Post by Jin Tonic on Feb 25, 2009 20:04:37 GMT -5
1928, in a town called Stockholm... The village did well for itself, providing enough food for the townsfolk, enough jobs for the men to provide money for their families, buy and trade what was needed, and generally do a bit more than live off the land. Stockholm Memorial Hospital overlooked the village from a hill, and was the best place to receive medical treatment in the county. There were several stores, but the biggest store of note was Thom's General, which carried just about any kind of equipment anyone needed. Near that was the Indigo Grocer's, run by the Indigo family for (they boasted) three generations.
There was, of course, an old funeral home at the far end of town from the hospital, the old graveyard resting just to the south of that, comfortably housing the funeral home's previous visitors. Not far to the south of the cemetery, the village had another large building overlooking it... The previous home of the late Dr. Richard Stockholm, whose grandfather had founded the village in the 1800's. The Stockholm family had stayed at that building ever since, until its last member, the venerable doctor, died of pneumonia a decade ago... Ironically, a decade later, just earlier this year, penicillin was discovered--a new miracle which could have saved the good doctor's life.
The Stockholm house has stood empty since Richard's death, though occasionally, the mayor would send people up to maintain the house, keeping it alive despite its lack of real inhabitants. That practice ended two years ago, when the workers started experiencing strange problems... It started with equipment problems--and considering the basic nature of the tools used in that era, that in and of itself could have been seen as a bad omen. The most severe--and final--accident happened when one man was hammering new crown molding into the mansion's spacious living room... The hammer's head broke off from the hammer, striking a fellow worker in the head, killing him instantly. After a long string of increasingly worse incidents, this accident caused the mayor to finally condemn the house.
Over the course of the following two years, a number of people have reported seeing lights through the windows in the old Stockholm place at night...though of course, when the police investigate, they find no cause or source for the lights. Some of the police are starting to mutter--somewhere in town, someone's opened a new still. They're starting to suspect that the still is somewhere in the mansion's sealed basement, and that the bootleggers are sneaking in and out through secret passages at night.
There is another problem... Children slowly started going missing around two years ago. Police suspect that the predator lives somewhere outside of town, but the children in the school whisper that the killer is the ghost of Dr. Richard Stockholm, and he's striking from his mansion. To back up their fears, every night that a child has gone missing, all the cats in town have seemed to lose their minds, finding any means to get out of the house that they can. Complicating things more, ravens and crows would flock around the old mansion, screaming and cawing on these nights for hours and hours...and the morning after a child would go missing, one of the cats would show up on the doorstep of their owner, its neck and back snapped in multiple places, looking like it had been pounded to death.
Two weeks ago, there was another child who went missing, bringing the town's total to an alarming 19 children missing. A group of friends of the latest victim's decided to take matters into their own hands. The oldest of these children, a young cat nicknamed Jonboy, age 12, led four of his friends, ages 8 to 11, into the mansion late one evening. Armed with knives and awl picks, they snuck in through a broken window. While inside, something attacked Jonboy, causing his four friends to flee the scene, screaming. They ran to the sheriff's office, closer to the old mansion than the police station, and made incoherent, panicked reports of how their friend was being strangled by a wig. As if to ridicule his friends, Jonboy walked into the station right then, grinning ear to ear, insisting he was fine.
He wasn't fine. Over the course of the next few days, his family and friends noticed he seemed distant, forgetful, and occasionally acted a bit strangely.
Then he committed suicide, by hanging himself in his garage... His mother found him dangling by the rope, stripped of all his clothes, having torn gouges out of his own face. What was worse, the town's mortician reported gravely that he had found a small, nickel-sized hole in the base of the back of the boy's skull, and found that more than half the child's brain was missing.
This incident has thrown the town into a panic. The mayor has decided to try to put the town at ease by tearing down the old Stockholm house, a controversial decision he found extremely difficult to make...
