ic The Last Free Place

[trollthumper]

Bombay Beach, California

March 19, 2024

 

CW: Self-Harm, Torture, Imprisonment, Suicide

 

This was a place of decay. And Eric LaCroix both loved and hated it for that reason. 

 

Both of those were strong terms, of course. Especially "hated." In the years since he'd really started to make use of his photography education, Eric had been jetting across the country, catching the spirit of crossroads, ghost towns, and graveyards. Often for photo shoots and Instagram feeds, but maybe working towards a coffee table book. Some of his photos were now hanging at the Black Petal Cafe where he had served as eternal barista. 

 

Of course, the spirit of places was more than metaphorical for Eric. Which is why the Salton Sea was screwing with him royally. A shoot at Slab City - "The Last Free Place," haven of snowbirds, outsider artists, and RV off-grid life - had spun out into a tour of the cities surrounding one of Southern California's greatest marvels gone to rot. A simple diversion of the Colorado River had led to the refilling of a long dried-out lake bed, creating a large saltwater body deep inland. For a few decades, it was a resort paradise, all the fun of the coast in the middle of dry land. Until the saline levels kept rising, and the agriculture run off kept flooding in. 

 

It was not a great place, especially for someone attuned to the flow of death. The shores were littered with the bones of luckless fish, and the sky itself reeked of salt and waste. The cities around the sea, life clinging on in the face of devastation, had elevated rates of asthma, lung cancer, and heart disease. The main wildlife willing to make it a native habitat, the pelicans, were riddled with botulism. Even the sea itself was dying, as California had enacted policies to let it evaporate in the hope of restoring wildlife on the exposed playa.

 

And yet. Life persisted. The people here lived, likely because there was nowhere else to go or because they were stubborn enough to make homes. The cities were even drawing in its share of artist communities - though Eric knew which way that would go, and he bet it would be a while before this became the next Joshua Tree. But if life could persist him, if people could make it a home, he could at least put up with the fact that his death sense left him with the constant sense that he was hearing radio static from another room.

 

Until the signal cut through loud and clear. And he knew that it was much more than dead fish. It was time for his night work.

 

A quick jaunt through Osiris's back closet, and he was at the house. At least California Winter made his leather jacket tolerable, as Spring slowly approached. The house itself was nice, by Bombay Beach standards - a little bit of rime and dust to the walls, but a simple, one-story abode. Red and blue lights filled the driveway, and the two beat cops on duty did a double take as he walked up. 

 

"Get lost on your way to some metal concert?" The older one asked. 

 

"Nah, Joe. I know this one. Seen him on Instagram. Cemetery, right?"

 

"Cimitiere, but I'm not a stickler." He was a long way from Freedom, but thank God social media had enough of a reach to make sure authorities wouldn't just mistake him for a Ghost fan with delusions of grandeur. "What's the situation?"

 

"Two dead. Marie and Daniel Johnson, 25, 26. Both locals; I... knew 'em from church." The younger one looked down, trying to hold something in. "Wounds seem self-inflicted, but... there's reason to suspect... well, occult shit."

 

Nick let them walk him in. He was too used to small town cops believing that "occult shit" meant they had a Ouija board or a copy of The Kybalion. The bodies were a quick scan on the way through the center of activity. Marie was slumped before the sink, her wrists cut open. Daniel was sitting at the kitchen table, his throat open, a steak knife fallen at his limp hand. It was a terrible tableau, and he knew he'd need to look at it in detail. But they weren't here, which was either good for them or very bad for them. Because the writing on the table, done in Daniel's bloody finger, said everything Nick needed to know.

 

HOME DAGON HOME HOME YHANTHLEI SEA TO THE SEA

 

"You were right. I think I may need to call in some consultants for this one..."

[Avenger Assembled]

Sea Devil 

 

This was, without a doubt, the most unsettling place Aquaria Innsmouth had ever been - and she'd been in some very bad ones. At least she'd arrived at night, so that overhead she could view the comforting blanket of the Sea of Stars as they shone down on one of the very worst places in the Hell Above - the place she usually called the Surface. In her power armor, taken itself from the stars, she was protected by a blanket of Freedom City water from the foul smells and unsettling wrongness of this place. She stood there silently, her face half-visible, as she contemplated the horror of this place. 

