And here we have chapter eight, where we round out the major players in the story by meeting more important (at least in the story to come) Committee members. I honestly don't have much more to say, except that there's another shout out to Lovecraft (of sorts) and also a shout out to the Slender Man heh.
They were congregated in the first basement, those members of the Committee who had suffered the specific dreams of the familiar but unnameable dead man who came with an air of onions. It was dark, of course. Clenshaw wouldn't allow them to turn the lights on. Instead he commented how they should hold their questions. He would repeat himself for all seven of them, as they came. Lauren helping them into the basement, where it was darkest.
“You're telling me,” Doctor Robels was saying to Lauren, helped her down the stairs, with an annoyed and angry voice “I was woken up to shuffle around with you, of all people, in the dark?”
“Oh, trust me.” Lauren said to his fellow auditor, “As annoying as it is, and trust me I know how annoying this is, but it's worth it.”
“Shuffling in the dark like this? Ay, I have work tomorrow.” she snapped, “I don't have time to play games in the dark. This better be good.”
“It ain't good,” the red headed auditor commented sounding bored, “It's actually quite bad. Horribly bad. The worse.”
“That bad, huh?” the dentist auditor commented, sounding practically enthused.
Lauren helped her to find a seat, amongst five of the Committee agents, including Taryn Mais. His strange mutation allowing him to guide himself through the dark, he easily made his way back up stairs after reminding them all not to turn on a single light.
“Okay,” Lauren inquired as he rejoined Declan and Clenshaw in the lobby, “So whose left? Both of mine are here.”
There had been a clicking sound, coming from the dark forms of Clenshaw and Declan, it paused as Clenshaw answered “We're waiting for Robertson.”
“You shouldn't bite your fingernails.” Lauren admonished with a smirk, “You never know when you'll need to claw yourself out of a hole.”
“That's not funny.” Declan said in a quiet tone.
“Hey, I didn't mean any offense.” the red headed auditor said, the closest he'll get to a sincere apology.
“Do you remember being normal?” Clenshaw suddenly asked.
“You mean before I got Chaplin?” Lauren asked, his normal eyes looking down at his hand.
“No, well yes.” Clenshaw said with a sigh, “But before that too. Before the Committee, before Peter. Before the whole damn world became a whole lot less caring.”
“Heh,” Lauren said leaning against the window, keeping his eyes staring outward, “No. It's always sort of been less than caring. We just made believe it wasn't.”
“Don't say that,” Clenshaw said, “It did care. Once.”
“I don't know, Clenshie.” Declan said.
The adjudicator gave a mumbled response quickly, “Oh you're going to start calling me that now?”
Declan continued, as the adjudicator mumbled, “It's not as if the world was really all that caring.”
“Friends. Family. You're telling me they didn't care Declan?” Clenshaw said, “I'm not that old, that I've gone and hit senility already.”
“Oh,” Declan said, his brother still on his mind, “I'm probably not the best one to talk with. About family.”
“Me neither.” Lauren added in.
“You never talk about your family.” Declan responded, an open invitation as the trio tried to pass time, as Robertson's car could be seen coming down the street.
“Of course I don't.” was Lauren's only response, before turning his attention and impatience towards Robertson “Come on, hurry up and park it already. God, I don't think he knows how to drive at all. Look at him! He's just inching back and forth, he's got plenty of room!”
“Go get the radio.” Clenshaw said, “Keep yourself busy while he parks.”
Lauren sighed and headed off, “You still want me to wait up stairs?”
“Yes,” the adjudicator answered, “We don't know that you, or Chaplin, can see Peter. It's the only other way to tell.”
“You sure that's not too much space? It's not too long of a range?” Mr. Barr asked, obviously unsure.
“It isn't.” Declan said, “Trust me.”
Lauren took his word and moved to collect the small portable battery operated radio, making sure he had grabbed the headphones. He waited in the dark, as he had been told to do so, as Clenshaw and Declan led Mr. Robertson down the hall past the lobby, and into the first basement. When the door was shut, he crept slowly forward and flicked the radio on. Immediately the second verse of the song Body Language by Queen blared through the headphones. His fingers adjusted the dial until he came across white noise. He waited.
