Danny Torrance (redrumredrum) wrote in noexits, @ 2021-08-26 22:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread/narrative, ₴ inactive: dan torrance, ₴ inactive: richie tozier, → week 019 (the monolith) |
Day 2 | Monolith
The monolith was dangerous. Dan didn’t need to even see the monolith to know that. He only had to wake up and hear the normal sounds of the Derleth campus to know something ominous had happened. And that was the thing that worried him the most. What he heard. Nothing. The second and third floors of Butler Hall had been silent as the literal grave ever since the reset. Dan’s shine wasn’t as strong as it had been when he was a child, but he’d spent the last fifteen years working to improve it so he could better help Abra and the rest of his family. And if the situation with the True Knot had taught him anything, it was that he needed to be as strong with the shining as he possibly could. Because there would always be dangers. There would always be new nightmares. And someone would always need help. Dan knew he could be more proficient. But even with the shine that he had, dimmed over the years but still bright, he’d found himself connected to whatever was behind those doors on the mysterious floors. Dan was a convenient radio to transmit through. They probably sought him out, in a way. Someone who knew they were there. Who could hear them but not completely. They wanted their presence to be known. They wanted to instill fear. Except this week. This week they were scared. And that did not bode well for the Derleth residents. Dan stood outside in front of the rubble that was once Carter Hall and stared up at the monolith. Like everyone else he, too, had the impression that it was watching him. But not from the outside. Not with eyes. From the inside. Even Tony felt like he was being watched. It sees me, Danny, Tony said to him, his voice much younger than it used to be. I know, Dan replied to himself. And that wasn’t all. There was something different about the people at Derleth, as well. Although, as far as Dan could tell, no one else seemed to notice it. Even he’d missed it the first day. Until he saw Loki storming across the thoroughfare that is. It was Loki, but in a quick flash, it wasn’t. He saw another man brooding over the sidewalk instead. A man that looked like Loki, but wasn’t Loki. Reddish-blond hair, scruffy beard, glasses, a tweed suit. That’s how Loki looked the week Dan first arrived. When Dan was in the body of his six-year-old self. The other Loki. The human one who was almost killed by the trees. But when Dan blinked, the flash was gone. And Loki looked as he normally did; gloomy, black-haired, and surly. As the day went one Dan noticed this with others. With some the changes were small, almost unnoticeable. With others they were much greater. Something was wrong. Something more ominous than they presumed. What that was, however, Dan couldn’t quite put his finger on. But it left him uneasy. So this big fuck off monolith was all the rage lately - and Richie wasn’t really sure what to do about it. Wasn’t like they could really ignore it - so what else was on the list of options? Besides making a note of the dread that crept like the morning sun, slow, almost an ooze - like mud into crevices, just kind of eking along and that was that. They all felt like they were being watched and Richie did too, admittedly - it was an intuition that he couldn’t ignore, and maybe some extra sense amplified the feeling but who knew. No matter what though, he wasn’t going to actually lay a hand on this piece of ‘art’ that had suddenly emerged from a bunch of rubble (what happened here? Did someone bring down the whole building?) after a reset. It was interesting though - wasn’t a reset just that, supposed to bring things back to the way they were? Adding something didn’t seem like it was a good sign. Fresh air was needed though, so may as well check out the creepy-ass thing that somehow had gotten its hooks into everyone, whether by ‘hair standing on the back of neck’ feelings or straight up night terrors that were a replay of whatever horrorshow they had to deal with in the past. Richie was in no mood for that. He approached Dan, rubbing his forehead, glasses pushed up on his nose. “Hey,” he greeted, squinting at the other man - not because anything was suspicious, but because Richie was admittedly trying to stave off a headache that as if a lightning bolt was hitting his skull - he’d been seeing things, weird things; he was pretty sure he’d never met the woman with alabaster skin and feather duster lashes, big blue eyes behind glasses and a silhouette that, honestly, even someone as gay as him could appreciate. He was also pretty sure that he didn’t remember anything about her