adalyn rayner (embracethestorm) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2021-01-04 09:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | #june 2018, adalyn, adalyn x silas, silas |
Who: Addie & Silas
Where: Rayner House
When: Noon, June 1st
Warning: None
Silas had heard it through the grape wine that people who'd gone missing were returning one by one and there had apparently been a lot more than he realized. It was such a strange occurrence, both the disappearances and now their return but he didn't have the details, only a little gossip from here and there, mainly from Miles of course. A bartender was a good source for gossip. He didn't think much of it, it was just another strange thing that happened in Point Pleasant but there was a small part of him that couldn't help but wonder if this meant it wasn't going to stay quiet. The winter had apparently been insane, even if he hadn't been home to witness it. Addie had told him everything and it was hard not to notice how calm things had been since everyone went missing. He hoped he was just falling into the trap of conspiracy-brain and that there was nothing to it, even if there was he didn't really see how it connected to his family.
Until late May, when his conspiracy brain went into somewhat of an overdrive, complete with a near panic attack. It had been years since their father brought Elijah back from the dead, years of him living in their basement, a shadow of his former self, more monster than man. Years of it being almost mundane, unchanging at least. Something triggered a change and Silas wasn't sure what.
He was pacing in the foyer when Addie came home, paler than usual and trying desperately to remain calm while somewhat failing. "Addie," he said under his breath and stalked to the front door to meet her, clutching his phone in his hand. "I have something- something happened. I need you to not panic because if you panic I'll panic and it'll... it'll be ugly." He was already panicking, he could feel it, that familiar 'oh shit am I having a heart attack' tightness in his chest, the numbness in his hands. "Dad's... gone. Dad's- Elijah took dad."
Addie was, of course, aware of the people who had gone missing in January, and she was also aware that quite a few had somehow made their way home, although the circumstances surrounding it all remained a mystery to her. It wasn't something she was actively thinking about though, her mind too full of other things to give adequate space to more of Point Pleasant's quirkiness.
After spending the night with Nick and then running a few errands, Addie returned home in a pretty good mood, ready to get to work and see her brother. She was a little surprised to see Silas in the foyer and her greeting was quickly forgotten thanks to his obvious trepidation. She didn't need to ask what was wrong because Silas jumped right into it. Addie's throat seemed to close up immediately and confusion swept over her face. "Wait... what? Eli... how?" She was dumbfounded, convinced that Silas was mistaken, or he had had a nightmare or something. Elijah was in the basement. Their father was comatose upstairs. The logistics of it seemed implausible.
Silas knew just how insane this sounded and he wasn't sure he could adequately express just what he knew and why so he fumbled with his phone to show her the security recording. It wasn't the best quality of course, a terrible frame rate to save on bandwidth and space but it was unmistakably whatever their brother was now, lurking into the attic room and effortlessly wrapping their father in his covers before carrying him out of the room. "It happened about maybe twenty minutes ago? I ran outside as soon as I saw but saw no sign of them. They're not in the basement, I mean, they could still be in the house. I don't know what to do." He didn't think Addie knew either but god he needed her to. Maybe if she panicked he'd snap out of his own crazed state of mind to compensate, that would be nice too.
Addie watched the recording, her heart starting to beat a little harder in her chest. That couldn't be anyone else but Elijah and now he was... where? Outside? What if he was seen? Wiping her palms on her sides, Addie looked around the foyer, like Elijah would suddenly appear with their father and everything would be okay. "First thing we need to do is look around the house... every room, every closet. I don't care if they can't physically be in a space, look anyway," she said breathlessly. "If they're not in the house somewhere, then... then we try to think of any place in town where he might have taken dad. They couldn't have gotten far if it's only been twenty minutes or so. We just have to move fast, okay?"
"Yes," Silas said tensely and closed his eyes to try to clear his mind and get his brain functioning. Now wasn't the time to question everything, they both needed to get moving and be fast, like she said. "Basement," he said and pointed at her, then himself. "Attic. Meet you here when we've swept the whole house." He was having a hard time imagining Elijah out and about, he still looked like he used to, technically, but there was something so unnatural about him, about the way he moved. And they both knew his diet... Maybe he just really missed their dad and had hidden away with him in some storage, here was to hoping.