Inside the first basement the adjudicator moved carefully as he spoke, “Alright, time for attendance. It's dark and I want to know where you all are seated. Even if I can't see you, I would like to face your general direction as I talked to the nothing in front of my face.”
“Can't we just turn on a light?” Taryn had inquired.
The adjudicator turned to where he felt Taryn had been, “No actually. Okay, so Taryn is present.”
“We're all present.” auditor Robels commented, still annoyed.
While yawning behind Clenshaw, Mr. Robertson dded in his own thoughts, “It's late and it's dark, if you don't turn a light on I'm liable to fall asleep again.”
“You do that, and we could be in trouble. Now quiet. Please” the adjudicator said, trying to persuade the annoyed members, and continued taking attendance as if he was a school teacher, “Doctor Robles is here, as is Mr. Robertson. Now if we don't mind can we wait till I call out names, else we'll be here all day trying to keep count. Now, Mr. Vourderis?”
“Here. You know I'm here, why are we doing this? And it's Charles, please. I hate this Mr. Vourderis stuff.” Mr. Vourderis, complained.
“Well,” auditor Declan said before adjudicator Clenshaw could reply, his voice showed he was agitated though he tried to hide it, “It's best we're in the dark right now.”
“Moving on.” Clenshaw said sternly, hoping to get on with it, “McLaughlin?”
“Right behind you adjudicator.” McLaughlin answered.
“Good. Mr. Ieuls?” There was no answer. Clenshaw cleared his throat, and repeated himself firmly “Mr. Ieuls?”
“I think he's asleep.” Ms. Worthington said.
“Is he sitting next to you, Shirley.” Declan asked.
“Actually yeah, hold on.” she said.
There was a soft thud, followed by Ieuls' sudden grunt.
“Sorry to wake you,” Shirley said, “But we're taking attendance.”
“Attendance?” Ieuls said with a cough, “Really? Are we back in grade school then? Should I go get a flag so we can say the pledge then?”
“Mr. Ieuls,” Clenshaw said. He had started to sound like the previous adjudicator, Malhaun, the more the night went on, his voice became stiff and ever more gruff. “If we are finished, we can move on.”
There was a slight pause, before Ieuls answered, “Fair enough. Moving on then?”
“Declan,” Clenshaw said, “Fetch Lauren.”
“He wasn't in here?” Robels asked as Declan could be heard moving up the stairs, her voice a possible protested.
“We've been sitting in the dark, and he gets to dilly dally upstairs, probably with every light on.” Mr. Ieuls said.
“Trust me, he hasn't been using the lights.” Clenshaw said, starting to lose patience.
“Okay,” Declan's voice came from above after the basement door opened, “Come on. We're ready.”
The two auditors made their way downstairs, Lauren's voice calling out “They're all clean.”
“Clean?” Robels said in a defensive irritation, standing unseen from her seat in the dark, “What does he mean clean? I am always clean.”
“Calm down auditor Robels.” Clenshaw said, raising his voice now, growing tired of the interruptions. “Auditor Barr, make sure the door's blocked and then you can turn on the lights.”
“So,” Robertson said, “We are going to be putting the lights on then?”
“And I was just thinking how nice it would be to sit next to Shirley in the dark,” Ieuls started to tease, “Where no eyes could see.”
There was a sound of a slap, a huff of anger from Shirley and a chuckle from Ieuls, “I think you just slapped McLaughlin.”
“No,” Charles said, in a pained voice, “She got me instead.”
Taryn couldn't help but give a laugh.
“Enough! All of you!” Clenshaw commanded, “Lauren, get those towels under the door and turn the lights on already!”
As soon as he finished his sentence the lights did flick on, as the members of the Committee winced and covered their now heavily dilated eyes.
Charles Vourderis leaned forward in his chair, “Thank god for that.”
Taryn glanced around and suddenly felt very silly. Here the Committee members were, all dressed as they normally would be. Lauren in his mismatched attire, Declan looking like a librarian, Shirley in her skirt and jacket, all of them. Except her. Wearing her flannel pajamas, she wished she had been seated further in the back.
“Well?” Robels said expectantly, still standing. Her hands were at her hips in tightly bound fists, and her foot was all but tapping against the floor in impatience. So very close to doing so, though. “What do you mean, we're clean?”
