Week #9 - The Dead Watch Over the Living

[lycoris]

Title: Ghosts of the Mind
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Mikami. Gevanni briefly. Everything else is a bit confused. :)
Warnings:: Mildly freaky imagery.
Word Count: 3716

The first night wasn’t so bad.

They took him to the room that he was going to live in. It didn’t smell very clean and Mikami wasn’t sure that he liked it very much but they ignored him. Stephen Loud brought him there which made sense. He had grown accustomed to Stephen Loud’s presence over the days when the man had spied on him and it confused him when Stephen Loud informed him that he would be leaving now. Stephen Loud wasn’t supposed to leave.

But lots of things that weren’t supposed to happen had happened.

He tried to explain that he couldn’t sleep in this room. He needed to make a bed himself to make sure that it didn’t contain anything unpleasant. He didn’t have anything to sleep in and he loathed sleeping in his clothes. He also didn’t like the fact that the door was locked. If there was a fire, he wouldn’t be able to get out. And it was dark and he didn’t have a proper light. But everyone ignored him. In the end, he carefully stripped the bed and turned the mattress to make sure that there was nothing wrong with any of it, then remade it. It was better than nothing, even if the sheets felt limp beneath his hands and the bed smelt musty.

He slept uneasily, drifting in and out of consciousness. Whenever he sank into sleep, his head filled with the sound of shots and a voice screaming for his help. Other voices crying, shouting, surrounded by chaotic fury. Mikami hated chaos.

One of the times he opened his eyes, he thought he saw someone standing in the room with him. But when he sat up, he saw that there was no one there.

Day One.

The room was worse in daylight. There was only a tiny window that let in a dull light. The toilet was simply there, there was little furniture and it was dark and dull and dirty. He hated it.

Also, he was late for work.

They gave him breakfast which he didn’t eat - he hadn’t prepared it and he didn’t trust these people to make food properly with clean hands. Then they took him to see the man in charge. The man’s name was Yamamoto Hiroki, bright red against his skull. He told Mikami quite calmly that this would be where Mikami spent the rest of his life. That it wasn’t quite a normal prison, that it had been arranged by L and others like him for special prisoners, very bad people. And that included Mikami Teru. He would be there for the rest of his life. They would sort out exercise, intellectual pursuits and everything that he needed within reason but on the whole, he would be treated like a normal prisoner. Mikami listened very politely to all of it, then asked exactly when they would allow him to go to work. He was late as it was and they needed him. Yamamoto Hiroki listened to him very politely, then sent him back to his room. Mikami got angry then and shouted but they didn’t listen or come back for him. They didn’t understand.

He spent the day uncomfortably aware that he wasn’t following his routine and feeling increasingly sick because of it. He needed his routine. That made sense of the world for him. You could only do things properly if you had some sort of routine that you followed. They were they denying him this. Why were they keeping him locked up in this place? Didn’t they understand that he’d only been doing as God instructed? Why didn’t they understand that it was for justice?

It was that night, as he struggled to sleep that he saw the first ghosts properly.

The bed was feeling lumpy and he kept itching. He was certain that it was filled with bugs but his request for proper bedding had been ignored. He sat up to check that nothing was crawling over his skin and saw the man standing at the end of his bed. He knew the face. He remembered bringing it to mind as he’d written the name into the Notebook. The man’s name had been Kagami Kazuki. He’d raped and murdered six women.

Mikami had never believed in ghosts. But he could see the man standing there, staring at him, scorn and disgust on his face. And as Mikami watched, he saw another figure behind him, a man who had killed his wife and children. Then another, someone who had committed arson and killed twelve people. Another person. And another. And another.

And then the whispering started. Voices all around him, murmuring scornfully, even laughing. Jeering at him just like the boys at school had used to.

“Take a look at him!”

“He’s nothing special, is he?”

“Oh now, he did it for justice!”

“Murder for justice now is it?”

“Still a fucking murderer!”

“Stop it!” Mikami ordered them. “Stop it at once! I do not believe that you are there anyway! Be quiet and go away!”

They laughed then, jeering, cruel laughs that seemed to echo around his wretched room. They crowded closer instead of going away, faces pressing nearer to his. Mikami struggled not to shy away from them. They were not real. He had more right to be here than they.

“Go away! Go away!” one of them mimicked his voice in a falsetto tone.

“If we’re not here, how can we go away?!”

“We can’t! We’ll just have to stay!”

“Stay forever and ever and ever!”

