Bloodline - 0..1

It was a year unlike most others. Where there should have been a warm breeze through these parts the locals felt an unsettling chill in the air. The once rampant undergrowth lining one particular house had receded and coiled into a wall of thorns. No one dared venture inside, and as the weeks passed the brush began to overtake the house. As the cold continued and worsened with time the house remained in a state of constant neglect. People no longer took to the park or spent their times about the burrows. Instead they moved like drones through their routine that had a stench of stagnancy about it.

When the cold worsened there were less and less people queuing up about town until eventually the seasonal abnormality had brought activity to a grinding halt. The grocers began to dwindle down their hours, the tennis club closed its doors and the music shop no longer resonated a pleasant anthem in the wee hours of the morning. Instead, the silence crept about. And it was not the comfortable suburban silence that overtakes a neighborhood at midnight, it was the deafening silence after the blast of a shotgun.

In late September of the year a stranger found his way into the villa with his caravan of belongings. Finding it difficult to secure permanent lodgings in the town he instead headed for the nearest bed and breakfast. The trip had been long and he needed a place to rest his weary head.

Rap rap rap rap rap echoed the noise of the door knocker in fifteen Bright View Terrace on the upper east side. Again, the knocker clattered against the door until a woman with gnarled fingers and a hooked nose pulled it ajar to greet her mysterious guest. No sooner than she flicked the lamp on and opened the door came a driving rain and a crash of thunder.

"Oh dear, come in, come in," she urged, pulling the man by the shoulder into the foyer. Quickly she took the mans coat and flung it onto a nearby rack before rushing off in a moment of revelation. "Care for a spot of tea?" She called out from the other room amidst the sounds of pans and pots clattering about.

"Not just yet," the man spoke, softly but with volume and a sense of authority, "I should like to find a place for my bags first."

"Oh, how could I have forgotten?" The woman squawked whilst she peered from the pantry, "Brian!" She screeched towards the staircase, "Brian! Come down here!"

Quickly to follow a gangly boy sprinted down the stairs and stopped just short of an carelessly placed umbrella stand. "Hey there, name's Brian Reynolds, may I take your bags?" Before the man even had a chance to utter a response Brian was already up the stairs with great haste and bearing more than the lion's share of assorted bags and cases. As quickly as he disappeared, Brian reemerged from a room behind the pantry.

"Care for anything sir?" Brian peeped from the doorway. The stranger, standing in shock from what he just witnessed, managed to stumble out "I'll take the tea" while he stood admiring the room. At first he hadn't taken notice of the elaborate construction in the house. The rafters stood tall, maybe twelve feet from the floor, and were decorated with various artworks, occasional graffiti and, most notably, a set of nine different but seemingly related gargoyles.

Rushing out with a pot and a tray of fine china, Mrs. Reynolds bounded to a table in the adjacent room with the grace of a ballerina. Despite her age the woman could still move, the man thought. He slowly made his way into the dining room where Mrs. Reynolds was busy pouring three cups of tea from her ornate pot.

"Oh, where are my manners?" She inquired to assumedly nobody but herself. "My name is Maria Reynolds, welcome to the Oasis. How long will you be staying with us mister..." she trailed off expecting a response.

"Nordson, but I go by Victor," the man replied curtly. "I'll be here until I can find a space to rent for a while." His eyes constantly afoot, Victor continued to scan his surroundings. On the wall were various medals that looked military in nature. Below them rested an old phonograph and a collection of records that looked as aged as Mrs. Reynolds.

"Well Victor," Maria began, "until you find a place to stay you may call this home. Our rates are reduced if your stay is longer, so might you give me an estimate as for your stay?"

"I think two weeks will suffice," he replied, his attention clearly torn.

---Break: Continue Later---
Direction: Activity inspired, revisit old thorny house, attention to Brian's lurkings, town still in static state, breath some life into this corpse.