Welcome to Gaia! ::

((OOC: *noms contentedly on cookie* Yey.))

Cybil looked, for one of the first times since she had met Miranda - indeed, since she had met Mark - completely flustered and unsure of herself. "I don't...I didn't do anything. I don't know. Mark looked strange, so I...I touched his shoulder, just to be sure he was okay, I didn't mean to do anything, and..."

Realizing she was stumbling over her words, she pushed her hair back and shrugged, willing the blush to fade from her face. "I have no idea what just happened. I've never done that before."

Mark, the sly voice in the back of his mind forgotten, said slowly, "It looked like she heard us. Like we were, I don't know, affecting the vision somehow. It looked like she was turning to look at us."

Cybil blinked, surprised, and then frowned. "That's true, it did, didn't it? I wonder what would have happened if we'd stayed. Do you think..." she hesitated. "Do you think we should try it again?"

(Could it be in Elodie's box of estate sale books?? maybe >.>...?? Or is there a plan?)

Elodie finished her toast just as her aunt placed a large mug of hot chocolate -with marshmallows- in front of her. Her aunt just made an impressed face and took the plate to rinse off and stack in the dishwasher.

Elodie simply smiled and pulled the mug a few inches closer.
She would miss this, being babied every so often was nice.

Blowing on her drink her eyes wandered again to the box. The one lamp was pretty cool she guessed, and she thought she saw a couple neat french books.

(((It is too easy, what if, it happens to have a page from the diary or another book Abigail owned, tucked in one of the books, that's something the others could read off of right? The box could come from one of her friends families.)))

Elodie lifted the old lamp out of the box and found it to be extremely heavy. Setting it on the counter she took a good look at it. It had a gold base and stem, which quickly ended in a green glass shade longer than it was tall, with a ball and chain type pull cord. The plug looked old, but it seemed rather sturdy altogether so she stood and took it over to an empty outlet.
Plugging it in, she pulled the cord.

((OOC: That would work.))

"Yeah," replied Mark, feeling about the same as before - minus that little voice that had been in the back of his mind, but he welcomed that. It was good to work without it. "I've got it. Any time, Cyb."

He began to shift the image so that it was as close as he could replicate to where it had been last time.

Cybil took a deep, nervous breath, and then set her hands on Mark's shoulders, exactly as she had last time.

There was nothing for several seconds. Cybil was about to draw away when once again, the room seemed to dissolve and the vision amped itself up.

They were there again. Though the sense of wrongness was growing stronger for Cybil with every second, she forced herself to hold on to Mark and not pull back again.

Abigail sat at her desk, writing. Once again, her head tilted as though she heard something and began to turn.

Cybil resisted, desperately, the urge to let go. She realized that this was the problem - she didn't want to see Abigail's face. For whatever reason, she didn't want to see...

Then the head turned, Cybil screamed, and Mark jerked back, a sound of horror coming from him as well.

The woman's face was...rotting. Blurry and grey, with empty eyeholes and a skin-splitting, skeletal grin.

Worse, far worse, was when the leathery skin cracked and gave way as the jaw creaked open. A dark, whispery voice filled the room.

"You really think you can win? Stupid children. Stupid, stupid children. We'll destroy you, as we destroyed her." The voice burst into uproarious laughter. "Take a good look. A good look. This is what's left of her. This is your saviour now!"

Then the entire body was a rotting corpse as it lurched up from its chair, swaying and dragging itself towards them.

Cybil instinctively let go once again, and they found themselves back in her room. The blonde dropped to the side of the bed, shaking and white. "Jesus," was all she could get out. "Christ Jesus."

Looking up at last, she managed to grate, "Mark. Miranda. I...Christ. You okay?"

((OOC: *has totally not been reading too much Stephen King lately*))

Cybil pressed her hand onto the bed and pulled herself up so that she was sitting between them. Mark immediately nudged in beside her. The blonde draped a comforting arm around his shoulders, and they took strength from each other for a moment.

Then she looked at Miranda with eyes that were - reluctantly - warmer than they had been before. "Yeah," she agreed quietly. "Me too."

Without another word, she shifted her other arm back in invitation. Both she and Mark had needed human contact after a scene like that. While Cybil didn't know, she thought Miranda might, too.

Mark, keeping his head up although it clearly cost him, said, "That was the same voice. As the one I heard before. The...the first time. It was trying to get me to push another picture at you before you were ready, Miranda. It wanted me to hurt you."

"It wants us to hurt each other," Cybil corrected quietly. "It wants us to break apart. They want us to break apart. So we just have to come together stronger, is all."

She tilted her head, gave a small, cat-like smile. "They're scared of us, you know."