banging one of her undergrad students, like that wasn’t a soap opera he’d watched, so? What the fuck? “You have a headache too or is it just me?” It took Dan a moment to realize that Richie’s voice was out loud and not in his head. It was odd hearing someone for the first time after only hearing them in his own mind. The voice was the same, but less intimate. Speaking aloud always left up certain walls that weren’t as easy to penetrate as they were in telepathy. Emotions and sensations always leaked through in mental conversation. And as someone who’d spent years not speaking with his actual voice, Dan often missed that subtle awareness of mental closeness with another person. He turned to look at Richie and raised a brow. “Not exactly a headache. More like vertigo. A little nauseous, too.” It was that feeling of the monolith seeing him from the inside out that made his stomach churn. It reminded him a bit of a sinus infection he once had as a child. The kind that struck so hard that even the slightest turn of the head might result in the spewing of a half-eaten bowl of Cheerios. The pressure on his temples wasn’t piercing. It wasn’t like a migraine. It was dull and persistent. It didn’t hurt, but it left him uneasy. “Has anyone else looked weird to you lately?” Dan pinched the bridge of his nose. He was trying to get the image of Loki out of his head. He was flashing back and forth from seeing the surly god on the sidewalk to the day he’d killed him and shoved his body into a closet at the gym. Dan didn’t like to hold a grudge, and he recognized that amnesia played a large part in Loki’s murderous rage that week, but he was still a bit miffed about that. What was most frustrating about it, however, was how it kept changing in his mind. First Loki with the long hair and the emo eyes. Then Loki with the beard and the cliche English professor attire. “I feel like I’m losing my mind a little bit. I blink and sometimes Derleth looks like an actual school. I could have sworn a student dropped her book bag by my feet ten minutes ago. I even saw her unfinished geometry homework fall out of its folder. And then she was gone. And she wasn’t one of the ghosts. They’re keeping their distance this week.” Even the semi-friendly janitor spirit who Dan often watched mopping the musty basketball court hadn’t been around. “Oh - “ Richie nodded, because while a question like has anyone else looked weird to you lately might be difficult to answer under most circumstances here (weird was the name of the game in their happy little experimental home), he knew what Dan meant. Even more so when he elaborated about how Derleth was looking like a school. Because it didn’t look like a school right now. It looked like the site of ‘bad feelings invoked en masse,’ or the setting for a Hannibal Lecter movie - the equivalent of emotionless eyes falling to nowhere, or a stranger standing too close in your personal space and mouth-breathing. Just unsettling all around, but lately, it was dialed up to ‘eleven.’ “Yeah, definitely weird,” he agreed, reaching up and rubbing the tips of his fingers over messy waves - on most days there was no taming his hair, which swept across his forehead and did riotous curling at the edges whenever he sweated a little, so he often just let it do its own thing. He didn’t have a hair and makeup artist here to make sure he looked decent beneath the glow of stage lights. “I haven’t seen any ghosts either, but I saw one of the professors? She was, uh - involved with an undergrad student. I can’t tell who she was though. I think someone who also got pulled here? Her face looked familiar. But she was just - at the school like it was normal.” Yes, yes - fascinating, Dr. Watson. Tell us more. “Is this a Shining at play? Am I having visions?” He was still pretty new to all of that, and he appreciated Dan’s gentle guidance - appreciated having someone he could reach out to, telepathically, as well. But he attempted to not be too invasive with that - it seemed intimate in a way that few things were; going up to someone and being like I’ve been in you was super sketch, god. “When I had visions in the past they were always…” Dan paused, uncertain of how to explain it with words. “I have an imaginary friend. Well, a sort of imaginary friend. He’s actually a bit more complicated than that, but that’s not important. He’s been with me since I was a child. I call him Tony. Anyway, he’s the one who always used to show me things that were going to happen. And when I had these visions, all of which came true, it was as though I were looking at them from an outside perspective. Not from my own, but through Tony’s eyes. This is different. For example, right now I look at the gym and it’s just the gym. Old, unused, empty. But