oldbetsy | Ghosts n' Stuff

[larryface]

Who's that weirdo stalking around the girls' dorm building?

Mutters and dirty looks weren't exactly subtle as they trailed him around campus, but for what it's worth, Larry has long since learned to shrug off dirty looks. At least when they were directed at himself. As it is, the suspicious looks and creeped out muttering go seemingly unregistered as he focuses down on a device in his hands that looks suspiciously like a Gearboy. Occasionally he stops, squeezes down on the shoulder buttons of the game system, then moves on with a deep frown.

There are moments that he has to stop and apologize when he bumps into someone, and more than once they start to yell, at least until they realize that he's already walking away from them after a cursory 'sorry 'bout that'. It's only when he pauses to perch on the back of one of the campus benches to thumb impatiently at his phone that he even stops at all, still looking down with that almost constipated frown and paying no mind to anyone else.

Still with the staring and the stink eye. You'd think they'd never seen a ghost hunter before.

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[larryface]

That kind of reaction and at least lowkey support was something he'd only become used to in high school. He nodded at Helga and headed across the bathroom to take a seat on one of the counters.

"Y'know that stuff that makes you just feel helpless? Like even if you're trying your damnedest it's not like you're ever gonna make a dent in it and trying to help just fucks everything up regardless? This is kinda how I'm trying to break outta that. Mom's always going on about being proactive and stuff, so why not?"

[oldbetsy]

... That's. Well.

For a moment Helga looks way more awkward than she has at any other point this evening. One of her hands rises to the back of her neck again, absentmindedly adjusting the big pink bow wrapped around that messy bun of hers. Before she talks she turns to the stalls, trying to keep the action casual as she starts checking each one.

"Kind of, I guess." Her words come out mumbled, spoken in an almost angry huff. She's only vaguely better now at facing her emotions than she was at eleven, over half a decade spent on a therapist's couch showing some benefits.

"I mean I kind of made a career out of messing everything up when I was a kid." She pushes one stall open, the door sluggish to shut when she goes to the next. It's like she's doing it to kill time because that's exactly what she's doing, one hand in her pocket the whole time. "And when I was older too."

[larryface]

He's starting to feel like he should stop talking at this point. He's gotten too used to just being able to run at the mouth about this stuff and now it's catching up with him. He watches her prodding at the doors under the guise of finding the right one.

"Oh yeah, I've met career shit-starters too. Not saying it applies to you but sometimes there's shit that precipitates that. You ok?" He's sidled up to her side as he says it, the gearboy raised to try and charge whatever might be in the broken stall. Maybe it'll just be something small and explainable. He really hopes that's the case. He doesn't want to have to bother Todd for his sigil codex... "Oh, uh, sometimes when they appear it's super awful so you might wanna not look. Unless you're cool with Cronenberg-style gore effects."

[oldbetsy]

"Huh? Yeah, I'm fine, no worries." She genuinely seems dismissive about it but that's been Helga's modus operandi with emotions for ages. At this second she feels more stupid than anything else, if only briefly. "Sometimes I just start yammering and you know how that goes."

She halts though halfway through opening the next door, finally looking over at him. What flustering there was has died off and she seems happy to abandon the previous subject.

"Videodrome or Dead Zone?"

[larryface]

"Definitely Videodrome, with a hint of Scanners depending on how badly they were disfigured when they died." And now he has a song stuck in his head. Long live the new flesh indeed.

A moment to brace upon reaching the right stall, Larry sets off the gearboy again. He breathes a sigh of relief when it doesn't seem like anything responds. "Huh...could be they need coaxing or something. Megan wouldn't appear at will until she had her necklace nearby."

[oldbetsy]

To her credit Helga doesn't blanch or react more than making a pinched face at that. Good, great. Gory spooks, that's what I need.

She relaxes as Larry breathes a sigh of relief, evidently not finding a thing. That emboldens her a bit once more so when he says coaxing she can't help but snort in amusement.

"What, like asking them to come out or something."

She turns and with usual Pataki bravado now that she's pretty sure this amounts to absolutely nothing she slams back the stall door like she's a loan shark coming to collect a payment.

"HEY PRINCESS! WE AIN'T GOT ALL DAY Y'KNOW!"

[larryface]

Larry winces as Helga starts getting loud, hoping he wouldn't have to try and be a mediator for a confused ghost. He backs up a step and sets off the gearboy again, bracing, and...

It's like a puddle of gore forms in reverse from the floor, tissue flowing upward onto bones as they materialize. a ragged skirt flows into view followed by a dirty blouse with puffed sleeves. It reads as 70s to him, which...well, it seems appropriate to him. Long, lank blond hair and a vacant eyes complete the look of a very much there and unmistakable ghost.

"Uh...uh. Hi?" He never knows how to talk to them when he sees them. That was always his friends' forte. She doesn't seem responsive, though. This explains the lack of ostentatious claims when it comes to hauntings here. She's just kinda here and not doing anything. He lowers his voice and leans toward Helga. "Dude, do you know anything about this? Like...campus stories or whatever? Girl goes missing, gets found in bathroom, stuff like that?"

[oldbetsy]

... Oh. Oh. She just watches at this thing oozes into being like some sort of terrible claymation short. Her early bravado of course flees in the face of this batch of special effects that aren't special or effects at all.

It's not until the thing is completely fleshed out that Helga seems to remember she can move. She grasps a hold of Larry's arm without a second thought like he's her lifeline on this very un-Scooby Doo adventure. And when he leans in to whisper she looks back at him with these round, big eyes.

