After several reblogs between myself and werelesbians on Tumblr, this 'fic was born.
Also, this chapter is first part of my version of Archie's backstory; there will be another part or two before I get into the actual story (those other parts of the backstory may wind up just getting added to the end of this chapter, I haven't decided yet). Also, I will probably not post the second part until December or early January as I'll be busy with NaNoWriMo for the rest of the month.
His first memory comes from when he was barely three years old, and like almost all his other memories, his "special visitors" are the focus.
At the time, he didn't understand what the strange old woman in an outdated black dress was doing in his room, or why she was covered in blood with a knife stick out of her chest. All he'd understood was that she scared him. He'd screamed and thrown his toys at her, only to scream louder when they passed straight through her and hit the wall. It took his mother coming in, seeing the woman and shouting angry Latin that caused the old lady to hiss and shriek and she faded away to smoke before he would calm down.
Later he would realize that that was one of the last times he'd seen his mother lucid and aware of the world around her.
Later still, he would learn that the Latin had been an exorcism.
He first started to realize the truth during a discussion about Halloween in his pre-school class when he was four. The teacher was asking them what they planned up as for the Halloween parade, and one of the other kids had proudly declared that he was going to be a ghost. The word sent tingles down his spine, and the rest of the school day passed by in a blur. As soon as he got home, he dug out the child's dictionary that had been a gift from his grandfather, who believed that if you were old enough to hold a book and turn the pages, then you were old to start reading it; because of this, he'd been reading since he was three. Once he'd found the entry, he slowly read it aloud, fumbling over the unfamiliar words. "Ghost: a res-restl-restless spir-spirit tra-trapped on Earth after…" He froze, staring at the final word of the definition with wide eyes. "After…death."
He threw the dictionary across the room and didn't touch it again for another four months.
By the time he'd turned five, he'd come a sort of resigned acceptance that he could see and talk to ghosts.
By six, he mastered knowing when to ignore the spirits (when he was at school, when his father was around, when he was in public) and when it was safe to talk to them and help them figure out what was keeping them here and how they could move on to the afterlife.
By the time he was seven, he'd gotten thirty seven ghosts to move on and made three irreplaceable friends; his neighbor, a dory comic book lover with thick glasses, crooked teeth, and dirty blonde hair that looked like a bird's nest not matter what anyone did, a stray cat that adored him since he fed it the occasional scrap of meat, and a two year old ghost girl who never seemed to quite understand the concept of being a ghost and who seemed perfectly content haunting him instead of moving on. For a while he had a happy, if very strange and unusual, life.
Two months before his eighth birthday, that changed.
The day had started out normally enough.
He'd gotten up early, dressed in his favorite t-shirt, jeans, and hoodie, eaten breakfast while avoiding awkward conversation with his often-absent journalist father, checked up on his mother who was deep ensnared in the fog of her own mind as she mumbled to herself, and then gone outside to play amongst the maple and apple trees. There wasn't a lot of time left before school started again, and he planned to enjoy every remaining minute of his freedom.
A little bit after one o'clock, he wandered back inside to grab something to eat besides the not-quite-ripe-yet apples. However, he froze upon seeing his mother in the kitchen.
Confusion and fear washed over him. His mother never came out of a fog this quickly, especially when she was as deeply into one as she'd been that morning. Cautiously, he stepped into the kitchen. "Mother?"
His mother turned to him, her empty eyes causing warning bells to go off in his head. His mother's eyes were never empty; even when she was in the deepest of her fogs, her eyes were a proud display of her vitality. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to run back outside and hide until his mother returned to being her usual, if mentally vacant, self. Yet something kept his feet stuck solidly to the floor.
"My boy," his mother whispered after staring at him for too long of a moment, the spark reigniting in her eyes as if it had never gone out. "My little baby boy."
A cold wave of horror washed over as he realized, right at that moment, that it wasn't his mother he was looking at. Oh, it was her voice, her words, her body, but it wasn't her. His mother had been replaced.
