fic: In The Walls (4/8)
Headers & Main Post - Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Part Seven - Part Eight - Bonus Content
Practice the next day feels like some sort of sick joke. The ballroom feels so empty without Mikey in it-they've never played without him before, never written with anyone missing-and the music sounds all wrong without the bass keeping it anchored. What a metaphor, keeping it anchored, Gerard thinks bitterly. Mikey was barely anchored himself, and he was the one knocking everybody else off balance. Even though Mikey leaving was the right thing for him, it still feels all wrong. Well, everything feels wrong right now, not just practice-but practice is really, really bad.
They're back to working on "Dead!" and they're going over things Gerard was sure were nailed down, arguing over things that haven't changed since before they left New York. There's no good reason to be working on it, except that it's a pretty palpable thing between the four of them that nobody wants to pick up where they'd left off on "The Five Of Us".
So they stumble through pointless repetitions of songs they don't need to be playing. Gerard doesn't want to be the one to say it, but they sound terrible. Everything sounds the tiniest bit out of line from where it should be, and it grates on his nerves the entire time.
So they struggle through the day, and if they put their instruments down a couple hours earlier than normal, well, nobody says anything about it.
After they break for the day, Gerard starts coiling up some cable to have something to do with his hands when something touches his shoulder. He startles, and then turns to see Frank standing behind him, looking sheepish. His mouth is open like he wants to say something so Gerard waits, but Frank doesn't say anything.
They're the only ones left in the ballroom, and the silence is almost overpowering.
"What?" Gerard finally asks tersely.
Frank flinches, and Gerard immediately feels bad for snapping. "Sorry. You okay?"
"I guess?" Frank says. "Today was weird." Frank clearly wants to say more but he's holding himself back. Gerard knows what it's got to be about, but he's not going to say anything if Frank isn't. He knows Frank, knows that he'll say something sooner or later-probably as loud as he can, probably cut with a lot of swearing-but he's happy to wait for Frank to do it on his own time, maybe when Gerard isn't around. He wonders if he's a terrible person for even entertaining the thought of not being there for Frank, but he feels bad enough already without having to hear all about how bad Frank feels, too.
They stand in awkward silence until Frank waves one hand towards the door and says, "So, uh. Would you mind walking me upstairs?"
"Sure," Gerard says. He puts the coiled cable down on an amp, and his fingers feel weird as they relax from the death grip he hadn't realized he'd had on it.
They shuffle out of the ballroom in silence, and there's this prickly tension around them like they can both still feel the weight of the shitty practice on their shoulders and they can't shake it off.
As they round the corner into the hallway to Frank's stairs, they hear a long, high-pitched creaking noise, like a door is swinging very slowly on ancient hinges. Gerard pauses, looking around for the source of the noise. It takes him a moment but he finally sees that one of the doors further down the hall is hanging partway open. That must have been it, he decides, and he starts walking again, taking quick steps to catch up to Frank.
But then all the rest of the doors swing open, all at once but not quite in unison, and the noise of it is horrible, grating and squeaking and drawn out. Gerard sucks in a sharp breath and finds himself reaching for Frank, putting a hand on his arm and holding on as they keep walking.
The doors slam behind them as they pass, one by one, and it's weird but not particularly scary, except for how it shouldn't be happening. And then they pass two that don't slam, and Gerard starts to contemplate whether or not hauntings ought to be internally consistent when all the remaining doors slam at once, so loud that he jumps in surprise even though he knows he should have been expecting it, and so hard and fast he can feel the wind of it blowing through his hair.
"What the fuck," Frank gasps. He sounds really freaked out and Gerard can't blame him. That last slam felt almost... almost planned, like the house had been deliberately trying to scare the living shit out of them after lulling them into a false sense of security. And now that he's decided to believe the house is haunted (and he keeps thinking it exactly like that, he decided to believe, like it gives him any small amount of control over all the weird shit that just keeps happening), everything that was merely strange before-like the occasional slamming door, which is a weird fixture of their life in the house-is taking on a new sinister air.
"I still hate this place," Frank mutters once they're clear of the hallway, and he shoots a look over his shoulder like he's making sure the doors are all behaving themselves now that he's got his back to them.
"I'm starting to get there," Gerard admits. "I think you and... you guys are right about it being haunted, too."
"Yeah?" Frank perks up at that, and he turns to face Gerard like he's sizing him up. "What changed your mind?"
They start up the stairs to Frank's room as Gerard gets his thoughts in order. "All the little things, I guess. Like those doors, just now. And the thing with Bob and the taps the other day. And, uh. Remember when I said I thought I saw something in the mirror?"
"Yeah?"
"I definitely did. A few times. I really don't think my eyes were playing tricks on me."
"Huh," Frank says. "That's fucked up. Were you scared?"
"Why do you think I ran away?" Gerard asks dryly. He sort of can't believe he's having this conversation in the middle of the hallway like it's normal-it feels like he should be whispering his secrets behind a closed door somewhere. Maybe this is the healthier approach, he thinks hopefully, but then sneers at himself a moment later. As if actually believing the house is haunted is in any way healthy. It feels like there's nothing about their situation right now that isn't deeply and completely fucked up. Gerard breathes out heavily. "And," he starts, but stops right away.
"And?" Frank prompts gently when Gerard doesn't immediately finish his thought.
"There was some weird shit with Mikey, right before he left."
