Who: Baba Yaga, Horror What: Horror satisfying his curiosity When: Summer 1926 Where: On the outskirts of some small town Warnings: TBD
Where they were didn’t matter. It was hot, it was dusty, it was dry, and it could have been any of the last few places they had stopped.
He didn’t care.
Whatever the name, it was going to be forgotten, was going to be just a sort of marker if reference was needed…..if any sort of reference as dull andcommonplace as a name was ever going to be required. Horror was more likely to say ‘Remember that person, who ran out and’ or ‘Remember that time when the sky just’. The world was a stage, really, and Horror was the star. The central figure. The one being for whom the entire world existed just to be played in. It made an ideal playground, with its never-ending supply of toys, with its many backdrops and trappings and delights….while all the time, it was simply just there. Just the place they happened to be.
The carnival moved through it, across it, taking with it a small piece of everything Horror considered real. He was there, Carnival was there, and all the while that dark undercurrent hummed, a lovely constant. Why he met the god of it and didn’t want to rip him to pieces, he didn’t know, and why he felt at home there, he didn’t know.
He didn’t care.
What he did question was what he didn’t yet know of, what he didn’t yet have a category for.
This was part of the reason he had left Midway Plaisance on such an oppressive, heat-soaked afternoon. The other part of it was wanting to see, wanting to know……if there was anything to be concerned about. Well, concerned…..that wasn’t quite accurate. Never having known anything that could take him down, Horror couldn’t possibly conceive of anything - or anyone - as a real threat. Perhaps a nuisance, perhaps just an unwelcome intrusion. Nothing, certainly, that was cause for alarm. Fear was for others. Never him. So maybe that was the one and only reason, after all - curiosity. A drive to know.
A selective drive.
He could feel it a long way off, so far away it had just been a muted feeling from some vague thought of somewhere else. The closer they got, the stronger the feeling was, and the more Horror enjoyed it. There was something familiar there, something he would understand when he saw it, or heard it, or touched or smelled it. They had gotten close enough for him to leave and find it in a day…..close enough, he felt, until he had gone and discovered it.
Horror didn’t expect anything. He knew there was something there, of course, something to be found, and he could feel the shape of things…..but he hadn’t brought his thoughts to a focused point, to any precise conclusion. It was something he understood, completely……but he had to meet it first. He had understood death before he’d killed and discovered how it felt, he had understood terror before he had made someone else feel it for him. They were, like so many other things, just things to be discovered. He didn’t strive to understand them beforehand. He didn’t try to guess at their nature or purpose.
The only way to do things was to do them. Experience them.
When Horror walked through the yellowed grass to the generous estate, he felt what was there in a slow build of fear. Sweet fear. The taste that meant children. Children and dreams, emotions and concepts too big for their small hearts and minds. Fear that needed shape, that needed names and charms against them. A lovely type of fear.
This, Horror did care about.
Calm, smiling, and impossibly cool on such an unbearable day, Horror climbed the steps of this new building and knocked on the door.