Disclaimer: I do not own Lara Croft, Tomn Raider etc. I am not making any
money with this work of fiction.
Notes: This story was written on Christmas Eve some four years ago when I was travelling in Australia as a Christmas card for a friend back home. Please bear in mind during reading that the way Lara is portrayed here is not really how I see her, but a mere vessel for suitably Christmassy melodrama. I don't think she would make the choices she has made here.
I personally love Christmas stories - they keep up a tradition on storytelling and in TR fic often pay homage to the classics of literature. Ryan Foley's "December Soul" and Sarah Crisman's "Lara Croft and The Surprise Visitor" probably had a heavy influence on how this little piece ended up.
Enough has been said, I do hope you enjoy the ride :=)
============================================== A Night For The Living by Heidi Ahlmen (siirma6@surfeu.fi) ==============================================
Chapter 2
'What a sad house' Chrissie thought to herself as she wondered around in the second floor, in a bedroom. A huge bed, a fireplace, and a simple walk-in-clothes-closet. 'No furniture or stuff that would make it look like a home', she noted sadly and returned to the walkway outside the bedroom. The
next room she found was a huge room with an old television, and stairs to a library. After fingering some buttons on the ancient-looking remote control, she walked towards the library stairs - and stopped.
Someone had lit the fireplace in the library. And turned on a dim lighting.
Probably the same someone who was now walking around in the library.
Chrissie's heart started racing as she heard the silent footsteps on the old, wooden floor. Trying to keep cool, she walked a couple of stairs up to
see the whole library room. Noone. But the fireplace and some lights were still on. Not that they gave much light, though.
Chrissie walked into the library, marveling the sight of what seemed thousands of books. She wandered to a nearby table.
"National Geography 1989. Archeology Weekly 1996. British Museum Yearbook of Archeology 1990. The God Seth - An Apprehensive Study of The Ancient Egyptians Evil God," Chrissie read the titles of the numerous magazines and
books placed on the table.
"Who are you and what are you doing in my house?"came a sudden question in a stern, sharp tone.
Chrissie yelped, and dropped a book. She turned quickly, her pulse raising to dangerous heights.
In the doorway leading to the television room, stood a woman dressed in a long, darkblue dress. She had long, brown hair, and she wore black, low-heeled shoes, cut very elegantly. She was dressed for a party, Chrissie
noted.
"You scared me," Chrissie said, still eyeing the strange woman.
"My apologies", the woman said. "I do not take kindly to strangers."
She had a very attractive face, with very clear characteristics. Dark brown hazes with an empty, yet a very stinging and cunning gaze in them. A slightly unfriendly face. The expression she wore was indifferent, detached.
"What do you mean, 'your house'?" Chrissie asked, trying to raise her voice
above a frightened whisper, without notable success.
"This is my house. I live here. Who are you?"
"I'm Chrissie, Christine Lucas - I mean Christine Granger."
"Can't remember?" the woman asked, a smile playing on the surface of her tighly-pinned lips.
"I'm adopted," Chrissie said simply. It wasn't a secret, but she'd always felt awkward explaining her life to strangers. But somehow it felt appropriate with this woman. Chrissie didn't, for some reason, want to be disrespected by this woman, she didn't want her to think Chrissie wasn't in her right mind.
There was something about this woman that screamed out aristocracy, but still she had an edge to her that didn't quite fit the big picture.
"I see. What are you looking for in here, Christine Granger?"
"I'm here with my friends," Chrissie said, feeling a bit more confident. This peculiar woman had to be the caretaker. "We had heard that this place might be haunted."
"Maybe, maybe not," the woman said, smiling strangely. She walked to stand next to the table and picked up the book Chrissie had dropped. The blew off the dust, and somehow the dust and the spider webs seemed to disappear into thin air after leaving the book cover.
"What's your name? Are you the caretaker?" Chrissie asked.
"The caretaker?" the woman looked puzzled.
