#bergen_county

"So remind me what's the plan again?" Lily asks Symon. The little girl seems to be quite sporting and ready to go but she is a kid, and some of the details of his plan she might have forgotten

He checks his outfit under his coat - good, good, from the supply closet at the local Library.

Long, shadowy robe repurposed from a Halloween costume and some dungeonmaster supplies - a small mesh bag that Ann Marie uses for groceries is more gruesome when it clatters with plastic skulls, and a face mask of the sort seen all over the news adorning Asian faces, but his splattered with red paint to mimic a boody rattle cough. He strikes his pose as Death by Flu.

"Let's see how you're set up... oh, good. Nice." He compliments Lily on her outfit, having been asked to bring her 'Sunday Best', something that it would seem appropriate for a child to be buried in. From there he has added a few touches - borrowed makeup from his stepmom's stash hollows out Lily's eyes and adds a touch more sunken pallor, and even a few specks of blood around her mouth and a trail to drip onto her chin. His touch is delicate and gentle despite his sometimes rather brusque (for a sluagh!) attitude - from long practice painting miniatures.

"There... you're the perfect picture of a child woefully stricken down due to parental neglect. Do you remember your lines? We can rehearse from "Whyyyyy mommy...." if you like. The group doesn't arrive for a while yet."

she gifts a cough, a ragged wheezing cough "whhyyy mommy..." another wet sounding cough... "whyyy did you want me to die?.....i don unnerstannnnn" she stretches her words out, how she manages to make it sound like she's got a throat full of mucus is hard to say

"like that? did I get it right?"

He gives her a grin. "Perfect. And if you creep towards them, grasping... " He demonstrates as well. "I'll loom in the background like a spectre - but one thing to keep in mind as a key is don't block all the exits. Sometimes people panic, and if they do, you don't want them to lash out at you if they feel trapped. I mean, that's a great fear too... but not the one we're playing with today."

"oh... like.. one of my legs is giving out... so I want to use my arm like some beastiaaal pawww..." She nods "always give them room to run"

He gives her a flashlight to hold under her chin. "I think the emergency lights will give enough ambiance once I flip the breaker, but just in case, this will help. Can you see in the dark?"

"no." she says "But I can hang upside down by the ceiling"

A rasped laugh! "That's GOOD. Okay, now the main target is a lady named Mrs. McGee. She's the head of MOMS - moms opposing mandatory shots. She'll be the one leading the meeting and should show up first... alone. She has a daughter just a bit older than you." He flicks through his phone, checking the snaps he had made from snooping in his dad's files. "Dad hadn't decided yet if he was going to have to ban her from the clinic because her unstuck kid would be a plaguebearer to his other patients. Let's see if we can help change her mind. Or at least make her need to change her shorts." A snicker.

"So, are we being mean, or being nice? cuz it sounds like a little of both" her eyes dance

He also looks amused. "To a sluagh, they can be the same thing, I think. You gotta be cruel to be kind, sometimes."

Lily nods, "that makes sense. " a thought, "is Mrs McGee very religimous?"

A pondering look. "I'm not sure. That's a good point, though. Always do as much research as you can. The more ammo you get, the stronger you'll be. A cantrip works best when it plays to the specific target."

"not sure i can do cantrips yet" envy

He takes a bit now to explain to Lilly what he's doing. How the precise layout of the skulls in a pattern are to feed the cantrip he is preparing, how the cut off lights will play in, and the tattered edges of his robe and the sunken lines on her face all will echo into the Autumn shadows he'll call to lurk around the edges of the room. "I know it's a lot, but... it's more feeling - if it feels right, if it suits what you're trying to do, that's gonna give it more OOMPH than a dozen repeat motions or similar rituals where you just follow a standard pattern. At least, that works for me. You'll figure out what your style is over time."

Lily memmorizes as best she can, duplicating the lay out once or twice to get it right, then a toothless grin.

"I think i'm ready" she says

He peeks out the door of the storage closet, checking around the corner to see if the meeting room is still empty, or if their target has arrived to set up for her meeting.

He hears talking, but not in the room. He's got about five minutes more if he wants it, would be his guess

He waves Lily on, creeping into the room, and he takes up a position hunched behind a whiteboard near the door, where he can reach the lightswitch. "Pick a hiding spot..." He whispers, and watches, interested to see where she goes. Starting to focus his glamour, the edges of his cloak almost seeming to wriggle as the shadows cast by the fabric long to creep free.

