The Forgotten, Part 1
Title: The Forgotten, Part 1
Author: dustyirish2003
Characters/Pairings: dbah-Charlie/Dan; Charlotte, Miles, Frank, others later on.
Rating: Series- PG-13 - NC17, this part PG-13 for language.
Summary: They thought they’d left the island behind. They were wrong.
Disclaimer: Lost doesn’t belong to me. If it did, a certain bassist would be very much among the living. I’m not making one red cent off of the silliness within.
Author’s note: The events depicted within take place one year after return from the island. Not sure how to describe this one … part ghost story, part action adventure, and, undoubtedly, knowing me, part pure porn, at least eventually.
Sweet child in time
you’ll see the line
The line that’s drawn between the good and the bad
See the blind man shooting at the world
Bullets flying taking toll
If you’ve been bad, oh lord I bet you have
And you’ve been hit by flying lead
You’d better close your eyes and bow your head
And wait for the ricochet
~ Deep Purple
“Bloody hell! You drop that thing, Gavin, and I’ll have your testicles for lunch!!”
Charlotte glared up at the man running the backhoe. What had she been thinking? The idiot couldn’t even properly date potshards, and she’d put him in charge of heavy machinery. She watched tensely as the final load of debris was scooped from the entrance.
She’d been at the dig for three months now, waging daily battle with reptiles, infectious disease, pesky insects and even peskier government officials. This sort of thing was a bit out of her balliwack - she didn’t usually go mucking about in the gutters of archaeology - but if she was right about the contents of the cave before her, she’d never have to sleep her way into grant funds again.
From here on out, she’d be the one doing all the fucking.
An undisturbed site had not been found in this area for over a hundred years; looters were rife. But this particular cave had been tucked away in a nearly impassable gorge, the only entry plugged up by half a ton of rocks and sand. The location precisely fit the tales, right down to the cross-shaped boulder on top of the ridge. A fitting final resting place for a legend.
She was scurrying inside before the dust began to settle. She crawled over a small pile of stones, flung aside a sunbathing snake, and emerged into a world that was not supposed to exist.
The first area of the cavern was tiny and narrow, forcing her into a crouch. She moved the beam of her flash slowly around the space. There were several piles of debris, ringed in a half-circle, barring the entrance to the next room. She crab-walked over to them, heart pounding.
Bones, human bones, mixed in with bits of textile and perfectly preserved leather shields. Her light caught the glint of metal, and Charlotte found herself looking at centuries-old swords and maces. She counted the piles of skeletal remains, awe coursing through her. Seven.
The Guardians.
It was true. All true. Beyond these seven would lie the mother-lode.
A sudden, chill gust of wind blew her hair back from her face. Odd … the temperature outside the cave was blazing - they were in the middle of a desert, after all. For a brief moment, thoughts of booby-trapped tombs and the curses of pharaohs flitted through her mind. Then she laughed shakily and dismissed them. It had only been a pocket of trapped air or the breeze from an underground stream. And what, exactly, was she doing crouching here like a ninny when fame and fortune were right around the next bend?
She lifted the camera from around her neck and shot a few quick photos of the bones and the surrounding space, then prepared to move on to the room beyond. She was rising from her knees when the breeze returned, chilling her to the bone. The air grew dense around her, her lungs turned to heavy stones in her chest. She fought for breath, terror washing over her in a wave.
She was no longer alone, here in the halls of the dead.
There was the brush of frigid lips along her neck then her own name was whispered into her ear.
The strength went out of her legs and she plopped gracelessly to the ground, crushing a three thousand-year-old femur to powder under her ass.
Words suddenly began to form in the sand at her feet, letter by letter, written by an unseen hand:
GO BACK
As Charlotte watched, wide-eyed and ashen, the letters filled with blood.
*************************************************************************************************
“Go back…… …”
Miles sat up in bed, squinting blearily over at the other side of the mattress. There was no one there, which was pretty much a no-brainer since the voice which had awakened him had clearly been male. Miles didn’t make a habit of dragging stray men home from the clubs. Not often, at any rate.
But someone, or something, was in the room with him.
