Welcome to Hemlock Falls

[Craft]

Craft pulls his pocket knife from his pocket and looks from Aaron to Sarah, "So, neither of you really know Dave?"

He frowns slightly and moves to insert the blade in the keyhole of the doorknob. He's only actually successfully done this a couple of times. But it was probably better to try that then do anything that would add more weirdness to Sarah's life.

Aaron however... he had a feeling Aaron knew more about the 'hikers' than he was making obvious.

"Let's hope this works..."

 

[Sarah Whittaker]

Sarah tries to be discreet about the fact that she's staying close to the hikers.

"Is it cynical of me to think 'probably not'?"

 

[Atrus]

But Sarah was proved wrong, and the cheap door opened. The 'flat' inside was really just a big room, with a pulled-up Murphy bed, a kitchenette, a radiator under the window, and a table for two. A bachelor pad thought out in the olden days for those miners who were either single, or couldn't commute daily to and from their families.

The place sported the lived-in mess of someone who hadn't cleaned in a few days: dishes and glasses in the sink, socks and shirts about the bed, several cigarette butts in the tray on the table. The fridge was humming gently, with the occasional higher-pitched whine.
The light they had seen was coming from a reading lamp, standing on a three-legged stool by the bed.

"Well, he's not here," Aaron stated the obvious, "Shit. Where's he gone to?"

 

[Craft]

Craft offered a grin as the door opened, "Not too cynical, but I'm glad you were wrong..."

Craft's first move is to go to the window to see if there's any indication it's been open: Water on the windowsill or whatever. On first glance, there wasn't much else in the room that seemed to be a 'secret exit' so it was disconcerting that Dave would have simply vanished.

"He did actually come in here, right?"

 

[Sarah Whittaker]

Sarah nods, and asks absently "Is there a common room in the barracks?" She walks around the room, slowly. "Maybe there's more beer in the fridge?" She moves towards it, and (attempts to?) open the fridge.
Her movements are slow enough that someone would be able to stop her if their instincts screamed 'don't look, it might contain cheese so ancient it's now a chemistry experiments'.

 

[Atrus]

The fridge only contains cheap booze and a wilted something that maybe was celery in a past life.
The windowsill is dry and the window, despite rattling a bit because of age, doesn't seem to have been opened recently.

Aaron shrugs at the questions. "I know he went this way, but I didn't see him come in. I thought he might have tried going home, so I checked here first. It's hard for her to see him. It's like he has a, a dark fog around him. It took her this long to figure out it was Dave at all."

 

[Craft]

Craft remains quiet for a moment before asking the question that had been on his mind since Aaron had first mentioned 'her'.

"Who is 'SHE'?"

While waiting for an answer he pokes his head out of the room, looking up and down the hall for any sign of light emitting from under another door.

 

[Atrus]

There seems to be one flickering light, maybe from a TV, on the other end of the hall.

Aaron looks at them all, bewildered, then lowers his sunglasses the smallest amount just so he can glare at them from over their rim, revealing two startling clear-blue eyes in the process. "Sheeeeeeet. You don't know. None of you know. Why did you even reply to her message then if- if you didn't even know who sent it! 'She' is the green lady. The protector of the town. She's been here since, well, forever."

 

[Craft]

"You'd be surprised how often we have to go chasing mysterious random messages broadcast in the dead of night over the radio."

Craft shrugged, "We heard the message, and it seemed like a bit of a distress call. So we came."

Craft had experience with more than one forest god, and expected that perhaps the Green Lady was another, "Does the green lady have a name? Just because we didn't 'know' her doesn't mean we don't want to help. We're going to help."

 

[Sarah Whittaker]

Sarah shrugs. "Kendrick's Crossing, remember? Apparently noone tells us anything." She hesitates a moment, then asks "The Hemlock?"

 

[Craft]

"The Hemlock?" Craft shrugged, "I'm guessing that's some sort of local legend? Only maybe not so much a legend?"

"I'm guessing 'she' was responsible for the radio broadcast out..."

He had far more questions now, "Does she know what Dave is running from? I mean... if there's a fog around him..."

 

[Sarah Whittaker]

"The big tree in the centre of town. Just my guess." She moves back to the doorway of the room. "We can stand here speculating, or we can check out that light down the hall. Looks like someone's left a TV on."

 

[Craft]

Craft starts down the hall to the door with the flickering light escaping from beneath it. He knocks on the door and calls out, "Hello? Is anyone there? We're here to help."

He takes a step back and waits for a response.

 

[Sarah Whittaker]

Sarah follows.

 

[Atrus]

Aaron kept his general area of teenager scorn as he listened to Craft and Sarah talk. "The hemlock? The one in town? Geez, no, that's just an old tree." He looks pointedly at Sarah as he continues. "The lady is... well, she's under the town. But she can get in the mind of some people. And we can ask her to do stuff. Like the signals I used to guide you here. But there's some stuff she can't do, like send signals out of town. I had to record her message, and then sneak inside the radio at night and transmit it. Someone almost caught me on the way out."
For a moment he looks like he's opening up a little to these bunch of strangers. "I think... I think she was trying to call others like her." But as Craft knocks on the door down the corridor, he shuts up and stuffs his hands in his pockets again.

From beyond the door comes the noises of someone getting up and walking around. The door opens and the tired face of a lumberjack in tank top and shorts pops out. "Wazzat? Help?" The man seems to half-recognize Sarah and Aaron, but squints at Craft. "You mean for the storm? Is there an evacuation going on?"
After the group explain that they're looking for Dave, the man scratches his beard. "Dave, eh? He's a quiet one. But yeah, I saw him come up a few minutes ago. He's gone already? Hope he didn't go down the mine in this weather."

 

[The Dullahan]

Rourke kept quiet through all this. A magical psychic lady protector under the town was way outside of his lane of expertise. he did bristle at the 'psycho vet' comment. But, Rourke was anything if not self controlled so he kept his thoughts to himself. The mine? Rourke paused, wondering if this whole trip was going to lead them into a dark, confined, hole. His whole body tensed. He wasn't good with dark holes, his last tour saw to that. He took a deep breath. He was beginning to wonder if this lady was actually a physical being. But he tabled those thoughts for now, reminding himself there was a vet out there in this monster of a storm. "Why would he go to the mine?"

 

[Marcos Medeiros]

Marcos — who seems to have something of a knack for disappearing at key moments — wanders into the room after Rourke. His hoodie is soaked, and a loud squish follows his every step. He's clearly been outside, likely searching around the barracks for any clues to Dave's whereabouts.

"Anywhere else he could have gone?"

 

[Atrus]

The man scratches the back of his head. "Uh, I'm not sure where else he could have gone. Maybe the church. He goes down there to pray a lot, after Iraq. But he seems to have obsessed with the mine lately. Kept saying there's something beneath he needs to get to. We all tried to tell him that it's not safe down there. There's a reason it's been closed down twice."

 

[Sarah Whittaker]

Sarah nods, then looks at Aaron. Trying to read Mr Inscrutiable.

 

[Atrus]

Aaron seems a little worried when the lumberjack mentions the mine, but as long as the man is out there, he's keeping tight-lipped.