Frank makes a strange, strangled noise like he's swallowed his words at the last second, and then says, "More than he already told me?"
"I don't know what he told you," Gerard says defensively, stung by the thought that Mikey would have told Frank anything voluntarily when Gerard had to drag it out of him.
The conversation drops off then, and the silence gets heavier and heavier as it drags on. When they get to Frank's room, Frank barely even acknowledges Gerard as he goes in, just upnods briefly and then closes the door firmly.
Gerard stands outside Frank's door staring at it blankly for almost a minute as he tries to collect his thoughts. He has no idea how the conversation spun out of control so badly (and so quickly, seriously), but it makes his chest ache to think about the way Frank looked at the mention of Mikey. Gerard knows the feeling behind it, and fuck, it hurts.
He can't help but wonder what Mikey told Frank. He wouldn't be surprised if Frank blames him for Mikey leaving, if maybe that was what was behind the strange turn in their conversation. But no, that can't be it, he couldn't-he wouldn't have asked Gerard to walk with him if he did, right? If Frank did have a problem with Gerard, he would say something... right?
Gerard wishes he could be sure of that, but he can't forget how he thought the house was fine, that his brother was fine, and look how far that got him. He can't trust himself to be sure of anything, anymore.
When he's back in his room he hovers uselessly for a moment, torn between sitting by the window and trying to write (if only to scrape the shit out of his brain and get rid of it), and going to bed and calling it a day. He doesn't think he can sit still right now, though, so he changes into his pajamas and shuffles into the bathroom to wash up for the night, even though it's barely ten. Maybe the routine of it will help settle him.
As he brushes his teeth he looks at the door to Mikey's room. For once, its outline isn't picked out in fuzzy blue light; it's just a normal door now. Gerard thinks about going in and sitting in the dark. He's not entirely sure why-it seems like sitting around in Mikey's room would be overwhelmingly sad and pathetic, but on the other hand, it might help, might make it feel like Mikey is closer, like he's not missing. But then he remembers the last time he was in there-when Mikey pushed him, almost hit him-and then the time before that, when he found the bottles... Fuck, he really doesn't want to think about that; it's still way too much for him to deal with right now. He spits out his toothpaste and rinses his mouth, keeping his eyes trained down on the sink rather than the mirror, and then takes a perfunctory piss.
He climbs into bed and pulls the covers up to his chin. He tugs them up to his nose a little later when he feels a cold draft blowing through the room, and then up the rest of the way over his face when he rolls over and burrows in when the chill starts creeping in under the blanket's edges. His room has never been this cold before, but it now seems somehow right that it should be.
* * *
When Gerard wakes up the next day, it's a real struggle to force himself to get out of bed and go downstairs. It's not until he's finishing his second cup of coffee that he realizes he's still in his pajamas because he straight-up forgot to get dressed. He looks down at the knees of his flannel pants, totally confused, and starts scratching at a spatter of dried paint without really thinking about it.
He's still staring at his pants when he hears somebody else come into the kitchen, but he looks up when the footsteps stop abruptly much earlier than he was expecting.
Bob is leaning up against a counter, staring blankly into a cupboard that Gerard is pretty sure is completely empty.
"Where's the cereal?" Bob finally asks after a solid minute of just standing there, staring.
Gerard frowns. "One cupboard over, where it's always been."
"Whoops." Bob looks down sheepishly.
"You okay?" Gerard asks. It took them a while to get used to where things were in the kitchen, sure, but Gerard has seen Bob get the cereal out any number of times since they arrived, and he's pretty sure finding it hasn't been a problem before.
Bob yawns a great big stretching gulp of a yawn before he can say anything, which is all the answer Gerard really needs anyway. "Just tired," Bob says unnecessarily, then adds, "didn't sleep much last night."
"No? How come?"
Bob shrugs, then leans in to open the next cupboard over and take the cereal out. He brings it to the table and that's when Gerard gets a good look at Bob's face. He'd looked tired at a distance but up close he's drawn and haggard. His skin is so translucent that it makes him look sick, and the bags under his eyes are dark like bruises. "Same old," Bob says. He turns his face away and Gerard blinks, realizing he'd been staring.
Gerard forgot he even asked a question so it takes him a minute to realize what Bob is on about. "What?" Gerard asks, then yawns himself-Bob must have set him off.
"The leaky taps in my bathroom kept me up all damn night," Bob says, and then knocks over the box of cereal when he reaches for it. It spills across the table in a flood of toasted oat flakes, and Bob sits there and stares at it dumbly.
Gerard frowns at the mess on the table but makes no move to sweep it up. "That's happened before, right?"
"This was way worse," Bob says quietly.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"You gonna be okay today?"
Bob doesn't answer right away, and Gerard is about to ask again when Bob says, "Yeah." He sounds like he's not sure he can commit to it, and Gerard's not buying it.
"You sure?"
"I said I was," Bob snaps.
Gerard could push it but he realizes he'll probably end up arguing with Bob-which he'd rather avoid, thanks. So they sit in silence, staring at the mess of cereal on the table like it will clean itself up if they wish for it hard enough, until Ray comes in.
Ray looks at the cereal spilled across the table, and he opens his mouth to say something but then pauses, taking in Gerard's and Bob's faces in turn. "I'll go get more," he says carefully.
Ray brings a fresh box of cereal and a carton of milk to the table, and then goes back for bowls.
