Dear Diary,
What is the afterlife? I have heard it mentioned so often, but there is no physical proof of such a thing. Is it like love? Many of the people I asked could not answer me, even as they crossed the threshold towards this mysterious place.
I do not like taking things on faith. Faith is too much like trust, and mine has been shattered completely.
I pose myself with a new conundrum; how do I prove the existence of an afterlife, or a lack thereof?
…
So many problems, such limited resources to investigate with.
Pokémon
Transgression
By Crukix
|Shadows|
-O-O-O-
I know zombies aren't real. I mean, I've always been told that by my parents and really, the idea of dead things coming back to life is something that even I can believe isn't actually going to happen.
The only problem is that it is happening.
My parents always told me these things can't exist. Of course, my parents also told me the creepy little girls in white that appear on films don't unnaturally play jump-rope whilst singing creepy nursery rhymes.
So I'm two-for-two on proving my parents wrong and somehow, I told you so doesn't seem like the easiest thing to say anymore.
Death lies all around me. I'm aware of it. I can feel it in the air – I can taste it with every breath! From the corners of my eyes I can see the scattered bits of what used to be people and the smears of blood they've left all across the roads and the buildings.
And in front of me stands the living dead, purple skin, covered in blotches, tiny little fangs and with a hole the size of my fist in the side of its head.
The thing stares at us in as much surprise as we stare at it. An arm drops from its mouth, stained red with blood and what may have once been nail varnish. It hits the floor with a wet plop and suddenly the world seems to start all over again.
The thing screams in a way that I've never heard before – not from even the steelix because somehow this is far scarier because the thing trying to eat me was a human! Its mouth stretches and stretches and I can see all the way down its throat!
Somewhere in the distance, I hear footsteps.
It's enough that finally, we all seem to realise just what might be going on.
"Holy foongus," Ali says.
"I'm dreaming," Jerry mutters.
Whereas I simply scream. I scream and I scream because the thing used to be human and its eating dead people and now it's looking at us and oh my god it shouldn't be making those noises and it's going to eat us too and-
-Ali's sawk decides it's had enough as it picks up a piece of an abandoned car and smashes it into the thing's face! The zombie goes down with a big crack sound and it falls against the road hard enough that I can hear the crack like it happens right next to me. It moans and reaches for Cap, but Cap picks up the car piece and smashes it into the zombie-thing's head until there's nothing left but a pile of goo and bits that once used to be brains.
"I…" Jerry says nervously. "Really?"
Ali shrugs. "Hey, you're supposed to aim for the head, aren't you?"
"B-but," he stutters and waves his hands at the remains of the thing. "What if it was human?"
"It had a hole in the side of its head," I say. "It was the size of my hand, Jerry! It can't be alive with something that huge missing from its head!"
He frowns as he looks at me, almost like he's uncertain as to what I'm doing there. Then he starts to try and move in front of me; attempting to shield me from the sights of leaking spleens and already-dry patches of blood. I don't tell him that I've already seen them. I let him stand in front of me, because that stops me from seeing everything. If I can't see it, I can pretend that it isn't happening.
Mandy starts squawking from atop my shoulder. I try to slam my hands down around its beak, but it hops atop my head, crows some more and then jumps to my other shoulder.
The sound echoes all around us. I don't like it. I want nothing more than to run, hide and pretend that Eterna doesn't exist.
Jerry's trying to coax Elizabeth into letting us jump onto it within a moment's notice. The dodrio doesn't look happy, however, and keeps hissing at the piles of bodies on the floor. Its left head pokes the ground around a corpse as the middle head scans the surroundings and the right head licks the corpse's exposed leg.
"Let's leave," Ali says, breathing deeply. "Let's get out of here, pretend we never saw anything and then ring the police or hazard control or even Umbrella – as long as we get out of here now!"
"Good plan," I say. Because really, why would anyone want to stay in here, where they're likely to have their face eaten or something like that?
"But what if there's someone alive in here?" Jerry asks.
"If they were alive, do you really think everywhere would be so abandoned?" Ali hisses. "This isn't a movie. This isn't a videogame. We're not going to be able to eat random food lying on the floor to heal ourselves if one of those things bites us! We leave. Now." She grabs him by the top of his arm and drags him away from the street. I follow quickly, Mandy on my shoulder again, Elizabeth following behind us closely. Cap clears the way in front of us, grunting to itself as it lifts up heavy objects and tests their weight as weapons.
Jerry sighs and grabs his arm from Ali. "I think-"
The sound of snapping bones cracks from down the road.
"-That we should probably steer clear of sounds like that," he finishes.
I try to huddle myself in the middle of everyone. I'm reminded of the steelix eating Nathan and how I shouldn't even know what the sounds of people's bones snapping as they're being eaten sounds like.
I see something at the end of the road. It's moving, faster than a shuffle but slower than a walk. It's hunched over at an unnatural angle. Its skin seems purple. Bubbles of something thick and black drip from its mouth.
It's missing an arm.
"Let's go," Ali says.
We turn around and find another one running towards us.