She had seen drying lake and riverbeds in her time; places of death that the people must leave if they hoped to survive. But this place, so far from Ocean, in the midst of a dying sea - this was what it would be. She tapped the blunt end of her trident against the earth thoughtfully, making a faint crunch as soil and dead grass ground against oceanic metal. This place is what it would be if the stars were never right. If Surface-Men and their allies did what they do to the world, forever. 

 

She had come here alone, taking a long flight across the nation while she dreamed of the vast and briny depths that should be (instead of this) - and though she'd arrived to find companions, she rather regretted it. "Far. Far to come, so far from home," she croaked softly for her companions' benefit as they stood there beneath the stars. They had not yet gone inside. "A silent place. "

[Dr Archeville]

Artificer

 

Generally speaking, the waters of the Pacific ocean were less dense and less salty than those of the Atlantic.  So while its waters were more welcoming than the arid Surface, the typical Atlantean would find them less comfortable than those of their home, a strange place where the colors were too bright but the water smelled/tasted too 'dull' and 'flat'.  Heroditus Stylianos had never been, but he'd read of many other Atlanteans who had been, so when he received the call of potential Deep One activity on that coast, he felt he'd be prepared for the journey.

 

He was wrong, but that's only because he wasn't going to the Pacific ocean proper, but to a landlocked body of water over 100 km from the coast.  A choked, dying, rotting thing, a twisted mockery of what should be healthy and life-giving.  Which would make it a beacon to Deep Ones and their foulness, he mused as he flew over, zipping across the continent with the aid of an experimental flight booster.  But, between my knowledge and devices, and whatever local powers Cimitiere enlisted, I am certain they can be dealth with in a swift and-

 

He came to a screeching halt (literallly, as the osprey spirit bound to his winged sandals screeched in protest at the sudden stop) as the edge of the Salton Sea came into view, as did the mystical aura of adisturbingly familiar Hydran artifact.  A few Atlantean curses passed through his mind, but he stopped himself before too long.  Well, he thought as he approached, better the devil you know....

 

[trollthumper]

Nick realized, in retrospect, this was likely a bad idea. He was a landlocked individual, of course, and while he had an understanding of the political tensions between the Deep Ones and the Atlanteans, he had a good sense that Sea Devil and Artificer would be the ones most likely to put aside bad blood in the name of focusing on the potential crisis at hand.

 

That, and Glamazon hadn't returned his calls.

 

"Thank you for coming so far on such short notice." He gestured to the house. "As you heard, we've got an incident that looks to be related to Deep One theology. Two people seem to have committed suicide, and one of them left a prayer to Dagon in their own blood. We don't know if it was of their own volition, or..." Nick let it hang in mid-air, especially with Sea Devil present. This was his area, and he felt like a party crasher. "I'm going to try to read the scene, but I wanted to get your insights first. This isn't entirely my department, and I don't want to do anything that could potentially color the fabric of all this before I try and call up the dead. The local authorities are giving us a wide berth, so... let's go in and see what we can do."

[Avenger Assembled]

Sea Devil 

 

Aquaria attached her trident to the back of her armor with a metallic clang as the magnets kicked in. When Artificer arrived, she wondered for a moment if the Atlantean found this place as abhorrent as she did - before she decided she couldn't show such weakness in the face of the enemy. Even one who had sometimes been a friend. "This place is - death. Perhaps they went mad!" she croaked with more firmness than she felt before trudging inside the house. 

 

Inside a Deep One's investigations were - strange. She smelled the air around the two dead bodies, loud, wet snorts from nostrils that were more like a seal's than a human's. She studied the bodies themselves, peering with black and yellow eyes at the sad remains of the dead Surface-Men. She struck the walls a few times, upper body cocked as if she was listening for the sounds of the echoes in the building. When she came across the prayer to Dagon, she squatted before it, fully retracting her faceplate, and making a low, resonant thrum deep in the back of her substantial throat. 

[Dr Archeville]

Artificer

 

'Perhaps they went mad!'?  How could you tell....