"The great-grandson of a butler that worked here owns the manor. Didn't you
know?"
"Winston? This is my house," the woman murmured, more to the walls than to Chrissie.
"This can't be your house. Who are you?" Chrissie asked a bit rudely, before remembering that she was an intruder as well.
"My name is Lara."
"Nice to meet you... Lara. Lara who?"
The woman walked toward the fireplace, and then she went to turn off the dim lamp on the other side of the library. Before doing that the woman gazed out of the window to the storm outside and in the dim lamp's light Chrissie saw
that the woman was slightly transparent. She gasped silently and swallowed.
"Lara Croft."
Lewis and his gang had found nothing strange. Just some ancient ham, leftovers of a nineteen nineties meal, and an old gym with a swimming pool.
Finished with downstairs, they followed Chrissie's footprints on the dust. They led the boys into the television room. And into the library, where they found Chrissie.
She looked horrified, and tried to wave at Lewis to stay away, but the boys
came in anyway. They all gasped when they saw the woman standing beside the
window. The lamp had been switched off so they couldn't see more than a woman's shape.
"Lewis, Brad and Nicky, meet... " Chrissie began with widened eyes as the woman in the dark blue dress walked up to them, "Lara Croft."
Lewis swallowed as he recognized the name. So did Brad. And Nicky. They decided to take a runner but Chrissie intervened by grabbing the hoods of their raincoats and pulled them back.
Lara Croft waited patiently.
Brad knelt down, feeling fainty. Nicky looked pale as he sat to the table, accompanied by Lewis. Chrissie stood nearby.
"Listen, Chrissie, we gotta get out of here", Lewis said, panicky.
"No, we don't. See. She's harmless."
The ghost seemed to dislike her words. It pointed at the lamp again. And another lamp. Soon the whole library was lit.
And so was the transparent woman. She stood her hands spread in the middle of the room, smiling apologetically.
Smiling and being transparent.
Nicky, Brad and Lewis tried to calm down with only marginal success, still uneasy at the thought of being accompanied by what apparently was a genuine ghost.
Chrissie walked up to the Croft ghost, moving her hand through her body.
"Ow. Watch where you are poking, young lady", Lara Croft said, shifting away.
"You're a real ghost", Lewis said, making all the boys' thought materialise.
Lara Croft looked sad.
"So are things, my boy."
"Are you the woman who lived here ages ago?" asked Brad.
"I still live here."
"That's some way to put it," pointed Nicky, not so afraid anymore. At least not horrified.
The ghost walked silently to the steps leading down to the television room,
waving at the teenagers to follow her.
As she walked out of the television room to the walkway, all the lamps and chandeliers lit, and the dust on the stairs seemed to disappear.
Chrissie and the boys followed her through the tv room into the bedroom. The ghost walked up to the walk-in-clothes-closet and took something out. It was a crossbow.
"Wow!" Nicky gasped.
"Was...Is that yours?" Asked Lewis, astonished.
Lara Croft nodded proudly. She opened the closet door wide open, revealing an enormous collection of weapons, ranging from pistols to rocket launchers
and harpoons.
"Incredible," the boys muttered.
"So much for security systems," pointed Chrissie, a bit amazed herself. "Are these all really yours?" she asked.
Lara Croft nodded, a witty smile passing her lips.
"Who are you?" asked Lewis, jokingly.
In the meanwhile Chrissie had noticed the boys' intense looks at the ghost.
Theexpensive-looking blue dress revealed the dead woman's shape in a very sensual way. She had undoubtedly had an incredibly athletic body, yet with distinctively feminine curves. Results of heavy work-out and good genes. Probably the achievement of the ninety nineties health riots.
The ghost had heard Brad's question, and as an answer she reached under the
big bed and pulled out a photo album. She opened a page and showed the group a newspaper article from The Times.