earlier there was a flash and I could have sworn someone had hung a banner above the entrance announcing a Homecoming Basketball game. And I saw it. With my eyes.” Dan ran his hand over the back of his neck. The hair was standing on end. A warning chill slithered down his spine. “I saw Loki earlier as well. But it wasn’t Loki. It was like I was seeing another version of him. Like something out of an alternate reality.” Dan gave an uncomfortable laugh. “Actually it was a lot like those old sci-fi television shows where the spaceship enters a different dimension and suddenly everyone has beards. It was him, but not the version we know here. And then, like the gym, I blinked and he was himself again.” Dan couldn’t tell if he was getting flashes of another dimension or if the people were actually changing before his eyes, completely unaware of their transformations. But either way it was unsettling. “But I asked Tony if he was the one responsible for these visions. And he said no.” That unnerved Dan the most. The fact that Tony couldn’t see what was going to happen. Tony had always been able to see. He glanced at Richie, his expression not quite as optimistic as it had been the previous week during their silent conversation. “I haven’t heard anyone else mention any of this. So for the time being I’m going to assume that it’s a shining thing. We might be the only ones who have noticed. That’s also concerning.” Dan turned his attention back to the monolith. Again he felt like it was staring. Staring without eyes. “Do you remember anything else from your vision? Anything that might suggest what the monolith is capable of or why it’s here?” Honestly, someone telling him he had an imaginary friend - and that basically this imaginary friend was their future self projected by psychic powers to give advice or whatever? Totally normal. This weird-ass fuck off monolith that had come outta nowhere? Not very normal. Richie wasn’t sure what that said about him, but it probably said something. He didn’t have the fortitude to seek out therapy at this juncture (did they even have any therapists caught in their bubble anyway?). “Well, uh - tell Tony I said hi?” Richie grinned sheepishly. “But yeah, I guess we’ll consider ourselves...lucky. Or not lucky. I don’t think there was anything else from my vision that would give helpful info about the monolith. It's just - if we’re having visions of the same time period or whatever, maybe something happened then that kickstarted the monolith getting here?” God, this felt like a vice around his head. Parsing out puzzles was not his specialty - he was pretty intelligent despite what the dumb dick jokes may suggest, but clearly there were other supergeniuses here who had lots more brain cells to spare (lots of his had been obliterated during various coke binges in shitty Vegas hotel rooms). “Is there a way I can show you what I saw?” he asked Dan. “Uh, you know - “ He gestured back and forth between them. “Mind melding powers.” Dan laughed. It was a little awkward considering the current topic of conversation, but it was an honest laugh. It was hard not to be amused around Richie. Richie had a very natural and contagious humor. And Dan appreciated it. It was a good reminder to himself to lighten up a bit. He had the tendency to dive deep into a problem and then struggle to swim back up for air. “Tony says ‘hey’.” No, I don’t, Tony insisted, albeit somewhat sarcastically. Dan ignored him, save for a grin. What was the point of an imaginary friend from the future if not to torment them? “I remember Dr. McKay saying something on the net board about having witnessed the monolith during the week that he and Shepherd were ascended beings. I’ll be honest I wasn’t really paying attention to them during that week. I was still new and didn’t know entirely what was going on. Also I was six at the time so there were other difficulties to overcome.” Dan didn’t really know what McKay had meant though. Either the ascended beings part or the part where they had witnessed the monolith in some kind of realm outside of Derleth. There were many aspects of various people’s histories and worlds that Dan didn’t understand. But it seemed to him that certain people brought more than just themselves with them when they arrived in Derleth. Could it have been possible that part of everyone’s varied universes were also melding into Derleth’s construction? “I know I’ve heard people talk about a week when they were in a different Derleth. And something did happen then. I think Rick was involved, but don’t quote me on that. I’m getting all of this second and third hand.” Dan probably could have meandered through a few minds to get a better perception of that week, but he wasn’t rude. When Richie offered to share