And she finds a spot, going to the corner of a wall, then scootching UP the wall with fingers and toes like a wingless fly behind a tall lamp. No feet to be seen higher up like that.

And that's when Mrs. McGee comes in, with someone else behind her, "This is about our freedom to keep our children healthy our way, the natural way..." mutters of agreement.

Taking a deep breath to prepare, he focuses his will, and extends a tendril of glamour to slink up the wall behind him, and then he flicks off lights with an audible CLICK.

Using the dark to scuttle away from the switchplate... the shadows creeping unseen in the dark, up the walls and across the ceiling to cast a filmy darkness over the fluorescent bulbs, waiting.

"What on earth is wrong with the lights..." "hard to see"... "my word..."

"Something brushed past my foot" "There'sn othing here but us, Marilyn"

Love craft chuckles.

A muffled click, and the lights flick back on - this time, flickering, dim, as the Autumn Shadows play over the ceiling bulbs, and give the effect of dripping tendrils. "Marilyn McGee..." He intones, breath rattling in his chest. Creeping up to stand atop a table, and the falling cloak brushes down to the floor, giving the illusion of a much taller figure. "You have summoned us down upon you. Your lies.... your hatred... has brought despair."

"What on earth is..."

There are thumps from the wall, like a sack of pre mashed potatoes going down a ramp, end over end.

Another of the ladies gapes as the tendrils "I am freaking out..."

"It's... whoever this is, it isn't funny..."

Of course, Symon can see what is making that thump sound... Lily, in her outfit, is 'falling' slowly down the wall, like a corpse tumbling to limbo's emptiness... if he parts the shadows a bit he can let them get a better view, only in that local

He inhales and wiggles his fingers, coaxing the shadows back away from Lily as he would to tempt a cat. "Death shall remain, where a doctor's guidance could have wrought life, and health... sickness, and death..." Adding an asthmatic wheeze to his tone.

"mmmooooommy..." a whisper, as the thumping tumbling child goes ito her death throes before all...

A rattle as the bag of skulls is tipped out onto the floor, rolling towards the figures. "Measles... Mumps... Whoooooooping Cough.... Small Pox... and even the flu...." He hunches over alike a looming gargoyle, letting his blood-stained mask flap free around his mouth like a flag. "Each defeated by man, beaten and weakened, but you give them access back into this world..."

"soo hot... so sick... " A sniffle "_why did you do it, mommy, why did you want me to die?"

In the darkness, she does indeed mistake Lily for her little girl "Baby? I... no no .."

The shadows lap at Lilly's feet, and creep up her legs, slowly enveloping her. "YOU did this.... "

"ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posie..." Lily lurches like she was told, now on the ground "ashes, ashes, we all....fall...." _ A stagger and crumble _"down."

and like a shadow, Lovecraft comes down on the downed girl who has stopped breathing (or so it appears) and begins to 'tear' at her flesh, an animal feeding on a carcase.

Or so it might look, if one didn't have night vision to see that someone is just using the girl as a tray for a sliver of chicken.

He snickers and starts to muffle it, but then decides to go with it, letting his raspy cackle echo free!

The fear that spikes, and not just from their target, bursts out like a boil finally gloriously lanced!

And at that burst, Symon - no, the Spectre of Grim Disease, takes just a moment to bask in the glorious feeling, then slaps the lightswitch off and scuttles over to Lily. "That's our cue..." And directs her through the dark to a loosened vent cover that no human could possibly fit through.

Lily stands in the last of the light and twists her head and whispers, using a deeper tone than she can really reach, but trying for it and whispering as loud as she can, "stop sending your children to hell early, it's getting overcrowded" she swivels her head at an impossible angle to glare. If they CAN see her, they're probably freaking there too.

Symon ,already on the move, does them both a favor as he gets her into the vent and both slither through as the yelling, the SCREAMS begin in earnest

"oh my freaking ears" the little girl says as Symon takes her to quieter places

He cackles as they squirm away to safety, back through the vents until they come back out in the storage area, and he starts re-packing his Halloween supplies into a bag. "Yeah, that part is unfortunate. But it's still like sweet music, even if too damn loud. ...How do you feel?" He peers at Lilly critically, making sure that the glamour that lanced free was caught. "You'll want to.. hmm, I think of being like a slimy frog, and the glamour catches on my skin..." His tongue licks at the air grotesquely, savoring the flavor. "Maybe you're more like a spiderweb."

"Or a nice, moldy sponge..."