t want any other innocent parties to vanish, either. But it would not help anyone back in the city if they found he was gone the next day.
He pulled off to the side of the road and drew his phone out of his pocket. Within five minutes he had called his home and left a message on his own answering machine. If he did go missing, his house would be checked and the message found. At least they would know where he was. If he came back alright, he could simply erase the message.
The forest was quiet tonight, rather oddly so. Crickets should be chirping, if nothing else. Andy opened the door, just waiting and listening. But it was in vain—there were no crickets, no frogs, no owls. Even the plant life was perfectly still.
Andy was thoroughly disturbed now. He took his flashlight out of the glove compartment before slowly rising from the car to begin his investigation. It was like being in a tomb. Which certainly wasn’t the greatest comparison he could have made, but it seemed to fit.
He was deep in the forest as it was. As he selected a particular path and advanced, reality fell further and further away and left him stranded in this bizarre Netherworld.
Why was he calling it that? Nothing strange had even happened other than the total silence. And yet somehow, Andy had the feeling that that was the strangest of all.
The sight of an old and skinny slab of stone caught his eye enough that he backed up to see it through the foliage of his trail. Was that a marker? His heart dropped. It was. And there were others nearby, on both sides of the path. He was in a cemetery, one that had probably been started by the old settlers to the area.
That fact only made him more leery and disturbed than ever.
“Hello? Lieutenant Tragg? It’s me, Andy.” He spoke cautiously, quietly, barely above a whisper. If he spoke loudly there would be trouble. He knew that without knowing how he knew it.
Part of him wanted to scoff. He had never been afraid of cemeteries. Well, maybe as a child, but certainly not as an adult. But the farther he traveled into this cemetery, the more his feeling of terror grew. It was palpable, restrictive, closing in on him like a vise. He wanted to bolt and run. His desire to find Lieutenant Tragg was the only thing that kept him going. It would be downright foolish to pursue this otherwise. What he felt was not in his imagination. It was real.
“Lieutenant, please!” he cried, in fear as well as desperation. “If you can hear me, if you can speak . . . !”
He trailed off. He had forgotten himself and had tried to yell. But what had come out was barely a yell. In fact . . . had he spoken at all? He had heard the words in his mind, but outside of it they were so quiet. Had his voice been stopped?
He gasped at the thought. And his blood ran cold. He had not heard even that. Was it his voice . . . or his ears? What created the silence of this place?
His eyes darted about. He was still in the graveyard; stone and wooden markers were on either side of the path. Some were leaning forward or backward, threatening to collapse to the ground. Some were so weathered they could barely be read. One wooden marker was split down the middle and completely devoid of any and all writing.
He tried to take another step forward. Now it was his mobility that was being taken away. His leg felt like lead.
Help! he screamed in his mind. Dear Lord, what if Lieutenant Tragg really did get stranded in this?! What if he’s somewhere on the path, unable to move or speak or anything else? If I can somehow manage to get free, how can I leave without looking for him? And how can I look for him when this sort of thing happens?!
He tried to move again. Instead his balance was altogether gone. He fell forward, crashing to the ground like a stone statue. He could only barely force his hands up enough to provide a smidgen of cushioning. But even after he collapsed he gripped the ground, shaking as he struggled to so much as crawl forward.
Perry was right. The canyons are too dangerous for anything, not just a meeting place!
If he attempted to turn around now, would the physical bindings be removed? Was it even possible to turn?
He tried it anyway. But it was like an old videogame; movement only went one direction. He could not go back. He could not even begin to adjust his position in that manner without feeling like an invisible wall was against his body. And he could scarcely go forward. It took every ounce of his strength to slide ahead one inch.
There were more markers up ahead, still occasionally dotting either side of the road. This cemetery was extensive. He could not recall having heard anything about such a place existing in the canyons before. Most graveyards of this nature were small. Why was this one so large?
Suddenly the other markers faded into the background. They were still there, but he could not focus on them. There was only one clear marker, right at the head of the road. As soon as he saw it he wanted to look away. And yet when he tried, he could not.
This evil, whatever it was, had its point of origin in that stone. It had to; nothing else felt as intense and dark as what he sensed from that object.
He clenched his teeth, forcing himself to move forward. One inch, two inches. . . . Somehow he would get to it. He would destroy it. Then maybe the hold over him would shatter.
How would he destroy it when he was moving like someone who had to relearn how to walk? He could hardly lift his hands, let alone his body. He could not smash it, or crash into it, or otherwise knock it to the ground. The closer he went, the more impossible it became to move at all.
There was a name carved into the ancient stone. He had not been able to read it from far away, but hour after hour, as he drew closer and closer, the writing slowly became legible. And the icy feeling in his veins was back in full force.
It was not possible. Tragg would not be buried here, even if he were dead. And if he were, if this was really a marker for his grave, why didn’t it have his full name?
In fact . . . what on earth was that date?
He was out of his mind. Or . . . no, his eyes were going now. Tricks were being played on them. Before long he would go completely blind. Then he would only be able to keep moving ever so slowly, unable to see or hear or speak. He would be entirely at the mercy of this incomprehensible evil.
His hands touched something other than the ground. He looked to his left with a violent start. It was smooth and cold and . . .
Bony.
There was a skeleton lying next to him, and another ahead of that one. On his other side there were more. They were all crawling, all looking as though they had died there fighting to move, just as he was.
Was he going to be just another corpse to add to the number? How could he rebel? How could he do what they had not done?
He had been going to destroy the marker, hadn’t he? All thoughts of that had fled away when he had seen the name and date upon it.
He could not destroy it. His mobility was completely gone. Now as he tried to go forward, it was just as it had been when he had attempted to go back. He was stuck.
And he was directly in front of the headstone. He could look at nothing else. He could not even turn his head or close his eyes. All he could see was that name and that outlandish date. And he was going to lie here for he had no idea how long, staring at it until he died, like all the others.
“NO!”
The voice was loud, booming, cutting through the silence that had reigned for hours. And he gasped, rocking back as he realized it was audible.
The voice was his. The spell was broken.
And so was the stone. Cracks formed and snaked across it as if by magic. It shook, and the ground shook, and Andy fell flat on his stomach as the otherworldly earthquake intensified.
Then it was all over. The marker lay in pieces near his fingertips. He looked up, slowly, cautiously, still not quite able to believe.
The name, now also in fragments, was no longer Tragg’s. It was something strange and unheard-of, something that sounded as though it belonged in a book and not in real-life.
The date was the same.
Andy pushed himself to his knees and then to his feet. Movement was easy. And the horrible, tangible terror was gone. He felt no crushing outside feelings now; only his own bewilderment, worry, and fear.
“Lieutenant?” he called. His voice was normal. “Lieutenant Tragg, are you here?”
There was no reply. Andy walked back to where he had dropped his flashlight when he had fallen. It was not more than several yards from where the broken marker lay. That gave him another chill.
He searched the old graveyard for the better part of an hour, with no success. At last, when he reached what seemed to be its boundaries, he sighed and turned, more than ready to leave.
For once, perhaps, he was grateful he had not found any trace of his mentor and friend. The thought of Tragg being stranded here filled him with a new horror.
What was this place? Whose grave was this, really? How had he shattered the spell by simply being able to finally cry out? Why had he been able to cry out?
He was not sure he even wanted to know the answers.
With everything back to normal he was not quite willing to run, but he certainly walked briskly to the head of the trail and back to his car.