He didn’t have the tingle, not the regular one anyway, that vague electrical sensation that told him spirits were in the general vicinity. And he was getting no psychic reading whatsoever, which was all kinds of weird. But he could swear he felt something.
Only one way to find out. What the hell … at best, he’d get this stupidity over with in a couple of minutes and be able to get some more shuteye. At worst, his goldfish would hear him talking to himself.
“Yo. It’s three in the morning, bro. No time for hide and seek. Mystery guest sign in please!”
Still no reading, but a draft of chilly air whipped through the room. Okay, so he definitely had an otherworldly visitor. Not a problem. He dealt with this shit on a day to day basis, though not normally within the confines of his own bedroom.
Miles yawned. “Why don’t you check back during business hours, dude. Actually, you know what … next time, make an appointment.”
…. GO BACK!
Miles rolled his eyes and turned on the bedside lamp. “I hear ya, I hear ya. And I can get you back, no sweat, but only if you quit dicking around and let me get a fix on you. Put up or shut up.”
He still wasn’t getting a thing on his internal spirit-meter, but the covers were suddenly jerked from the bed to land in a heap on the floor.
So that was the way it was going to be. Okay, if the bastard wanted to play, they’d play. Miles closed his eyes, pretended to go back to sleep, then sat up with a jerk. “Boo!”
His coffee cup levitated off the nightstand and turned upside down, the contents spattering to the carpet.
Miles raised his hands and fluttered them beside his face in a mockery of fright, his voice rising to a falsetto. “Ooooh! I think I just peed my panties!” He snorted and went back to his normal voice. “If you’re looking to throw a cheap scare into somebody, you seriously came to the wrong house, guy.”
BACKBACKbackback ....
That was a new one: A ghost with a built in echo effect. But not a particularly stunning range of vocabulary.
“You might wanna think on getting a different tag line, my man. That one’s wearing a little thin.”
His row of vintage record albums flew off the bookshelf in a torrent.
“Hey! My Stones at Altamont bootleg was in there, asswipe!!”
At least he didn’t find the Hendrix in the dresser drawer, Miles thought wryly. At the very same instant the drawer was jerked to the floor and Jimi went sailing across the room.
Miles’ eyebrows shot up, a thread of unease working its way through him. Not only had the dead guy shut him out, he was somehow doing a reverse reading; picking up Miles’ thoughts. That wasn’t the way it worked, no way no how. Nobody got into his head.
Whoever he was, this puppy was strong.
For the first time ever, Miles didn’t feel like he was the one holding the reins. And that royally pissed him off. It was time to show the corpse who wore the pants in this relationship.
“That’s it - you and me are done, bro. Go haunt someone else. Come around again and I’m busting out my proton pack.”
The room was silent and calm. Miles sat listening for a moment then sighed in relief, turned out the light, and lay back down.
Go back, Miles ….
Fan-fucking-tastic … not only was the spook still here, they were now on a first name basis. He rolled away from the voice, put a pillow over his head and muttered, “Bite me.”
A burst of air shot past him and cold teeth clamped down on his bare shoulder.
That was when he screamed.
**************************************************************************************************************************
Frank teetered out onto the swaying deck of his yacht, trying to figure out how the goddamned thing had gotten unmoored from the marina in the first place. The waters were dead calm, there was only the slightest hint of breeze ruffling his beard. Quite a conundrum. Then he realized the lines were still tightly secured to the dock; it was him listing to port, not the boat.
A little giggle escaped him and he bellowed into the darkness, “And that, friends and neighbors, is what a fifth of prime Beefeater will get you!!”
There was one exasperated toot from the boat in the next slip. The residents of the Sunnyside Marina all knew Frank Lapidus and his penchant for midnight outbursts.
The yacht had been his consolation prize to himself after his return from the island. Hazard pay, you might call it. He figured he might as well blow his life’s savings on an oversized bath toy; he sure as shit wasn’t gonna have to spend it on chicks anymore. The only women to give him a second glance these days were the kind that got paid by the hour.
