Chill: Hey Hey Johnny

Yesterday was Chill, and then we went to the drive-in and saw The Invisible Man and The Hunt, so I'm a little sleepy. Here's last time.

The envoys are in the living room (which is warded, recall), trying to figure their next move. Jordan notes that they haven't checked the cars outside, which presumably belong to the missing teens, so they head out to the driveway to try that. The cars are locked, but Emily breaks the windows impatiently.

Both cars have what you'd expect from teens on a road trip - food wrappers, drink cans, and like. Papers in the glove box indicate that the sedan is registered to Vicki Parsons, while the SUV is registered to Jacob Hammond. The SUV doesn't contain much of interest; there's a case of beer in the back, but otherwise nothing. The sedan, however, does turn up something interesting. On the floor of the back seat is a copy of a book called CrimeSong: True Crime Stories From Southern Murder Ballads. The book is obviously in process of being read; it's got notes and underlines, but it's not old or weathered. Jennifer takes a moment to speed-read it. It's basically a history of murder ballads, specifically from the South. As such, nothing specific about their area of the country is mentioned, but the song "Knoxville Girl" (which was on the Louvin Brothers album they found inside) and its history are described.

Samantha uses Postcognition on the book, and sees the cars pulling in. A heavyset girl is driving the sedan, and the black boy that she saw in an earlier vision is riding shotgun. They stop the car and kiss, and when the girl gets her bag out of the back, the book falls on the floor.

Samantha notes that the kids don't look spooked or excited as though they're trespassing, just happy to be on vacation. Apparently they didn't know that anything was wrong. The characters talk about this a bit, and Blake muses that the kids probably listened to the album just like the envoys did. Just like you did, a voice whispers to him. At this point, the book in Samantha's hands falls apart as though the binding just disintegrated.

The characters head back inside, and Blake looks around the living room. He notes that they didn't check the closet, and inside finds a plastic bin labeled "INTERNET". Inside there's a router and the cables to set up a wireless connection; evidently it comes with the house and the teens either didn't find it or didn't bother. He sets it up, and the envoys talk about their position.

They note that the mysterious voice only seems to talk to some of them - it hasn't spoken to Samantha or BB, for example. It calls women "lovely" and it sounds male, though since it whispers that's hard to tell (although Jordan points that given its attitude toward women, it's almost certainly male). Blake thinks it has a southern accent, but he can't place it. Since they've seen it near the washer/dryer, they decide to have a look there again.

Jordan and Blake leave the ward to check the mud room. Jordan closes the door on the washer and a face appears in the glass, a distorted reflection of a young man. She recoils, but keeps her cool. The figure talks to them a bit, and it does indeed have a southern accent.

Remembering the lyrics to "Knoxville Girl," Blake calls it "Willy." It says that it hasn't been "Willy Wise" in some time now. Blake asks if there's going to be a "Boise Girl" song about this instance, and thinks that he sees a flash of anger in the man's face. It vanishes, and the characters fall back.

The characters talk in the living room more (this is going to be a common thing, as you might have noticed). Since the teens unplugged the appliances, including the TV, Blake wonders if the creature might be able to appear in that screen. They lug the TV into the hallway, out of the ward but still close by, and plug it in. And indeed, the man appears.

He taunts them again, saying that he expected better of "the Society." Some of the envoys call him "Willy," and he tells them again that it's not his name. It doesn't seem to anger him, though, he just isn't going to answer to it. Jordan asks if the kids are OK. The man says that they're alive, but not OK. Becky is going to need her inhaler at some point, so the characters had better figure it out.

The characters decide that they need to figure out how the teens disappeared and where they are. Jordan tries to go to the car and get some gear, but even with a Mental Shield up, she can't pass the barrier. She figures that effect is targeting the place, not her, so while she might be able to activate a Sphere of Protection and walk though it, she isn't sure if that's wise (since it would leave everyone else in the "bubble", including the teens). They also figure that Becky must be in the corner bedroom (since that was the one with two women, and the woman in the other bedroom was Vicki). Jennifer and Emily go to the bedroom to search it, and Jennifer finds Becky's inhaler - prescribed to Rebecca Bennet - in her pants pocket on the floor.

