Author Notes - Like I said before, I want every sister to have at least one good scene with Lincoln. Since I don't want to fill the story with too many scenes, there will be a few times a sister accompanies Lincoln into a scene where, originally, Mirabel had gone alone.

CHAPTER SIX - TO NAMELESS SISTER'S ROOM

Lincoln wasn't entirely sure what he thought of Lori's advice. On one hand, it seemed like his only lead. On the other, what awaited him on the other side of that dim door? With someone like the-one-who-couldn't-be-named, anything could've been behind that decorated piece of wood. Vampires? Spider webs? An entire graveyard? Real blood splattered against the wall? From what he could remember of his older sister, any or all of those possibilities seemed so likely.

But what other choice did he have?

As he approached the front door to Ruidosa, he gulped. 'Okay Lincoln, it's fine… just duck into Lucy's room, grab that tombstone, and then get the heck out. Hopefully, you won't die, and then you can-'

He opened the door…

'Hey, bro.'

'AHHHH!'

… and had the daylights scared out of him, for the very first thing he saw on the other side of the door was Luna. She leaned up against the wall with her arms crossed and eyebrow cocked. He cursed under his breath as he got to his feet, wondering why he bothered saying anything out loud when Luna could've been listening in at any time.

'Hey Luna.' He said, resigning to the fact that she was inevitably going to talk about that.

'Why do you need to go into… her room?' She asked. 'You do realise that room's off-limits for a reason, right?'

Lincoln sighed. 'If I told you, you wouldn't believe me. … Oh wait, yes you would, because you probably heard the entire discussion I had with Lori.'

She nodded. 'Yep. Now, I ask again… why are you going into her room?!'

Her sudden shift into shouting made Lincoln jump again. His eyes darted around the second story visible from his spot - the other doors were glowing, and he couldn't see any of his sisters or parents. Everyone must've been either in town or in their room, fortunately too out of the way to overhear this discussion.

'Well…' Lincoln said, smiling nervously. 'Lori said-'

'And 'Lori said' is not a good answer!' Luna cried. 'That girl's room is terrifying! It's got coffins, and bats, and-'

'How do you know?'

Luna groaned. 'I wasn't that young when she disappeared. I used to drop by her room to deliver her food, since she never left but I could hear her stomach growling. It was scary before, but now that she's disappeared, it's even worse. Don't do it.'

Lincoln stared at her for a few seconds, staying silent but giving her a mighty look. The kind of look that said 'I am not dealing with this'. He kept it up for a little while, until Luna sighed.

'Alright, fine.' She said. 'If you really want to go inside that room to find a 'vision', then be my guest. I'm just saying, bro, that you won't like it. I'll be listening out for you, so I'll be there if something goes wrong.'

Lincoln grinned. 'Exactly. If anything goes wrong, you can rush in and save me.'

She smiled too. 'Well do, brah.'

If anyone was going to find out about this, Lincoln believed that Luna was the best one to know. She would know about anything anyway, and didn't really seem to mind what he did. As long as he didn't get hurt - that would worry her. She allowed him to walk up the steps onto the second floor, where he got a closer look at everyone's doors.

Lori's was still flickering, just a little. The more he stared at it, the worst the flickering appeared to be. Was it actually getting worse, or was he just seeing things? He didn't dare take the risk. Lola and Lana's shared door was flashing too, Lola's side doing quite a bit worse. Luan's door looked a little iffy too, which only made Lincoln more confused. She seemed just as cheery as ever, so why was the door going out now?

Lincoln paid it all no mind, and headed for a gap in the wall between Luan and Lynn's doors. This gap wasn't always there, for he could recall a door standing there instead, but now it was a small hallway that gave way to a set of stairs. It wasn't an especially long staircase, but there was little light that reached it and thus the door at the end was hardly visible. It didn't help that the door, unlike anyone else's, had gone completely dark.

