Graceland

[K. R. Jakes] When we went down the road got soaked in moonlight. The cemetery would be closing soon, because a dark cemetery is usually padlocked. The things people get up to in dark cemeteries, they're not the things one would want. There are teenagers and children who want to hold a seance. There are graverobbers, theoretically. There is the danger of a lawsuit, should some mourner stumble into an open grave and break their neck. There are many, many dark corners and shadowy thickets where someone who has no good news or kind intentions to lurk. And the dead do not make good witnesses. Still. Graceland Cemetery is a place where tourists are just as likely to be found as mourners, and on Thanksgiving Night, it is particularly empty of people. There are a couple of candles, lit, and temporarily shaded by some monument to a dead, and the candles look like stars, in the deepening twilight, the unspooling dark. Kage does not need a map for the Graceland Cemetery, because she has spent more than her fair share within its gates; it is vast, and it reminds her of a labyrinth, a park where people are hushed and quiet, and sometimes this hushed and quietude suits her needs. For instance, now. Tonight. She has dropped Julian off at his house, and she has parked down the road -- oh, quite a while ago. And she is far enough inside that she has passed the chapel, that she is standing with the collar of her sweeping coat turned up, dewed with rain, the mist that creeps across the winter-starving grounds, winds through ivy and roses, and regards a monument pensively. An unlit cigarette is in hand, held in front of her mouth. Perhaps she's considering using the candle to light it. [Dylan Willis] There's something about cemeteries close to dusk that makes people nervous. The cling of mist from the day's rain adds an air of eerie mystery to the landscape, wind rustles the leaves on the trees and howls past the mausoleums. Droplets of water scatter as the wind picks up, and the flickering of lit candles is the only light when one chooses to stray too far from the paths. The man moving amongst the tombstones tonight has strayed from the paths. Kage has been alone for the better part of her walk. The cemetery is open, yet the general public is not taking advantage of the ajar gates and the scenery, the quiet and the solitude. They are indoors, warm and safe, digesting their dinners and preparing themselves for the weekend ahead. There is shopping to be done, leftovers to be eaten, games to watch. Yet there are those who are not bothering with the trappings of the holiday. She is not alone for long. Out of the gloaming comes a tall figure, wearing jeans and an olive green Army jacket, hair overgrown and bleached blond from the sun. He walks with a staggering purpose, as if he's trying to find his way somewhere--whether towards or away cannot be discerned from a single glance--and when he becomes aware of her, he stops dead in his tracks. He stops dead, and then he steps behind a gravestone, his breath steaming in the humid night air. [Awareness+Perception: Because Why Not.] [K. R. Jakes] [And Percept + Alertness, because omg was that a noise in the cemetery?] [K. R. Jakes] Dylan stops dead, and he steps behind a gravestone. Kage has been alone for the better part of her walk. When she is no longer alone, she notices, although she doesn't see Dylan. She hears him; her head lifts, her chin is proud, and she looks sharply to the side. Her eyebrows have drawn precisely together, and she is a plain woman, for all her skin's pale and her hair's red, and her eyes an indeterminate dark in this dying light. Kage is looking at the grave Dylan is behind. Kage notices the plume of his breath; or is that just more fog? Dylan notices that Kage is awakened. He can't not notice it; he became aware of it as he looked at her. Aware of the taste that the workings of her will leaves: an amorous kiss; a verbing of the word beloved, an impassioned pressure. A candle, shining. And then, an opposite resonance -- Kage is a creature of balance -- and this opposite resonance, ah. The force that sucks all through the pinprick at the bottom of the world; the withering of green things. A draining away, siphoning gone -- hungry for more. And traces of Spirit magick about her eyes, recently used, but nothing active now. No, no spells, no books, and the candle's not conjuring anything up except for perhaps a desire to smoke or to go one way or another. The mist does not roll in. The mist is there, and Kage is as still as a deer who is startled -- no. Not quite. That implies an instinct to flight. There is no instinct to flight, but certainly, an instinct to still -- and maybe her eyes are fierce, and maybe they are wary, and maybe they're just searching. [Dylan Willis] There is nothing more than darkness to sequester the man from