"Archeological Wonder: The Dagger Of Xian Discovered
Famed archeologist Lara Croft of Britain, shook the archeological community
last week by announcing her latest discovery: the Dagger Of Xian. A famed artefact of the Chinese mythology, the dagger has been said to give its wielder the shape and powers of a dragon...."
Below the text was a picture of a young, smiling woman, dressed in shorts and a sky blue top, holding a pair of pistols and a decorative dagger. The text below the picture read: "Archeological Prodigy, adventurer Lara Croft, daughter of a British Lord Henshingly Croft, has succeeded again in bringing the truth behind ancient myths into the light."
"You were an archeologist?" asked Chrissie, looking at Lara Croft.
She nodded.
"You must've been rich as hell, I mean, living in here... Awesome life you had. Must've been." Nicky wondered aloud.
The ghost of Lara Croft looked sad.
"I will show you", she said, closing the scrapbook. She lead the teenagers downstairs, into the gym.
As she walked into the room, every chandelier, every light was again switched on.
It was like magic. All the rust, mold and ugliness disappeared.
And suddenly the woman disappeared, too. Chrissie looked around but she was
nowhere to be seen.
And suddenly she appeared, near the ceiling, hanging from a horizontal metal bar, dressed in a tight black leather catsuit.
She lifted herself on top of the bar, and shifted down, raising her chin above the bar, doing the movements with just one hand.
"That's incredible," Brad whispered, watching in amazement.
The ghost then started going through a complicated series of gymnastic moves, hanging from the bar. Then she simply let go, doing a somersault in the air before landing on her feet right in front of Chrissie and the boys.
"Pretty good job", said Brad, unable to tear his eyes from the ghost in a catsuit.
"Thank you."
Lara Croft then gracefully walked into the pool room and dived in. In a second her tight catsuit had changed into a sporty black swimming suit. She took a couple of
short dives, and surfaced.
"What's the point of these mini-olympics?" Lewis asked as Lara Croft pulled
herself up from the pool, suddenly dressed in the blue dress again.
"You said I lived a wonderful life." The ghost said, challengingly.
"Yes?" Asked Brad.
"This is all wonderful, the house and my career, but what if.... Try to imagine..."
"Imagine what?" Chrissie asked carefully, sensing the hint of profound sadness in Lara Croft's voice again, like a wisp of icy wind.
"Imagine if this empty house and your work was everything you ever had."
"You children are very lucky."
"How?" Lewis asked.
Chrissie, Lewis and their cousins were all seeted in the library again. Only the ghost of Lara Croft was wandering around restlessly, answering the teenagers' questions about the house and making up her own questions for them. Chrissie and the boys were very careful with their questions, they still felt uneasy about sitting around in the middle of the night with
a ghost. A real ghost.
"You all have loving families." Lara said sadly. Then she pointed at Chrissie. "You. You should try to forget and forgive the people in your past and find the spirit of Christmas for yourself."
Chrissie didn't say anything.
The ghost pointed at Lewis.
"You. Don't ignore your parents' wishes. They want you to stay close to them. Don't leave them behind you just because their expectations are different from yours. That is the worst mistake you could possibly do."
Lewis swallowed.
"How do you know about Grayston?"
Chrissie remembered. Lewis had wanted to move to Grayston and go to a special technical school. His parents had been furious at the thought of him leaving so young, saying that if he left without their consent, he wouldn't
be a part of the family anymore.
The ghost now pointed at the California brothers.
"Shame on you two. What if your parents knew?"
Chrissie and Lewis looked at each other. Then they looked at Lara, puzzled.
"Bradley and Nicky are smoking pot."
"How do you know all this stuff?! You're just a stupid ghost!" Brad yelled,
angry, and waved his hand furiously through Lara.
"We ghosts have our ways," she replied, sounding slightly edgy.
"What are you - who are you to pick on us, anyway?"
"I speak on the right given by the fact that I did my fair share of mistakes, and that is why I died. That is why I remain in this house."