Ali screams louder than me. Jerry louder still. Cap throws the remains of a paving stone at the zombie, but it's faster than we thought. It zips to the side, stone smashing against the floor behind it and it comes at us, growling and snarling and drooling as it tries to eat us!
Elizabeth screeches, leaps into the air and kicks it away. The thing lands in a broken heap a few paces away from us, still growling, now bleeding and with a steady army of shadows creeping up around it.
"Jerry," I mumble as I cling to him. He doesn't say anything. Instead he just wraps an arm around my shoulders and draws me in close. Even Mandy doesn't protest as it gets a little squashed. I don't want to be here anymore. I want to hide away – even see more dead legends, so long as they're not coming back to life and eating things!
"Stay still," he whispers to me. His hands tighten just a fraction before he screams, "Elizabeth, waste it!"
The hairs on the back of my neck prickle as the air starts to crackle. The dodrio stands nearly motionless, save for the massive collections of energy in each of its beaks. I'm almost certain I hear someone scream, "Stop!" before there's a deafening boom that sends my hair flying everywhere.
My ears ring in the aftermath. The world seems like its spinning round and round. Where the zombie was, only ash remains. Little flecks of zombie flutter down from the sky, drifting around the fissure in the floor and the partially-vaporised car.
There's a moment's peace that hangs in the air.
Then something moans and breaks it completely.
"Urrggghhh…"
I have to be imagining this, because only in my weird and wacky brain would dead things be able to moan and try to eat people.
"Uurrrghhh…"
I wince as I looked at the thing shambling towards us. It might have been human once. It looks like one of the dinner ladies at my old school – except if maybe she'd been served for lunch. Her insides are all exposed and I'm only sure it used to be a woman because there's long hair that sticks to the remains of its face.
"You're one ugly son-of-a-bitch," Ali comments.
"Get down!"
Naturally, I completely ignore the random request. I watch as a woman races over the top of an abandoned car, leaps from the boot and smacks the zombie across the street with a baseball bat! Little bits of blood and gore flick everywhere, but I don't care if there's any on me because that was so cool!
The woman's older than Jerry and I put together. Her clothes are falling apart and her ginger hair is styled into a pixie cut, with a long streak of green through the side. She sighs as she taps her bat against the floor and slides chunks off the wood.
It seems as if she notices us for the first time. "Hey," she says, with a smile that doesn't meet her eyes. A huge scorpion pokémon follows behind her. Instead of running across the car like she did, the pokémon simply tramples across it. Metal screeches underneath it, but the thing pays it no attention at all.
It's hard to not look at the pokémon. It's purple and easily as big as me. Large fangs drip slobber onto the floor that dissolves the road and the remains of zombies. It hisses at the woman, coils its long stingy-tail around itself and chitters something I'll never have any hope of understanding.
"I'm Ryan," the woman says before we can even stutter. "Welcome to Eterna's own little apocalypse."
Jerry seems to be the first of us to recover. "How… what…" he says stupidly. Finally he shakes his head, introduces us and just stares at the woman. "What's going on here?"
She shrugs. "Zombies. Well, that one was, at least," she says, pointing with her bat towards the one she beat to its second-death. "That one you vaporised?" She waves her bat in a circle towards the large crater Elizabeth left behind. "That wasn't a zombie."
"It was trying to eat us," Ali points out. "It was eating someone else and it looked dead. How is that not a zombie?"
The woman sighs and shoulders her bat. "Lots of things to explain, too unsafe to stand around saying them. If you want me to explain things, you're going to have to run and chat, kids. If not, then feel free to find the nearest exit and hope that the gym leaders haven't blockaded everything off."
"Why would they do that?" I ask.
"To stop everything from spreading," Jerry tells me. "When there's a really bad disease or something in some towns, they quarantine the entire area."
"It happens in Kanto a lot," Ali says. "Around Lavender, because of the Tower. But that doesn't explain what's going on here or why people are trying to eat each other."
Ryan turns away from us and gestures towards the city. "Welcome to the Feeding Ground. Not everything you see is a zombie. We – I – discovered a few things about them. Suffice it to say, if they've got wounds that look fatal, they're a zombie. If not, they're not. Sound simple?"
Jerry frowns. "Yes, but-"
"-No buts!" Ryan hisses. She points down the road, to where more things are crawling over the remains of people, pokémon and places. "Those things coming? They're zombies. Feel free to kill them. But maybe we should have a quick demonstration first, alright?" She taps her bat against the side of the big scorpion. "Drapes. Work your magic, would you?"
The thing hisses at her. Even though I can't understand it, I recognise the disdain in the thing's face. Yet even still, it listens to her. It uncoils itself, stretches its tail towards the heavens and growls. I feel a chill pass through the area. My arms erupt into goose bumps. Night seems to come forth from the scorpion and wash over the world.
As it passes over the zombies, something weird happens, however.
They scream like they're being physically wounded. The screams seem to go on forever. Their eyes start bleeding – those that can still bleed. The rest wail and shriek until they start literally falling apart.
