The other kids slowly crowded around the wall in light conversation about the possibilities of the investigation and where it might go. Shawn could hear a few of them talking about the best homes on the map for candy this year and which ones were dangerous because of what was going on.

Edith turned her head towards Shawn.



"Based on our super-slooth investigation, something is going on at Ralph's house. This 'something' has something to do with an evil circus."

"At the beginning of the summer, a few kids in Rodeo Drive began to have dreams about the Circus. And in each dream, there was something specific -- clowns. Every kid was having a dream about clowns. And evens stranger, we would be able to describe them and quickly found out that they were the same clowns. Gary described a Clown called 'Gaggles' or 'Goggles' and Jimmy knew a clown called 'Mr. Pibbles.' These clowns kept appearing in all of our dreams."

"That was the first part." Edith said, pulling back her index finger and then extending the second one to indicate that her story had not ended.

"By the second part of this summer, kids had already started disappearing. We started to investigate it. And wouldn't you know, each one of us found out that the kids that had disappeared were talking about Clowns or having dreams about Clowns or even planning to run away and join the Clowns."


"We tracked a lot of them to Ralph's house, based on our surveillance."

Shawn frowned as he tried to take it all in - he'd definitely had nightmares about clowns, but the ones Edith was talking about sounded more specific and dangerous. "That's kind of what I heard, too. There was an evil circus, and the lady at Ralph's house has something to do with it. I thought she was hypnotizing people, like on TV, and then they'd go to her house. That's what I was scared might happen when we sneaked in."

Shawn's voice was low and soft, like they were sharing secrets. "But dreams and stuff? And talking about joining the clowns? I don't know, I was hoping I could stay safe just by running away if I saw the lady, but you can't really run away from dreams..."

There was a pause as Edith considered, half of her face hallowed out in the shadow of the flashlight. Shawn could see that the girl had deep, purple bags under her eyes, or at least one eye.



"Yes. And it's getting worse." Edith confirmed. "The dreams are taking up more and more time. And we're all getting less and less sleep."

"I hardly get any sleep. I forgot to bring the garbage up to the front of the house. And I also forgot to empty the dishwasher. Mom hit me with a spoon."

"Öh, sorry, I'm Gary." A voice shouted out from against the wall. "Do I know you?"

"I haaaaaaaaate not being able to sleep." Corey complained, drawing out the word hate with epic dramatization.

"So you see. I think the conclusion might be that if we all get tired enough, we'll be completely delirious." Edith pronounced what was clearly a 10th or 11th grade vocabulary word by Shawn's account. "We may not even know that we've joined the Clown's and gone to Ralph's house before it's too late."

OOC: Shawn Rolls Intelligence + Study with the following results

0 Successes - Shawn doesn't know what delirious means, and what Edith is saying goes right over his head

1+ Successes - Shawn understands what Edith means from the context of what she is saying, even if he never heard of the word 'delirious' before

Shawn waved back at Gary, automatically returning the greeting. "Hi, I'm Shawn. I don't think we've met." He didn't really get what Edith said, but he hoped he'd pick it up later if he had more context. Certainly, the stuff about dreams painted a grim picture even without that. He decided to dig in deeper until he could figure out what she'd meant.

"So the dreams, are they scary, or are they trying to make it seem like clowns are nice and fun? It's just you mentioned some kids talking about wanting to join them, right?" Shawn hadn't had any clown dreams, but he hadn't been sleeping much, and when he did, Mr. Clayton was the one who showed up. Maybe that was protecting him? "Are the clowns in the dreams adults, or do they look like kids?"

OOC: 07:48, Today: Shawn failed (no successes) using 2d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s with rolls of 3,3.  Intelligence + Study.

As Shawn spoke, one kid with a thin face said  "Yeah! Yeah! In my dream they try to make it like its fun! But then it gets scary and stuff."  The kid next to him said something else. And then a chorus of kids began discussing their dreams, drowning out whatever information could be gleaned.

When they calmed down Gary broke in



"It's really different for each kid." He said, with a simple, firm conclusion

Edith, went over to the desk and opened the drawer.

"See this. This is a statistical analysis that I made Bart write out that captures all of the dreams and measures them for all of the kids on Rodeo Drive."


Shaw looked down at the chart.

"It doesn't have any numbers." Gary observed.

"That's because Bart is only slightly less of an idiot than Houston." Edith Scowled.

"What?" Gary asked, perplexed

"Bart forgot to include the numbers when he made the chart." Corey chimed in

Shawn tried to glean as much information as he could from the babble and the chart, but Gary seemed to summarize it best. If it had all been the same, it might have told him something about the clowns' ultimate goal or something, but there wasn't much he could tell from this. But there was still one or two things he needed to try and find out from the group.

"Does anyone who joins the clowns ever come back? Or do they just stay at the house?" The second one would be bad, but the first one was almost worse - it implied that there could be kids who joined the clowns out in the neighborhood, doing who knows what?

“They stay in the house" Gary said

"Actually, they come out at night sometimes. Like their carrying things to the house ." Corey contradicted

"According to Jimmy’s surveillance log, last Monday at 7:31 PM a kid was seen entering the house with a grocery bag filled with something ." Edith said, flipping through her notepad and reading

“You can’t trust what Jimmy says! He threw rocks at us earlier with Sara!”

"I wonder if that kid was getting vegetables? Like I saw with Sara?" Shawn wasn't exactly happy at the idea that kids who joined the clowns didn't ever come out, but it was at least better than the idea that they were wandering the neighborhood during the day. Or worse, pretending to be just any other kid.

"So, is there anything we're doing to try and stop this? Anything I can help with?" They'd answered most of the questions he'd had for Leonard before, but he wanted to remain in Edith's good books as well.

Edith tapped her front teeth with her index finger"Vegetables….maybe ." Edith paused, Shawn could see she was thinking it out.

“That’s probably it. But why?” She asked, no one in particular.

Turning towards Shawn and responding to his question she announced “We’re going to break up into teams. Gary, go find Bart and Houston. You three are going to search the homes in Rodeo Drive. Knock on the doors, ask for candy, check to see if there’s any sign of vegetables and if the kids are home.”

“Corey, knock on Jimmy’s door. You two will do the same on Main Street. Look for any sign of vegetables.Especially near Ralph’s house.”

She turned a wry grin towards Shawn. “You’re a big celebrity, you and you friend can go to Celebrity Drive and check that out, right?”

Shawn didn't know a lot about Celebrity Drive, but as far as he could work out, he was being asked to trick-or-treat, and that didn't seem too bad. He nodded his head, trying to seem as serious and professional as Edith did about the whole thing. "We'll do our best."
This message was last edited by the player at 14:13, Sun 15 Aug 2021.

Edith produced a small notebook out of nowhere and handed to it Shawn. It was rough, the edges slightly worn and with a picture of robots on the front. Above them, the letters Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye were written in futuristic font.

“Take this.” She said to Shawn. Shawn glanced over and saw that Michael was still in the corner counting.

"Record any kids you see on Celebrity Drive that have vegetables or are carrying vegetables. Also, any that have mentioned clown dreams. We'll meet back here on Friday."

Shawn took the notebook and nodded seriously at Edith as he squirrelled it away into one of his pockets. "All right, Michael and I will keep our eyes open. Hopefully we can figure this whole thing out before it's too late."

OOC: Shawn Joins Thread

Trick or Treat or Celebrity Drive