“Generous, aren’t we? He’ll be so lonely without us! All alone here forever and ever!”

“No,” Mikami whispered. “No, that’s … go away. Go away! You’re not here, you’re not real! Leave me alone, leave me alone!”

He rolled over on the bed, pulling his sheets up around his ears and closing his eyes tightly. For a few minutes, he had an odd feeling of thin hands plucking at his sheet but perhaps that was his imagination. At any rate, when he next looked up, the figures were gone.

Day Two

He woke feeling sick the next day, unable to stomach the breakfast that they offered him. It wasn’t what he would have chosen anyway. They didn’t seem to have listened when he’d explained that he preferred to eat according to a regulated menu and he needed to know what he would be eating each day. Why wouldn’t any of them listen to him? People were supposed to listen to him. He was a respected man, a good person. Everyone knew that. Why did people keep ignoring him? Why?

He was beginning to feel angry. Wildly, bewilderingly angry. The injustice of it, that was what got to him. The injustice, the unfairness. How dared they treat him in this fashion? How dared they act as though he was a common criminal?

“But you are,” a voice whispered nearby. “You are, you are, you are. You’re a murderer, just like us.”

They were back. More of them this time, some of them indistinct, some of them clear and recognisable. They padded and twisted around the walls, watching him with dark, hollowed eyes, lips twisted up in cruel smiles. They laughed and jeered, not clearly for the most part but he knew it was happening. He knew those looks, those expressions, these cruelties. They were evil, wrong, vile people. How dared they even come close to him? They had no right, no right!

“Go away!” he ordered them. “Go away! Go away!”

But they didn’t go away. They stayed and whispered and mocked and even reached out, tugging on his hair with light, shadowy hands. Mikami gritted his teeth and struggled to ignore them. It wasn’t true, it wasn’t, it wasn’t. He had never believed in these things!

Stephen Loud arrived that evening with a suitcase of clothes and a box of various little trinkets.

“Your secretary let me into your flat,” he said quite gently. “I thought you’d want your own things.”

Mikami looked at him blankly. As Stephen Loud sat there, the things were moving behind him. Laughing, jeering, making crude suggestions about the man. It made it quite difficult to concentrate.

“I … how are you?” Stephen Loud asked, sounding awkward.

“Are you allowed to visit?” Mikami asked briskly. “I’m not sure this is proper procedure. There should be rooms … proper things ...”

“No,” Stephen Loud said. “I mean, yes, usually, this would be against procedure but … but this is a special sort of prison. Things are organised differently. You … you’re very worried about procedure, aren’t you?”

“Things should be done properly,” Mikami whispered. “I … I like things done properly … ”

“Including murder?” someone whispered in his ear and ghostly hands pressed against his back. “All nice and proper, wasn’t it, Mikami-san? All carefully written in neat little lines, every name on the same bit of space, neatly organised, all heart attacks.”

Mikami knew the voice. He twisted round and stared into Takada Kiyomi’s cold face. She’d always been quite beautiful to him but now her beauty scared him. He tried to pull away automatically and Takada laughed softly.

“You could never have killed without the book,” she mocked. “Too messy, too complicated. Poor little Mikami Teru.”

“Go away!” he shouted and then heard Stephen Loud make a puzzled, hurt sort of noise. Twisting round again, he saw the man begin to stand.

“No, not you!” he snapped. “Don’t you understand?”

“I … no. No, not really,” Stephen Loud said. “Why don’t you explain?”

“Of course, you should explain,” Takada said casually, sitting down nearby and crossing her legs. “Go ahead, Teru-kun. Show him how crazy you are.”

Crazy. He was not crazy. He had never been crazy. He was a servant of God, the someone who understood justice. They’d often described him as mad but he wasn’t! He wasn’t!.

“I … it doesn’t matter,” he mumbled. “I … I don’t … I’m not feeling very well.”

It was true. His stomach felt as though it was coiling inside him. He shivered suddenly and Stephen Loud reached out a hand towards him, clearly meaning to catch him if he was going to faint. Takada laughed, her laugh no longer soft and sweet but harsh and cackling.

“How the mighty falls!” she mocked. “How the mighty crumbles!”

He closed his eyes for a long moment, telling himself over and over that there was nothing there. That he could hear nothing, see nothing but Stephen Loud. When he finally opened his eyes, that was the truth again and Stephen Loud was looking at him with what seemed to be a sad sort of fear in his eyes.

