MCSKSG Five point one
Beginning of chapter five. 1,756 words.
The red emergency lights flickered on. Lacy took a step back, right into me; I put a hand around her shoulders to keep her steady and we both stared up at the sharp red surfaces of the stairs leading up.
It was dark out, but definitely not late enough for ghosts to start showing up. It had been nearly midnight last time; my watch said it was nearly seven now. Seven was not the witching hour. Somebody needed to teach this ghost about timing.
"It'll go away if we just stay here, right?"
I didn't...I didn't really want to just wait, though. It was frustrating, really, whatever stupid ghost had to just add this on top of the day I'd already had. It was probably a really stupid idea, but I fought monsters on a pretty regular basis, I could face one little incorporeal ghost. "Stay here if you want." I pulled away from her, starting up the stairs.
"Wait!" She snagged the sleeve of my coat and I looked back at her over my shoulder, one foot on the steps. "Why? I mean you don't...you don't have to go check it out..."
I didn't, and maybe I shouldn't, but... "I think it wants something. It won't leave until it gets it." It was how the ghosts were in Payon. Give them what they were looking for and they'd vanish just like that.
Of course sometimes the ghosts in Payon were just looking for more people to kill...
"Well I..." She bit her lip, looking worried. "I'll come. Too."
I paused and then nodded before starting up the stairs again. She followed after me. I was rather glad she'd decided to come, actually. Facing down things like this is easier when you have somebody with you.
As we ascended, the higher we got the colder the air around us became. When we hit the landing between the twelfth and thirteenth floors, I could hear Lacy shivering through her uneven breathing.
We both heard the sound of the door trying to be forced open. It was sudden and it was close; I jumped back, she wrapped herself around my arm. We stared up, able to partially see the door from our place on the landing. I saw the invisible force struggle against it three more times before a low moaning cry went out; I wasn't even sure I'd heard it once it faded, but it had whispered, "Help. Help me."
"Guido..."
"We're going to help." I meant to say it to the ghost, but it came out just loud enough for Lacy.
She made a sound like a whimper and tightened her hold around my arm. I looked to her; she was staring past me to the door in front of us. Her breath came out in wisps of white, just like mine. "What if this is how those girls disappeared?"
I looked back up at the door, bathed in red. I hadn't thought of that. The ghost luring people up to trap them on this floor. It couldn't be that though, right? "Then...I think...it would've done more to make us go up the first time." It sounded good, at least. Didn't it? I didn't find myself particularly consoled though...
"Y-yeah... I guess so..." Her hand snaked down, wrapping around mine. "Then let's go."
There was a girl holding my hand. It was freezing cold and she was doing it out of fear, but it still counted for something, didn't it? It gave me a boost of courage as I led the way up the last flight of stairs before us. She was counting on me to protect her. I could do this.
I paused at the door, staring it down. If I opened it, that would be the point of no return. I thought maybe this really was a bad idea and maybe I should just turn around and head back down to wait it out, but Lacy adjusted her grip on my hand and the warmth reminded me that I couldn't turn back now.
What if it didn't open? What if it was locked just like every other door in the stairwell when the ghost turned out the lights? I took a deep breath and pushed at the door, half expecting and fully hoping that it wouldn't budge so I could laugh it off and say, "Oh well, let's go back down!" But it did open, and instead of turning around to run back down the stairs, I took a step forward, onto the thirteenth floor of Westfall Apartments.
The place looked like a maze of boxes, walls, and shelves. There were no apartments, just random walls like halves of rooms had been left unfinished everywhere, like wide pillars to hold up the seven floors above us. I could see alright in the moonlight that filtered in through the windows lining the sides of the floor, but that only went so far before it faded into an inky darkness in front of us, and I doubted Lacy could see half as far down as I could.
When a set of flourescent lights flickered on above us, I could tell she was a step ahead of me. "Nobody lives on the thirteenth floor." Her voice was low, almost a whisper, like she was afraid somebody would hear her. "We use it for storage."
