despair and die.
"We're in hell, my pets; they never make mistakes, and people aren't damned for nothing." Jean-Paul Satre, No Exit.
i.
It's dark, it's dank, it's dreary, and yet, it's still the best anyone could hope for in an afterlife considering the circumstances.
The subway no longer seems like the claustrophobic nightmare it became during Henry's life. In his death, he has become the nightmare and now the subway just seems like an extension of home.
Home.
What a laugh.
Cynthia is still there. It's not like she has anywhere else to go. She remains the same, hair in tendrils and a gaping maw.
'I wish,' she says, through broken teeth and blood and spit, 'I wish I had been a better person. That's all.'
He looks on, with understanding eyes that do not see because they are not there and nods.
'I wish I hadn't tried,' he churns through a jaw that does not connect.
Cynthia nods, it's jerky, he almost snapped her fucking neck and with all this hair it's difficult to keep it upright; she understands.
Walter lurks in the shadows and laughs.
ii.
After the 21 sacraments was completed, Walter began to drag in all the people who had wronged him into his nightmare. It was slow at first. After all, he had already sacrificed the main offenders to become his undead army. No, it was slow. And in between the unfortunates forced to damnation in his otherworlds the sacraments were left to their own devices. Without Walter's intervention, they almost seemed pure.
Henry is still in the subway when the newest unfortunate appeared. A prison guard, wearing the tacky blue Brahms uniform. As the trembling man steps around the corner to come into his and Cynthia's view in front of the turnstiles, a flash erupted in Henry's ever-throbbing brain.
Walter as he was and is before he died and he's in a cell and the prison guard is laugh laugh laughing because how did a pansy like him kill two kids huh? Pansy like him couldn't hurt a fucking fly no way so how's he done this huh? Drugs huh? Pansy lanky streak of piss. We're gonna play here for a long time, pretty boy.
Autopilot is on. Walter's army, front and centre! Time to break in the new recruit!
Walking is hard after having your legs broken, Cynthia could tell you this for free, so she falls to the floor with a sickening crack, joints popping in and out of sockets with rhythmic crunches as she slithers herself towards the scared looking man who seems torn between running and pissing his pants.
Cynthia is slow, the prison guard manages to run on past them both, numb fingers slipping the bloodied turnstile coins into the rusted slots. With the newest unfortunate out of their line of sight, Cynthia sighs and rights the delicate snapped neck on her mottled shoulders.
"I never get the new blood," she sighs, "I'm not as fast as I used to be. I'm so hungry..."
Henry places a consolling hand on her shoulder. Her skin is cold and a little damp. She laughs coquettishly and her head flops precariously to hang at the side of her shoulder.
iii.
Andrew is a remarkably cheery ghost. By the time Henry sees the Brahms prison guard again, all wide shoulders and plank raised, he is with the ex-watcher trying to learn the words to the ritual of the twenty-one sacraments.
"And God said, 'At the time of fullness, clense the world with my rage.
Gather forth the white oil, the black cup and the blood of the ten sinners.
Prepare for the ritual of the Holy Assumption.''"
"And God said, 'At the time of my fullness, the world will be my stage?"
"No, Henry, listen carefully."
Andrew starts up again, patient only because he always fancied himself as a opera singer in life and loves having any chance to practice. Henry finds it amusing how creepy his passion has become in death. Would Andrew still be as happy if he knew that his singing had made Eileen almost wet herself in terror?
Eileen...
Henry is snapped out of his depressing train of thought by the remarkably feminine shriek of the Brahms guard.
"Two of you again?"
Andrew growls. He hates being interrupted when he is singing. The Brahms guard's momentary bravado falters, shoulders drooping as he tightens his already white fists around the splintered plank of wood.
Drip, drip, drip.
"And God said, 'Offer the blood of ten sinners...'."
Andrew shakes and shakes and shakes and up he goes into the air. A true bumbling menace, he starts for the Brahms guard who makes what Henry can only describe as a truly valiant attempt at a combat pose. But Henry will not intervene, despite empathising with this man's predicament. Neither will he join in despite how hungry he has become in death, a hunger for the pain and the sorrow and the essence of these people Walter brings into their home.
He is the 21st Sacrament. He is the Receiver of Wisdom. And so Henry will stand back and watch and receive Walter's wisdom though his eyes do not see and his skin does not feel and his brain is little more than black, rotten mush inside his fractured skull.
The Brahms guard puts up a remarkably strong fight for someone who is here for having a bigger bark than his bite. If Henry could speak in anything but the gurgling language of ghosts then he thinks he would be screaming -
"Use the sword, the sword, the sword..!"
Henry knows what Walter would say to that. Walter would grin with Henry's blood still congealing on his face and tell him that not everyone was as vigilant in their journey through these worlds, not as accepting when it came to letters from long dead serial killers childlike alter-egos. 'This is why I chose you,' Walter would say, and did say, before he bashed Henry's face in.
