evolvedmadness (evolvedmadness) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2022-05-11 12:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | #june 2018, brody, brody x kat, kat |
Who: Kat and Brody
Where: The Carnival
When: Sunday afternoon, June 24
Status: Complete
Once the rain cleared off, it turned out to be a decent enough day, and yet Kat wanted to punch someone. A carnival should be an interesting thing to report on, sneaking into town under the cover of night and rain, with no advance notice to the paper or anyone else it seemed. And yet her partner on this assignment had to be the one person she’d been doing her best to avoid once starting at the Gazette. She could work in proximity to him fine, could tolerate him in the break room while getting coffee, or the odd remark as he passed her desk. But working with him to write the front page spread for tomorrow’s paper? She couldn’t say no and expect to keep her job. So there she was, waiting at the entrance to the carnival, camera around her neck and her expression stuck in a perpetual frown as she waited for Brody to arrive.
She would have been happy never to see him again. He was one of those guys that had been attractive in high school, but had gotten even more so with age. Still cocky, confident, and prone to pushing her buttons. Tonight would be an exercise in patience; Kat was determined to be professional. It had been years since they’d been together and they were both adults now, fully capable of spending a few hours together for work. Or so she told herself. As she came into view, she already found herself wanting a drink.
Brody was still getting used to Kat Lucas working at the newspaper. He had assumed once she left town, she would be gone for good, but here she was with a camera around her neck, looking like she hadn't really aged a bit since high school. She was also rather prickly towards him, which wasn't surprising and Brody found himself having a bit of fun with it. It was too tempting to poke the bear, so to speak, which didn't really endear himself to her at all, but that was okay. They were both adults now, so Brody figured they could get their work done in a professional manner.
Covering a mysterious carnival was just the type of thing Brody was looking forward to. He knew about the history of Point Pleasant, had grown up fascinated by it. Working for the paper gave him an outlet to write about the strange occurrences that happened there, even if people thought he was a crackpot for doing so. Brody honestly didn't care. If he could find the truth somewhere, he would.
With his phone in hand, Brody spotted Kat waiting for him. He threw her a grin, despite the frown on her face. "Hey there, Kit-Kat, you ready to enter the spooky carnival?"
“First, do not call me that,” Kat said, her expression turning even more sour. It had been cute in high school, a silly little term of endearment. Now it just rubbed her the wrong way. He had no right to call her anything but her name. “Second, please tell me that’s not the spin you want to put on this. There’s nothing spooky about it. It’s just a carnival.” True, they all had a bit of that vibe, but Kat had seen her fair share of things that really went bump in the night and this was nothing. It just was what it was, but if they were looking to scare people, then her photos would need to match. She just didn’t think it was necessary. The place seemed to be doing well enough on its own.
Kat's scowl only prompted Brody's grin to deepen. "It's not just a carnival, Katalina. It's a carnival no one knew about, that popped up in the dead of night. It's vintage. Its' the epitome of spooky and you bet your ass we're going to spin it that way. Do you think people are going to be interested in reading front page news about a basic carnival coming to Point Pleasant?" He shook his head and took out his wallet to buy them each a ticket. Somehow he doubted the carnies would be impressed with his press badge enough to let them in for free.
“Kat. Just Kat is fine, Brody,” Kat said, her smile tight. Tonight was going to be painful, she could already tell. “I would think the people of Point Pleasant would be smart enough to stay away from creepy things outside of Halloween, but what do I know? Maybe things changed while I was gone.” Maybe they’d all become infinitely idiotic and more foolhardy. She couldn’t imagine what would cause so many people to seek out potential danger—but she had to remind herself it wasn’t real anyways. It was just a carnival, the kind that popped up all over America from time to time. She pressed her lips together as she realized that she’d gotten lost in her thoughts and he’d used that moment to buy them both tickets. “I can buy my own ticket,” she grumbled.