I watch in fascinated horror as the bodies of people start to fall away, limb by limb, nose, ears and then eyes. Jerry tries to shield me from it – I manage to keep watching. Even Mandy seems transfixed. Ali is swearing under her breath, just loud enough for me to hear. I don't need to look at her to know that Cap is holding her protectively – just like Jerry is with me. Elizabeth is actually growling at the sight, though it makes no movement to go any closer.
Even with no body underneath them, the people's heads are still moving. They still scream in pain, even though I know for sure they shouldn't be able to, considering their jaws aren't even attached to their heads.
Then something even stranger happens.
Clouds of purple and black start to drift out of the people's open bodies. The clouds start to become a fog, which slowly starts to seep through everything, over the entire landscape and crawling in through any space it can find.
Hundreds of evil red eyes open in the fog.
I recognise the sound as my own gasping shriek. My stomach doesn't so much drop as run away screaming.
"Those are your zombies," Ryan says, pointing with her bat. "Drapes, if you would?"
The thing hisses again, but it obeys. Night bursts from its very skin and washes over the cloud of evil eyes. They moan and hiss and I even hear whispers of "Doom" and "Destroy" coming from them.
Then abruptly, they all disappear into the shadows and leave us in the abandoned street, with little bits and pieces of zombies scattered around us.
Ryan looks at us, her single earring spinning on its axis. "That's how you deal with these creatures."
-O-O-O-
I sigh to myself from our new little hideout. Ryan led us to an abandoned apartment block and made sure we followed her up to the top. There's no one left in the building, which makes it just the slightest bit creepier.
I hum as I make my way through a person's forgotten kitchen. There's something in the fridge that looks like it might soon be able to start speaking. I don't know what it is, I don't know what it was and I certainly don't want to ever have to see something as gross and furry anywhere near food ever again.
Ali's busy barricading the door. Cap helps her and they converse in whispers so quiet I'm unable to hear anything they're saying. Jerry's watching the window, staring out onto the street as if he expects the things to suddenly develop the power of flight. He's recalled Elizabeth and instead Annie floats around him, making eerie banette-noises.
Mandy busies itself eating a raw steak that was left on the kitchen counter. It's going slightly mouldy and fills the entire room with a really disgusting smell, but the vullaby just seems to treat the mould like nothing more than salt.
I walk back into the main room and see the massive pokémon – a drapion, as my pokédex told me – scuttle into the shadows of a bedroom. Ryan remains by one of the windows, using her bloody bat to lift the curtains and watch the world outside.
"So what was that evil cloud?" I ask. My voice cracks a little where I haven't used it in a while and I wince.
Ryan looks at me, then at both Jerry and Ali. They all seem to have some idea about what it was, though I know for sure Ryan has to be certain. She's the one that seems like she's been battling them for a while – she has to know! She even knew that they weren't zombies!
Ryan shrugs as she sits down on a worn green chair. "Pokémon," she says simply. "Eterna has miles upon miles of forests nearby. Said forests also happen to conceal a forgotten mansion that's supposed to be haunted. The guy who owned it murdered his family and then killed himself or something. Either way, it's supposed to be haunted by Mr Slicey himself or one of his dead children.
"And because it's supposed to be haunted, loads of ghostly pokémon tend to show up and hang around the place." She looks up at me and offers a tiny smile which I think is meant to reassure me. "Something's disturbed the pokémon in there or just changed their lifestyles. The town isn't plagued by zombies – it's haunted by gastly possessing people."
I have to search just what a gastly is on my pokédex. It says gastly are poisonous, which I guess explains why everyone looks like they've been eating rattata-poison. I still can't quite understand why there are loads of ghosts wandering around the town and ask as much.
Ryan shrugs. I see that Ali and Jerry have moved closer, finding the conversation interesting enough to draw their attention. "As far as I'm aware, most gastly tend to eat rotting flesh, scavenger-style. Not too dissimilar from your own pokémon," she says, pointing at Mandy. "Given that they're possessing people and using them to eat other, non-possessed people, I'd say that the gastlys are just pigging out and using the town as an all you can eat buffet."
Jerry frowns. "But there's not that many people left for them to eat, surely?"
"Which means only one of two things," Ryan says. "Either they gorge on Eterna and retreat back to their mansion, or…"
"They move on elsewhere and feast on the rest of Sinnoh," Ali whispers. "I swear I played a game like this once."
"How did you beat it?" I ask her.
She pulls at her ear. "You had to find a shotgun blessed by Arceus."
"Oh," I say. There's no hope of finding something like that, then. "What can we do then? Can we run away?"
Ryan shakes her head. "I don't know how you guys managed to get into the town, but it's under a full quarantine. The League have showed up and blockaded it at all the borders towards every over town or escape route. If they think you're possessed, they'll kill you on the spot. People have tried flying out, but they just get shot down by fighter-charizards."
Well, both of those options suck.
"Roark's in here somewhere," Ryan says as she gets back up. "They haven't closed off the forest, because they've figured out that everything seems to be coming from there. The only problem is that well… the gastly came from the forest. So wandering in there is pretty much the same as walking into a gyarados' mouth and closing it shut behind you."
"So what do we actually do to get out of here?" Jerry asks. "Can we not just go back out of Eterna the way we came in?"
