Lovely Night For Horror Part 2

Posted on Wed Nov 23rd, 2022 @ 12:26pm by Delaney O'Callaghan & Leiddem Kea (*)

Mission: Mission 16: Hysperia
Location: New Holodeck
5260 words - 10.5 OF Standard Post Measure

“Banshees, púca, The Abhartach, Dúlachán...Headless Horseman, A big-ish spider?” It all sounded very odd in his accent as he counted off on his fingers the items that should said. He looked at the Irish woman and shook his head confused and amused all at the same time. Why could he not just pick a normal woman? With normal tastes? He wondered amused to himself as he heard something that sounded like a howling as he turned and saw something in the distance. “Why by the goddess?”

The more she thought about it, the more Laney realised that this entire experience had been heightened, at the time, by the fact that she was several drinks into a very poor series of choices. It was no secret that she was a light-weight when it came to actual alcohol, there was a reason she tended to steer clear of it in favour of synthehol in almost all cases these days. The final Halloween of the last year of her degree, however, had been right before exams, smacked up against the incumbent smell of freedom that promised an end to four years of ups and downs. The entire campus had flung itself into festivities, and her group of friends had not needed a whole lot of convincing when it came to inventing ways to participate.

Their modifications to her program had been a love-letter, of sorts. A kind of we-will-miss-your-Irish-nonsense-so-have-some-nightmares-on-us.

"I did not program this," Delaney held up a hand in her own defense, eyes fixated on the distant prowl of their shadowy lucky dip. "None of this was my idea. I just had..." She faltered in search of the word. "I completed my first year in France and the remaining three years in Germany. Non-strange friends weren't an option."

“Computer exit program.” Leiddem called but nothing happened. He repeated the request two more times before laughing. It was just typical for something like that to happen there and then as he heard a howl on the wind. “Werewolf?” He demanded as he saw something stumble out of the forest that looked half animal and half humanoid. It paused and sniffed the air before turning face turning towards them.

"Oh, that's not good."

Logically speaking, it wasn't something that should have worried them too much. The program was designed a certain way, they'd run it a few times on the night because most of them had been too unsteady on their feet to get very far without being caught, and the only consequence for letting the spooky horror catch up with you was the shut down of the entire program and a grid of accusatory holodeck relays announcing your failure. Whatever it was currently stalking them, it posed no real threat.

Except it was dark, and the fog was starting to roll in, and it was definitely a werewolf-shape. The brain didn't always listen to its rational side. There was also residual evidence from their experience with the Holoworld to point out that holograms weren't always as harmless as you banked on them being. Delaney frowned, not inclined to head down the path of panic just yet, but they were still dealing with some technical unknowns.

"They haven't figured out how to configure the comm. system to accept program alterations," she murmured, lowering her voice as she moved slowly to slip from the rock onto the ground. "I did wonder, the ship wasn't designed to have its communications hardwired into a hologrid, they must still be working on it." Curtis must still be working on it. She filed it away under things-she-needed-to-have-a-chat-with-him-about and instead turned her attention to the problem at hand. "Listen, as unappealing as it might be, that thing only has to get within a metre of us and the program will end automatically. We can either let it come to us or we can try to finish the challenge."

“Of course they have not figured it out.” The man said and just rolled his eyes in despair as the werewolf started going up towards them. “Well here goes nothing as it’s a lot faster than us,” the man announced as the werewolf finally gotten to view properly as he got his first proper look at it. Whilst the normal werewolf that he knew was a wolf this being could only be described as a monster. It was a twisted mass of muscle and black fur. It looked between the pair and decided to head to Leiddem. He bounded into the man knocking him to the floor. “Nothing is disappearing.” He whispered as he stumbled back up.

"This is...not right."

“You think.” Leiddem snapped softly.