Knowing there was nobody on this entire floor only served to make it creepier. It was like some kind of huge, low-ceilinged warehouse. And empty warehouses are just about the creepiest places in the world when they're not haunted.
The door suddenly slammed shut behind us, making us both jump and look back at it. The sound echoed around us, almost mocking, and I was really starting to regret coming up. I pulled the collar of my coat closed at my throat, looking back out at the dimly lit storage floor around us. Lacy let go of my hand and I looked back at her to watch her try the door.
"It won't open..."
I'd been expecting that as soon as it had closed.
The cold wasn't gone yet. The ghost reminded us that this was its doing by moaning, "Help... Find... Rhianna..."
"Rhianna?" Lacy drew close to me, sliding her hand into mine again.
I guess it really was the ghost of the missing girl, just like Rayu had thought. That didn't make me feel any better about being here. Why had I decided to check it out again? Oh, right. Proving myself to a girl. It wasn't even the right girl, god damn it.
Find Rhianna... "I... I think... She wants us to find her body?" Great. Searching through a warehouse floor for a dead body. Oh god.
This was answered by a ghostly, whispered, "Please..."
"Guido..."
"It's okay." I didn't feel nearly as sure as I sounded, but I really did think we needed to do this. It was the only thing we could do, right? Otherwise it would keep happening, girls would keep disappearing, and, well, we'd still be stuck here too.
"The...the cops tried to check this floor already..."
"...What did they find?"
"They couldn't get in. Like...like it was sealed shut. They tried...everything, really."
...Why would the ghost seal out the people who were trying to help? "Let's...let's just try to find her." And not think about worse possibilities for what we were in the middle of right now.
I started walking, leading Lacy through the rows of boxes, around the half-finished walls. It almost felt like something was guiding us; the cold stayed with us the whole way. We were halfway across the floor when I thought I heard something, movement rustling somewhere across the floor.
"Mice," Lacy said hastily, like she had to get it out to convince herself instead of me. "We have mice."
I didn't want to think about it any further than that, so I accepted the explanation with a nod and kept moving.
All the lights lined the center of the floor; there were holes set in the ceiling where light fixtures had been meant to be installed in individual rooms, but none of them were actually there. That meant it faded to a dim greyness around stacks of boxes and ill-positioned walls. It didn't do much for making us feel any safer being up here. Dim light and shadows do wonders for the imagination. I kept seeing things move out of the corner of my eye, only to turn around and see nothing there.
"Do you smell that?" I glanced back at her; she had one hand over her nose and was looking off at the other side of what would have been the hallway if the floor had been finished.
"Yeah." It smelled kind of like rotting meat, which was not a particularly good sign in my book. It was like a specific type of rotting meat, though I'd rather not talk about how I already know what decomposing flesh smells like.
I almost tripped over Rhianna before I saw her, and when I did see her I immediately turned around to set a hand over Lacy's eyes. "Don't look."
"What is it?" She sounded nearly panicked.
"Trust me, just don't look."
"Oh-okay..." She moved her hands up to cover her own eyes and I pulled mine away, looking back down at the body I'd nearly stumbled over. It wasn't the first dead body I'd seen, but it was definitely the messiest.
I don't want to describe it, so I won't. There was another, fresher looking corpse laying right beside her, and even though the blood on the floor was dry or congealed enough to resemble chocolate syrup, I never ever wore those sneakers again.
What I will describe though is the feeling I got coming off of Rhianna's body. It was like the strings I could feel from the rocks, but weaker and tinier, and different in a way that I can't figure out how to describe. She was wearing a silver chain around her neck, which was tarnished and blood-stained now; I knew that was what it was coming from.
Against my better judgement, I knelt down to pull it off. It almost made me sick, stealing this right off a dead girl's neck, getting so close to something so horrific to do it, but I knew I needed this chain. As soon as I touched it I knew it was just like my boots. Rhianna had been one of us.