They eat their cereal more or less in silence as they wait for Frank to come downstairs. Gerard only eats a few mouthfuls that taste like sawdust before he pushes his bowl away, and he's getting up for coffee number four when the noise starts.
He can't quite place it right away, but then he realizes that it's coming from the ballroom-Frank's started playing without them. He's never heard their new stuff from anywhere but right there, and when it gets to him in the kitchen it's muffled and distorted by hallways and walls-it sounds completely different. It would be virtually unrecognizable, actually, if Gerard didn't know the music so well.
They take that as their cue to head over to the ballroom, and Gerard picks up his pace so he can be the first one in. When he comes around the corner all he can see is Frank, standing by himself, head bowed and shoulders slumped, making a hellish goddamn racket on his guitar. It hurts Gerard to hear it-not the noise itself, though that's pretty bad, but how clear it is that Frank is upset and trying to find something to drain out the feelings.
To nobody's surprise, practice that afternoon is even worse than it was the day before. They're flubbing notes they've always hit, moving into chord changes just a little too slow, never quite locking down in time with each other. The prospect of forward progress really feels like a mirage at this point: just out of reach, never getting any closer. But they keep pushing (hard, probably too hard) and nothing is happening and Gerard can feel the frustration building in the room around them, stinking the place up, clinging greasily to their every move.
What it is, Gerard thinks bitterly, is that it feels like nobody fits together anymore. It's as though Mikey's absence has changed the very shape of things, and the pieces don't interlock anymore around the hole where he should be. It's ironic, Gerard thinks, that the only song they've written in the house so far should have been so shockingly prescient-without you is how I disappear indeed.
They've been playing for a few hours when Frank tentatively proposes taking a stab at the new one again. Gerard has a bad feeling about it but goes along with it anyway-if Frank thinks they can do some work on it, who is he to disagree?
It only takes a couple run-throughs before it becomes obvious to everybody exactly how bad of an idea it was. Frank's turmoil is clear on his face, but Gerard knows that if Frank isn't saying anything, it's because he's not ready. In the mean time, though, it's hard to watch Frank try to take everything out on his guitar. His strumming is a little too hard and his chord shapes are a little too sloppy-and it's better that he's punching at the music instead of a brick wall (which Gerard would not put past him at all), but it's not any good for the rest of them.
Ray and Bob make a valiant go of keeping up with Frank's playing, but he's constantly shifting the tempo as his hands move faster and faster before he catches himself and slows down again, and it's really a lost cause. Ray is doing the best he can but he's still struggling, and he keeps shaking his head like he's scolding himself every time his performance is less than perfect. Gerard catches the motion out of the corner of his eye a couple times before he starts watching for it deliberately, and it seems like the more it happens the more withdrawn Ray gets, pulling in on himself and putting less and less into his playing. Gerard himself is struggling not to space out so bad that he misses his cues to come in, but it keeps happening anyway. Bob is maybe doing the best of all of them, but it's not by much-and there's a certain grimness in the set of his jaw that tells Gerard that it's a struggle there, too.
The strain of them all trying to keep lids on their tempers gets heavier and heavier as practice wears on. Nobody seems at all happy with how things are going, and Gerard doesn't even have enough fingers to count how many times the between-song sniping at each other almost blows up into a full-on fight. When they stop for the day-much earlier than yesterday-it doesn't escape Gerard's notice that Frank practically throws his guitar down when he puts it away.
It was undeniably the best thing for them to do, but stopping so early really doesn't sit too well with Gerard. Are they giving up, he wonders, or are they staging a strategic retreat?
He doesn't have any answers. He doesn't have anything, it feels like-just a great big hole inside him where everything used to be a few days ago.
He wonders again if maybe the rest of them shouldn't leave, too.
But no, that would for sure be giving up. Gerard refuses to give up, not now. Not only that, but he can't shake the fear that stopping now would maybe be the end of the album, at least as far as his high hopes go. He remembers the days it took them to get going again once they got to the house, the long afternoons of replaying and rethinking songs they already thought they'd nailed down in New York, and he's worried what will happen if they pack up and move again. He's scared of losing the new, darker edge the songs have picked up. The songs they've been writing since they've been here are the best they've ever done, and he can't stomach the prospect of losing that.
They've lost enough already.
* * *
The next two days of rehearsal are more of the same and worse: more listless run-throughs that do more harm than good, musically and personally. They're barely pretending to go through the motions now; instead, they're lurching around the ballroom like zombies, pale and grubby and unhappy. It's like a plug's been pulled on them, Gerard thinks miserably, and now there's nothing left to keep them moving forward and creating. After four excruciating days of friction and drag, they finally come to a screeching stop.
Frank's playing that afternoon hits new lows of sloppiness and it knocks them all off-balance, Ray most of all. Then Bob somehow manages to entirely lose track of the beat and their run-through of "Mama" completely implodes, collapsing in on itself in a way that hasn't happened since they were young and drunk and a totally different band.
And then Ray takes off his guitar and sets it down carefully in its stand before spinning to face Frank. "What the fuck was that?" he shouts, his hands balling into fists at his sides.
Gerard takes a step towards them, already thinking about how best to stop another fist fight before it starts. From the corner of his eye he sees Bob moving, getting up from his throne and moving around his kit like he's got exactly the same thing in mind.
