THIS IS NOT A HAPPY STORY THIS IS NOT A HAPPY STOR Y
This is my crack at Lovecraftian horror. It's all about Rose going grimdark in a non-Sburb-type scenario. CHARACTERS ARE GOING TO DIE AND THIS IS GOING TO BE CREEPY SO PLEASE DON'T READ THIS IF THAT'S GOING TO BOTHER YOU.
AGAIN, THIS IS NOT A HAPPY STORY. (Also there's very little shipping in this story, less than I even planned.)
The title comes from the title of a poem by Lovecraft, actually. I wrote this in 28 hours (less, actually, because I slept and ate and played Candy Crush during that time as well) so forgive the suck. Also do not follow this story unless you want me to sic the horrorterrors on YOU. This story is DONE and there will NOT be a sequel.
You suppose you've always been a little weird. Your gin-soaked sister's words, not yours, but they're still true. Your roommate calls you "creepy." That's also true. Your cousin calls you a "Cthulhu-loving perfumed horrorterror enthusiast with a psychiatric interest in the grim and doomed." Probably the best way to describe your personality, actually.
You're not really sure why, though. Maybe it's because, lingering at the corners of your consciousness, there's always been something dark and compelling. It's pulled you for six years, more insistent as the years go on, ever since you were thirteen. Before then, it was mere whispering, just a faint presence that hovered, barely noticeable and easily ignored. As if by magic, as though the dawning of your teen years hailed some great cosmic shift, it intensified later. But instead of frightening you, it just intrigued you. It still does.
And as though that lurking shadow was a clarion call, it started summoning people to you, people who, inwardly or outwardly, are just as dark and twisted as you.
It starts with your cousin Dave. His brother has this puppet called Lil Cal and Dave is convinced the thing moves on its own. He also hears it whispering to him, he says. Nothing too sinister, just standard demented-puppet-type crap, but the thing is solid wood—there's no place for a speaker, so it's probably not Dirk fucking with him.
After him is your roommate Eridan. He's a lot like you—into wizards, and not just the cuddly Harry Potter wizards. Dark wizards who dabble in blood magic and arcane rituals, the terrifying occultists who dare to peek behind the curtain to gaze upon the framework of the universe. Eridan loves it. If he hears the quiet murmurings of the ancients, he doesn't tell you.
His best friend Feferi is some kind of clairvoyant conduit—what kind, you're not really sure. She uses a lot of fish puns and she's always smiling, but you see her smile falter and grow strained from time to time and you can tell—she definitely hears the whisperings. She won't admit it, either, but sometimes, just for a split second, you see something lurking just over her shoulder.
Then there's another friend of yours, Aradia. She slips in and out of these weird trances sometimes and when she comes back from wherever it is she goes, she insists she's time-traveled. There's things she says she's fixed, gaps and mistakes and rends in the fabric of time, things she prevents to keep the world spinning safely, and every time she comes back, she's ashen and she trembles for a few days. She doesn't want to do it, she says. She has to, though. There's something compelling her.
Her best friend is Sollux. He hears voices, he freely admits it—but only to you and Aradia. The voices are different than the cosmic gods who spin the earth and stars, he says. He hears the anguished cries of the imminently deceased, those who are doomed to die soon, and it's constant, never-ending. He can't shut them out. You'd chalk it up to his bipolar personality disorder, but you know as well as he does that BPD doesn't cause auditory hallucinations. And besides, he can move small, lightweight objects with just his mind. That's a closely-guarded secret, though. He's terrified of it, of what it might mean.
Their roommate is Tavros, and he's the closest thing in your group to a skeptic, but even he can't deny how weird it is when any animal he encounters listens to him without question. He was in a car accident as a child and had to have his legs amputated as a result, but when he woke up, he discovered that his family's five bulldogs all obeyed any command he gave them even though two weeks before, they'd been the most rowdy, ill-mannered bunch you could find.
Terezi is a friend of Dave's, and she's a veritable genius. She's a law student and she can somehow predict what someone will do unerringly. She strongly believes in the cosmic puppeteers who cause everyone to dance, and she claims she can see the strings and who's pulling them. That's how she knows everything people will do. Just because she knows, though, doesn't mean she likes it. It frightens her, but she's learned to accept it.
Your name is Rose Lalonde, and right now, you're about eighty-five percent sure your bedroom walls are bleeding.
A scream threatens to rise out of your throat, but it can't squeeze itself past the lump that's formed, teasing at choking you. You're not scared, you remind yourself, just startled. But you don't believe it right now. Sometimes you wonder why it's you who has to deal with the fraying threads of the universe. How come you're the one who must suffer as a silent witness to the decay of time and space? It doesn't seem right—but you know better than to complain about it. Of those who would believe you (and there are few of them), most have it far worse.
Your mouth opens and closes several times, your lips fighting to call for help, for some other person to validate that you're not actually going crazy (you are, though—slowly but surely, you're going mad), but the only other person in your tiny apartment is Eridan, and he should be fast asleep. You're paralyzed save for your face, eyes frozen open as you silently plead for the vision or whatever it is to leave you in peace—you haven't gotten a restful night of sleep in months. There are always shadows and murmurings at the edges of your consciousness, but it always seems that just as you're about to fall into that blissful empty pit of slumber, you hear a shriek or see a wave so sharp and so close that it jars you fully awake.
And now this. Dark red oozes from invisible seams in your wall, the bitter tang of copper in your nose, in your mouth, and you think you see faces, hear sharp scrabbling of claws, and finally—finally—your voice raises and you're able to scream, loud and long and piercing.
Footsteps thunder across the hall—you woke something up, something sinister, this is the end and you can only pray that death means utter darkness and utter quiet—and then the light in your room snaps on and Eridan stands in the doorway, his hair disheveled and eyes wild with fear and concern as he straightens his glasses.
You look back at your wall. Nothing. It's clean and definitely not bleeding.