Addie nodded and swiftly took off for the doors to the basement. She had no idea what it meant for their father that Elijah had taken him. Would he die if he wasn't hooked up to the machines in the attic? This was scary but at the same time she was relieved that Elijah hadn't gotten out of the basement while Toby was working. Fear and adrenaline fueled Addie as she began to search in the basement rooms, including the mortuary and the cremation rooms. It was probably too much to ask that Elijah had just brought their dad downstairs to "play chess", but Elijah's room was empty too. Cursing loudly, Addie began to run back upstairs. There were plenty of rooms to check on the first floor, after all. She wasn't going to panic yet.
Silas ran to the attic, he didn't often run but it came surprisingly easy when his adrenaline was running high. He searched every room there, under the beds, in the cupboards - like Addie said, there was no place too stupid to look so he looked everywhere. It wasn't necessarily his father he expected to find in the smaller spaces, but maybe a hint, a clue, something to work with. He worked his way back down frantically going through every room and corridor while he knew his sister did the same thing, but there were no signs of Elijah or Edgar anywhere. "They couldn't have gotten far," he said urgently when he met Addie back in the foyer and there was a nagging feeling he had forgotten a room, a closet, a chest - something - but he wasn't sure how he could be much more thorough given that he was rushing. "God, if the neighbors see them- no that should not be what I'm mainly worried about, but God..." He ushered past Addie to grab his coat, patting his pockets. "Drive or walk? Different directions? What do we do? Where would he go?"
She was worried about everything. About Elijah, and their father and the fact that someone could see them. How would she and Silas explain that to anyone? What if the police were called? What if Nick found out she and Silas had a once-dead-not-dead brother living in their basement? There was a nasty, acidic taste in her throat and she feared she might end up vomiting. But it passed quickly and Addie tried to refocus on the problem that hopefully had a solution. "We split up. Do you have your phone? I'm going on foot just in case Elijah is going through backyards or something. I don't know where he would go, Silas. The cemetery? The woods? I doubt he's taking dad to the Back Porch for a drink." Addie took a deep breath and then gripped Silas's forearms tightly. "We'll find them. It's going to be okay. We just have to be fast."
Silas took a moment to picture Elijah carrying their father into the Back Porch and something lurched inside of him, wanting to get out. He swallowed dryly and shook his head because no, he needed Elijah to go somewhere nobody would see him - except Addie and Silas! "I always have my phone so... You look in the cemetery, I'll check the woods," he said and that nausea only got stronger at the thought. The cemetary was safer but neither place was really somewhere anyone should go alone. It made him wish Nick was in on the secret and could help them search but no, they were alone in this particular misery. He wanted to search with her, fearing he was going to come undone as soon as she left - or even as soon as she let go of him - but he'd held strong under similarly difficult circumstances, he could ride this wave too. Damn it.
"Okay. Just don't freak out! Which I know sounds really ridiculous because I'm about to freak out, but if we freak out we'll never find them and everything will just implode. I mean, what if someone else finds them? What if someone else has already found them? Oh god." Addie let go of Silas and clasped her hands over her chest. "What are we going to tell people? If Nick finds out..." She breathed in sharply and wondered if this was what a panic attack felt like. Yes, she knew thinking about this would affect her was incredibly stupid and selfish because they needed to find their dad but this had the potential to be really, really Bad for all of them.
Her panic did help Silas breathe and he grabbed her arms and gave them a gentle squeeze, hoping to ground her too. "We'll be the ones to find him. They might just be in the garden," he said and that was entirely too optimistic but Nick could not find out, not like this! He'd told Addie that she should marry this man, the last thing he wanted was to scare him off. "Elijah was dad's mistake and we are not going to pay for it. We are going to find them and we are going to bring them home." There, that sounded reasonable and calm, far more reasonable and calm than he felt. "Let's go."
Addie nodded, because she had to cling to Silas's optimism, whether it was genuine or not. He was right. What their dad did to Elijah hadn't been their choice and she couldn't bear to watch her entire life burn down around her because of it. "Let's go," she agreed before taking a deep breath and turning towards the door. They had to move quickly. What would they do if they couldn't find Edgar and Elijah? Addie wasn't sure but she decided not to fully panic about it until she absolutely had to.