It was difficult to be scared of something that, whilst monstrous, was behaving as if it wasn't in full control of its actions. A creature that size, attacking with actual intent, would have lacerated Leiddem's jugular before he'd had a chance to yell for help, and with no weapon to fight back, there was no need for the beast to relinquish the upperhand as easily as it had. Wide-eyed, mind racing, Delaney watched it back up in confusion and then stared with furrowed brow as it let out a howl of frustration...and blinked out of existence.

"Uh."

Whipping around to survey the darkening fields behind them, Delaney scanned the familiar landscape for any sign of the werewolf and then slowly edged her way over until she was standing back-to-back with her boyfriend, a position that gave them the best chance of maintaining a full rotational view. "That was definitely close enough to trigger the program to end, I think it tried to and reset the monster, but didn't actually shut down." Normally, being stuck inside a simulation of her home wouldn't have seemed such a terrible thing to Delaney, but a perpetuation cycle of folklore monstrosities didn't sound like the best way to spend an evening. Reaching down, her hand found Leiddem's, back still pressed to his. "I hear horse hooves."

The Dúlachán.

Leiddem had no idea what horse hooves meant but he did not like it at all as the werewolf disappeared in front of him. “Do I dare ask what horse hooves mean?” He demanded.

"It means we need to start making a decision on how we want to handle this. This one in particular slows down a lot once we enter the woods."

“What by the deity is that?” The Betazoid said as he blinked as he took in what the Dúlachán actually was for the first time. He was really going to have a serious talk with Delaney when this was all over to check that whatever had made her create this was processed and over with for the most part.

"Headless Horseman," Delaney replied, taking a moment to judge the distance between themselves and the entrance to the woods, whilst calculating how fast a horse could cover that ground. With a sigh, she climbed back on top of the rock and held a hand down to Leiddem. "He doesn't leave his horse, with any luck he'll just reset without actually being able to reach us up here."

“This isn’t Sleepy hollow.” Leiddem murmured.

Far from being scared, Laney was actually embarrassed. This had been a prank at her expense, and not a particularly well-crafted one, with the assets pulled from the central database rather than created specifically for the program. At the time, though there had definitely been a lot of running and screaming, it had been punctuated by the uncontrollable laughter of tipsiness and had served more as a comical entertainment than anything else. Delaney didn't scare easily, and as someone who worked on the creation of holonovels from the ground up, had a healthy perspective on how much they should be taken seriously. The program not working as intended, however, coupled with a holodeck that hadn't properly been put through its paces yet, and the experiences of the Holoworld, were adding to a mounting sense of unease, however.

Along the road, The Dúlachán, dressed in such a way that it would have easily fit into the festivities on the planet below, slowed its horse's pace to a trot and began the impossible task of searching for its prey, despite the fact that it had no head with which to sense anything. "I'm sorry about this," Delaney whispered, sounding defeated. "I should have remembered the program had been modified."

“You owe me a romantic evening or something.” Leiddem commented as he crouched a little to get a better look at that they were facing down the path. “ I don’t need an apology I just need to understand what is fully going on.“ The man shook his head and grabbed her hand and slowly started to walk backwards towards where the forest would give them some cover and best chance if she was correct about the thing never leaving its horse. Slowly he watched as the horse or whatever was guiding the supernatural being noticed them and he gave up trying to be quiet. “Run” He yelled propelling himself around running for cover.

"I don't even know that I know what's going on!" Faring better as a long distance runner, Delaney managed a short burst of speed and then settled into a rhythm that did its best to maintain pace whilst dodging the divots and rocks that lurked beneath the long grass. "This was a perfectly normal recreation of home until a bunch of crazy Germans got their hands on it!" It was, she'd been certain at the time, just an affectionate attempt to acknowledge the stereotypes of her heritage before the group disbanded and they all went their separate ways after graduation. The trouble was, none of her friends had invested nearly as much time into learning the nuances of holodeck programming as Delaney had. It was hardly surprising that the program was glitching; from recollection, it had been a surprise that the shoddy coding had worked at all. "First thing I'm doing," she promised, risking a glance over her shoulder and immediately regretting it, "after we get out of here is deleting this subroutine. It's gaining," she added, immediately veering to the right. "Split up, it can't chase both of us!"

