When I woke up it was cold, dark, and damp.
It should have been the perfect environment for a creature like me. But instead it only fueled my misery.
I pulled myself up from the collapsed heap I had been lying in just enough to look around. I found myself in a large rectangular room with cobbled walls, all moist and overgrown with a thin and sickly layer of winter moss. I laid in a thin pool of water coating the muddy mess which was the floor. In spite of the wide space, there wasn't a single thing in the room but me.
I could see a door on the far wall from me. I didn't bother get up to check it. I knew it was sealed.
I knew where I was, and why I was here. And I probably should have had a blizzard of thoughts about it all. But I didn't.
The time for thinking was over. It was all over. This was the end.
I laid my head back in the mud and tried to fall unconscious again. I never could, but my head was at least blissfully empty for a time.
After a few minutes, or maybe a few hours, thoughts began to creep into my head again to pester me. Not any meaningful reflection, of course. Even if I was capable of that, it did me no good anymore.
No, what returned to me were fleeting memories. Quick images flashing through my head to haunt me. I guess they sensed that my emptiness was too peaceful.
I saw the kit's face, trembling in terror as tears leaked from her eyes and she cried out to be saved.
I saw Havoc's twisted glee as he dragged her towards the fireplace.
I saw Scratch's warped and monstrous face as he reduced the once-strong Beartic to tears.
I saw Silver, towering over me as she tried to snuff out my pitiful life.
But the memories weren't all this recent.
I saw my father staring out in cold disgust as I marched out to my death in the blizzard.
I saw my mother watching from a distance as the Swinub she told me to hunt bit into me instead, staining the snow red. She never would have helped me if I hadn't run back to her.
Funny that I would remember her disappointment more than the pain.
And what did I think of these memories? Nothing. They were an annoyance. Pointless.
I scrunched my eyes tighter and wished they'd go away, letting me lie uncomfortably in the mud.
After another indeterminate amount of time I finally pulled myself upright and leaned against the wall. The discomfort of lying in the mud and water had grown too irritating. What I wouldn't give to not be able to feel it...
I looked across the room again, wondering if maybe I should get to know my new life. I guess I didn't really need to right then. After all, I had... a few centuries, probably? I had no idea how long I would live for, but apparently it was really long.
A few centuries spent rotting here in the mud and the dark and the cold.
The world really kept one-upping itself with me, didn't it? How naive of me to have thought that just killing me would be the punchline. It had found an appropriate fate for someone like me. Someone who had been so brash as to beg for mercy again and again from the consequences of my own awful decisions.
Well, fate didn't need to worry any more. I had gotten the message. I was right where I belonged.
I scowled a bit, realizing what I was doing. I was thinking again. That was pointless now, and it was only going to make this harder.
I rose up into the air. Familiarizing myself with this drab new reality would be a good way to drive off any meaningful thought.
I couldn't imagine what the point of this room was, with its mud for a floor and lack of any furnishing. Maybe it had never had one...
Examining the door would be the obvious first step, but that could wait. Time didn't matter anymore, anyways. Instead I hovered along the wall, observing every inch of it in intricate detail.
I didn't know how buildings like this were made, but I could see the familiar pattern of stone bricks I had seen one or two places before in town. I guess that pattern made sturdy walls for some reason. Maybe sometime I could try and figure it out. I'd never really find the answer of course, but maybe it could distract me for a year or two...
The bricks here were far less flat and even than the ones I had seen in town though. They were only vaguely shaped into rectangles and jutted out randomly from the wall. How... interesting.
They were also all soaking wet, and I could see drops of water dripping from the tops of the walls in the edges of the room. That had to be from all the snow. Somehow it was getting through the ground and down here and all over the walls...
And that was probably why all the moss was growing here too. I think mother said it grew in wet places, once.
I took a closer look at some of the moss. It was a plant, I guess. Which was kind of weird. I wasn't used to plants growing in the tundra, yet this stuff used to grow in the back of our den. And it was growing down here, but I thought plants were supposed to need sunlight? Maybe I just hadn't been listening again...
It was a weird sort of dull green, as if it was afraid to show too much life or vibrancy here. It formed a thin layer on most of the wall, taking on the rough and random patterns of the stone. There were only a few patches here and there where it had decided not to grow.
I frowned again. No no no, I was taking this all in too quickly. It had barely been a few minutes. I would need to keep distracted for a very long time.
Maybe I could count the bricks later. And then the little individual heads of moss after that. Or maybe I could try to figure out why the moss wasn't growing in some places. That might take me a while.
Sighing, I continued along the wall to the door. I knew it was sealed, but just to occupy myself for a few precious moments I gave it a pull. It budged a tiny bit and then held fast. It was locked. No surprise there.
