Haunted House GP

[londoncallingmods]

 The house doesn't exist, that's the first thing anyone who might find themselves inside it would want to know. Now, you might ask how one could find themselves inside something that doesn't exist, but you'd honestly be better off asking yourself how you could leave something that doesn't exist. After all, ideas and concepts can't be burnt or broken, and you can't breakdown a door that's not there- Or was there and then decided to be somewhere else for a while...

 

You wake in a house though, a house that doesn't exist. A house that defies the laws of reality. There are corridors that go on for days, rooms full of nightmares, and millions of doors that lead you anywhere but out. Trapped inside with you are dozens of other people, all searching for an exit, or an explanation.

 

Behind every door you'll find your darkest fears, maybe even memories you've tried to forget, or secrets you never wanted to share... 

 

(OTA! Here is your first of two Halloween gps! This one is, of course, set in the haunted house where your pup can run into anything you can dream up! Deadly traps! Spooky monsters! An existential crises! Top level your pups waking up or running into danger, and then go ahead and tag other players! Since this is all magic-y and spooky don't worry too much about time lines and who bumped into who first. Only rule is that your pup can't escape until November 1st! Have fun! Also, because there are two GPs going up this week, both are open to new top levels for two whole weeks! And, of course, you can keep tagging long after that if you want. :D I'll post reminders daily on slack.)

Comments

[dr_spencer_reid]

Spencer wasn't alright- He was fairly certain this was the beginning of his mind's decent into madness. However, he still headed towards the familiar pale figure.

"Not really," he admitted, looking at the knife, then at Sunny herself. "I'm not sure if I'm losing my mind or..."

Or what? He wasn't sure what the alternative could possibly be.

[akatawitch]

Reflexively Sunny felt her heart skip a beat, but for now all she did was shake her head. "I don't think you are. I've been wandering around here for... you know, I don't know. I lost track a while ago."

[dr_spencer_reid]

"Shared hallucinations are uncommon, but not unheard of. Folie à deux, or shared psychotic disorder," he said, looking as if he was about to launch into one of his long and rambling explanations, but silencing himself when something caught his attention.

"There's a light on behind that door," he said, pointing at one of the many doors that lined the hall.

[akatawitch]

"If we were around each other enough to influence each other like that, maybe I'd buy it," Sunny countered, turning towards the light. It might be a trick. Or a trap. Or someone else trying to find their way.

Or a way out. She started towards it.

[dr_spencer_reid]

"Wait, if we're going in there, we need to move with caution. Someone could be in there, waiting for us," Spencer warned.

"I'll open the door, you should stand back."

[akatawitch]

Sunny experienced a small flash of annoyance, then tried to remind herself that Spencer was a trained law enforcement officer and this was not an instance of being talked down to simply on the grounds of being female. But she let him go first.

What greeted them on the other side was not another corridor or a staircase or even a room that would logically match this house. It looked to be a one-room hut. In the middle of the floor lay the lifeless bodies of two children, a boy and a girl, neither of them a day older than three. The man who knelt over them was large and looming, built like a former athlete with powerful arms and a midsection that had already run to fat. He held a piece of chalk in one hand, in the other an ornate knife of his own.

Otokoto Ginny had died nine years ago. These children had been saved nine years ago. But there they were.

Black Hat took them in, a skinny white Lamb and a little Leopard girl. "This is the best you can do, girl?" The question was all sneering laughter.

Sunny didn't know if she could go any paler, but she felt the blood drain from her face.

[dr_spencer_reid]

Spencer instinctively reached for his gun- Only to remember he had none. ...He had nothing, actually. Nothing but bruised wrists and a looming headache.

So he did the next thing that came naturally to him, he moved to try and stand in front of Sunny.

[akatawitch]

Black Hat broke into a genuine laugh at that, beginning to draw on the dirt floor with the chalk he held. "The last time at least you were a child hiding behind another child. Now you're hiding behind Lambs? You may as well hand him over now, little witch. I only need one more life to complete it."

"You're dead," Sunny spat back. "I watched you die."

Black Hat did not look at her, clearly unimpressed. "Indeed. You watched."

[dr_spencer_reid]

Spencer's brow creased briefly in confusion, and he looked back at Sunny.

"This isn't real," he decided. "It can't be real. Maybe not a shared psychosis, but... I've seen things that couldn't be here either. The sort of things that haunt my nightmares, but I know can't really hurt me any more. ...Sunny, whatever this is, it's not real."

He sounded so sure of that fact, and his posture relaxed slightly as he spoke. "We don't have to stay here- This memory or nightmare, isn't worth your anger."

[akatawitch]

Relaxing was a mistake.

Sunny didn't have time to warn him before the ground shifted beneath Spencer's feet to pitch him into the room, before magic crawled up his limbs to hold him down by the dead children. The knife in Otokoto's left hand made small but decisive twists as he muttered in a language Sunny didn't have time to recognize.

"Children make the best sacrifices," Black Hat lamented. "But you've still something of innocence about you. You'll do."

He directed his next commands to what must have seemed like the air, but it shifted and pulsed like no natural wind. Bush spirits, Sunny recognized. Or remembered. She couldn't quite tell which. "Go now. Watch for real threats. The girl is harmless."

Not so. Not anymore.

Enraged, Sunny slashed her knife through the air shouting at the top of her lungs in a voice that was not entirely her own. "Hold." She held the little green blade high, eyes full of determination and tears as Black Hat's own shirt collar began violently choking him.

"Spencer," she murmured. "Run."

[dr_spencer_reid]

It all happened so fast, and by the time Spencer hit the ground it was too late to even react. His mind took it all in though, the knife, the words, the children- It snapped picture after mental picture, filing it all away to be analysed later.

Sunny spoke, and his mind shifted it's focus.