 

Heroditus kept such musings to himself, trying to keep up a diplomatic front.  "If this is... atypical behavior for Deep Ones," he began as he looked around the scene of the incident, looking both for signs of trespass and any lingering traces of mystical auras, "perhaps it is something in the waters that caused it?  Some Surfacer pollutant that affects the nerves, or a bacterial infection causing fever and delirium?  Improper agricultural infrastructure can lead to a whole host of health issues."

 

He looked to Cimitiere, "have there been such reports among the Surfacers here?  Of... mental aberrations, connected to rising pollution levels?  Connected directly to the pollution, not merely to the death such corruption brings, and the despair which follows?"  It would be a difficult knot to untangle, but it was as good a place to start as any.

 

[trollthumper]

"It's the Salton Sea," Nick said. "It's not exactly Laguna Beach. People who live out here tend to be desperate, determined, or wanting to leave everything behind. The place has a long history of asthma and other respiratory conditions among the inhabitants, in part due to the waste rising off the Sea. Supposedly a long history of depression and suicide as well. From what I understand, Ms. Johnson was a psychiatric nurse at a local clinic. Daniel was a bartender and painter who'd made a few sales. This is what I heard from the cops, and none of that speaks to their mental states, but..."

 

Nick raised a finger in the air. "This does. Magic. Usually, the kind of magic that makes somebody kill themselves has to be strong enough to overcome every urge a person has to say, 'I don't want to die.' But... there are ways. The first is to directly puppeteer the body, like people think happens with voodoo dolls. The second is possession, to have a spirit or ghost jump in and just go right for the arteries while the brain's recovering from the psychic shock. The third is illusion - making them think they're in such a horrible position that the survival instinct vacates, and there's only one way out." 

 

He looked to the deceased. In cases like this, the trauma of death would usually leave some sort of ghost for him to interrogate. But not here. Not now. He only hoped that death had come as such a shock that there were no earthly chains left to bind them, that they'd gone on to something approaching rest. The other options were ones he couldn't weigh right now. 

 

"The magic still feels heavy in the air. Not enough to strike like a lightning bolt, but definitely like a fog."

[Avenger Assembled]

"This is not how it is done," rumbled Sea Devil as she rose to her feet. "You do not use a knife. You use teeth," she said, illustrating her point by putting her armored wrist up to her own fanged mouth. "Especially if they were told. I do not think these are hybrids. Hybrids are - not like this," she went on, obviously having trouble articulating the idea. "I would have to taste their blood to be sure," she added frankly. On her own, or with her friends, she'd have done so without hesitation - but not with Nick and Artificer in the house with her. "This says," she said, pointing to the blood on the wall, "'silence'. I think they could hear it. Can you hear it?" she asked in a rumble for Artificer and Nick's benefit. "I can hear it now, as I could hear it when I arrived. I think it is - everywhere, here." She made a noise in the back of her throat, a low wubwub, then shook her whole body, obviously not quite able to simulate it for Surfacer ears. 

[Dr Archeville]

Artificer

 

"I hear nothing," he replied with a shrug, "but I am aware that some of your k- ah, that some Deep Ones are able to perceive mystical auras as sounds.  Perhaps," he looked to the bodies again, "perhaps these are not full hybrids, but they do carry some tiny amount of Deep One cor- ah, connection, from some distant ancestor.  Not enough to evidence any physical manifestations, at least not outwardly, but enough to be sensitive to certain... tones?"

 

He removed the goggles from his head and a tool from his bandolier, "I can perceive mystical energies visually, and these goggles can enhance that further.  Some further refinement may allow me to discern precisely which manner of magics were used here -- illusion, mind control, or something else."  He began carving small marks onto the rim of one of the lenses, "though if too much time has passed, the auras may have faded too much to get such a detailed read."

 

He concentrated on his work a moment, then suddenly looked up, "Cimitiere, do their spirits still linger?  Can you get anything from them?"  He knew Nick was a necromancer of some skill, but was not entirely certain of the particulars.  If he can question the murder victims directly...

 

[trollthumper]

"Not in this case," Nick said. "They've... well, we can hope for 'passed on.' There are worse options. But let's go with that one." He was usually cool about this. He was the slicked-back pompadour atop the worm-eaten skull (or at least, makeup that made it look that way), the haunt of the crossroads, the slick walker of the spirit roads. He ate death for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So why was this creeping him out? 

