Sorry for the wait! Had a lot of fun writing this chapter though! Thank you so very much for the lovely reviews, and enjoy!
CHAPTER SEVEN
Isabel was in a living room, and though she wore the white cotton nightgown she fell asleep in, she wasn't in Outpost 3. She knew this place. It was her house back in Los Angeles; the Murder House. But it was empty. There was no furniture. A fire crackled in the fireplace, but the couch and the chairs were nowhere in sight.
She wandered into the study. Bookshelves still lined the walls, but there wasn't a single book. Isabel's footsteps echoed throughout the bare rooms as she explored each one, looking for something, though she didn't know what. She found nothing.
The Murder House was completely empty. Not even ghosts.
Despite this, Isabel looked for them anyway. "Moira?" she called out. There was something wrong with her voice. Though the house was empty, and her footsteps resonated, her voice stopped short, never going beyond a foot in front of her as if there was an insulated dome over her head that absorbed sound before it got too far.
A sharp cry came from one of the bedrooms upstairs. Isabel looked up to the ceiling. It sounded like a baby crying for its mother; it sounded in pain. Something told Isabel not to investigate; that she wouldn't want to know what was up there. But her curiosity got the best of her.
Isabel walked upstairs, the usually creaky steps not making a sound. The silence made the cries all the more piercing and unbearable. As Isabel drew nearer, the cries became clearer. It no longer sounded like just a baby. There was something else… something more sinister.
The crying was coming from behind the door that led to her bedroom. Isabel hesitated. It didn't feel like her room. It felt like her brother's. It was Tate's before she and her father moved in, and in this moment it was his again.
A hush fell over the house when she turned the handle. The crying ceased. She pushed open the door to reveal a bedroom as empty as the rest of the house, the walls a discouraging shade of gray-green that Tate had chosen when he had been alive.
Isabel walked over to the window. The curtains were drawn, but sunlight peeked through. She threw open the curtains, desperate for actual sun. The sunlight disappeared; there was nothing but a brick wall on the other side of the pane.
Another piercing wail.
Isabel whirled around to see that there was now a crib in the center of the room. She could see a vague shape wiggling around in the crib; the source of the crying.
Her skin prickled. She didn't want to look, but knew that she needed to. It was important for her to see.
She stepped up to the crib. A baby's face was red as it continued to scream, its little hands balled into fists. Isabel lost interest in the face when she saw the kicking legs: thick, hairy things with hooves instead of feet.
Her brow furrowed. Was she supposed to be horrified? She was shocked, but the fear wasn't there.
Isabel reached down and picked up the baby. It immediately calmed down. The face relaxed; the hooves stopped kicking. The baby (a boy, it was a boy) had the most beautiful eyes Isabel had ever seen. There was something hypnotizing about them. Isabel smiled softly, partially in amusement as this was so absurd, and partially in satisfaction. Whoever this baby was, she was meant to be with him.
She brought him over to the window, which transformed into a bookshelf mounted on the wall when her back had been turned. Isabel didn't question it; dreams were odd like that.
"What shall we read?" Isabel whispered to the babe. She looked down though, it was gone. Her arms were empty, and they fell back to her side as she turned around once again to face the crib. That had vanished as well, and in its place stood an ominous figure clad in black latex.
Perhaps she would have been terrified if she wasn't familiar with this Rubber Man. But she knew him; her savior. He was the one who pulled her out of the way of a car when she (at the time) thought she was drunk and stumbled into the road (and later learned she had actually been pushed into the road).
Isabel never saw his face before, just that all-consuming shining black. But there was a stirring in her gut. She never saw his face, but in this moment, Isabel knew exactly who he was.
"Tate?"
She jolted in the chair she had fallen asleep in. Mallory jumped back, drawing her hand away from Isabel's shoulder. "Sorry," Mallory said quickly as Isabel looked around, remembering where she was.
"No, no it's all good," Isabel assured Mallory, wiping away the trail of dried spit that traveled from the corner of her mouth to her chin. It seemed she fell asleep in the library.
"You missed breakfast… Venable's pissed."
"I think I'll live." Isabel sat up in the chair, massaging her left shoulder blade. The chair was comfortable to read in. Not to sleep in.
