Rumors on Cascade Hall

A Memory

November 29, 2020 5:45 AM

Rumors by A Memory

The silvery mist swirled about the floor, seemingly unable to take form as someone approached. There were sounds first, a door creaking open followed by the murmurings of quite a few voices. If the observer had to guess, they were mostly younger, student-aged voices. Suddenly the mist jerked into form. It resolved into a static image of students that no one here would recognize sitting at unfamiliar dining tables. One or two of the students were looking in the direction of the observer.

The noise continued seemingly unaware of the stationary aspect of the image. A whispered wave moved through the place where the students sat, a brief silence followed it. The image shifted, a new static image of the same scene, but now almost all of the students were looking at the observer. The voices began again, and they seemed to slowly move closer as if they were walking past the observer. Most were normal conversations spoken in Greek, but there were quite a few "Didn't you hear?" questions and "They just abandoned her." Some were quieter than others, but none were quite enough not to hear.

Once more the mist jumped to a new static image, there was a new perspective on the tables. A few tables farther ahead there were two girls in their very early teens sitting by an empty seat. They had worried looks on their faces which were turned towards the observer. The conversations continued past, and their movement seemed speed up.

"They didn't even try?" Came a boy's voice from somewhere ahead and to the left.

"I heard her parents died tragically, they say she is cursed." Responded a girl's voice coldly from the left.

"No wonder they didn't want her. Who would?" Came the boy's voice again from behind and the left.

The image changed again, it was less distinct this time, out of focus. The table that had the two girls was much closer, it looked like they were standing. Still the voices whispered all around.

"You won't catch me near her."

"Norene, Radomira, come sit here with us instead."

"Do you really think the professors will let her stay?"

"She's killed people."

"She's always been weird, I never liked her anyway."

The image shifted one last time. The table was right there, and deserted. One of the girls stood off a way with a look of frightened anger on her face. The other was on the edge of the scene halfway to sitting at another table with her back purposefully turned toward the observer.

A girl's voice, from the direction of the one still standing, "Keep away from us!" She nearly shouted. It was meant to be an angry command, but the edges of the words were flecked with fear. "We're not your friends anymore! Just... just keep your cursed self away!"

The images all collapsed back into nothingness.

OOC: New rule: instead of having two sub-threads, this post is set up in a class-style format. There should be a max of two responses, either separate (two people posting directly to the memory) or interactive (one thread with two characters in it).

2 A Memory Rumors 0 A Memory 1 5

Graham Osbrook

December 10, 2020 6:56 PM

...It's all Greek to me. by Graham Osbrook

One of the things Graham liked about school was the way lessons tended to fit everything together. If this – then that – or else. It was a set of patterns as unchanging as the rising and setting of the sun. There were such things as cloudy days – such things as total eclipses, even – which could obscure the visual proofs of those patterns, just as a particularly difficult or poorly presented or poorly attended lesson could seem to disrupt the orderly pattern of the schoolroom, but the underlying reality was still there and would present itself in due time.

Order. Organization. These were things Graham liked to see in the world. Surprises, for him, were an issue that called for much more qualification and nuance. An unusually nice present, that was a nice surprise. A set of strange apparitions in strange, unsettling, non-English pantomime…that was not such a nice surprise.

It hadn’t been ghosts, he was sure of that. His maternal grandparents lived in New Orleans, one of the more haunted cities in the country. He had gone to festivals and shows there before, and he knew what ghosts looked like. They did not look quite like that and they did not behave quite like that, especially the…dissolving bit. Sometimes they put on shows – acted out events from their lives or even scripts, as it pleased them, for themselves or even sometimes for the living – but frozen ones, with voices coming from everywhere and nowhere? They weren’t acting, they weren’t interacting…could ghosts be insane? And did it matter, considering he had already established that those things weren’t ghosts? And why, of all the people in all the world, had they appeared to him?

It had to be a coincidence, he reasoned. He had only been here right now by chance; where they were, it would, he thought, be hard for someone to hide and play a prank on him, even if he had been able to think of anyone who would bother doing such a thing. It was not impossible, he guessed, that someone had just seen him leaving Crotalus and had decided on a lark, but it didn’t make any sense that anyone would do that….

He had the brief thought of writing to his mother, which he dismissed as quickly as it came. The last thing he wanted his mother to ever hear was that he was having visions, especially since he was quite sure that he was not insane. Dreaming, maybe, but not insane, and therefore, there was only so much his mother could do for him. Should he write his grandparents, to see if they agreed about it not being ghosts? He didn’t think they would tell Mom on him, but…

He heard a small noise and flinched, all thoughts of asking for adult help driven promptly from his head. Instead, he decided to beat a very hasty retreat and to postpone thinking for a more opportune moment. Whatever else it was, it had been disconcerting, hearing people babbling around him in some language he couldn’t even begin to guess the identity of and faces changing from one bit to another, but nothing else. He thought that if he heard another noise, closer, he might make an embarrassing spectacle of himself, and he really did not want to do that. Knowing he didn’t want to do that was one of the things helping him believe that he was in fact still sane.

16 Graham Osbrook ...It's all Greek to me. 1498 0 5