"Oh, was that my fault?" Frank asks mockingly. His hands flutter over the strings of his guitar for a moment before he takes it off, putting it down with far less care than Ray had given his. "I didn't realize I was the only person playing."
"It was you," Ray insists. "We were all doing okay until you went and fucked it up, Frank!" He's bristling, radiating anger and frustration like none of them have yet dared to do so overtly, and fuck, there's really no way this is going to end well.
"Your playing really isn't so hot right now either, Toro," Frank spits back-and it's true, even though Gerard is internally siding with Ray on this one.
Bob moves towards Frank, his hands out. "Chill out, Iero."
"Fuck you," Frank snaps.
Ray swings to face Bob. "I don't need you fighting my fights, Bryar," he grits out, crossing his arms over his chest.
For a moment it looks like Bob is going to get involved and Gerard's heart starts beating faster in anticipation. He's sweating now too, and his stomach is twisting bitterly like it always does when he's faced with confrontation as bad as this.
But then Frank is moving into Ray's space, and even though his fists are down and he's not quite within swinging distance, he's still holding himself up straight like he's spoiling for a fight, and after the incident between them in the kitchen last week, well, Gerard's not so sure that Frank isn't going to get one. And sure enough, Frank tips his head up and tells Ray, "If it's a fight, then fucking fight me!"
And then Ray-Ray, bless his heart, seriously, takes a giant step away from Frank, almost tripping over his patch cord but keeping his balance-and his distance.
"You're a chicken, you're a fucking pussy," Frank taunts him.
"You're the one who's been a pussy ever since we got here!" Ray shouts back.
And just like that, everything blows up. Frank and Ray are yelling over each other as loud as they can, and then, shit, shit, Ray's got his fists up, even though he's not moving any closer to Frank. But Frank is closing in, and fuck, the noise they're making is unbelievable. Their shouts are echoing around the ballroom and bouncing off the walls, the rafters, shaking the chandelier, coming back and hitting Gerard's ears what feels like a hundred times louder than they started.
It's chaos, that's the only word for it. Frank is closing in on Ray and he's tense all over like he's going to just go for it at any second. Bob is hovering off to the side, visibly anxious. And the yelling keeps going. Gerard can't even make out the words Frank and Ray are hurling at each other. All he can hear are bits of insults and obscenities, and there's a shrill edge to Ray's voice that's got Gerard sure that it's all about to be over, maybe as soon as the next heartbeat.
And then cutting through the din is Ray's frustrated shout, "Fuck, this wouldn't even be happening if Mikey hadn't bailed on us!"
Gerard whirls to face Ray, takes two steps forward without even thinking about it to get in Ray's face. "You don't say that about my brother," Gerard tells him through gritted teeth, and he's uncomfortably close to yelling now, too.
Ray laughs bitterly but doesn't back off. "You think this would be happening if were was still here? We weren't having any problems until he left."
"Where do you get off trying to blame your failures on someone else?" And Gerard really is yelling now. He's actually seeing red, and there's a rushing in his ears that wasn't there a minute ago. He feels more than sees the guys moving around him: Ray taking a step in, Frank still wound tight just off Gerard's side.
"My failures?" Ray scoffs. "Can I remind you that our total suck has been a group effort since he left?"
Gerard opens his mouth to say something, but Frank gets there first. "You'd know failures, wouldn't you?" he says sharply, and-oh, he's facing Gerard, addressing him, accusing him.
Something bitter and vile in Gerard's guts starts bubbling over and he's almost about to say something when Frank keeps going.
"Too bad Mikey didn't learn from your mistakes, huh?"
Gerard staggers back like Frank just kicked him in the stomach-he thinks it'd hurt far less had Frank actually done that instead-and almost falls. He catches his balance and then before he knows it he's lunging at Frank. His hands come up even though he doesn't think he wants to hit Frank, he just wants to make him take it back no matter how he has to do it. "You fucking asshole!" he snarls. All he can see is Frank's stupid sneering face and now he does want to hit him, wipe that fucking look right off his face-
And then Bob is stepping in between them, shouting. Gerard pulls up short, trying to process this sudden interruption through the noise still buzzing in his ears, and he realizes that Bob isn't joining in-he's telling them all to back the fuck off. Bob pushes Gerard away from Frank, and then pushes Frank back considerably more firmly. He turns to Ray, who backs off of his own volition, and Bob nods at him once but doesn't move from where he's standing between them all.
"Guys," Bob says. He sounds dead serious. "Come on, give it up. You know this isn't really about Mikey. He had to leave-you know that, you saw him. It's not personal. He's coming back. So sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up before I beat all your asses." Bob is flushed red and looking a little like he can't believe he yelled at them all, but then the look drops off his face and he gets that stubborn set to his features they've all come to know so well, and then he crosses his arms over his chest and starts glaring at them all in turn.
Gerard chances a look over at Frank, and the look of horrified shock on his face would be heartbreaking if Gerard weren't so furious with him. He looks away when Frank flicks his gaze back at him, but not so fast he doesn't see Frank flinch when their eyes meet.
"Okay?" Bob asks.
Nobody says anything.
"Okay, Toro?" Bob asks, looking over his shoulder at Ray, who mutters an "okay" back.
Gerard mutters his own "okay" when Bob turns his way. Bob nods at him, and then turns to Frank.
"Fuck you," Frank mutters, and then turns on his heel and storms out of the ballroom.
Gerard bites his lip as he watches Frank go.
