Chaos at the Crestwood - 2
| Chaos at the Crestwood - 2 | |
|---|---|
| Players |
Javi has summoned Maya for some research help |
Javi and Maya have met up at the public library at the appointed time to dig into the happenings at the Crestwood. To show his appreciation for her assistance, Javi has provided the refreshments. The sort that are allowed in a library, of course. But there are enough to keep them going for a while, even if they might end up with a sugar crash at some point. After all, if you're looking up sad stuff about kid ghosts, you probably need some m&ms as a pick me up. He has mostly left the books to Maya -- he has been engaged in a very extended and rabbit-hole-esque web search. If she looked over to check at any point, she would see some tabs with pretty dubious Geocities-type web design, many complete with horribly busy backgrounds containing pentagrams and weird single eyeball imagery. But hopefully he knows what he's doing. They're about two hours in, far enough that he sits back at the computer, reaching up to rub a hand over his face before he blinks several times to refocus. "Fuck."
At the moment, she's currently got one leg up and over the arm rest, one foot hooked on the leg of the chair, while she's tucked into the corner of the other armrest, a notepad lying flat on her stomach, a packet of scanned print-outs of newspaper articles, a pen dangling from her teeth. She tilts her head back to look at Javi, reaching to pull the pen from her teeth, and asks, "You want pretzels?" She's commandered the whole bag on the floor next to her. "You know, I always figured ghost shit would be like, really recent or really old, like in the 80s. But like, 2017. I was in high school then." Javi had really been //quite// focused throughout the entire marathon session -- maybe even a little weirdly so. However, now that he's stopped, it only takes him a second or two to practically jump up out of his chair and begin to pace. "Yeah," he replies, "sure. Thanks." He starts toward her, reaching down to grab a handful from the bag. Once he has, he straightens up and starts to walk around the immediate vicinity, popping one into his mouth here and there as he goes. When she goes on, though, he looks back over at her and lets out a little amused huff. He's not laughing //at// her, not at all. It's just a funny picture. "Yeah," he agrees, "they kinda mostly show like...old shit. In movies or whatever. Kinda funny to see what they get right and wrong." He shrugs, popping another pretzel into his mouth. "You find anything?" Maya even helpfully reaches to push the bag closer to him! So helpful, so kind. She herself looks around for where to put her packet of printouts, before choosing to lean and tuck them between her and the back of the chair, before she picks up the notepad on her stomach, "Uhhh, yeah, sort of? It's probably the 2017 fire. And there was actually a /dude/ named Crestwood, that was just some cute apartment name. Uhh...John?" She squints at her own writing, "No, It was Joe Crestwood. I figure he's the landlord or the apartment owner or something, because there as this ad in August that year trying to get people together to sue him in one of those class action stuff, since people were wondering if the building was up to code or whatever. There's an email, too." Javi continues his route around the room, eating his pretzels and listening to Maya -- probably, anyway. He doesn't actually //seem// like he's listening, because he's not really looking at her while she talks, but once he's wandered back toward her his reply makes it clear that he was. "Huh, okay." He crouches down near enough to her to peer at the writing as well, his head tipping thoughtfully to one side. "Guess that makes sense. There's been a ton of shit that went down there. All the weirdo sites talking about it, and there's even someone living there who's posting photos on a blog thing." Something seems to strike him then, and he straightens up. "You know what, she said something about Joe, too. She does, like...automatic writing? Supposedly. Like going into a trance and writing shit. Joe came up a buncha times." "I didn't find out much about him." Maya admits, holding the pad over so Javi can read. It's really more of a series of jotted down phrases, in Maya's round-but-messy print, at all angles. "Couldn't really find anything about whether the class action took off either, man. Is Joe the one tapping into the girl or is everyone tapping in just mad at this Joe guy? Maybe we need to find him." She lets the notepad fall back on her stomach, if Javi doesn't collect it, before the foot slung over the arm of the chair slides down to the floor, "The big news sites are reporting stuff too, just the last few months. They just figure it's B&E." He's quiet for a few more seconds, still squinting down at the writing, before he sighs. "So there was some kinda accident," he finally continues. "Guess it's not just one kid. She said it's, like, thirteen. And they're all pissed, obviously. And scared. So it's tough to contact 'em. But if Joe keeps coming up it's gotta be something he did, right? Or didn't do, maybe." "Or what they think he did or didn't do, right? I mean, real estate's a scam and all, but I read nobody knew how