More out of curiosity than any belief that I should escape, I pulled back and forth on it a few more times. I could feel a weight behind it. They had definitely blocked it from the other side too. It was almost generous to assume I might make it past the lock.
It did make a bit of a banging noise as I jammed it back and forth though. Maybe I could make a song out of that eventually, or something...
As I scanned along the wall after the door, I noticed something new. A series of small holes throughout it. They were far too small for me to fit through, though some smaller Pokémon probably could squeeze through them. They peeked through the spaces between bricks in various spots and seemed to be dug out intentionally. Some were at ground level, while others were randomly in the middle of the wall.
Had some ferals been tunneling through here? Maybe they'd tunnel back in sometime, and I could entertain myself trying to tame them.
I shook my head. No, that was an awful idea. I'd just make them more messed up than when they were an animal.
Finishing my circuit, I collapsed back down against the wall where I started and squished uncomfortably into the mud.
Mud castles... That was another one for the to-do list.
Well, my mission had been accomplished. I had driven the annoying thoughts from my head. I closed my eyes. Maybe I could fall asleep again. Or at least just enjoy emptiness.
I don't know if I fell asleep or not. All I know is that eventually my eyes were open again and staring into the void around me.
I felt pain in my heart again as the memories of everything I'd been through started to creep back into my mind.
Well, the bricks weren't going to start counting themselves I guess...
For several minutes I made my way around the room again, diligently counting the bricks in the wall. Thankfully I kept messing up and having to restart, making the process especially lengthy.
It was when I was near the back wall that I heard a rustling near the door. I spun my head just in time to see movement by one of the little holes in the wall, as it seemed like a portion of the darkness itself was sucked into the hole.
I paused a moment, more surprised than terrified. At this point what was the worst that could happen to me?
I debated briefly whether I wanted to surrender my current count of the bricks to investigate but then I realized I had already lost it in my head. So I wandered over to the hole and peered through. There was a glimpse of another room behind it with a stairwell up, but no sign of whatever mysterious thing I had seen.
I felt a twang of disappointment. I had let myself have some tiny hope that something interesting would happen...
Well, I could finish counting the bricks later. Now I had to keep an eye on these holes to see if anything like that happened again.
I sat collapsed by the far wall and drew patterns in the mud as I watched the holes vigilantly for a time.
Eventually my watch paid off, as I saw a dark shape beginning to push itself through the hole. I quickly pulled myself upright from the mud, strangely eager for something to happen.
A gray... lump of sort pushed itself through one of the holes in the middle of the wall and fell down in the mud. A few of those ghastly blue wisps I had seen Scratch create during our haunting appeared hovering around it, casting an eerie light throughout the dingy cellar room.
Oh. They were going to try and scare me. Of course. Just leaving me alone would never be enough for them.
They wouldn't be happy with the results though. Because I wasn't scared. How was I supposed to be scared when things literally couldn't get worse?
The gray lump began inching closer, ominous flames in tow. Its shape began shifting as a second smaller lump lifted itself up above the large one. I could make out a face. Was that... Seam?
No... It looked vaguely like her, but it was misshapen and the face seemed to be fake. I recognized it now. The gray lump was a doll resembling Seam. Definitely one of her creations. She must be controlling it somehow.
It continued to move towards me at a crawl. I could see dark tendrils reaching out beneath the cloth and dragging it forward. Its glowing wisps flying forward to dance around me. As it grew closer I could make out a second face carved into the lump which formed its torso. It began to emit a deep and gargled laugh as it approached.
She must be inside it. That was the trick. I didn't know how she fit within it, or how she had squeezed through that tiny hole though. Or how she was making her voice sound like that.
I had to give her credit though, the monstrosity was particularly horrifying. If I had anything left to fear for I would have been terrified.
As the little demon crept right in front of me the flames suddenly vanished and it spoke to me in a deep and warped voice.
"Gotta say, you're not nearly as fun to mess with as I expected," it said nonchalantly. The creature had dropped its game and relaxed a bit, the doll around it going limp. It wasn't Seam, but whatever it was, it hid inside a doll of likeness.
For a moment I nearly broke down and started talking with them out of sheer boredom. But something in my gut reminded me how well my previous experiences with the ghosts had gone. So instead I dropped to the ground and tried to look away.
"Go away." I muttered.
"Well that's just rude," it replied with a hint of amusement. "And you never came to introduce yourself, either!"
Ah, yes. This must be the oh-so-dreaded Faceless. Glad I spent two weeks cowering behind the monsters upstairs in fear of the monster downstairs. That had worked out well.
"Well, I'm Faceless," he uttered his own name with a strange sort of growl, "And this is my cellar that you're in."