They'd been so young when Elijah Happened, thirteen and ten year olds had very little say in what went down in their families, and yet it was hard not to feel responsible all the damn time for some obscure reason. It had become their problem early on and now that they were adults they were fully complicit but Silas still clung to this naive idea that he could feign complete ignorance if it came down to it. A strange mockery of his dead brother living in his basement? However was he supposed to know? He followed Addie to the door before turning on his heels to locate his glasses because even if he was fine driving without them when it was bright out, he was actually searching for something this time.
It was about two hours later after the two of them 'casually' speed-walked through the cemetery and woods respectively, trying to look unphased when they passed other people in between texting each other with frantic updates or lack thereof. Silas got to the house first and it came only naturally to start searching inside again, just in case they'd missed something - just in case Addie had missed something because even if he didn't really think she had, it just helped to double check it for himself. And who knew, Elijah might have come back! But of course he hadn't.
Addie was breathless when she returned to the house. Breathless and worried. The concern that people might see their father and Elijah was now overwhelmed by concern for her father's health. He was in a coma. What was Elijah going to do with him? She entered the house, wishing she would walk in on Silas looking relieved and happy because their father was back. But the house felt quiet and empty and Addie tried to keep her breathing even. "Silas?" she called, immediately searching the lower level rooms. "I'm back!"
Silas came jogging up the stairs and his disheveled and frantic look was more than enough of a clue that he had in fact not had any more luck than Addie. "I don't- I- I can't imagine where he would take him," he said, feeling defeated and at loss for where to look next. His mind kept giving him awful ideas, ranging from Elijah wandering into a public space with their half naked and comatose father - to Elijah taking him somewhere awful, one of those evil places he'd been telling Nick about. There was no way he was searching the tunnels and he wouldn't let Addie near them either but what if Elijah was there? What if and what if and what if - he needed those dark images to stop. "Do we keep searching? We can't... call the police."
Addie brought her hands up to her face for a moment. "No, we can't call the police. How would we even explain it? We just have to keep looking... if we can't find them, then... we have to wait until they come back." If they came back. Dropping her hands, Addie gave Silas a pained look. "We're sort of at the mercy of Elijah right now. I don't know what else to do. We can't close down or anything." For a brief moment she considered calling Nick, but then she would have to explain everything and she knew that could very well spell the end of their relationship, even if he did help them. "Maybe he's hiding until the sun goes down?"
Silas could practically feel the last of the blood draining out of his face when he thought of this upcoming weekend but Addie's words did bring some hope. Elijah didn't exactly love the sun so maybe... maybe they would have a better chance of finding him after the sun went down. "Oh my god, we have a service on Sunday," he mumbled. "God I hope they're back by then, I'm going to need so much valium to get through this weekend otherwise. So to speak. Let's look again tonight? He's got to be hiding somewhere..." It was easy to imagine Elijah getting in somewhere on his own, but carrying Edgar? Silas didn't want to think about it too closely, just imagining them out and about was giving him heart palpitations.
Addie was picturing Elijah carrying their comatose father into the service scheduled for Sunday and she just barely managed to keep from vomiting. "Yeah, let's just... wait here for a while and see if they come back. If not, we'll go out at sunset and search again. If someone finds them before then, well, obviously we'll find out because they'll know dad and call the police and then what will we say? This town is crazy but if we try to explain that Elijah isn't really dead...or he is, but he isn't." Her eyes widened. "Oh my god, they'll think he's a zombie. You don't think he'd try to... eat anyone, do you? What if he gets hungry? Maybe he'll come home if that happens. It sounds like I'm comparing him to a lost animal, but if you think about how much we feed him, or rather what we feed him." She brought her hands up to her head. "We're like a demented episode of The X-Files, Silas! All that's missing is the FBI snooping around the morgue!"
"Oh my God, we are," Silas groaned, covering his eyes for a few moments as he tried to find some way to calm down and breathe. He was well versed in dealing with tragedy but uncertainty was his weakness for sure and he hated every second of this. God damn Elijah. "Okay so, he wouldn't hurt dad, he would never hurt dad, we can at least not worry about that. He doesn't... I don't think he'd seek out other people, he only really wants to be with dad and he's not... He's not a killer. He's a... Carrion." Silas wrinkled his nose at his own words, somewhat wishing he hadn't said that out loud but it was true, Elijah wasn't violent, he was just creepy. He had to come home when he got hungry, that or he'd start digging up graves? Silas felt like collapsing just thinking about it. "I'm going to make us some tea and probably have a shot or two of something strong and then we can go back out after dark."