"You could, I suppose," Ryan says. "But is it going to be safe? More importantly; is the way out even going to be still open?" She sighs and shakes her head. "I'm afraid the only things we can do now are either hole up somewhere and try to wait it out, or take the charge, attack these stupid gastly and figure out just what's causing them to go so crazy."
Ali punches her hands together. "I say we take the fight to them. After all," – she smiles like an insane person – "'I ain't afraid of no ghosts.'"
Jerry and Ryan groan as one.
-O-O-O-
It's quiet outside.
I would say it's too quiet, but that would be stupid considering my feet are still making noises every time they hit the floor and the distant sounds of buildings creaking in the wind and screams of people running for their lives or being eaten drift to my ears.
I don't like Eterna, I decide.
In fact, I'm pretty sure I just don't like Sinnoh.
I take a deep breath and try to calm myself a little. Jerry and Ali are with me. That's some comfort. Ryan's gone off to who-knows-where, leaving us with the message that she's going to beat up some dead things and then find the nearest adult store.
I didn't understand what she meant by it, though Jerry and Ali clearly did. They both went bright red as Ryan proclaimed she'd gone too long without it and that she was going to have some fun in this world, even if it was just by a toy. I thought she meant a box of Lego or something, but apparently that's not what she meant.
Though no one's telling me what she did mean.
"Why are we even doing this?" I moan as the trees grow taller and taller. I can see the darkness waiting between them, promising me that I'll meet more of the creepy ghosts that happen to be possessing people. "We should be leaving!"
Ali's the one to squeeze my shoulder and smile at me. "If we get to this mansion, we can find Roark. With them, we might be able to figure out what's going on. I don't like it much either, but would you prefer to kick ass and win that way, or just hide in a corner like some little girl?"
I nearly point out to her that I am a little girl, but I can't say that I don't want to try and fight my way out. Craig disappeared and I couldn't do anything. Nathan got eaten in front of me and all I could do was scream and run!
So this time, I actually want to do something.
Mandy tweets from my other shoulder. Ryan had the massive drapion try and teach it the basics of shooting blasts of darkness at things. Unfortunately, whereas the drapion can make night wash over day, Mandy can only manage something not too dissimilar from a gob of black goo.
Apparently Mandy will learn how to use it properly, in time. The only problem is that I don't think we have much time before all the gastly-monsters come and try to eat us.
"C'mon Squirt," Jerry says to me. Out of nowhere he picks me up and lets me ride piggyback. He's got Elizabeth carrying his bag like some sort of pack-dodrio and Annie floats around us, cackling in sounds that remind me of the haunting moans of the zombies.
But somehow, that's familiar. What's strange is Jerry suddenly treating me like he did when I was little. I shrug to myself and marvel that he has to be so much stronger than I thought he was – he's carrying me, my bag and Mandy all at once! Ali just smiles at us both and leads us towards the woods; her heracross hovering just a few steps in front of her, hissing occasional things at the encroaching darkness.
"Keep an eye out Squirt," Jerry tells me, "you're higher than all of us now. Watch for where the things are coming from and let us know."
"Alright." I watch as the town slowly gets taken back by nature. Buildings and concrete roads turn into grassy paths and massive trees. The leaves of the trees are all slowly turning red and orange. It's kind of pretty, in a strange way. I mean, Unova's in summer at the moment – it's weird to see that Sinnoh's in autumn.
It seems like I blink and suddenly we're in the middle of the woods. Some trees are bare, some still have leaves, but they all have pale brown trunks that stretch up to the skies further than I can see. Aside from us and our pokémon, there's no sound anywhere in the forests.
Cap finds the remains of a nest of pokémon. Ali says they look like they were eaten. She doesn't let me look at them.
I see them when we're walking away.
They look like they've been eaten by people.
Raw.
"I can't see anything," I say. There's no pokémon in the trees. The woods should be alive with the songs of starly and kricketot, according to my pokédex. The woods seem as abandoned as the nearby town.
"What do you think, Nina?" Ali asks her pokémon. The heracross clicks and flies up to the trees. It seems to be trying to investigate everything, though with both its arms still in plaster casts it's clearly having a hard time. From below, Cap says something that Nina seems to understand. They talk for a moment before Nina descends and manages to relate all the information back to Ali.
"Nothing," Ali translates. "There's no pokémon or anything that could be considered living around here. Apparently it seems like all the zombies are in the town, still feasting on everyone. Humans must taste nicer or something."
"Thanks for that," Jerry says. Even though I'm not looking at him, I still somehow know he's grimacing. "Any tips on where to find this mansion?"
Ali spins and points forwards. "Nina said that it looks like there's a building ahead. Might be what we're looking for, might not."
"Or it could just belong to some hermit who lives in the woods and shouldn't be trusted around people."
Ali pulls a face I don't quite understand. "Yeah. There's also that problem."
Again they seem to move around me, like I'm some prize that's worth defending no matter the cost. I'm not completely clueless – I know all about avoiding weird people that live in woods and have collections of skinned buneary outside their huts. I did have normal parents, after all. I don't know whether to be annoyed at them both or somewhat happy they're protecting me so much.