“Good idea.” The man agreed. He glanced back and saw the headless horse man looking around. “Oiy over here!” He yelled instantly bringing the supernatural being to his attention. It was typical behaviour for him but either way it was what he would have done any other time holodeck or no holodeck more so because it was him or his girlfriend.

Of course he bloody would...

There was no time to protest though, and no reasonable grounds to in the first place. If their plan of action was to reach the objective, then Delaney was the better choice to make a break for it because she knew exactly the path to take. That didn't make navigating it in the dark all that easily, certainly not once she plunged into the trees and the canopy overhead thickened to obscure all but the occasional pinprick of starlight. It was a full moon, because of course it was, and as such it took only a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the eerie blue gloom, but even with some vision restored Delaney had no choice but to slow down to a jog lest she lose the path entirely. It was, she was willing to admit, significantly more uncomfortable to be alone under current circumstances, even if the parade of horrors pursuing them were little more than glitchy stereotypes that didn't quite mesh with their surroundings. Ducking under a fallen branch, she paused to listen, her heart hammering in her chest from both exertion and an over-abundance of adrenaline.

Leiddem suddenly appeared breathless to her left having ran in opposite direction and curved through the trees. He looked a little muddy but proud of himself. “Lost it.” He declared leaning over to rest on his knees for a moment. It had been hard work trying to outrun a horse, he really needed to work more on some cardio when he got a chance.

It took effort to keep herself from smacking him in the arm, enough that Delaney redirected the sudden spike in nervous energy to an abrupt twirl that turned her a full rotation, scanning the trees as she went. "If we stick to the established path, it'll be too easy for it to catch up. Here," she grabbed his hand and plunged them down through a thicket of shrubs, "we'll have to take our chances with the long way."

He followed without hesitation and grinned at her squeeze in her hand. He wasn’t sure if it was for his reassurance of hers but it was a lot nicer to be together again instead of separate. “Not exactly how I imagined you grabbing me into a dark forest. But I’ll take it.” He teased as he glanced around trying to hear something that was not there yet.

"It's not exactly how I planned to lure you in a forest either," Delaney pointed out, a brief playfulness dominating her expression as she glanced over her shoulder at him. It was promptly interrupted by the need to duck a lower branch, after which she stopped for a moment in the midst of a cathedral of trees to gather her bearings. "Actually, none of this is going to plan. And the worst part of it is," she continued forward, batting aside errant foliage, "that the auto-generator they spliced into my program is terrible quality." She shook her head. "All I remember is laughing myself silly. I must have been drunker than I thought."

“Oh so you’ve considered it huh?” He said ignoring the self mocking. He thought it was a brilliant program just not what he would have expected to be doing tonight. “Luring your lover into a haunted woods is a bit darker than I imagined you Lan.” He said ducking under a branch as he tried to move through the forest when it was not designed for someone so tall.

"Hey, it's quite romantic in here. During the day," she added, stepping over a fallen log. "When it's decidedly less haunted. I think the clearing is just up ahead."

Weaving them through the remaining corridor of trees, Delaney stepped back out onto a trampled pathway, more a result of a multitude of visitors constantly cutting through than any intentional construction. Being out of the brambles was far more comfortable, but the sensation of being exposed, coupled with the eeriness of the faint fog mingled with the filtered moonlight, made peering back in the direction of an expected reappearance of the horseman all the more daunting. For a moment, she could concede to being a little creeped out by the program, for all it lacked the polish to make it truly immersive. She leaned back against Leiddem's chest, a far more obvious attempt to marshal her courage through the reassurance of his warmth.

"If we get to the pond and taking this stupid sword doesn't end the program, we're going to be stuck here running in circles until someone misses us," she whispered. Glancing the other way, she pointed down the pathway to their right. "We need to follow this, and watch our back."

