Vivi, she/her, 3 lives
A shiver went down her spine as she beheld the object which had brought her out so far…
Vivienne Rosewood had come to the unassuming town of Wildwood to explore the supposedly haunted branch library, which locals sometimes called Wildwood Masters Library when they didn’t simply call it the ‘Haunted Library’. She had arrived the prior evening at the hotel she had reserved a room in, and upon declaring the intentions of her visit to the receptionist, had been promptly warned to stay away from the library. Vivienne had conducted informal interviews with other locals the following morning, and the stories she heard about the Library were too horrible and strange to be believed. Two librarians had been killed before the townsfolk wrote the place off, but apparently people still visited on occasion, and things those people claim to have experienced were very supernatural in character. Even if those stories were objective tall tales, the fact that the corpse of a local student who had gone missing had been sighted recently on the roof of the structure was a harder claim to simply dismiss as a hoax, and Vivienne wondered why the police hadn’t been more involved with all the mysterious occurrences happening at this place.
Although the stories had perhaps sufficiently unnerved Vivienne enough to question the wisdom of exploring the Wildwood Masters Library, she nonetheless had a cadre of followers she had come to entertain, and if nothing else, the place sounded exactly like the kind of torment her followers enjoyed watcher Vivienne subject herself too. Vivienne was a Youtuber who went by the handle “Vivi the Spooktator”. Her main shtick had become visiting haunted attractions and filming herself getting spooked before providing reviews of the attractions she experienced. She was always looking to shake it up a little bit to keep things interesting for her fans, and it had been one of them that had alerted her to this place she now found herself. She still didn’t quite know what to expect…
Vivienne had procrastinated enough, and by late morning, she had finally forced herself to look upon Haunted Library, the exterior of which certainly looked the part. Seeing a brown stain on the roof from where she stood, Vivienne wondered if those were caused from the life blood of the hapless student who had been found up there reportedly not too long ago. Vivi took a few deep breaths to work off the jitters. It was time to get in character.
After checking herself out to make sure her appearance was camera-ready, Vivi pulled out a compact tripod from her purse and extended it to full length before placing her camera upon it and pointing the camera toward the Library. Vivi then took several practiced paces toward the library before she wheeled toward the camera and announced “Hello my fellow Spooktatotators! I am your host, Vivi the Spooktator, experiencing America’s scary things so you don’t have to! Today I am greeting you from the gloomy town Wildwood, which contains perhaps the most haunted site you’ve never heard of, The Wildwood Masters Library…”
Vivienne pressed a button on her watch to stop the take there, and then she returned to the camera and reviewed her footage. She subsequently made some adjustments to the camera position before she returned to her position for another take. This Vivienne did several times before she was satisfied. She then began new takes in which she described the things she had been told about the place. As she did so, she noticed that folks had begun to take notice of what she was doing, and Vivienne made sure to wave to them between takes. Something of a crowd seemed to forming, and for a moment, Vivienne was concerned that they might lynch her for what she was doing. There wasn’t anything wrong with filming this place, was there?
Suddenly, there was a cry from a girl in the crowd, followed by a silver blur that hurdled toward Vivienne's camera. Vivi made out the form of a tabby cat, which subsequently wrapped itself in her camera strap before using it to pull the camera off the tripod. “Hey, get back here!” a bewildered Vivienne cried as she ran toward the feline to recover her device. The cat somehow nimbly evaded her despite having a bracelet in its mouth and a camera wrapped around it, and then sprinted toward the entrance of the library, the door of which was now open, which Vivienne did not recall being the case earlier. She started to give chase but then froze as the cat disappeared into the ominous structure. Vivienne glanced back at the crowd and her knocked-over tripod, and then she turned to look at the stain on the roof. With a sinking feeling, her gaze returned to the gloomy entrance into the library, beyond which she could see nothing. Something deep within her was screaming for her to flee and never come back, but Vivienne’s pride and adoring fans would never allow for it. With a sigh, Vivienne made her way toward the darkness…