"Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret."
His incessant sobbing finally seemed to cease, not for good, but long enough to give the house its earned moment of silence. Without his terrible wails flowing the halls it was possible to hear the sheets of rain from outside, pattering on the moss-laden roof. He tried to forget about what the relator told them all those years ago.
It was an old house; all of the houses in Machiasport were ancient and miraculous. Most came complete with one too many balconies and ornate diamond paned windows, though there were just as many Colonial and Saltbox styled homes scattered up in the hills and down by the shore. He lived in a ridiculous baby-blue rectangular behemoth with a middle gable and perfect symmetry down to the stupid half moon windows in the attic, his wife had picked the one house in town he hated, but in her time he never once made noise over it. There was a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach that told him she probably knew.
He was never a terribly social man in town, his idea had been to get away and write, not to talk to people and certainly never to forge any relationships with more human beings. He believed adamantly he had enough friends. They moved for the solitude, the 2010 census result of 1,119 residents, and the nature of deep costal Maine. His wife had slightly more success with the locals (as he would call them, to which she would respond “You mean our neighbors?”), she’d do the shopping and the people around town knew her as an acquaintance, but no one really knew her. The town was none the wiser that her husband was a relatively successful novelist and that Doubleday was currently breathing down his neck for a new story, a story that would never be written.
Lightning flashed a brilliant white and pierced through the thin gauze of the drapery she picked. His face remained heavy upon the piles of notes and books that covered the oak desk and he rose only to eye the flaming red Devil printed on the bottle. The Devil stared back with a most inviting grin.
Fuck you.
He spat on the floor and fumbled across the desk to the whiskey, the small red cap had long been lost. He brought the bottle to his lips in much haste and it poured like a waterfall and stung like a bitch, almost choking down his strained throat, but he didn't flinch and he didn't care. It made him feel life through a different pain, if only for a few brief seconds to the rest of his waking hours. It was then that he could begin to feel dead again.
“It’s a great house.” Said an old woman dressed - bun to violently pointed shoes - in tweed, her eyes were framed pointedly in librarian specs. She wielded a shiny black clipboard.
“It is isn’t it!? Joe, whatdya think?!”
“It’s a GREAT house!” He said, convincingly enough.
“It’s also a great piece of history… or small town folk-tale, dependin’ who you ask.” She looked proudly up at the soaring gable, squinting in the sun, then back to the couple.
“There’s a plot of land, a cemetery for animals deep in those woods. The Mimacs believed it held a power, said to have been the first to use it as a burial ground.”
Joe cocked an eyebrow, there may have even been an audible chuckle, but he hadn’t heard it. “What kind of power?”
“Allegedly something dark, something that you let rest in its own mythos.”
It was obvious as to what she was alluding to - re-animation - and he couldn’t believe it. The idea was something out of the novels he wrote, only worse. C'mon, an ancient burial ground!?
“I guess we’ll just take the other trails, then?” He turned to meet Catherine’s eyes and she was already melting. She twirled like a dying top and fell into his arms and the house was purchased. Sure, there were mountains of papers to deal with, and they would have to out-bid the fellow buyers (which would not be a problem financially, but instead a minor annoyance for a Tuesday), but if the way she looked into him meant anything, it meant, “this is where it all begins.”
So they did the paperwork, their offer was accepted (on a Sunday), and they hired people to re-paint centuries old walls and re-finish the dusty maple floors. Catherine and Joe had to wait two weeks from the purchase of her dream home for move-in day.
She smiled true. “I feel alive, bae.”
Light filled the room brighter than day and from behind his shoulder illuminated a shapeless and stationary figure dressed in white satin. He slid the whiskey across the desk; let it bounce lightly off the wall, then stood from his chair for the first time in a while. Joe lumbered slightly in the middle of the bedroom and let his eyes adjust to standing with such a burst of life. The room became visible, as did the figure beneath the sheets. Joe walked towards the bed, he extended his arm and it moved slow and steady, not once did he flinch or shake; he knew what was there, he hadn’t touched her.