The white-haired boy approached the door slowly, his nerves locking up with each squeak emitted from the old floorboards. His eyes adjusted to the darkness slowly, and as they did he noticed the appearance of the door before him. It was a young girl, with bangs so long they covered up her eyes. She held her arms out, revealing that she was wearing some sort of cloak. Skulls decorated the corners, and she was surrounded by candles in a rather… interesting shape. In other words, the door was the biggest red flag he had ever seen. The top of the door spelt out the very same name they were never supposed to speak of… Lucy.

He gulped, already dreading this decision.

'Well… might as well get it over with…'

He placed his hand upon the doorknob, and turned it…

'Lincoln!'

'AAAHHHH!'

Had his nerves not already been wound up beyond all belief, he may have had only a slight jumpscare from hearing his name yelled out behind him. But, with how wound up he had been, it sent his heart absolutely pounding right out of his chest. He spun around in his jump, with his back pinned against the door, and he only calmed down when he saw the person behind him was not the dreaded girl-who-couldn't-be-named but instead just Lana, who was snickering to herself just a little.

'Lana, what are…?'

His question trailed off when he noticed her appearance. Everyone in the house was used to Lana showing up looking like a mess, but this was on a whole other level. Her hair stood up on end in all directions, and her face was covered in ash. Parts of her outfits had little patches of frost on them.

'Wait, wait…' Lincoln said, pushing his hands out. 'Let me guess. You and Lola got into an argument, and she struck you with lightning.'

'Yep.' Lana replied while patting her hair down, a look of frustrated resignation on her face. 'Apparently, bringing Chomper into the fight was 'cheating'. How am I cheating when she's the one who can control lightning?!'

Lincoln could just barely see the twins' door from his perspective, and he noticed Lana's side of the door flicking for a moment before it returned to its full glow. He was going to remember that.

'Well, she can't really control it.' Lincoln said. 'I don't know why Ruidosa gave her a gift that depends entirely on her moods.'

'Yeah,' Lana added. 'Especially since she's such a drama queen. Anyway, what are you doing… here?'

She pointed directly at the door, which made her shiver too as she looked at it. Even though Lana was only seven - turning eight in just a month or so - Lincoln knew there was no getting out of this one. Lana wasn't that much of a fool.

'Uh…' Lincoln said. 'I could ask you the same thing.'

'Because you're here.' Lana replied.

'Yeah, I walked into that one. For, uh, reasons, I need to go into Lu- her room to find a vision thing. So if you could-'

Suddenly, Lana smiled and clenched her fists. 'Wait, you're going into that room? Cooooool! Can I come with?'

Lincoln gave her a confused look. 'You… you want to come with me?'

Lana looked up at him with a massive toothy grin. It was as if she thought she was going to Disney World, and not a room infamous in the family and town for supposedly being terrifying.

'Uh, yeah!' Lana replied, as though it was obvious. 'I've never gone in that room before, but I hear it's full of icky stuff! You know, like spiders and bat poop. And it sounds so scary! I gotta see it!'

Lincoln smiled; he certainly didn't understand it, but he wasn't complaining about having a friend to venture into this spooky room with.

'Well, if you insist.' He said. 'If there really are bats in there, it might be helpful to have someone around who can talk to animals.'

Lana grinned. 'Too right.' Her smile dropped. 'Uh, you can open the door first.'

Lincoln shot her a deadpanned look, but reached for the doorknob anyway. To be fair, she was only about eight, and he was the older one by far. As he slowly pushed the door open, the hinges emitted the most awful squeak either kid had ever heard. In fact, they could hear Luna crying out in pain for a moment. It took a lot of willpower for Lincoln to push the door all the way, and he was immediately greeted with the smell of dying grass and heavy mist.

The sight on the other side of the door sent shivers down his spine once again. The best way to describe the 'room' was that it looked like a full-on graveyard, shrouded in the darkness with nothing but the full moon and a couple of stars to light things up. The 'sky' past the iron-barbed fences was clearly painted on, but it didn't stop the mist and darkness from creating a truly spine-chilling environment. Only the sound of whistling wind could be heard, and hardly anything moved among the rolling hills covered and filled with marked graves, some empty and some full.