sight, darkness and the army of headstones scattered along the path. His breath gives him away, though, his breath and his presence, palpable from a distance such as theirs. Where before the evening had seemed chilly to the point of stopping the blood, it seems warmer by degrees, as though she is walking towards a fire, contained and unseen yet dangerous all the same. He doesn't stay hidden long. She can hear movement behind the gravestone, can hear rustling and preparation but cannot see what the 6'1" man is doing behind the 6'6" gravestone, but eventually, as all things tend to do, the waiting ends. It ends because he steps out onto the path, steps out directly in front of this woman who feels like the withering of something beautiful in winter, like the flush of desire in the warmth of spring, her very being incongruous and something about her drawing his attention like a hand snatched out of the darkness. A month ago, he might have been attractive. He might have had a haircut and shaved his face, might have been paying some mind to the state of his clothing or the cleanliness of his skin. His hair has gone untouched for weeks, it looks like, and his face is covered in a growth of pale, scraggly beard that ages him. His clothing is stained and ill-fitting, the promise of strength within his form concealed by hunger, and he looks feverish, wild-eyed and burning up, his hands at his sides and fingers twitching as if to reach for a weapon should she draw one first. He takes one step forward, then another, then another. There is maybe five yards between them when he finally stops, dark eyes unblinking, and speaks. "Did they send you?" he asks, his voice gravelly and drawling with a Midwesterner's pronunciation. He sounds like a man for whom sleep is a distant memory. [K. R. Jakes] (Percept + Awareness: Are you a monster?) [K. R. Jakes] Percept + Awareness. Are you sure you're not a monster? 'Cause you seem sort've like a monster. [K. R. Jakes] He reminds Kage inexplicably of a folk song. Not an old ballad, but a new ballad; Lal Waterson's Scarecrow. As I walked out one winter's day saw an old man hanging from a pole in a field of clay. His coat was gone and his hair grew long 'til the wind flung it up around his neck and let him go. How could you lay me down and love me? Boy, you're only a bundle of rags in an overall. And his appearance is not one designed to invite an easing of the guard; Kage takes a step forward when he coalesces from the shadow, from the sound behind the grave. But she does not take another step forward. She stays on the path, and looks at Dylan. Her eyes are full of something; an expression that hasn't yet decided whether it is water or air, sea or shade, salt or breath. She pitches her voice low, and easy. "'They'? I doubt it; I don't get sent anywhere." A beat. "Do you need help?" [Dylan Willis] His eyes narrow when she expresses a lack of understanding of his meaning, when she claims not to be sent anywhere. It lends a hardness to his face, so weathered and aged already without suspicion helping it along, and when she asks if he needs help, a tension goes through the man's body, a preparation for action that seems more like a tic than a conscious decision. From this distance she can't smell how unwashed he is, can't smell much more than the dampness of the earth and the stillness of the city evening around them, but she can see on his knees the imprint of dirt from kneeling, can see flecks of blood across his thighs, can see hand prints and smudges on a t-shirt that used to be white. His hands are grimy, the knuckles cracked and scabbed over, the fingernails inexplicably short. The warmth she feels is coming from him. Once it might have been an interpersonal warmth, an empathy that speaks of caring and concern and compassion. Now it is quite literally the warmth of something heated, something burning, something hot enough to torment. He takes a step forward. Then another. "Is that why you're here?" he asks, dry cynicism coloring his tone. [K. R. Jakes] He looks like something dredged out of a grave. Kage takes a moment to wonder whether or not he is. The unlit cigarette is still held poised between her index and middle finger, its end against her thumb; nicotine stains. And, poised -- that's a good word. We'll use it right now. Kage stays poised, because Kage always stays poised, stays collected; her chin stays raised, and her eyes stay that indescribable color in the dark. The candleflame gutters, but that's because there's a cool wet breeze; it re-writes the fog, re-writes the mist, re-writes the lacery of dew on withered sedge. They may be an indescribable color, her eyes, but they're not occupied by an indescribable expression by any means. Their expression is wary, worried. And as he steps forward, as she notes that burning . "I'm here to give thanks," she says, a