When Alex woke up, she was very disoriented. Her head hurt, and she couldn't recall falling asleep, almost like she was hungover. From every direction she could hear whispers, but she couldn't really make out the words. She must've fallen asleep on someone's lap because she can feel what is definitely a chest cushioning her head, rising and falling with their breathing. They're humming a song she swears she knows, but she can't recall the name. She hadn't had a one night stand in awhile, not since her freshman year of college 3 years ago.
She's even more confused when she opens her eyes and sees nothing. She can definitely feel arms holding her upright, legs underneath of her, and the chest she's using a pillow, but there's no one there. The moment her eyes had opened, the humming had cut off abruptly, and the body under her tensed up. She matched that tension now, muscles contracting in preparation for a movement that didn't happen as she remained there, frozen.
She's confused and faintly nauseous, but fear doesn't come quite yet. She glances around, finding herself in a rather large glass cell. There isn't a door as far as she can see, just four completely sealed walls. There's familiar white inscriptions on all four walls, and she can make out countless empty cells on three of the sides.
"Everything's okay, you're safe," a motherly voice says, her whisper standing out from the rest for some reason. Alex looks around, but of course there's no one there. Suddenly, the unseen body under her shifts as they gently lift her off their lap, removing themselves from her person entirely. She doesn't hesitate, using the chance to scoot herself backwards on the ground until her back is pressed against a wall.
"Breathe, dear," the same voice comes again, and she realizes that she had been hyperventilating. She closes her eyes and focuses on breathing, trying to calm herself down. She's wary when she opens her eyes, but there's still nothing but glass and metal to see. She tries to remember where she is, how she got here, but she can't.
And then everything from the night before comes flooding back; the junkyard, Cyrus, Dennis, the ghost, the glass cube. But she isn't nearly as terrified as she should be, something about not being able to see the ghost comforting. Reason also prevails; he hadn't hurt her. He had kill so many people the night before, but the Breaker hadn't hurt her. She had been in the junkyard all summer, and he hadn't really hurt her. Scared her, yes, but he hadn't left her a broken and bruised corpse. The smaller cube that they had been in before was a far cry from this cell. There was no blood on the walls, there were no body parts on the floor. It was just her and the Breaker, just like it had been all summer. Or at least that's what she told herself to keep sane.
She's startled when suddenly the pair of glasses from the night before comes sliding across the floor, ending their path at her hand.
"Don't look," a new female voice calls out, further away than the first voice but still close enough to be heard clearly. And she wants to heed the warning, but she can't deny her curiosity. She puts on the glasses slowly, expecting something to jump out at her the moment she can see, but nothing does. Instead, the ghost from before is sitting across the cell from her. He's still horrifying, being as large and gory as he is, but there's no threat in his posture. He's leaning on the wall behind him, legs stretched out in front of him, watching her carefully. It's a shocking difference from the snarl she had seen on him previously. Up close, she can read the name on his shirt.
"Mahoney?" she croaks, the first thing she's said since she's woken up. The ghost across from her nods slowly, hesitantly. Behind him, in the next cell, there's a woman in a hospital gown. She must've once been very beautiful, but now half of her body was covered in red, angry burns. The woman smiles gently, and something about it makes her want to cry.
"What's your name, sweetie?" she urges. She hesitates for a moment, unsure of if she should respond, but she feels like the other woman can be trusted. And it's not like giving her name was dangerous.
"Alex Darrling." It seems deafening in the sudden quiet of the basement, as if the rest had gone silent just in time for her to speak up. It was beyond eerie.
"What a beautiful name!" she compliments with another gentle smile, genuine in her delight, before going on to introduce herself, "I'm Jean Kriticos."
"Kriticos? As in Cyrus Kriticos?" she asks without thinking it through, the name causing a frown to appear on the burned woman's face. Something dark crosses Mahoney's face at the mention of the name, but everything is fine as long as it isn't directed at her.
"Unfortunately. He's related to my husband," Jean explains, something like melancholy appearing as she mentions her previous life. She looks so tortured, but there's nothing Alex can say. It's like watching the sun be smothered behind dark clouds, depressing and nerve wrecking.
"What's going on? Why am I here? Why are you all here?" she finds herself rambling, almost begging either of the ghosts looking at her for an answer. Jean seems to be fretting over how to answer, whereas her cellmate continues to just watch her. And someone responds, but not who she was expecting.
"Excellent question, Ms. Darrling," a familiar voice sneers, and she turns to see Cyrus himself standing in a hallway, looking at her. At his arrival, her cellmate suddenly appears standing in front of him, banging on the barrier as if he could force his way through. All the others in the basement begin to call out, to scream, to cackle, and it's so very loud. She can feel their anger and hatred like it's a physical sensation, their misery obvious. It makes her feel like she's going insane, because this entire situation is crazy.
"Will you cease that infernal banging! I am trying to have an intelligent conversation here, something which you clearly aren't capable of," he hisses, which only serves to enrage her cellmate more. It gives her flashbacks to the night before, the pure and unadulterated rage that had resulted in so many mangled bodies. It's all she could see with every time his fists hit the glass, blood and bodies. She cowered in the face of it, and she rationally knew that this was PTSD, that her ghostly companion probably wouldn't kill her, but it didn't help. Alex could almost hear the screams of the men as they ran away, as they were crushed, as they were broken.
"Please, stop," she pleaded in a voice that seemed so different from her norm, like she was made from fragile crystal rather than the person she had been before all of this. She's surprised that he managed to hear her at all. He froze, hands midway in their journey to hammer on the glass again. He looks at her, the snarl still on his face, but he seems startled when he takes in her expression and body language. It's a far cry from how he looked when he had lifted her up in the cage, when she had fainted.
