log: charlie/leo explore the forest who Charlie and Leo what detectivin when last night where repose forest warning spooks, cutes, rituals, etc
The evening was cold. Freezing in fact. One of those nights were the crunch of ice undertow permeated with every step. An eerie sort of silence settled on Repose, a foreboding that had goosebumps bloom and hearts jump into throats. A perfectly dramatic backdrop for the hunt of a missing girl potentially caught up with a weird crowd.
Charlie Powell bundled up against the wind and winter temperatures, but her teeth still chattered just a little while she waited for Leo to arrive. In her hands were two Maglite flashlights, hefty in weight and bright as all hell. They agreed to meet at the edge of the forest, near the part where their girl had last been seen, and they decided that under the cover of dusk might be the best bet for their safety. (Also, again, way more dramatic.) It was their first true job together, and the blonde really liked the idea of being partners in not!crime with Leo. Edgelord and Cheerleader on the hunt to find and save a girl.
She knew that something was percolating between the two of them, maybe more than just a simple detective partnership. He brought her to his family home to peek into the layers that he didn’t show most anyone. He’d come to see the play, brought her flowers, and then accompanied her to the diner with the rest of the cast and crew. He talked her down from her Elsa-esque angst in her proverbial tower created in her own mind. There was something special there, and Charlie? Well, she wasn’t quite sure how to go about all of it. Leo certainly would try to deflect until the fire between them dwindled until it was little more than a pile of ashes of some ill-fated...well, whatever this all was.
Dwelling kept her distracted from the cold, and at least she wasn’t dwelling on how she could potentially fuck all this up. The investigation, of course.
Leo took this case seriously, make no mistake, but he also was excited to see Charlie. He wasn’t going to tell her that or admit it to anyone (not that he had many people to tell that to), but he was getting used to seeing her more and more often. He was aware that flirting with her during their shifts at the bookstore was getting more overt and the fact he brought her flowers obviously said something. But, he wasn’t totally ready to take things any farther. This time of year brought up bad memories. Heartbreak. He was over Dawn in the sense that he didn’t wish she was around anymore. That didn’t mean the pain was gone, that humiliation that someone would leave him after he left so much out for her to walk on.
He took this case seriously, so that was pushed to the front of his brain. Here was the scenario: Clover Weithfield. 21. Daughter of hippies and subsequent free spirit. She came to Repose to get clean for her daughter that was born two years earlier. She vanished without a trace here back in March. Right at this spot with no clues in her apartment. The cops looked at her case like she was this hippy druggie who wanted to get away from motherhood. A possible cultist who was probably out of state by now. Leo? Leo thought she was dead. Her parents wanted closure.
Leo had sent all this information to Charlie, including why he had to stop investigating. His detective vision was picking up something....other. It was impossible for him to trace or identify. Maybe something magic related? Maybe something more sinister than putting a girl in the ground because some guy made a mistake.
“Hey.” Leo said, locking his car and walking up to her. His eyes flickered in the darkness, like a machine with an amber glow was booting up. “We should just get this out of the way. Here’s my weird eyes.” They were fully glowing now, a beautiful and strange amber. Like someone had bottled the sunrise.
Charlie had her phone out as he approached, reviewing the file that he’d sent her once again. Something had struck her as strange from the get-go, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Then again, people disappeared a lot in Repose under mysterious circumstances, and no one had the balls to look into it usually. Chalked up to someone’s fuck-up or an accident in the woods, when in fact, it could be traced back to any number of things if a person dug deeply enough — the facility, Edwards Island, or something that would be considered even more off-kilter in any other town.
“Hey,” she responded with a smile. She stared for a moment as his eyes warmed and glowed, like it was something she’d never seen before. Because, well, she hadn’t. For all her magic mumbojumbo and those she’d worked with to suppress it, she’d never actually seen anyone else with powers. Especially ones like his. Charlie reached out to touch his face with her gloved hand without a second though. “They aren’t weird,” was all she said before her hand dropped, shaking her head as if to wake up.
