It's a quiet and tinny sound coming from the delapidated juke in the corner. Cecy's Bar is doing what it usually does, a lot of nothing apart from feeding the urges of assorted drunks and people depressed about the holiday upcoming. The bartender quietly works, clanging glasses together behind the bar while the little xmas lights and faded plastic holly are the only show that anyone bothered to notice the season at all.

Sue steps into the bar with a gust of chill wind, drawing her helmet off as the relative warmth tingles her reddened nose and cheeks. No one notes Sue's entrance, apart from the noise of the door opening and closing, leaving her to walk about in anonymity. She carries her helmet under one arm until she reachs the bar, setting it down with enough of a bang to get the barkeep's attention as she strips off her gloves.

The bartender looks at the helmet in a sort of distracted way, then seems to only give Sue only the most passing of interest.

Sue sighs... it seems its just going to be that kind of night. A moment's concentration, a conscious suppression of Arcane, and she tries again, calling out "Excuse me..."

The barkeep looks up with that same distracted interest. "Yeah? Help ya?" apparently he's just that way as he goes back to his glass banging in the glow of the xmas lights.

Sue nods once "Yes... I'd like coffee, please... irish." She waits a minute to see if he actually heard her.

Gary kinda gives Sue one of those looks that you get from someone who is being vaguely put out by your request. Slowly, he grabs a coffee mug with a poorly drawn hoola girl on the side and pours the coffee from the pot. It looks like your basic seedy bar coffee sludge, having been much too long in that pot. He finishes the pouring and adds in the other ingredients before handing it off to Sue. No flourish, no style, no nonsense.

Sue peels a couple bills out of a pocket and pats them on the bar. She cups her hands around the drink, bracing herself against the sludge as she brings it to her lips.

Gary puts the money in the register and drops the change in front of the woman with an unceremonious 'thunk' as the sludge reveals the fullness of its time in the pot to her.

"I've tasted worse," Sue thinks to herself, " but it probably really -was- poisonous that time."

The other patrons are at various stages of being in their cups and they really don't notice her, though she did get the barkeep's attention, once he took a good second look at her.

Sue continues to sip at the sludge, assured that the whiskey will kill anything that might be living in it, drinking it primarily to warm her back up from the long ride in. She notes the barkeep's attention, but doesn't find it unexpected as she lets her gaze wander the rest of the room, especially the shadows.

This place is quiet and quite run down. Certainly the haunt of many a lonely soul looking to anesthetize whatever it is that troubles them. A woman is at a booth with a man and only the exchange of money before the kiss lets it be known that the hooker and her John have made their contract for the night.

Outside, the tolling of the bells of more than several churches calling the Midnight Mass can be heard. One of the others at the bar looks up at the noise and guilt crosses his features for a brief moment before he calls for another beer. Gary obliges him silently, unmoved by the bells outside.

Sue waits until Gary's returned, sliding her mug back to him "Another, please..." She notes the guilt more than the barter, but it's late and she's tired... whatever is here seems like it can wait for later.

Finally, the bell begins anew. 12 clear bell tones clang in the night from a closer belltower. Gary drums up another coffee for Sue from that sludge in the pot, killing the contents before adding the whiskey. He looks around but a moment, distracted by something as a sudden chill runs through the room.

A dog barks outside in alarm and then the door opens as a man in maybe his mid-40's opens the door and lets himself in the bar. Yet it isn't this man that catchs Sue's eye, but the grey haired, grey-faced spectre whose visage looks of a certain lonely doom. He is silent, following the younger man and waiting behind him, expectant as he says "Son, you must listen to me, I am your father for Christ's Sake!"

Sue stiffens at the chill that runs up her spine, a small "no" unvoiced on her lips as her gaze is riveted on the old man. It is with great effort that she tears her gaze away and tends back to her drink, gulping it down.

The old man grows a little more impatient and says "You know? I get mebbe one night a year with you and you just ignore me. Damn ya! Listen to me, boy. I have to tell you how to deal with all of this."

Sue might be able to avert her eyes, but her ears she can't deafen so well. What she hears sounds like someone who needs help... but what she sees only reawakens the inner turmoil... and the nagging thought that she shouldn't be seeing it at all, having not invoked such senses in days.

The old man drones on a bit about stocks, bonds, and a bank account that will help make things better for the family. The younger man is heedless, drinking his beer in silence, not that giving this guy what seems to be a sizeable amount of cash like what the old man is talking about is all that great an idea. Sue, despite herself, takes careful note of the apparation's words, while bending her gaze to surruptiously study the younger man, trying not to look at the droning wraith.

The younger man is rather non-descript, though it looks like he might once have been better off than he is. Sue really can't avoid seeing the ghost, though, and the curious lesions and burns on his face and exposed skin. The reddened spot, right over the sternum, seems to have indicated some kind of bloody death, though no certainty is offered. The younger man obviously can't or won't hear the voice of the elder.

Sue searchs her pockets for a scrap of paper, finally ripping a blank page out of the small diary she carries, scribbling down the ghost's words in a non-descript hand. Frowning a little, she sighs... so much for not getting involved. She slips from the bar to go to the lady's room... or whatever serves for it.

It is as she gets up from the chair that it happens. The ripple begins as a slight disturbance of the Gauntlet. Sue's fingers crumple the paper as she swallows hard, her other hand hovering near her concealed knife for a moment... until she's assured herself that nothing seems to be coming -through-.

But it doesn't stop at a ripple. Sue recalled having a sense of oddness about this place, but as she crosses the floor toward the less than sanitary toilet facility, the ripple ratchets up into a loud rumble that fills her ears. Whatever is going on, the wals between the worlds are getting shaken hard.