“Precaution.” Lauren said, holding up the radio.
“Oh no.” Vourderis uttered in disbelief, “No. I was hoping I was wrong, but no. It can't be, can it?”
“It is.” Declan said with a sigh.
Clenshaw nodded and cleared his throat, “Peter.”
“No. God fucking damn it!” Charles Vourderis said kicking an empty chair in front of him, from his seated position. It flung and pitched, scraping against the cement ground. No one spoke until it's momentum had stopped.
“You know,” he said, shaking his head and looking pale, “He crossed my mind, but I said no. I said to myself, no can't be. Can't be Peter. It's probably some sort of trickery. I had the dream, I smelled the onions, I saw someone. I thought, no couldn't be. Then you call, and I swear – I swear to myself, it's not him. It's not Peter.”
The man suddenly stood up, his hands thrown up in the air with frustration and fear, “Peter the fucking kill everything shadow?”
“Hey, Shirley, do me a favor?” Lauren suddenly called out, “Slap him again. Just to calm him down.”
“No, nobody's going to lay a hand on me!” Charles aid said scurrying away, his paranoia obvious. “I don't know, for all I know he's on one of you!”
“Oh, for God's sake Charles, he's not here.” Clenshaw nearly yelled out, “We've got Lauren's third eye, and the radio test. Peter's not here.”
“Not yet you mean. If he's out there, if that's what this is,” Charles called at the adjudicator, “If he got out, he's going to be coming right? And you brought us all here! I didn't have to be here, who knows! Maybe he forgot about me!”
“That's it,” Lauren said, “I'm slapping him myself.”
The red headed auditor moved forward, ready to put his words to action until Declan, in one smooth motion, stood before Lauren, halting him. His voice was low when he told Lauren, “Don't. Let him get it out of his system.”
“Whose Peter?” Taryn asked, turning to her neighbor and fellow agent McLaughlin.
“Something very strong, and very evil.” McLaughlin said with a low fearful voice as Charles threw his hands up in disbelief.
“Whose – What? You don't know?!” the seemingly crazed man proclaimed in amazement.
“Give her a break,” Lauren said in Taryn's defense, “Not every rookie'll come with full on knowledge of every gug and ghast we come across. I don't recall you knowing everything in your first week.”
“Peter isn't a gug,” Charles Vourderis started to say, cutting Lauren off at the mention of the fictional creature, not that Lauren stopped speaking to allow the interruption, despite Charles attempting to speak over him, “This isn't a book. This isn't Lovecraft. This is a very real thing that, more than likely, wants us all dead!”
“Oh like that matters.” Lauren said, “Everything in the universe wants us dead. At least everything that gives two shits. Everything else just doesn't care if we die or not. Same thing really.”
“Will you two stop arguing.” Shirley moaned, “You're giving me a headache.”
“Headache? A headache?!” Charles gave with a yawk, “How can you possibly be worried about a head ache, when Peter is out there! You're lucky we still have heads to begin with!”
“Enough!” adjudicator Clenshaw bellowed, “I want quiet and order, else you can all wait outside!”
Charles, tense and fidgety looked absolutely defeated at that. To him being outside this room would be a death sentence. At least in here, selfishly he thought, the odds were in his favor. There was at least a game of numbers. Had Peter appeared, now as they argued and planned, there ere two things that could happen, as Charles saw it. Peter could attack him, or he could attack someone else. The odds were therefore in his favor to settle down, here and now, and not wait outside, where he would be the only target.
Taryn watched as Charles slowly reached a hand down to the back of his chair, for balance, and moved himself slowly to sit. She had met Charles before, on her forth day with the Committee. He had always seemed confident, if not arrogantly so. Seeing him like this, seeing Clenshaw so stern not to mention Declan with the beads of sweat drawing down the sides of his white and drawn face, it made her nervous.
“As you were saying, Mr. Clenshaw.” Shirley asked, it was not surprising that she did so. She always needed to have the last word, a show of false victory.
“Believe it or not, we're not even sure we're dealing with Peter.” the adjudicator said, trying to quell the tension that had rose in the room since the name's first utterance, “For all we know we're dealing with something entirely different. Possibly more than one entity, for lack of a better word, that may be completely unrelated to each other.”