“Wait, here.” She handed him his flashlight and then dug into her jacket pocket to pull out a folded stack of papers. On them were screenshots of Clover’s social media leading up to her disappearance — the public posts, at least. Instagram, Twitter, etc. But the last page was a note from someone. “I know this guy from college. Paid him to look into her internet presence. See this post?” She flipped to the third page in the package, a Tweet about feeling relaxed and one with herself, dated a week before her disappearance. “He says there’s traces that maybe this wasn’t even tweeted then, that someone messed with the time and date. And that there have been some other posts deleted or made private. He’s going to look more into it. More into the parents as well.”
Then, she held up her finger and shuffled the papers around to a series of nature pictures on Instagram. She held one up for him to see— a bucolic shot of a clearing in the very forest they stood at the edge of with the usual filters and a quote from what looked like a Tarot quote. “And these? Are all stock photos that were taken from an article in the Repose newspaper written years ago. Like, when I was in middle school.” Charlie folded up the stack of papers again and handed them to him as well so he could further inspect. “I also looked into mom. No luck yet on getting a meeting with her or on tracking down more info about what’s going on at the trailer park.” Her mom had been tight lipped as usual, and Charlie knew she had to start digging around elsewhere at this point.
“They’re so weird.” He mumbled as she touched his face, leaning into her gloved hand with a smirk. All that talk about pushing his feelings down was such bullshit.
He took the flashlight and watched her take papers out, shining the light on them as she explained. This was good digging, he was impressed. Leo was pretty old school, so social media search was his last resort. It was nice having someone who seemed interested in it. Made his life easier. “So someone definitely has control over her social media right now. They’re sloppy, too. Maybe good with computers, but not smart enough to use unique assets.” Leo pointed to one of the pictures, the Instagram one, and held his hand out so she could give it to him. He looked it over with his flashlight silently, his mind working through something.
“It’s possible that whoever has control over the social media is from Repose. Born and raised here, you know? Might help narrow things down with the group of people she was seen with.” He handed the paper back and the flashlight once she put her file away. “Good work. It’s strange her mom doesn’t want to talk. You’d think she’d be leading the charge on this thing. I was hired by her child’s dad. Maybe I can ask him about family stuff next time I give him a call.”
There was that warmth again. As he leaned his cheek into her touch, he could feel it radiating from her. She’d stopped trying to control it because it was more effort than it was worth, and even though they weren’t saying anything out loud, Charlie had a sneaking suspicion that Leo’s mind was in a similar place.
“It’s easy to take over all that sort of stuff -- everyone keeps their shit logged in now, y’know? Hell, this might not even be her actual account anymore. Greg is looking into tracking her digital footprint and see if things have popped up that might be a little less obvious than stolen credit cards or social security run. We’ll just need to toss him some more money if we want him to dig deeper. I think we should keep him on retainer just in case.” Charlie knew the value of having people in the right places. It was why she was glad Connie offered to say hello to her dad, to potentially poke around.
She inhaled and shook her head. “Sometimes parents aren’t as invested. I mean maybe she doesn’t even know? She’s in the asylum after all. Maybe the dad is keeping her in the dark for a number of reasons.” Not that any of that was right, but she knew all about families keeping secrets to “protect” the others. “Maybe we just go over there together. See if we can have a meeting with her? And you can also talk to dad and see if he has anything to say about that. I’ve got a feeling we aren’t wrapping all of this up tonight.”
Charlie’s flashlight rested at her side, and she looked at Leo with a silent ‘you ready?’ before starting towards the thick line of trees ahead.
“If she was murdered and had her phone on her and unlocked, it would be as easy as taking it off her body. Or, just going into her place and taking it there. I told you I didn’t find any computers, right? The place was completely bare. Just a flip phone that hadn’t been used in weeks.” In this day and age it wasn’t unheard of for people to not have a computer, even a laptop. A smart phone could do all the work for them. But, if this person who hurt her was into technology, it wouldn’t be unheard of for them to take the computer and take control over all social media accounts.