 

Maybe it was good he was creeped out. That he could still see death as tragedy. He always had this vision of himself at 60, looking like Link Wray left under a sun lamp for too long, cackling at the world's funniest suicides. Able to waltz between the land of the light and the land of shadow, seeing death as not a termination but a hiccup. He hadn't become a crypt keeper yet, and moments like this, ironically enough, helped tug him back into the world of the living. Back where death meant something. 

 

He just wish he knew what this meant. 

 

"There's something I can try... but you can feel it. Sea Devil said as much. And it might bring about the lightning bolt." Nick cracked his fingers. "Then again, if I only made good choices, I wouldn't be able to talk with the dead in the first place. So..."

 

He placed his fingers on the table, just brushing the edge of the blood - not enough to disturb the crime scene, but enough to pick up on residual traces. He opened his mind to the twist of the Moirae's skein...

 

To Artificer and Sea Devil, it was as if somebody had wrapped marionette strings around Nick's limbs and twisted crudely. He flew back, hamstrings pulled like tightropes, the toes of his boots digging into the linoleum, head thrown back in a pose usually only possible via spinal injury. He opened his mouth, and out flew words deep and choked, familiar to Sea Devil - Lemurian. 

 

"DRY AND DESICCATED... SWIM, SWIM, SEA, SEA... BROTHER SLEEPS IN PAIN, SISTER SLEEPS IN DESPAIR... LIGHT AND DARK AND LIGHT AND DARK... MOTHER, FATHER, CALL ME HOME... BACK TO INNSMOUTH..."

 

Nick slumped down over the table. For a few seconds, he seemed to come to. Then he let out a long, low moan, looking down at his fingers and twitching like he was on day two of heroin detox. He reached for the bloodied knife that had slumped to the floor...

[Avenger Assembled]

Sea Devil

 

Aquaria gave a basso rumble of terrible sympathy before she lashed out, lightning-fast, and caught Nick's hand with an iron grip stronger than any human's. Slick green fingers intersected with five human digits. "You are not them." She continued and echoed something she'd said years ago, in a private place to one she loved. "The voices are lying to you. Do not listen. You are stronger than them. Trust me. Stronger. Together." She held on with a grip suggesting she would never let go, fixing Nick in the regard of her vast black and gold eyes, anchoring herself with her other hand against the table. 

 

[Dr Archeville]

Artificer

 

Heroditus let out a yelp, dropping his goggles and stylus as he took a step back.  Subverting the wills of these civilians is one thing, but to snare Cimitiere's mind...

 

As Aquaria leaped into action, Artificer hastily withdrew more components from his bandolier, assembling something like a three-pronged tuning fork.  She might be able to break him out of it, but if not... or, worse, if she also falls under its sway...  and yet, any threatening actions from me may worsen the situation.  I must time this carefully.

 

The three tines of his device began glowing with a soft blue light, but held off on releasing the arcane forces which -- he hoped -- would be sufficient to restrain Cimitiere.  If he is not of a mindset to use his own magics to counter mine, this should work... unless the effect on him also gives him berserker-like strength...

 

[trollthumper]

Nick turned to Sea Devil, his head making stuttering motions like a needle skipping on a record. When their eyes locked, his mouth opened... but the words Sea Devil heard did not come from his tongue. They came into her head. In Lemurian. 

 

"Sister... the cage must break..."

 

Nick's eyes rolled back up into his head, and he nearly fell to his feet - save for the grip of Sea Devil. Coming to with his hand held aloft by a Deep One in power armor, Nick shook it off with remarkable speed and grace. "Thank you," he said. "I knew it was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. This is what happens when you lick the wall socket." He paused. "I could feel it, you know? Or... he, she, they, whatever. You know what the worst part of it all was? I felt [i]panic[/i]. Not my own, though it kicked in after a while. I felt [i]theirs[/i]." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Sea Devil 

 

Aquaria stood back, a hand over her mouth, and when she spoke it was with a terrible, aching grief in her rumbling voice. "They were in cages. They were in cages!" The last word was an angry bellow, punctured by a crack of her trident's blunt end against the floor that cracked the wood beneath. She knew of the brutality of Atlanteans and Surfacers alike, who imprisoned their enemies rather than kill them, confining them to a small space where one's screams echoed along the walls and inside one's head - she stopped for a moment and turned, throwing open one of the windows. But of course the acrid, dry air here was hardly a soothing balm. 