little flatly. "It's thanksgiving." A pause, and if he advances again -- she rocks back a little, as though she'd step back. Her arrogance won't let her; not yet. There are other people as arrogant as Kage is, but they're not thick on the ground. There are other people as likely to meddle in the affairs of dangerous things, but they're not thick on the ground, either. And Dylan, he feels like a dangerous thing. And Kage, well. "Why are you here?" Another pause. "Do you need help?" [K. R. Jakes] ooc: on phone! brb! sorry if that didn't make sense! (says to group at large, not just jamie) [Dylan Willis] Why is he here. Does he need help. There is maybe four yards between them now, less after he takes another pair of steps forward, pressing onward even when the impression of retreat writes itself into the fabric of the young woman's form. He hasn't blinked this entire time, and his neck twitches slightly as he comes to a halt again, kinking his head to the side ever-so-slightly as he watches her from across the scant distance between them. "There's no way out," he says. "I've been looking. I know why I'm here, there's no... there's no arguing why I'm here, I'm here because of what I did to her but I'm not staying. I'm not. If I can just get out I can undo it maybe, bring her back, I could bring her back but... they keep trying to stop me." Another step forward. "And I don't think you can help me." [K. R. Jakes] "I..." Kage is at a loss, as she tries to fashion sense out of Dylan's madness. And it is madness. It must be madness; he has blood stamped into his knees, and dirt; he has handprints all over his shirt; he smells of grave-loam and there must be somebody's grave he's stretched on. An apple-tree, a brightness. "Who do you think can help you?" He's taken another step forward, and she finally gives in to impulse; takes a half-step back. [Dylan Willis] How can he not be aware of the fact that he is making her nervous? How can he not see that his behavior has warning flags unfurling themselves in her mind, that klaxons have to be sounding, that more than a few of her nerve endings have to be telling her to run every time he steps forward. In another life, in another time, he would have been a devastatingly handsome man. His jawline is the same, his eyes are the same, his features haven't changed, but whatever once was inside of him, whatever drive had him keeping his hair trimmed and his clothing clean and his behavior well within the realm of acceptable, has. It's entirely possible that he's always been like this, but there is a novelty to his dishevelment, a sense of the blood and dirt being recently acquired. The temperature has risen several degrees in the minute or so that they've stood on this path together. It is creeping towards the 40s, the cold-enough-to-kill snap of late autumn thawing. If Kage listens she might be able to hear voices. If Kage wants to avoid joining him wherever it is that he is, she'll attribute it to the breeze whispering through the gates of the nearby mausoleums. Now, it's his turn to take a step back. He twitches again, the tic moving from his neck to his shoulders down through his arms, and his breath leaves his nostrils in an audible huff, his brow tightening with suspicion. "There's no one else. There's just... there's you, and there's them, and if you're with them... are you with them? You have to be." He takes another step back, his left hand slowly rising from its place at his side to come around to the small of his back. It stays there, for now. [K. R. Jakes] "I'm with myself," she says, and this conversation echoes another she has had recently. "And the way you talk about them, I don't think I want to be with them." Another pause, and then, "Look. There's more than just me and them; there's also you, and there's also a 'her.' Isn't there? Let me try to help you." Kage should run. Kage should flee. But, flight? But, flee? Kage can't. Her instinct is to meddle; her instinct is to bargain; her instinct is to try, at least once more, to get through to Dylan. This is not because she has a soft heart; it isn't even because she has a warm heart. "Or ... Let's you go that way, and I'll go this way," and Kage tilts her head to indicate some direction across the graveyard that is not toward Dylan, a lock of hair as vibrant as bloodspill, as firecopper, flicking into her eyes. "I'm Jakes, by the way. K. R. Jakes." [Dylan Willis] [Pause!] [K. R. Jakes] [Saves!] [Dylan Willis] If Kage knew what was good for her, if her sense of self-preservation overpowered her sense of curiosity, she would leave this man on the path where she found him, would slowly back away until he ceased to register her as a threat and went off on his merry way to find someone else to terrorize. What he'd said holds some truth to it: there is no one else. They are virtually alone out here by the