"Rose?" he asks softly, as if afraid of startling you further. "W-what happened?"
You swallow a few times. "The wall," you rasp, pointing to the wall opposite your bed. "It..." You can still practically smell the blood. "It was bleeding, I swear."
He doesn't question it. He crosses to the wall and lightly presses his palm to it, as though he could learn its secrets that way. "It's not anymore," he murmurs, half to you and half to himself.
"I know," you say. "It went away when you turned on the light. I just—"
He whirls around to face you, his eyes widening in horror and confusion, as if you've just said you intend to kill him.
"What?"
"W-what did you just say?" he demands, taking a step toward you.
"I said, it went away when you turned on the light."
He shakes his head. "That's definitely not what you said."
You cross your arms defiantly—you know what you said. "Then what, pray tell, did I say?"
"I don't know. It sounded like nothin', like gibberish. But it definitely wasn't English."
"You're crazy."
"Not as crazy as you," Eridan says dismissively. "Anyway, I'm goin' back to bed. Maybe you should see about takin' some NyQuil to help you sleep."
"I refuse to rely on chemical aids."
"Then you're gonna be awake a long time, princess." He goes to the door and flicks the light off. "See you in the mornin'."
He's right. The sun is nearly rising before you're able to fall asleep.
Things go on like that for a few weeks until you're sick of it. Eridan is sick of it, too—you can tell. He just won't say anything because he starts seeing things, too, beckoning tendrils that prowl around him out of the miasma of his everyday life. Unlike you, though, he vehemently pretends he doesn't. After all, discovering the man behind the curtain is all fun and games when you're the one who decides you want to see him. It's another matter entirely when the man steps out from behind the curtain to leer at you.
But your frustration leads you to Mama Root's, a tiny occultist bookstore downtown where people leaf through tomes so dusty you can't even see the back wall when you walk in. You give a half-hearted wave when the woman at the cash register greets you and slink toward the back—you know this type of bookstore by now. Anything useful to you will be far in the back, away from casual browsers. It's like the adult section of an entertainment store except this is far more dangerous.
Books by Lovecraft are back here, but you ignore those. You're not looking for stories, you're looking for facts. Besides, you read Lovecraft's complete anthology by the time you were fifteen, so there's nothing else he could tell you, anyway.
In the back is one other person who doesn't notice you. He reaches for something on the top shelf, and despite his height, he can't quite reach. He rocks on his heels for a minute before reaching up again, but this time, instead of straining, you see strange, thin bolts of light issue from his fingertips in red and blue, and whatever it is he's reaching for is suddenly lifted by that light and sails gracefully into his hand.
Your eyes widen in surprise and you let out an unconscious squeak. He hears you and spins, looking around violently, his own eyes growing large behind his glasses. The two of you lock eyes—his are mismatched, one brown and one blue, you can tell even from here—and you don't even attempt to stammer out some kind of apology.
"Don't tell anyone," he says softly, but with a harshness that indicates an order. "I can kill you with my powers," he adds as though the thought just occurred to him.
You nearly laugh in his face. He's lying. His powers can't kill. They barely lifted a book into his hands. "I won't tell anyone," you promise, stepping closer to him. "But don't lie to me."
His thin shoulders slump. "Sorry," he murmurs with a faint lisp. "I'm usually more careful than that. I'm just... getting desperate."
Your chest tightens. "What, have your bedroom walls been bleeding, too?"
He raises his eyebrows, his expression incredulous. "Not blood. They're oozing, though. It looks like honey, all thick and gold and viscous, but... I can tell it's not."
Oh, fuck. You're not the only one. Relief and despair wash over you in equal measure. You're grateful to not be alone, but if this is happening to more than just you and Eridan, something occurrence, something big, is taking place. "How long?" you ask.
"A few weeks now. I can't sleep anymore. My roommates... well, one believes me. The other doesn't, not really. But Aradia has always been a little off, so I guess it makes sense that she believes me."
"She hasn't... seen anything like that, has she?" you ask.
He shakes his head. "Not that she's told me. Then again, I think there's a lot she doesn't tell me."
You nod, half to him and half to yourself. You know how he feels. You know Eridan doesn't tell you everything. Maybe you should be grateful for it, but if there's something he's not telling you that could help, you want to know.
"Sollux, I found—" a girl starts as she bursts in, but then she catches sight of you and stops, clutching a book to her chest. This is probably Aradia.
Sollux looks from her to you and back. "It's okay, AA," he says quietly. "She believes me."
Aradia swallows hard. "Yeah, but who is she?"
"I'm Rose," you say. It's only polite, after all—you know both of their names but neither of them know yours. "My walls started bleeding a few weeks ago."
"Actual blood?" she asks.
You nod. "I think so. It smells like blood, anyway." You point at the book in her arms. "What did you find?"
"A cleansing ritual. It looks a little... suspect, but I think it's worth the risk." She looks at Sollux and holds out the book. "Take a look. I have it marked."
Sollux flips open the book and finds the page. As he reads, his eyes get wider. "Blood magic? AA, I don't think this is such a good idea."
Eridan would love this, you decide.
"And how are we supposed to get six other people?" Sollux adds. "Who is seriously going to agree to this?"
You raise your hand. "My roommate and I would, so that's two more."
Aradia raises a hopeful eyebrow. "We can probably convince Tavros to go along with it, too. So we only need three more."
"I can probably find a few more," you say. "My cousin Dave at the very least will probably..." Your voice trails off as you look over Sollux's shoulder (actually, around his arm, considering your forehead is just an inch or so above the bottom of his shoulder blade). You suddenly understand his reticence—this is dark magic. Seriously dark. The point is to open a portal to the Other Worlds and suck whatever it is out of this plane of existence and back to where it belongs. "This is dangerous," you say. "But it will work if it's done properly. We should—" You have a brilliant idea. "We shouldn't do this at your place, not until we know how it'll work. We'll do it at my apartment, that way Eridan and I are the ones who will have to deal with the consequences. In case it's bad, we don't want your other roommate to suffer, you know?"