"Some people of Point Pleasant are smart enough to know what to stay away from," Brody pointed out. "But not all of them understand what creepy really is. Creepy can be disguised as a lot of things, including a cutesy vintage carnival." He quickly pulled up the notes app on his phone to type that in. "And yeah, Kat, I know you can buy your own ticket, but since this is for the paper, it's the paper that's paying for it." He lowered his phone and turned towards her, one dark brow raised slightly. "Look, we're here for work. Try to loosen up, okay? You're so tense you look like you're about to implode."
“I need a drink,” Kat sighed, but knew that was out of the question. She was on the job, which meant this was going to be a dry visit. “Where do you want to start? There’s a lot to cover here. If we’re truly going for creepy, I’ll try to get shots with less people, since crowds having fun doesn’t really sell that it’s some kind of haunted playground.” It would be harder to do, but Kat thought she could swing it, especially once the sun went lower in the sky and the shadows began to crawl across the earth. “So you believe in all that these days?” she asked. “Think there’s really anything to worry about here?”
"There's plenty to drink here," Brody said with a shrug. Yes, he knew she meant something with alcohol, and he didn't think there would be anything wrong with having a beer once they finished getting what they needed for the story. Maybe a drink would help Kat relax for once. "Just get whatever strikes your fancy, people or not. We can always filter it if we need creepier. I don't want this article to be some kind of dire warning to the town... just something subtle." Tey walked together towards the entrance and Brody glanced at her. "I believe everything Kit... sorry, Kat. Every good thing in this town is a mask for something terrible." Despite the cynical words, Brody's tone was jovial enough. This wasn't the place or time to get into a deep discussion about the horribleness that was Point Pleasant. "I forgot you left town for a while... I guess you got used to something normal."
Kat told herself that once she got through this she could have as much to drink as she wanted. Maybe then she’d actually enjoy the carnival. For now she just needed to keep her temper in check and get through this. She raised a brow at him as he started in with that pet name again, but then he let it drop, so so did she. The words were more cynical than she expected of him and it made her wonder what all he’d seen in the last few years. She might not have been there, but every time she’d come home she’d had those beliefs renewed, stamped a little deeper into her psyche. “No, not really,” she said. “I mean, I got used to it not impacting me directly, in my daily life, but my nephew went missing a while back. And my niece a few months before that. So it kept reminding me, even while I was gone. Things have been quiet since I got back. I take that as a bad sign.”
"Your nephew came back though," Brody pointed out, wondering if he could get Kat drunk enough later to talk about that. The Lucas family had always been pretty tight lipped about things regarding their family. "I'm with you though. Anytime things seem normal for a while, I start to expect the worst. Good for the paper, but bad for my anxiety, right?" Inside the carnival itself, Brody glanced around. It was vintage in appearance and he wondered just how old everything really was. "You know, we should get on the Ferris wheel. I bet you could get a pretty amazing shot from up there."
Jasper had come back, as had Amelia, but neither of them came back the same. It wasn’t something Kat was interested in sharing with him, but anyone that knew them could see that things were different, even without knowing their stories. Though most people didn’t know Amelia had returned at all. It was one of the many reasons Kat kept her mouth shut. “If you know how bad things can be, why’d you stick around?” she asked. It was hard for her to imagine Brody having anxiety over anything more substantial than a football match. Kat’s gaze rose to the Ferris wheel, somehow towering over everything in the town. It was hard to believe it hadn’t been there yesterday. “That’s exactly what I need—to be trapped in a little, metal box with you, sixty feet off the ground,” she deadpanned, then added more sincerely. “It would be an amazing shot.”
"We can take different metal boxes if you're not confident in your ability to keep your hands off of me," Brody replied, another easy grin forming on his lips. "As for why I stick around, where else am I going to go? My family is here and I like my job. If I go somewhere else, I'll have a boss who micromanages and tells me what I can and can't write. I can do whatever I want here. Besides, how many other places are going to give me the stories Point Pleasant can?" There were quiet days, sure, and sometimes he had to write puff pieces to keep the paper from deliving into something of a horror novel. But Brody had learned to take the good with the bad and balance it all.