 

"<I will free you, brothers and sisters. When the stars are right>," she croaked softly, almost to herself. "Are they dead?" she asked Nick. It was a horrifying thought in and of itself; the spirit surviving after the death of the flesh like some Surfacer phantom, but of course Deep Ones trapped or kept up here would have had no one to eat their flesh or crack their bones. "Did they die up here - in this place?" 

[trollthumper]

"I don't know," Nick said. "If that was a Deep One... they felt... tethered. Dead, but..."

 

But. But. It was such a familiar "but," usually. Even if a ghost got inside you and made you hurl up ectoplasm like Regan MacNeil, any necromancer worth its salt could tell you that they were dead, even if they were tied to the mortal world. And yet...

 

"He felt like... turmoil. Like the tides. There was death, but... life, too. Like he'd pushed himself somewhere between the two. It's not the first time I've seen in happen, but usually, the life is just a sliver. Not a force equal to death. And the thing is... it felt like it was growing. I mean, it was hard to tell between trying to take my body back, but... the vitality seemed to be welling up."

 

Nick shook his head. "It's been a while since I've dealt with something like that." He looked to Sea Devil. He knew what most other arcanists knew about the Deep Ones, which meant 75% of that had to be shoved in the trash when she became a superhero. He knew her professional, and they'd run into one another more than a few times. But he knew he was treading on eggshells.

 

"I think you'd know more about the history here than I would..."

[Dr Archeville]

Artificer

 

Heroditus relaxed a bit, seeing Nick back in control of his faculties, but he still felt ill at ease about, well, everything. 

 

So there were Deep Ones here, captured, and long-dead.  Captured by whom?  I know of no Atlantean outposts near here - did the Surfacers do this?  If so, why?  They don't know much about Deep Ones, would see them only as monsters, kill on sight.  So why contain them?  A scientific study?  Some magical working?  And did they actively execute them, or just... leave them to die, allowed this place to kill them?

 

He thought back on what he knew of the Deep Ones, the lessons drilled into him as a child.  How he'd had to re-examine those lessons when, four years ago, he'd first met Aquaria, and a few months after that, when his twin sister had been transformed into a Deep One.  They're as much victims as the people they capture and sacrifice to their ineffable deities... though that makes them no less dangerous.

 

He disassembled his device and replaced its components into their pouches, and kept his thoughts to himself.

 

[Avenger Assembled]

Sea Devil croaked a sad note. "We are more alike than you are, because we all hear the same song." She had long since given up explaining what she could hear to Surfacers; even ones as magically attuned as Nick. And if Artificer could hear it too - well, he would be the first Atlantean she had ever met who could. "We tell ourselves that we are all the same. But the seas are vast - and not everyone hears the same things. Perhaps they came when the sea was new and could not leave. Perhaps someone kept them here. Was someone here who would keep them? Atlanteans - or men like you?" She slid her hand up and down the shaft of her trident contemplatively, then said, "We should look here. Everywhere." Not even bothering to fly, she hooked her trident to her back and simply climbed up to the roof of the house, where she crouched on all fours and stared with goggle eyes, listening to that terrible noise in the night air. 

[trollthumper]

As Aquaria ascended to the skies above the house, the stillness of the salt air hung around her. Up here, the desert was tranquil, save for the light night winds. She could still smell the salt rime clinging in the air, but in between the notes of filth from the polluted sea below. Even the smell of dead fish was not the great reward of a whalefall, but the noxious hint of a poisoned feast. A desecration that teased with notes of false promise, like a glass of water held on the other side of the prison bars. 

 

The rasp was so distant, she mistook it for the breeze. But soon, it was undeniable - a death rattle, like a corpse in reverse, slowly rearing back to life. Distant, and not growing louder, but definitely growing clearer...

 

Inside the house, Nick Cimitiere and Artificer heard something different - the distant sound of police sirens. "Here I thought this place would be desolate..."