"I wouldn't be so sure about that. You can't keep skipping meals. Here." Mallory reached into her pocket of her gray apron, revealing a gelatin cube. "I managed to sneak this for you."
Isabel stared at the meal cube in Mallory's hand. She should eat it, but she couldn't bring herself to accept it. Her mind was too much of a mess, especially after that dream. She couldn't get herself to focus on her stomach. "I'm not hungry."
Mallory didn't argue, but she didn't look pleased. "Survivors guilt won't keep you fed forever."
Isabel couldn't help but smile at that. "You sound like Moira," she mused.
"Who's Moira?"
There was a pang of fondness and melancholy in Isabel's heart as she remembered her dearest friend; the woman who was more of a confidant than her own mother. "Someone I loved," Isabel answered honestly.
Mallory let the gravity of those words sink into her skin. "At least go and be social. I heard Venable talking to that right hand woman of hers. She's not pleased that you're not like the others.
"Weird, I'd have thought that she'd be relieved."
"For what it's worth, I am."
The two shared a smile, Mallory's warm and Isabel's appreciative. In Mallory's smile, Isabel saw something strange: goodness. Pure and utter goodness. It seemed that despite the horrendous circumstances, Mallory still had a glimmer of faith. Isabel didn't understand it. She lost hope in just about everything.
Mallory held out her hand and helped Isabel up from the chair. "Everyone's in the main drawing room. You should probably make an appearance."
"That sounds awful," Isabel groaned as she stood.
"Yeah, and it probably will be. But from what I've seen, it's better not to be an outsider."
Isabel knew Mallory was right. Ostracizing herself wouldn't do her any good. "I guess Kenny Ortega was right: we're all in this together."
Even after the apocalypse, Kenny Ortega still haunted their generation. But who was haunting Isabel's dream? The Rubber Man was Tate, Isabel felt it in her gut. What about the baby, or whatever that thing had been?
Isabel knew about religious imagery. The dream wasn't exactly subtle. A baby born half human and half goat was the sign of the Devil. But what did it mean? Did it mean anything at all? There was a very good chance that she just had a weird dream that meant nothing. That seemed more likely than any symbolism she could come up with.
"Earth to Izzy," Coco said as she snapped her fingers in front of Isabel's face.
Isabel tuned in to find that she was no longer in the library but instead sitting on a couch in the drawing room. She panicked for a moment. Had she used transmutation? No, she wasn't good enough at that, and no one was freaking out so she must not have displayed magic. Right, she walked from the library to the main room but had been too lost in thought.
She toyed with her nightgown, keeping her hands busy.
The Carpenters still played endlessly.
"You have to let me do your hair," Gallant said, running his fingers though Isabel's long locks. "There's so much of it!"
"What were you thinking about, anyway?" Stu asked. He was sat across from Isabel, and leaned forward in interest.
Isabel couldn't tell them. Even though it was just a dream, Isabel felt like it was a secret she was meant to keep. "Just how annoying this song is," she answered as she heard the click of Venable's cane against the floor, indicating her arrival to the drawing room. A hush fell over the crowd.
"I was unaware that the end of the world called for a sleepover," Ms. Venable said in her usual unamused manner, her gaze focused intently on Isabel. Well, more of the nightgown she never changed out of.
Isabel tried brushing off Venable's cold gaze, knowing she was in trouble. "Sleepover might be fun. A pajama party to ease the tension."
Before Ms. Venable could argue, the group murmured in agreement.
"Oh my god, that would be so much fun!" Gallant declared as Coco squealed in agreement. "Truth or Dare, Never Have I Ever; yes, oh my god I'm in!"
"It might be just the thing we need to boost morale," Dinah agreed, though Evie scoffed at the idea of entertaining something so childish.
Ms. Venable's expression darkened, her eyes narrowing on Isabel, the instigator. She lifted her cane, and then slammed it back down on the floor. The sound resonated throughout the entire outpost, like the crack of a gunshot.
"Enough," Ms. Venable seethed. "Enough with this nonsense." Her glare made the group look down in shame and fear. "Miss Noble, my quarters now."