A chill wind blew across the top of the hill.  No mournful singing disturbed the night's silence.  Above them, countless stars shone brighter than they had ever seen before.  The silent, shimmering, shapes of the Aurora Borealis streak across the sky, casting an eerie, shifting, light over the scene.

Five people stand, sit, a little way off from the gaping maw of an open grave.  At either end of the grave stands a solitary figure.

Peter Van Hoff kneels next to Lucy Talbot, helps her to sit, is powerless to help with the pounding sensation in her temples.  Ryan Cross and James Stanza gaze around themselves, confused at the sudden change.  Annabelle Croft rushes towards Peter and Lucy.  Something around them clearly disturbs her.

Peter is the first to break the silence.

"What the hell just happened?"

"j'ai mal au coeur... " James muttered, blinking and rubbing his eyes at the sudden change in scenery. 
"Lucy... where have you taken us now?"

Lucy? Who was... oh, right...

"She did this?" Ryan asked, staring around him in disbelief, his ever-present sense of Where He Was roiling a like a kennel of pups just thrown a ham bone.

"I don't care who did this but it had better stop." Peter said furiously. The situation had gotten out of hand and he felt helpless to do anything to correct it. A feeling he did not like in the least.

Lucy held her aching head between her palms. She squeezed her eyes shut. Nothing seemed to help."I don't think I did this," was all she could say before she had to lie down. She tried to steady her breathing. With her eyes still closed, she tried to remember what she had heard and seen and felt just before she found herself here.

"You did it."

The voice came from the figure at the near end of the grave.  Low, soft, flat.  No emotion, no feeling.  It was a statement, nothing more.

Peter started to head toward Lucy to make sure she was okay when the voice spoke. Stopping in mid-stride he turned back to the grave. "Who are you?" He demanded.

The figures began circling the grave, one always opposite the other.  Their voices quiet, low, subdued.  No emotion.

"You did it."

"I arranged for certain events to happen."

"You did it."

"I was contracted by certain individuals to ensure that events took place in a way that would lead to the elimination of an individual who was causing problems."

"You did it."

The two stopped, back where they began.  Until now, neither had given the slightest indication that they had heard Peter speak.  Then they turned and looked toward him.  They spoke together.

"We are being observed."

Lucy rolled over on her side to try to see the two speakers. She had been about to ask them what she had done, but then she realized that she was not the one being accused, at least not by the two people at the grave. Her head still hurt so much it was hard to think straight, but she still felt the hair rise on the back of her neck when the two seemed to become aware of being watched and the implication that none of the rest of them were really where the other two were at all.

As Lucy moved, the two figures walked around the grave, coming within a few steps of each other for the first time.  They walked towards the small group of five, moving faster than anyone had thought possible in strange, flickering jerks.  As they drew closer, Peter was the first to get a good look at them.  The words died in his throat.

Their suits are old, Victorian perhaps?  They show signs of rot, decay, mildew.  Strangely, there is no smell, no sound from rustling cloth.  Their grey skin is drawn tight over their bones, what's left of their muscles.  Around the eyes of one the skin is gone completely, the eyeballs shrunken and resting in their sockets, held in place by the nerves and leathery muscles.  The other is missing its lower jaw and half it's neck.  Where did the voices come from?

Ryan had started to crouch to figure out how to help Lucy, and stopped when he saw the... whatever they were... heading towards them. This really had gone too damn far. He rose and stepped forward towards Peter, and the ... whatever they were... eyes narrowed. The thistle pin on his lapel gleamed dully in the strange light of the graveyard.

Involuntarily Peter took a step back and almost ran into Ryan moving forward. He cast a questioning glance at the other man, silently asking him if he had any idea what was going on.

The figures stopped a few paces from Peter.  Annabelle hissed "There's more of them behind us.  I don't know if you can see them."  She glanced around the graveyard, colour draining from her face.  "We're surrounded!  Lucy, you need to get us out of here!"