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
As always, comments and reviews would be much appreciated - they're the fuel that feeds this creative furnace.
siirma6@surfeu.fi
Notes: This story was written on Christmas Eve some four years ago when I was travelling in Australia as a Christmas card for a friend back home. Please bear in mind during reading that the way Lara is portrayed here is not really how I see her, but a mere vessel for suitably Christmassy melodrama. I don't think she would make the choices she has made here.
I personally love Christmas stories - they keep up a tradition on storytelling and in TR fic often pay homage to the classics of literature. Ryan Foley's "December Soul" and Sarah Crisman's "Lara Croft and The Surprise Visitor" probably had a heavy influence on how this little piece ended up.
Enough has been said, I do hope you enjoy the ride :=)
============================================== A Night For The Living by Heidi Ahlmen (siirma6@surfeu.fi) ==============================================
Chapter 2
'What a sad house' Chrissie thought to herself as she wondered around in the second floor, in a bedroom. A huge bed, a fireplace, and a simple walk-in-clothes-closet. 'No furniture or stuff that would make it look like a home', she noted sadly and returned to the walkway outside the bedroom. The
next room she found was a huge room with an old television, and stairs to a library. After fingering some buttons on the ancient-looking remote control, she walked towards the library stairs - and stopped.
Someone had lit the fireplace in the library. And turned on a dim lighting.
Probably the same someone who was now walking around in the library.
Chrissie's heart started racing as she heard the silent footsteps on the old, wooden floor. Trying to keep cool, she walked a couple of stairs up to
see the whole library room. Noone. But the fireplace and some lights were still on. Not that they gave much light, though.
Chrissie walked into the library, marveling the sight of what seemed thousands of books. She wandered to a nearby table.
"National Geography 1989. Archeology Weekly 1996. British Museum Yearbook of Archeology 1990. The God Seth - An Apprehensive Study of The Ancient Egyptians Evil God," Chrissie read the titles of the numerous magazines and
books placed on the table.
"Who are you and what are you doing in my house?"came a sudden question in a stern, sharp tone.
Chrissie yelped, and dropped a book. She turned quickly, her pulse raising to dangerous heights.
In the doorway leading to the television room, stood a woman dressed in a long, darkblue dress. She had long, brown hair, and she wore black, low-heeled shoes, cut very elegantly. She was dressed for a party, Chrissie
noted.
"You scared me," Chrissie said, still eyeing the strange woman.
"My apologies", the woman said. "I do not take kindly to strangers."
She had a very attractive face, with very clear characteristics. Dark brown hazes with an empty, yet a very stinging and cunning gaze in them. A slightly unfriendly face. The expression she wore was indifferent, detached.
"What do you mean, 'your house'?" Chrissie asked, trying to raise her voice
above a frightened whisper, without notable success.
"This is my house. I live here. Who are you?"
"I'm Chrissie, Christine Lucas - I mean Christine Granger."
"Can't remember?" the woman asked, a smile playing on the surface of her tighly-pinned lips.
"I'm adopted," Chrissie said simply. It wasn't a secret, but she'd always felt awkward explaining her life to strangers. But somehow it felt appropriate with this woman. Chrissie didn't, for some reason, want to be disrespected by this woman, she didn't want her to think Chrissie wasn't in her right mind.
There was something about this woman that screamed out aristocracy, but still she had an edge to her that didn't quite fit the big picture.
"I see. What are you looking for in here, Christine Granger?"
"I'm here with my friends," Chrissie said, feeling a bit more confident. This peculiar woman had to be the caretaker. "We had heard that this place might be haunted."
"Maybe, maybe not," the woman said, smiling strangely. She walked to stand next to the table and picked up the book Chrissie had dropped. The blew off the dust, and somehow the dust and the spider webs seemed to disappear into thin air after leaving the book cover.
"What's your name? Are you the caretaker?" Chrissie asked.
"The caretaker?" the woman looked puzzled.
"The great-grandson of a butler that worked here owns the manor. Didn't you
know?"