Lana gulped. 'T-This is less cool than I was expecting…'

'Y-You know, Lana,' Lincoln said. 'You can leave if you want.'

'Leave? Heck no! We're not leaving until we've found whatever it was that you're looking for!'

'Don't tell anyone this, but you're braver than me.'

'Uh, I'm pretty sure Luna-'

'Tell. No one.'

They each took a single step into the room together, hearing the old grey grass crunching under their feet. The cold breeze, somehow generated in the enclosed space, quickly gave them goosebumps as they stepped further into the room.

'Wait.' Lana said. 'What are we even looking for?'

'A 'vision', I think.' Lincoln said, trying not to shiver too much. 'Cos, uh, she had visions on tombstones. So, we gotta find something that looks like a tombstone.'

Lana looked around. 'Uh huh. … There's tombstones everywhere! How do we know which one we're supposed to look for?!'

'That's… a good question. Maybe we'll know when we see it. Come on!'

They approached the nearest tombstone, their stomachs unable to settle completely. The whistling wind was the only thing they could hear other than their own footsteps and breath, and they could've sworn something or someone was watching them from the shadows.

The nearest tombstone was one in front of an empty grave, one that seemed unfinished for it was only a couple feet step. It was still a grave though.

'Why did you-know-who have graves in her room?!' Lana demanded, throwing up her arms. 'Was she trying to scare people away?'

Lincoln peered closer at the tombstone, hoping to see something that related to a 'vision'. Then, his skin quickly went pale and he hoped to the spirits above that this wasn't the vision after all. Behind the thick moss, he could see a certain name: 'Lincoln Christopher Loud', with his birthday carved into it but his 'death' date yet to be put upon it. It was enough to make his knees quake. Lana quietly backed away, until she came across another tombstone with an equally familiar name on it.

'This is my tombstone!' She cried. '... Why did she have OUR tombstones in here?!'

'Um… maybe she wanted to be prepared?' Lincoln replied, scratching the back of his neck. 'Either that, or she really didn't like intruders.'

'Well, at least I oughta find some worms here! They're everywhere in places like this.'

Lincoln didn't question his little sister's taste in either friends or, erm, literal taste, and continued looking at all the tombstones. It felt a little wrong to go looking through this field, but he tried to tell himself that they weren't real graves, if only because Ruidosa would certainly not be okay with having actual dead bodies within its walls.

It wasn't easy to check every single tombstone, thanks to the darkness enveloping the entire room, but it didn't take long for Lincoln's vision to adjust enough for them to become readable. He had managed to find a tombstone for every single one of his sisters, except for Lisa and Lily; neither had been born before the-one-who-can't-be-named had disappeared.

*CRA-ACK*

'AAHHH!'

Lincoln jumped. For a moment, he had assumed that an angry Lola had entered the room. It took him a little while to realise that was real thunder and lightning from the room itself, since a dark and stormy night was certainly the 'spookiest' of all weather conditions. A silhouette of a big building flashed in the brightness for a moment, and once his eyes readjusted after that blast of light, he found himself face-to-face with… well, it could only be described as a mini-castle. It wasn't like the castle in Lola's side of her room, but instead something straight out of that Castlevania game he played sometimes.

It may not have been that big, for a castle at least, but it was built entirely of darkened bricks slowly being covered by moss. He could see faint candle lights and cobwebs out of the windows, and out of the corner of his eye he could've sworn he saw a mysterious white figure passing by. It was enough to make his whole body shiver.

'Uh, Lana…' He said. 'I think I've found another lead.'

Lana rushed to his side, sucking a worm into her mouth like it was a piece of spaghetti. It made Lincoln gag a little, partially because she could surely talk to little critters like worms. Not to mention all the stuff a worm would be moving through in a place like this.

'Woah…' Lana said, her jaw dropping a little. 'Is that… a haunted house?'

'L-Looks like it.' Lincoln said. 'You know, you can turn back at any time if you-'

'Turn back? PFFFT! And make you go into that place alone? I wouldn't do that! Plus, every minute I spend with you is one less with Lola, and last time I checked she was summoning a hurricane.'