"I'm Aurora. And I live here now, I guess." I grumbled back, making no effort to hide my irritation. What was the worst he could do? Kill me?
"Yeah... that's the damned problem," I heard him mutter beneath his breath. "About that. Heard what you did to Havoc. Damned shame, really. He was one of the few bearable bastards up there," he said with the same obnoxious amusement in his voice. He was clearly having fun annoying me.
Bearable? Nothing Havoc had ever said or done was bearable.
"He was a monster." I replied shortly. I kept my gaze away from him, swirling patterns in the mud with my hands. Hopefully he'd get bored soon and leave.
But to my surprise he started laughing, an ugly gargling sort of laugh. The vibration caused the head of his doll to fall backwards behind him. "Yeah! He sure was. And he owned it too, which was the nice part." I saw him shifting inside the doll to fix its head.
"Being proud that he was a monster just makes him a bigger monster," I retorted. Why was I arguing with him? I had nothing to gain... But for some reason his defense of Havoc made me... angry.
"Maybe. But come on, you're telling me you made it a week with Scratch before you wanted to rip his whiny, hypocritical tongue out?" he asked like it wasn't at all crazy.
"Scratch? He was the least of my problems..."
Faceless scoffed, drawing a scowl so wide the flaps in his fabric facade mimicked it. "Are you for real? He's the worst. They're all assholes for sure, but at least most of them have the decency not to make constant public announcements of their virtue."
He began screeching out an awful impression of Scratch. "Oooh guys, remember not to go TOO FAR! Now that I've reminded you I'm a nice guy, excuse me while I go scare children."
I couldn't tell if he was tickled with amusement at his own mockery, or genuinely angry. The doll only revealed his most extreme facial expressions, and his garbled voice was difficult to read.
"Like seriously though, that never got infuriating?" he asked. "Cause last I hung out with him it was constant."
"I... I didn't really notice it," I admitted. I guess it was kind of hypocritical, but I never really knew what his line of "too far" was. Clearly Havoc threatening to kill a child wasn't too far, so it was probably pretty far out there...
Faceless snorted. "I heard you were naive, but that's just pitiful."
Why was I engaging with him? I should just be ignoring him... But his presence was bringing all of my pent up frustration out. Arguing with him did nothing, but I couldn't convince my resentment of that...
"Why are you acting like you're not a... an 'asshole'? You came down here to try and scare me. You're no different than any of them." I glared at him. "Why does it matter if Scratch is a hypocrite? You're one too."
To my surprise though, he just started laughing again, quickly sending his "head" backwards once more. "Oh, no, I'm not sayin' I'm better than him. I'm absolutely an asshole. Complete garbage," he grinned widely through the cloth. "But at least I'll have the decency to tell you that outright. No pretenses here."
His jubilation settled, and he sounded more serious as he continued. "Gotta say though, you're a lot less pitiful than I expected. I heard you were avoiding me this whole time and I figured you'd be melting on the floor when I came to spook ya."
"What do I have to be afraid of, at this point..." I mumbled.
I finally stopped to take a good look at him. He really wasn't what I had expected. Sure, he was creepy of course. I couldn't really make out his form, but I had seen the many dark tendrils leaking out from beneath the cloth. And the doll itself was unsettling with its mis-sized button eyes and sewn-on mouth, not to mention the weird second face on the stomach that his real eyes peered through. But all of the ghosts had been creepy like this.
"You're... not what I expected," I muttered out loud without meaning to.
"What, were you expecting someone handsome?"
"No... " I started hesitantly, still not really sure why I was telling him this. "The other ghosts treated you like such a taboo. But I guess I just don't understand why. You don't seem any different than them. I thought you'd be like... an unspeakable horror or something."
"Oh you poor naive child," he snickered. "What do they have to fear from horrors? They are the things that go bump in the night. No, what they're really afraid of is coming to terms with that fact."
"I... don't understand."
"Like I said before, I have no pretenses of virtue. But as you so astutely noticed, I am no different than them. They realize that, and they hate it. Because if I'm a monster, and they're doing the exact same things as me, then..." his face curled up in a twisted smile again. "Well that would make all of them monsters too.
"How can Scratch pretend he didn't cross some imaginary line if I'm haunting just like him and it's so obvious I'm in the wrong? And stars forbid I call out Silver's pathetic rationalizations, or Sen's constant stream of complaints. Well then I'm committing the real crime: tearing our so-called 'family' apart by not validating their shit night after night.
"The real reason they hate me is because they know they're just like me. Yet they still put up such a pitiful display of trying to pretend they're just misunderstood. It would be funny if only it wasn't so grating." he concluded. He no longer sounded at all amused, genuine anger seeping through.