“If my hands are on you, it’s because I’m pushing you over the side,” Kat smirked back at Brody. It was an empty threat and they both knew it, but if he was going to suggest that she was dying to touch him, she’d provide him with a reason why. “There are lots of places with decent bosses, some that aren’t more than an hour from here,” she said. “Are you even allowed to write the truth when you know it? I feel like the same excuses get regurgitated every time—contaminated water, hallucinogenic gasses in the air. It’s all bullshit.” If they published the truth, it would make them look crazy, but she was sure the constant lying would get to her over time. That was why this was supposed to be a short term gig; she’d work for the paper until her own business was stable, then quit.
Brody laughed, trying to imagine Kat sending him over the side of one of the Ferris wheel carts. She could probably manage it too. He began to type into his phone, taking notes of what he was seeing around him. He wondered if he could track down one of the employees to ask a few questions. "It's mostly bullshit," Brody muttered, distracted for a moment before looking over at Kat. "Eventually the paper is going to be mine... and I'm going to write the truth the way I know it. I've got stories written about this place... I just can't publish them yet." He knew when he eventually did, he would probably be called crazy, but he was mostly okay with that. "C'mon, let's get to the Ferris wheel so you can get some photos while we have some natural light going for us."
“It’s going to be yours?” Kat asked, raising a brow in surprise. It seemed awfully arrogant of him, but while she’d always known him to be cocky, this felt like something more. He’d been working at the paper for years while she’d been away, and he’d worked his way to owning the front page read, so she supposed it was plausible. If so, then good for him, though she needed to be gone from the paper before that ever happened. Kat could tolerate working with him, but not for him. “You write the truth and you’ll put the paper out of business. They’ll call you a gossip rag instead of a news source,” she warned as they walked towards the line for the Ferris wheel. “People don’t want to hear it. I don’t think most of ‘em can handle it.”
"That's the plan," Brody explained. He didn't see it as arrogance as much as...confidence. It was a small town and a small paper and Kevin was going to have to retire eventually. Sooner than later, he hoped. Brody had the experience and the education and he had plans for the entire thing. Sure, he was young, but he knew what he was doing. "It's not my job to care about what people want to hear about. The truth is the truth, isn't it? Maybe people would be safer to know it. I can write about it without it turning into News of the Weird." At least he thought he would. Brody glanced over at Kat. "What about you? How do you deal with the truth?"
While Kat wanted to say she dealt with the truth, and all her other problems, head on, instead she knew she’d run away. It felt like a cowards way out, just leaving Point Pleasant and her family with it, but it had also felt like the smart thing to do at the time. Of course, she’d managed to find problems of her own and even though they paled in comparison to what the rest of her family dealt with, she still felt like she’d run away from them in the end. “It’s been a while since I had to personally deal with the shit that happens around here,” she said, then her lips turned up slightly. “Maybe I’ll take a picture of it. Capture it on camera, as a reminder. As proof. People will say I Photoshopped it, but I’ll know, and I don’t need to share it anyways. Unless people will buy it, then why not?”
Unable to help himself, Brody grinned. "There you go. I mean, I know people won't necessarily believe it. Even with hard proof, they find some way to say it's a lie. But all you can do is push forward and try to make people accept it. Hell, maybe Point Pleasant lives on denial, right? The creepy stuff only thrives because people refuse to believe in it." He stepped up onto the platform with her when the next cart came down from the Ferris wheel. "Ladies first," he said, gesturing to the seat. "You're planning on staying in town for good now, right? For your brother's wedding and all that fun family stuff."
“The worst of it is… hard to swallow,” Kat said, leaving it at that. She didn’t know what Brody had been exposed to, but it felt difficult to top the stuff that had happened to Jasper and Amelia. And Mila and Aaron. Everyone in town had a dose of the creepy stuff from time to time, but some got so fully drenched that they were changed. Brody himself seemed unscathed to Kat, curious because he knew something was out there, but probably not what. Kat climbed onto the Ferris wheel cart, taking a seat and busying herself with her camera as Brody joined her. It was easier than just sitting there and staring at him as they talked. “Yeah, I need to stay in one place if I expect to rebuild my business. And it’s good to be back with family. I want to be here for the wedding and the baby and all that.”