"Well, he could be with dad here!" Addie threw her hands up, exasperated. "I mean... if we let him. If... we could have taken him upstairs, you know? Does he even know dad is in a coma? Does he understand it?" She knew Silas probably didn't have the answers to these questions, but talking always made her feel better, like she could suss out the solution if she refused to let any silence linger. Silas was right though. Elijah wasn't a killer. But would he become one if he grew desperate enough? Hungry enough? She was imagining him digging through the cemetery, searching for fresh corpses. Paling, Addie swallowed hard. "Tea. Tea sounds good. Tea with whiskey, please. Like... forty percent tea, sixty percent whiskey."
"Seventy," Silas said but he didn't mean it, there was no way they were getting plastered now, no matter how much he wanted to. They needed to keep their wits about them so they could do another search after sundown. He absolutely agreed with her, Elijah - that prick! - could have just lurked up to the attic room and stayed with their father there. Of course he probably didn't understand what was going on, maybe he took Edgar for a 'walk' in some misguided hope that the fresh air would wake him up. Or.. No, Silas really didn't want to think about what Elijah might do with Edgar when he inevitably didn't wake up, his understanding of things was so limited. He wrapped his arm around Addie's shoulders, recognizing she felt at least half as unsteady as he did so some physical comfort could only be a good thing. "Some nice tea and whiskey while we wait."
Addie wanted to drink. She wanted to drink a lot. And then maybe call Nick and drunkenly confess that she loved him and oh, she had an undead brother out in town somewhere carrying around her comatose father and would he be willing to help her find them? But the responsible thing would be to drink just enough to calm some of her nerves and then formulate a better plan with her brother. "Tea and whiskey," she murmured. "Okay. Maybe some valium?" Exhaling, she rested her head against Silas as they headed for the kitchen. "We need a plan. In case he doesn't come back tonight. Like... a Plan C."
"God no," Silas said and for a second he looked like he was going to be sick, his lip quivering and his skin paling as he considered the possibility that they would need a plan C eventually. "No, no, no. I really need to believe Elijah will bring dad home very soon, that's about all the stress I can manage right now. I'll find us a perfect plan - I'll figure out something... Something amazing if he doesn't come back - but he will. He will come back because we are all he knows and he'll need to eat." He turned, swallowing down against the queasiness and grabbing some glasses. The tea needed boiling water but alcohol needed no preparation beyond getting poured into glasses so that was what he'd do right now. "Right now I can only focus on waiting and then searching. That's about as far as I can think before I throw up or have a panic attack." He knew it was bad when he kind of wanted to chug the bourbon straight from the bottle but he got a hold of himself and poured himself bourbon and after knocking that back he poured whiskey for Addie.
Addie wanted to argue, because wanting to believe something didn't necessarily mean it was going to happen. And what if Elijah didn't come back that soon? Or ever? Slumping into one of the chairs, Addie ran her hands through her blonde hair, not wanting to imagine any of the horrible things that could happen, but her brain wasn't exactly cooperating. She took the whiskey from Silas and drank it in one gulp before hissing through her teeth as it burned down her throat. Warmth exploded in her stomach and she held her glass up to Silas. "Just one more. It'll help me think."
Silas poured her another drink before heading back to the counter for some more for himself. The tea would help too, he hoped, most of all he wanted to sleep until they could act again because being awake and waiting was just so god awful. "I'm trying to think of where Elijah would go. Where he used to hang out when he was... before he... Back in the day." All those places were awful, just the worst, was school still in session? Would he go there? The hospital? His old girlfriend's house? Nope, none of those were good and if Elijah had had some secret hangout it had clearly been too secret for his kid siblings to know about it. "We should have had a GPS chip on him," he grumbled, even if nothing in the past had indicated they would ever need that.
Addie had been much younger when Elijah had killed himself and her memories of the years before it were a bit fragmented. She sipped her drink this time, rather than knocking it back like the first, attempting to think of the places in town her brother might wander to. "He wouldn't take dad to the hospital, would he? If... if something in his mind recognized that something was wrong with dad? Maybe he didn't realize the machines upstairs were helping him. Or maybe he's taking dad to one of the witches." Addie's fingers tightened around her glass. "Like, to help dad somehow. Did Elijah know about those people?"