Now, what to do with the rest of this fine evening before him? He’d polished off his ready supply of booze and - ever since the events of the year before - he and sleep were no longer on speaking terms. A late night spin around the coast might be just the thing.
He was up, the moon was full … why the hell not.
He bent down to untie the ropes, wondering idly if he was going to topple into the water, and if he did, if it would only serve to sober him up or if this time he would actually drown. He couldn’t say he gave much of a damn one way or the other.
When he straightened back up there was a man standing on the prow railing like a misplaced figurehead. The stance reminded Frank of something. Something else involving ships and tragic endings. He scratched his head for a few moments, thinking, then it came to him.
“I’m the king of the world!!”, he boomed, spreading his arms wide. This time there was an angry flurry of honks from across the water. But the guy on the railing didn’t even turn towards Frank’s voice, just stared, motionless, out over the dark ocean.
“Helluva sense of balance you’ve got there, pal.”, Frank said amiably. He tried to take a couple steps forward and tripped over his own feet, nearly wiping out. He cackled. “Helluva lot better than mine, at any rate.”
Something was not quite kosher with the whole perching-on-the-prow scenario, but Frank was way past the point of being able to connect the dots.
The man, wherever he had come from, had obviously taken a midnight dip in his clothes because water was coursing off of him in rivulets. But, strangely, the wood below him remained dry.
“Not a real talkative fella, are you?”, Frank asked. “That’s alright, guess I’m doing enough for the both of us. I’d offer you a drink, but I sucked it all down earlier.”
The guy still gave no indication of hearing him. Normally, this would strike Frank as rude, but the man looked not with it, somehow. Depressed. His shoulders were slumped and his overall air was one of hopelessness. Was this some bizarre suicide attempt? If so, Frank could sympathize.
Man, could he sympathize.
“Hey buddy, it’s not worth it, believe me, it’s not.”, he called, gently now, feeling a sudden wave of sorrow for this pitiful soul. “And, as much as I’ve considered it myself, I’m guessing drowning would be about the worst way to go. C’mon, now. Get down offa there, I’m in no condition to rescue you.”
Frank lumbered forward a few more paces and finally figured out what was wrong with the picture. The man simply wasn’t all there - not in the mental sense, so much, but the physical. He was like a bad fade in a B movie - randomly shimmering in and out of the picture. And the glow Frank had mistaken for moonlight was, in actuality, radiating from the visitor himself.
Freaky, to say the least. And Frank wasn’t at all sure why he was continuing to move forward into the weirdness instead of backing away as fast as his feet could carry him. He only knew it felt like he had no choice.
As Frank watched, the man’s eyes changed - brilliant, stormy blue faded, became cloudy, the color leached away. Lifeless. The eyes of the fish floating upside down in the waters of a polluted lake.
The eyes of the people Frank had left behind on that beach twelve months earlier.
The figure on the prow raised his hand, a message written on the flesh in black ink. Frank came closer still and read the words by moonlight.
GO BACK
The man reached down, then, and lay his palm on Frank’s ruined cheek. There was no substance to the touch, it ghosted over his skin like a wisp of gelid smoke, but it shocked Frank stone sober in one go. It was cold, so very cold.
It was the touch of a dead man.
And with sobriety came recognition.
As Frank whispered his name, the man disappeared before his eyes.
************************************************************************************************
“Okay, okay, makes sense … so, in effect, the hyperspatial virtual particle flux must be activated by…”
Dan’s monologue cut off abruptly as he opened the door and walked into his lab.
A man was standing there, holding a black Sharpie, scribbling two words, over and over, on the west wall of the room. From the look of the east, north and south walls, he had been here awhile.
Dan gawped for a moment, then squawked, “Aw, no! Hey! What’s this??”
Amazingly, the intruder didn’t even turn at his voice, didn’t so much as flinch, just went right on tagging the sheetrock with his bizarre brand of graffiti.