The satin cascaded lightly across the dips and protrusions of Catherine’s pale face, her long shut eyes were finally uncovered, exposed to the night. Removing the sheets finally made Joe realize the smell that had been stewing in their bedroom for the past few days, like a sack of decomposing garbage that sits and blends into the normality of one's senses, her body’s odor had become background noise. It had fallen secondary to his routine of grief.
”That bitch was fucking lying.”
He looked down at Catherine’s beautiful face which continued to rot from the inside. He brought himself close to her lips, “But what if she didn't, babe?”
”You would try for me. You would try.”
Joe fled the bedroom, leaving sobered him up and would only strengthen the intensity of its odor. He returned with a muddy shovel, a hammer, pieces of stray wood, and two large green trash bags that swung idly by his boots.
He buried her in the sour land; he bundled her with care and placed her gently, and he wept when it did nothing. He must’ve waited for an hour in the rain, collapsed on the spot he entombed her, cursing himself for acting like such a child. He was an absolute wreck and decided he wouldn’t have the energy to dig her back up until morning to give her a proper burial, not until he was done lying in oblivion.
“How could I have been such a fool, Cath?” He said quietly over her grave, before standing to leave. “How did this all get so ruined?”
In retrospect nothing had been ruined until he buried her, until he put to test the legends of a too-small town. No curiosity in the world was worth fulfilling for a look into hell itself.
How the Influences Fit
Pet Sematary: focuses on a pet cemetery that can bring things back to life… they just come back... different. Why is it spelt wrong? The sign is spelt wrong in the book and film, I assume because a child made it.
The Evil Dead ‘81/Evil Dead ‘13: the original will always be a straight up horror to me and I will defend the lack of intentional humor till I die (the humor came in EDII!). This Sam Raimi classic is about a group of kids that go to a cabin, find a book and a tape recorder and unleash an ancient Kandarian demon that possesses them in succession until one is left to fight for their life. If you’ve seen the (fantastic) reboot/quasi-sequel that came out last year imagine our antagonists like those deadites but a bit faster.
The Blob ‘88: Blob falls from space and grows and grows and consumes and consumes, the way the RP would reflect this film is (eventually) in the scope of the attack. The Blob to me was always a film that, despite it taking place in a small town, felt excitingly massive. Your boring small town can become three times bigger when moving to safety are possibly the steps leading to your death.
All right people, bear with me here. I have a location and some inspirations, and a lot of stray ideas. Think of it as Pet Sematary meets The Evil Dead meets The Blob. The re-animated act more like serious, human possessed deadites and after a proper slow cook build up of world creating, character development, and suspense their rising return to our world will descend into a Blob-like takeover of the city.
I'm looking at this as a spiritual successor to Pet Sematary meaning we're not being canon to the novel, we'll set it in Maine but I really enjoy the costal isolation of Machias and Machiasport Maine (here and here) over Ludlow. I’m also going to see if I can find some town maps so we can keep geography slightly in mind, I don’t care about being terribly faithful to the layout of the towns; of course the types of shops and businesses that bring them to life would be of our own creation. Thinking about early roleplaying and it seems to me it would play out closer to a slice of life game, before the crazy sets in, and the horror would be subtly introduced by us all.
If this sounds like something that interests you - something with a dose of dark humor, serious horror, and bloodshed - then drop a line and we can start expanding, tweaking and developing. I want very much for others to be apart of the creation process so that this idea can become an entertaining roleplay.
Multiple characters are allowed and encouraged (as we want people to die, lol)! I plan to have a character that's graduated from high school so we can paint those idyllic summer nights before bigger responsibilities set in! I'm also thinking on a sheriff character of some sort.
IMPORTANT: If you are interested in playing a possessed re-animated corpse at some point let me know via PM so it can be a surprise and we can work it out, especially if that’s something you want to happen quite later on. There’s going to eventually be a point of no return when our antagonists have amassed a crazy amount of followers and this is when we’ll all be able to freely control them, but for the build up we’ll want to be fairly reserved and use them sparingly.
