Caleb and Illyana | Mojo Mayhem
Jul. 31st, 2019 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ax_mainSeeking Spirits
CUT TO--
Blurred shot of the night sky. Fog rising in the glow of lights. The camera pans down.
EXTERIOR. HOUSE- NIGHT
A spooky building. We follow THREE PEOPLE up the steps. The hallways stretches ahead, obscured and dark.
INTERIOR. HOUSE - NIGHT
CALEB and ILLYANA walk down a rundown hallway. The camera follows them. CALEB points to a door ahead of them.
CALEB: People say they’ve seen a man standing in that doorway.
INTERIOR. PRISON - NIGHT
ILLYANA sits cross-legged in the middle of a cell by herself.
ILLYANA: I know you died here. They say you killed yourself. If you’re still here, give me a sign.
The cell door slides closed, seemingly on its own.
FADE TO--
LENS FLARE. MEDIUM-SHOT of ILLYANA looking up from a book, her expression determined. Title card reads “ILLYANA - OCCULTIST & DEMONOLOGIST”.
FADE TO--
MEDIUM-SHOT of CALEB looking serious and worried. Title card reads “CALEB - MEDIUM”.
FADE TO--
MEDIUM-SHOT of TRAVIS glancing away from the camera, looking surprised and also mildly frightened. Title card reads “TRAVIS - TECH SPECIALIST”.
CUT TO--
INTERIOR. HOTEL - NIGHT
CALEB and ILLYANA, whose backs are to the camera, turn at a noise.
ILLYANA: Did you hear that?
There’s another sound, louder than the last, and the camera jerks.
TRAVIS: Oh my God!
INTERIOR. HOUSE - NIGHT
CALEB stands in profile in a dilapidated room. He’s cast in the faint green glow of a camera’s night vision lens. He looks at the camera, expression serious.
TRAVIS: What?
CALEB: We’re not alone.
CUT TO--
OVER BLACK:
SEEKING SPIRITS
IN SMOKEY SPOOKY TEXT.
THAT LASTS FOR THIRTY SECONDS.
The Stanley Hotel loomed over them. In the darkness, illuminated by the camera’s night vision, it looked unearthly. It was easy to see why so many stories were told about it, how it had gained such renown after a certain author had stayed in room 217.
Slowly, like relaxing a tightly held fist, Caleb let his awareness widen. Illyana called what he could do ‘communing’, but he just thought of it as seeing. A black mass moved just into the corner of his vision and hovered there. It could have been called human-looking. It had legs where legs would be, and arms where arms would be, and it had what could be argued was a head, but it was stretched out like someone had taken a little play-dough man and pulled and pulled and pulled.
“You know, we don’t have to go in,” Travis pointed out. He was staring at the hotel through the camera lens, mouth twisted in the kind of smile that tried to look joking, but landed somewhere closer to a grimace.
“You say that every time,” Caleb replied, amusement in his voice. He decided not to mention the shadow people yet. For a guy built like a football player, Travis was a big chicken.
"And every time, you follow us in," Illyana added with a roll of her eyes, then adjusted her glasses (totally unnecessary, but Mojo insisted they gave her a scholarly look she otherwise lacked) and turned to look at the camera. "This time, Travis is following us into the famous Stanley Hotel, made famous in one horror movie and a few million YouTube videos. According to my research, it seems likely that there's a genuine paranormal phenomenon associated with the building, and with any luck, we'll encounter it for ourselves." She turned to look at Caleb. "Are you seeing anything?”
Caleb angled himself so the camera could catch the side of his face as he said, “Shadow people. One there, and another there.” No ghosts yet, but if there were any around and they wanted to talk, it wouldn’t be long before they saw signs of them. They were attracted to people like him like flies to honey. “A few of the people we interviewed mentioned seeing shadow people. Some of the descriptions match. Tall, stretched out dark shapes.”
"Great," Travis said like it wasn't great at all.
Shadow people. It was a good start, but a vague one given the varied potential alignments evidenced. "Do either of them seem belligerent?" she asked, wishing (not for the first time) that her abilities ran more towards perception than just accumulated knowledge. What was, was, though, and she and Caleb made a good team as a result. "Or demonic?"