Realistically, I decide that maybe I should debate my feelings after we've escaped zombie-land.
The woods are strange. I can see signs of life around me, but at the same time, I can't hear or see any actual life. I see bits of bark chipped off nearby trees – it looks like someone pulled it off with their fingers. On the exposed tree are streaks of blood, like someone was holding onto it as they were pulled away.
The floor is littered with little bits of torn clothes and random objects hidden under the cover of leaves. I try to guess how many people must have come through here and forgotten or lost they stuff, but realising that they've most likely been eaten stops me from thinking much about that.
It doesn't seem to take long to find the building Ali's pokémon were talking about. It's so much bigger than my house – bigger than the local pokémon gym back home! Whoever lived there had to have been rich! Although the windows are almost all broken and the white paint covering the outside looks kind of yellow, the house still looks really cool, in the old and majestic sort of way.
The air is still all around us, though. I slide down from Jerry's back and stare up at the house. I half expect a flash of lightning to burst into life above it, or even thunder to rip through the air.
There's nothing but silence, though.
Ali gulps. "This is the place. I think. It matches what that Ryan girl said."
"Yeah," Jerry says. He frowns at the place, like he's trying to develop x-ray vision or something. "Ryan said that she last saw Roark headed this way, right?"
I nod and say nothing. The house is creepy and even though it makes all the hairs on my arms stand up, I still want to just stand there watching it. The shadows of nearby trees creepy over the house, almost like they're ancient, knobbly old witches that are seeking children to eat.
I shudder at the thought.
Then I see a shadow move behind one of the windows.
"There!" I hiss, even though I want to scream and run in the other direction. "I saw something! In there!" I practically shriek, pointing at one of the in-tact windows on the third floor.
Ali groans, "It would be on the top floor, wouldn't it?"
"Would you rather it be the basement?" Jerry asks.
"Point."
It takes forever for us to actually work up the courage to approach the mansion's front door. I expect there to be some ancient old skeleton-butler that opens the door for us, but instead there's nothing but a few cobwebs hanging over the door.
The door itself is surprisingly clean, though. It's almost like people have been here recently.
Of course, the smears of blood on either side of the door also say as much.
"Stick close to me, alright?" Jerry says as he pulls me towards him. Mandy trills from on my shoulder and is answered by a hiss from Elizabeth. I don't know what to say, so instead I remain silent as Jerry pushes the door open.
It creaks with such an ancient noise I'm actually slightly afraid it might fall off. It manages to swing back, however, and nothing happens other than a little bit of dust at the back of the gloomy hall aimlessly spiralling out of control.
The hall itself is huge though. Even on my tiptoes, I'm still not even half the height of the doors! There are ancient-looking chandeliers that hang from the ceiling, lit with candles that burn bright purple and drip bits of bright white wax onto the floor.
"Well…" Ali says, "this isn't creepy at all."
There's a chill in the air inside the mansion.
And the walls seem to be whispering, "Die."
I shudder and hug myself as we walk through the hallways. We find nothing more than moulding old bits of food, occasional rooms that look like someone may have lived in them and even the occasional skeleton hidden in the corners of a forgotten closet.
It seems like whoever left did it quickly. There's still food on the table in the dining room, except now it's pretty much grown all furry and is quite likely to be able to create intelligent life sometime in the future. Stains of what might be blood are trodden into the floor and the severed head of a little girl's doll rolls across the dining room floor, almost like an invisible spectre is playing with it.
The walls aren't whispering anymore. They're chanting. The same words, over and over, working their way into my brain and making it hard to think.
"Getoutgetoutgetout. Begonebegonebegone. Whywon'tyoudie?"
I look away from the rolling doll's head and try to focus on something else. Mandy is chattering under its breath, whispering things I can't quite understand or hear. Jerry, Ali and their pokémon all seem on edge, though if they can hear the chants coming from the walls, they aren't saying anything.
"I'mgoingtoeatyou. Ripandtearboilandburn. Fleshfleshfleshfleshflesh."
"Can you guys hear that?" I finally ask.
"Meatmeatmeatmeatmeat."
"Hear what?" Jerry asks me.
"Freshmeat. Humans. Humanshumanshumans. Whichonetoeatfirst? Meatmeatmeatmeatmeat."
Ali frowns at me. "I don't hear anything either. Why, can you?"
"Tastytastytastyflesh."
"No," I say instinctively, like I shouldn't let them know I'm weird enough to hear the chanting. But something tells me I have to let them know – that if I can hear it, it might help us or something.
"There's something in hear, whispering," I say. "It's like the walls are saying things."
"Burnthemburnthemburnthem!"
"What?" Ali asks.
"Killkillkillkillkillkill."
Jerry crouches down to my level and puts his hands on my shoulders. He looks more worried than I feel. He presses the back of his hand to my forehead and asks, "What's going on?"
"KILL THEM!"
I jump so quickly that I actually nearly fall over. Jerry's eyes are wide – like he's seeing something move without anything actually moving it. The doors to the room all slam shut and a breeze comes from nowhere and makes the ancient tablecloth start to flutter and moan.