Silas didn't really know if Elijah had known any of the witches in town. He'd been sixteen when he died, there was a chance he didn't really know anything about the things that happened in Point Pleasant beyond the usual high school rumors. "If he went to see one of the witches then that would honestly be the best outcome," he said but he didn't feel a whole lot of hope in his words. "They would contact us and not the police... Maybe dad woke up, told him where to go." He shook that thought off as soon as he'd spoken the words, realizing how dumb it was the moment he heard himself say it. "No, he wouldn't go anywhere with Elijah." Unless it was something dark, something like what he'd done to bring Elijah back. Something he needed Elijah to help him with because he didn't want Addie or Silas to get caught up in it.
Addie sipped her drink some more, staring at a dried drip of coffee from the morning that hadn't been wiped off the table. "If dad woke up, we would have known. I mean, if it had happened before Elijah took him. If he woke up after... who knows. He might be too weak to do anything. Or say anything." Sighing, Addie brought her gaze back up to her brother. "We'll give it another hour, then we're going to lock up and spend the rest of the night searching for them. We can't just sit around here and hope for the best. Dad's in a coma and Elijah... well, you know. We have to find them before someone else does, Silas. If we can't, we need to find someone to help us."
"Who?" he asked before he could think it through and it came out a little sharper than intended. He closed his eyes and steeled himself before giving her an apologetic look. "I don't know could help us. Dad's contacts? Witches?" He vaguely knew of them, they were around, powerful crazy people and possibly the sources of the power that had breought Elijah back though Silas didn't know the details. Maybe Edgar had made a deal with something darker than a witch, he really didn't want to know and never had. Only today it might have come in handy. "Maybe we should go through dad's things," he said hesitantly. "See if we can find any... contacts."
"Someone in this town helped him with Elijah. If we can find out who, they can help us," Addie said. She wasn't stung by his tone because she knew he was stressed out. She was too. The last thing they needed was to start sniping at each other. "I haven't been in dad's office since... well... I have the keys to his filing cabinets and everything. We can look through there." Addie paused and arched a blonde brow. "Nick might be able to help us. He knows about this stuff. Maybe he'd know what to do." Her gut was resisting the idea, mostly because she thought that if he knew what they harbored in their basement, he might be too weirded out by it to want to continue seeing her. But it was her dad, and her sorta-brother and she couldn't bear the thought of anything bad happening to either of them. Anything worse than what had already happened anyway.
Silas had very nearly given his enthusiastic 'yes' to going through their father's things when Addie brought up Nick and he blanched, shaking his head. "Don't bring Nick into this," he said hurriedly. "Don't bring anyone into this, we'll do what we can first." The last thing they needed was for her Writer boyfriend to hear about their fucked up family dynamic. He might leave Addie and he might write a book about it and both of those things would be horrible. "Let's go to dad's office and see what we can find. Whoever brought Elijah back might be able to find them now and they'll obviously already know about him." He could kick himself for never asking Edgar about how this had happened, ignorance was bliss until it wasn't.
Even though she felt like Nick could help, she felt secretly relieved that Silas had quickly shot the suggestion down. She didn't want to freak out her boyfriend and she really, really didn't want to lose him because of her father's choices. Eventually he would have to know, but... not today. "Okay," Addie said with a firm nod, feeling a little better now that they had something resembling a plan. She stood, picking up her whiskey to take it with her. "Dad's keys are in my desk upstairs. I'll go get them and meet you in his study. Maybe lock the front door so we don't have any unexpected visitors." Addie didn't have any appointments that afternoon, but people occasionally came by of their own accord to ask about prices, services and sometimes pet cremation. She certainly didn't want to have to deal with anyone else right now, not when her brain felt so scrambled.
Silas nodded sharply. "I'll bring the tea," he told her since he felt the urge to start now and it was hard to sit still in the kitchen and drink tea when they had some semblance of a plan. Especially a plan that might work! It wasn't enough to make him feel optimistic about this but it was a good start and the restlessness he was feeling shifted into something a little more manageable for now. He didn't really expect Edgar to have a little filofax of witches and their abilities but maybe they could read between the lines on some of his contacts and files. Silas hoped they could at least, right now it was the only thing they had to go on.