Travis winced. "Did you have to mention demons?" he complained.
“No demons. The shadow people are mostly just, ah, staring.” There were more behind them. Caleb could feel the pinprick crawl of eyes on the back of his neck. “We should head inside. We can start with a group walk-through of the property, and then settle in for some individual EVP sessions?” They’d set up cameras earlier that day, as well as the home base in the entry hall with its bank of monitors and computers that the footage would feed into.
"Sounds like a plan," Illyana agreed, ignoring Travis's continued grumbles. She pulled a hand held spectrometer out of her bag, and slowly scanned it back and forth as she started towards the hotel. It wouldn't tell them much, unless the ghost somehow registered on its limited sensors, but it looked impressive. Appearances were everything.
Caleb followed after Illyana, glancing over his shoulder at the shadow people who’d gathered as a crowd on the path, no longer following them as they passed through the main entrance of the Stanley Hotel. “Hello there,” Caleb quietly said to the building, gazing around at it.
The lobby looked even bigger in the dark. The front desk and the stairs were just ahead of them, and to their left and right the space stretched out for what seemed like forever until it disappeared into the shadows. Antique furniture sat here and there, making the room with its beamed ceiling and old, wood floors look as if it had taken a side-step out of time. Maybe it was ghosts, or maybe it was how history had a way of sinking into the bones of old places like this, but that feeling hung in the air too. Liminal space. Like the moment between drawing in a breath and releasing it.
“Concert Hall first?” Caleb suggested, leaving it to Illyana to explain the room’s haunted history to their viewers. She was better at it.
"It seems like a good place to start." Illyana waited for Travis to circle around her and begin walking backwards before continuing. "The Concert Hall is reported to be one of the most paranormally active locations in the hotel, haunted by both the spirit of a handyman who enforces an 11:00 curfew and the ghost of a woman who once took shelter there. Most importantly, it's been said that Lucy is willing to communicate with people who reach out to her." She grinned and looked over at Caleb. "Here's hoping she's also willing to communicate through those who reach out to her."
The corner of Caleb’s mouth turned up in an amused sort of smile. “If she is, we’ll find out. I’m personally hoping we catch one of Flora Stanley’s private performances.”
“Oh, that’d be great,” Travis said like he meant exactly the opposite.
Illyana shook her head as she continued walking through the dark hallway. "You'd pass that up just because she's dead? Travis, sometimes I don't know-" her voice broke off as the lights began flickering.
“Travis, did you turn off the circuit breaker?” Caleb asked, looking up at the ceiling, waiting for the lights to flicker again.
“Yes,” Travis replied, his voice cracking. “I checked it twice.”
Caleb looked ahead of them, but saw nothing in the darkness even as he extended his extrasensory perception. There was the barest brush of movement behind them, though. The shadow people had finally followed them inside. “Then, I guess we’re going the right way. Keep heading to the concert hall?”
"Any reason why we shouldn't?" Illyana asked, completely serious. If Caleb was seeing anything she wasn't, it'd be best to know now.
"Did you want a list?" Travis tried to joke.
“No. We’re okay.” The shadow people wanted Caleb’s attention, but they weren’t a threat right now, so he’d deal with them later. “It might have just been electromagnetic interference...” He paused there, allowing for a moment where post would add an overlay that would explain electromagnetic interference. “We should keep going.”
Illyana nodded and continued walking in silence. Soon, the faint sound of a piano playing drifted towards them from down the hall. "Sounds like we might be in luck," she said in a stage whisper. Despite her attempt to be quiet, or perhaps because of it, small decorative objects on the hall tables began to rattle as if shaken by some unknown force.
“Luck. Right,” Travis muttered as he panned the camera over the rattling knick-knacks.
The trio followed the sound of the piano. It grew louder and louder, until they passed through the doorway into the concert hall, and the gentle playing ended in a sudden cacophonous riot of all the keys being smashed at once.
And then there was silence.