At this point, the door to the room slams. Emily figures she knows how to deal with this, grabs a chair and hurls it against a window, only to have it bounce back. The man's face appears in the glass and smiles, and Emily insults it, telling it that if it wants to come out and be corporeal she'd love a chance to fight it. She turns to work on the door, and Jennifer sees a humanoid figure appear behind Emily for a split second. Emily feels a stabbing pain in her back and a wound opens, apparently from a knife. Emily hears the man whisper You really ready to see another comrade die? I could gut her right now.

Emily activates Feat of Strength and shoulders the door, but it doesn't budge. The others hear the commotion, though, and come down the hall. Jordan uses Disrupt on the door and it opens, and the characters fall back to the ward again. Jordan stitches up Emily's shoulder, and they talk it over again. This creature, whatever it is, is playing with them. BB opines that if this thing is really interested in this game, it probably hasn't killed the kids yet and it might talk to them and let something slip. Presently, though, it's content to wait them out until the ward falls. Since BB is far and away the toughest of the envoys (master of all the Restorative disciplines, after all), he decides to go into the hallway and talk with the being again. He brings the record, too, figuring it might be something that the creature is focused on.

It appears, and BB tells it that if it wants to play this game, it needs to be a little clearer on the rules. He also asks why the man isn't talking to him like he is the others. The man says that frankly he finds BB a little boring, and he's amused that given that the envoys have someone who can see back in time that they haven't applied that ability well. Emily, listening, says that she feels the man is the one who's boring, and pulls her gun, again asking for a chance to shoot him. The man appears in front of BB, wiping Emily's blood off his knife, and says "go ahead, then."

Emily shoots, and BB suddenly lurches forward, pulled by an unseen force. The bullet catches him in the back, but fortunately his Resilience discipline minimizes the damage. He falls forward and Emily stares in horror. The man grins and says "there, now, don't you feel better?" before vanishing.

BB limps back into the ward Jordan removes the bullet and stitches him up. He tells Emily that she needs to calm down and think - she might have been trying to bait the creature, but she let it bait her and shot an envoy in the process. BB uses his Heal discipline to close the wound, and Samantha decides to use Postcognition on the record player to see what happened when the teens played it.

She sees Vicki and the black boy talking. Vicki is excited about the record; she mentions that "Knoxville Girl" actually charted back in the 50s. The others seem more or less nonplussed, but she plays the song. As they listen, one of the kids looks up and says "Who's Johnny Wren?" Others ask what he means, but he said he thought the other boy (apparently his boyfriend) said it. Samantha hears the name "Johnny Wren" several more times, and then the song ends. She sees the creature's face appear in the TV, but the teens aren't looking. 

Armed with this new name, Jennifer gets back to research. Turns out there was a murderer named Johnny Wren. He killed his girlfriend, her sister, and her cousin back in 1958 in South Carolina before his girlfriend's father disarmed him and chased him off after whacking him in the face with a log. But here's the weird thing - Johnny Wren is still alive. He's almost 80 now and he's in federal prison. Jennifer also manages to find a digitized SAVE record of an encounter with a being called "Willy Wise" in Cincinnati in 1899. The envoys describe disciplines of the Evil Way much like the ones the characters have seen (Slam, Whisper, Quiet), but not its ability to cut an area off from the outside world or how it's hiding people. That manifestation ended when two workers doing construction on the Ohio River got in a fight that left one of them dead and one of them on death row for the murder.

It's almost 6PM. The characters are hungry and tired, and they've got a few more hours until sunset. As they rest a bit, they hear glass breaking and a ruckus from one of the bedrooms. Blake guesses it's Johnny Wren, trying to draw them out, but Jennifer wonders if it might be one of the teens. Jordan and BB head down the hall to check.

Inside the corner bedroom (the one where Jennifer found the inhaler), they see that a window has been broken inward and there's blood on the sill on the bedspread. They see the clothes moving as though someone is rummaging through them, and for a split second they see one of the teens, the African American boy, standing there screaming at them. Jordan tries to reach out and Disrupt the effect, but she collapses. BB calls the creature out, but then sees Jordan's shirt slit itself open and the words MY NAME IS JOHNNY cut themselves into her back.

BB reaches down to get the inhaler, and the boy appears, fully visible...and then BB blacks out as well. The other envoys are heading to the room, but things are definitely going badly.