Lieddem nodded. He was quite looking forward to claiming a sword even if it was only in the holodeck and not the thing of beauty he was considering in purchasing on the planet below. He wrapped his arms around her easily and held her there just for a moment. The setting might not be romantic but the person he was with was perfect. “Yes Ma’am.” He declared grinning at her, still trying to keep the jovial persona up. He knew they would not be found for hours as he knew he had no where to be for while.

He earned the deadpan he'd been aiming for, and a relatively-gentle elbow to the stomach to go with it, though Delaney was snickering quietly by the time she took the lead down the beaten track. In terms of the real deal, she had travelled the path many times since the pool in question had enough of a run-off to be clean enough for swimming. It was a narrow, winding trail but traversed often enough that most sizeable obstacles had been moved out of the way years ago. Programming the simulation had been a labour of love that had seen Delaney spend hours on ensuring the details were correct, which was just another reason for why these low-grade assets were failing to blend in with the necessary polish to create a properly immersive experience. That didn't mean to say that listening out for horse-hooves was particular pleasant, and the distant yet approaching snort of the beast further along the track brought Delaney to a standstill long enough to whip around and stare back through the fog. "We better move it."

“Do not need to tell me twice.” Leiddem commented glancing over his shoulder but he could not see anything through the fog that would reveal itself to him.

Breaking into a jog whilst trying to keep from making her own footfall create too much noise, Delaney ducked quickly under a low-hanging branch and then stumbled as, for a brief second, the world around them distorted. Several random flickers almost revealed the hologrid beyond the program's boundaries and, in a baffling succession of flashes, the lighting cycled through daytime, to dusk, to daytime again, and then back to the frosty mist of moonlit darkness. Turning a slow circle, Delaney surveyed the forest warily and murmured, "That was weird."

A shriek from her left evoked a yelp before she could help herself.

"And now we have a Banshee."

“I swear to the deities I’m going to read every mythic book I can when we get out.” What the hell was a Banshee? The Betazoid did not know but he did not like the shriek at all it sent shivers down his spine as well as made his head feel like it was going to explode.

The whinny of a horse answered, far too close to be comforting, and Laney gawped for a split second before resuming her haste forward. "Two at once? That is not fair."

“Divide and conquer?” He demanded thinking of which one would be best for her to take compared to him. He glanced around and yanked up a log to use as a weapon thinking it might be easier for him to take on the horse rather than the shrieking thing.

"We just have to get to the pond and try the sword. As long as this thing doesn't keep reinventing itself, they should reset and reshuffled once they get close anyway."

With that said, Delaney broke into a faster jog and focused her energy on following the path. There was no real recourse for encountering a Banshee anyway, it was never a key feature of any of the folktales that the hero survived his encounter by bopping the thing on its nose. The sound of a horse's angry scream gave her cause to glance backwards briefly, though Leiddem's yelled insistence that she keep going gave her only a split second to comply. He'll be fine, she chastised herself for letting the cheap thrills get to her. It'll reset before it can even touch him.

Leiddem was sure that if he kept moving it would be harder to get to him. He climbed up onto a tree as the horse and huntsman came towards him. He took a deep breath and leapt sending them all to the floor before the image reset leaving Leiddem stunned on the floor breathing heavily.

Several things happened all at once. First and foremost, the horseman's disappearance prompted an attempt by the program's algorithms to select a randomised sequence. Somewhere in the busted coding, and the holodeck's own integration issues, this translated to a disorienting shuffle of locations on top of its spook selection, though each setting appeared and disappeared in such rapid succession that Delaney eventually found it easier to just close her eyes. By the time the program creaked back to its initial parameters, the nauseating effect had been enough to turn the redhead in several circles as she tried to gather her wits and figure out her bearings.