"We need to get out of here," I say as quickly as I can. Mandy's about to leap off my shoulder and start attacking the air itself, but I try to keep my pokémon with me. It knows something's wrong. It means that I'm not completely insane for being able to hear everything.
"Killthechildkillthechild. Cutthegirlcutthegirl. Eattheboyeattheboy."
I scrunch my eyes shut and slap my hands over my ears. It doesn't block out the sound.
"Foodfoodfoodfoodfood."
"Meatmeatmeatmeatmeat."
"Now you die."
I jump out of my skin again. The room seems to have stopped in time – everything's still. Jerry and Ali seem to move in slow motion. I don't understand what's going on, but I see the shadows start to move towards us. They hunt like vultures, creeping along the walls like plague and swallowing all forms of hope and light.
Distantly, I hear giggling.
I turn towards it, somehow moving at normal speed as everything around me moves in slow motion.
I see a little blonde girl, dressed in white. She doesn't look at me. She runs from me, her laugh echoing all around me as she makes her way to one of the doors I know are locked.
I look back at Jerry and Ali. They're still going in slow motion. I don't understand it, but I decide that if I'm normal, then that means I can do something! Elizabeth moves in slow motion, shedding feathers as it goes to attack the shadows. I see black collecting in Annie's arms; the bolts of black lightning forming so slowly I can see every detail of them perfectly. Cap is racing to block the shadows from Ali, Nina about to dive in, horn first towards the plague.
Yet Mandy and I are strangely exempt from all of this. I reach up to my shoulder and pet my pokémon, if only to reassure myself that I'm not going completely crazy.
"Come on," I whisper to it. Mandy nips my ear in response. I don't even tell it off. I need to figure out what's going on with this strange girl.
Her laughter leads me towards her, even when she disappears through the door. I reach it and bite my lip as I touch the door handle. I know it's locked – I tried it myself when we got in the room!
Yet now it opens at the slightest touch.
The door creaks open almost as loudly as the front door to the house. The room inside is pitch black – but somehow, I'm able to see perfectly within. Little columns stand everywhere in the room, each holding some sort of gruesome trophy hidden behind a glass box. I see hands, feet and even the occasional face, all hidden behind glass and somehow still perfectly preserved.
They're all human.
And when they see me, they all move towards me.
I stop myself from screaming, but I don't know how. The hands thud against their glass boxes. So do the feet. The faces do nothing, instead just following me like eyeless masks.
I see the distant form of the girl some distance ahead, glowing like a beacon in all the darkness. I gulp and take a deep breath before I follow her.
I walk between all the body parts as I do. They keep following me. The faces turn to watch me walk past them, the hands and feet attacking their boxes with increasing ferocity as I race my way past.
I see mouths on red velvet cushions, hidden behind the glass boxes. They don't move on my approach, but they start to speak as I pass them.
"Savemesavemesaveme."
"Killmeplease. OhmakethepainstopIcan'ttakeitanymore."
"Ohgodohgodohgodnonononono!"
"She's here."
Quiet bursts into life throughout everything. The little girl is gone; her giggles removed from the world like they were never there in the first place.
The first sign I get that something is wrong is when Mandy starts growling.
I spin around and find the shadows of the room grouping together, forming one large object. It flickers and wavers, almost like it's composed of nothing but evil and smoke.
Finally, it takes a human shape.
A pair of blood red eyes snaps open.
"Welcome," the voice says. It washes over me like a shower of disgust, making me shudder and want to run. It seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once and leaves me feeling nothing but fear and despair.
I didn't even know I could feel so upset. I don't want to do anything more than lie down and give up. I'm so sad. It eats away at me, feelings of pain so great, feelings of losing people that I don't even know, yet it eats at me and gnaws against my soul and makes me want to do nothing more than give up and join them all.
"Yes~" the voice hums. "Lay down. Give in. It will all be over soon."
My eyelids are heavy. It would be so easy to give up, wouldn't it? I could use a sleep. I haven't managed to sleep since seeing the zombies. How long ago was that? It feels like months.
The world spins –
It shifts out of focus –
I see the shadow coming towards me –
My eyelids are so heavy –
Just… five minutes –
Screee!
I leap out of my skin and fall against the floor, even though I'm already lying on it. Mandy attacks my ear, screeching in it again and again until I can't really hear anything anymore, but I'm not tired and I can see the shadows moving towards me, one hand outstretched and hovering just above my head.
I'm trembling too much to say anything. Instead I scramble to my feet and run away from it until I reach the nearest wall and press up against it, panting for breath trying desperately to stop my heart keep thud, thud, thudding in my chest.
The shadows let their hand drop. All the while, the bright red eyes remain focused on me. It tilts what might be its head like a curious herdier and suddenly, a smile full of nothing but needles spreads across its face.
"Interesting," it says in a voice that makes me feel sick. "Come here child. Dying doesn't hurt, I promise."
I shake my head and back into the wall just a little bit more. "N-no," I stutter out. "I'm not going with you."