"You know what they say... you can leave Point Pleasant but it always brings you back. Sounds nice, right? Except it's more like... this town puts its claws in you and drags you back screaming and kicking." Brody watched Kat as she readied her camera. "I've got some ideas for a few columns coming up. I'll need your help with those too, by the way. I know you're not all that happy to have to work with me, but I'm thinking we should probably talk about that. Or at least agree to let high school stay high school and not let it affect us now."
The town wasn’t responsible for bringing Kat back to Point Pleasant. That blame belonged to an asshole ex-boyfriend. Kat had a lot of those in her history, and she could easily say that one of them was sitting next to her right now. Cheating was pretty high on her list of shitty things a guy could do to his girl, but it was nothing compared to physical or emotional abuse, so she supposed she should maybe give Brody a break. It was years ago and it wasn’t like he was looking to get back together with her. “I’m here, aren’t I? It doesn’t impact my work.” She wasn’t thrilled about the idea of working more with him, but turning him away could impact her job, especially if he was really set to take over. “What were you thinking?”
Considering how often she scowled around him, Brody had to imagine it did impact her work. Or maybe it just impacted her attitude around him, which he couldn't really fault her for. But they could be grown ups and work together... at least he hoped they could. He knew why she wasn't fond him, but it wasn't like she was Miss Innocent either. Though Brody had to bite his tongue on pointing that out. He didn't want her to beat him over the head with her camera. "Once I get them more settled in my head, I'll let you know." Since he wasn't the one taking the pictures, Brody settled back to enjoy the view as the ferris wheel began to rise. "You're a great photographer, by the way. You ever think about... opening a studio or something?"
Kat gave a nod, willing to wait for the pitch to start worrying about potential projects he might throw at her. She had enough to worry about without considering the maybes. The complement brought a small smile to her lips, even if she knew he was just trying to butter her up. He wasn’t stupid; requests were easier granted with complements than insults. “Thanks,” she said with a little smile, her eyes flicking to him between shots. “I had one in Bangor, though I did most of my shots on location. I hope to get one here eventually, but… it’ll take a while to get back to that point.” The worst part about moving back home was the loss of her business. She could build it again. She had the portfolio to prove her skills. But it would take time and word of mouth. It was annoying, but she’d stick it out because this was where she was meant to be, whether she liked it or not.
"You think so?" Brody was typing in notes on his phone as the Ferris wheel took them ever higher. He felt like he ought to enjoy the fact that he was on a fun ride with a beautiful woman, but circumstances made that a bit difficult. "I don't think it would be very hard for you to get a loan here, if that's really want you want to do. Unless you're afraid of putting down real stakes in town and getting stuck again." A job at the newspaper made it easy to run away again, if she wanted to do that. Having a business and money owed sort of made her stay here permanent.
“I’m not stuck,” Kat said abruptly. “I chose to come back.” Maybe not under the best circumstances, but it was still her choice. Now that she was back, she couldn’t dream of going anywhere else. Her entire support system was here, something she didn’t realize until things had gotten bad. Had Brian isolated her from her local friends? Or had she just worked herself to the point where she never saw them? None of them were as close as the ones she’d had in Point Pleasant, and none of them knew a thing about her history. They didn’t know what she’d grown up with or what she’d been running away from. She was tired of running. “I just got a house,” she added after a moment’s pause. “A couple months ago, I mean. I’m still trying to get that in order. It’s kind of a fixer upper, so I want to make some progress there before I take out another loan.”
Brody looked up from his phone, his brow cocked curiously. "Why'd you choose to come back? I mean, truthfully." Maybe he had asked her that before and she had given him some bullshit answer, but now he was genuinely curious. From what he understood, most people who came back to Point Pleasant came back because they had to for one reason or another... not because they really wanted to. It didn't surprise him either, that Kat had bought a house. She was putting down real roots now and there was no going back from that. He still had his one bedroom apartment at Haven Park and he was happy with that. It felt like he could still run away if he had to.
