Sorry it's been quite a while since the last update; I've been pretty busy lately. Hope you enjoy and hope the last few chapters go up quicker than this one!
Thornhill- Saturday, 2:15 P.M.
Jughead, now in a much better mood after having eaten, took Betty's hand as the gang started to return upstairs.
Veronica, too, offered a hand to Cheryl with a smile, who gave it a disdainful glance and then walked up three feet ahead of her.
Halfway down the hall, Betty came to a halt.
"Hold up," she said. "Déjà vu…"
Betty's hand absently rose to the wall, where it crept up the wallpaper, grabbed the ebony wall lamp, and gave it a yank.
"Careful!" Cheryl shouted, but the wall lamp had been built to bend, to be pulled like a lever.
With the pulling of the lamp came the sound of grinding gears and then the sound of a spring being released. When the gang turned, a panel on the wall had come loose, revealing a secret passageway.
"Your house has secret passageways," Veronica gawked.
"Someone alert TV Tropes," Jughead said.
"I knew of a few," Cheryl said, opening the panel wider. "Never seen this one before, though."
Betty shook her head, dazed from whatever spell she'd been put under once again.
The four crept behind the wall panel, which had been hiding a secret study.
In the dark, they could make out a massive wooden desk strewn with old photo prints. The came closer to the desk, trying to make out the photographs' subjects in the shadows.
Betty whipped out her cell phone and cast light on the photos. Most were images of Thornhill or the land surrounding it, but upon closer examination, the gang realized that in each picture was a man.
"His killer," Betty mumbled. "His brother."
"Wait, this guy was killed by his brother?" Veronica asked.
"Understandably so," Jughead said. "I'd kill my stalker, too."
Betty then turned the light to the opposite wall, where hung a corkboard below a message, angrily carved into the wall and underlined several times over.
WHERE DID YOU HIDE MY DAMN TREASURE, BASTARD
Jughead reached forward and brushed the jagged, crudely crafted letters on the wall. "The ghost doesn't even know where the treasure is. Great."
"And he really wants us—Betty, I guess—to find it," Veronica said, eyebrows drawn.
"Look at this," Cheryl brought their attention to the corkboard, where the ghost had hung photos of several locations and torn others off when he had been alive. "Most of these are on the property. Maybe the treasure's there."
"Look at this," Veronica said, nodding her head to an exquisite jewelry box hidden underneath the desk behind them, jewel-studded and intricate, that had probably been an antique even when it was first brought to the secret study.
She reached forward and gently opened the lid, revealing a small metal key.
"Unlocks the treasure chest maybe?" Betty suggested.
"One way to find out," Jughead said, tearing the photographs from off the walls.
Thornhill- Saturday, 5:00 P.M.
"This is the last spot on the property," Cheryl said grimly.
In all the other locations, they'd struck out.
Betty, Jughead, Cheryl, and Veronica had torn apart each of the locations in the pictures; dug into dirt, lifted paintings off of the walls, and had done everything they could to uncover the treasure, save for prying off the floorboards.
"Fingers crossed," Jughead said as he dug one of the Blossom's shovels into the earth below one of the graveyard's biggest headstones.
"Are we robbing a grave?" Betty asked tentatively.
"Hopefully," Cheryl said.
Alas, they did not end up robbing the grave, only defacing it.
"That's it," Veronica called. "That's the last place it could be! Let's try the gates one more time. Maybe they're open now that we have to leave to find the treasure."
The gang crossed the property in the rain, praying for the gates to finally be unlocked again.
They were not.
"Hey, Uncle Ghost," Cheryl called. "Let us out; there's nowhere else on the property it could be!"
"It would appear there isn't," came the voice of the ghost.
His figure emerged from the grey of the rainfall.
Perhaps this whole time, Jughead, Veronica, and Cheryl had believed, in some small crevice of their minds, that Betty was wrong and that there was no ghost at Thornhill.
But now, the tall figure standing in front of them, throat slit and eyes sinister, could not be denied.
So they stood and listened, mouths open and eyes as big as golf balls like dumbstruck cartoon characters, as the ghost explained himself.
"Children, I do regret making you trudge all through the property, tearing it apart, only to find nothing. I would have saved you the trouble if I could, but I never figured out where the treasure was, myself.
"You see, I followed my brother for months searching for what he stole from me. But I could not find the time to fully examine all the sites I suspected in the time before my death while also remaining undetected by my dear brother. He killed me before I could recover my riches."
"The only other places you think he could have hidden the treasure are off the property," Betty reminded him. "So you should let us out."
"Yeah, you shouldn't probably have kept us trapped in the first place," Jughead said wryly. "Kinda makes it hard to trust you."
The ghost ignored him. "Of course. But there is one last thing before I let you go." He turned to Cheryl. "Cheryl Blossom, dear, where is your brother?"
If the gang wasn't frozen before, they certainly were now.
"You mean…" Cheryl started, "You mean you don't know? You didn't do anything with them disappearing?"
The ghost's face hardened. "I only have eyes on you four. You're the ones that summoned me here. Don't tell me you don't know where they are."
"We don't," Veronica said.
The ghost frowned and cocked his head. Finally, he spoke. "Very well. I wanted the boy, the brother. But you will have to do, Cheryl Blossom."
"Do for what?" Veronica asked, fear growing in her gut.
"Radices currere abyssi, children," the ghost smirked. "Roots run deep. Sins are not so easily forgiven. Wrongs must be righted. Retribution, darlings. An eye for an eye. There must be blood."
"I'd like to point out that Jughead and Betty and I have nothing to do with whatever happened in the Blossom family, like, decades ago," Veronica said, voice shaking.
The ghost let out a laugh. "Your friend Elizabeth has everything to do with it. It was her blood that brought me here. She is my great granddaughter. The responsibility of avenging my death, of killing one of my dear brother's descendants as he killed me… that falls squarely on her shoulders."
He stepped toward Cheryl, who jumped backwards, but then he turned toward Betty.
"You know what to do, Elizabeth Cooper. Bring judgment and justice upon this twisted family and claim your rightful prize. Avenge me and I shall let you all go free. Free to retrieve your treasure, Elizabeth."
As everyone turned to look at Betty, a knife materialized in her fisted hand, ready to be used.
Betty stared down at the knife, then looked up and scowled at the ghost. "I'm not a killer, you freak."
"You think you have a choice?" the ghost growled, voice rising and thunder rumbled in the distance. "This is in your blood, in our blood, Elizabeth. Her family wronged ours. That's why we had to cut ourselves off. This is your chance to restore order to our sick and twisted bloodline."
"I'm not doing it," Betty spat.
The ghost sighed. "Very well, grandchild. It doesn't matter, really. She will die by your hand. By our hand."
Betty stumbled backwards as the ghost ran straight into her, disappearing into her body. Again, everyone could tell, Betty was in some sort of supernatural trance.