"Winston? This is my house," the woman murmured, more to the walls than to Chrissie.
"This can't be your house. Who are you?" Chrissie asked a bit rudely, before remembering that she was an intruder as well.
"My name is Lara."
"Nice to meet you... Lara. Lara who?"
The woman walked toward the fireplace, and then she went to turn off the dim lamp on the other side of the library. Before doing that the woman gazed out of the window to the storm outside and in the dim lamp's light Chrissie saw
that the woman was slightly transparent. She gasped silently and swallowed.
"Lara Croft."
Lewis and his gang had found nothing strange. Just some ancient ham, leftovers of a nineteen nineties meal, and an old gym with a swimming pool.
Finished with downstairs, they followed Chrissie's footprints on the dust. They led the boys into the television room. And into the library, where they found Chrissie.
She looked horrified, and tried to wave at Lewis to stay away, but the boys
came in anyway. They all gasped when they saw the woman standing beside the
window. The lamp had been switched off so they couldn't see more than a woman's shape.
"Lewis, Brad and Nicky, meet... " Chrissie began with widened eyes as the woman in the dark blue dress walked up to them, "Lara Croft."
Lewis swallowed as he recognized the name. So did Brad. And Nicky. They decided to take a runner but Chrissie intervened by grabbing the hoods of their raincoats and pulled them back.
Lara Croft waited patiently.
Brad knelt down, feeling fainty. Nicky looked pale as he sat to the table, accompanied by Lewis. Chrissie stood nearby.
"Listen, Chrissie, we gotta get out of here", Lewis said, panicky.
"No, we don't. See. She's harmless."
The ghost seemed to dislike her words. It pointed at the lamp again. And another lamp. Soon the whole library was lit.
And so was the transparent woman. She stood her hands spread in the middle of the room, smiling apologetically.
Smiling and being transparent.
Nicky, Brad and Lewis tried to calm down with only marginal success, still uneasy at the thought of being accompanied by what apparently was a genuine ghost.
Chrissie walked up to the Croft ghost, moving her hand through her body.
"Ow. Watch where you are poking, young lady", Lara Croft said, shifting away.
"You're a real ghost", Lewis said, making all the boys' thought materialise.
Lara Croft looked sad.
"So are things, my boy."
"Are you the woman who lived here ages ago?" asked Brad.
"I still live here."
"That's some way to put it," pointed Nicky, not so afraid anymore. At least not horrified.
The ghost walked silently to the steps leading down to the television room,
waving at the teenagers to follow her.
As she walked out of the television room to the walkway, all the lamps and chandeliers lit, and the dust on the stairs seemed to disappear.
Chrissie and the boys followed her through the tv room into the bedroom. The ghost walked up to the walk-in-clothes-closet and took something out. It was a crossbow.
"Wow!" Nicky gasped.
"Was...Is that yours?" Asked Lewis, astonished.
Lara Croft nodded proudly. She opened the closet door wide open, revealing an enormous collection of weapons, ranging from pistols to rocket launchers
and harpoons.
"Incredible," the boys muttered.
"So much for security systems," pointed Chrissie, a bit amazed herself. "Are these all really yours?" she asked.
Lara Croft nodded, a witty smile passing her lips.
"Who are you?" asked Lewis, jokingly.
In the meanwhile Chrissie had noticed the boys' intense looks at the ghost.
Theexpensive-looking blue dress revealed the dead woman's shape in a very sensual way. She had undoubtedly had an incredibly athletic body, yet with distinctively feminine curves. Results of heavy work-out and good genes. Probably the achievement of the ninety nineties health riots.
The ghost had heard Brad's question, and as an answer she reached under the
big bed and pulled out a photo album. She opened a page and showed the group a newspaper article from The Times.
"Archeological Wonder: The Dagger Of Xian Discovered
Famed archeologist Lara Croft of Britain, shook the archeological community
last week by announcing her latest discovery: the Dagger Of Xian. A famed artefact of the Chinese mythology, the dagger has been said to give its wielder the shape and powers of a dragon...."