his vision, however, Dan blinked in surprise. “We can try. It’s not something I’ve done a lot because it can be a little dangerous. You have to really focus on what you want me to see, otherwise we could get lost in peripheral thoughts.” Dan turned to face Richie. Then he grinned. “I’d make a joke about pulling out if I feel like I’ve gone too far, but morbid comedy is probably best left to the experts.” Pulling out. Richie wasn’t expecting that, and he wheezed a laugh - it took a lot to surprise the likes of him when it came to dirty humor, so he had to give Dan credit there. And a lot of appreciation. “Look at you, hitting a home run with the dick jokes,” he grinned broadly. “That one was almost worth a marriage proposal.” Because honestly, most everyone else - his friends especially - would have just given him the infamous beep beep, Richie if he attempted something so crude. But right, focus - because that wasn’t a challenge or anything. If it would help, however, he would definitely try - it sounded like they were seeing similar things, but he didn’t know for sure. And maybe Dan would recognize the lady Richie himself had seen, because he definitely didn’t. Either way, he’d probably check if Rick wouldn’t mind giving some info - the guy was like some laboratory supergenius, so that was fun. Insight from a source like that would be appreciated. “Okay - “ He shook out long limbs, fidgety, like a boxer gearing up for a prize fight. “I just - reach out to you? And think really hard about it, and then show you?” Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. No problem. Totally manageable. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t always a prude. Heard my fair share of crude and unusual. Actually, I’ve been hearing it since I was a kid.” Dan tapped a finger on the side of his head. “Took a while to block out all the bullshit that goes on in the minds of strangers.” It had been confusing and a little problematic when he was a child. Back when he didn’t understand. When his family first arrived at the Overlook Hotel, Dan tried to ask Dick Hallorann about some of the things he heard in other people’s heads — dirty things — but Dick had told him not to think about it. Later on, Dan figured it out. Probably earlier than he ought to have. And he learned quickly not to tell his mother about the things he learned from accidentally connecting with someone else’s wayward thoughts. Poor Wendy stressed over everything when it came to her little boy. Rightfully so in some respects. But that was one of the downsides of the shining. It forced a kid to grow up fast. Real fucking fast. “You probably don’t have to reach out too far. Just close your eyes and concentrate on the vision. Let it repeat in your mind and I’ll try to do the rest.” In principle it shouldn’t have been too difficult. Tony showed him visions all the time. And he’d also exchanged some images with Abra as well over the years. But Abra had been incredibly proficient. She had the strongest shine of anyone Dan ever knew. He’d never reach that level, not after spending so many years suppressing his abilities. But this he was fairly certain they could accomplish with little practice. It shouldn’t have been too much different than speaking telepathically. Except instead of words it was like turning on a television set. Dan took a deep breath and focused on Richie, his expression hardened into a thoughtful pose. He kept his mind open and receptive, but he also made sure to keep up a few walls so his own thoughts and memories didn’t accidentally spill over into Richie’s mind and disrupt their concentration. Richie could follow instructions - he could do this. It was good practice anyway, right? So he closed his eyes and concentrated. Concentrated so hard he swore that the sun itself seemed to dim in the sky - or maybe not, but he tried hard. He pulled the vision together - he knit the strands of time into something that resembled an actual vision, something he could share with Dan and something that didn’t have a hazy, watery film over it. It was their current campus but, yes, actually a campus - something pulled back a different era entirely though. Study dates with pipes and blazers and bow blouses, a sea of flannel shirts and sweaters. Listening to the radio, naps taken between classes while wearing herringbone blazers (and snoozing in a lush greenhouse). One of the professors was the lady he saw (Darcy, her name was Darcy) - familiar in a sense, like she was stuck here out of time too. Both her and the undergrad student she was hooking up with - was that an ethics violation? Maybe? Idly he wondered if the school looks like a school was what Dan was seeing too, with the similar aesthetics and forgotten time period - nothing particularly