"I guess we're done for the day," Bob sighs.
Gerard can't decide if he'd rather cry or laugh, and he feels like he might not be too far from doing both. There's a strange buzzing in his head he can't shake and he figures he may as well go hide in his room for the rest of the night. Maybe the quiet and the closer quarters will help make it stop.
* * *
Gerard wakes up suddenly too early the next morning, sweaty and over-warm and nauseous. His heart is pounding so hard it feels like it might bruise his ribs. His breath is coming too short and he's practically gasping to get enough air.
Bodies. Dead bodies. Dead bodies covered in blood. Dead bodies with familiar faces staring up at him with big dead eyes.
When he reaches out to turn on his bedside lamp, his hand is shaking so hard that he almost knocks the lamp over. He keeps fumbling at it and finally the weak light blinks on.
Not just familiar faces-fuck, it's his band, it's Frank and Bob and Ray, and Brian, and Cortez and Worm, and the bodies are stretching on and on, dozens faces he recognizes from years ago and hasn't seen since.
It was just a bad dream, he thinks over and over as he tries to calm himself down. Just a dream, just a dream... but fuck, did it ever seem real.
He looks down and sees the knife in his hand. There's so much blood.
Gerard can't stop seeing the images from his dreams. It's like the after-image is seared into the front of his fucking brain and they're going to be there forever, waiting for him to close his eyes again.
He leans in to close Frank's staring eyes, and then pauses.
He throws his covers back from where they're suddenly chokingly tight around his neck and swings his feet out of bed. The floor is cold under his bare feet as he goes into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. It's bracing and it helps pull him further and further out of sleep, away from the dream.
His eyes haven't glassed over with death yet, and he can see his reflection there, staring back at him. It's him, except it's not. He's too young.
He carefully keeps his eyes trained down on the sink. His hands are still shaking. His heart is still beating too hard.
It's a face he's seen in a mirror, weeks ago when they first got to the house.
He walks back into his bedroom and hovers awkwardly in the middle of the floor. His room seems so empty now without Mikey sleeping on his floor every night. He stares down his bed, considering, but then realizes there's no way he's getting back in there, not tonight. The sky outside his window is starting to get lighter and he thinks that maybe it's not too early to start his day.
He doesn't even bother getting dressed, even though he eyes the pile of clothes he's accumulated in one corner of his room before heaving a mental shrug and mumbling, "Fuck it," under his breath. He goes down to the kitchen where he eats breakfast like he always does, moving through his morning routine with no real thought or care. He feels all slimy and cotton-headed, halfway between feeling hungover and like he's just spent hours crying.
He sits around for half an hour, and when he doesn't get any indication that anybody else is coming down any time soon, he goes back up to his own room. Everything there looks different now that the sun is up, even his bed, so he tentatively climbs back in. It's too light now and he's too full of coffee to have to worry about falling asleep. He thinks he'll be okay. Maybe. He won't have any more dreams, at least.
It turns out that lying down and pulling his covers up over his face doesn't do much at all to stop the rapid spinning of all the wheels in his head. They're spinning in place, though; they never go anywhere, they just keep coming back around to the same thoughts to dig their ruts deeper and deeper and deeper. He still can't believe how quickly everything changed, how the band basically pulled a 180 and went from making serious progress on a song they'd all but abandoned to actually making finished songs worse. He can't believe the way they fought yesterday, the things they said, the accusations they hurled around at each other and at Mikey. It's not Mikey's fault that the rest of them are fucked because he had to leave, not objectively, but god, he can't help but feel like it is, and he feels bad for feeling good that he's not the only one who thinks so.
And now that he's thinking about leaving, he comes back yet again to the idea of packing the rest of them up and leaving, too. Frank is on the record as hating the place, and Gerard isn't too keen on it himself anymore, not after all the strange shit that keeps happening. But that's dumb, of course. Those aren't good reasons to leave. They're not quitters, they don't give up. Not on this, not on Mikey, not on anything.
Gerard sighs. He knows he's making up reasons not to do it, but he honestly can't see them leaving the house, not now.
He stays in bed for God only knows how long. He alternates staring at the ceiling, staring at the wall next to his bed, and closing his eyes, but he can't get his brain to clear, can't stop the endless rush of terrible thoughts through his mind. He's got a wicked caffeine headache building, a dull throb in both temples that feels like it's going to squeeze his brain out his ears at any minute, and his stomach is about to start trying to devour itself whole.
Finally, he musters up enough energy to swing his legs out from under the covers and he gets slowly out of bed. He figures it won't be too much effort to stop into the kitchen for food-he's just going to grab a box of Pop Tarts and he doesn't really want to dignify it by calling it a meal. The house is eerily still around him as he makes his way through the hallway and down the stairs.
As he nears the turn for the main hall, though, he hears the murmur of voices. He pauses, trying to decide if it's something sinister or not, and then realizes very quickly that it's Bob and Ray. When he turns the corner he sees them standing together near the wall, leaning in close as they talk.
Gerard has no idea what's going on, but from the way they're standing he can tell that it's serious. Gerard stops and tries to think of another route to the kitchen, so he can avoid them and give them some privacy. But then Ray looks up and sees him and waves him over, so he goes.
When he gets close enough to make out actual words, he catches Ray saying, "I really didn't think this house was haunted but now I don't know, I mean, what else could possibly explain what I'm hearing?"