As the thing that had replaced his mother stepped toward him, a burst of white-hot anger rushed through him, granting him back both movement and voice. "Stay back!" he shouted, fists clenched. "Stay away from me! You're not my mother!"
The thing paused and cocks his mother's head at him. "What did I do you make so upset, sweetie?"
"Shut up! Shut up shut up shut up! Stop using her to hide from me!"
"What on Earth is going on in here?!" his father demanded, glaring. "Why are yelling at your mother?"
"That's not Mother!" he shouted, angry tears forming and spilling over onto his cheeks. "It just looks like her! It took her over or something!"
"Don't be ridiculous," his father said, crossing the kitchen over to the fridge to grab a beer. "Of course it's your mother. Who else could it be? One of those 'ghosts' you're always prattling on about?"
His father's mocking suggestion caused him to feel as if someone had replaced his heart with a block of ice. He'd never considered the possibility of a ghost possessing someone, but who was to say that such a thing was impossible? After all, possession had been mentioned in quite a few of those books he'd read.
Before he utter a single syllable of Latin to determine whether or not his mother truly was possessed, his mother's hand closed tight on the handle of a carving knife and swung it in a wide arc. He dove for the floor with a startled squeak and managed to avoid the kitchen utensil turned deadly weapon, but his father wasn't so lucky. He watched in horror as a cascade of red liquid streamed from his father's slashed throat. His father stared at his mother with wide eyes, and the blood surged as lips parted to say something only to be lost on the gurgling loss of red life. His father's body tumbled to the floor, lips parted still and forever in death.
If he had thought his heart to be ice before, it was the Artic at the peak of winter now. For a moment, all he could do was stare in horror at his father's body. Had he not seen the flash of bloodied steel out of the corner of his eye, his mother would have brought the knife down squarely into the center of his back.
As it was, the blade slashed through the muscles of his calf and ankle, forcing a terrified scream from his throat. Staggering, he did his best to outrun his mother, who was chasing him with the single-minded determination of a wolf on a hunt. Hearing the sound of an approaching car, he shoved the front door open and rushed toward the road.
The young man driving the silver sedan slammed on the brakes he ran out in front of the car screaming. The young woman in the passenger seat let out a startled scream of her own before fumbling with her and yanking open her door. "Call an ambulance!" the young woman shouted to the young man, stripping off her jacket and pressing it against his leg. "Oh, you poor dear," the young woman soothed as the young man told the emergency dispatcher about the situation. "Look at y- Oh, goodness!"
He turned to see his standing in the yard, pale blue sundress covered in blood with the knife in her hand looking just as horrific. Standing there barefoot with a blank look on her face, his mother certainly looked the part of a woman who'd gone mad. He felt a rush of fear run through him as he stared.
For a moment, his mother's eyes seemed to clear, and then the knife was raised once more. He flinched back and cursed himself for dragging the young man and woman into this, although he couldn't tear his eyes away from his mother. The knife came down.
"Mother!" he screamed, lunging forward only to be pulled back by the young man and woman. "Mother!" He stared, unable to tear his eyes away from the ghastly scene in front of him; his mother gurgling as fingers unclenched from the handle of the knife she'd used to slit her own throat. A smile stretched blood-painted lips, his mother mother mouthing 'I love you' before the now lifeless body fell forward.
"No! Mother! Mother! MOTHER! NO!"
His eyes were reddened from crying, although his tears had dried up some time before. His leg was heavily wrapped in gauze and cotton, and caught the words 'permanent muscle damage' from a conversation between the doctors that he was only vaguely listening to.
A knock on the open door caused him to look up and see a middle-aged woman with black hair that was just starting to go grey and kind blue eyes standing there with a small, sad, smile. "Hey there," the woman said, her tone gentle as she crossed the room and crouched down by his bed so that she was roughly eye-level with him. "My name's Emily. What's your name, sweetie?"
The use of his mother's old nickname for him caused fresh tears to well up in eyes, and he turned his head away in shame. "Archie," he whispered, looking back up at her to see her looking at him, eyes full of concern.
"My name is Archie."
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