And now, in the days before it is destined to be torn down, a new voice reaches out to several people in the town... A number of townsfolk have started having strange dreams about the old mansion... In these dreams, they see an angel in the sealed basement. They witness the angel's descent from the heavens to the old mansion, where a new darkness is congealing... They see the angel valiantly try to destroy the creatures within the mansion who are allowing this new darkness to fester. The mortals bear witness to the angel's pain as he is outnumbered, beaten down, and sealed away in the basement to bleed to death...
In their dreams, the angel whispers to the townsfolk... He tells them of the culprit of the missing children, a monster whose race dates back to the natives of this land, a creature hated by cats and ravens... The creature, a hulking beast of a man, furless, with dirty brown skin and scraggly hair, yellow twisted teeth, hunts children during the night, kidnapping them, and bringing them back to the mansion to torment and torture...before beating them to death and eating them. The angel whispers that though the creature is fearsome, it is as a mortal, and can be killed like one as well... The angel whispers suggestions to the sleeping townsfolk, revealing the hidden room the monster calls its lair, decorated with the skulls of its prizes...
As the affected townsfolk wake from their dreams of the angel, they get the horrible feeling that, should the creature live, it will kill the demolishers before they can destroy the house, and the nightmare will only continue...
It is four days before the Stockholm mansion is scheduled for demolition. Four days to destroy the creature that has been plaguing this village...
It is time for those whom the angel has reached to meet, for each of them has an odd, uncanny feeling that they are not the only ones to have received these messages...and they have the feeling they know who else has heard.
(OOC: Since this has a discussion thread, let's post character bios there. They don't need to be terribly detailed, but the more you put into it, the happier I'll be. Y'all know how to make a bio, so I won't bug you with that. Just make sure you at least have a name, age, specie, gender, and occupation [even if it's just "school student"]. Once you've got that, feel free to post for them. ^^ We'll start with introductions, and I'll give everyone several days for their characters to work out a plan before I move the action into the heat of things. If y'all want more than one character, that's cool, but only one of your characters has been contacted by the angel mentioned above. I'd love it if y'all made a few cannon fodder characters to die over the course of the story, so long as you humanize them, and let us get attached before you take 'em away from us. After all, how horrific is it if everyone lives happily ever after? =D
Have fun, and happy hunting!)
There was, of course, an old funeral home at the far end of town from the hospital, the old graveyard resting just to the south of that, comfortably housing the funeral home's previous visitors. Not far to the south of the cemetery, the village had another large building overlooking it... The previous home of the late Dr. Richard Stockholm, whose grandfather had founded the village in the 1800's. The Stockholm family had stayed at that building ever since, until its last member, the venerable doctor, died of pneumonia a decade ago... Ironically, a decade later, just earlier this year, penicillin was discovered--a new miracle which could have saved the good doctor's life.
The Stockholm house has stood empty since Richard's death, though occasionally, the mayor would send people up to maintain the house, keeping it alive despite its lack of real inhabitants. That practice ended two years ago, when the workers started experiencing strange problems... It started with equipment problems--and considering the basic nature of the tools used in that era, that in and of itself could have been seen as a bad omen. The most severe--and final--accident happened when one man was hammering new crown molding into the mansion's spacious living room... The hammer's head broke off from the hammer, striking a fellow worker in the head, killing him instantly. After a long string of increasingly worse incidents, this accident caused the mayor to finally condemn the house.
Over the course of the following two years, a number of people have reported seeing lights through the windows in the old Stockholm place at night...though of course, when the police investigate, they find no cause or source for the lights. Some of the police are starting to mutter--somewhere in town, someone's opened a new still. They're starting to suspect that the still is somewhere in the mansion's sealed basement, and that the bootleggers are sneaking in and out through secret passages at night.