of the monolith, but it all just felt connected. Richie was nearly certain of it. Probably. And he got yanked back, grasping at Dan to try to not faceplant onto the ground. Mind-melding powers - so wild. He also wondered if his nose was bleeding, or if that was just shit he saw in the movies. “Okay, that was weird as fuck.” Dan didn’t close his eyes, but his gaze did take on an almost trance-like appearance as he focused on the thoughts coming from Richie’s mind. It was blurry and disjointed at first, but after a moment, once Richie found a clearer path through the mental haze, Dan was able to concentrate better on what he saw. It was a weird almost affectionate act, this process of being allowed to look into someone else’s mind. And there was always a split second of internal panic seeing through another person’s internal eyes. Fear that he might not get back to himself. Because that’s how it worked for Dan. He saw what Richie saw as Richie saw it. Like when Abra let him in to see the True Knot. And when she, in turn, tried to pierce the mind of Rose the Hat, temporarily switching places. He shook away those thoughts and focused. The world Richie was seeing in his visions was one in the same to the Derleth Dan had seen in those brief waking flashes ever since he left his room on the first day of the week. Somewhere in the distance a bell was ringing and students were clamoring out of the buildings, hurrying off to their next course. Gone was the forest, replaced by the neatly mowed grass of the Green. A couple were making out on a bench. Some athletic types were playing a pick-up game of football. A group of hippy-esque protestors were standing outside of the science building waving signs. Dan couldn’t read them from this distance, but he had the impression they had something to do with (AN EXPERIMENT, DANNNNEEEE) (WHAT THEY DID) (OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE) whatever research was being conducted inside. And then he was following Richie’s perspective into one of the buildings to the professor and her undergrad student. Both in compromising positions. Dan blinked. Surprised, but also not surprised. Like he’d been there before even though he knew he hadn’t. And then Richie pulled out of the vision — memory? — and stumbled. Dan was similarly jostled but managed to catch Richie with both hands before he fell, clasping onto his upper arms to hold his balance. “Are you alright?” Dan watched Richie carefully, checking for any signs that he might topple over or spew his guts. When it looked like he was going to manage standing on his own, Dan gently let go. He suddenly felt as though the monolith were looking directly at them and at no one else. As if they’d just done something it didn’t like. Even Tony dwindled in the background, keeping his distance. “That was Darcy, but not … our Darcy. She looked like her, but I don’t think it was her. And I don’t think what you saw was a vision, exactly. Not from the future anyway. It felt like something that was happening right now. But not here. Maybe in another reality? Another Derleth?” Or the real one, Dan thought to himself, loud enough for Richie to pick up on if he was paying attention. The real one, Richie repeated - because yes, he had been paying attention; it felt like the open connection between them - whatever had allowed him to show Dan that flash of whatever - was as wide as a football field; it seemed to sizzle like static in the air between them too, and maybe his nose wasn’t bleeding but he definitely felt - different. Not in a bad way, really. It was just that showing someone something was not telling them - something he had to get used to. “Whatever the real one used to be,” he said out loud. “I wish I knew how it was all connected but I don’t think those answers are going to conveniently reveal themselves. But yeah - “ He dusted himself off, clearing his throat, even though he hadn’t actually faceplanted. “I’m good. Glad I did it without exploding either of our brains.” That was said jokingly. Because brains going ka-boom would have been one hell of a mess to clean up. “Or whatever the real one is.” Dan wasn’t entirely certain that the Derleth they were receiving flashes of was merely a thing of the past. There were too many coincidences. Too many similarities. He’d heard halfhearted rumors about a week where everyone was in another Derleth, but he was seeing glimpses of people in his flashes that he knew hadn’t been around then. How was that possible? Or had they always been there and not known it? Were these Derleth doppelgängers the reason why any of them were here at all? Dan wasn’t the kind of person with a scientific mind. He wasn’t unintelligent, but he couldn’t explain the physics of alternate realities and multiple