But, Charlie was right. This wasn’t going to be a one night investigation. He wanted to locate a body, that was always an easy win, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. Leo followed after her, through the first part of the forest where the trees were still thick and brush didn’t seem disturbed. But, then they came to a clearing. A circle with a stain in the middle like a fire was burning there. “This is where I keep getting my sense knocked out.” He pointed around the circle. “There’s something here interfering with my eyes.” And, sure enough, his eyes were fading the amber, sometimes blinking out like there was an internal glitch.
Charlie hummed. Everyone had a smartphone at this point in life; they were beyond accessible. Flip phones sounded like a burner phone, which piqued her interested in a different way. “Do you still have the phone? Maybe I can toss it to my guy and see what he’ll come up with.” It was worth a shot, and she’d given that dude a hefty chunk of her last paycheck. He could run another thing for her. Plus, she liked to keep him busy because then he kept agreeing to her jobs.
She knew that Leo would love the quick, easy way for this case, especially after being dredged so deeply in it. But, things like this were never that neat, it was never that easy. As they walked through the dark and the brush, twigs crunching underneath their feet, she stole glances now and then to make sure he was doing alright. Living in a case like this could take a toll on anyone, and Charlie knew that her edgelord partner took things to heart more than he would ever care to admit.
She came to a stop at the edge of the clearing and stared at the circle for a moment. The space radiated an energy that washed over the blonde like a tsunami, and she stumbled back, hand flying out to grab his arm so she didn’t trip over a rogue knot. “Jesus,” she breathed, fingers pressing into him as if trying to ground herself. Her eyes squeezed shut, and she tried to center herself, center the maelstrom battering her internally. “Yeah, there’s some strong magick there.”
As if remembering something, her eyes flew open, and she tugged the arm she already gripped until he moved about a foot away. “I’ve been practicing something. Maybe it’ll help block it out.” She’d taken some of Newt’s advice and had gone to the Hall Way, but instead of grabbing a tutor, she snagged some spellbooks -- protections, tracking spells, healing spells. Anything she could teach herself or at least try. “Do you want to try?”
“Yeah, the family gave it to me. There’s a couple messages on it, but I couldn’t use it to connect anything yet.” Leo made a mental note to give her the phone later. The messages were from an in-town boyfriend, which wasn’t easy for her baby daddy to hear. Maybe Clover wasn’t getting clean at all, maybe she was falling back in with her old circles. That’s why the police were so eager to let this one slide. “There was barely any kind of investigation, by the way. Missing person report was filed, but they didn’t even do a search.” It was one thing to be dismissive of a hippy girl, it was another to drop the ball on purpose. Something wasn’t right about that, but Leo wasn’t sure he could wrap his brain around it yet.
Leo watched as the invisible magic seemed to push against her. Almost like a strong wind or a freezing cold chill. As a kid, he’d call what she was doing acting, but out here it felt real. Felt like something he couldn’t touch, but believed was there. She tugged and he followed. “Like a spell?” Leo asked, half dubious, half fascinated. “Yeah, why not? What do you need me to do? Is this your excuse to bleed me dry in a sacrifice? We haven’t even gotten to first base.”
He joked, joking made this wacky shit a lot easier.
Charlie’s eyebrows furrowed when he mentioned a lack of investigation. “Seriously?” She shook her head. Repose was a town full of secrets, but no investigation into a missing mother? That just seemed cruel and neglectful. And downright suspicious. In retrospect, she might have connected some dots, but in the moment, all she saw was another problem being ignored or brushed away. “Yeah, no. That’s not okay. At all. There’s something...off about all of this.” Who could be involved in it? The police department? The town? The whole county?
But, like she had told him earlier, it wasn’t going to be solved tonight. Tonight, she wanted to make sure the two of them were safe and focused on what the task was at hand -- gathering clues from this clearing before someone else scrapped those too.
“Yeah, like a spell.” A smile, and she positioned him so he was standing directly in front of her with enough space to hold their hands between the two of them. She had to tilt her head to look up at his dark eyes, at that weird beanie, and she tried her best to exude a sense of calm. Even as her blue eyes rolled dramatically. “You wish you’d be a blood sacrifice, edgelord.” She smirked. “I’m keeping you around at least a couple months longer. We have to give the Powell baked goods time to really puff you up.”