Kat glanced at Brody, the question exposing a moment of vulnerability before she pulled the shutters closed tight. It wasn’t exactly a secret, her brothers knew, as did Mila, but it wasn’t something she talked about either. It made her feel weak, even though she thought she should feel strong for making the choice. She hated that she’d fallen in with a man who would raise his hand at her, no matter what the circumstance, and even if he took the blame for hitting her, she still felt a fraction of the responsibility for staying with him as long as she had. Letting it get to that point. Not seeing the signs. “Bad breakup,” she said, raising her camera to her eye, hiding behind the lens. “I wanted to be closer to my family. With my dad gone, it… felt like the right time to come home.” For all the bad this place had brought upon them, it was her father who had hurt her the most. And now he was gone.
Bad breakup... that was as good a reason as any. "Sorry about your dad," he said, because he felt like he ought to say it, even though he knew Joseph Lucas had been a Grade A Asshole. Everyone in town had known it and he didn't think anyone was really mourning him except maybe his family. He watched Kat take a few photos before he went back to scrawling in his notebook. The Ferris wheel was taking them higher and Brody couldn't help but look up and enjoy the view beneath them. "It's not exactly a bad place to be," he said after a moment. "I mean, beyond the unpredictability, the high rate of missing persons and occasional life and death situations. Plus, you get to work with me, which I'm sure is a major bonus." Brody grinned and nudged her playfully.
“Don’t be,” Kat muttered in regards to her father. “We’re better off without him.” It was probably a horrible thing to say, but it was the truth and Brody probably knew it. She’d done her best to keep all her boyfriends away from her father, but that didn’t matter in the long run. Joseph Lucas had a reputation far exceeding Kat’s reach. As a teen, she’d thought it was something she could hide. As an adult, she knew better. He was never the man she’d wanted him to be and she reminded herself of that any time she found herself mourning the loss. He wasn’t worth her grief. “How is that a bonus?” she asked, lightly teasing. “Are you a good luck charm now? Able to keep me from disappearing? Or handy in life or death situations? You got a weapon on you?” She pretended to look for one, but knew there was nothing to find.
She was probably right about that. If Brody's dad had been like Joseph Lucas, Brody would've cut him out a long time ago. But he was distracted from those thoughts by Kat's lighter tone, because that was definitely preferable to her scowling at him. "Well, I'm unbelievably handsome, so that's one bonus. I don't know that I would call myself a good luck charm, but I'm sure you'll find out if that's true the more we work together. Maybe I am. And I could make a really obscene joke about the kind of weapon I have on me, but then you might report me to HR." He nudged her playfully with his elbow, hoping she wouldn't take the camera in her hands and bash him with it.
“Not my style,” Kat said with a little twist of her lips. His thoughts were more accurate than his words—She was more likely to hit him upside the head with the camera than to take anything to HR. Which potentially made them an HR nightmare, but Kat had learned to restrain herself while at work. If he really pissed her off, she’d just key his car outside of business hours. “Your weapon won’t do shit about the things that haunt this place. Sometimes I wish I’d see more, just to I could relate to the rest of my family, but I realize that’s all kinds of fucked up. I’ve been lucky. I shouldn’t question it.” They rose a bit higher and Kat snapped another picture, quietly happy with the results she saw when she checked the viewfinder. The pictures were going to be fantastic. “What’s the weirdest things you’ve seen? With your own eyes.”
"Jesus, how long do you have?" Brody asked, glancing up as he heard the snap of her camera. He was already mentally putting together the layout of the article, complete with whatever photo turned out the best. "Sometimes I wonder if its just my eyes playing tricks on me. You hear about all the weird stuff, right? So it's in your brain, messing around. You might see something and then walk away and wonder... did I see that? Or did my brain want me to see something... and you doubt yourself. Most humans are pretty rational, so they're going to shrug it off... a trick of the light, that kind of thing." Brody glanced out over the ocean nearby. "One time I thought I saw a kid out in the water... just the top of his head, with his eyes staring at me. He looked... decayed... but I blinked a couple of times and he was gone and then I figured it was a fish or some shit like that." Brody trailed off and took a breath. "For all I know we're all being drugged by this town and just hallucinating everything."