The hairs on the back of Caleb’s neck stood up. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and tilted his head just so to get a glimpse of a figure. He was an older man, or had been when he was alive anyway, and he wore modern clothing like he’d just come in from outside. Drifting past Travis, he put his hands on Illyana’s shoulders, leaned in close, and hissed, “Get out.”
"Can't do that," Illyana said with feigned confidence, squaring her shoulders, and forced her voice to remain stable. "Why do you want us to leave, anyway?"
Travis swung the camera around to center it on Illyana. “Who are you talking to?” he asked, worried.
“Paul,” Caleb answered for Illyana, and he turned to face the camera as Travis moved it onto him. “A handyman who passed away in 2005 of a heart attack. He’d been shoveling snow.” He looked over at the ghost who was circling around Illyana now. “He’s still wearing his snow gear. His hat is one of those…” He didn’t know the word for what kind it was, so he mimed it. “It has the flaps over the ears? And it’s lined with fur?”
“Trapper hat,” Travis supplied.
"It doesn't matter what he's wearing, it matters that he wants us to leave," Illyana pointed out belligerently. "And I still haven't heard any kind of an answer. Why do you want us gone? We didn't do anything to you."
“Thanks, Travis.” Caleb watched Paul circle Illyana. He flickered in and out like a bad connection, staring at her.
“Get out. It’s time for you to go.” Judging by Illyana and Travis’s lack of reaction, this time Paul’s voice carried on whatever wavelength that let Caleb see and hear and the dead.
“He says it’s time for us to go,” Caleb said, then added. “I don’t think he’s dangerous.” He wasn’t giving off the kind of energy that an angry spirit did. If anything, Paul seemed…stern. Maybe the stories people told about him were right.
"Well, I'm not ready to wrap this, are you?" Illyana asked, her eyebrows raising. They hadn't even gotten much filmed, yet.
“Yes,” Travis said at the same time as Caleb said, “No.”
Illyana chuckled and turned to look at the camera. "We'll move on to Room 217, made famous by horror writer Steven King and it's ghost, housekeeper Elizabeth Wilson, and check back in on the Concert Hall later..." She continued speaking, walking backwards as she headed towards the door. They'd gotten some great footage so far - might as well see what else they could find.
CUT TO--
Blurred shot of the night sky. Fog rising in the glow of lights. The camera pans down.
EXTERIOR. HOUSE- NIGHT
A spooky building. We follow THREE PEOPLE up the steps. The hallways stretches ahead, obscured and dark.
INTERIOR. HOUSE - NIGHT
CALEB and ILLYANA walk down a rundown hallway. The camera follows them. CALEB points to a door ahead of them.
CALEB: People say they’ve seen a man standing in that doorway.
INTERIOR. PRISON - NIGHT
ILLYANA sits cross-legged in the middle of a cell by herself.
ILLYANA: I know you died here. They say you killed yourself. If you’re still here, give me a sign.
The cell door slides closed, seemingly on its own.
FADE TO--
LENS FLARE. MEDIUM-SHOT of ILLYANA looking up from a book, her expression determined. Title card reads “ILLYANA - OCCULTIST & DEMONOLOGIST”.
FADE TO--
MEDIUM-SHOT of CALEB looking serious and worried. Title card reads “CALEB - MEDIUM”.
FADE TO--
MEDIUM-SHOT of TRAVIS glancing away from the camera, looking surprised and also mildly frightened. Title card reads “TRAVIS - TECH SPECIALIST”.
CUT TO--
INTERIOR. HOTEL - NIGHT
CALEB and ILLYANA, whose backs are to the camera, turn at a noise.
ILLYANA: Did you hear that?
There’s another sound, louder than the last, and the camera jerks.
TRAVIS: Oh my God!
INTERIOR. HOUSE - NIGHT
CALEB stands in profile in a dilapidated room. He’s cast in the faint green glow of a camera’s night vision lens. He looks at the camera, expression serious.
TRAVIS: What?
CALEB: We’re not alone.
CUT TO--
OVER BLACK:
SEEKING SPIRITS
IN SMOKEY SPOOKY TEXT.
THAT LASTS FOR THIRTY SECONDS.