His theory did make a bit of sense. If Faceless had been the first ghost I had met, I would have known he was trouble right away. He was so outwardly condescending. But thinking back on it all of the other ghosts were the same. Candel made me feel stupid every time I talked to him, and Havoc would happily play games on me no matter how much they hurt me. It was all the same, just wrapped up in a few kind moments and a claim of friendship.
Still, this was useless to me.
"Well, I guess I know that now. But the realization is a bit too late..."
"Yep. Really, it should have been obvious if they pulled the same shit on you they tried to pull on me. One sec."
Without hesitating or explaining he scampered quickly to the other side of the room and squeezed his entire doll through one of the holes, leaving me alone again.
Man was I stupid for avoiding him all this time. He was a jerk, but at least he might have been a warning sign about the rest of them.
Before I could think it through too much, he popped through the wall again and crawled over to me. But this time he was hiding inside of a new doll, a sort of chubby Haunter. I couldn't tell which of the brothers it was supposed to be.
"Before ya ask, yes, I do have dolls for all of them," he explained as if the question was obvious. "Ya see, my kind are super sensitive to light. And pretty damned ugly, too. We usually gotta hide under stuff to minimize the exposure.
"So when I first came here and learned that Seam could make little costumes like this I was super excited, right? It's a damned laugh now, but I always wanted a Pikachu costume," he made his garbled chuckle again. "Can you imagine me trying to haunt someone, all dressed up as a friendly little mouse? I almost want to try it for kicks.
"But anyways, no matter how many damned times I asked her Seam kept making me costumes of all the other ghosts here. It started with her, then it was Havoc, then Sen... And every damned time I'd just ask her to make me a Pikachu!
"But the dumbass didn't really give a damn what I wanted. She just wanted me to play stand-in for everyone at her stupid tea parties. Well, she heard the phrase 'stupid tea party' one time and that was that. Not like it was too much of a loss anyways. She was annoying and she was clearly never gonna make me the damned costume anyways.
"But you should have heard Scratch's whining. Somehow I was the bad guy for not wanting to be her toy after she ignored me for the fifth time. 'Just play nice with her. We don't need the fighting here' he'd say. Cause I was supposed to just put up with her shit so I didn't make anyone upset. Never mind if I was pissed.
"Pretty quickly I realized the rest weren't any better. Sen wouldn't shut the bloody hell up about every little mistake I made, Candel's ego wouldn't fit in his stupid little dome. Didn't talk to Silver much, but she was definitely garbage too.
"Difference between me and you is that I took these obvious warning signs and figured it out before it bit me in the ass. Which is why I live here, and you're a prisoner." he finished with an eerie cheer.
Well, he was right about that part. He "escaped" and I didn't because he was smarter than me. That much was clear. I should have seen the signs.
At the end of the day even if he was a monster, he was a monster that made smarter choices.
I glanced down at myself. I would be a monster eventually too, anyways. I was still disgusted by what the other ghosts had done, but I was already just like them physically. A creature that loved everything everyone else hated. I thrived in the freezing cold and the dark of night. I had already begun to enjoy chaos and fear.
That last part was what had always scared me the most. I had no promise that in a few years I still would be disgusted by the other ghosts. Maybe I would be in here lamenting that I hadn't joined them sooner. Maybe eventually they'd let me out, but only because I'd become as depraved as all of them.
Wouldn't it be better to just die...
Something gnawed at me about that though. Faceless accusing the other ghosts of justifying themselves... It made me doubt what had I'd been told.
"Why do you... do this stuff? Why do you haunt people?" I asked him with sudden conviction.
This seemed to catch him off guard. "Err? Cause it's fun?" he asked with evident confusion.
"Yes, but... you don't care that you're hurting people, right? Why not?"
"That's a weird question," he sounded perturbed. "Guess I've been around here long enough I forgot that isn't normal with most Pokes." He paused pensively. "But if ya want a real answer: I've taken a lot of shit in my life. Turns out it's hard to be the good guy when you're a hideous monster that hides from the light. Long time ago I tried being 'in the right' for a while and learned pretty quick that it's a lot of trouble and doesn't really change much. If it's all gonna end the same for me, I may as well enjoy the ride and not worry so much."
"But it has nothing to do with 'ghost instincts'?" I asked eagerly. I was too overtaken with excitement to pay any mind to his sudden introspection.
"Oh stars above, is Scratch still on that shit?" he groaned. "Yeah, sure, it makes me excited to see people getting scared. But I also get an adrenaline kick from fighting. Not like I go around attacking everyone I meet and blaming it on my 'Pokémon instincts'."
"So you're saying the ghost instincts aren't real? I'm not going insane?" I felt a strange sense of relief wash over me. It didn't really matter anymore, but it was nice to think I'd at least keep my mind.
