Off the Pedestal:
Chapter Five:
Full Summary: AU. Paul POV. First in the 'Disturbed' trilogy. His grandfather had always warned him about his powers, shifting especially. He'd ended up a cripple, and didn't want to see Paul end up like that. But it eventually got to Paul too, and though he's fine physically, he's now insane… Look out, Carmel, Paul Slater's coming to town.
A/N: See the note at the end of the last chapter about the change of rating.
I'm in World Civ and Lola still hasn't come back. When I traipsed back into the room, the class kind of ignored it (ie. the missing pupil) until old Walden came over and said, "Some people have told me that you were with Miss. Albertrosh, Mr. Slater. Do you know where she is now?"
I look at him. He seems fearful – oh, I get it, he knows. He thinks I've murdered Lola! Well, that's rich. May as well murder her if people are going to have these constant suspicions about me… It's all the priests' fault, really. He shouldn't go around telling my teachers that I'm a bloody nutter, should he? Come to think of it, he shouldn't even have let me into this school. I was expelled for God's sake. You'd think he'd be afraid of me – afraid that I'd poison one of his students, or something.
Then again, you never know. He could be hoping to 'enlighten' me with all the greatness of his God and all that crap. I'll 'enlighten' the bloody idiot with my fist, if I need to. Damnit, I hardly even know him and I still have fifty million reasons to loathe the old guy!
I lean forwards slightly, "I was with her," I say. "She was in a hall the last time I saw her, and I don't give a shit about how she feels, considering she's an inconsiderate little moron." He seems to be going sort of bug-eyed. I bite back the urge to laugh. Bug-eyed. Funny expression. Like his eyes have turned into a bugs or something. Oh, can you imagine someone with spider eyes? Six pairs of eyes! It'd sure creep everyone out!
He steps away with a weary sigh. "Detention tomorrow night, Mr. Slater," he informs me.
"Great," I say unenthusiastically, and completely zone out.
I meant it. I don't give about how she feels – or any of them, for that matter. I have my own things to work out, and my investigation doesn't seemed to be going too well, so I felt it would be somehow wise to inform everyone about my current temper – then again, being able to explode on them is always fun.
And, today, explode I will, for I am pissed off.
I'm sick of this puzzle. I've been working on it for months now, yet it's the key to so many secrets that I just have to figure it out. It's the key to a whole new world, and I'm stuck coming up with theories about it. There are times when I'm more 'lucid' as you'd call it, where I sit and think about it. The thoughts tend to go something like this:
It's a bloody DOOR. You open the handle and enter it. Simple!
It's not that I haven't tried that though, what kind of a moron do I subconsciously think that I am? I mean, even Charmaine the brainless moron knows how to open a door. It just doesn't work that way, and whatever I sometimes think, I know that you can open that bloody door. It wouldn't be there if you couldn't. I also know it's important; I read up on some of it and of course there's the bloody gatekeeper. That guy doesn't just block ANY doors. He's like an intellectual troll or something (if there's any such thing), one who only guards the most dangerous places.
And I go wherever there is danger and wherever there is mystery, and this is pretty much a two-for-one deal here, so how can I miss it?
Sadly, there's no kind of logic that I've found out so far, so I'm now experimenting with patterns of numbers and rituals and things.
Rituals are confusing. What could it be anyway? You can just imagine some sort of advert: throw five victims through the door in one day and receive a new world free! Then again, that doesn't solve the problem of actually OPENING the door. I mean, all the ghosts I've brought up couldn't even see it, so I think it's a shifter thing, a thing for ME to solve and me alone. And seeing it is, of course, going one step closer to opening it.
I can't find any kind of pattern. As soon as my hand even brushes the doorknob, the gatekeeper arrives and acts totally over the top and chucks me out. As disgruntled as I am to have to admit it, he's pretty strong.
Well, not physically, obviously, just spiritually. Whoa, that sounds like a right bunch of crap, doesn't it? But both ghosts and shifters have more power than other people do, and he can force me to shift sometimes. Luckily, I'm pretty damn good at defending against that, so one day I COULD just make a break for the door, considering he'd already be there.
Besides, I'm very familiar with the fact that he's tied to the door. I don't see why he won't let me through: I mean, all the ghosts I've seen moan about how they deserve eternal rest, but this guy just doesn't want it. I bet he'd be free to get his just desserts or whatever if he just let someone through the damn door, but he just won't.
I should have some advantage over him, though. I was here when he first arrived. It's one of those things that you remember like it was yesterday…
I'd read up about the door, of course. And you know you're at the right one when only you can see it, and it glows.
That's right. A glowing DOOR – mad, right? I obviously grew very curious and decided to open it. I'm rather ashamed of myself at that time, for I hadn't much shifting knowledge – nothing like the amount I have now. But I still think I was quite well prepared, so I picked the lock with a hairpin.
The hairpin thing is rather a funny story, actually. I'd stolen it from some girl in a park somewhere – yeah, this was ages ago – she'd been a right bitch, so I pulled her hair. I didn't even pull it that hard, but it's like she was moulting or something as I pulled a great big handful out. The hairpin was attached to that.
My parents and hers were friends, so her parents looked after Jack and us whenever my parents decided to sod off to do some golfing or whatever. I made a point to tie it all together, and just keep that hairpin in it to tease her. It was hilarious and upset her to no end. She said people would think I was some kind of stalker if I had bits of her hair in an effort to get to me to chuck it out, but she failed. Anyway, that's beside the point.