Andrew's aura isn't necessarily the strongest, but the Brahms guard is clearly fatiguing from the (pointless) fight. Clearly this man is not here for his smarts. Having ran past Cynthia and Henry with a brick in his pants earlier, the guard hasn't seemed to figure out that Walter's Army are the most dedicated army in all of the Otherworld.
"Shiiit. Why won't you muth'fuckers just die already you sick twisted pieces of shit?"
Brahms guard rams the plank on home right into Andrew's skull. It embeds itself in the water-weakened flesh with a loud squelch. Andrew is still. The Brahms guard is stunned, then grins, crowing victorious noises.
"Oh yeah muth'fuckers how do you like me now? You don't mess wi' me. None of you muth'fuckers mess with me," he grins, pearly white teeth almost stretching to his ears. Sweat drips from under his uniform hat and pools in his sideburns. Henry hasn't seen anything so alive since Eileen and shudders. Andrew is still. And still and still and still and still, until Henry thinks he might have stopped, when suddenly a raucous peal of laughter spurts into the air like the stuttering of a broken radio.
The Brahms guard stops bragging almost instantaneously. Henry watches and waits and waits for Andrew to deliver the finishing blow, but the bloated stinking corpse just can't stop laughing. Andrew's form flickers in and out like the static on a tv set showing a little girl crying out for her daddy until he just fades away, wooden plank dropping inertly to the floor, leaving both the Brahms guard and Henry in a standoff.
"Heh, heh. I gotta take you down too ya piece of freaky shit? Can you even see me? You guys look all freaky shit but yer all just pansies, huh?"
Henry considers heeding he and his comrades calling and killing the guard where he stood. But instead, he merely stands there, arms swinging languidly by his sides, palms open. The Brahms guard's grin falters as Henry turns away and walks down the sodden, mildewed walkway and vanishes through a wall.
iv.
"So you've seen him, then?"
Talking to Jasper is an exasperating experience only Henry truly has the patience for. Richard doesn't even bother with the torched man anymore, merely firing his gun at the man whenever he tries to start a conversation.
Jasper wheezes once more, gesticulating wildly with his hands.
"He threw water at you?"
Jasper wheezes.
"Then he ran off again...?"
Jasper nods, not that Henry can see this, and stretches a hand out plaintively.
"I don't have any chocolate milk. The only thing my fridge is full of is cats."
Jasper wheezes.
"You can't drink cats, Jasper, that's sick."
v.
It's perpetual dusk when Henry finally reaches the Building World to visit Richard. This is Henry's routine. His punishment. He will visit his friends in turn, see what they have become, always, always, always ending with Eileen.
Henry shakes his head and bloody tissue plops out of his eye sockets onto the concrete floor with a splat. This is not the time to be thinking of her. Henry rounds the corner and finds the door which leads to the bar. As he expected, Richard is sat inside. His ghost shudders involuntarily, making the strip lights flicker and fade.
"What do you want?"
Henry swallows, bile leaks from his torn throat, and sits down at the bar gingerly.
"Have you seen him?"
Richard snorts. Shudder, flicker, fade. He takes a sip of the whiskey sour in front of him.
"If one of Walter's dumb-fucks had been here would I be sat on my ass drinking?"
Henry wants to respond that yes, of course he would be, but the last time he had been so cocky he had earned himself a shattered kneecap.
"I was just wondering if he had made it this far yet, that's all."
Shudder, flicker, fade. Richard finally turns to face him. Henry can see him in his minds eye, distorted around the edges, pale and rotting.
"Aren't you supposed to be the one who knows shit around here? Why're you asking me, you already know the answer."
"Jasper says that he tried to put him out with a bottle of water then ran off when he realised he was another ghost."
Richard lets out a bark of laughter and buries his face into his hands.
Shudder, flicker, fade, flicker, shudder, flicker, fade.
"Is this really fucking it?"
One of the strip lights pops off all together.
"If you could go back, would you have done things any differently?" Henry can't help but ask the question he knows there is no point asking himself because goddamn it he tried.
"Fuck no, that little fucker deserved what came to him. If he'd kept away when I said we wouldn't be in this fucking mess."
Henry cannot argue with that.
The two specters sit in silence, pondering. Shuddering, flickering, fading. There is no true silence, though. Walter's World was full of the shrieks, bangs and roars of whatever lurked in his mind. Gunshots fired in the distance. Henry was mildly surprised that the Brahms guard had made it this far.
"He's getting close."
"Eh, you deal with him."
"I can't."
"Fuck not?"
"I can't see."
"Hah, hasn't stopped you in the past."
Henry shakes his head, Richard just cannot be reasoned with. He slips off of the bar stool, not wincing when his kneecap splinters slightly through his worn and bloodied jeans.
"Stay safe, Mr Braintree."