The smile grows larger than the shadows' face. "I used to be human once. This form is so much better. Killing becomes so much easier when you're a gengar."
I have no idea what one of those is, but I don't want to stay around long enough to find out. The shadows step closer towards me and Mandy seems to have had enough. It screeches louder than ever, leaps at the shadows and starts tearing strips of them away.
The smile turns into a frown almost instantly. "Bothersome pest," it says and smacks Mandy aside like it's nothing more than a tiny fly. Mandy shrieks and disappears somewhere into the shadows and no matter how much I scream out, it doesn't come back to find me.
"Don't worry," the shadows say. "I've had plenty of practice cutting little girls up. You won't even suffer for long." It stretches out a hand again. I see something start to form in them, almost like a knife. It glistens in light that doesn't exist and comes closer and closer and closer towards me.
I break into a run again. I knock over one of the podiums as I charge past it, sending the mouth inside into a frantic screaming fit of, "He'scominghe'scominghe'scoming!"
"Notagainnotagainnotagain!" another mouth screams.
"Killherkillherkillher!" another shouts.
I move past them and feel my heart pounding in my ears. I'm not going to let some weird creepy ghost thing kill me! I need to find a way out! The ghost-girls must have led me here for a reason! They can't be singing random stuff to me, only to let some weird thing called a gengar kill me!
I shriek as something crashes above me. Dust rains down all around me from the darkness above and I find that now I can't even see what's going on. All I can see are the glowing red of the thing's eyes and the glistening sharpness of the knife that it's going to kill me with.
This can't be happening. I have to be imagining this. I've passed out from fear because of the steelix and I'm going to wake up somewhere nice and warm, where Jerry and Ali aren't suspended in time and I don't have some creepy ghost-thing that claims to have been human trying to kill me and –
Freezing cold warps itself around my chest and stops me from moving. My feet leave the floor and I kick and struggle but there's nothing for me to press against and I can feel myself choking and I can't breathe because it's pressing against my chest and around my throat and there's no air getting in and something sharp presses against my neck and oh my god I don't want to die!
A flash of light stuns me and makes the shadows back away. I drop to the floor and manage to sob and gulp down air in the same moment. My eyes blur with tears as I look back up and see one of the creepy girls facing the shadow-demon, her hair billowing around her like lives snakes and the red eyes of the shadows actually looking somewhat scared which only makes me even more scared.
The shadows hiss and shift in the air. They move back from the girl, but they're stopped by another one behind it. I can't see her – she's blocked by the mess of the shadows – and then another appears next to her. There's a massive flash of light and suddenly the shadows are surrounded on all sides by little girls in white with blonde hair that whips behind all of them.
They look up at the monster and even though I can't see their faces, I get the feeling they're smiling. One by one they join hands and they start to skip around the thing, singing as they do so.
"Bleed it dry, destroy its brain – all your efforts are in vain. Victory will lie within your grasp – all it requires is you surrender your heart~"
There's a flash of white so bright that I have to close my eyes and put my arm over them. When it clears, I blink spots away and find myself still trapped in the darkness, except now there's no shadows and only one little girl stood there, still facing away from me.
"H-hello?" I say to her.
She keeps her gaze away from me. Even as she does so, on her own she sings the exact same thing again.
"Bleed it dry, destroy its brain – all your efforts are in vain. Victory will lie within your grasp – all it requires is you surrender your heart~"
She stops and there's a moment of silence. Abruptly she spins her head around completely and I scream because she has no face!
Her song echoes all around me, again and again and again and as the black creeps into my vision, I'm left with the sight of her faceless gaze burning into mine.
-O-O-O-
When I finally wake up, my brain feels like it's filled with wool. I'm sure I can hear something like my name being shouted, but it's just too hard to even begin concentrating on what's happening.
It feels like forever passes until I'm finally able to think again. I remember the creepy gengar, the room full of screaming body parts and the scary girl and the ever encroaching darkness that just kept coming and coming and –
Mandy!
I practically leap to my feet and begin the search for my pokémon, even with my eyes still half shut and my brain still not working properly.
I don't make it even a step before someone attacks me and picks me up and into the air. I scream and grab hold of whoever it is by the hair, still not entirely certain of what's going on but sure that I don't want to be picked up and strangled again.
Beneath me, all I can hear is, "She's awake! You're awake! Ow that's my hair! You're awake!"
Focus starts to bleed its way into my brain. "Jerry?" I ask, half certain that's who the voice belongs to.
I'm answered by a laugh and what I'm half-certain is a kiss on my cheek. Weird.
"Don't ever scare me like that again," Jerry warns me. I blink him into focus and see what I'm half-sure are old tear streaks down his face. Elizabeth nudges my head with all three beaks, squawking things I don't understand. Annie floats above us both, whilst Ali's smiling at me, Cap and Nina by her side and most importantly a struggling, squeaking Mandy in her arms.
"Mandy!" I practically throw myself out of my brother's grip and at my pokémon. Instead all I manage to do is over balance in my brother's arms and send us both crashing to the floor. Ali laughs a little and lets Mandy go and instantly I'm attacked by the little bundle of black feathers as I hug it to my face and promise to never, ever let any of my pokémon ever go again. I even let Kiki out of its ball and hug it too! The face it gives me shows that somehow my maractus knows what's been going on, even though it was locked away all the time and shouldn't.