My excitement seemed to confuse him for a moment, but it quickly vanished.
"Oh it's real. I mean I wouldn't call it 'insane' but you're definitely going to end up acting just like me," he said cheerfully.
I groaned as my heart sank. Well, that was that. I could say goodbye to my sanity.
Faceless started laughing however. "Arceus above, you are gullible. Yes, ghosts feel a compulsion for surprise and fear, but it's just like being hungry. You ever start tryin' to eat someone just because you're hungry?"
"So I won't lose my mind?" I asked hesitantly.
"No, that's just some more shit Scratch uses to justify why he's a decent guy who just happens to terrorize people on the side."
I was almost hesitant to feel relief just in case he was lying again. But after a few moments the "gotcha" never came and I began to think he was telling the truth.
We sat in silence for a bit as I reveled in that small victory.
But as that new joy faded I considered the oddity of the situation, and had another question.
"Faceless, why are you here?" I asked cautiously.
"Because I live here," he grumbled. "Are you forgetting you're in my home already?"
"Yes, but... There's clearly other parts to the cellar. Why are you telling me all of this? You've made it clear that you're, uhm, selfish. So what do you want from me?"
"Well first of all, even if you're a bit less timid than I had expected, you're still quite fun to tease," he laughed his hideous laugh. "But more importantly, it's because I want you to leave", he said sternly.
"Uhm... I'm kind of stuck here. I don't think I'm leaving like... ever," I explained, confused. Surely he understood what was going on here? Unless... did he intend to let me out?
"Right. About that... You know you can move through walls, right?" he pressed, glaring at me with a look of distaste mirrored on his cloth exterior.
"No, I can't. I never learned. And I probably never will."
"That's a load of garbage. There's been a lot of dumbass ghosts out there before that all learned how to phase. Trust me, you might be up there, but you're not the biggest moron I've met," he snickered.
"Yeah... well you haven't know me for very long," I sighed.
"I'm serious," he snarled, lurching forward. "You'll figure it out. So you'd better try."
"If you want me gone so much, why wouldn't you just let me out?"
He relaxed and gave another big smile, though this one was less... insidious. "Finally, a good question. I want you out of my cellar. If I let you go, Silver will have my head. If I kill you, Scratch would. But if you escape all on your own...", he began to drag himself through the mud, back to the holes in the wall. "Well, no one could blame me for that!" he said cheerfully.
"So just remember: you can leave any time. Your prison is purely mental." His tendrils leaked out and began to drag him up into one of his holes. His voice grew stern as he added, "I expect you gone soon."
And then he popped right through the wall and was gone.
Was... all of this just a ploy to get me to leave? I really had no idea what parts of that conversation were genuine or not. He seemed to be enjoying our talk, but he definitely didn't hesitate to leave all of a sudden.
It was impossible to really understand the strange little demon. He wasn't the literal monster I had imagined him as, but he certainly wasn't a good guy. Still... I got the impression that he had enjoyed venting his frustrations to me. In spite of his posturing, he clearly wasn't alright.
And strange enough, our conversation had left me feeling somewhat good as well. Maybe good wasn't the right word... I felt validated. I had spent so long with everyone making me think the stuff I felt was just crazy. Having someone agree with me, even a little monster like him, made me feel better about it. They were in the wrong, and someone else knew it.
And of course, there was the bit about me not going insane after all. Sure I might like seeing people get startled or whatever, but it wouldn't consume me!
I paused a moment as my mood dampened. Was I sure I wanted to take his word on that? After all, he seemed totally nuts and he was reveling in it. But he didn't seem to mind admitting that. In fact, he would have loved to see me squirm, right? So if it was going to drive me crazy, he would have told me the truth...
Well, either way, it was uncertain now. Which was better than the certain doom I had felt about it an hour ago.
There was one other thing though... Perhaps my weirdest feeling of all. He said I'd figure out how to phase. He seemed certain of it.
I... I couldn't remember a time anyone had felt confident in me being able to do anything. Even Candel's lessons were cloaked in an understanding that anything I accomplished was only because of his wisdom. But Faceless didn't take any responsibility for this... he was just sure I would learn.
He had insulted me in the process, and his motives for believing in me were purely selfish, but... he did believe in me. And that was probably stupid of him, but it felt good anyways. Which was weird and stupid of me, for caring what a delusional nutcase thought.
I suppose it wasn't exactly confidence in myself, but I began to wonder if maybe I wasn't overestimating how hard it could be. Like he said, I was stupid, but maybe even stupid ghosts could learn it.
Before I knew it I had let that naive hope take ahold of me and I was pushing my hand against the cold, mossy stone as hard as I could. Unsurprisingly it went nowhere, and harsh reality quickly took hold of me again.