Day Three

The next day, he found himself counting the bricks in the wall. He wasn’t quite sure why. It seemed like the thing to do. Counting was quite soothing. You could just get on with it and there had to be a right number eventually. It was nice to have right answers for things. Sometimes, the answers for things felt bewilderingly slippery. At the moment, he didn’t really think that he knew anything very much.

And it helped him ignore the voices.

There were more of them now and he couldn’t understand them, but they kept being there, behind him and he knew they were saying nothing good. He hated them. Why wouldn’t they go away? Why wouldn’t they leave him alone? Why did they keep calling him a murderer? He wasn’t a murderer! He was a good person! A loyal servant of justice!

“No,” Takada whispered, her voice sweet in his ear. “No, you weren’t. You remember, don’t you? You did it for God but think of all that you discovered. Think of all the things that were said … ”

He’d done his best not think of those things. So much better not to think about those awful, awful things. God’s face twisted up with terror and pain, screaming with hate and begging for mercy. That wasn’t God. God didn’t do that. He couldn’t bear it. He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about any of it. Why was Takada trying to make him think of such horrible things?

“Go away,” he ordered her.

“None of us will ever leave you,” she said quietly. “Do you not know the legend of the Furies, Mikami Teru-kun? That they haunt those who spill blood?”

“They … that’s not true they … it is more complicated. Please, leave me alone, I did not … I was … I do not have to justify myself to you! You are dead!”

“By your hand,” she whispered. “By your hand but for a minute.”

“Dead!” he screamed at her. “Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead!”

He kept screaming it, over and over. She laughed, soft and sweet and as she did, her beautiful skin began to crisp, curling up into black embers, blood turning to mist, skeleton blackening. He shrieked and shrieked, lashing out at the hideous vision until hands restrained him and something cold pricked his arm, making him fall asleep. He had nightmares of monsters that waiting in the dark for him, of the ghosts that he knew still lingered around him, of childhood memories that he thought he’d banished. When he woke up, the first face he saw was Takada’s, smiling down at him and he screamed again and instantly felt another cold prick in his arm and someone telling him that it was just another mild sedative as he sunk into another tangle of nightmares.

When he next awoke, the man had a name above his head. He was clearly real. He asked Mikami a lot of strange, confusing questions that Mikami refused to answer and then sent him back to his cell.

It was when Mikami discovered lunch was waiting for him there that he realised with a strange feeling of emptiness that he had lost track of the days.

For a short while, the dead left him alone. He sat quietly for the most part, not quite sure what to do but watch the shadows move over the walls and counting the bricks over and over. It was as though nothing was quite connected in his head. As though nothing quite made sense. He prayed because he’d always found solace in prayer before, knowing that a just and good God watched over him and believed in him to carry out his wishes but now, the prayers seemed somehow hollow, as though no one was listening.

Then the voices came back.

“Killer! Murderer!”

“Took our lives because you thought it was your right? Stupid fool!”

“Evil, that’s what you are!”

“He wasn’t God,” Takada whispered. “You know he wasn’t. He was a fraud and what does that make you, Mikami? You listened to the whispered words of the devil, didn’t you? That makes you an outcast.”

“No! No, that’s not true! Stop it, you know nothing, you understand nothing! Leave me be, leave me be!”

Sometimes they stopped and Mikami relaxed in blessed respite, but they kept coming back, whispering, taunting him. Sometimes, the hands even touched him, realer now, pinching and scratching and even punching. They spoke of longing for revenge against him, how since their deaths they’d surrounded him, watching, waiting for their chance for vengeance. How he deserved to suffer, to be caught and hurt and killed the way they had been. He no longer dared scream. If he screamed, people would take him away again and force him to sleep. Mikami didn’t trust sleep. He trusted nothing now. His prayers continued to go unanswered, unheard. What else mattered if no one would listen to him?

Then the false God came.

He stood beside Takada, laughing softly, shaking his head pityingly. That lovely soft voice that Mikami had so admired telling him that he was worthless, pointless now. That he’d failed.

“No,” he mumbled through dry lips. “You failed, you were a lie, a trick. You were not God!”

“You believed in me,” the false God breathed, eyes glittering as blood oozed from the wounds Matsuda Touta had inflicted upon him. “A false God. That makes you a failure. No one hears your prayers now, Mikami Teru. They have all turned from you, the man with clay feet. What good is a worshipper who believes the honeyed words of the devil? God will never again hear your cries. You brought false justice.”

“No! No! NO!”