Ali squats down beside me and holds my cheeks in her hands. She seems like she's inspecting me for damage I've probably missed or completely forgotten about. "What happened?" she asks. "We blinked and suddenly you'd vanished. Then we found you in this room with everyone else."
My surroundings swim into my vision instantly. I see the room in light now. Its old, empty and completely devoid of anything that happens to even looks slightly like body parts on a podium. Instead there's a few people, all piled up and dead.
I see that all of their throats have been sliced open. I swallow heavily, knowing that I could have been one of those people, were things a little different.
"I… I'm not sure," I say. It's true, because even though I experienced everything, I still have no real idea of what actually went on, save for a load of shadows and creepy things that were trying to kill me. "What…?" I say as I look at the bodies.
Jerry shrugs. "I'm guessing whatever was in here did that. I –"
A moan from underneath the bodies cuts him off. I leap away from them, clutching both my pokémon as I do so, whilst Ali looks like she's about to kick the pile with her pokémon acting as back up.
Jerry seems to spot something we don't. He rushes at the pile and starts pulling dead people off and dropping them to one side. Ali joins in quickly and I'm left completely clueless, sat a few paces away with their pokémon as they drag someone out of the pile and rush around as they press their spare clothes against his fountaining neck.
The man looks like he's barely even alive. His hair seems like it was originally kind of red, except now it's completely stained with blood. He's paler than I even thought possible and he's wearing a little badge that I recognise instantly as a Sinnoh gym leader's identification.
"I see you found Roark."
We all jump at Ryan's voice. She sweeps in through the doorway, drapion following behind her. Her bat is covered in goo and she looks like she's been fighting things the entire time I was trapped in the room with the horrible gengar.
"I gotta say Roark, you look like shit," she says, even as she shoves Jerry out of the way and takes over from him. "Now shut up, stop blubbering about how you've had your throat sliced and calm down. You've lost a lot of blood, you're lucky to be alive. Most importantly –"
She looks down at her hands, sees them covered in blood and freezes for a moment. It's almost like she's reliving something, but then she seems to snap back out of it and becomes focused again. "Most importantly, Roark, you're a gym leader. Which means that you have to be tough and you'll live through this. I bet my favourite vibrator on it."
She turns around and looks at Ali. "You. Go see if you can find someone else that's alive to help us out here. You," she says to Jerry, "see if anyone else is alive in this creepy mansion. The ghosts are all gone now, you shouldn't have any problems. You can help me out here," she says to me.
Jerry gives me a look that says he doesn't want to leave me alone. I shake my head at him and wordlessly let him know I'll be fine with my pokémon here. He nods and sets off a little reluctantly, sticking close to Ali as he does so.
Once we're alone, Ryan sighs, hair drooping in her face and offers me a small smile. "You did good kid," she says.
I look up at her, completely confused. She keeps her smile spread across her face, but its meaning is completely hidden in mystery.
"Not many people would be able to fight off a fully grown gengar like that. Especially not one so juiced up like it was." She looks away and focuses on nothing in particular. "Older, stronger people that you have fought against them and lost."
"Oh," I say, because really, what do I say to that? "It wasn't me," I admit. At her intrigued look, I just shrug and hold Jerry's old shirt against Roark's bleeding neck. "There was this girl in white. She appeared and held it off, then a few more did and then suddenly she was alone and the gengar thing was gone, but the girl was still there and she started singing a song and she had no face!"
I'm breathless by the time I finish and I'm not even certain why. Ryan's eyes go from incredibly wide to subdued as she bites on her bottom lip. Her face holds a mystery that I know I'm never even going to begin to be able to decipher.
"It said it used to be human," I tell her. Roark's silent, but he looks like he's not really listening. Or if he is, he isn't saying anything and Ryan seems to trust him, which means that I can too. "The gengar did. Is that true?"
Ryan shrugs. "Most of the time, pokémon ghosts are different ghosts. But…" She leans in close to me. "I want to know something. Can you keep what I'm going to tell you a secret?"
I nod quickly. Obviously if it's something weird and creepy, then I'm just going to have Kiki needle her in the face.
Ryan takes in a breath and moves back. "It wasn't a gengar – not a real one. There's something here that made the gastly act up like that. What you saw was originally a gengar, but it got warped."
I want to know more, but she goes silent on the subject. "How do you know so much about this?" I ask her.
She smiles at me again, though this time I see the sadness behind it. "There are a lot of things in this world that most people don't know about or see. Maybe you'll understand one day, but I really hope you never have to."
I don't know what to say to that. I realise that she's not going to say anything more about the subject, so I drop into silence, taking comfort in the fact that my pokémon are here with me. We remain like that for a little while until Ali and Jerry finally return with humans that are here to help us.
I grin at the sight of living, breathing, not trying to eat my face humans and decide that when Roark gets better and I've battled him, I'm never, ever coming back to Sinnoh again.
