I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colours anymore, I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes
I wanna see it painted, painted black
Black as night, black as coal
I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black
Yeah
December 28th, 2016 - Coventry Horrors, Seventh Floor While Aloise had been tending to Emmie downstairs, Andromeda had been searching the seventh floor. The wardrobe had created a bit of a mess, when it fell through the ceiling, and Alexander's corpse was still on the ground. She grimaced a bit, eyeing the dumbwaiter that had been the instrument of his death. Had it been properly bricked up, Folly never would have been able to shoot the man from inside. Goosebumps ran up and down her arm, as she couldn't help but imagine someone else there, waiting with a gun, but trained on her this time.
In one of the corners of the room, she had found a trunk. In her professional opinion, its age was about the same as the wardrobe's. The hinges on it had almost entirely rusted, but not to the extent that it could not be opened. It took a great deal of strength, with her putting her entire body into getting the trunk's lid to budge, her feet slipping slightly against the floor as she shoved, but it eventually popped open.
Inside the trunk there were the artifacts of a person's life. Clothing, trinkets, and a dusty diary greeted Andromeda. Pulling her gloves up higher on her fingers, with them halfway off but keeping the oils on her skin from touching the diary, she removed it from the trunk and examined it carefully. Much of the writing was faded, but Andromeda could dimly make out a name --
Ms. Margaret Coyne. Printed neatly on the spine was another name in simple font --
Pinkerton. Andromeda heard footprints approaching, and figuring that it was most likely Aloise and Emmie, she set the diary carefully down on the lid of the trunk. It was possible that there would be something helpful inside, but there was also no reason to expect it had any bearing on the wardrobe.
Aloise followed Emmie rather quickly into the room, trying to pull the young girl back away from the wardrobe, but Emmie opened the doors. The tunnel like portal splayed out in front of them, energy crackling and sizzling like lightning bolts trapped
inside of a Faraday Cage, rather than outside.
"Emmie, get back from that," Aloise warned, her voice a bit hoarse. They had already lost too many people that day.
But the wardrobe had become more powerful, more unstable. The portal, as if sensing Emmie's curiosity, began to pull on her gradually, to the slightest extent that it was not immediately noticeable.
"I'm not sure," Andromeda replied.
"We don't know what it does, where it goes to...What happens to those who cross it." And as if on cue, the portal let out a screech almost of energy, practically grabbing Emmie as she was thrown into the portal. Andromeda was sucked up quickly behind her and the doors snapped shut, just as Aloise, the ex-marine, attempted to grab Emmie. A tear slid down Aloise's face as she fell to her knees, slamming her fists repeatedly against the wardrobe door. But nothing of any particular note happened.
"No..." Aloise choked out. As far as she was aware, Andromeda and Emmie could be dead.
December 28th, 1929 - Coventry Horrors, Attic Fairfax couldn't have looked more confused as Eudora asked him if he had a brother named Jack or knew a Jack. He didn't have any siblings and he couldn't have bothered himself to care for his cousins. They tended to be rude, pompous, and arrogant. They thought that because they fought in the war, it meant that they were better from others. They were the opposite of everything Fairfax was. But none of them, as far as he could recall, were named Jack. "Haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about," Fairfax admitted.
Folly, however, looked slightly startled as Eudora began asking about a Jack Fairfax. She glanced at Eudora, almost fearful for a moment, before shaking her head. "You can't ask him those sort of things--he shouldn't know about the future." Her voice may have been quiet, but her tone was strong and confident. "It'll mess with time if he does." She had entirely ignored Eudora's scolding her for her whereabouts, and Fairfax seemed ready to interject his own argument that knowing about the future would be perfectly fine, when a white-haired woman and a blonde teenager fell out of the wardrobe.
"...How many more of you are there?" Folly asked, eyeing Eudora suspiciously. "You're damaging time, like this..."
Fairfax, however, seemed more amused and shocked by the white-haired woman. He had never seen someone so young with hair like that before, and to him, it was a marvel. The continued appearance of people from the future, especially with their odd dress, brought a smile to his face. "Hullo, there!" Fairfax greeted. "Friends of Amiyra or friends of Eudora?"
"....Er, neither," Andromeda answered, her eyes a bit wide as she took in the room. She recognized the attic of her childhood home instantly, but it was different. It felt almost a century younger. There was no gaping hole in the floor where the wardrobe had crashed through. The room felt repaired, usable, livable. She couldn't help but wonder for a moment why it had been boarded up--what had happened?
December 28th, 2016 - Cirque Anomaly, the Grounds As Thalia searches the ground for Boris, she won't be able to find the madman. Perhaps with his current state, that is for the better. There's no telling what the man is capable of, as grief seems to have only heightened his insanity. As she nears the Storage Tent, Thalia will begin to sense something odd. It will remind her of what she felt in the woods in Europe, a temporal disturbance. The feeling will increase the closer she gets to the tent, culminating once she finds the wardrobe inside of it.
Meanwhile, in the main circus tent, Lilith will find all of her things are in order, just as she left them. A few of the kids in the circus are playing up on the trapeze, giggling and shouting among each other. The ringleader is speaking with a nerdy looking man, dressed in a lab coat and wearing thick glasses. A badge on the man's chest identifies him as a VIP for the circus performance that night, entitling him to backstage access and the ability to watch the performers get prepared. A few words are exchanged between the man and the ringmaster, before the pair shake hands, and the man takes a seat in the front row. He winks at Lilith and gives a bit of a wave.
December 28th, 2016 - the Police Station As Liam starts to look around the room, a blinding shock of pain rips through him. It feels as if he has been put inside a human pressure cooker, with the pain growing and covering his entire body. In rapid succession, ten visions come to him. None of them are clear, all of them blurry. He cannot make out their meaning and he cannot understand the images, only feeling a sense of dread, a terror that will build and build with each passing second.
The visions will then abruptly stop, but the pain doesn't. The wind will be knocked out of him, as if he had been punched in the stomach, and as he lurches forward, a vividly clear vision will come to mind. The train station in Coventry will appear to him, with a rapid series of signs practically jumping out at him. Some of them indicate the platform, others indicate trains leaving for Salem, Boston, and so forth. Holding a ticket for a train to Boston, continuing on to New York, is
this woman. She holds a phone to her ear, and as if she knows that Liam is watching her, whispers to a person on the other end. "She's dead. Just as you asked."