Sollux and Aradia exchange glances. "Okay," she says. "I'm fine with that."
"Me too," he says finally.
You exchange phone numbers and decide on a week from today at your apartment. You may not have the answers you're looking for but at least you have something.
As you suspected, Eridan is outrageously excited—whether just because of the magic or at the prospect of clearing your home of the dark terrors that you've somehow dragged in, you're not sure, but it doesn't matter. "But right now, with you, there's only four of us—five if they can get their roommate. I'll ask Dave, but that's six. We'll still need more."
"Fef," Eridan says automatically. "She'll probably say yes."
"Go ask her. Tell her it's next Saturday."
"Sure thing." He disappears into his bedroom, pulling out his phone, and you dial Dave's number.
"Welcome to the Strider House of Irony, how may I—" he starts, but you interrupt.
"Dave, cut the bullshit."
"Fine, monster with a bow. What's shaking?"
"I need your help with something."
"My help?"
"Yes. You know how I've always been... psychically hypersensitive?" you ask, borrowing one of Lovecraft's phrases.
"You mean creepy?"
"Same thing."
"Yeah, I know. What of it?"
"Well, a few weeks ago, my bedroom walls started bleeding. So—"
"They did what?"
"Started bleeding. At least, it looks and smells like blood, but I haven't gotten a chance to thoroughly examine it. I—"
"And this started a few weeks ago?"
"Yes... why?"
He's silent for a few moments. "Just... same thing's been happening here. Started a few weeks ago. I thought I was going crazy or something, but if it's happening to you... actually, no, that's not very reassuring."
"It's quite possible we're both going crazy. But I met someone today who's been experiencing the same thing. It started at the same time, too. Well, it's not blood, but he said it still scares him." You decide not to delve into the honey part of it. That's just weird. "Anyway, his friend found this cleansing ritual thing but it needs eight people. There's four of us with Eridan, and possibly their roommate, and Eridan's friend Feferi, so that's six. Think you can help?"
"When?" he asks quietly.
"Next Saturday. We're doing it here since we don't quite know what's going to happen. Their roommate is a bit of a non-believer, so if shit goes south, it's not fair to expect him to deal with it. I think Eridan and I are best equipped to handle this kind of thing, you know?"
"Yeah. So you need two more?"
"Just one more if you say yes."
"Yeah, I'll help. And I'll ask Terezi if she wants to come, too. She'd probably be really into seeing those horrorterrors in person."
You force a laugh. "Thanks, Dave. It's going to be at eight Saturday night, so free up your schedule."
"Eight at eight. Sure. I'll let you know what Terezi says in a few minutes, okay?"
"Thanks."
You hang up as Eridan wanders back into the living room. "She said she'll help." He rubs the back of his neck. "She also said that... she thinks there's somethin' in the pool in her backyard."
"What?"
"Yeah, I know. She usually goes swimmin' in the lake by her house, right, but a few weeks ago, she started hearin' this strange gurglin' sound an' it scared her so she got outta there in a hurry, right, but then she started swimmin' in her pool instead an' the sound followed her an' she says she thinks she saw somethin' at the bottom of the pool, too." A nervous smile twitches at his mouth. "She doesn't even take baths anymore, just showers. She's afraid a' standin' water, even puddles. She thinks somethin' is gonna reach out an' drown her."
You feel cold but you nod. "Then it's good she decided to help. Dave agreed, too, and he's asking his friend Terezi if she'll help as well. So if she says yes and Tavros says yes, that's eight, and that's all we need."
"Good." Eridan rubs his arms. Your stomach growls strangely. "The sooner we get this over with, the better. I'd really like to get back to sleep sometime soon."
"You and me both," you agree.
Dave calls you back a few minutes later and says Terezi agreed to help. You call Sollux to tell him the news, and he gratefully informs you that Aradia has convinced Tavros as well. "That's eight," you say. "As long as we have all the materials we need, we're all set for next Saturday."
As though the monsters know you mean to be rid of them, they tighten their grip over the next seven days and nights. You wake up screaming every night with visions of being dragged into black water, of something sharp and excruciating working its way up your body, as though you're being swallowed by something with a serrated tongue. You'd feel bad for waking up Eridan except he barely sleeps anymore; he goes into bizarre trances that end with him sobbing. You don't ask him if he sees anything the next morning—he just sits at the kitchen table, the bags under his eyes growing more pronounced as he downs pot after pot of coffee. If he were a smoker, he'd probably burn through five packs a day.
Your stomach rumbles and gurgles more often, nausea sweeping over you once a day—always at noon. You find yourself pitching toward toilets and retching, but nothing comes up except a few drops of water here and there that leave your mouth filled with the taste of salt. You're reminded of Eridan for reasons you don't care to fathom—you're too busy holding your stomach and heaving, your insides burning as though something is trying to claw its way out.
On Wednesday, you stop going to school. The bathrooms scare you. You see flashes of your classmates and teachers with horrible disfigurements that leave you biting the insides of your cheeks to keep from screaming, and moments later, everything's perfectly normal. You hate walking past mirrors, too—you keep thinking you see something different about yourself and you're too afraid to confront it, but it's too late now. Whatever it is, it's coming for you.
So you stay home. On Thursday, Eridan stops going to school, too. The two of you stay at your apartment, covering every reflective surface in towels and sheets. You're afraid to go out, afraid to even move from your bedroom even though, out of the corners of your eyes, you know you see something dripping down, only it's less of an ooze and more solid now, something akin to tentacles that almost seem to wave at you.
Saturday comes and the two of you spend most of the day clearing out space in the middle of the living room floor. At seven-fifteen, the first knock on your front door sounds and Eridan opens the door—he knows by now that you're not answering that door.
