"That's the Babble Book." April said.

"At wast! The wong arm of the waw is reaching out and cwosing in on you. You scwewy wabbit." The Book said nonsensically.

It thrashed its tongue out in the air like some sort of parade ribbon and had a large smile on its face which took up nearly the entire front cover of the leatherbound book.

"Oh." Shawn seemed really disconcerted by the book, but he was trying to hide it since all of the other kids seemed fine with it. "So, uh, we write in you to get clues about the clowns, right?"

"Yes" April said, trying to instruct the new kid.

"If you write your story in it like the others, the Book will remember. You don't even need a pen if you don't have one." April explained, for the benefit of Shawn.

"You just need to pretend and then write."


She let Shawn take that information in. In the corner, Dawn was fiddling with some string on the blankets.

"I'll do it, but I'll probably hate myself in the morning!" The Book taunted.

Or maybe it was just the way the booked talked. Bradford laughed a little, warming to the idea of the book speaking.

"Oh, okay. I think I found a pen, so I'll just use that. Using my imagination just sounds weird." Shawn approached the book cautiously, as if unsure if it was going to bite. "I guess I'll give it a shot."

Assuming it didn't scream or bite or anything unexpected, Shawn opens the book and prepares to write.

The book slapped at Shawn's hands lightly with its leathery tongue as Shawn opened it. At first glance, Shawn could see that it was filled with strange symbols and old writings. There were blank pages too. Parchment that was thick, tea-stained and crisp.

The pages fluttered and Shawn could smell a certain odor in the air. Popcorn.

Then, the Book pushed itself to the page where Henri had written. Shawn quickly skimmed the paragraph about how Henri had survived an encounter with the Clown in a pet store that kept the souls of little boys and girls.

There was a space on the page, next to that story. And empty space. Shawn's own hand felt stiff as he pressed the pen against the paper.

Shawn started writing his piece - his brow furrowed as he the pen scratched along the pages.

Bradford started to talk about how great things would be once he, Dawn and Ron got home as Shawn started to write in the book. It was quiet in the cabin and the rain outside drummed on the windowsill nearby. From time to time the scratching of the pen cut through the heavy silence in the room.

The pen scratched and scratched, and as it did, the book shifted slightly, the tongue still waving in the air, as if it was somehow used to this sort of thing.

]]

OOC: Henri and Naomi Join Thread: Henri, Naomi: Just Names On A List
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:34, Tue 15 Nov 2016.

"So, what I'm trying to say, is that things are going to be great." Bradford told Dawn and Ron. "Just as soon as we get out of here. Save a few kids and get back  home. You'll see guys."  he said fondly.

Shawn continued to write like a kid possessed, giving no sign of even seeing the other kids. It was just him and the book now.

Bradford's voice was suddenly faint. His words sounded distant and tinny. Like they were coming from the far end of some giant metal tunnel. ]

All the while, Shawn continued to write.


OOC: Ron Joins Thread: Ron: Cast Out to The Evil Circus

"WAIT!" April suddenly screamed at Shawn, trying to get through to him.

The sound was pleading and desperate. It sounded like the last desperate scream of one of the 'scream queens.' Like a teenage girl that Shawn had seen so many times in movies like that. The scream was shrieking, ear piercing and filled with unadulterated terror.

It begged for mercy. Begged for anything. Begged for one more chance. It cried out for one explanation, trying to tell Shawn something.

Shawn looked up from his writing - there were tears rolling down his cheeks now, and his face had lost what little colour it had to begin with. "I'm sorry - I couldn't-I can't..." He turned back to his writing, but his hand was shaking and his eyes were blurry.

And with that, Shawn watched as April came towards him, her hand outstretched in a gesture of desperation. She took several steps forward, face a mask of worry and fear. By the second step, Shawn could already see through her to the other side of the wall. And by the third step, she was gone.

Shawn glanced behind him and saw that Dawn was gone as well. The pile of blankets and pillows where she sat lay empty like that of an unmade bed.

The cabin was suddenly quiet.

There was the tap, tap, tapping of rain on the outside. The book shifted its weight as if to accept more of what Shawn was giving.

"Now...listen." the one Shawn had heard them call Bobby started, sounding like he was trying to avoid certain doom. It was the voice of negotiation. He was backing against the wall. Pressing himself against it, as if he hoped to avoid Shawn's gaze. Bobby wasn't on the list that the Closet-Clown had given him.

Shawn felt the pen in his his hand for the first time in minutes. He looked down and saw that his fingers and knuckles were white with tension.

Shawn let out a scream, and threw the pen across the room. Then he finally broke, collapsing to the floor and curling up into a ball, sobbing and sobbing. He didn't even seem to see Bobby.

It went on for some time. A sob coughed up from his stomach. Tears stung at his
eyes. They ran down his puffy cheeks and collected at the base of his chin, patting down gently onto the cabin's floor.