'Yeah, that's fair.'

'You go first.'

'Also fair, though that doesn't make it any less annoying.'

Lincoln - as slowly and as carefully as his shaking legs would allow - approached the door with Lana following close behind him. Of course, ghosts weren't real… right? So he had nothing to worry about. If anything, his greatest worry was that Luan would jump out of a dark corner after shapeshifting into some horrifying humanoid abomination. That would just kill his nerves. The floorboards leading up to the castle creaked under his feet, as though they would snap and send him hurtling downwards at any moment.

Ruidosa was great at setting up whatever atmosphere it wanted, Lincoln could give it that. A lovely fairytale castle for Lola, a wonderland of flowers and dresses for Leni, a thousand screens of social media for Lori… and a spooky as heck graveyard for her.

He opened the door slowly, cringing a little as it squeaked; it must've gone years without even a spot of oil. Or perhaps that was how it was supposed to sound, considering the rest of this room. A few coughs escaped his throat thanks to all the dust the opening door had scattered, and Lana's little sneezing fit almost made his heart stop.

On the surface, it looked like a regular forey, just a bit smaller. A series of steps led up to the second storey, and a grandfather clock in the corner provided the room with a quiet ticking sound. Everything, however, was covered in dust and cobwebs, if you could see anything in that darkness. Only a few candles, still burning through means unknown, lit the way and only just barely.

The boy flinched again - Lana had grabbed onto his legs for dear life, and he could feel her shivering just a little. The thought of him being the brave one after all was not exactly reassuring one. Still, he stepped closer into the building and tried to ignore the creaks beneath him.

'I'm starting to see why this place is off-limits…' Lana murmured.

Just then, a little frog popped his head out of the big pocket in her overalls. He scampered across the floor and leapt right out of a nearby window, croaking wildly as he fled the scene.

'Go, Hops!' Lana yelled. 'Get out while you still can!'

Lincoln flinched; he could hear her yell echoing through every corner of the house. His ears perked at another sound, and not exactly a pleasant one - a large series of annoyed squeaks. Cranking his head around like it needed oil, he looked up at the darkness looming over the top of the stairs. That was not darkness, and he realised this when he saw a bunch of glowing white eyes staring at him.

'U-Uh, Lana…' He said, his voice as shaky as his legs. 'I think we're gonna need that gift of yours right about now.'

One by one, the colony let go of the ceiling and flapped their wings about, baring their sharp teeth that glistened in the dim candle light. They unleashed a fury of squeaks just barely in Lincoln's hearing range, piercing directly into his eardrums.

'LANA!' He yelled. 'Do something!'

'On it, Lincoln!'

Lana stopped hiding behind her brother and stepped into the centre of the foyer. Unlike literally any other person on the planet (except for maybe she-who-can't-be-named herself), the young tomboy did not find herself unnerved at the presence of so many bats glaring down upon her. If anything, seeing so many animals before her - no matter what kind of animal they were - relaxed her nerves, and made her feel more at home.

'Hey, look, I'm sorry for waking you up.' She said. 'We're just here looking for something, so if you don't mind we'll just be on our way.'

For a moment, Lincoln was petrified over what these flying critters would do to his little sister. Yes, she could talk to all sorts of animals - including crocodiles - but never bats before. All his fears went down the drain when one of the biggest bats flew down and happily perched on Lana's arm, rubbing its face up against her like a cuddly cat. All the other bats grinned too, now making happy squeaks instead of angry ones.

'I think they like me!' Lana said, scratching the bat under its chin. 'And she says her name is Echo!'

Lincoln let out a heavy breath. Well, that made wandering through this seemingly-haunted castle a little less terrifying. He approached his little sister, but stayed away from the bats in case they still didn't like him; you could never be too careful around animals potentially carrying rabies.

The proverbial lightbulb went off.

'Hey, Lana, these bats live here, right?' He said. 'Then they might know where Lucy's vision thing is! Can you-?'

'You beat me to it.' Lana said, giving him a thumbs-up. 'Hey Echo, we're looking for one of Lucy's visions. Apparently, it looks a lot like a tombstone. But that's all we got. Do you know what we're talking about? And don't say the tombstones outside. We checked every one.'