church, darkness rolling in and that warmth growing. It's like a cool summer evening now, at least in the high 50s, though it had been barely above freezing when Kage set out earlier this evening. But she doesn't run. She doesn't flee. She stays, and she talks, offering up two options: either let her help him, or they go in two separate directions. The man lowers his hand from where it had crept behind his back, and it comes up empty once it is within her line of sight again. Nothing was grabbed or produced, but it's clear that that's what he was preparing to do. He's not unarmed. His resonance is powerful. Kage ought to be able to tell without asking any further that the man standing in front of her is powerful, and in their world, 'powerful' is synonymous with 'dangerous.' "Why do you want to help me?" he asks, slowly, without advancing again. [Kage] His hand comes up empty, and Kage is relieved, but the tension does not leave the nape of her neck. Her jaw. The muscles of her lower back. "Because," Kage says, and there are others who'd ask that same question. There are others who'd ask more: why didn't you run to begin with? Why did you talk to him? This mad-as-birds man, accompanied by scorching heat? This man who you know is dangerous; whose sheer force you can feel. Why? "You look as if you need it. As if I'd want it, were I you. Because it seems like it may be the right thing to do. I'm sorry." [Dylan Willis] Because, she says, and he frowns, deeply, his gaze cutting razor sharp and vicious through the darkness. There's suspicion in his eyes, and tension writes itself into his shoulders and arms as he straightens up. Eventually, she produces an answer: he looks as if he needs it. And then she apologizes. There are no crickets as there would be on an evening as warm as it feels tonight, there are no animals rustling in the bushes, no birds bedding down for the night. All there is is that mournful wind, that tossing of branches, that thick sense of their being truly alone right now. If Kage were to scream, the groundskeeper might hear her. Then again, he might not. This is a huge cemetery, Chicago's most famous. If she were to scream it's entirely possible no one would be any wiser. "Do you know a way out?" [Kage] The question is simple. And, Kage suspects, deceptively simple. The redhead presses her mouth against the joint of her thumb for a moment -- not a kiss, not a prayer, but a moment of respite; of calming. She is still holding that unlit cigarette, and after she touches her mouth to her skin, a reassurance that she is solid, she takes a deep breath. She is meeting Dylan's gaze. She is trying to read his intentions, she is trying to understand what he means, trying to figure out just how she can make this into something good. "I don't know. I can take you out of the cemetary, if you're lost." The mundane answer. Oh, mundane. [Dylan Willis] There may be no way to make this good. As she stands watching him, as she looks into his eyes, something very chilling becomes very clear very quickly: he's not seeing what she's seeing. He's not standing in a cemetery with her, he's not standing on a quiet path near a church talking to a plainly pretty graduate student. Where he is, where he's standing, who he thinks he's talking to, she can't ascertain without digging deeper. All she knows is it's getting very, very warm. He cants his head at her, his gaze never softening or swaying from hers, and though his hand twitches as if to reach behind his back again, it does not move. His lips move, words leaving his throat but too quiet to be picked up from this distance, and then he steps forward again. And again. And again. Apparently he's going to go with her. [Kage] There may be no way to make this. Apparently he's going with her. Kage watches with a degree of trepidation as Dylan approaches. Finally, she tucks her cigarette behind her ear. A lock of oh dark hair, back behind that same ear, away from her cheek, away from her throat; a swathe of pale skin. An even, but quick, tempo of a pulse. As Dylan takes another step forward, Kage picks at the fraying edge of her coat sleeve, at a stray thread. A coat, a sweater; it was cold. It isn't now; she almost feels like sweating, like she's simmering, like she's a coal beginning to burn. Beginning to pop, because he's close, and closer. The thread, she pulls it completely out; more and more thread. "Let's try this way," she says, and this-a-way is taken. And, "Can you tell me your name or how you got here? Knowing that might help." [Dylan Willis] As he draws closer, Kage can smell the weeks on his skin, in his clothes. He smells like cold, like old sweat, like dirt and blood, and she can see more clearly the fact that he's thinner than he ought to be, that he hasn't been sleeping, or if he has been sleeping it hasn't been deeply. Maybe that's what his problem