"Listen..." Bobby said. And this time the voice sounded more certain. Less afraid of what Shawn might do, or what might have been done. Instead, Bobby's voice took on a sort of comforting, if not rationalizing tone to it.

"Listen, Shawn..." He pleaded, trying to break the spell that all of the emotions had on Shawn. And they did have him. Shawn could feel a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"You did...what you had to." Bobby reasoned. "It's alright." Bobby soothed.

He was still across the room, talking from a distance. But the words could be felt floating towards Shawn. A minute ago, it might have sounded harsh, like arrows flitting across the room, trying to stop Shawn from writing.

But now the room seemed to have lost its frenetic energy.

"Don't worry. He came to me too." Bobby reassured.

Shawn, still curled up on the floor, gave Bobby a bleary-eyed look. "H-he did?" His voice was cracked and hoarse.

"Just...calm down." Bobby said, looking not calm at all himself. He wasn't talking about G.I. Joe's anymore. Oh no. Now, he was looking just as bit as nervous as Shawn was. Maybe even more.

He brought his hands up to his hair, running it through the sides until the fingers met at the top of his head. His eyes squinted as if he was in pain.

"How are we gonna get out of here now?" He asked out loud to no one in particular. Then he looked back down at Shawn.

"I mean, yeah. I mean, not really came to me. Just, I don't know. I didn't even think the whole thing was real in that way. I didn't even see any clowns. I just heard a voice under my bed. It came to me the night before and told me I had to bring this kid named Will out. Out to where..." He stopped and looked around, almost as if preferring not to finish the sentence.

"In the dream, there was a map. The voice told me that I would have the map in my hand and if I wanted the G.I. Joe toy that I keep asking Mom and Dad for, that I had to take the map and follow it until I met a kid named Will." He kept on the with the story, lost in his own words. As if trying to recall how it all happened and not really paying attention to Shawn anymore.

"I mean, its the summer time, right? So I just took my bike out and kept riding. The problem was I kept riding for days and days. Right on that road named Route 50. It kept going and going and...strangest thing...I wasn't even hungry."

"Honestly, I did it mostly because I was afraid of the voice under my bed. I mean. Not scared like a little kid scared, but kind of like Duke would get scared if he was outnumbered by Cobra troops in a battle or something."

"So then I see this kid. And he tells me that his brother's car was stolen. So I did what the voice and the map told me to do. I led to him to a side area on the road. It just kind of felt like it was going to be there, you know? And it was. And I led him there and then that was that."

"I kind of knew what was going to happen to him. The voice said that he was on the list. And if I wanted to stay off the list, I had do it."

"The voice also said that if he got away, I had to follow him and find out where the kid named Will went. And that was here."

"So that's my story." Bobby said.

While listening to the story, Shawn managed to lever himself into a sitting position on the floor. The tears had stopped for now, partly from being all cried out, mostly from passing through sadness and guilt all the way to numb. "So what do we do now? The voice said if I did this, I'd be off the list and could go home."

"I don't know." Bobby said, abandoning the pretense of snarkiness that he had demonstrated earlier when Shawn had arrived alongside Jody.

Although he seemed upset, Bobby was also calmer than most kids would be in this situation. He appeared, by all means, to be thinking the problem through. And for a second, it reminded Shawn of the movie Rubert Gets Lost in Space. It was a kid movie that he had almost secured a part in about a year ago, were it not for Mom deciding the movie wasn't high profile enough for Shawn.

Now Bobby began to pace back and forth, feet sounding on the cabin floorboards and making them creak.

He bent down over the pile of sandwiches that April had left for Shawn and Jody and snatched one up.

"Let's think this through. There's something we must be missing." Bobby reasoned, taking a bite of the sandwich and then grimacing with a disgusted look before putting it down.

"And remember, 'mud' spelled backwards is 'dum'." The Book said in its low, Loony-tune style voice.

It wasn't open anymore, and Shawn could see the tongue was waving in the air in random directions, a big, broad smile on the Book's face.

Shawn wracked his brains for the answer, but between his exhaustion and the guilt, he was hardly in the right mind for it. He started looking around for where he'd thrown the pen. Maybe that had the answer?

Shawn walked over to the middle of the room and bent down to pick up the pen.

There was a feeling of loneliness in the cabin now. It weighed heavily on the room and made the air thick.

Then, as Shawn got up with the pen in hand, he could see headlights through the windows of the cabin. Bright beams of yellow light poured through the windows and shown on the far side of the room. The rain was coming down hard outside, but Shawn could see there was a car out there. It was hard to make out what kind of car, who was driving it, or really anything other than that it was there.

Then, Shawn heard the sound of a car horn. Sort of....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3SxEOvAOEg