misterblackbird: (Sneaky (lol))
Cain Hargreaves ([personal profile] misterblackbird) wrote2011-10-22 05:53 pm

Entry 531; Day 1037

[Filtered Against Known DELILAH Members || Unhackable]

I suppose everyone's had enough of the City's smoke, mirrors, and piano wire to satisfy them for a little while. And, really, that's what it all was, even if it was the City or the 'deities' behind it all, and pulling on those wires. Perhaps they were a bit more invisible than the usual sorts of wires and perhaps the smoke was a bit thicker than one might have expected, but, like all the curses, it was nothing more than a trick.

I've been to any number of houses or places that were ostensibly 'haunted' by one creature or another--demons, ghosts, even vampires. In every instance, these 'creatures' were all too human. Honestly, Riff can vouch for it: I've even been known to wander in a cemetery or two in the dark of night. I daresay it's almost my element. I suppose that's why there's very little in my world that truly unnerves me and why even curses like yesterday's seem more like a conjurour's tricks than something of which to be really afraid.

I've seen these sorts of things before. And, yes, they can be startling at times--I won't deny that--but once one has seen these things done a few times, the wires start to appear. Even in the case of curses, once one knows it is a curse, that's rather the same as seeing the spare dove hidden in a magician's sleeve or the mirrors used to deceive a willing but gullible audience. I'll take yesterday's curse as a kind of entertainment for us all. And I did find it a very good show. So bravo for that, City.

I actually did manage to join in a duet on a piano that seemed to be playing by itself. We made quite a good pair, this 'haunted' piano and I. I thought we sounded quiet good. Perhaps I should imagine that my partner was the ghost of a despairing young lady, since that was the sound of it. It would make a for a good story.

Really, there's something somehow beautiful and melancholy about those sorts of abandoned houses, though. They're in such rags, but they seem to suggest such former grandeur. Some of the ones I passed by yesterday seemed so much like the houses of acquaintances I knew in London, but as though they'd long abandoned these same houses and left them to the weather and to time. Perhaps it's morbid of me, but I do almost like seeing them, somehow. It's rather like being reminded of one's own death, in a way. It can push one forward.

Besides that, I've almost missed seeing fog like that since I've been here. It's not all that often that one sees it here. It felt rather more like home than it has in ages to me.

Perhaps I'm speaking too soon, but this October hasn't seemed nearly so horrific as some in the past. Perhaps we will escape this one more or less unscathed.

~C.

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[ooc: Cain has had quite enough haunted mansions to satisfy him for a very long time. For that matter, he kind of lives in one, what with being in the opera house and all. And he's debunked enough things to feel rather sure of himself. Not that he doesn't like a good ghost story and all...it's just that it's only a story.]

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[identity profile] primrosella.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 12:47 am (UTC)(link)
It may make for a good story, but I think it'd be hard to appreciate the music properly amidst feeling sorry for the poor ghost.

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[identity profile] misterblackbird.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 12:49 am (UTC)(link)
But there wasn't any ghost, you see.

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[identity profile] primrosella.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 12:55 am (UTC)(link)
Perhaps not, but the one you were imagining, did playing the song help her find her peace? It'd be the right ending for a story, even if it is only a story.

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[identity profile] misterblackbird.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 01:19 am (UTC)(link)
I suppose that would be the right ending for the story.

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[identity profile] primrosella.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 01:48 am (UTC)(link)
I met one once, you know. A despairing young lady ghost? She was just a bit older than I was, really--and younger than I am now, come to think of it. So I suppose I'm just a bit biased when it comes to that sort of ghost.

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[identity profile] misterblackbird.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 01:50 am (UTC)(link)
I somehow shouldn't be at all surprised that you have met a ghost--and a despairing young lady ghost, at that.

What did you do for her? I think you must have done something.

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[identity profile] primrosella.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 01:55 am (UTC)(link)
Meeting her was really the most awful of them--her and the baby. The others howled and moaned as one might expect of ghosts, but she and the baby just cried.

I found her locket for her. It had a picture of her lost love in it, and she couldn't rest until she had it back.

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[identity profile] misterblackbird.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 02:01 am (UTC)(link)
That, I think, seems more useful to a ghost, somehow, than simply playing a duet with one. It's not the first time that a 'ghost' might seek a lost jewel or lost trinket.

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[identity profile] primrosella.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 02:14 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, I don't know about that. They do say a ghost's favorite kind of music is sheet music.

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[identity profile] misterblackbird.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 02:15 am (UTC)(link)
If you're making puns like that already, I somehow doubt that yesterday's curse upset you so terribly.

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[identity profile] primrosella.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 02:20 am (UTC)(link)
...No, you and Edmund caught me before I could get myself into any real trouble. So there's nothing to be terribly upset about, really, other than that I acted rather silly during a curse again.

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[identity profile] misterblackbird.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 02:26 am (UTC)(link)
And acting rather silly during a curse, whether for the first time or again, is hardly something to be upset about. It really does happen to all of us sooner or later. I have told you about my thinking I was the Sultan of Turkey before, I feel certain. Your wanting to go into an abandoned house pales in comparison with that madness.

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[identity profile] primrosella.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 02:30 am (UTC)(link)
Mm, and that's why it's lucky you both stopped me before I found my way to the crypt. If it did turn out to be that same manor as the one I remember, that much wouldn't have been abandoned.

But I didn't, and I suppose that's really what matters.

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[identity profile] misterblackbird.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 02:38 am (UTC)(link)
And you did get to wander about in the house, didn't you? There's something to be said for that. Even I ended up doing a little of that yesterday.

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[identity profile] primrosella.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 02:41 am (UTC)(link)
Mmhmm, and it did look quite the same as I remember it, right down to the parlor with the painting of the woman looking at the secret in the wall.

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[identity profile] misterblackbird.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 02:42 am (UTC)(link)
Looking at a secret in the wall? What sort of a secret?

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[identity profile] primrosella.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 02:45 am (UTC)(link)
It was the oddest thing! If one followed her gaze to the wall, there'd be a secret latch right in the place where it landed. And then that latch opened a door that let into a tower, and at the top of the tower was an organ. Quite a secret for an old manor house, really.

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[identity profile] misterblackbird.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 02:57 am (UTC)(link)
Indeed it is. I'd say it seemed another thing that could only appear in stories in my world, but I've seen a few secret passages in one house or another. So, this time, it seems like quite a secret but I'm not all that surprised.

Did you find the organ again this time?

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[identity profile] primrosella.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 03:21 am (UTC)(link)
No, I'm afraid I didn't make it that far. I managed to find the latch, though, so I imagine it still would've been there, just the same.

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[identity profile] misterblackbird.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 03:24 am (UTC)(link)
Such a shame. I wouldn't put it past the City to have had it there anyway, though.

[identity profile] he-who-kills.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 01:27 am (UTC)(link)
Boo-boo-boo.

[identity profile] misterblackbird.livejournal.com 2011-10-23 01:40 am (UTC)(link)
I believe I may have misspoken, since there appears to be a ghost here even now.