For a moment she can't get her brain to work, not with the very not ghost-like ghost over there. Once the gears turn her first words are whispered right back and ground out just a little.

"How the hell should I know?!"

And even as she says that her brain scrounges up something. She blinks back at the spook. "I guess... there's some stories about disappearances, sure, but that was years ago.. And all over campus too. Supposed to get us not to go wandering campus at night." That's why RA's even brought them up, yeah?

[larryface]

With Helga's confirmation that she can see the thing, and that she knows of things even if not first- or secondhand, Larry swears under his breath and tucks the gearboy under the arm that Helga's got her vicegrip on. The other hand digs into his pocket for his phone, the ringback already going off in his ear after he'd speed-dialed someone else.

From there it's a one-sided conversation as far as Helga can hear, a confirmation of presences here linked to the old disappearances. It's over quickly, and he turns to her to explain as he snaps his phone shut again.

"I got a bad feeling about those disappearances." There's a grimace on his face as he looks back at the ghost girl. "Maybe it's not related, but I gotta be sure. Nockfell's fucked but maybe nowhere else has to be."

forgive me, i got tangled up in setting up another journal for 500 years

[oldbetsy]

She barely hears the call honestly because holy shit. She hadn't thought anything would actually turn up but here goes reality calling Helga Pataki's bluff once more in prime fashion at that.

Helga can't help the sort of shaky snort she gives. "Yeah, what gave you bad vibes first?". She winches at her own sarcasm though, realizes she's about to break his arm here with her hold and sets him loose as she gives a long sigh.

"I dunno, Nockfell got a lot of disappearances? Could always ask the lady of the night herself." Here she hooks a thumb to Miss Ghost herself.

Welcome back from formatting hell.

[larryface]

"I am the crown prince of bad vibes," Larry replies absently; if he'd noticed the sarcasm, he isn't calling attention to it right this second. He flexes his fingers when his arm is released, a subtle tingling rolling through and fading as the circulation returns.

He steps into the stall and glances around at the somewhat grimy surfaces to see if maybe there was an anchor around the area keeping the ghost there. She wasn't responding to his presence that he could tell at any rate.

"Oh yeah. Teachers, randos, the people that worked in the old saw mill, and those are just the ones we know about."

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[oldbetsy]

"Same." Like, a hard same. If Helga can do anything perfectly in her opinion it's fuck everything up. Therapy helped, sure, and she had changed some but... yeah.

Her expression scrunches up at that. Did he live in the Bermuda Triangle or something? She's still outside the stall herself but she thinks to squat down and peer around the floor for anything.

And as her gaze catches something she recalls the whole cult business he mentioned earlier. It must be real serious then and her stomach squirms a little at the thought.

"Remind me not to come visit." Then, "There's something behind the toilet, on the floor near the base."

[larryface]

Two peas in a fucked up pod, they are. The only difference is that he only believed he was why everything around him was fucking up, when it was just shit beyond his control.

To his credit, he doesn't ask her to come in and help him find anything. He has the experience here, out of the two of them. There's no reason that she should be forced to put herself in danger any more than she already has.

"Why do you think I haven't invited you to come by and meet my friends?" he snorts, craning his head as he crouches down and catches sight of what Helga had noticed. There's a moment that he hopes it's just something dead back there, or maybe something accidentally dropped, but the longer he looks, the more he realizes that it had to have been wedged there deliberately.

"Wish I had some fuckin' gloves," he mutters as he reaches back to try and pull it out.

[oldbetsy]

"Because I'm not the best with people?"

Honestly she hadn't even given it another thought. She was so used to being removed from people's typical friend groups anymore that being that 'one person on the side who isn't quite a friend but you talk to them' isn't that shocking. She chatted with girls in her dorm but she sure wouldn't call any of them friends.

[larryface]

"Shit dude, none of us are," he mutters, "'s why it's just the four of us, plus Neil when he hangs around. Hah, got it."

He plops himself down to sit on the bathroom floor, turning over the little bundled thing in his hands and unwrapping the dirty rag around it. He makes a sad sound upon realizing that he was holding a small book, and as he peeks at the first page, it's obvious it's a diary.

"Man, I don't wanna read this... Probably has evidence for why she's in here, though. Man..."

He pockets it, rather than trying to read the diary in front of the person he assumes is the owner. They could go through it on their own time. The ghost herself doesn't seem to be the violent type, so he's pretty sure they can just leave her here for a little longer.

"C'mon, let's get outta here before people start yelling about a guy in a women's bathroom."

[oldbetsy]

Helga gives an indelicate snort, flapping her hand in a sort of dismissive way. "Like anyone gives a damn."

Still she gets it. Casting a glance to the ghost herself Helga decides she looks more tired and dejected than outright scary, even if she's kind of roughed up around the edges... or more than that. It makes her feel sort of sad but it's an emotion she pushes off with her typical grace.

She hitches her thumb over her shoulder, walking backwards out of the stall for absolutely no particular reason at all, nope.

"C'mon, we'll hit up my room. If you don't want to read it I will." She cracks a faint smirk, though without it's usual sarcastic edge. "I'm kind of an expert on diaries."

She pauses where she stands out of the bathroom stall itself and flicks her gaze to the ghost again. She doesn't point but it's pretty obvious who she's addressing here. "Long as you don't care. I can't imagine you do though." Her tone implies Helga totally gets why she wouldn't either, even if she doesn't know a damn thing about said spook just yet.