[CONTEST!] CASEY LAMPLIGHTER

   
   Real Name: Casey Lamplighter
   Title: The Sleep Walker
   Alignment: NG
   Age: 27
   Gender: Male
   Race: Metahuman
   Hair: Black
   Eyes: Grey
   Height: 5' 10"
   Weight: 124 lbs
   Blood type: O-

   

   

   
The following is a transcript from the patient interview of one CASEY LAMPLIGHTER, conducted by DR. ELAINE ASHBURN.

CASEY
Do I...do I just start wherever? I've never done this before. I...I don't know what all you need.

DR ELAINE
Whatever comes to mind Mr. Lamplighter. I'm here to listen.

CASEY
Alright, um, yea okay...So I was always an imaginative kid. No imaginary friends or anything quite like that but other stuff. I think it freaked my mom out. Apparently I went to her once with a sheet of paper, I don't remember this mind you, and I had written out a couple of sentences backwards and upside down. She says I was about six, maybe seven, at the time and she panicked thinking it was a sign that I had some sort of learning disability. "No no no" I tell her "Look" and I take the paper into the bathroom and hold it up to a mirror. Whatever it was that I'd written spelled out perfectly in it. Maybe that's not the best example, um, maybe The Man is a better one.

DR ELAINE
The Man?

CASEY
Yea, he was a thing, my family now sort of talks about it like it half the time like it was a ghost or half the time like I was just a weird child. It was in my grandparent's house, the place was pretty old, but the back end of the house where the kitchen and the living room were had been built more recently than the rest of the house. You could see the separation of the two parts. The tile in the kitchen ended abruptly into the carpet of the dining room in the older part of the house little gold metal bar smoothed the transition between the two. I say all of that because, and again I don't actually really remember this, I guess I wouldn't cross that thin gold line between the kitchen and the dining room. "The Man lives there" was the reason I'd give to my family and if someone didn't go first and address The Man telling him to go away I would refuse to cross. But that border wasn't the only time I'd see him. My mom tells a story of getting me dressed in my pajamas on Christmas Eve. She had little me up in my grandparent's bedroom and all of a sudden I just freeze. Apparently I'm just staring wide eyed over my mom's shoulder and so of course she asks me what's wrong. Well I point a finger and say "Mommy I don't like that man, make him go away, please make him go away". So of course this freaks her out, she turns over her shoulder and there's nothing there but there I am still gawking at this "Man". Obviously whatever weirdness made me imagine this person eventually went away but I never felt good in that house, even as an adult.

DR ELAINE
Alright, and was "The Man" the thing you predominantly saw? Did it ever appear outside of grandparent's house?

CASEY
No never, the man lived there...sorry, I mean no I only ever saw him, it, at their house but there were other things. In the house we moved into when I was five or six it was worse. I couldn't sleep at all there and this one I remember. In that house our second floor was like one long straight shot hallway from the top of the stairs. On the right side as you came up was the bathroom and then my parent's room, on the left side was the upstairs closet and my sister's room and then at the very end was my room. Well most nights after all of the lights were out and my family was in bed I'd hear footsteps. They'd start somewhere out in the living room downstairs, then slowly, methodically, they'd take each step up and pace there way straight to my door and just stop. I couldn't sleep with the door open because I was terrified that I'd see whoever...whatever the thing was.

(Pause)

And then one night I saw it, or at least something. Like I said I had a terrible time sleeping when I was there, I actually think its part of why I get so paranoid when its time to go to sleep even now as an adult. But when I did eventually get to sleep I'd have nightmares, just horrible nightmares. A lot of the time they were of my grandparent's house of all places. I would dream of portals to Hell opening up in their front lawn or the dead spilling out of their cellar, like I said over active imagination