Feferi flings her arms around his neck and they hug for a few moments until her eyes find yours. "Oh, my cod, Rose, are you okay?"
You don't know what you look like and Eridan hasn't told you, but you must look pretty bad to warrant that level of concern. "I'm fine," you say, your voice hoarse from disuse, but allow her to look you over and pat your hair into place.
"Eridan told me about the... the lake and the pool," you say. "Have you been there since last week?"
Feferi shakes her head sharply. "No. I know it—there's something in the water."
Dave arrives next with Terezi in tow. They're both looking a little ashen, but Terezi flashes a smile that shows off all of her sharp teeth. "Empty in here," she says, looking around.
"We cleared it all out for the ritual," Eridan says.
Your cousin turns his head in your direction, and even though his sunglasses hide where he looks, you can feel his gaze on you. He's wondering, too, if you're okay, and you wish you had the words to say you were, even though you really don't think you are.
Sollux, Aradia, and Tavros arrive last at seven-forty-five. Sollux's arms are laden with materials and Aradia carries the book you'll be using. Tavros wheels himself in and bats the door closed behind him. All three of them look a little lost, so you decide to introduce everyone.
"We all know why we're here. I'm Rose, that's Eridan. This is my cousin Dave and his friend Terezi. That's Eridan's friend Feferi. This is Sollux, that's Aradia, and that's Tavros. So... let's get started."
Sollux and Aradia help Tavros out of his wheelchair and place him on the floor. Everyone begins to form a circle off him and once everyone's sitting, Aradia starts setting up. There's a black basin, the material of which you can't quite identify, a ritual knife, some matches, and what looks like a live spider in a jar. Your insides roil and you pray you won't have to vomit again.
It looks simple enough until Aradia slides the bowl toward herself and raises the knife in one trembling hand. She closes her other hand over the blade and suddenly pulls sharply downward, and when the edge reappears, it's dripping with blood. Aradia opens her free hand up and lets a few drops of blood fall into the bowl.
"I have some paper towels," Tavros says quietly, pointing to the corner where his wheelchair sits.
"Hang on," Eridan says. He gets up, finds the roll of paper towels, and hands a few to Aradia before sitting back down.
"Thanks." She edges the knife and bowl toward Tavros. "Your turn. It has to go counterclockwise," she adds.
"Okay," Tavros says. He wipes off the knife with another paper towel and does the same thing as Aradia, slicing open the palm of his hand and squeezing a few drops of blood into the bowl. Around the circle it goes, from Tavros to Eridan to Feferi to Terezi to Dave to you and finally to Sollux. Once the bowl is back in front of Aradia, she murmurs something and then spits into the bowl. She stirs the contents with the knife and then opens up the jar, shakes the spider out into the bowl, and before it can scurry away, she stabs it. Pulling a face, she scrapes the dead spider off the blade and into the basin, murmurs something else, and strikes a match.
Everything is silent and you feel yourself wanting to edge closer even as the rational part of your brain screams that this is wrong. Aradia drops the match into the bowl and that's insane, the flames should not roar up like that, blood is not that flammable, what the hell is going on here—
And then you hear laughing and feel wind whipping around you. Somehow the basin is in the exact center of the circle except that doesn't make any sense, either, Aradia didn't even touch it, and you and Eridan lock eyes through the flames and he looks so bizarrely different and you're terrified, this wasn't supposed to happen, something horrible is occurring right in front of you.
There's a face in the flames. It stares right at you, its sharp teeth leering, and it's human, or human-looking enough to make no difference, except those eyes are ethereal, one completely normal looking, but the other has seven pupils and seems to pierce right into your soul.
HELLO, SEER OF LIGHT. IT HAS BEEN A LONG TIME.
Without your conscious control, you extend your arm, reaching your fingertips toward the fire. You try to pull your hand back but your arm won't obey your brain. Your whole body leans forward until your fingers are entirely engulfed in flames and it hurts, you can hear the sizzling and smell your flesh burning and you try to scream but you can't and your fingertips are turning black and the darkness is crawling up your arm, slithering past your wrist and creeping toward your elbow and you can't pull your hand away—
"Rose!" Dave shoves your arm away from the fire and suddenly you're in control again, jerking your arm back toward your chest and cradling your hand, but the blackness is already fading from your skin and the scorching smell is melting into nothing.
A tendril of flame whips out from the fiery tower, but it's not heading for you. It whips around Terezi's neck and starts dragging her closer and Terezi screams, bloodcurdling and chilling and your stomach is somewhere behind your ribcage now, your innards twisting and turning, and Terezi is still screaming, one long and unbroken wave of sound, and even though Dave and Feferi are trying to pull her back now, they can't quite manage it. Terezi's entire face is in the fire now and she's shrieking in fear and pain, half-sobbing until without warning, the inferno lets her go and she falls backward, her hands over her eyes and her glasses flying off while she sobs.
And then it has Feferi, her eyes widening and jaw falling slack. Her eyes roll into the back of her head and there's a stream, a veritable river pouring from her mouth to the floor, drenching the carpet. Her whole body shudders and she falls back, convulsing, and the water keeps coming. She gags, her eyes still wide and white, and is it possible she's drowning? What the hell is happening? Terezi's not in any position to help, she's still holding her eyes and crying, and Eridan can't help, either.
Oh, shit. His skin has turned completely black, pitch-black to match his hair except that ridiculous bleached-blond streak in his bangs, and he seems to be shimmering. Heat or steam or something is rolling off his body in waves and his eyes are wide and yellow behind his glasses and he is definitely not moving. He looks completely paralyzed, and next to him, Tavros looks terrified but he can't move, he can't look away from the fire.
It seems to be careening toward him, as though a lover were leaning over him. The flames lick across Tavros's jaw tenderly but don't leave scorch marks, not the way they did to you, and even though he looks ready to scream, he's leaning forward, into the fire as well.
There's a crack, and Aradia vanishes. She's just gone.