Echo frowned, just a little, and chirped back at her friends. The other bats frowned too, and looked among each other with worried expressions. Even though all Lincoln could hear was 'squeak-squeak' interspersed with the occasional 'uh-huh, uh-huh' from Lana, he could tell from their faces that it was unfortunate.

'Don't they know where it is?' He asked.

'Oh? Oh, no, they do.' Lana replied. 'They say they think they know what we're looking for. Apparently, it was the last vision she had before she ran off. Does that sound right?'

Lincoln smiled. 'Yeah! That should be exactly what I'm looking for. So, what's the worry?'

'They won't tell me what, but they say that she was so scared by what she saw in that vision thing that she disappeared soon after reading it. They just wanna know if you really wanna go find it.'

The only Loud son took a deep breath. 'Tell them I want to be taken directly to it, no questions asked.'

Lana grinned. 'Well do, bro!'

The logs had been delivered. The truck too. The carpenter and the mechanic were elated to have their things delivered to them, seemingly not caring that it was dreadfully late. And now, Lori was at the golf course, where Coach Niblick, during a visit to Royal Woods, had accidentally driven his golf cart into one of the lakes. She had to wonder why a tow truck was out of the question, but a young lady with super strength was simply easier.

'I'm sorry, Lori,' Niblick said. 'But I just lost control. I'm not used to the terrain here.'

'It's fine.' Lori said, sighing. 'It really is.'

But, as she approached the golf cart, she stopped. Lincoln's words came back to her - finish with the truck, and then take a break. She had definitely finished with the truck, so now was the time to take a break. But she was already here, and… surely a golf cart was like a break, compared to a big truck?

She stepped forward again, but stopped after just a couple of steps. Of course, that was definitely not what Lincoln had in mind. Sit under a tree and listen to the birds... Go read a book… Eat some cake… None of that sounded like 'recover a golf cart' to her. In fact, none of that sounded like 'work' or 'heavy lifting' at all.

'Lori, are you okay?'

Her heart skipped a beat. As she thought about it, she realised that she had taken the path here slowly, so she could listen to the birds like Lincoln had suggested. It made her late.

It made her late.

And she had already delivered the truck and the logs later than she was supposed to! But the idea of just sitting down for five minutes was too tempting, so she remained in her spot, staring at that golf cart.

'You know Lori, if you want, we can wait…'

She gasped. Niblick was waiting on her! How could she let him down? If she didn't hurry up, she'd have no time to reroute the river. And that kid was still under that bookcase!

I'm gonna let everyone down… She thought to herself, pushing forward.

So, she grabbed onto the golf cart by its bumper and got herself ready to move it. It wasn't hard to get a good grip on it, so she stood up and…

And…

It wasn't moving. She tugged on the bumper again. The golf cart did not move from its spot. It wasn't moving! She tugged it again, and again, and again. That's when a horrible realisation dawned on her: the golf cart was heavy.

'I'm losing my gift…' She murmured to herself.

Lori let go of the bumper, and grabbed it by the back of the driver's seat instead. Then one of the tires. Then she even tried to push it from the front, getting her legs wet in the process. It still felt heavy.

'Lori…' Niblick said, approaching her. 'Are you-?'

Lori couldn't take it anymore.

'I'M LITERALLY LOSING MY GIFT!'

Author Notes - It isn't an unpopular opinion to say that the scene in Bruno's tower, as fun as it is, does drag on a bit. It kinda feels like the movie is trying a little too hard to have an adventure/action-y scene, when really it would be better off without it.

It may seem like Lana plays Antonio's role on the surface (heh) due to sharing his gift, but really his role in the story was given to Lisa. I basically split the kid in two, which I have also done for... another character, but we don't get to that for a while. So, because I wanted Lana to do something, I let her go with Lincoln into Lucy's room.

And if you're wondering why the bat is a girl named 'Echo' instead of a boy named 'Fangs'.. well, it's a completely different bat, isn't it?