DR ELAINE
I see

CASEY
So anyways I wake up from one of these nightmares in a panic. Like I said my parent's room was like right next to mine and I just wanted to not be alone in the dark after the bad dream but that meant braving the hallway. Even with the corners of the doors nearly touching the idea of going out in that hall at night took some real courage on my part. Eventually I get up the nerve and go quietly out of my room, as sneaky as I can be, cross my floor and exit my room. Obviously there's nothing in the hall but my parent's bedroom door is open. I creep over to it and I must have been extra quite because as I peek into their room I see this...thing. It's human-ish, same size as little me. It's like white pale but not translucent, this thing was solid and it's leaning over my dad at the side of the bed with its face to him. I must have made some sort of sound because after a couple of seconds the thing turned its head to me. It's head was round, no nose no ears and where its eyes should have been were just these sunken hollow voids but I could tell it was looking right at me. It gave me a little smile, raised a spindly finger to its mouth and then just like a puff of smoke it was gone. I didn't know what to do. I just stood there staring at the space where the thing was, too scared to move. Eventually my parents wake up to me just staring at them. I don't say a word and they usher me over into bed...I hated that house.

DR ELAINE
That's understandable. And did you continue to have experiences like this into your adolescence?

CASEY
Well, that's the most vivid memory I have at that point of seeing these things. I have a few more weird encounters as a child, feelings like I was being watched in places where there was no one around, hearing things that weren't there, I had pictures on my phone once when I was in my teens that had been taken the night before of just random spots in the house that I didn't take, but no eventually most of the weirdness stopped and left me a generally fearful young adult. The vivid nightmares never went away though.

DR ELAINE
Do you still have them?

CASEY
It's not as frequent as when I was a kid but yea. I used to wake up from them and see strange things moving around in the room after I'd woken up. I'd have to convince myself that whatever it was wasn't real and eventually it would go away.

DR ELAINE
And is that what brought you to us today? These nightmares?

(Pause)

CASEY
No not exactly. I uh...I did something...or maybe something happened to me? Its, well I'm not really sure how too say it

DR ELAINE
Its okay Casey take your time, I'm here to listen.

CASEY
Yea okay...It started a couple months ago. I was having another nightmare about something or other. You know how dreams are, I don't remember the details just that in the dream I was scared and I was running. There was something chasing after me down a long hallway. I couldn't see the thing but I knew that something bad would happen if it caught up to me and I see the end of this hallway coming up ahead of me. There's a door at the end and of course dream logic tells me that whatever is on the other end of the door is also bad. But the fear pushes me to the door and I go lunging through it. All of the sudden the hallway is gone and I'm standing in the middle of the mist shrouded street. Everything around me is grey, the buildings, the street the fog, everything and the door I came through is gone. Its just this street and this feeling, not like before, now I can feel and see and smell, full sensory experience just like I'm awake. And I'm clear headed here too, that parts hard to explain, like that dreamy fog is just gone, I'm sharp and mentally awake. So I scan the area around me and I start to make out these far off shapes in the fog. I can barely even make out their wispy forms but even then I could tell they were staring at me, every single one of them like I absolutely do not belong where I am. So I start telling myself to get a grip and wake up. I'm pinching myself and slapping myself and anything that I can to to snap out of it and I can't. Like I KNOW that I'm dreaming and it just won't happen. I can feel these things bearing down on me even from the distance they are away and I can't stand to be in their presence another second. So I screw my eyes shut as tight as I can and just pray to whatever I can to get me out of there. Then its like I've just come back up for air after being held under water for a minute. I fall to all fours and start sucking wind like a hyperactive bellows.

DR ELAINE
So you woke up

CASEY
Yea, just not in bed

DR ELAINE
Excuse me?

CASEY
When I woke up I was on my knees in the dark and it was cold. I could feel something rough and hard underneath me. And then there was this bright light coming for me. I thought I was dead until I heard the blaring horn and the screech of tires as the car that was coming at me swerved away. Of course I jump up to my feet and look around trying to figure out where the fuck I am and its the same damn street I was on in the dream. I'll spare you the details of me scrambling home in the dark in the middle of the night, but I had somehow gotten myself a town over in my sleep.

DR ELAINE
That's not unheard of, sleep walking is...