I took my hand off the wall and rested against it. I needed to just think... the torrent of thoughts I had been suppressing all this time was finally rushing up to me. And I decided I wouldn't run from it again.
So where did I begin? It was like every memory in the last two weeks was pushing against my mind all at once.
No, longer than that. My whole life.
Well... I guess I should start with "why am I here"? Not like, literally, I mean... That was obvious. But like... where did I go wrong.
Besides like, everywhere... And why did it matter anymore anyways? What difference did it make if I learned anything from this? I was never going to get another chance.
But even as I thought that, I felt a tiny glimmer of doubt in my heart. Some part of me wasn't convinced that was true. I guess that stupid little doll had gotten into my head after all.
It was obvious where I went wrong anyways. When I stopped Scratch because I was too dumb to just stay out of it. Or maybe it was before that, when I yelled at Havoc and we got split up in the panic.
Or maybe it was before that even, when I didn't just pretend I was having fun. After all, we wouldn't have been all the way out on the edge of town alone if I had just smiled and faked it.
Or maybe I should have just said no, I wouldn't come at all. I could have told them I didn't want to scare anyone. Of course, they wouldn't have liked that... They said they were doing it for me but... that was a lie, wasn't it?
Maybe I should have listened to my gut these past two weeks and realized they weren't my friends. I could have left at any time. But instead I let them convince me it was all just in my head, and that they were the ones I should listen to.
Or maybe I should have just never come here in the first place. I never would have had to meet any of them. I could have gone south, or maybe I even could have tried to convince the villagers to tolerate me... I had never even tried, did I? Thirteen years I daydreamed about living with them, and I gave up in just a single try...
Heck, if I wanted to go back this far, maybe I'd been messing up my whole life. After all, thirteen years was a long time to have absorbed nothing I was taught. I didn't even have to listen to their whole "live out in the tundra" nonsense! I literally just needed to learn enough to make it to town! Maybe everything that had happened to me was just the culmination of all of my life's mistakes.
I sunk even lower, closing my tearful eyes. Well, this didn't make me feel any better. Not that I really expected it to...
But looking back over it all, I did see my mistake. The one common factor in all of my stupid decisions that landed me here.
I kept trusting others instead of taking any initiative for myself. I just kept following the monsters around me, expecting there to be something hidden underneath their surface cruelty. The ghosts were jerks to me from the start, but I just kept assuming that they were really looking out for me. That if I had just listened to everything they told me to do we'd be good friends.
Even before them, my parents spent my whole childhood treating me like a burden, and I still thought for some reason that they'd care too much to let me die.
All of this had happened because I had imagined some shred of decency in other Pokémon.
And in that moment of epiphany, I nearly lost all hope. For a moment I understood some dark truth, that everyone was a monster. The only way to live was to live alone, trusting no one. My father's grim philosophy finally made sense. Trust no one. Live alone. Then no one can betray you. No one can hurt you.
But as if in protest, a few small memories from my childhood visits to the village pushed through to the surface. Beartic giving me treats with a warm smile. The Ninetales letting me cuddle up to its fluffy tails, even though I wasn't its kit. The way I had seen the Eevee kit before, snuggling close to its mother. Her mother looked back lovingly, without a hint of disappointment.
And with these memories, I felt that doubt again. Maybe I just didn't want to believe my father's philosophy, but... those Pokémon didn't seem cruel. Maybe they were all just faking it, hiding away their evils beneath smiles and kindness. But I couldn't help wondering: was it possible that everyone I had known had all been the wrong ones?
What was it that Faceless had said? He forgot it wasn't normal for Pokémon to be okay with hurting each other. Had I ever really known it wasn't normal in the first place? Had I been the victim all along?
With that one thought, the doubt... no, the hope, I was feeling began to bloom. Maybe I had been wrong from the start. Maybe I didn't deserve this. Maybe I wasn't the one who had failed here.
I found myself rising with excitement. Okay, maybe it didn't do much good to be in-the-right after the fact. Everything had still happened, and I was still locked in a cellar. And if anything, realizing that maybe I didn't deserve it made that fate even crueler.
And at the end of the day, right or wrong my actions had led me here. Even if I wasn't in the wrong, that didn't change that I had still landed myself in a prison.
But even though I was still trapped in these four walls, I felt... freed.
What was it Faceless had called it? A "mental prison"? Yeah, that I suppose.
And for the first time it dawned on me what Faceless was actually implying.
Candel had said that phasing was about your ability to believe you wouldn't be stopped by a solid object. So in a literal sense, the walls keeping me trapped were mental.
Well, if I was free of that "mental prison" then maybe...
I pushed my hand against hard, cold, mossy stone again. The wall was as solid as ever.
