Trial 1

[yourghosthost]

[After everyone has finished their investigations, everyone finds themselves gathering in the stretching room once more. The door shuts behind them. The corpse swings above the proceedings, ominously, and wandering eyes can't help but draw their attention to it.

It especially draws attention when it appears to move upward.

The whole room seems to move downwards, as the walls get longer and the ceiling gets further away. A snide comment from your Host echoes throughout the room:]

Tell me. Is this haunted room actually stretching? Or is it just your imagination?

Find your place in the graveyard. I will be with you shortly.

[After a few moments, the room stops. A new door opens.

It appears to be an outside area, covered in overgrown plants and moss. An incredibly high gated fence surrounds the whole area, and perpetual darkness (accompanied by a bright full moon) sets the mood. A cobblestone path goads you on through this area, leading to a circle of 25 tombstones, each labeled with a participants picture, name and their birthdate. They're arranged to face each other, ominously enough. On top of each tombstone is a small typewriter-esque keyboard.

The only unique tombstone here is the only marked for Karolina. It's adorned with a red rose and a glass of cognac, and her tombstone is marked with a limerick:

Here Lies Karolina Dean
She might have had a rough life
But she really didn't deserve that knife

As everyone finds their places, the Host speaks.]

The keyboard on your tombstone shall be used for voting who you believe committed this crime. Due to the...nature of some of our participants, I will be forgiving misspellings and accidental presses, but each guest shall only receive one vote, and we go by majority rules.

Take all the time you need, please. There's no turning back now.]

Comments

[sixfingeredstan]

An unfortunate circumstance, either way.

[This is terrible. An old-fashioned clusterfuck.]

[aboyandhiscar]

Yeah. . .looks like we're just full of what ifs and no hard evidence.

Honestly, what I wanna know is why anyone is up that late making a salad in the first place.

[kindaruledatit]

Hey, sometimes you gotta get up and make something because you're hungry or whatever.

[It's the teen way, Mike.]

[aboyandhiscar]

Fair enough, but check it--she gets up to make a midnight snack, right? What are the odds someone else is there too? Did someone go with her to make it a party and things went south real fast real bad?

[kindaruledatit]

I guess that's kind of the thing we have to figure out. Maybe someone could have gone with her to help, or they were just out too and ran into here and... things got bad.

[aboyandhiscar]

Ran into her with a knife. That's the part I'm stuck on--she got hit from the front, and she got her bracelet slipped off. Maybe she. . .was friends with the killer? Someone who she was pretty comfy here with, at least.

[kindaruledatit]

...Or maybe she took her bracelet off while she was making food? It did look like it wasn't broken or covered in blood or anything.

[hmm]

Okay, so maybe someone she knew tried to attack her. There's probably a bunch of people who could have done that.

[aboyandhiscar]

Maybe, 'cept for the fact it's not working right now.

And...man, I dunno. Do you know who she was close with?

[a beat]

--aside from you, uh. Obviously.

[amadeusrockette]

Karolina was a vegan. If she was going to make a midnight snack, it would probably be a salad.

[aboyandhiscar]

Yeah, but the salad's not the important thing here. Two folks were up, and got the same idea somehow. So either someone knew Karolina got the late night munchies, someone went with her, ooor it's one heck of a coincidence.

[amadeusrockette]

It's more likely someone went with her. The whole thing seems to be pointing toward a . . . bad idea gone worse? [Well. It must have seemed like a good idea.] I think maybe Karolina thought that she could . . . fool the spirits.

[aboyandhiscar]

What? Fool them how? With a side salad?

[amadeusrockette]

No, no. But she was . . . otherworldly. [She fucking sparkled and shit that's not normal.] Maybe she thought she could "play dead"?

[aboyandhiscar]

. . .?

. . .

--!

[NOW he gets it]

Woah, woah, back up. You think this all might have been a set up that went downhill? That's pretty dang risky.

[amadeusrockette]

Yes, but if she felt like her secret couldn't be exposed - or felt a sense of duty to keep secrets from being exposed - then wouldn't an elaborate scheme seem . . . almost reasonable?

[SHE REALLY HATES THIS BUT YO. IT'S SEEMING LIKE A PRETTY GOOD IDEA TO HER.]

[aboyandhiscar]

[his mind is blown pretty much wow]

Trick the ghosties into thinking we did the thing, and let us all go? Yeah, I can see it. Still feels like a weird talk to have over midnight salad, but it if it was totally spur of the moment. . .

It'd explain why someone was trying to stop the blood and if someone was really looking for help.

[amadeusrockette]

I think maybe . . . Karolina thought her powers would protect her, but they somehow didn't. [If she was sparkly, it kinda makes sense that she'd be made out of light or something???] And then everything went . . . very wrong.

[aboyandhiscar]

Dang. . .

Man. Well, if that theory holds up, it really does slot this firmly as an accident.

[arpeggiositar]

Yeah, it would. We lost our powers and skills, maybe this'd have been fine if Karolina did have all of them.

Still, going as far as to do all that...it was pretty dangerous, no? They must have been desperate, if they were willing to go so far.

[amadeusrockette]

There are - everyone has a secret they don't want people to know. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume someone didn't want theirs to get out.

[kindaruledatit]

She was like, an alien. [A pretty alien.]

[amadeusrockette]

Did she . . . do you know how much she knew about her, um. State of being?

[How do you even word "hey, Wendy, do you think Karolina could have thought a stab wouldn't have hurt her" without sounding like a wacko.]