CASEY
See, I thought that's what it was too but it was more than just that. After that night I started to sense things, like the air around me was charged. I didn't know what it was then but I was feeling them watching me.

DR ELAINE
Casey, take a breath, what do you think you were seeing?

CASEY
Not seeing, not yet. That came later. But I could feel them, the things from that other place. It was small at first, an occasional uneasy feeling like something about the world around me just wasn't right. But now they're everywhere. Even in here I can feel them watching me.

DR ELAINE
Casey I think you need to...

CASEY
No hold on I need to finish. I crossed over to their world, brought a piece of us to them. But...I can bring some of them to us too. I think I'd been doing it unconsciously all my life.

(Pause)

I'm not crazy doctor, that's not why I'm here. I don't know what you want to call that place, "The Other Side", Purgatory, Heaven, Hell, I think its a little bit of all of them but that's not the point. The point is that those strange wispy figures, the things drawn to me and hunting me, I know why they don't want me there, I know why they won't ever stop coming after me.

(a third voice can be heard in the recording, records from the time of the interview show no one entering the room at this time)

???
Elaine

DR ELAINE
S-Sam? You can't, this is...

(at this point there is a digital screech followed by approximately ten minutes of silence before an orderly enters the room and stops the recording)

Neither DR ELAINE ASHBURN nor CASEY LAMPLIGHTER could be found in the room after this interview. Their whereabouts are still unknown. The third voice at the end of the recording has been analyzed to match a one SAMUEL ASHBURN, deceased brother of DR ELAINE ASHBURN.

   
   1. Reaction
   2. Agility
   3. Strength
   4. Endurance
   

   
The Grey:
After analysis of the above recording, it is believed that CASEY LAMPLIGHTER is capable of some form of inter-dimensional travel between out world and a plane dubbed "THE GREY". From what little information can be gathered from his interview with DR ELAINE ASHBURN it seems that this travel is not altogether voluntary and may be related to REM sleep though it seems it can also be achieved consciously with some effort. While the properties of THE GREY are unknown at this time it does appear to mirror our own world in some ways. Physical structures and obstacles in our world appear to in most cases carry over to THE GREY though it is hypothesized that this may not always be the case. Living beings do not appear to cross over in substantial form within THE GREY and would likely appear as intangible specters. Likewise, beings native to THE GREY visible in our world would in most cases appear insubstantial and ghost-like. The events at the conclusion of the interview seem to indicate that CASEY is also capable of transporting beings to and from THE GREY. In the case of the latter, he does not appear to need to be in THE GREY to pull beings from it and need only be aware of an entity's general presence and location. He also seems to be generally aware of the obstacles and entities inhabiting THE GREY even when not there himself. The presence of the deceased DETECTIVE ASHBURN at the end of the recording suggests that THE GREY is adjacent to some form of afterlife and CASEY may be capable of manifesting spirits from THE GREY into our world.

   
Paranoia & Insomnia:
Despite CASEY LAMPLIGHTER's insistence that he is "not crazy" it does appear that his exposure to THE GREY has had adverse effects on his mental health. He appears to be paranoid and easily excitable, likely motivated mostly by fear and self preservation. Similarly with entrance into THE GREY being somehow tied to CASEY's REM sleep it is clear he suffers from insomnia and a general lack of sleep.

Hunted:
While it is unknown exactly what the beings in THE GREY are, it is clear from CASEY's reaction to them that they pose some sort of serious threat to his general well being. Because of THE GREY's location as a sort of overlapping plane to our own these entity's pose an ever present and unyielding danger.

Spirits:
As he reported in the above interview CASEY has no more than a few months experience with his travels to THE GREY. As far as we know, DETECTIVE SAMUAL ASHBURN is the only spirit he has successfully brought back. Given the hostile nature of THE GREY it has been theorized that spirits brought from that world into ours may suffer greatly and will eventually pose a threat to those around them. Close surveillance of their condition and the whereabouts of CASEY LAMPLIGHTER are strongly advised.