The day I went up there, we were looked after by her parents, so I had the hairpin and hair. When I'd picked the lock, the door swung open slowly, and it was a really bright light, so I couldn't see anything, then all of a sudden I was flung backwards, making me one pissed off shifter. As I lay on the floor, wincing in pain (I was a lot weaker then), there was a loud banging sound.
I looked up hurriedly, and my suspicions were correct: the door was shut, now. This wasn't the only thing that caught my attention, though: it was the massive ghostly bloke standing in front of it. The gatekeeper. He just stared down at me with a completely blank expression, except this angry look in his eyes. At the time, he seemed to speak almost robotically.
"It is not your time," he said, "For you are not the chosen one." That was also the first time he showed his powers, as I woke up in my room, with a four year old Jack trying to wake me up. He looked so relieved when he did that it was just pathetic. I remembered what had happened immediately, and started laughing hysterically. I wasn't even sure why, but 'you are not the chosen one'? How funny was that? Who did the guy think he was, anyway? The bloody Keeper of Souls?
Apparently, my random bout of laughter had scared Jack. I mean, bloody hell, I knew Jack was scared of everything, but LAUGHTER? How pathetic is that? I could just imagine him running whenever anyone laughed, which amused me even more and made me laugh harder.
Incidentally, after that experience was the time they decided I'd gone off my rocker. Quite funny, really, as people think you're insane for LAUGHING. Of course, there was the whole talking to ghosts angle and thinking I was psychotic, but that's not my problem.
And they wonder why I exorcise them. Pfft.
As I finish reminiscing, the shuffling of feet and desks reaches my ears, and I look up. Apparently it is the end of the lesson. I walk to the door, but –
"Mr Slater, will you please stay behind a minute?"
I freeze and glare at him, but go back nonetheless. I may as well humour him. He shuts the door after the last few people have left, and suddenly drops the formality. "Paul, are you okay? You act as if you don't listen to a word that anyone says."
I look up at him, amused. "I don't," I shrug nonchalantly. "Can I go now?"
He sighs, frustrated. "Paul, you really HAVE to listen in class. It's very important, as I'm sure you know. You see-"
I zone out again. I tend to zone out whenever I hear his voice.
When he's done ranting at me and gives me a hall pass, I walk out of the room and head to my locker. At least, that's what I'm planning on doing. I'm supposed to be in Algebra, but it's Walden's fault I've been kept in, not my own. I fumble with the combination, sift through my books and take the ones out for next period, then head towards the next class.
I don't quite make it on time. You see, I got a little preoccupied with a spectral visitor.
Only this one wasn't here to see me.
"Fatherplease help me, please get her for me!" She sounds so bloody pathetic that I carry on walking. She is a woman, smaller than me and glowing like crazy, looking at the good father like she was his pet (ha, wouldn't THAT be funny). "Please, please! I need her! She'll help me, I know she will!" Her hand reaches out suddenly, and grabs at his clothing.
That was when I froze, because her hand didn't go through him.
The father of all deception sighs. "Who is it that you want to see?" He asks curiously. I am curious, too. Who was that important?
"Suze, she said she'd help me! She swore she would, and I need her help, father!" Father Dom sighs again. I blinked. Who the hell was Suze? I store this in my memory to figure out later – it seems that there is another Mediator loose, not counting the priest.
"She is in class right now," he says patiently. "She is a student here at this school and cannot come out of lessons to perfect her mediation technique," here he shoots the girl a pointed look.
"But I've seen you!" the enraged woman yells. "You talk to her about it in your office, why can't you do that now? This is important! She'll help me if you get her. Father, get her for me!"
"I cannot get Susannah out of class to deal with this. She'll come to you later, you know she will, so please do not worry, my child. Now," he is speaking with an extremely infuriating calm, "what is your name, so I can pass along a message?"
She sniffs. "Janice," she says in a heart-wrenching sob that makes me double over in silent laughter. What a drama queen!
Father Dom nods thoughtfully. "Susannah has told me about you. She told me that you wouldn't explain to her how you died. Would you like to talk about it now?"
Her only reply is turning her nose up. Stuck up cow.
He is exasperated, I can tell. "Will you tell Susannah later on?"
"Maybe," she says in an irritating, non-committal way. If I were the father, I'd have kicked her ass by now. How the heck can he remain so calm when he's obviously frustrated?
Anyway, he says something – I don't catch what it is – and walks away.
She's going to materialize and I know it, so I step in first, grabbing hold of her and smirking evilly. She goes to scream. I wonder about letting her, after all, the priest thinks that only his precious Susannah can see her, but decide that it's all in good fun. Besides, inducing fear in people is what I live for.
I clamp a hand around her mouth and give her a sickly-sweet smile, very similar to the sort that I used on Lola. "So," I say conversationally, "are you gonna tell me who this Susannah chick is, or do I have to beat it out of you?" I'm deathly serious and she knows it, struggling against my grip but to no avail. She's quivering in my gaze and I don't care, doing nothing but revel in that feeling of satisfaction and ultimate power.
A/N: Sorry for the long wait, I had a lot of writer's block. Hope you like it.
I hope that answers the questions about Suze. Admittedly, she isn't in the plot of this as much as she is in the two sequels – the two sequels are almost completely based on her and Paul (and the ongoing Shadowland storyline, of course). She'll show up soon, though she may not have a big role until later. I mean, see, she's mentioned! XD
Review, my lovelies, review!
Chloe.