The door to the bar slams open as Henry slips off and down through the floor.
vi.
"Hello again, Mr Sullivan."
Daddy Sullivan is a wonderful listener. At least, he is in death. Daddy Sullivan was Walter's first guest after Mother returned, and it seems that both Walter and Mother's hospitality has made Daddy never want to leave.
Daddy doesn't scream or hurl insults anymore. Daddy hangs from the ceiling in South Ashfield Heights and he listens to all of Henry's problems.
"I'm tired, Mr Sullivan, really tired."
Daddy hangs from chains that bite, fused to his very bones. Henry wants to laugh, Daddy and the Brahms guard are here for a very similar crime.
But Daddy has learnt from the error of his ways. Restrained with a muzzle, Daddy no longer barks his orders. Mother is in control now.
Mother, Mother, Mother.
"I guess I'm just delaying the inevitable, Mr Sullivan."
Daddy's chains screech in agreement.
"Well, I best be off I suppose, Mr Sullivan. It was nice talking to you again."
Daddy's chains screech goodbye.
vii.
There is a trail of destruction in the Hospital that can only herald the Brahms guard's arrival. Shotgun shells surround the corpses of Patients that lay strewn in a steady path towards Eileen.
The Brahms guard will not last much longer, Henry is certain of this. No one ever gets past her.
Henry's careful footfalls echo throughout the quiet Hospital corridors as he made his way towards Eileen's room. The ghastly belching of one of the gutted Patients sounds behind him.
"I wouldn't worry, he won't be around much longer." Henry watches as the Patient numbly shuffles off back into the depths of the Hospital. Such nervous creatures.
There is nothing special about where Eileen dwelled. No eerie shadows, no twisted creatures patrolling the corridor leading to her sanctum. Even Walter rarely frequented this place. It was just as extraordinary as the rest of Walter's Otherworld. With nothing to herald the presence of another member of Walter's army, many a new guest into Walter's personal haven had stumbled in to her trap unawares. No one ever gets past Eileen.
Henry stands in front of Eileen's room, a tentative hand outstretched to push open the door. He is unsure as to why he is suddenly so afraid, what could he be afraid of when he too was a nightmare?
Henry is greeted to the sound of tortured wailing upon finally opening the door. Eileen is cradling the Brahms guard, humming lullabies as the man squirms in agony under the pressure of her death grasp.
"H-hush, hush, little baby, don't you cry..."
Bones splinter in her vice like grip, bloodied hands swiping grime through the Brahms guard's thinning hair.
"Fuc-k, fucking help me!"
For the first time in a long, long time, Henry laughs. It starts out slow and deep, nothing more than a small rumble in the back of his ripped throat.
"She's gonna fucking kill me," Brahms guard outstretches a broken-fingered hand toward Henry, sheer panic sparkling in his watery blue eyes.
"Hush, little baby, don't say a w-word, word..."
"Eileen...he says he wants my help," Henry is laughing. What a truly fantastic joke.
Brahms guard isn't struggling anymore, he's staring slack-jawed as Henry comes to stand behind Eileen. Unable to communicate in the human tongue, Henry's words sound like the piteous moans of the ghosts he himself so loathed when he was alive. Henry leans over the Mother Reborn's shoulder until he is eye to socket with the man.
"I have never been able to help anyone, why would I start now?"
Henry's hand snatches out, palms spread showcasing 21121 gouged into the soft graying flesh.
'21121, on your hands, because despite your best attempts to stop me, your efforts were futile,' Walter explains as if speaking to a child as he calmly marks Henry with the mark which makes them kin.
"I'll help you," Henry wraps his once nimble fingers around the Brahms guard's neck, digging his nails into the skin and drawing blood.
"H-hush little babe, sleep tight."
Eileen draws back, milky eyes gazing at her precious prey, before sinking blunt hard teeth into his shoulder.
"We've become so hungry, so I'll help you," Henry tightens his hold on the guard's neck, suffocating him slowly.
"I'll give you a quicker death than Eileen would ever permit you," Henry whispers into the guard's ear as he takes his last breath. Eileen cracks his collar bone between her teeth.
Henry straightens up and stares at his stained hands. Eileen has already gone back to cradling the fresh corpse of the Brahms guard, too dumb or too dead to know that he is no longer alive.
"Baby will f-fall, when the bough breaks, b-baby will fall..."
"Eileen, when did you become so cruel?"
vii.
Henry trudges the grated floors and living walls of South Ashfield Heights, desperate to return home. The entrance to Mother's embrace is untainted by the darkness that clings to every other crevice of the Otherworld and Henry feels bad for leaving his bloodied footprints on the tiled floor outside the door of 302.
As he gazes blankly at his old front door he is suddenly hit with overwhelming despair.
"Please..." Henry mumbles, clawing at the white cracked wood of 302, "Please, help me. Please, help me. Please, help me. Please, help me."
Mother laughs.