"Ara—!" Sollux starts, but he doesn't finish. Everything in the living room starts rattling, shaking, practically dancing, and you just know he's the cause, but he's not in control, he can't be. He screams. His body convulses much like Feferi's is still doing, and the next thing you know, he's floating, his legs gently unfolding from this cross-legged sitting position and he's being pulled up by his chest, his limbs limp and lolling while everything—Tavros's wheelchair, the sofa and two recliners against the wall, the television and TV stand, the end table near the door—in the room begins levitating along with him, rising into the air. From nowhere and everywhere at once comes the sound of Aradia's disembodied screaming and this cannot be happening, you've seen strange things in your nineteen years but you've never experienced the horrorterrors like this.
You hear squishing and laughing and screaming and it's coming from around you and within you and now the walls in your living room are bleeding as the wind and storm that rages around you seems to increase in intensity except now the blood or whatever it is that seeps from the walls are dragging across the carpet, sliding closer toward your now-broken circle of bodies and the face in the flames continues laughing, its eyes horrifyingly mismatched and seeming to stare right through you. The fluid crawls with a terrible jolting motion toward you, under you, right up to the flaming bowl.
GOODBYE, SEER OF LIGHT. I WILL SEE YOU AGAIN SOON.
All at once, the rushing sounds stop and the flames die out and the dark tendrils from the wall vanish and Aradia reappears, and for one long second, everything is silent as the eight of you look around at each other.
Except Feferi is still lying on the floor, blinking numbly up at the ceiling, her eyes now normal and the water no longer issuing from her mouth in torrents, and Terezi still shakes where she lies, covering her eyes.
And then Aradia lets out a broken cry and pitches toward Sollux. All of you seem to collapse and cry without really meaning to, but what other reaction could there be?
We fucked up, this was a horrendous mistake, you tell yourself, sobbing into your hands. You knew something horrible would happen but you didn't know it would be this bad.
"Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God," Aradia chants, her arms around Sollux's neck. "I didn't know—oh, God, Sollux, I'm so sorry..."
"Fef, talk to me, please, what happened, please, let's just..."
"Why's the floor wet, oh, my God..."
"Terezi, let me look, what's going on?"
"Turn on the lights, Dave, please, I can't see a thing, turn on the lights..."
The last thing you want to do is stand up and do anything but you finally pull yourself to your feet and flip the lights on.
"There, Rose turned the lights on, come on," Dave says. He takes his glasses off and sets them aside, something he rarely does—his irises are red and he hates people looking at them. "Come on, Terezi, look at me, it's okay now, please."
You see what her eyes look like when she opens them. "I thought you said Rose turned on the lights," Terezi whimpers. "I can't see a thing, though."
Her eyes are scorched black in her head. She's completely blind.
"You need to go to the hospital," Dave murmurs. "You're gonna be okay, you just need to go to the hospital and they'll fix you right up, you're okay." But he's insensible, trying to reassure both him and her that she'll be fine when you feel it—she's blind for good, and all of this has been the worst mistake of your life.
Feferi and Eridan both look at you, something akin to accusation in their eyes, and you deserve it, this was your suggestion, yours and Aradia's, and look where it got you—one of you is blinded and every single one of you has seen things that will need a lifetime of psychiatric help to heal, if you heal at all.
"I'm sorry," you whisper, your knees giving out, and you sink to the floor, your stomach churning, and you double over, retching and gagging. You're prepared for a small, slow trickle like usual, but that's not what you get. No, this time, it's a waterfall of water, salty and bitter at once, and you close your eyes, willing it to be over, let it end, how is this even possible, but you keep heaving and your insides burn, practically screaming in agony, and no matter how much water pours out of your mouth, it doesn't stop, the writhing in your intestines just goes on and on.
Until it stops some interminable amount of time later and you realize you're lying on your side, your head in Tavros's lap as he strokes your hair—he'd somehow crawled over to you—and you're grateful for the contact, grateful to feel anything except the crushing oblivion of the unknown pressing down on your stomach. "What's happening?" you ask quietly, knowing that no one knows.
"You passed out," Tavros says quietly. "Dave took Terezi to the hospital. Feferi and Eridan went back to his room. I think Dave and I avoided the worst of it," he adds. "The rest of you..."
You look up to where Aradia and Sollux are sitting. He stares straight ahead, his eyes hollow-looking, and she rests her head against his shoulder. They both look numb and exhausted.
"I'm so sorry, Tavros," you whisper. "I had no idea this would happen."
"It's okay. Everyone's alive, at least. That's the point."
The three of them leave a short time later after Sollux and Aradia pull themselves together long enough to help you to your room. You tumble into bed fully clothed and fall asleep almost instantly, and even though your dreams are dark and terrifying, you don't wake up until long after the sun has risen again.
There's a new text message on your phone from Dave. The doctors say Terezi is permanently blinded.
Your stomach rolls with guilt. This is all your fault. You should have known. You wish you hadn't dragged anyone into this mess. I'm so sorry. How is she holding up?
You roll out of your bed and stumble from your room. The whole apartment is quiet, and for once, the bleeding walls didn't wake you up. You knock on Eridan's door, but there's no sound or movement from inside. You open the door. "Eridan?"
The room is empty. His bed is neatly made. He's not here.
He wanders home later, the cuffs of his sleeves damp. He says he was spending time with Feferi. "She's still really shaken from last night," he adds.
"Terezi's permanently blind," you say.
"I kinda thought she would be," he murmurs. "I just had this feelin', you know?"
"Yes. Me, too."
The two of you sit in silence in the living room, staring at the spot where the fiery bowl had been the night before. The faint scent of salt from the water both you and Feferi vomited up still lingers and you're going to have to shampoo the carpet or else it'll start rotting, but you can't summon the energy to even go outside, let alone drive to the closest Wal-Mart and rent a Rug Doctor to take care of it.
