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The Moonlit Hare's Banquet (Introduction) Interactive Story!
🕑 Added 2021-11-14 01:00:12 +0000 UTCByron, by all accounts, was bog standard by the measure of your average private eye. His clients were of a particular range, and were limited to suspicious wives fretful of their husband's fidelity; children with fistfuls of pennies on the lookout for a lost pet; and the odd missing persons case, which tended to be on the rarer side of things. He occasionally received a fourth type of client, and while they were certainly entertaining, he never paid them much notice. That clientele being of the occult-seeking variety.
He once received a job from a fat, bristly man, with hair that stood up like a porcupine's quills. Byron was asked to find the ghost of the man's beloved cat: Sir Findlewink Augustus the Seventh. Byron humoured the man, and actually managed to find the collar of the spectral pet in a graveyard outside of the city. He returned it, and received a reward. Though he never saw anything 'supernatural,' and chalked it up to a slightly more eventful than normal missing item case.
In July, that changed.
Byron had never seen a ghost. He imagined they looked just like a person, but with their opacity thinned until light passed through them like a cheap curtain. The twisted, gnarled thing which held him by the neck met that criteria, and there was no other word to describe its rasp other than "ghostly." It came out in fragments, backgrounded by the audible fizz of a TV without any channels.
The world went black and Byron slipped into unconsciousness. When he awoke, he was laid out across the floor of his office. He coughed when he tried to draw a deep breath, and checked himself in the mirror. His striped salt and pepper fur was matted, and a tree branch stuck out from a knot above his ear like an architect's pencil. He brushed the fur away from his neckline, and discovered a pattern of bruises that ran along both sides of his throat. Like the hands of the ghost which had choked him.
The only thing different from normal besides his new neck tattoo was a letter. Splodges of blue ink stained its edges, and the wax seal looked like it had been pressed by a sledgehammer. Byron opened it, and read:
"You were lucky. The Hare's minions don't 'usually' take so long to kill their victims. If you're still alive by the time you wake up, go to the location on the map."
And so here he was. Seated in his old clunker of a car, on the limits of Blackenridge. A sprawling coastal town. Like the lovechild of somewhere you could imagine either The Lost Boys, and Bram Stoker's Dracula taking place. Byron unfurled the map of the town his mysterious benefactor had left him, and aligned it with his view of the town: What will Byron do?
Date & Time (July 1st, 13:00)
> Visit the diner.
> Visit the church.
> Visit the bookstore.