Instead of a blood sacrifice, Charlie grabbed both of his hands and intertwined their fingers. The warmth immediately began to bleed out of her and into him, but she continued to look up at him, cheeks only pinkening slightly. After a second of contemplation, she twisted their hands so that their palms laid flat against each other, the backs of their own hands facing their chests. Blues kept with those flickering ambers for a moment before her eyes drifted shut, and she began to mutter something in Latin. A tingling sensation, light pins and needles, skittered up his arms and spread through his body, following behind that familiar warmth she exuded. The feeling washed over him in waves, one more powerful than then next, until there was a slight discomfort. At that moment, her eyes flew open, and blues appeared almost white.
A brush of wind rustled her blonde hair and whatever dark mussed strands poked out of his hat, and that warmth crawled through his body again. The blue slowly bled back into her eyes. She woke up out of what seemed like a trance. A handful of moments passed. She blinked. “Okay?” She didn’t let go of his hands just yet.
“Cut my life into pieces, this is my last retort.” Retort because he was trying to be funny and simply quoting Papa Roach was not enough damage. She took his hands and he inhaled like he thought something painful was going to happen, but instead it felt like he was being lowered into a warm bath. She said stuff in Latin which was both spooky and kind of cool to listen to and then he felt like his nerves were sparking. His eyes went haywire for a second and he had to close them, just as he felt like the entire world was burning white hot. She was there in front of him, but he couldn’t see her. His own abilities going so wild that all he could make out was a fiery silhouette.
“Shit, shit.” The feeling of being too hot and over stimulated passed and he gasped cold air. His body temperature lowering back down as he found himself back in the circle. Suddenly, his vision started to stabilize and everything was clear. He looked around the circle. Footprints, cigarette dust, hair strands- wait. The footprints were long gone to the naked eye, but Leo could make out the final remains of them. “Look at this.” Leo took her flashlight and left her side, going to the edge of the circle.
“Imagine twelve people. They’re all doing this- probably in unison.” Leo stepped forward, he turned, he slid one foot towards the center, he took a side step, turned and then continued doing that all the way to the middle. “Some kind of- this isn’t just some hippy dippy get-together. This is a ritual. They’re doing some kind of dance.”
A surprised giggle bubbled out of her chest when he ran off like a bloodhound who finally caught a scent. “It worked?” she asked, but mostly to herself. She couldn’t believe that the spell had been successful. Struggling with controlling her powers constantly had her forget how powerful she could be if she focused and honed them in. A lick of anger towards her mother moved through her. For Delilah telling Charlie to ignore, suppress, pretend over the last handful of years.
One he started talking, she chased after him as best she could in the dark, following the bouncing light totem towards him and the circle. As the night fell more, the moon lit up the clearing in an eerie, cinematic sort of way, but Charlie wasn’t scared. No, she was focused on how strange this place made her feel. A piece of her was drawn towards that spot of black and dead logs where the fire used to be, but the rest of her told her something was very, very off about the whole thing.
“You see twelve sets?” Charlie asked, and she mirrored his movement -- step, turn, slide, side step -- until she met him near the smudged, old fire. The blonde crouched, one knee digging into dirt and mulch as her hand reached out to touch the spot. Suddenly, a flame burst up almost like a cheeky hello, and Charlie jumped back. “Fuck!” Suddenly, they could see the trunks circling around them. Each had a different shaped, but similar looking carving scratched into them -- a series of circles and dots arranged in a variety of curves and combinations.
Leo had been afraid of the dark since he was a kid. In Jersey, there wasn’t dark. There was always a dirty street lamp outside his window or a light on in the kitchen. With his father, there were dark catacombs, black forest nights, empty castles. He hated the dark, so he learned how to remind himself what it looked like during the day. Once he gained his powers, they eliminated any fear he had left. As long as his eyes worked, he could see everything.