The red emergency lights flickered on. Lacy took a step back, right into me; I put a hand around her shoulders to keep her steady and we both stared up at the sharp red surfaces of the stairs leading up.
It was dark out, but definitely not late enough for ghosts to start showing up. It had been nearly midnight last time; my watch said it was nearly seven now. Seven was not the witching hour. Somebody needed to teach this ghost about timing.
"It'll go away if we just stay here, right?"
I didn't...I didn't really want to just wait, though. It was frustrating, really, whatever stupid ghost had to just add this on top of the day I'd already had. It was probably a really stupid idea, but I fought monsters on a pretty regular basis, I could face one little incorporeal ghost. "Stay here if you want." I pulled away from her, starting up the stairs.
"Wait!" She snagged the sleeve of my coat and I looked back at her over my shoulder, one foot on the steps. "Why? I mean you don't...you don't have to go check it out..."
I didn't, and maybe I shouldn't, but... "I think it wants something. It won't leave until it gets it." It was how the ghosts were in Payon. Give them what they were looking for and they'd vanish just like that.
Of course sometimes the ghosts in Payon were just looking for more people to kill...
"Well I..." She bit her lip, looking worried. "I'll come. Too."
I paused and then nodded before starting up the stairs again. She followed after me. I was rather glad she'd decided to come, actually. Facing down things like this is easier when you have somebody with you.
As we ascended, the higher we got the colder the air around us became. When we hit the landing between the twelfth and thirteenth floors, I could hear Lacy shivering through her uneven breathing.
We both heard the sound of the door trying to be forced open. It was sudden and it was close; I jumped back, she wrapped herself around my arm. We stared up, able to partially see the door from our place on the landing. I saw the invisible force struggle against it three more times before a low moaning cry went out; I wasn't even sure I'd heard it once it faded, but it had whispered, "Help. Help me."
"Guido..."
"We're going to help." I meant to say it to the ghost, but it came out just loud enough for Lacy.
She made a sound like a whimper and tightened her hold around my arm. I looked to her; she was staring past me to the door in front of us. Her breath came out in wisps of white, just like mine. "What if this is how those girls disappeared?"
I looked back up at the door, bathed in red. I hadn't thought of that. The ghost luring people up to trap them on this floor. It couldn't be that though, right? "Then...I think...it would've done more to make us go up the first time." It sounded good, at least. Didn't it? I didn't find myself particularly consoled though...
"Y-yeah... I guess so..." Her hand snaked down, wrapping around mine. "Then let's go."
There was a girl holding my hand. It was freezing cold and she was doing it out of fear, but it still counted for something, didn't it? It gave me a boost of courage as I led the way up the last flight of stairs before us. She was counting on me to protect her. I could do this.
I paused at the door, staring it down. If I opened it, that would be the point of no return. I thought maybe this really was a bad idea and maybe I should just turn around and head back down to wait it out, but Lacy adjusted her grip on my hand and the warmth reminded me that I couldn't turn back now.
What if it didn't open? What if it was locked just like every other door in the stairwell when the ghost turned out the lights? I took a deep breath and pushed at the door, half expecting and fully hoping that it wouldn't budge so I could laugh it off and say, "Oh well, let's go back down!" But it did open, and instead of turning around to run back down the stairs, I took a step forward, onto the thirteenth floor of Westfall Apartments.
The place looked like a maze of boxes, walls, and shelves. There were no apartments, just random walls like halves of rooms had been left unfinished everywhere, like wide pillars to hold up the seven floors above us. I could see alright in the moonlight that filtered in through the windows lining the sides of the floor, but that only went so far before it faded into an inky darkness in front of us, and I doubted Lacy could see half as far down as I could.
When a set of flourescent lights flickered on above us, I could tell she was a step ahead of me. "Nobody lives on the thirteenth floor." Her voice was low, almost a whisper, like she was afraid somebody would hear her. "We use it for storage."