is. Maybe his mind is starting to snap because he doesn't have anyplace to sleep, or he's been trying to sleep on someone's grave, or because he's deliberately staying up. Maybe. He keeps his arms at his sides as he falls into step beside Kage, so much shorter than he is and so much tinier, so much fairer. With his build, his countenance, his dress--his Army jacket--he looks like a man who could have been in the military at one point, if he isn't still. He could seriously hurt her if he wanted to, could probably snap her neck with his bare hands. Yet she tries to help him. This has to mean something to him. He's going with her. "There's nothing there," he says, frowning, as if he's trying to come up with an explanation to her questions and is coming up with exactly as he's said: nothing. He winces, a sudden agitation writing itself into his frame, and he reaches up to scratch at the back of his scruffy head with shaking fingers. "There's no... there's nothing. I don't know. They must have taken it from me when I got here." [Kage] He is going with her. This is a mixed blessing/curse dexim a si sihT. K. R. Jakes sidesteps. A space between she and Dylan; the illusion of safety. He could hurt her; she knows this. He could hurt her on levels that perhaps are more than physical; she knows this, too. And perhaps she only doesn't care because she is arrogant. Because she has worked her will on the universe, before; she has told reality how the story is going to go. Kage wraps the thread around her finger, around, around, around again. Then unwraps it. Wraps again, around, around, around again. "Okay. Do you want me to look and see if I can tell you your name?" A pause. "What does this path look like to you?" His agitation might be so intense that Kage doesn't say anything, doesn't finish that second question. Doesn't even voice it, but there it is: in her throat, on her tongue. Ready to be shaped. Define the world. [Dylan Willis] His world had made sense up until tonight. He was looking for someone. "They" were trying to keep him from her. If he could find a way out of wherever it is that he is, he could find her, and everything would be alright. This is what has been keeping him going, what has been making his lack of identity and his lack of context and his lack of assistance or friends tolerable: there has been no one questioning him, no one grabbing him by the back of the neck and forcing him to stare into this great cavernous abyss where his life had once been. And he is agitated. Kage has the knowledge that she could warp reality to her liking on her side, but what is at her side is just as warped as anything she could ever dream up. She asks if he wants her to look and see if she can tell him his name, and he stops dead on the path, staring at her as if she had suddenly shouted or pulled a weapon or otherwise turned on him. Maybe that stops the second question from leaving her throat. Maybe it makes her rethink walking out of here with him. For several seconds all he does is watch her, as if waiting for what she's going to do next, and then he looses a loud breath through his nostrils. "You said you weren't one of them," he says. [Kage] He stops. Dead. The second question is stopped, too. Murdered before it is fashioned into something by breath, so it has no spirit; no soul. Kage doesn't stop dead. There is a path, and she is leaving this cemetery; but she does turn so that she's facing Dylan; walk backwards if necessary. Necessity: a bitch. Kage will leave this cemetery without Dylan, if she must. Where would she even take him? She doesn't know. She hasn't considered that yet. Consequences. "I'm not with anybody," Kage says, quiet, but a little intense. Her eyes are dark, wistful; full. "Except you right now. That's the truth. You can come with me, or not. I won't touch you, but I do want to help." The emphasis is on want: Kage's essence is a desirous one; something longing. That dreams of longing. Kage's practicality comes and goes. She would wait at a crossroads for a devil, if she thought she could talk the devil into somethin interesting. "I'm going to try and leave this place. Should I go on ahead?" [Dylan Willis] She insists, not for the first time, that she isn't with anybody. She hasn't thought about what she is going to do with this guy once they make it out of the cemetery, whether she's just going to leave him to his own devices or if she's going to take him back to her place, or where even she would take him. There have to be homeless shelters or hospitals that would take him in, but the question is whether he would go or not, whether he would turn aggressive or hostile or even violent if she tried to get him to stay at any of those places. There is an inherent trust in his coming along with her, but like the rest of him, that trust is not a stable thing. It bucks and wobbles