Things seem to calm down for a few weeks. Dave comes over once to tell you that Terezi's mother is threatening to sue even though Terezi flat-out refuses to talk about what happened. "You're lucky," Dave says. There's accusation in his voice now. "I won't tell them, either—who the fuck would believe us? It sounds fucking insane. They'd throw us in a fucking asylum or something. But that shit was wicked dangerous. What the fuck were you thinking?"
But you hadn't been thinking. Not of the true repercussions. One of you could have died. Several of you—all of you could have died. It's a miracle all of you are still alive after that.
Dave's Lil Cal problem is intensifying. No matter where he goes now, that puppet seems to follow. What's worse is that he knows it's not Dirk fucking with him anymore because Dave's brother is at work half the time and it doesn't make any sense for Lil Cal to be following him around anyway. To prove his point, he gestures toward one of the recliners behind you, and you look.
The puppet is sitting right there, its wide, demented eyes on you two. "It'll be gone in a few minutes," Dave says. "Once I get into my car, it'll be there in the back seat, looking at me." He sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. "Some cleansing, huh?"
"My walls stopped bleeding," you say half-heartedly.
He freezes, staring at you (presumably) with shock. "What the fuck did you just say?"
"My walls? They stopped bleeding."
"Oh." He exhales sharply and you wish you could see his eyes. "I though... man, I had no idea what you said for a second there. Well, good. At least something positive came out of this."
You swallow as he walks back to his car. You spare a second to glance back at the recliner to see that Lil Cal is now gone.
You don't hear about the horrible things that happen at Sollux's apartment until he calls you about two weeks after the big event in tears. "Please, can you just... can you come over? I can't... Tavros is gone, he's with his boyfriend, and I just... please..."
Your nausea is constant by now, torrents of salt water flowing from your mouth two or three times a day, and now it's not just salt water—it looks like it's dotted with tiny fish eggs and the fact that those are inside you is enough to make you heave again, and no matter what you eat (not that you're eating much anymore, since food just makes you even more nauseous), it stays the same, just rivers and lakes of salt water laced with white pearlescent fish eggs pouring forth into the sink or the bathtub, it's too much for the toilet to handle anymore, you must have thrown up a whole ocean by now. But there's desperation in his voice and it's the first time in two weeks since you've heard from anyone besides Eridan or Dave, all of your other friends seem to have ostracized you, rightfully placing the blame on your shoulders. So you take a quick shower, turning the water as hot as you can stand, nearly scalding (hopefully it'll scorch away whatever is writhing, unclean and twisted, inside you), and drive to his apartment.
He's on the twelfth floor of a twenty-story apartment building. The ascent is long and even the elevator ride is draining, but you're not the only one who's weak. When he answers the door, he looks pale and trembling. "Sorry it took so long," you say quietly once he lets you inside. "I..." Another wave of nausea rolls over you, and for a second, you think you're going to vomit salt water and fish eggs on his mismatched shoes, but you rein it in. "I'm not feeling so great," you finish.
"Neither is she," he says with a nod toward the sofa.
You look. Aradia is sitting on the middle cushion, her back perfectly straight. Her hair looks limp and lifeless and her skin has an unnatural gray pallor. There are two people on either side of her, a boy and a girl, and they're both shaking a bit, but they're holding her hands and talking to her softly.
Aradia doesn't appear to hear them.
"How are your fingers?" he asks.
"Huh?" You look at them. They're not burned at all even though you distinctly remember the feeling of them searing in the fire. For some reason, it looks instead like a jellyfish or some other tentacled creature wrapped its ganglion around your fingers and left scars. They're tender to the touch, but it's a better sensation than the burning. "They're okay." You motion toward the sofa. "What's going on with her?"
"She's in this trance. This happens often enough, but only for a few minutes at a time. At least, until that thing a few weeks ago. Then it started happening for twenty minutes, thirty, an hour... She's been like that for four hours now. I'm getting really worried. I called over Equius and Nepeta to see if they could bring her out of it, but..." He shakes his head. "Nothing so far. I can't... Rose, she's my best friend. I don't know what the hell to do. I've never her seen her like this before. Tavros hasn't stayed here in a week because of how freaked-out he is by this."
"Let's go to your room," you say quietly. "She'll be alright out here with them."
The two of you stay in his room for nearly an hour, comparing notes on your experiences. He says he blacked out during the part of the ritual where he was levitating and making other things float, too—you know he was what caused it—but he shows you that he can lift the whole bed now. "I couldn't do that before," he says. "It used to just be like pieces of paper and pens and shit. I couldn't even lift something bigger than a book. Now... now I can move all of my fucking furniture if I concentrate hard enough. I don't know—" He freezes. "And the voices. They're louder, always louder. Like that—it sounds like... oh, my God." He jumps up and sprints out of the room. "ARADIA!"
You follow him out of the room and into the living room, where Equius and Nepeta are blinking and looking around. They look like they've been asleep, and nothing's changed except Aradia is gone. The front door is half-open and you realize she actually left, she's awake and wandering around somewhere—except if Sollux is hearing Aradia's voice in his head, it means something terrible is about to happen.
"Sollux—the roof."
"Oh, Jesus, no," he breathes.
You follow him out the door with Equius and Nepeta a few steps behind you. They take the elevator to scale the last eight floors while you and Sollux just charge up the stairs—whoever gets their first wins.
It ends up being you two, as winded and unused to exercise as you are, and you throw open the door to the room just in time to see a flash of dark red, the same color as Aradia's shirt, before she steps over the ledge and into the air.
"ARADIA!" Sollux screams, dashing to the edge, but it's too late. By the time you peer over the side, she's already hit the ground, her body twisted at a strange angle, and you know it—she's dead.
Sollux sobs as Equius and Nepeta appear. You just sit there, fisting your hair and rocking. How is this possible? What the hell is happening? Is this all your fault?
You know it is, though. Even as Nepeta shakily draws out her phone and dials 911, you blame yourself.