"Well you ain't gonna do it again, whatever it was. I've about had it up to here," he raised his hand above his head, palm flat towards the ground, "...with crazy." He glared at the things hotly. "What the hell did you do? And if the answer is 'killed my great-aunt', I'm gonna beat seven kinds of Hell out of you or die tryin'." 

Peter moved to put his back to Ryan's in case the ones Annabelle said were behind them got any ideas. It did not matter to him anymore if this was real or just an elaborate hoax, he just wanted it over with and if that meant a fight, so be it.

James looked on helplessly and closed in around Lucy with the others, figuring that, right now, she was the best bet for escaping this twisted mirror of their own world.

"Sorry, Lucy.  I really am very sorry."  Annabelle did look very apologetic as she crouched down behind Lucy.  Then less so as she whacked her around the back of the head with her backpack.

For Lucy, the world went dark.  For everyone else, it went light.  Closest to the two figures, Ryan caught the last words the creatures said before they faded to white.  "He is coming!"  As much as he could read their faces, it sounded like fear.

The five now had no surroundings at all.  Everywhere, every direction, was white.  Stark, clinical, white.  They cast no shadows.  Only the fact that some of them were standing gave them any indication of where "down" was.

Lucy moaned as she slowly came back to consciousness. She blinked her eyes open and saw that the graveyard had been replaced by, well, nothing. Well, almost nothing, it seemed that she was still with the tourgroup. Her headache had subsided a bit, though now it was more towards the back of her head, rather than her temples - just more wierdness on top of all of this wierdness.

"So, where are we now?" She asked no one in particular and everyone in general. "And please don't tell me I brought us here again, wherever here is."

While she awaited an answer, she sat up and tried to see if wherever here was happened to match any of the feelings or sensations, the Possibilities, she had sensed at the portal in Aamalan's room.

"I wish I knew." Peter answered, looking around. This shit was just getting weirder and weirder all the time. Maybe it would be a good idea for him to take a vacation after all this was over. "As for you bringing us here, we came here as soon as you were knocked unconcious. Make of it what you will." Peter shrugged, a gesture that somehow did not look right coming from him.

"We're somewhere around the Espanade of Edinburgh Castle." Ryan replied absently. If he tried to focus anymore on where 'here' was, he was pretty sure he'd toss his cookies. Not pretty in a world of white.

It was hard to say whether the tapping noise had always been there and they hadn't noticed, or whether it just got louder when they started talking.  It was a faint, rhythmic, tapping - five taps, a pause, three taps, a longer pause, then five taps again, then three.  Whatever it was it gave a direction to the void there were in, things resolving into "towards the noise" and "away from the noise".

"Well," Ryan said, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels. "We could also go that way." He jerked his chin towards the sound.

Annabelle followed his finger, the rest followed her gaze.  There was nothing to be seen but the noise had got a little louder.

"Sounds familiar," James shook his head a couple of times.  "Classical.  War?  Planets?"

"Mars."  Annabelle nodded.  "Holtz.  You're right.  Is that a good sign or a bad one?"

James shrugged.  "It's what you make it, I guess."  He took a couple of steps towards what he figured was the source of the noise.  "You coming?"

"At least if we follow the noise we won't blunder around in circles." Peter said moving in James' direction. "After everything else so far tonight, what's the worse that can happen?"

Lucy struggled to her feet and followed James as well. "I'd rather not have to think about how this could get worse," she muttered to herself. Her imagination, of couse, had other ideas. It played out scenario after scenario for her of all sorts of ways this strange misadventure could turn out. She tried to shake away her fear of what might be next, but all she succeeded in doing was to make her head hurt again.

The drumming grew louder as they approached, never enough to drown conversation but enough to let them know they were getting closer to its source.  Which turned out, strangely enough, to be a window.  One minute there was nothing but featureless white all around them, the next a large sash window hung in the air before them.  White painted wood frames, two panes of glass three feet wide by five tall, the top of the window some eight feet above Ryan's head.  The window looked out onto a stage, three actors - maybe singers - and beyond them the orchestra pit and theatre proper.

