View source for 2015.06.14.Night.Terrors.of.the.Sea.part1

{{Infobox Log
|name      = Night Terrors of the Sea, part 1
|summary   = Lainey has a terrifying nightmare, wherein she encounters an entity that makes demands of her.
|icdate    = June 14, 2015
|ictime    = 12:00 A.M.
|players   = [[Lainey]] and [[Brody]]
|location  = Lainey’s Dreamscape
|prptp     = None
|spheres   = [[Wraith]]
}}

Lainey is fast asleep, looking peaceful from the outside, but in her dreams she is moving and very awake. She sits in the back seat of a car, the lamp posts shining light in through the windows every few hundred yards, flashing from front to back to light up the figures inside. A man and a woman are up front, and they are faceless and still like figures in a shop window. Rain starts to beat down against the windshield and Lainey sits back, looking out to watch as the rain wets the road.

The rain thrums against the car roof with a steady rhythm, like the galloping of horse hooves, and peals of lighting occasionally flash across the inky sky, illuminating the thick, weeping clouds that crowd the firmament. Seconds later, after each brilliant, cerulean flash, thunder breaks, the shockwave rumbling the vehicle's glass. Nothing else seems to disturb the oppressive silence.

Lainey flinches heavily when the thunder claps and brightens the sky with lightning seconds later. She shifts in her seat to move away from the window, and as she situates herself in the middle she looks to the front and opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. She clears her throat, and this time a whisper slips past, "Don't go so fast. The roads will be slick." She pushes back against the seat, looking forward through that front windshield.

Another blinding peal of cobalt thunder, and the hot glow of a passed streetlamp seems to suddenly change everything, bending this reality further into something surreal. The woman in the front seat is abruptly gone, having vanished, and now the blank-faced man who steers the car looks more wooden than before... more mannequin. His eyes stare straight ahead, gazing off into the impenetrable black and deluge of rainfall, the vehicle's headlights shinning a few feet out onto a void of endless darkness... or an unmarked road without apparent end.

-CLICK- The seat belt makes a distinctive, assuring sound as it locks in. Still... it only takes a moment, another fork of lightning flashing across the heavens, a single, fearful blink of the eyes, before Lainey finds herself no longer in the safety of the car. She's still fastened to its seat, strangely enough, but it's as if the carseat had been extracted by the shadows, teleported from the car it once was in, and placed somewhere new... somewhere distant: the young woman finds herself on a beach of ebony sand on a starless, stormy night. Rain pelts her face, drenching her, a steady downpour hammering the coastline. And, off in the sea, waves churn and roll noisily against booming thunder and pulses of lightning, before crashing violently against the inky shore.

The change is almost like waking from a dream when you can remember what happened, yet you can't explain it no matter how you try. Lainey sits in the sand, water hitting her face, and she turns to look left and right. "Mom?" she calls. "Dad?" She starts to rise, but her belt keeps her in place, so she quickly unbuckles it and rises to stand. "Dad? Are you out there?" she calls against the rain, hands lifting to push her hair back out of her face as she starts to walk along the shore, arms crossing to try and help keep her warmth.

The wind whistles in Lainey's ears, howling with a fearsome cacophony, like the roaring of a thousand lions, while the waves, as they loom and tumble onto the beach, hit the sands with such a force and from such a height, that she midst well be standing in the midst of a hurricane, facing its full fury. The air is frigid, making breath visible, and a sense of impending dread, terror, hangs thickly. Amidst the drowning symphony of the storm, an alien sound can be heard. It's faint a first, like the thumping of a heartbeat, -thud... thud... thud...- And, it vibrates through the soft ground, through the very marrow of Lainey, as it steadily grows in its volume, -thud-BOOM...thud-BOOM...BOOM-BOOM, BOOM-BOOM, BOOM-BOOM- Until its direction is unquestionable, shadows shifting and writhing as the silhouette of something huge, massive, starts to emerge from the undulating sea.

The sights and sounds are starting to make Lainey look weary, so the redhead turns her form and starts to head away from the ocean, but as a strange feeling comes over her she pauses her step. The thudding starts to ring in her ears, and the girl gives a whimpering squeak, turning back to start hurrying through the sand, though she finds she can barely move at all. It's more like quicksand. She glances back to the water again as she drops to her knees, seeking a hiding spot, yet there is no where to hide. Her eyes set upon the waves and that growing figure and she screams into the wind, her voice lost in it and only that opened mouth showing her terror. She pushes against the sand, trying desperately to get away from whatever is arriving.