Sue just.... tries to make it to the restroom, all color washing away from her face. Anyone to see her might think that two whiskey-laden coffees were a bit much for the girl as she lurchs inside.

The old man looks up in alarm and says "Oh my God....Sweet Jesus!" he looks around for a place to go, that panic growing to a certain terror that you've seen in the eyes of people who know that they are about to die. He lets out a scream as the din rises and the buffeting goes on. The rest of the world is oblvious to the struggle.

Sue makes likely one of the biggest mistakes ever as she despiritely reachs out with her Magick and her will to wrest the Gauntlet back into normality, expending precious points of Quintessence in the effort to stop the effect, her own panick echoed by the wraith's screaming.

"No!...please!...No!" come the screams. It is apparent that the ghost is in some kind of pain, and as you reach out to try and quell the storm, you see something loom up out of the darkness near the stage and head toward the screaming wraith.

With the great expenditure of effort, Sue manages to create a small, Sue-sized bubble in the spiritual shit storm going on all around her. In that moment of clarity, having interfaced with that part of Reality, she senses the overwhelming vastness--and violence--of the event. It -is- quite overwhelming, too. Her magickal senses take a pounding as the storm continues.

Through the partially open door, she sees that looming shadow and the frightened wraith. The shadow reveals itself to be several shadows that split into a sort of attack on the helpless old man. His screams become shrill as they tear into him.

Sue's head pounds with the onslaight as she watchs, feeling no small part helpless. She hasn't, honestly, a clue how to help the wraith... or even if she should. Plagued by doubt, and harried by the storm, she hesititates. Entropy comes to mind... but with the chaos unleashed here, would that just make things so much worse?

As she continues to watch, those shadows tear the old man asunder in what seems a split second. The wraith discorporates in a bloody and final sort of way, his haunting scream burning into the air with such a shriek that maybe even the living heard it. The younger man at the bar looks up, suddenly cleaner and better dressed somehow and says softly "Dad?".

A sudden phase in time, and Sue finds herself looking upon a man in the paramedic coat next to the young heir. He plucks up a radio from his hip and listens to the chatter before alarm passes over his face "Gotta scram, Mark...A car went into the Piscataquog...looks bad." He tosses a couple bills on the bar to Gary, who seems as dumpy as ever. She can hear more radio chatter as the guy leaves in a serious hurry, just before time snaps back to the present.

Sue reels, stumbling backwards and turning to grab the nearest sink... its likely some small mercy that the coffee was the only thing she'd had today, but even that comes up as a physical response to the reaming her magickal awareness is taking. With a shaking hand she turns on the cold tap, trembling fingers splashing water over her face.

And with a final rumble, it all ends faster than it began. Sue's senses slam back into the present with the decorum of a 20 car pileup. It is all suddenly so quiet, too quiet. The people at the bar go on with their early Xmas morning drinking, heedless of all of it.

Sue leans against the sink with a groan for a long moment, before realizing the crumbled paper still in one hand. Thank god for ball point pens... its still ledgible as she straightens it out. But... perhaps she will just drop it on the young man's table as she passes, letting her Arcane slide back up. There was a motel a bit back... though rest is about as appealing as going through another session of whatever THAT was.

Sue fetchs her helmet from the bar and shoves it on her head afterwards, the young man having not so much as batted an eye. She pulls on her gloves and makes the best retreat she can.

Once outside, Sue steps into the heavy snowfall. Manchester is a sort of snow covered paradise, at least on the surface. A few quarter-sized flakes fall on her sleeve before melting to leave droplets on her jacket. Only the sound of a snowy night beckons, no cars are out here on the streets, and the only other soudn is the buzzing of the neon tubes in the bar's sign.

She mounts up over the Honda Hawk, taking a second glance back at the bar before firing up the engine and speeding towards the northeast on South Main, towards Varney Road. As she makes her way through the deserted streets, she senses something, but it passes before she can wrap her awareness around it.

Arriving without any other incidents, Sue pulls the bike up to the Island Park Apartments, a short ride, really. She refrains from any maneuvers that could be even remotely tricky, turning off the engine and dismounting. The place is seedy... but its a bit more private then a cot at the Y... or so she hopes.

Sue manages to get a room without incedent. Of course, sleep is the big question for her. She closes the door behind herself and locks it, the small lamp on the bedside table the only thing seeming to hold back the forboding darkness.

Once safely inside, Sue once more sloughs off helmet and gloves, followed by jacket and boots as she sits heavily on the edge of the bed. Fishing in a pocket reveals a small doll bearing some resemblance to herself, and she seeks Magickal release from her throbbing tembles as her fingertips rub the sides of the tiny figure's head.

As she gazes around, that minor task of pain relief behind her, she notes that there is a place to put her clothes and the door seems secure enough to make a respectable temporary home, for at least tonight. Through her window, she can see the lights on a Douglas Fir in front of one of the nearby churches, its lights reminding her that it is Xmas and for whatever reason, she is alone.

Sue certainly doesn't need the extra reminder, and rises in her stocking feet to extinguish it with a draw of the curtains. Trying to draw some comfort from ritual, she pulls off her bdus, drapping them across a chair. Her knife goes close to hand beneath the sad pillow of the bed, and she at least lays down in some semblance of attempt to sleep, though knowing she's more like to see the dawn then that state.

As she puts herself down in the bed, a small portion of the light from outside spills down on a pamphlet that has been put on the bedstand, perhaps by a previous occupant. Across the front, in sweeping letters, her eyes can makes out the words..."Welcome to Manchester!"

Sue supresses the urge to incinerate the overly-cheery thing, merely reaching out to sweep it on the floor before curling on her side. She gives a long sigh, staring into the room's darkness as she awaits the sleep she half-hopes will not come.