The sound of trickling water eventually lured her, and with no small degree of relief, she burst through the glade to where the small pool sat inconspicuously in the moonlight. From its centre, the rising slope of a large rock provided the perfect diving platform, though in this instance it had been used as a very crude anvil to house a non-descript sword buried halfway to its hilt in the stone. For a second she stood, sizing up the task and trying to recall the best wading point so that she could reach the rock with the least amount of difficulty. It was as she was bracing herself with the silent reassurance that it would only be freezing cold water for a few moments longer that the scurry of movement in the trees just beyond caught Delaney's attention. She froze, staring, and waited for another hint that she wasn't alone.

Something dark disappeared up a tree trunk directly opposite.

Oh come on...

"Just stay back there," she shouted back down the track, careless of the increase in rustled leaves and indistinct shapes moving through the fallen debris that she aroused with her noise. "I've got this covered, you just watch the road!"

The man stops dead in his run towards her and looked around confused. “I’m watching the road. But you’re acting like you don’t want me there?” The man demanded bouncing on the balls of his feet inching to run towards Delaney to get them back together to face things as a team.

They had, over the course of their time as friends and then something so much more, learned plenty about each other. Amongst the detritus, the refuse of idiosyncrasies that some might have considered infantile, or at least a little odd, were the unique and somewhat illogical things that scared them. In her case, the overriding front-runner was the dark, though mostly when it was absolute and then usually because of the disorientation it evoked. In Leiddem's case, it was...

"Spiders! Lei', it's fine, I'll..."

Glancing around frantically as the forest floor seemed to shift and move around her, Delaney considered her options. She could plunge into the cold water and hope that she could manage the sword on her own. If the program was running properly, she was likely the one designed to remove it in any case. But, whilst the ridiculous side-show freaks hunting them hadn't rendered her entirely fearful of their safety, something about entering the water without back-up made her balk. They hadn't really any notion of whether the safeties were working, not when the basic parameters of the program were still working enough to reset the creatures before physical contact was made. Drowning, she feared, was another matter entirely.

"Let me just get close to a couple, it should reset them to something else!"

“What no… that is stupid.” Leiddem assured.

Bending down to pick up a fallen stick, Delaney turned towards the woods and grimaced, her tentative footsteps cracking twigs and provoking a scurry of hundreds of tiny feet. How big are they again? Did they have fangs? I think they had fangs.

The man gulped as she said spiders and frowned. He glanced around and finally noticed the scuttling around trees and in the shadows. He hated spiders, always had and the ship having great big ones when they lost power had been the final straw in his realisation that he had a phobia. For a man like Leiddem to admit that it was a big thing but one he did not mind admitting to Delaney. But stood there he stopped dead and looked at her, he could hear her questions but her lips were not moving.

"Great, I meet my *Imzadi* or whatever that word my grandparents bang on about is, and our first imprint is about fucking *spiders*." Leiddem said as he refused to stay where he was and joined her.

"What did you just call me?"

It was a jovial attempt, though by now Delaney was wielding her stick in both hands and had, thus far, smacked a tree branch and a large rock with it in anticipation of a greater threat. "How about a little less swearing at me and a little more jumping into a pond? Hopefully they weren't clever enough to program it to only respond to me; if you go for it, I'll try get close enough to these buggers to reset them to something less..."

She whirled and smashed her stick uselessly into a gorse bush.

"...slippery."

“We will discuss that later. Stay safe.” The man said firmly looking at the woman and shrugged. He looked a little helpless at What he had admitted aloud. It was not that he had wanted to admit it there and then, it just slipped out very much like how she had slipped into his heart, mind and very soul. He grunted a farewell and took off down the path towards the water ignoring the scuttling black figures.

Stay safe. In a situation that really shouldn't have warranted the caution, if the technology they were utilising was actually functioning as intended, that simple statement seemed provoke too many concerns that Delaney had been valiantly trying to keep at bay. So far, the jump scares had remained just that, with the creatures disappearing before physical contact was made. The rest of the environment, however, this section of home that would normally not have made her feel threatened at all, still presented some risks. With a desperate glance around, she paused long enough to consider doubling back to follow, as worried if not more about him entering the water without assistance. The soft landfall of a dozen shapes dropping behind her cancelled that inclination.