like a ship tossed about on a stormy sea, threatening to completely topple over and take down everyone onboard. Yet right now, she is doing what no one else he has encountered has done for him. She's trying to help. Bless her stubborn little heart, she's trying to help. She wants to help. That takes some of the hardness out of his eyes, loosens up his shoulders and makes him consider his options. He's been here, wherever here is, for weeks. He's been alone, unless he's been set upon by "them," and "they" are trying to keep him from getting out of here. K.R. Jakes wants to help him. K.R. Jakes is going to go with or without him, though, and after a moment of ambivalence, after a moment of contemplation, he draws a breath, and he starts after her. The look on his face says what the man himself doesn't: Don't leave me here. [Kage] He stays still for a while, and Kage does not; but she watches him. Kage watches his expression as he watches her walk backwards and away from him. She watches him take a step, and another. Another. All night, she has been watching him take one step and then another it seems like. Not all night. Fifteen minutes, maybe. Maybe twenty since he coalesced from behind a gravestone, a snap of a twig, a rustling; madness and burning. Who knows? And it weighs on her, it does, so that her throat fills up. At first she still doesn't turn away, watching to see that he's following -- that he's not going for whatever he has at his back. She has stopped spiralling the thread around her finger, and it cuts into her skin; white and red. Then she takes a deep, deep breath and turns her back. Dylan can catch up, or Dylan can snap her neck, and the part of Kage that is used to having terrifying male figures looming at her shoulder is as calm as a tideless sea. That's a tiny part, though. When he first appeared, she thought of a ballad. And another ballad. And her mind also grazed across a myth, and it's that myth she's thinking about now. Orpheus, Eurydice. There are no crickets in the cemetery, and it is dark, and there are no visitors, and the fog is thick. "Would," she says, and her throat is thick, remember? So it comes out richer, clotted cream; smokier. Just until it's clear of fog, until the shadows're swept out. "Would you tell me what you see when you look around?" They've walked, they've walked, they've walked. There's an exit, not far up ahead. There's a road that goes straight from Graceland's chapel to the main parking lot. And Kage looks back at Dylan, or to the side, pulling on the thread, resolved. "A gate out of the cemetery should be just ahead," she adds. [Dylan Willis] ========== This man before her had a life a month ago. He had to have. He didn't just spring fully formed from an open grave, doomed to spend the whole of his existence wandering around a cemetery with no end in sight, hiding from those who might help him and threatening those who wouldn't. Someone out there is looking for him. Someone out there is waiting for him to come home, to call, to give some indication that he is not lying in a ditch with his belly opened or his throat cut, that he is not chained up in someone's basement or in jail or gone to Mexico or Canada or France or any other nation that tends to harbor fugitives, expatriates, and the disillusioned. Whatever life he'd led, though, that's gone now. It's gone the way of his name. There is nothing there anymore. The man she's leading out of the cemetery is a blank slate covered in dirt and blood and time, is bristling with mistrust and all but twitching with energy needing to be discharged. There is some sort of weapon at his back. He is not helpless, yet it's clear that he needs someone to show him a way back. The question she had not been given leave to ask earlier leaves her lips again now. What does he see when he looks around. His boots are tramping down on the dirt path, crunching small stones and reasserting his presence in this world even if his mind has been shattered and scattered elsewhere, and he keeps his arms at his sides in the event that--what? That he needs to react to something happening around him? That something comes at them? That he needs to defend himself? He does not walk like a man who is moving along a peaceful path on a holiday evening. He's walking like a man surveying treacherous territory, his eyes as much on their surroundings as it is on the woman next to him, perhaps even more so. "Everything's burning," he mutters. They walk, and they walk, and they walk, and they maintain their distance all the way to the gate. At the threshold the man looks up at something that isn't there, wary and uncertain, but he keeps his hands to himself. He doesn't grab K.R. Jakes for support or grab her hand for comfort or thrust her ahead of him to test whether the way is safe. He draws a breath, heavy and rattling, and he follows her.