The Stanley Hotel loomed over them. In the darkness, illuminated by the camera’s night vision, it looked unearthly. It was easy to see why so many stories were told about it, how it had gained such renown after a certain author had stayed in room 217.
Slowly, like relaxing a tightly held fist, Caleb let his awareness widen. Illyana called what he could do ‘communing’, but he just thought of it as seeing. A black mass moved just into the corner of his vision and hovered there. It could have been called human-looking. It had legs where legs would be, and arms where arms would be, and it had what could be argued was a head, but it was stretched out like someone had taken a little play-dough man and pulled and pulled and pulled.
“You know, we don’t have to go in,” Travis pointed out. He was staring at the hotel through the camera lens, mouth twisted in the kind of smile that tried to look joking, but landed somewhere closer to a grimace.
“You say that every time,” Caleb replied, amusement in his voice. He decided not to mention the shadow people yet. For a guy built like a football player, Travis was a big chicken.
"And every time, you follow us in," Illyana added with a roll of her eyes, then adjusted her glasses (totally unnecessary, but Mojo insisted they gave her a scholarly look she otherwise lacked) and turned to look at the camera. "This time, Travis is following us into the famous Stanley Hotel, made famous in one horror movie and a few million YouTube videos. According to my research, it seems likely that there's a genuine paranormal phenomenon associated with the building, and with any luck, we'll encounter it for ourselves." She turned to look at Caleb. "Are you seeing anything?”
Caleb angled himself so the camera could catch the side of his face as he said, “Shadow people. One there, and another there.” No ghosts yet, but if there were any around and they wanted to talk, it wouldn’t be long before they saw signs of them. They were attracted to people like him like flies to honey. “A few of the people we interviewed mentioned seeing shadow people. Some of the descriptions match. Tall, stretched out dark shapes.”
"Great," Travis said like it wasn't great at all.
Shadow people. It was a good start, but a vague one given the varied potential alignments evidenced. "Do either of them seem belligerent?" she asked, wishing (not for the first time) that her abilities ran more towards perception than just accumulated knowledge. What was, was, though, and she and Caleb made a good team as a result. "Or demonic?"
Travis winced. "Did you have to mention demons?" he complained.
“No demons. The shadow people are mostly just, ah, staring.” There were more behind them. Caleb could feel the pinprick crawl of eyes on the back of his neck. “We should head inside. We can start with a group walk-through of the property, and then settle in for some individual EVP sessions?” They’d set up cameras earlier that day, as well as the home base in the entry hall with its bank of monitors and computers that the footage would feed into.
"Sounds like a plan," Illyana agreed, ignoring Travis's continued grumbles. She pulled a hand held spectrometer out of her bag, and slowly scanned it back and forth as she started towards the hotel. It wouldn't tell them much, unless the ghost somehow registered on its limited sensors, but it looked impressive. Appearances were everything.
Caleb followed after Illyana, glancing over his shoulder at the shadow people who’d gathered as a crowd on the path, no longer following them as they passed through the main entrance of the Stanley Hotel. “Hello there,” Caleb quietly said to the building, gazing around at it.
The lobby looked even bigger in the dark. The front desk and the stairs were just ahead of them, and to their left and right the space stretched out for what seemed like forever until it disappeared into the shadows. Antique furniture sat here and there, making the room with its beamed ceiling and old, wood floors look as if it had taken a side-step out of time. Maybe it was ghosts, or maybe it was how history had a way of sinking into the bones of old places like this, but that feeling hung in the air too. Liminal space. Like the moment between drawing in a breath and releasing it.
“Concert Hall first?” Caleb suggested, leaving it to Illyana to explain the room’s haunted history to their viewers. She was better at it.
"It seems like a good place to start." Illyana waited for Travis to circle around her and begin walking backwards before continuing. "The Concert Hall is reported to be one of the most paranormally active locations in the hotel, haunted by both the spirit of a handyman who enforces an 11:00 curfew and the ghost of a woman who once took shelter there. Most importantly, it's been said that Lucy is willing to communicate with people who reach out to her." She grinned and looked over at Caleb. "Here's hoping she's also willing to communicate through those who reach out to her."