“We’re not being drugged,” Kat said, looking away from her camera to look at him. “If we were hallucinating, we’d all see different things, but I’ve been in situations where we’ve seen the same weird shit. There’s no rational explanation for some of it. I don’t like it. I don’t want to believe in it. But I can’t stick my head in the sand.” That seemed like a quick way to get yourself killed around here. If Kat saw something she thought she needed to run from, she’d run now, ask questions later. She’d always been a fighter, but sometimes survival was more important. “I’d be willing to bet you actually saw a kid,” she said. “Even a drowned one. Good reason to stay out of the water.” She considered even asking him where he’d seen it, just so she could stay away from that specific piece of beach, but maybe that was too much. It wasn’t like she was dying to take a dip in Point Pleasant waters.
Brody thought there could be a way to drug everyone to see the same shit, but that seemed like a silly thing to argue about. Kat just had the ability to make him want to argue. "Well, drowned kids and the cold ass water." Brody glanced out over the water again. Thankfully there were no interruptions, no sign of someone, or something hanging around beneath the surface. "What about you? What's the weirdest thing you've seen?"
The real answer was her niece, aged ten years in ten days. Or was it nine? Either way, she went missing and came back years older, and even Jasper’s story about the portal world couldn’t trump that. Not that it was a contest. But she couldn’t tell Brody about either of them. Another memory occurred to her and just as it sprung to mind, goosebumps rose on her arms and her heart began to race. “I saw this man once… Right before I left, I got drinks with some friends and was walking back to my car. We’d closed out the bar, so it was late. There was no one around, but then suddenly he was there. Tall, with this hat… I know it doesn’t sound like anything remotely supernatural, but I suddenly felt like, if I didn’t run, I was going to die. So I ran.” She took a slow, deep breath, then shook her head, shaking the memory away. “I also saw a wall in Juniper get marked the shit up. Like someone was clawing at them, but there was no one there. I have pictures to prove it. It disappeared afterwards.” Yet, as creepy as that was, it hadn’t scared her near as much as the man.
Brody listened, watching her face intently for any sign that she might be pulling his leg. But instinctively he knew she wasn't, because he recognized at least one of those stories. "You saw the Dark Man," Brody said after a moment. His gaze scanned the crowd below them, almost instinctively searching for the guy he had heard described so many times. It didn't seem like the Dark Man was a very social character though, so he doubted he would spot anything unusual below. "I've heard a lot of stories about that guy, especially when people are drunk and more willing to talk about the weird shit. The Juniper thing... doesn't really surprise me. People have thought that place was haunted for years. You got pictures though?" He was kind of eager to see them, if he was being honest with himself.
“He has a name?” Kat asked, fighting off a spell of the shivers. She couldn’t even prove the validity of her story, had expected him to blow it off as her being drunk and paranoid, but then he’d gone and given the thing a name. Just speaking about him spooked her, like he might show up if they said his name too many times. Beetlejuice. Bloody Mary. Candyman. The Dark Man. She didn’t want to imagine what might have happened if she hadn’t run. “I have the Juniper pictures, but no one would believe them. I wish I’d gotten video. Then you could see it happening, could hear it. It said something about a prophet, but it didn’t make a lot of sense. I’ve always heard things about that place, but that was the first time I believed it might really be haunted.”
"I guess... I've only ever heard people call him the Dark Man. Some guy at the Porch called him the Man with the Bowler Hat but that's a mouthful to say every time. For the record," he continued, looking at her. "I'd believe you. I believe just about everything in this town... mostly. You might not have been here when they were, but last winter there was a man and woman staying at Juniper. Said they were journalists? But they didn't give me those particular vibes, one journalist to another. They were in Juniper for months. They checked out earlier this year, disappeared... now they're back and living in a house on Maple Street." Brody chuckled. "I don't think we're the only people who know the weird shit going on in this town. There are other forces at play here, people looking into what's really going on." Brody didn't know why he was telling Kat all of these things, but if they were going to work together, he supposed he wanted her to know.