The ebony sands seem to writhe and twist, coming alive, each grain puppeted by some malevolent, collective-intelligence, and transforming into an ice-cold, slimy ichor. Lainey finds her limbs immobilized by the sticky tar, keeping her fallen form ensnared on the beach, and as the silhouette grows, towering into the inky sky at two stories high, its misshapen, monstrous humanoid form is revealed by flashes of lightning. When the...thing breaches the crashing waves, each electric, cerulean pulse of the heavens illuminates its rough and livid flesh, comprised of scales and covered in an oily sheen. There is something primordial about it, its visage shark-like, possessing a maw with seemingly endless rows of rusty, gnarled teeth. Kelp, like ivy, also entwines it, mummifying it, while the odor of brine engulfs it, assaulting the woman's sense of smell as it begins to thunder closer in the hammering rain...this zombified-looking man-shark thing.

It isn't until Lainey sees that.. thing that she starts to really try getting away, and that's when she realizes that she is actually stuck in place. Her eyes fill with terror and she gives a scream out into the storm and cool air, teeth chattering once her lips press together. Her eyes widen and she screams again, yanking her limbs against the tar and finding that they only move very little. She begins to breathe heavily, panting hard as she watches this half shark, half man creature, her eyes locked on the rows of teeth. Will they crush her? Will they gnaw away her flesh and end her now? She screams again, crying out for help even though no one can hear her.

-BOOM, BOOM.. BOOM, BOOM.. BOOM, BOOM- ... The grotesquery moves closer, stomping on two gargantuan, reptilian limbs, a skeletal tail dragged behind it, while its claws dig at the air in front of it. Through its dead, glassy eyes, positioned on the side of its head, it seems to watch Lainey as she flails helplessly, the tar tugging back, tightening its grip with every struggle she makes. The creature pauses once its shadow is over her, its enormous form providing shelter from the pelting rain and arcs of lightning, and even through the winds' roar and the waves' crash, she can hear it making a wheezing and gurgling sound, as if its lungs were filled with fluid. Bending over, it suddenly starts to convulse, to hack, as if vomiting, the sound throaty, deep, vibrating, and she can spot an inky mass, like a oily tumor, bouncing up its throat...or... is it crawling its way forward?

It's this close and yet it does not eat or slice her in half? The thrashing Lainey slows to a halt as she stares wide-eyed at this creature, looking over it's creep.. yet somehow glorious form. Her chin lifts and her eyes scroll upwards, looking to see the mouth and those eyes as it bends over. Her attention is drawn to the oily mass making its way out, and again Lainey tries to move back. Maybe it's something to aid in digesting its meal, and Lainey doesn't look too thrilled to be said meal.

The heaving creature expels the slimy mass from its gullet before it collapses to the ground, a mass that seems to possess limbs that extrude their way out of the fleshy sac enclosing them. The fingers that finally pierce its birthing tomb are naked bone, and they rend apart their prison, freeing skeletal arms that move swiftly to expose vertebrate of a protruding spiral column and then a bloody skull, which with gnashing teeth stretches and strains its way out. "Give...it...back..." a sibilant voice hisses from the corpse-like fiend as it begins to claw its way toward Lainey, while still mostly encased in the tumor.

Lainey's eyes widen, looking both curious and scared at the same time. She watches the way the creature is birthed, and then how it crawls, which makes her almost breathless for a moment. She is soon brought out of her fascination when the thing starts to snap at her and move her way, and again Lainey struggles, yanking at the tar that holds her in place. "Give.. what back?!" she cries, looking desperate now to understand what this thing wants before it's too late. "What do I have!?"

The tumor-restrained skeleton, coated in inky slime and coagulated gore, snatches hold of Lainey's ankle, teeth chattering, empty sockets filled with an eerie, lime-green glow, and with inhuman strength it pulls its way towards her, the force of its tugging shearing more of its prison, exposing its gooey ribcage. It squirms, almost slithers, on top of her frightened form, which only seems to be held tighter by the tar engulfing her, and dragging its face closer and closer to her’s, a deep wheezing coming from its hollow throat, it demands once more, "Give...it...back...", the words echoing all around her, as if shouted into her mind. When their gazes lock, when the gnashing mandible of the skeleton is only inches from biting into her face's soft flesh, there overtakes her vision the image of a gigantic silver crucifix, stained by age... the object is familiar, she's seen it before, it’s attached to a matching silver necklace...and then, she abruptly awakens, right as the sensation of teeth feel like they're sinking into her throat.

Lainey is screaming again as that horrible face nears hers, and suddenly she is frozen with fear. Her eyes are wide and her lower lip is quivering, and as she screams again the nightmare ends, leaving her lying in her bed and screaming into the room as her eyes fly open. She's drenched in sweat and her heart is pounding wildly, hands moving before her and finally breaking free of the tar. Her knuckles smack against the wall that her bed is pushed up against, and she lets out a loud curse as she rolls over and sits up, stepping out of the bed. "The fuck.." she whispers as she looks around the room, eyes falling upon her dresser where the necklace must be somewhere amongst her other jewelry.

[[Category:Logs]]
[[Category:Lainey]]
[[Category:Brody]]