“Unrelated? So we're just dealing with two things that do everything Peter does? Wonderful. And I thought one Peter was bad enough,” Charles said, still with a paranoid eyes, “But no. Now we've got two.”
“It wouldn't be the first time,” Declan spoke, trying to sound polite, “That we were tricked by multiple and unrelated phenomenon that, together, appeared to be the work of a single more powerful entity. As the adjudicator just stated, we have no proof other than the symptoms. Symptoms that, for all we know, are harmless indications of something merely passing by.”
“Passing by?!” Charles balked.
“Yes, for all we know.” Declan said, though he sounded less confident than he had hoped.
“Remembe the Walking Man?” Lauren said suddenly.
“That's right,” McLaughlin replied, more confident than Declan had sounded, “All those children went missing. Sounded suspiciously like Slender Man's M.O.” He turned to Taryn's confused look, and started to explain to the rookie, “An entity that stalks children, very nasty thing. It was believed by law enforcement to be the work of a single man, dubbed the Walking Man by press.”
“I remember reading about that.” she said hesitantly, trying to remember the story. It had been a few years ago, when she was still in high school and living at her mother's. “But, that wasn't here was it?”
“Nope.” Lauren said with a smirk, “And there was no Walking Man. Was three men, no wait, that's right. It was two men, one woman. Completely unrelated, over in Connecticut and New York. Turns out, we're not that hard to fool.”
“Oh.” she said not sounding like she understood the point.
“He's saying,” Shirley added in, with an air of superiority, “That we could be dealing with a Walking Man. We read the symptoms as one thing, but it's something less nasty.”
“Less nasty?” Dr. Robels commented, taking up offense, “They raped and assaulted prepubescents.”
“Well,” Shirley said, not baking down from the statement, “It is less nasty. Compared to Peter.”
Mr. Robertson sneezed, causing many of the Committee members to utter a God bless, or a gesundheit.
“Sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt.” Robertson said as he pulled a handkerchief from his lapel's pocket, although it was a bogus gesture. The fake sneezed served his purpose of breaking the conversation, and since there was now a short window he continued to speak, “But since I did interrupt, and again my apologies, does anyone mind telling me who Peter is, exactly?”
“Not a who.” adjudicator Clenshaw answered, with a pointed look towards Charles to keep him from answering himself, “Not really. We don't know what it is, or where it came from. It's motives seemed to be entirely destructive to us, whatever their deeper meanings may be from the obvious.”
“So,” Taryn asked, sensing a pause in the the adjudicator's flow, “How do you know it's name is Peter?”
“We don't.” the adjudicator answered, “At first we named the entity Peter's Shadow, based on the old children's story of Peter Pan, of course. It was shortened to Peter.”
“But we dealt with him, didn't we? You did right?” Charles said, growing irritable again, “I mean, Malhaun did. Or was that a lie?”
Clenshaw stiffened, his glass eye remained staring straight ahead of him, but his true eye's gaze glided downward to the floor. “We thought so. That's why we're all here, now. If Peter is back, if he is in our dreams, then we need to see if he's still locked up.”
“Or,” Declan said sensing the difficulty Clenshaw had from the mention of Malhaun's death, “If he is still in his little hole, we can figure out how he managed to reach out regardless of his imprisonment.”
“And baring even that,” Lauren said, feeling it was his turn to speak now, “We'll at least have whittled down the possibilities. At least a bit.”
“Such as?” McLaughlin asked.
“Well, to something else.” Lauren answered, having little to go on he felt it was best to stay vague, “Something other than Peter.”
“Did it occur to you,” Dr. Robels inputted, sounding more grim now as the thoughts whirled in her head, “That just because it isn't Peter, doesn't mean it's not, you know? Another one?”
“Another Peter?” Charles said looking like he might drop in faint at that very moment.
“Just because it's alone, was alone at least, when it first surfaced, that doesn't mean it was always alone.” the dentist said with a nervous sound in her voice.
“Oh crap.” Ieuls said, before giving a strangled chuckle, “I hope to God it's Peter now.”
“How can you want it to be Peter?!” Charles stammered.
“Because,” Ieuls said, his eyebrow twitching a bit in nervousness, “I really don't want to have to deal with a Wendy.”
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