There is another problem... Children slowly started going missing around two years ago. Police suspect that the predator lives somewhere outside of town, but the children in the school whisper that the killer is the ghost of Dr. Richard Stockholm, and he's striking from his mansion. To back up their fears, every night that a child has gone missing, all the cats in town have seemed to lose their minds, finding any means to get out of the house that they can. Complicating things more, ravens and crows would flock around the old mansion, screaming and cawing on these nights for hours and hours...and the morning after a child would go missing, one of the cats would show up on the doorstep of their owner, its neck and back snapped in multiple places, looking like it had been pounded to death.
Two weeks ago, there was another child who went missing, bringing the town's total to an alarming 19 children missing. A group of friends of the latest victim's decided to take matters into their own hands. The oldest of these children, a young cat nicknamed Jonboy, age 12, led four of his friends, ages 8 to 11, into the mansion late one evening. Armed with knives and awl picks, they snuck in through a broken window. While inside, something attacked Jonboy, causing his four friends to flee the scene, screaming. They ran to the sheriff's office, closer to the old mansion than the police station, and made incoherent, panicked reports of how their friend was being strangled by a wig. As if to ridicule his friends, Jonboy walked into the station right then, grinning ear to ear, insisting he was fine.
He wasn't fine. Over the course of the next few days, his family and friends noticed he seemed distant, forgetful, and occasionally acted a bit strangely.
Then he committed suicide, by hanging himself in his garage... His mother found him dangling by the rope, stripped of all his clothes, having torn gouges out of his own face. What was worse, the town's mortician reported gravely that he had found a small, nickel-sized hole in the base of the back of the boy's skull, and found that more than half the child's brain was missing.
This incident has thrown the town into a panic. The mayor has decided to try to put the town at ease by tearing down the old Stockholm house, a controversial decision he found extremely difficult to make...
And now, in the days before it is destined to be torn down, a new voice reaches out to several people in the town... A number of townsfolk have started having strange dreams about the old mansion... In these dreams, they see an angel in the sealed basement. They witness the angel's descent from the heavens to the old mansion, where a new darkness is congealing... They see the angel valiantly try to destroy the creatures within the mansion who are allowing this new darkness to fester. The mortals bear witness to the angel's pain as he is outnumbered, beaten down, and sealed away in the basement to bleed to death...
In their dreams, the angel whispers to the townsfolk... He tells them of the culprit of the missing children, a monster whose race dates back to the natives of this land, a creature hated by cats and ravens... The creature, a hulking beast of a man, furless, with dirty brown skin and scraggly hair, yellow twisted teeth, hunts children during the night, kidnapping them, and bringing them back to the mansion to torment and torture...before beating them to death and eating them. The angel whispers that though the creature is fearsome, it is as a mortal, and can be killed like one as well... The angel whispers suggestions to the sleeping townsfolk, revealing the hidden room the monster calls its lair, decorated with the skulls of its prizes...
As the affected townsfolk wake from their dreams of the angel, they get the horrible feeling that, should the creature live, it will kill the demolishers before they can destroy the house, and the nightmare will only continue...
It is four days before the Stockholm mansion is scheduled for demolition. Four days to destroy the creature that has been plaguing this village...
It is time for those whom the angel has reached to meet, for each of them has an odd, uncanny feeling that they are not the only ones to have received these messages...and they have the feeling they know who else has heard.
(OOC: Since this has a discussion thread, let's post character bios there. They don't need to be terribly detailed, but the more you put into it, the happier I'll be. Y'all know how to make a bio, so I won't bug you with that. Just make sure you at least have a name, age, specie, gender, and occupation [even if it's just "school student"]. Once you've got that, feel free to post for them. ^^ We'll start with introductions, and I'll give everyone several days for their characters to work out a plan before I move the action into the heat of things. If y'all want more than one character, that's cool, but only one of your characters has been contacted by the angel mentioned above. I'd love it if y'all made a few cannon fodder characters to die over the course of the story, so long as you humanize them, and let us get attached before you take 'em away from us. After all, how horrific is it if everyone lives happily ever after? =D
Have fun, and happy hunting!)