the fires started." Maya pours herself onto her feet, before leaning into a long stretch, one that's even got her on her tippy toes at one point. Good stretch. A shake of her limbs, before she collects the packet of papers and notepad that have fallen, along with the pen, and puts them on the table, reaching for her water bottle to have a gulp or two. "If he was tryna cut corners and save on bills, he might've just let code go to shit, and any little accident blew the place up. Probably the most likely scenario. If it was an accident and not an insurance scam or something. Whether he blew it up for money, or somebody did to sue him. People are fucked up." "Yeah," Javi replies slowly, still looking at the notebook. Eventually, though, he pulls his eyes away and hands it back to her, reaching up a rub a hand over his forehead. "That'd make sense. Definitely a thing where I grew up. People just didn't wanna spend on shit so it'd get real bad before anything got fixed. Right? Especially if it's in a neighborhood where people won't really say nothing about it. But ghosts don't give a shit. They'll do whatever they're gonna do." He resumes his pacing around the room, though he doesn't go far. Just a circuitous route around where they've set up camp. "Actually kinda know a lawyer," he adds thoughtfully. "Sort of. I could maybe try and get a meeting with him to see if he could look some shit up about it or something." Maya takes out her cell phone, sending Javi a text with, probably tactlessly, (derelect house, fire, scales) and the email she found on the class action ad. "That's cool. I know there's a way to check on court stuff, but I got no clue how." Maya admits, giving a little shrug. "At least we know when she died, and everybody around her. Do you know why she started haunting stuff now? Or is it just because people are around now?" She wonders, looking at Javi with a vaguely puzzled expression. "Everything I saw was from just a few months back, it's been opened for like a year." Javi's phone pings, and he reaches into his pocket to pull it out and glance down at it. He doesn't seem offended by the emoji usage -- he clicks on the email to make it bigger so that he can read it, before he nods. "Yeah," he says once he looks up again, "me neither. But maybe he could at least, like...tell us how to do it or something." He puts away his phone again, wandering over the the computer when she asks this to click on one of the open tabs. "I found like, a thing here and there going back to when it opened, but it definitely got hotter the more people moved in. There was this one thing like six months ago, where this couple brought home a baby but they moved out right away 'cause every time the baby cried there'd suddenly start to be a bunch of crazy shit going on. Only stayed like a month."
Her question gives him pause, but ultimately he shrugs. "Seems like it should be," he agrees. "At least we oughta be able to find //something//. You wanna check that out, and I'll see about the class action? Then we can see what we can figure out after that." "Yeah, maybe I'll check out the apartments, too. Just pretend I want to rent the place out or something. I am actually, technically, still apartment-shopping, so it might not be a bad idea. Maybe just find some gossip from somebody around the block or something. If there's a local corner shop or a bar some locals go to, you know?" Maya says, reaching to grab the bag of pretzels and crunch through a few of them herself. Mmm, crunchy. "There's always somebody in someone's business." "Oh, yeah, good call." Javi looks around to grab any trash they've left, before he heads to the computer again. A few clicks later, and he's sent mail to himself with all the links he's found, before he clears the browser history and closes everything out. Perhaps it's from habit. "You're right, someone around there's gonna know something. When I went I was focused on the ghosts so I didn't really talk to nobody, but I don't think we oughta try and do anything with 'em again until we got more to go on." Maya just gives a vague, open shrug. "Yeah, I don't know anything about ghosts, so I'll basically leave that to you." Maya freely leaves the dead to Javi. "I just feel bad about the whole fire thing. There's been way too much fire in this city." Maya removes a hand from her pocket, to brush her hair back and then give her hand a little flick, droplets of water Javi can't see disappearing into the air. "Anyway, let's look around and you can buy me food. I think there's a deli nearby." Javi lets out a little huff, but he nods to acknowledge that he is at least slightly better equipped to deal with the ghostly part. "Sounds good. But yeah, it really fucking sucks. If we can figure out how to get it to let up, that'd be good." He's briefly distracted by Maya's movement, but in the way of someone who does seem to get visually distracted by certain things -- he doesn't seem to think anything of it in particular, since he can't see anything out of the ordinary. That distracted look shifts into a grin a moment later, anyway. "Right on," he agrees. "I could go for a big-ass sandwich." With everything now collected, he starts toward the door, opening it for her to precede him out and onward to FOOD. | |