Delaney lofted her stick to shoulder height, adopted a baseball pose and waited. From all sides, the thud of hairy bodies dropping from the surrounding trees began to form a circle around her. She couldn't see anything more than an undulating mass of dark shadows, though once in a while the patchy moonlight would catch the glint of hundreds of glowing eyes. Heart beating in her chest, Laney stood her ground, hopeful that the advancing menace would get within range to reset without her having to do anything.

Running was easy for the man he could run out of most things, and he had the first 30 years of his life until the last couple of months when he had truly started making a life for himself. He skidded down the bank as he heard the familiar sound of drip drip drip of water, and saw the pond laid out before him. It did not look that deep but looks could be deceiving..

He glanced behind and saw the eight legged creatures still following him but they were few and far between, most had stayed back with Delaney. Which did not make him feel warm and fuzzy and it did not mean he was in the clear. He looked at them, one more time before he jumped into the pond and started wading through the water towards the glistening of the sword not that far away.

One step

Two steps

Three steps

Four steps.

Leaning forward, his hand wrapped around the hilt of the sword and pulled it free with a lot of whoop. He held it aloft in triumph.

The hissing was an unnecessary detail. From all sides, a sudden convergence of shapes heralded the leaping attack of the larger spiders from the back of the circle and with a yelp, Delaney braced herself for the inevitability of not being able to strike all of them at once. For a split second, rationality fled, which lead to utter disorientation when the swarm of spiders disappeared, along with...everything. Trees, bushes, rocks, the faint wind and smell of dirt. Still frozen mid-swing, her hands now empty, Delaney stared at the sudden glaring obnoxiousness of the hologrid and dropped her head back in relief. "Oh thank God."

The man grinned as everything disappeared. “No, thank Leiddem.” The man declared hand in the air before he realised how silly he looked without his sword.

A roll of her head sideways saw Delaney fix a withering deadpan that carried far too much good humour to be anything more than a mockery. Then, huffing with laughter at the sight of him, she adjusted her own pantomime to approach and wrap her arms around his middle in an attempt to guide him in circles. "That goes without saying," she declared in a rare moment of unconditional affection, unsullied by a follow up attempt to poke fun or succumb to practicalities. "And were I so inclined, I might thank God for Leiddem, because only you would still be grinning after that mess."

Of course he was smiling. He thought she was brilliant and this whole adventure had shown him more and more. “Of course I am grinning. I’ve got the best girlfriend in the whole wide universe because she fought spiders for me.” He said leaning down to kiss her.

And I always will. The thought passed through Delaney's mind, normally something she wouldn't have hesitated to express out loud but the rush of relief mingled with the adrenaline of the experience made it unenticing to pull away from the embrace at first. Both hands pressed to the side of his face, she grinned nevertheless into the kiss before playfully tapping her fingertips, like little spider's feet, against his cheek.

The man just rolled his eyes at her playfulness and pulled back. "Let's get out of here." He said wanting a shower and to rest despite how fun it had been looking back.

"Fine by me," Delaney assured, having had more than enough of her attempt to show him a piece of home. As the doors swung open to finally permit them to leave, her hand slipped into Leiddem's and gave it a squeeze. "You head back to quarters and I'll meet you there after I've had a little chat with Curtis about our adventure and how I'd kind of like to avoid a repeat of it." For a moment, Delaney paused and then added, "At least when I'm not expecting it."

When she was expecting it though? As she moved quickly through the corridors, Delaney found herself grinning. It had been absurd and nothing like what she'd wanted to achieve. She hadn't even broached half of the conversation that she was going to bring up, but that somehow didn't seem to matter very much now. Fresh enthusiasm, bolstered by a serious dose of deep, abiding affection, hastened her steps. They had a holodeck now. Even with its emerging problems, the possibilities it opened up were endless.

She had plans.