He could move again, and he rose quickly. He didn't run though- Something in his pocket moved, and when he slipped his hand inside he found a tiny bottle and a loaded syringe.

He held the syringe where Sunny could see it, then nodded at the strange man that- Well, she seemed to have trapped somehow. He'd worry about how that was even possible later, right now he just wanted to know if he should act.

[akatawitch]

Sunny had largely gotten away with that through the element of surprise. Otokoto Ginny was a prodigy among Leopard People and a second level sorceress on her own shouldn't have been able to handle him. But that was in some way the advantage of being a free agent. You went for simple, practical solutions that your more magically-minded peers simply did not.

He'd get the upper hand back if this took too long. And even in her upset, she knew that Spencer had been right. She didn't have to finish this; she had to get them out alive.

She didn't know what was in that syringe, but satisfied that it would be useful, she nodded back. Though to be sure that this didn't go horribly wrong, she raised her knife slowly, effectively lifting Otokoto by the throat while he clawed at his neck for air. Only with his left hand, though. His right refused to drop his knife.

[dr_spencer_reid]

The nod was all he needed.

Spencer was certain he didn't have time to find a vein, and so he plunged the syringe into the crook of the man's right elbow. He moved quickly, and with more confidence than one might expect, injecting the drug into the man before immediately moving away to stand at Sunny's side.

[akatawitch]

Right arm still raised, eyes hardly daring to blink, Sunny backed them out of the room until she felt the wall of the hallway against her back. Only then did she swing her arm down, slamming the door shut without laying a hand on it.

It stopped, then. The light was gone, the whoosh of air churned up by the bush spirits, the strangled sounds of a man struggling for his life's breath.

Sunny didn't dare open that door again, though. No, now that her adrenaline didn't have to pump so hard, those tears in her eyes started spilling out and she found she was crying.

[dr_spencer_reid]

The way it ended, as abruptly as it began, was yet another indication that perhaps none of this was real. At least, not in any traditional or physical sense. Spencer opened his mouth to say as much, only to stop himself when he realized Sunny was crying. ...Suddenly facts and explanations seemed less important.

"Sunny," he said, his hand hanging awkwardly in mid air, then slowly coming to rest on her arm.

He wasn't good at this, he never had been. Moments like this only served to remind him how painfully ignorant he was when it came to physical interaction. Though his mind didn't fail him completely, a glance down the hall reminded him of where he'd awoken, and the reality of those events. It reminded him of shooting Tobias, and the emotional relief he'd felt when Hotch had embraced him. A simple interaction that had eased the guilt and fear. He was certain nothing else could have helped him more in that moment.

So that was what Spencer offered Sunny now.

Thin arms wrapped around her, and he pulled her close, not thinking of the knife or the power she clearly welded.

[akatawitch]

When she was little, Sunny's mother used to scold her for carrying on when she got upset. So she'd learned over time how to do more and cry less.

This wasn't going to be one of those moments.

It crushed her all at once just how much she missed Orlu and Chichi and Sasha, all the fear of that encounter which they had had to comfort each other through, being told by their mentors that fear was something they'd just have to deal with on the path to mastering magic.

And when Spencer of all people hugged her, well...

She let her right arm dangle, still holding the knife tight in her grip, but her left arm hung on and she hid her face in his shoulder and just took a minute to unravel.

[dr_spencer_reid]

Spencer was silent at first, rubbing her back lightly and letting her get it all out.

When he did finally speak up, his voice was soft and gentle.

"It's okay. It's alright, Sunny. We're alright."

[akatawitch]

"He killed all those children," she sobbed, trying to pull herself together.

[dr_spencer_reid]

Spencer knew he had nothing to say to that. No response that would ease the pain of knowing what she knew. He'd learned a long time ago that you couldn't ease that pain with kind words- You simply learned to live with it until it was slightly less painful.

So instead he simply held her tighter for a moment, before slowly letting go and taking a step back to look at her properly.

"I think we need to keep moving," he said, rubbing his bruised wrists as he fidgeted slightly. "I do have to ask though- How... How did you do that? With your knife, I mean."

[akatawitch]

Sunny sniffled hard and stepped back, stubbornly wiping tears from her face with the back of her hand. She would be all right, she knew. And Spencer was right.

Though at the question, she felt herself instinctively freeze. She could not make the words come out.

But she could answer in a roundabout way by offering, "I can take care of those bruises for you."

[dr_spencer_reid]

"Is it magic?" he asked bluntly, not offering his wrists- Not out of a lack of trust, but because he wasn't ready to focus on them, or what he'd gone through before finding Sunny. "I mean- It has to be, right? ...Actually, that would explain a lot about this place, better than a diagnoses of shared hallucinations anyway."

[akatawitch]

A direct question was easier in getting Sunny past years of conditioning, no matter what he'd just seen. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again... "Yes."

[dr_spencer_reid]

Spencer was silent for a long moment, a distracted look on his face as his mind processed that.

Eventually he spoke. "If we weren't currently trapped in a nightmare, I'd be asking you to show me more- But I suppose not dying probably takes priority over my curiosity and childhood dreams of being a wizard- Or a Jedi. Not that much of a difference really, outside of a need to fit into a specific genre..." he said, clearly about to stumble into a long and nerdy ramble as he seemed to momentarily forgot about the madman in the room behind them.

[akatawitch]

Absurdly, Sunny found herself smiling a little as she dug into her bag and fished out a little bottle filled with blue powder. "But I can show you something. Your wrists, please."

What she was about to do had to be worth all the whippings in the world, but her cover was blown and he was injured, and at the very least it gave her something to focus on and recenter.

[dr_spencer_reid]

Spencer looked down at his wrists, then held them out in offering, watching Sunny with curious eyes.