Chill: A Long Saturday

Chill! Woo! Here's last time.

Emily and Dylan are released from the hospital. Emily's wounds have been stitched up, while Dylan is out of a 24 hour hold in psych ward. They contact the others, who are staying nearby at Vicki's house, and head over for coffee.

Once there, they try and take stock of what's happening. Beth Anne is sitting on the couch, rocking and shaking a bit, and blames herself for the deaths of the scout leaders. Vicki goes over to try and help her (using the Calm discipline), but screws it up. They see into each other for a moment, and Beth Anne hears music playing, songs about murder. Vicki sees a black, shadowy hand reach out from under the couch and stroke Beth Anne's ankle lovingly. Understandably, she freaks out a bit, and points to where she saw it. Emily yanks Beth Anne off the couch and peers underneath, but sees nothing. The envoys manage to talk Beth Anne down, and Dylan wards the room to get her to talk about Jaworsky. 

She says that Jaworsky was the name she gave the "monster under her bed." It used to talk to her and take her on adventures where they'd fight monsters and help people, but she was never sure if what she was experiencing was real. Certainly when she told people, they never thought it was, and Beth Anne wound up in psych wards and on meds a lot. But now Jaworsky was talking to her again, and had turned mean and angry. She isn't sure what to make of it, or whether it's tied into these dogs. 

The envoys decide to head back over the park with the baseball diamond, since that's where they were sensing Unknown stuff yesterday. Also, Vicki needs to look in on her dad in hospital.  First, though, Emily splurges and buys them all heavy leather jackets, to act as protection from dog bites. They also buy some bear spray. 

They get there and look around, but don't see or sense anything untoward, so they split up. Vicki and Dylan head to the hospital, Manny and Emily stick near the baseball diamond (where a Little League game is taking place), and Beth Anne and Jennifer head over to Friendship Square to see if there's anything there. 

Vicki and Dylan get up to the room and find that Vicki's father is being discharged in a few hours. Vicki says she'll come back and get him, and goes to get him lunch. Everything seems under control, though, and apart from the wounds he's suffered, he seems to be OK.

Manny walks over toward the bleachers and Peedee slips his leash. He runs over and starts sniffing at another dog, and Manny hears a girl in the stands start to cry. He looks up and sees that it's Chrissy, the young girl who was bitten at Friendship Square last night. Her mother, arguing with her father about bringing her out in the first place, hustles her away, and her father hops down off the bleachers and talks with Manny. Manny learns that Chrissy is terrified, but surprisingly unharmed. The dog bite broke the skin and it bled, but compared to the savage rending that befell the two scout leaders, it was a love bite. Mostly just bruising. Manny notes this, and heads back to the others. 

Beth Anne and Jennifer go over to Friendship Square, and have no trouble getting in, as the door is gone. Beth Anne finds nothing but some debris upstairs; all the girls' personal effects are gone. She finds some of the waxy, black claw marks on the stairs, but only halfway up - this would be the dog that ran up, bit Chrissy, and then ran away. Jennifer, checking downstairs, pieces together the dog attack and finds that the dogs bit the women on the arms and legs multiple times before ripping out their throats. 

The envoys reconvene and talk about what they've found. They relate the story about Chrissy and Iris to Emily and Dylan, and Emily, figuring it's worth a shot, grabs a bunch of dandelions and pockets them (Dylan does as well, reflecting that Emily has been right about stuff like this before). Vicki gets online and looks at the troop's web page, but apart from learning some names, doesn't see anything noteworthy. 

Jennifer, however, is a professional snoop. She follows the page to the troop's Facebook profile, and finds a frankly irresponsible number of pictures (and a lot of "RIP Miss Laurie & Miss Mary" posts). Looking back some posts, however, she finds something very interesting. Last Sunday, the troop was at the dog park, meeting with a woman who trains therapy dogs and learning about what therapy dogs and so on. One of the moms posted that as they were leaving, she saw a man arrive with a little girl, about 6 or 7, who was afraid of dogs. The man was trying to force her to interact with dogs at the park, to cure her of that fear (the mom in question was justifiably horrified at this). One of the other moms commented, saying that she and her daughter had stuck around and when the man and his daughter left, he'd said that "if you can't get over this we'll have to come back next week." 

Today is Saturday, and this happened last Sunday. They check the weather forecast and see that it's supposed to rain tomorrow, and, not having a better lead, they head over to the dog park. Manny sees the woman he talked to the other day, the one with the black labs, and asks her about the man and his daughter. As they're talking, though, the woman points over Manny's shoulder: "There they are!"

Dylan, watching the parking lot, saw them arrive: A man in a red t-shirt and his little girl. Walking into the park, the man stops and dresses the girl down; she's obviously not keen to be here. They enter the park, look around, and start walking up to Manny and Peedee. He asks if his daughter can pet Peedee, and Manny responds that she can if she wants, but he isn't going to force the issue. The man tries to get his daughter to approach Peedee, but she's obviously scared. Manny points out that this really isn't cool, and (falsely) claims to be a cop, but the man gruffly points out that he's not doing anything illegal and says that Manny should mind his business. He picks up his daughter and walks away, into the park, presumably looking for another dog, but the park is pretty empty today. 

The envoys quickly discuss options. It would be nice if they could help the girl feel less afraid, but they aren't sure how. Vicki uses Follow the Strings and sees that the girl is genuinely scared, but also that there's some lingering, maybe dormant Unknown presence around her - not dissimilar to what she felt hanging around Beth Anne yesterday, actually. Vicki decides to go and talk to the girl, and maybe see if she can make friends.

She walks up and asks them if they've seen a frisbee around; she threw it for her dog, but her dog is stupid and didn't get it. This makes the girl smile a little, and Vicki takes that in as a way to talk to her. The girl says that she's afraid of dogs, because they "run fast and bite". Vicki gets her to look at pictures of little dogs in costumes, and that makes her giggle a little. She tells Vicki that she drew a picture of scary dogs last time she was here, but the picture blew away. She gets the girl (Isabel) to draw her a picture of a big black dog in a silly hat, and that seems to help. The girl even agrees to go over and meet the "labradogs". 

Meanwhile, Beth Anne hears a voice in her head, and says "he's here." She has a quick exchange with Jaworsky, which ends with him saying hold that thought. Your friend is trying to take Isabel away from me. The lady calls her dogs, and they start gallumphing over. But then Isabel screams, buries her face in her father's legs, and wets herself. 

Dylan immediately throws up a Mental Shield over everyone. The lady commands her dogs to stop, which they do. Even Ted, Isabel's father, is concerned at the extremity of her reaction. She's sobbing and trying to talk, but Vicki only makes out a few words: giant, black, dogs, teeth, blood. 

Vicki tries to talk her down, and manages to get her a little calmer. But then it starts to rain buckets. Everyone heads under the pavilion, and Ted tells Vicki that he's going to take Isabel home. They exchange numbers, however; Vicki offers to babysit. 

The envoys all agree that Jaworsky seems to have designs on Isabel - maybe he's replacing Beth Anne, maybe he's always had multiple victims. Vicki shows them Isabel's drawing and the dog she's drawn looks very much like the dogs that are attacking people. The first drawing she did blew away towards the copse of trees where the dogs attacked them - maybe it's still there? 

The envoys decide to pull their cars around to the other side of said copse of trees (it's not very big) and investigate. They have hours before sunset, after all, so hopefully they can find the drawing, or the dogs, or something. We shall see.