Stranger, more horrible things start happening as the days slip into weeks. Dave reports that his friend John can control the wind, while Dave himself has taken to burning Lil Cal only to have the puppet reappear hours later, perfectly whole. Your friend Jade becomes convinced her dog is the savior of humanity. Tavros wheels his way into the forest and finds dead, drowned animals. Sollux seldom leaves his own apartment now, not even to go to work, and it's only through donations that he can afford to keep the apartment. Dave and John's friend Karkat gets so angry he breathes fire. Stray cats follow Nepeta everywhere, which she enjoyed at first, but now, she's slightly concerned. Kanaya, a friend of Karkat's (and also yours, although you at one time hoped she might become something more to you), reportedly only leaves her apartment at night and spends the entire day in her room with black curtains hanging over the windows. Terezi is slowly but surely adjusting to being blind, but she wakes up in the night screaming over horrible nightmares of something crawling toward you all. Equius, who had been Aradia's boyfriend, grieves by smashing out the windows of his car with an aluminum baseball bat, slashing the tires, and attacking the body with a buzz saw. Tavros's boyfriend Gamzee disappears for days at a time and reemerges gibbering nonsense about miracles and gods. Eridan spends most of his time with Feferi, away from you, and whenever you do see him, you swear his skin is as gray as Aradia's was the last time you saw her alive.
You chance one and only one glance in a mirror before deciding to keep them all covered for the foreseeable future. That one glance is enough to convince you that your own skin is turning gray as well, and your eyes are black. You know that's crazy, and after you've blinked and cleared your vision, you appear normal, but that first glance is too much. You can't see that.
The day after Aradia's death is the first day your daily retching brings up a hideous, slick black bile. It doesn't have a taste and as it comes out, it feels like a tentacle is pushing out of your throat, but when it hits the basin of the tub, it vanishes like smoke. You sob because you're going crazy, that's the only explanation, you're going completely insane, but isn't that the preferable alternative to the whole world dismantling itself and cleaving the jagged pieces of your life into smaller and sharper fragments?
Other people start turning up dead—strangers, thankfully, because that's better than losing another friend. All drowned in the lake by Feferi's house, and you tell Eridan to warn her not to go swimming there—there's got to be something in there that's killing people. He just nods and promises he'll tell her, but you don't tell him about the bile.
One night he spends at home with you sees him pitching toward the sink in the kitchen and heaving. You automatically go to rub his back.
The drain is open in the sink, but the water he's just vomited up sits there anyway. He belches and a few fish fall out of his mouth, and it would be almost comical if it wasn't so terrifying. He gags, runs the faucet, and sticks his mouth under it as if he could suck the oxygen out of it.
"Eridan, I don't—"
He holds up a hand and continues drinking for almost a full minute, his throat swallowing rhythmically, before he finally turns off the tap. "What the fuck is goin' on, Rose?" he asks finally, staring at the fish that swim in the water in the sink.
"I don't know."
Dirk calls you three days later. Dave's dead. He impaled himself on one of his many shitty katanas. The time of death is determined to be while Dirk was at work and there's video footage from security cameras of him there, meaning he's not under suspicion of homicide, and the police rule Dave's death a suicide. Once they find out he knew Aradia (however briefly), they decide his suicide was in response to hers.
It feels like your world has been torn open. Dave has always been there for you, and until three weeks ago, was one of your closest friends. Now he's dead and you have another death on your conscience.
More and more people show up drowned in the lake and others are found right in your city to be exsanguinated. Whenever you see any of your friends, they all appear darker, smaller, more withdrawn, especially Jade and John in light of Dave's death. Terezi doesn't sleep anymore, just sits in her room and sobs about the impending terrors. You happen to see Kanaya one night and she's pale, practically glowing, but she looks unnaturally healthy. Nepeta stops going out at all, not to school and not to work after Equius disappears without a trace. About four days after his disappearance, he turns up again.
Strangled to death.
It's a homicide, without a doubt, and the police have no leads. Equius's car is found, still wrecked, in his garage, but his older brother Horuss confirms that it's the way he left it when he disappeared. Nepeta is nearly inconsolable for two days until, according to Sollux (who she'd started living with in order to make sure he still eats), she storms out of the apartment one day and vanishes.
Four weeks after the ritual, Eridan hardly spends any more time at the apartment. He's usually out with Feferi, he says in the interest of comforting her, but he's lying. You scare him. Sometimes, when you speak, even you can hear the gibberish pouring out of you like the bile or sea water and you can't do anything to stop it, either. Neither of you know what it means, but you can feel that something's close to wrapping its tentacle around your ankle and dragging you down. It's going to tear apart everything you know and love to get to you.
Nepeta's body is found three days after she disappears. She was bludgeoned to death by what looks like a juggling club, and the police point the finger of blame at any and all Juggalos, as though every single one of them is responsible for her death. The police think that her death and Equius's death are unrelated, but you know better. The same person or entity killed them both. It'll kill again, too, and now you can see the sinister stars wherever you go and feel something rising out of your throat, pushing against your teeth, fighting to get out of you. You can barely talk to Eridan when he's home for fear of letting it out, keeping your teeth gritted when you respond to whatever question he dares ask you.
When he leaves, he always has his stupid wand clutched in his hand, although it doesn't look so stupid anymore, not when it glows with a white-hot light. You've seen the scorch marks left in Eridan's room. You know he's done that. He didn't have any kind of magical powers before, but now he does and it's just a matter of time before he hurts someone with them. He's never been the most kindly, understanding person—in fact, he's a bit of a dick, but you've always set it aside because of how much of your Old Ones bullshit he tolerates and even believes. But now he's thrown himself wholeheartedly into it, whether as a result of what happened all those weeks ago or in spite of it. He's on a cosmic highway toward destruction, a vengeful boy on a path of nihilism.