He curled up in a corner, sobbing into his hands while the false God laughed at him, that terrible laugh that he’d laughed before. The sound grew louder, bouncing off the walls, it was horrible, hideous and Mikami’s head was going to explode, he was going to die, he couldn’t take it -

“Teru.”

The soft voice cut through the laughter and a hand gently touched his arm. The laughter stopped and all was silent. He frowned and lifted his head and found himself staring into the gentle face of his mother.

“Oh, my Teru,” she said and her voice was soft and sad. “My poor child. My poor, poor child.”

“Mother?” he mumbled blankly, then shook his head. “No. You’re dead. God took you because you did not believe in me. You are not here.”

“The dead never leave us,” she said. “I never left you, though you turned away from me. You turned to lies and falsehoods and hid your face from what was real but I stayed with you. I watched you as you lived your life. I am here.”

“Go away then,” he ordered her.

She sighed and her eyes were disappointed. She’d always been disappointed him. Nothing he’d ever done had been right, had been good enough. She’d always criticised, scolded, despaired. She’d told him not to do things he needed to do and to do things that he couldn’t cope with. She loved him but she didn’t understand. She never, ever had.

“If that’s what you want, Teru,” she said quietly. “But you can always call out for me. You always could. I’ll be watching. I always watched over you.”

She smoothed his hair with gentle fingers. She’d always used to do that after he’d had nightmares when he was little. A soft smooth of his hair, a promise that the nightmare was over and a new dream would now begin. Her lips light on his forehead. And then she was gone and he was cowering in his corner, conscious of the ghosts that lingered around the edge of mind, tugging at him, mocking him, gripping his arms with painful fingers.

It occurred to him some time after that that really, he was probably going mad. He realised it with a detached sort of numbness and found it vaguely soothing. Perhaps if he went mad, they would leave him alone. People would stop trying to force him to eat or to talk to them. He found it difficult to talk now. His words seemed to get confused and he couldn’t quite remember who he was talking to most of the time. There were so many voices around him, so many shouts and catcalls that it was difficult to distinguish. The only clear voices were Takada and the false God. And he didn’t want to hear them.

“You obeyed my lies,” the false God purred as he struggled to snatch a few moments sleep, leaning his head against the cold brickwork. “You listened to my falsehoods and accepted them into your heart. You’ll be damned forever for that, Mikami. You know that, don’t you? Do you know what will happen to you in hell?”

“I liked you,” Takada murmured on his other side. “You chose me for your dirty work and marked me for death. Put me in the hands of your glittering God with feet of clay. I was an innocent and you forced me into your web of deceit.”

She scratched his face with her fingernails and Mikami felt the blood begin to flow. Some part of him, a distant, distant part was aware that his own hand was raised. No doubt, he had scratched himself in madness. Often when the ghosts struck their blows, he found himself with bruises and marks. Or maybe he imagined them. The real people didn’t seem to notice them.

“There are no real people,” the false God cooed, his mouth twisted insanely. “Only you, only you and the ghosts now. They’ve left you, you have no one, no one at all. We have you now and we’ll keep you. God will not come. There is no saviour for you!”

The ghosts were all there then, hollering, shrieking, a cacophony of horrors. Mikami screamed and struggled but they were everywhere, holding him down, sucking him down into blackness and he couldn’t see, couldn’t think, the blackness was swallowing him, devouring him, his heart was beating so loud and fast that it hurt and he couldn’t breathe and the false God was laughing -

“Mother! Mother!”

The scream ripped from his lips and suddenly there was silence. Soft hands rested on his shoulders and soft hair tickled his face. He opened heavy eyelids.

“Mother?”

“You called out,” she whispered, her eyes concerned. “Did you have a bad dream?”

He didn’t answer. He felt small and stupid and somehow very, very young. His eyes ached and he could feel tears catching on his eyelashes. It was still so hard to breathe but his heartbeat was quieter now, no longer pounding so frustratingly in his ears.

“No,” his mother said, her voice kind. “No tears. You’re my brave Teru. Always so very brave. Come on now. It’s all right now.”

“They’ll come back for me,” he said dully. “They’ll come back … ”

“No, Teru. No, not now. They’ll never come back. It was only a bad dream. Just a nightmare. That’s all. Nightmares can’t hurt you, they fade away on the wind. This nightmare will too. You’ll see.”

She stroked his hair and leaned over, kissing his forehead lightly, then pulled him into her arms. Mikami rested his head on her shoulder, suddenly feeling completely safe for the first time in so long.

It was as she said. The nightmare was over. A new dream could begin.