There was a huge problem with this scenario, besides the obvious, and after a moment Dan had it: he had used his key to unlock the door just now, as he entered. The deadbolt had been thrown; he had heard the telltale clicking of the mechanism as he turned it. And it wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t - many things tended to slip his mind these days, but locking up his lab as he went home for the night was not one of them. There were too many delicate experiments here, not to mention a few that could get him in serious hot water with the university … or even earn him a bullet to the back of the head. Dan would no more leave his lab unlocked than he would come to work in high heels and pasties. And the possibility of someone having a duplicate key was nil. Dan had the only copy in existence; he was absolutely sure of this fact because he changed the locks himself on a bi-weekly basis. Some would call that paranoia, though Dan preferred to think of it as prevention.
So … how had the guy gotten in? And why was he acting like Dan was invisible?
“Hello! You there! Quit ignoring me!” Dan, growing more irritated by the second, moved forward and tapped the man on the shoulder.
The guy whipped around in surprise, eyes wide, marker falling from his hand.
“Who are you?” Dan began pacing frantically back and forth in front of the man, necktie flapping, thoroughly nonplussed. He shouldn’t be making such a big deal out of something that was undoubtedly intended as a practical joke - no doubt courtesy of his esteemed colleagues. The damage could probably be taken care of easily enough with a couple coats of paint. But the invasion of this space bothered Dan in a way nothing else could; he’d much rather have someone break into his home than his laboratory.
“Did Leary from Biology send you? He did, didn’t he? Yeah, that’s great, just fantastic. It isn’t enough that they whisper behind my back, leave wads of Bazooka on my chair? And the nicknames …. Oh, yeah, I’ve heard them all … ‘Frootloop Faraday’, ‘Dapper Dan’ … and, of course, my all-time personal favorite: ‘The Nutty Professor’ … yeah, that’s so totally original. Took some real thought to come up with that one.” He glared at the repetitive message lining the walls. “And just where, exactly, am I supposed to go back to? The beach? The future? Planet Mongo?”
The vandal just stood gaping at him. His silence was a bit unsettling, really.
Dan ran a frustrated hand over his head. His fingers promptly became tangled in his hair. He’d let it grow back out, after the island, but seemed to keep forgetting the fact.
“Dammit.”, he muttered, yanking in vain.
The guy looked scared to death of him, was now all but cowering in the corner. This puzzled Dan immensely … so far as he could see, there was nothing terribly threatening about a man who got booby-trapped by his own ponytail.
He put his rant on hold long enough to detangle, and studied his mute visitor. Shaggy blond hair, scruffy beard, mid-twenties. Good looking in a faded-rockstar way. His apparel, though … that was rather odd. There was nothing unusual about his t-shirt and jeans, but from there on down, it was all bare skin. Was the new fad of the month going shoeless? Dan never could keep up with the times. He’d last been hip somewhere around 1984, and even then it had been purely by accident.
“So … what? You can break in here and destroy my property but can’t be bothered to talk to me?” Dan had meant the words to be harsh, but they came out sounding more confused than anything else. Despite the destruction the kid had caused, Dan couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for him; he appeared to be utterly lost.
He seemed like he might be trying to say something now but just couldn’t manage to get the words out. He held out a trembling hand in Dan’s direction, as if begging.
Dan’s anger fell away completely at the gesture. The poor guy looked miserable, like he might be right on the verge of crying. This made Dan extremely nervous - he was only comfortable with tears when he was the one shedding them.
He spoke to the man softly, “You don’t seem really… Are you, you know, uh … okay?”
The fellow had the bluest eyes Dan had ever seen - he just wished they weren’t so vacant. He briefly wondered if the guy was on drugs. He seemed addled, disconnected from reality. But it wasn’t the look of a junkie, exactly. He looked haunted. And terrified. Quite similar, in fact, to the emotions Dan saw every time he glanced in a mirror.
He stepped forward and gently took hold of the guy’s arm. “Hey. It’s okay. Never mind the walls - I’m sorry I yelled. It was just … C’mon. Let’s … would you like some, um, coffee or something? I can, you know, make some up real quick. We’ll sit. And talk … or whatever. Okay?”
The stranger reached up and touched Dan’s hand then finally spoke, in a breathless whisper, shock and tears tingeing his voice:
“Oh my god … I can feel you.”
Then he darted for the door and was gone.
~ to be continued