Peter had given up believing this was some sort of trick. Unless he had been drugged and this was all an hallucination there were forces at work he could not even begin to imagine, much less control. It was not a feeling he was comfortable with but he was determined to make the best of the situation.

"Can someone give me a boost? I want to see if we can get this open?" Peter asked looking at the two men with him.

"Sure," Ryan replied, making a stirrup of his hands and moving into position under the window.

"Ready?" Peter asked placing his foot in the makeshift stirrup. With Ryan's help he grabbed the bottom of the window and tried to pull himself up enough to find the window's latch.

Lucy felt equal in parts a rush of hope and a surge of fear. On one hand, she wasn't happy about being in this strange featureless place, but still, it did seem better than the last 3 places the group had been in. She shivered at the idea of going to some other place only to find her heachaches returning, or something worse waiting for them. So, while the men tried to get a better look at the window, Lucy sat down and tried to get a more definite feeling of the place they now occupied. At least, she thought to herself, this would seem to make a resonable place to return to if things went worse again. 

Several things happened almost simultaneously.

The window slid open, far easier than Peter could have imagined.  He was carried up, out of the grip of the surprised Ryan and James before falling back onto the grubby floorboards they now stood on.  Peter, Ryan, James ended up in a tangle of limbs, coughing in the dust.

Lucy felt a distinct falling sensation, a bitter taste in her mouth, the sharp stabbing pain of a fish-hook through her cheek.

Annabelle vanished in a swirl of salty dust, *poof*.  Gone.  Taken.  For some reason, the four remaining knew she had been taken.  They just couldn't explain it rationally.

The drumming grew louder, almost to the point of pain, then faded again to an ever-present beat that tried to worm its way into their muscles, make them tap it out.

The stage was gone, as was the window.  They were at the bottom of a flight of stairs, footfalls rapidly descending towards them.

Disentangling himself from the others, Peter stood and faced the stairs. He did not want to be caught off guard when whatever was descending toward them appeared.

"This," Ryan growled as he pushed himself to his feet, "is just getting beyond ridiculous." He bent to give the ladies a hand up, should they need it. 

Next up was James, glancing about wildly then looking distastefully as he futily attempted to brush the dust from his good clothes.  When he heard the drumming he winced, massaging his temples with one hand ans smearing his temples with dirt  from his fingertips as a result.  

"Ow."  he understated.

As the noise lessened he heard the footsteps clattering down the stairs towards them while Ryan helped Lucy to her feet.  James didn't dare wonder about what precisely had happened to Annabelle...

"We need to hide!" he hissed, looking wildly about in the gloom for somewhere to conceal themselves.

"Where?" Peter asked annoyed. The insistent drumming making an already bad evening worse. Straightening his clothing the best he could Peter moved to the bottom of the stairs to await whoever, or whatever, was on their way down.

Lucy felt exhausted. She accepted Ryan's help standing up, but she was nearly certain she wouldn't have the energy to outrun whatever might be coming down the stairs - if anything was coming down the stairs - if there even were stairs for that matter. She wasn't sure just how well her sanity could hold against any more ghosts, graveyards, doors to nowhere (or worse, anywhere) and disappearing windows. Just thinking about any of it caused her to begin to shake uncontrollably. She wished she could trust the walls to be solid enough to lean on for support, or that Ryan or Peter would just hold her for awhile until this crazy fever dream of a night was done with.

The footsteps on the stairs stopped, a whisper of conversation, then a single set of footsteps started up again.  Booted feet rounded the final corner, dark blue uniform trousers revealed.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.  Lothian and Borders Constabulary at your service."

"Officer, are we glad to see you." Peter put on his most indignant act, which after the events he had experience was not difficult. "I'd like to report..." he paused unsure of what crime had occurred. "A shady tour operation. The four of us were on the tour and it seems as if the proprietors may have drugged us."

"If only, laddie.  If only."  The officer smiled.  No-one was particularly reassured.

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