"Fuck, you too?" Gerard blurts out.
Bob jumps, momentarily startled by the vehemence of Gerard's outburst, but then brushes it off easily.
"What is it with you guys and ghost shit?" Bob scoffs, but he sounds uneasy.
"I'd say you're completely outnumbered now, Bryar," Ray offers, not terribly apologetically.
"Yeah, whatever," Bob waves it off.
"So what happened?" Gerard asks Ray.
Ray takes a deep breath, almost as if he's bracing himself, before answering. "You know how before, I told you about how I was sure I heard a strange couple talking?"
"Yeah?"
"I heard them again. I keep hearing them. But this morning..." Ray trails off uncertainly, and he looks a little pale.
"What happened? Did they stop?" Gerard prompts gently.
"No," Ray says. "Not even close. It sounded like a really violent argument, you know, yelling and screaming and all that. And it was loud, like it was coming through the wall from the room next to me. But the woman sounded terrified, and, uh," Ray closes his eyes briefly and takes a deep breath. "She was begging him not to kill her."
"She what?" Gerard gasps.
"It was awful," Ray sighs. "I got up and went and looked in the rooms on both sides of mine, and they were empty, of course, but I kept hearing it. It just kept going. And I swear it was getting louder as it went on."
Gerard sucks in his next breath through his teeth and lets it out unsteadily. "Then what happened?"
Ray shrugs. "It stopped, like, it cut off right in the middle of her screaming, and then it was quiet again."
"Jesus, that's fucked up. Are you okay?"
"I guess? I mean, it was hours ago now and nothing's happened since, so I'm starting to forget, you know?"
Gerard nods.
"Makes me glad I only have a dripping tap all night." Bob's tone of voice says he's trying to make a joke, but Gerard can tell that he really means it.
Ray cracks the barest hint of a smile. "So where've you been all day, Gee?"
"In bed," Gerard admits. "I came down to get something to eat."
"Ah," Ray nods. "Guess you haven't seen Frank, then?"
"No."
"I don't blame him for keeping to himself today," Ray says thoughtfully.
Gerard can't help but agree.
They make some small talk, and then Gerard's stomach growls so loudly they all hear it. Gerard excuses himself and heads to the kitchen. It takes a few minutes of searching but he finds his Pop Tarts, and he eats two of them on the way back to his room--he must have been hungrier than he'd thought, if he can't even wait that long to start eating. He realizes belatedly that he's leaving a trail of crumbs behind him as he goes, but this isn't a fairy tale and he's pretty sure he won't be able to follow them home.
The sun is just starting to go down when he goes back upstairs, and the house is all lit up with the intense orange glow that comes along with springtime evenings. The familiar hallways are new and strange around him as he passes through on his way to his room. Tiny details on the furniture and ornamentation around him get picked out by the warm light and everything casts an exaggeratedly long shadow. The contrast between light and dark tempts Gerard to pay attention to the things he passes but he keeps his gaze mostly on the floor a few paces ahead of him. The details in the rug under his feet are actually almost erased, just by the angle of the light hitting them, so it feels like he's walking down an even, glowing path as he walks through the north wing of the house.
He walks slowly and it takes him a while to get up to his room. So long, in fact, that it's noticeably darker by the time he's got his door shut behind him-the sun must have sunk behind the bulk of the house, because the view from his window is shadowy and blue.
Gerard sits down at his desk and opens his notebook to a clean page. He uncaps his pen and sets the cap neatly on its end near the top of his notebook, but doesn't touch pen to paper. Instead he sits and looks down at it, as if he's waiting for something to happen on its own. Nothing does, of course, and he puts the pen down some minutes later, capping it carefully and setting it next to the notebook, which he closes. Just because he feels like he should be writing doesn't mean that the words want to come, and it feels like tonight is going to be the kind of night where nothing in the world is going to be able to coax them out.
He turns in his seat and looks out the window over the swimming pool. The water is moving gently, like a breeze is skimming across the top and setting the surface to motion in its wake.
That's when it starts. It's a faint itch at the back of his brain at first, but as he sits there and keeps staring down at the water it gets stronger. All of a sudden, all he wants to do is walk into the pool and stand at the bottom until he can't breathe anymore. But that's stupid, of course-what possible good would it do?
It would get the gears in your head to stop turning, he answers his own question. It'll make those nagging voices shut up. It will give you some peace and quiet in your head. Wouldn't you like that?
NO!, he thinks as hard as he can at himself, then gets up, paces back and forth a few times, and then tugs his curtains shut for the first time in what must be a week. Quite deliberately, he turns his back to his window and then pulls his chair further away and angles it so he can sit it in and keep facing away. He opens his notebook again and takes up his pen, setting the cap down with such force that it rolls off the edge of his desk. He ignores it in favour of doodling the vampire he always does when somebody asks him to draw something, over and over and over again, filling one page and then the next in an effort to soothe that itch with rote and monotony.
It doesn't work. The itch gets stronger and stronger, almost unbearably so.
The next vampire he draws is wearing a swim mask and a snorkel. He absolutely did not do that consciously.
He flips his sketchbook shut and pushes it away from himself, then gets up and starts pacing his room again. He angles himself to keep his path well away from the window. That only works for so long before he can't help himself any more-he pulls back his curtains to look out at the pool again. And then, like a spark touched to dry paper, it ignites-the itch starts to burn.