Knowing there was nobody on this entire floor only served to make it creepier. It was like some kind of huge, low-ceilinged warehouse. And empty warehouses are just about the creepiest places in the world when they're not haunted.
The door suddenly slammed shut behind us, making us both jump and look back at it. The sound echoed around us, almost mocking, and I was really starting to regret coming up. I pulled the collar of my coat closed at my throat, looking back out at the dimly lit storage floor around us. Lacy let go of my hand and I looked back at her to watch her try the door.
"It won't open..."
I'd been expecting that as soon as it had closed.
The cold wasn't gone yet. The ghost reminded us that this was its doing by moaning, "Help... Find... Rhianna..."
"Rhianna?" Lacy drew close to me, sliding her hand into mine again.
I guess it really was the ghost of the missing girl, just like Rayu had thought. That didn't make me feel any better about being here. Why had I decided to check it out again? Oh, right. Proving myself to a girl. It wasn't even the right girl, god damn it.
Find Rhianna... "I... I think... She wants us to find her body?" Great. Searching through a warehouse floor for a dead body. Oh god.
This was answered by a ghostly, whispered, "Please..."
"Guido..."
"It's okay." I didn't feel nearly as sure as I sounded, but I really did think we needed to do this. It was the only thing we could do, right? Otherwise it would keep happening, girls would keep disappearing, and, well, we'd still be stuck here too.
"The...the cops tried to check this floor already..."
"...What did they find?"
"They couldn't get in. Like...like it was sealed shut. They tried...everything, really."
...Why would the ghost seal out the people who were trying to help? "Let's...let's just try to find her." And not think about worse possibilities for what we were in the middle of right now.
I started walking, leading Lacy through the rows of boxes, around the half-finished walls. It almost felt like something was guiding us; the cold stayed with us the whole way. We were halfway across the floor when I thought I heard something, movement rustling somewhere across the floor.
"Mice," Lacy said hastily, like she had to get it out to convince herself instead of me. "We have mice."
I didn't want to think about it any further than that, so I accepted the explanation with a nod and kept moving.
All the lights lined the center of the floor; there were holes set in the ceiling where light fixtures had been meant to be installed in individual rooms, but none of them were actually there. That meant it faded to a dim greyness around stacks of boxes and ill-positioned walls. It didn't do much for making us feel any safer being up here. Dim light and shadows do wonders for the imagination. I kept seeing things move out of the corner of my eye, only to turn around and see nothing there.
"Do you smell that?" I glanced back at her; she had one hand over her nose and was looking off at the other side of what would have been the hallway if the floor had been finished.
"Yeah." It smelled kind of like rotting meat, which was not a particularly good sign in my book. It was like a specific type of rotting meat, though I'd rather not talk about how I already know what decomposing flesh smells like.
I almost tripped over Rhianna before I saw her, and when I did see her I immediately turned around to set a hand over Lacy's eyes. "Don't look."
"What is it?" She sounded nearly panicked.
"Trust me, just don't look."
"Oh-okay..." She moved her hands up to cover her own eyes and I pulled mine away, looking back down at the body I'd nearly stumbled over. It wasn't the first dead body I'd seen, but it was definitely the messiest.
I don't want to describe it, so I won't. There was another, fresher looking corpse laying right beside her, and even though the blood on the floor was dry or congealed enough to resemble chocolate syrup, I never ever wore those sneakers again.
What I will describe though is the feeling I got coming off of Rhianna's body. It was like the strings I could feel from the rocks, but weaker and tinier, and different in a way that I can't figure out how to describe. She was wearing a silver chain around her neck, which was tarnished and blood-stained now; I knew that was what it was coming from.
Against my better judgement, I knelt down to pull it off. It almost made me sick, stealing this right off a dead girl's neck, getting so close to something so horrific to do it, but I knew I needed this chain. As soon as I touched it I knew it was just like my boots. Rhianna had been one of us.