worlds. He just knew they existed. He sometimes — more often in his sleep — felt the cracks between places. Liminal places that peeked through the fabric of space and time. Although he wasn’t always consciously aware of it, he’d always known that there were other worlds. Dimensions. Whatever people wanted to call them. And he knew some things happened over and over in different ways. Or in the same way. (KA IS A WHEEL) Whatever the hell that meant. “I think it’s enough for the time being that we’re aware of it. That we know to pay attention. And that we’re not just crazy.” Dan gave a sarcastic smile. “Unless we’re both crazy.” Dan patted Richie on the shoulder. It was meant to be encouraging, but he recognized that he wasn’t entirely convinced himself. There were still the silent spirits on the second and third floor to worry about. The visions might not seem frightening on their own, but clearly something unnerved the ghosts. And that unnerved Dan. But hopefully the monolith would be gone by next week and there’d be nothing to worry about. Hopefully. “But we should keep each other informed of anything else we see. It might help us solve the mystery of this place.” Richie was no supergenius either - he was smart, sure, and decent at puzzles. But he didn’t live for the academics and most likely everyone here was just going to look to him for the entertainment anyway, and not necessarily for the elementary, my dear Watson moments. Still, he’d do what he could to help. If he had weird-ass mind powers, why not try to keep developing them and use them in ways that were actually beneficial? If they were getting flashes of a specific time period, it definitely meant something - it was no accident, or coincidence, and maybe the bits and bobs of how Derleth came to be would begin to come together to resemble some kind of storyboard in its entirety. Stay tuned. “That sounds like a good plan,” he saluted Dan, kind of teasingly, as a goofball grin worked its way across his face. “We’re both definitely crazy though, hate to break it to you. But - you know. Birds of a feather and all of that.” And maybe they’d actually crack the code one of these days. Stranger things had happened. Dan laughed at the crazy joke. But, truthfully? Sometimes he did feel like he was teetering on the edge of insanity. It used to be worse. Twenty years ago — hell, even fifteen — he was practically certifiable. Buzzed out of his mind or so drunk he could barely tie his shoelaces. He couldn’t even spell the word ‘shining’ let alone access it for any useful purpose. He’d allowed the alcohol to take over his life. He used it to blur out everything. The memories, the shining, the past, present, and damnable future. Dan had been the living dead. Haunted by his father’s demons, his mother’s ghosts, and the shit ton of mental garbage he’d collected on the way to adulthood. Crazy? Sure. He’d been crazy once. And deep down, in those dark recesses of the self that he kept locked away with a few supernatural beasties, he probably was still a little crazy. Thankfully, however, he had that under control. Nothing but the straight and narrow for Dan Torrance. A hefty portion of vegetables, eight hours of sleep, and Diet Coke kept him downwind of the crazy train. And that was good. Both for himself and for everybody else. But the monolith knows that, Tony whispered to him from the back of his mind. Quiet and concealed. It sent a shiver down Dan’s spine and he quickly shook the thought away. He couldn’t linger on that. They didn’t have enough information to know anything. Not yet. Then again, Tony was never wrong. Dan cleared his throat with a cough, but it was more to shoo Tony away than anything else. “You want to head over to the dining hall and get some lunch? All of these visions are suddenly making me crave something greasy.” “You just said the magic word,” Richie agreed. “Greasy, I mean. There may not be pizza rolls in the freezer but I know how to slap together a decent substitute.” And all of this was creepy as hell - it was like the damn monolith was taunting them, without even having to say a word. Like it had just appeared out of fucking nowhere to shut the ghosts up and mess with their heads - to throw its giant big dick energy around and say see? You don’t know shit, buddy. And, yeah, yikes. Talk about hopping aboard the crazy train. Richie knew he wasn’t right in the head, thanks to trauma stacked on top of trauma and never having dealt with any of it in a healthy way - but he’d be damned if he’d let some experiment finally do him in. So he guessed that if he was crazy, he was better off in good company for his downward spiral. He’d do the same for Dan. “Let’s go. I’ll show off my talents for you.” Hey, he had to be good at something. |