He gave a surprised laugh as the fire bounced up to surprise her. “Nice.” He said, about to make some quip about how she needed to put her Elsa gloves back on. But, he looked up and saw the weird carvings in each tree. “I don’t recognize any of these symbols.” His brain went through the gauntlet that he was familiar with as he walked back to the tree closest to where he was dancing. He traced his fingertips along the carvings. “How is any of this still here? Why didn’t the cops find this shit? Who-” Leo began to ask something else, but the shadow of the tree suddenly ran up from the ground over the bark like water flowing in reverse. It latched onto Leo’s jacket and thunked him against the tree before letting him go.
Leo crashed back on the ground, falling on his ass and looking up like he couldn’t completely comprehend what the hell just happened. His vision was starting to get weird again and this feeling of menace crept into his skull. “Quick, take pictures of the trees. As many as you can.” He kicked his feet back, crab crawling backwards to get away from the tree before standing up.
Charlie was too busy examining the symbols on a different tree to even attempt to huff at him. Her mouth had slacked open, and she slowly walked towards a different tree. Dots and circles. They were so neat and absent of splinters that it almost seemed like someone had stamped them in. Or the trees had grown like that with them already there. But, that wasn’t possible right? A cold enveloped her body, bizarre for Charlie nowadays when she was within feet of Leo, and a shiver shot down her spine. But, she felt compelled by some unknown force to reach out to that symbol. To touch it, trace it, memorize it.
She didn’t realize something was happening to Leo until she heard a thunk against wood and the crash of his body to the ground. “Leo!” Charlie immediately launched herself towards him to make sure he was okay, but she stopped short of crouching down. Instead, she pulled out her phone and took as many shots as she could of a couple of trees, conscious to also snap a picture of the circle with its now again dying fire before grabbing him by the wrist and pulling him out of the clearing and back into the brush.
“What the hell happened?! Are you okay?” She stopped once they were far enough that they couldn’t see the clearing and reached up to touch his face.
Leo’s vision cracked, the amber glow flickering and shattering from his vision. The trees were larger now, looming over him and pushing closer. Dancing towards the fire, trying to push him in. Of course, this was all in his head. The spirits trying to push him from the place, to keep him from seeing the truth in front of him. Charlie’s spell worked, but these powers were beyond either of them. The flickering candle of her magic was about to be extinguished.
He couldn’t get his phone out in time, so he took a moment to remember everything he could. The smell of the dirt, the signs on the trees, the shoe sizes. Charlie came over to him and started pulling him again, good instinct, and he looked up at her. He was breathing heavy, mind still jumbled with panic as it tried to store information. “It didn’t do that the last time I was here. Something- we’re close.” Leo reached to hold onto her. “We’re-” He closed his eyes, composing himself. “It’s going to get a lot more dangerous from here.”
Charlie knew that they needed to move away and fast. She could feel that push of some force to get rid of her and her magic from where they stood. From whatever bad energy still seeped out of the ground and trees due to what they witnessed happen in that circle. The pit of her stomach plummeted as she finally gave herself a moment, and her mind began playing through the possibilities. Anxiety crept up her throat.
But cupping his face and being held by Leo brought her back to earth. “Well, I’m glad the spell worked. I’m glad we got something now.” Her other hand reached up to hold the other side of his face. The flashlight was long gone, left behind when they scrambled away, and she could barely make out the outline of his face, the line of his nose, the points on the beanie. “We’re getting there. We’re gonna figure this out, and we’re gonna be okay. I’ll start looking into more protection spells.” Her thumbs brushed against his cheekbones. “You did good. We did good.”
He felt himself come back to earth, holding onto her as he came back to his senses. She touched his face and he leaned into it, eyes wide with feelings for her that he didn’t want to even acknowledge at the moment. “You did really good. Was that your first time using the spell?” He got to his feet and smiled at her. He adjusted his beanie, his jacket and he tried to seem cool. There was no going back from scrambling away from a ghost, but whatever. “Did anyone even teach you that shit? Amazing.”
Leo looked back at his car and without even thinking about it turned back to her and asked “Do you want to go get a milkshake?” Going their own separate ways after whatever the fuck that was seemed lonely. Milkshakes and Elvis on the jukebox sounded much better.