But I wasn't feeling defeated yet. In spite of my total failure, I felt... inspired. Ready to try again.
I pushed the wall again. The same result.
And again, and again. For hours. But my hope never wavered. After all, I had a few centuries, right? Faceless didn't seem to think it was impossible at least.
I'd figure it out eventually. And after all, it beat counting the bricks.
It's not easy to convince yourself whole-heartedly that you can do something when you keep failing at it over and over. To keep telling yourself "this is the one, this is the time I do it" when it's never actually the one.
It was impossible to tell time down here. I have no idea how many times I'd taken a deep breath and pushed my hand against the cold stone. The moss had already begun to wear away on the spot where I kept trying.
The eternity that had been my curse before was starting to feel like a blessing now. It was freeing to know how little it mattered if I succeed on my next attempt, or three years from now.
I think that was the only thing that kept me believing. The knowledge that I had as long as it took to get this right.
Well, that and one other thing... as much as I hated to admit it, Faceless's vouch of confidence was reassuring to me. If only because it contradicted Candel's haughty opinion. Candel always made everything sound impossible... but I had learned to cloak, hadn't I? And in spite of what he said, it seemed to me like I did it just fine...
I guess it was hypocritical of me to care about Faceless's opinion right after realizing that I kept trusting the wrong people. But whether it should or not, Faceless's confidence was helping me right now. And maybe sometimes it wouldn't hurt to listen to the "wrong people" if it helped me get by. After all, my parents were both monsters and I still wished I'd listened to their lessons.
So I spent a few days practicing like this. For a few hours at a time I'd push my hand over and over against the walls. There was always some twist, like I'd try getting really angry or imagining the taste of my favorite berries before I'd push the wall. But happy, sad, or anywhere in between I was met with the same result.
In between my practice sessions I'd draw in the mud. I started pulling some of it up to paint on the walls. My once-pristine white fur was already stained a hideous brown by sleeping in it, so what was a bit more on my hands?
I'd never done anything quite like this before since my parents would have chastised me for it. So I had a fair bit of fun tracing elaborate swirls and shapes all across the wall. I liked those because it was impossible to mess them up. I wasn't comfortable trying to draw any Pokémon or landscapes or anything but... I couldn't draw a pattern wrong. Within a day or two the whole cellar wall was coated in an elaborate mud design.
But whenever it came time for me to lie down to rest, I had another important task to attend to. I messed up the day I was sent out alone into the tundra. It may have been cruel, but I knew it was coming. And in spite of that, I just hid away from the problem and never came up with a plan.
One day I'd walk right through these walls and be free. And I needed a plan this time.
The easy answer was that I could just fly off into the tundra and never look back. If I could survive locked in a cellar, I could easily survive out alone in the woods. But I didn't want to do that. Living alone in the tundra... that was what I had been trying to avoid from the start.
Maybe I was just growing too confident but... I couldn't imagine going through all of this for no reason at all. Refusing to accept that fate had gotten me into this whole mess in the first place, but... I could do it better this time, right? That was why I was making a plan after all.
Perhaps this was just the next stop on my tragic trail, refusing to accept the easy escape and maybe dying for it. But honestly, I wasn't sure being forced to live alone for centuries would be any less tragic... So maybe it was better to try?
If I wasn't going to just flee to the tundra, that only left one option: Everrime Town. It was the only civilization I knew of. Maybe I could just travel south until I hit a town by dumb luck, but... I had no idea how long that would take. I could get lost for years. Not to mention, for all I knew the towns down south could hate ghosts even more. At least I knew the villagers of Everrime weren't bad people...
Finding a way to apologize was going to be a challenge though... Especially with the fiasco the other night. So many people, so filled with fear... We had turned the whole town upside down.
Maybe I didn't have to win them all over at once though. It was easy enough for me to hide, after all. Maybe all I needed was one friend, and I could work from there...
The baker was my first thought, of course. But I wasn't sure that was a good idea. I saw his vitriol for ghosts twice over. And if things went wrong, he'd be the first one to have Probo run me out of town. If he didn't just tear me up himself.
On its own, my mind flitted to the Eevee kit. I did empathize with her a lot. Was it possible she could feel the same way? Especially after what I had done to her?
As I thought about it, an awful, terrible idea began to form. Like the sort of idea that definitely gets you killed. Every logical part of me screamed to ignore it. But... my heart told me I had to. It told me it was the only right thing to do.
I sighed. Well, I guess I'd at least die free.
I formed a bit of the mud into a mound beneath my head and laid down on it.
I'd get the phasing tomorrow, for sure.
I did not get the phasing tomorrow.
Judging just by how many times I slept, it took me over a week...