Below the text was a picture of a young, smiling woman, dressed in shorts and a sky blue top, holding a pair of pistols and a decorative dagger. The text below the picture read: "Archeological Prodigy, adventurer Lara Croft, daughter of a British Lord Henshingly Croft, has succeeded again in bringing the truth behind ancient myths into the light."
"You were an archeologist?" asked Chrissie, looking at Lara Croft.
She nodded.
"You must've been rich as hell, I mean, living in here... Awesome life you had. Must've been." Nicky wondered aloud.
The ghost of Lara Croft looked sad.
"I will show you", she said, closing the scrapbook. She lead the teenagers downstairs, into the gym.
As she walked into the room, every chandelier, every light was again switched on.
It was like magic. All the rust, mold and ugliness disappeared.
And suddenly the woman disappeared, too. Chrissie looked around but she was
nowhere to be seen.
And suddenly she appeared, near the ceiling, hanging from a horizontal metal bar, dressed in a tight black leather catsuit.
She lifted herself on top of the bar, and shifted down, raising her chin above the bar, doing the movements with just one hand.
"That's incredible," Brad whispered, watching in amazement.
The ghost then started going through a complicated series of gymnastic moves, hanging from the bar. Then she simply let go, doing a somersault in the air before landing on her feet right in front of Chrissie and the boys.
"Pretty good job", said Brad, unable to tear his eyes from the ghost in a catsuit.
"Thank you."
Lara Croft then gracefully walked into the pool room and dived in. In a second her tight catsuit had changed into a sporty black swimming suit. She took a couple of
short dives, and surfaced.
"What's the point of these mini-olympics?" Lewis asked as Lara Croft pulled
herself up from the pool, suddenly dressed in the blue dress again.
"You said I lived a wonderful life." The ghost said, challengingly.
"Yes?" Asked Brad.
"This is all wonderful, the house and my career, but what if.... Try to imagine..."
"Imagine what?" Chrissie asked carefully, sensing the hint of profound sadness in Lara Croft's voice again, like a wisp of icy wind.
"Imagine if this empty house and your work was everything you ever had."
"You children are very lucky."
"How?" Lewis asked.
Chrissie, Lewis and their cousins were all seeted in the library again. Only the ghost of Lara Croft was wandering around restlessly, answering the teenagers' questions about the house and making up her own questions for them. Chrissie and the boys were very careful with their questions, they still felt uneasy about sitting around in the middle of the night with
a ghost. A real ghost.
"You all have loving families." Lara said sadly. Then she pointed at Chrissie. "You. You should try to forget and forgive the people in your past and find the spirit of Christmas for yourself."
Chrissie didn't say anything.
The ghost pointed at Lewis.
"You. Don't ignore your parents' wishes. They want you to stay close to them. Don't leave them behind you just because their expectations are different from yours. That is the worst mistake you could possibly do."
Lewis swallowed.
"How do you know about Grayston?"
Chrissie remembered. Lewis had wanted to move to Grayston and go to a special technical school. His parents had been furious at the thought of him leaving so young, saying that if he left without their consent, he wouldn't
be a part of the family anymore.
The ghost now pointed at the California brothers.
"Shame on you two. What if your parents knew?"
Chrissie and Lewis looked at each other. Then they looked at Lara, puzzled.
"Bradley and Nicky are smoking pot."
"How do you know all this stuff?! You're just a stupid ghost!" Brad yelled,
angry, and waved his hand furiously through Lara.
"We ghosts have our ways," she replied, sounding slightly edgy.
"What are you - who are you to pick on us, anyway?"
"I speak on the right given by the fact that I did my fair share of mistakes, and that is why I died. That is why I remain in this house."
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
As always, comments and reviews would be much appreciated - they're the fuel that feeds this creative furnace.
siirma6@surfeu.fi