The man with the bowler hat. That was definitely the dark man. She’d never seen anyone else wear that particular type of hat, except maybe at Halloween, and couldn’t imagine it being that frightening on anyone else. It was kind of nice to know Brody believed her, even if she didn’t need him to. She believed what she’d seen, even if no one else did. “The journalist thing is weird. I mean, I could see someone coming around to investigate and maybe write an article, if they got wind of what goes on here, but coming back and moving in.” Any sane person would do the opposite. “What do you think is really going on?” she asked, lowering her camera and looking over at him as the Ferris Wheel began its descent. “I’m sure you have some theories, even if they can’t be proven one way or another.” He’d mentioned the possibility of being drugged, but she didn’t think he really believed that.
"Oh, man, I don't know." Brody chuckled softly, even if the sound lacked humor. "I know some people think it all started from the Six. Some people think the town is just cursed... or that you know, God is punishing us for some reason or another. Drugs," he added as an afterthought. "Something in the water? Hell if I know. I doubt we're the only town out there who has a strange history. But a place like Point Pleasant is easy to ignore. If we were some big city, there'd be documentaries done about us, podcasters and bloggers swarming around. I don't know if we're lucky or not." He looked at Kat and cocked a brow. "What do you think?"
“A curse of some sort sounds on point,” Kat said. “Maybe something the Six did backfired. Maybe killing ‘em was a truly bad idea. I think whatever it is, it’s probably existed so long that it’s impossible to know the truth. Just that it is. It’d be interesting to go back and see if there’s any documentation on before the Six, or if that’s when it started. Though considering how little is written about what happens now, I doubt there’s much on back then.” If there were, they were probably considered legends or folk tales, the fact behind the fiction lost over time. He was right about how different it might be if this were a big city. There’d be all kinds of articles going around and the tourism would be totally different. “I think I’m okay with us not being the focus of some ghost hunter reality show,” she said with a little quirk of her lips. “I don’t deal well with idiots and they flock to that kind of thing.”
Brody shrugged softly. "There could be something that no one's found yet, but I don't know. It's interesting to hear different theories though... and to talk to the people who are in complete denial about what's really going on here." He grinned at Kat, happy that they were talking now instead of her just scowling at his mere presence. "We have our fair share of idiots in this town, we don't need anymore... so you're right. Although I think having a ghost hunter show in this town would be fucking cool. Just to watch them come into contact with some real shit, because those shows are fake as hell."
“That part would be hilarious,” Kat agreed. She just didn’t want anyone poking around, possibly asking her family questions they weren’t prepared to answer. Maybe they were too low profile for anyone to notice, but once someone got wind of all that they’d been through more would come out than any of them liked—which was anything at all, if she was honest. For as well known as their family name was, most of them were rather private about their affairs. “I don’t know as many people who are in denial as I used to,” she said thoughtfully. “I wonder if that’s because of our age. Like, we’ve been through a lot more shit than now than before. It was easier to ignore in high school. Now, it seems impossible. Unless you’re new to town. I kind of feel sorry for those people, not knowing what they’re in for.”
Brody shrugged. "All you can do is warn them... and then let them think you're crazy for a while." The ferris wheel was coming to a stop and they were next to get off. He smiled at Kat and nudged her gently with his elbow. "Being stuck with me up there wasn't so bad, was it?" Sure, their conversation hadn't exactly been uplifting or anything, but it was nice to know they were both on the same page where it came to the town. That probably meant they could work well together, as long as the personal stuff stayed out of the picture.
Kat thought of Shan and how many people had warned her, making it feel like the beginning of a horror movie. She would have felt bad for it if it wasn’t true. And if Shan thought she was crazy, that was fine. She was family, so that was par for the course. “Could’a been worse,” Kat said, her lips curling into a hint of a smile as they climbed off. Brody wouldn’t have been her first pick to ride the Ferris wheel with, but he certainly wouldn’t have been the last. The years had softened the hurt between them enough that she thought she could handle him, so long as she didn’t let him get too close. She refused to be burned twice.