The corner of Caleb’s mouth turned up in an amused sort of smile. “If she is, we’ll find out. I’m personally hoping we catch one of Flora Stanley’s private performances.”
“Oh, that’d be great,” Travis said like he meant exactly the opposite.
Illyana shook her head as she continued walking through the dark hallway. "You'd pass that up just because she's dead? Travis, sometimes I don't know-" her voice broke off as the lights began flickering.
“Travis, did you turn off the circuit breaker?” Caleb asked, looking up at the ceiling, waiting for the lights to flicker again.
“Yes,” Travis replied, his voice cracking. “I checked it twice.”
Caleb looked ahead of them, but saw nothing in the darkness even as he extended his extrasensory perception. There was the barest brush of movement behind them, though. The shadow people had finally followed them inside. “Then, I guess we’re going the right way. Keep heading to the concert hall?”
"Any reason why we shouldn't?" Illyana asked, completely serious. If Caleb was seeing anything she wasn't, it'd be best to know now.
"Did you want a list?" Travis tried to joke.
“No. We’re okay.” The shadow people wanted Caleb’s attention, but they weren’t a threat right now, so he’d deal with them later. “It might have just been electromagnetic interference...” He paused there, allowing for a moment where post would add an overlay that would explain electromagnetic interference. “We should keep going.”
Illyana nodded and continued walking in silence. Soon, the faint sound of a piano playing drifted towards them from down the hall. "Sounds like we might be in luck," she said in a stage whisper. Despite her attempt to be quiet, or perhaps because of it, small decorative objects on the hall tables began to rattle as if shaken by some unknown force.
“Luck. Right,” Travis muttered as he panned the camera over the rattling knick-knacks.
The trio followed the sound of the piano. It grew louder and louder, until they passed through the doorway into the concert hall, and the gentle playing ended in a sudden cacophonous riot of all the keys being smashed at once.
And then there was silence.
The hairs on the back of Caleb’s neck stood up. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and tilted his head just so to get a glimpse of a figure. He was an older man, or had been when he was alive anyway, and he wore modern clothing like he’d just come in from outside. Drifting past Travis, he put his hands on Illyana’s shoulders, leaned in close, and hissed, “Get out.”
"Can't do that," Illyana said with feigned confidence, squaring her shoulders, and forced her voice to remain stable. "Why do you want us to leave, anyway?"
Travis swung the camera around to center it on Illyana. “Who are you talking to?” he asked, worried.
“Paul,” Caleb answered for Illyana, and he turned to face the camera as Travis moved it onto him. “A handyman who passed away in 2005 of a heart attack. He’d been shoveling snow.” He looked over at the ghost who was circling around Illyana now. “He’s still wearing his snow gear. His hat is one of those…” He didn’t know the word for what kind it was, so he mimed it. “It has the flaps over the ears? And it’s lined with fur?”
“Trapper hat,” Travis supplied.
"It doesn't matter what he's wearing, it matters that he wants us to leave," Illyana pointed out belligerently. "And I still haven't heard any kind of an answer. Why do you want us gone? We didn't do anything to you."
“Thanks, Travis.” Caleb watched Paul circle Illyana. He flickered in and out like a bad connection, staring at her.
“Get out. It’s time for you to go.” Judging by Illyana and Travis’s lack of reaction, this time Paul’s voice carried on whatever wavelength that let Caleb see and hear and the dead.
“He says it’s time for us to go,” Caleb said, then added. “I don’t think he’s dangerous.” He wasn’t giving off the kind of energy that an angry spirit did. If anything, Paul seemed…stern. Maybe the stories people told about him were right.
"Well, I'm not ready to wrap this, are you?" Illyana asked, her eyebrows raising. They hadn't even gotten much filmed, yet.
“Yes,” Travis said at the same time as Caleb said, “No.”
Illyana chuckled and turned to look at the camera. "We'll move on to Room 217, made famous by horror writer Steven King and it's ghost, housekeeper Elizabeth Wilson, and check back in on the Concert Hall later..." She continued speaking, walking backwards as she headed towards the door. They'd gotten some great footage so far - might as well see what else they could find.