Gerard lets himself out of his room and moves silently down the hallway, letting his feet pick their own way down thick carpet and across hardwood floors. Soon enough he's got his fingers on the handle of the big French doors leading out to the central patio and it gives easily when he pushes.
He walks along the uneven patio until he's standing at the edge of the swimming pool. He looks past it to the fence bounding the mansion's property-he can see the gate from here, only partially obscured by the trees lining the yard. It would be a simple enough matter to walk across the patio and down the driveway to let himself out, but he can't even get his feet to move from where he's stopped. Instead he stands in place, dropping his gaze back to the water in front of him.
The compulsion he was feeling before is stronger than ever, like a fire burning so hot it threatens to completely overwhelm him. All he wants to do more than anything else in the world is slide into the water and stand at the bottom until all the air is pressed out of his lungs and the fire finally gets put out.
Gerard toes off his shoes and nudges them forward with his big toe until they drop into the pool, one and then the other, with a soft splash. He's disappointed to see them floating sadly instead of sinking, trailing the long end of one bow-tied shoelace behind.
The water-he has to get closer to the water. He sits down, easing himself onto the textured concrete ringing the pool, and then swings his legs around so they're dipping into the water. He doesn't even bother taking his pajama pants off or even rolling them up, and he feels the press of damp flannel against his skin as the water pressure pushes at it, the fabric getting colder and colder as the water soaks up towards his knees. There's just enough light spilling out from the house that he can see the contrast of wet cloth versus dry, with the darker patches growing ever larger as he watches.
He sits and concentrates on the feel of that for as long as he can, along with the drag through the water as he kicks his feet out from the pool wall and lets them drift back. But it's not enough. He needs to feel the water all against all his skin. He needs to do it now.
He unzips his hoodie and starts tugging at his t-shirt. He gets it all the way up to his armpits where it bunches and stops before he realizes he won't actually be able to get it off with his hoodie still on. In his single-mindedness it seems like almost too much effort to get himself free of his tangle of clothes that he's created, and he freezes up. The water is still right there in front of him, concentric ripples spreading out and out and out from where his legs are still slowly kicking.
It's right there, so close, so close. He should throw himself in and get it over with. It would be okay. He inches closer to the edge until the rim of the pool is digging into the backs of his thighs instead of his knees. The fire in his head is roaring now, crackling and massive, a wall of flame behind his eyes. He needs this so bad, so fucking much, and the water is right there-
"Gerard?" Ray's voice cuts through his reverie and he startles, jerking so hard he almost falls the rest of the way into the pool. But he catches himself by planting one hand firmly on the concrete at his side, and then he twists to look up at Ray.
"Are you okay?" Ray asks. He's a few paces away and he's wringing his hands.
Gerard can't quite cut through the fog in his head to give Ray an answer.
"I was coming down to play a bit before bed and I saw you through the window," Ray goes on nervously. "And something seemed off, I don't know. I mean, you never go swimming." Ray laughs a bit, and it sounds forced. "Seriously, can you say something? You're kind of starting to freak me out."
"Yeah," Gerard finally forces through. "Yeah. I'm okay." And it's the truth, too.
He looks down at his legs where they're knee-deep in the pool. He looks at his stomach hanging over the waistband of his pants, framed between the unzipped halves of his hoodie. He looks at his shoes floating further and further away from where he's sitting, and he wonders what the fuck he was even doing down here in the first place. He stands up awkwardly and gazes dolefully down at his feet, which are white and wrinkled from exposure to the water.
"Why are your shoes in the pool?" Ray asks, obviously following Gerard's line of sight.
"Fuck if I know," Gerard shrugs.
Ray flicks his gaze back to Gerard. "Why were you in the pool?"
"Seemed like a good idea at the time?" Gerard offers.
Ray looks out at where Gerard's shoes are bobbing in the shallow end. "Want me to go get them? I can probably reach."
"They're probably ruined by now," Gerard says. "But go for it, if you want."
It ends up being a simple thing for Ray to kneel at the edge of the pool and reach out and grab the shoes-he even pulls it off gracefully, which Gerard knows is way more than he himself could have ever hoped to manage. Ray comes back and then very seriously presents Gerard with one very soggy pair of black Adidas Sambas.
"Thank you," Gerard says solemnly.
"You're welcome," Ray says, equally so.
Gerard looks forlornly down at the sodden shoes in his hands. He can't quite figure out why he would have kicked them into the pool in the first place. He likes these shoes. As the minutes go by, what he's sure were his very good reasons for coming down to the pool are getting more and more vague.
Ray waits almost a minute for Gerard to say something else, but when he doesn't he starts heading back towards the doors. "Coming?" he calls back over his shoulder.
Gerard is. He leaves his sodden shoes lined up neatly on the stoop and then follows Ray into the house, closing the door tight behind him.
"So, uh, I'm going to go play," Ray says, and starts pushing his hair back away from his face.
Gerard may be crazy enough to try to go swimming half-clothed but he's not an idiot-he can read this one easy. "I'm going to go back to my room," Gerard tells him. "Dry off, try to get some sleep."
Ray looks relieved, and then waves goodbye to Gerard before disappearing down the hall to the ballroom.