But you know what? I think I enjoyed this week more than the week before. I was a prisoner in a nasty, dank room. But at least I wasn't spending every moment doubting myself.
I mean, in a literal sense I guess I must have... cause if I wasn't I'd be able to phase, right? But like, I wasn't worried about it. I'd have to get it eventually, right?
And I think that was what carried me for the week. For the first time in a long time, I actually felt hopeful for the future. And not like in the way where I was just telling myself I was hopeful. I really felt it.
I was even able to ignore the fact that Faceless was constantly watching me from his little tunnels. It took me a bit to realize I wasn't just going a bit nuts down here. I kept seeing the flicker of movement in that part of the room, but he'd never show himself to me. Little creep.
It was impossible to guess what was running through his head. Was he actually invested in my escape? Or did he just want me gone? It didn't really matter. I wasn't going to worry about what any of the ghosts thought any more.
And funny enough, for all the tricks I had tried to get phasing to work, there really was no trick. I had just gotten tired near the end of a "practice session", and wasn't really paying attention, and before I knew it my hand was in the wall. I didn't even notice at first, until I pulled it out and it clicked in my head.
I pushed the wall again and was met with solid stone, making me wonder if I'd just imagined it. I closed my eyes and tried to recreate the way I'd felt just a second ago. I zoned out and tried to completely stop caring if I succeeded or not.
After a few failed attempts like this, my hand again slid gently through the wall.
My eyes lit up. I did it! And in only a week too! I had half expected this to take me a century...
It was such a strange feeling, too... Like my hand was submerged in a cool, thick liquid. It was oddly pleasant.
I had half a mind to throw myself through the wall right then and there and be free.
But one thing was still keeping me chained. I still had my plan to see through. And I needed to be sure I could phase well before I gave that a go.
So instead of reveling in my small victory, I kept practicing. Soon every fourth pass at the wall my hand would phase through it. Then every third. By the time I fell down to rest again I could shove my hand through the wall at will.
I was no longer a prisoner. I'd be here a bit longer still, but now I was making my own choice.
When I woke up I was pleased to find that phasing the rest of my body wasn't much harder. Plunging my face through a wall for the first time was a bit scary though. It was all just... blackness. No light, no sound. Nothing.
Of course, that wasn't much different than just wandering the tundra. Black instead of white, and no howling of the wind, but otherwise about the same...
"Have you lost your damned mind already, or are you going to leave yet?" I heard an agitated voice behind me as I emerged from the wall I was practicing on.
I turned to find Faceless, this time donning a patchwork copy of Sen.
"Sorry, I'm practicing before I go. Don't want to mess it up and for them to catch me again..."
I briefly considered telling Faceless my plan. After all, he didn't seem to give a damn about the other ghosts anyways. But he definitely couldn't be trusted. If he really just wanted me gone he might just tell Silver my plan, and she'd come down and kill me herself.
"Oh for the stars above just go out the back. They're not going to find you," he grumbled.
"I promise I'll leave soon," I assured him as I turned back to my practice wall.
"Yeah, you'd better. Or I'll tell them you can phase, so they chase you out of my damned cellar..."
I could sense the disingenuousness in his threat. Like his heart wasn't in it.
The little creep really was rooting for me, wasn't he? I wondered why. I nearly asked, but I figured I probably wasn't getting anything out of him other than him wanting me out of his cellar.
Even so, I shouldn't push my luck. I'd practice as much as I could tonight, and then leave when I woke up. I just hoped I could keep doing this when I was afraid. Because there was a good chance that things went wrong.
"Tomorrow." I promised him, hoping that would suffice.
I could see him fidget a bit beneath the costume. "Good. And a word of advice: I'd get far away. Find somewhere quiet, somewhere alone where there are no other Pokémon. Cause trust me kid, I'm not the worst one out there."
This last ominous statement had none of his usual smug amusement, but instead a hint of regret. And just like last time I'd spoken to him, as soon as he was done he scurried back to his holes.
I called out for him to stop, finally succumbing to my curiosity, but he ignored me and crawled out of sight.
I sighed, trying to stop myself from worrying too much about him. Even if he did have some sympathy for me, so had Scratch. Faceless himself admitted he was a monster, and I couldn't keep letting myself get lost trying to dig up the good in people.
He'd helped me out, and I'd just have to take that gratefully and go.
The remainder of my time in the cellar was spent going in and out of the wall, until it became second nature. I didn't have to do any mental tricks anymore, and I never failed it. In just a week I'd accomplished what I had told myself I never could.
I woke up again well rested and ready. I called for Faceless, but he refused to show himself. I knew he was watching though.
"Goodbye, Faceless." I called out to the open room. "And good luck," I added as an afterthought.
With that I walked straight into the wall in front of me. It was time to set things right. Or die trying...