A week after Nepeta's body is found, Tavros's boyfriend is arrested and charged with murder. At first, it's just Tavros's murder—hours before, neighbors heard screaming from Gamzee's apartment and called the police, and when they arrived, they found Gamzee sitting calmly on the living room floor, playing a video game on two-player mode with the other controller in Tavros's hands, except Tavros's head was in his own lap. Blood was smeared across both his and Gamzee's lips and in the corner, a bloody hacksaw was propped up next to a trio of juggling clubs. One of those was also bloody, although the blood was dried. Gamzee is arrested on the spot, and he goes quietly. When he gets to the station, though, he not only freely confesses to Tavros's murder, but the murders of Nepeta and Equius. The juggling club in the living room, he says, has her blood on it, and he adds that he strangled Equius with the string of his broken archery bow, a fact that was left out of the newspapers but is nevertheless true.
You can't remember the last time you ate. You can't remember the last time you slept. You feel tendrils circling around you. You can hear its pulsing, something akin to a heartbeat although it doesn't have a heart, echoing in your ears. It's inside you and around you and it's slowly driving you mad. You can't do anything but cling to the side of the bathtub and vomit. The fish that Eridan coughed up in the sink have finally died. You hear your phone ring on the bathroom counter and grope for it.
"Rose, it's me," Eridan whispers. "I don't got a lot a' time, okay? Come to the lake. There's somethin' you need to see." He hangs up without waiting for an answer, and you groan, drag yourself to your feet, and shamble toward the door.
It takes you close to twenty minutes to drive to the lake by Feferi's house. Her car is parked there, and you can see that it looks different than the last time you saw it. It's dented in a few more places, which is odd since she's rich, richer than Eridan, and she can afford to have body work done without a problem, but the oddest part is that the trunk appears to be dented outward, like something tried to fight its way out.
You hear a scream. It sounds like Eridan. With a strength you didn't know you possessed, you run down the slope toward the water's edge as the scream cuts off, replaced by splashing and an odd gurgling sound. Over the din, there's a high, soft murmuring, almost soothing in its quality, and the splashing slowly fades.
That's when you see it. Eridan is being held face down in the water by Feferi, and she's singing to him as though trying to lull him to sleep. He's struggling against her, but she must be stronger than she looks because she holds him under easily. Her eyes are bright by the light of the moon, and a closer look reveals that her eyes are actually pure white. They've rolled into the back of her head again, and still she sings, holding his head below the water and rubbing his back even as he thrashes.
And then the thrashing slowly stops until his whole body slackens and there are no more bubbles pouring out of his mouth to pop at the surface.
An eerie, shrieking screech sounds from below the water, toward the center of the lake.
"What?" Feferi calls toward it. "We've done everything you asked! We sacrificed to you! Animals and humans, and that wasn't enough!"
There's another screech in reply.
"I know! I know the sacrifice wasn't enough! But he was my best friend! Why did I have to drown him? He could have kept helping me!"
You understand suddenly. It isn't quite like you thought. Feferi and Eridan were the ones drowning people. How she got him to go along with it, you'll never know, but your roommate and one of your closest friends is dead now.
Another screech bellows across the waves.
"I see," Feferi says sadly. "I'll do it." She turns her head and looks at you—as well as she can, considering her eyes are still rolled back in her head. "It's you she wants, you know," she says. She pulls out something that catches the light. It's a knife, and you're half-worried she's going to throw it at you, but at this point, death would be a relief, wouldn't it?
But she doesn't. "You'll answer her call, too, you know. Soon, you'll hear her." She spreads her arms wide. "Gl'bgolyb, the mother of queens and queen of mothers!" Without a second of hesitation, she lifts the knife to her throat and slashes.
It's over in seconds, her blood flowing from her neck and her knees buckling. She collapses on top of Eridan's lifeless body, and you almost scream. This is some horrible nightmare. What's the body count hovering at? This is seven, you think—Aradia and Dave and Equius and Nepeta and Tavros and Eridan and now Feferi.
You sob as something moves in the lake, closing in on the shoreline.
Never fear, Rose Lalonde. I am here for you. I have seen your suffering. I have known the terrors you've faced. I am here to save you, to guide you to a world of light and peace. You see the light, I know you do. That is your title. Seer of Light.
Against your conscious control, drop to your knees and crawl toward the water, toward Eridan and Feferi's bodies. It sounds so lovely, so serene, and you can't call to mind a single moment of your life where you felt completely at-ease.
Come to me. Let me comfort you. It will be over and you can finally rest.
Your hands and knees are muddy and bloody but you don't care. You splash into the water past your friends' corpses as something vast and tentacled and shockingly horrifying emerges, dripping with pond scum and extending its many iridescent tentacles toward you, but you find yourself unafraid, even happy.
That's right, Rose, come to me. I am here to comfort you. Come, and I will give you peace.
You reach out and grope for one of the tentacles. It wraps around your arm, and then more and more encircle your arms and legs and waist, and all at once, there's water in your nose and mouth, the taste of rotting, and you open your mouth to free whatever it is that's been roiling and fighting its way out of you for weeks now. You retch and it's an interesting sensation to be held beneath the waves and vomit all at once, and of course you can't breathe and your lungs and stomach burn with the effort, and out of your mouth snakes one tentacle, and then another... another... another... You lose count as it goes on and close your eyes, thrashing from lack of oxygen, but you don't want to come to the surface. It's bliss to finally let go, to feel this thing finally free itself from you...
It ends. You open your eyes. A black tentacled thing floats in front of you in the water and swims toward you. It latches onto your body in a strange sort of embrace.
There, now, Rose. Everything is alright. Sleep now, and dream the undisturbed slumber of ages.
Your vision grows dim. Your body is heavy, far too heavy. You're sinking, drowning, and too far gone to care. Seven of your friends are dead. You just want it to be over.
The horrorterrors of the world are fading from your mind. It's soothing, liberating. You feel both cold and warm at once.
You let go.
You die.