* * *
Gerard actually meant it when he said he wanted to try to get some sleep but he finds himself wandering, both mentally and literally, as he makes his way back to his room. He doesn't really want to be in his own room. He'll have to close his curtains, which means he'll have to go near the window. Maybe he can keep his eyes shut when he goes in and do it by feel. Maybe he can sleep sitting up in the kitchen. Maybe he can find a couch or something tucked away somewhere and pass out there-except no, that's a terrible idea. He doesn't want to be alone in any strange rooms in this house, no way.
He rounds a corner and realizes belatedly that he is, in fact, alone in a strange hallway; he wasn't paying much attention as he walked and now he has no idea where he is. He looks around, trying to find something, anything to help him get his bearings, but there are no windows and nothing on the walls is terribly familiar. Fuck, if he'd been paying more attention he could retrace his steps. Keep going, then.
When he gets to the end of the hallway he expects the turn to let him out either in the main hall of the house or give him a window or something, but the hallway goes on for a few yards and then there's a staircase that he's certain he's never used (or even seen) before. Well, he figures, he may as well go up.
The air around him gets noticeably colder before he's even halfway up the stairs, and when he gets to the landing he's unsurprised to see what looks to be actual frost clinging to the banister, the hardwood floor, the frames of things hanging on the wall.
The frame of the mirror hanging on the wall.
Oh, fucking hell, Gerard thinks, and he tries not to look at it, he really does, but he simply can't resist.
As he watches, the light around him gets much dimmer, and shadows spring up out of nowhere to fill the edges of his vision and start creeping in towards him. Some shadows slither up from the floor to mass around the mirror's frame, squirming and writhing and twisting around and around the mirror's circumference. Gerard is so enthralled by the shadows and the way they're pulsing and shifting that it takes him a few seconds to notice that he has no reflection at all. He blinks and squeezes his eyes shut so hard that his vision is blurry when he opens his eyes again, but his reflection is still gone-he can see the wall behind him and all the shit hanging on it reflected in the glass, but not his own face.
Gerard's breath is thick in his lungs as he squints at the mirror, tilting his head from side to side as if moving into some sort of sweet spot will make his reflection magically reappear. Just like it magically disappeared, he thinks, a little hysterically, and lifts one hand to wave in front of the mirror to see if maybe it's only his head that's not reflecting, or something.
Then the glass cracks, a jagged scar right down the middle of the mirror's surface. It cracks again with a huge noise, cleaving one of the halves into two, and little fissures start spreading out from all the cracks across the mirror's whole face.
A moment later the glass explodes with a deafening sick crack, and all the shards fly straight out at Gerard. Gerard gets his hands up to cover his face on reflex alone, but he's not fast enough. He feels a dozen peppery bites into the skin of his forehead and hands even as he flinches away.
Then he slips off the edge of the stair he is-was-standing on, and his heart jumps into his throat for an endlessly long second as he teeters on the edge of falling down an entire flight of stairs to die in a broken heap, where nobody will find his body for days. But he catches hold of the bannister-it's cold and rough under his hand, but it's solid and that's all that matters-and he holds on for dear life, his knuckles going white as his palm starts to cramp. He's not moving, though, not falling, and that's all that matters.
He tries to breathe deeply and evenly to force his heart to stop beating so hard, even by a little, and when it finally decides to cooperate Gerard feels confident enough to slowly make his way down the stairs (he doesn't trust himself to go up, not anymore, not when he still has such a vivid sense memory of almost falling). He feels tiny bits of glass falling from his hair and the folds of his clothes as he moves, and he winces every time he feels a cold shard bounce off his bare skin. When he gets to the bottom he shakes out his hair, squeezing his eyes shut as he does. Then he pushes his hair away from where it's hanging in his face-and his fingers come away bloody.
Gerard gently runs his fingers over his face, checking for more wounds. Even though his fingers get redder and wetter, nothing hurts too much to the touch, and he doesn't feel like he's going to pass out from blood loss or anything, so he feels safe enough concluding that he's not going to die. He's going to be okay.
But he still has to find his way back to his room. He sets off down the last hallway he'd been in, happy to leave the weird cold stairway well behind him. He tries to pay more attention to his surroundings, tries to decide if anything around him looks familiar enough to be the path he'd just taken, and then he passes a portrait of a sour-looking nun that he definitely does recognize. He remembers the creeping feeling of its eyes watching him as he passes, and he never thought he'd find such a thing reassuring, but there it is.
The hallway branches with turns both left and right when it ends. The right-hand turn leads into another long hallway that looks the same as the one he's in now, but the left-hand turn is full of the wan electric light that Gerard knows well from the house's main hall. He goes left and sure enough, after following the hallway through a couple turns, he ends up in a new hallway he recognizes right away: he walks through it every morning to get from the main stairs to the kitchen.
Funny, though, that he'd never noticed this branching hallway before.
He shakes his head, frustrated with himself and with everything. He's tired and he doesn't want to deal with the house and its stupid layout and bullshit surprises. He just wants to go back to his room and get some sleep. He pays extra attention as he heads upstairs, just to be sure, and the rest of his walk is completely uneventful.
He's almost in bed when he realizes that he's still wearing wet pants, so he strips them off quickly and grabs a new pair from the dresser. He puts them on and slides into bed and sinks into his mattress, happy to be horizontal, and he's already halfway to sleep when he realizes that his curtains are still open and he can see the light reflecting off the swimming pool on his ceiling.
Instead of getting up to do something about it, he squeezes his eyes shut and rolls over, pulling the covers up over his head.
Next