"Interesting," Cyrus murmurs as the ghost backs away from the glass, though he doesn't cease his snarling, "Now where were we? Ah, yes. You see Ms. Darrling, you are here because, for some reason, the Juggernaut decided not to kill you. I didn't even realize you were alive until he was transferred from the holding cube and came out carrying your very much intact and alive body. Imagine my surprise." Alex spared a glance at the aforementioned ghost, trying to see if he had any reaction to the man's words, only to find him looking steadfastly away from her, like he was ashamed. It was comforting, though she wasn't sure what it meant.
"What's going on? Why have you trapped all these spirits?" Alex wanted to plead with the man to let her go, wanted to promise that she could forget about this whole situation if he would just open the door, but it was clear that he didn't intend to free her.
"I guess it couldn't hurt to tell you," he decides after a moment of consideration, his ego clearly pushing him to gloat, "You see, this entire house is really a machine. And these twelve ghosts are all batteries. Each ghost was carefully selected for the role it fits. For example, the Breaker there, Horace Mahoney, is perfect to be my Juggernaut. Jean here makes a splendid Withered Lover. Building this machine, collecting these ghosts; it's been my life's work." He sounds proud of himself, arrogant in his intelligence and in his ability to trap these ghosts that had once been people. She has so many questions on the tip of her tongue, like how he could be so cruel, how he could justify imprisoning them, but she reigns herself in. She's in a very dangerous situation, and her only hope of survival is to learn more about his plans, and how she fits into them.
"And what exactly does this machine do?" She couldn't imagine anything good coming from a machine that's powered by the dead, but maybe she was wrong, maybe it was able to end world hunger or something. Or maybe it did the opposite, maybe it acted like a Doomsday machine. And maybe she should stop overthinking because it was only serving to freak her out more.
"How astute," he huffs, something analytical but curious in his manic gaze as he both compliments and insults her, "It will open the Eye of Hell. It's a shame my Darrling, you could've been such an asset." Cyrus's tone makes her sick, lights a fire in her soul, and his very presence makes her skin crawl. At this point, surrounded by 12 ghosts apparently, she can't really bring herself to question if Hell exists, much less what the Eye of Hell is.
"I would've never helped you," she hisses, jumping up from her seated position as if she could spit in his face.
"But haven't you? You're the one who led me to the Juggernaut after all," he cooed cruelly, tapping his cane against the glass sharply like she was a petulant child. It was demeaning, and she wondered if he treated all of his victims like this, if it got him off.
"You tricked me! You told me you were going to help me talk to him, there was nothing about capturing him! You can't do this! You can't play God!" Alex accused, finger leaving smudges on the glass between them as she pointed at the man with every statement. The imperfections made the vicious part of her smug, as it distorted Cyrus's image.
"Playing is for children. I'm going to be God!" he asserted before turning around dramatically, storming away from their cell, like he was tired of playing with her, like she had become unreasonable.
"You asshole! Let me go!" she screams after him, but he doesn't even pause before disappearing around a corner. Her scream of frustration is lost in the wails of the others, and as she turns around, pacing away from the hallway, she finds her cellmate had returned to his sitting position on the floor, watching her. She almost wants to scream at him, ask him what he's looking at, but maybe pissing off the ghost known as the Juggernaut wasn't the best idea. She vaguely remembers the comic book character of the same name, how he was known for being unstoppable during his rages. Given the sheer amount of bullet holes in the ghost, it doesn't seem to be much of a stretch that he was the same way.
"You need to get out of here," the Withered Lover urged from next door, as if Alex doesn't know that.
"I'm aware, but that doesn't really seem to be an option right now," she snaps, immediately regretting her sharpness when she sees how Jean frowns, "I'm sorry, I'm just frustrated."
"Aren't we all!" the same female voice from further down the hall chimes in, the one who told her not to look, something like amusement in her tone. Alex walks back over to the wall between her cell and the hallway, trying to see more. She can see some of the imprisoned ghosts, the way their cells seem staged like a scene, and she wonders why there's nothing like that in their cell or Jean's.
"Can you tell me more?" Alex calls out, even though she can't see the girl. But she seemed to be the only one volunteering information, even Jean seemed uncomfortable.
"It would be my pleasure," she responds, seemingly eager to talk, and Alex wondered what she was like when she was alive, "So, directly across the hall from you is the First Born Son, Billy." She look at the aforementioned cell, seeing a little boy dressed up like a cowboy with an arrow through his head and a hatchet in hand. He waved robotically, and there was an emptiness to his eyes that she found unnerving. It was unclear if it was a result of his death, or if maybe it had been the cause.
"He's just a child," she muttered, pitying the strange child. To die so young and then to be trapped here, Billy was truly a child of misfortune.
"Even children die horrible deaths, Alex," Jean pointed out, as if that was her only reservation, as if she wasn't more astounded by Cyrus's lack of humanity.
"Next to him, we have the Torn Prince, Royce," the girl from down the hall continued, sounding annoyed at the interruption. It was a teenager sitting on an upside down car, tapping a baseball bat against the glass in his apparently boredom.
"What's up, dollface?" he greeted with a smirk, sounding every bit the greaser that he appeared to be. He stood up and winked at her, playing the part of the prince and bowing shallowly, mockingly, and as he moved, she saw the other side of him. It was destroyed, the worst case of road rash she had ever seen. Alex doesn't doubt his death was extremely painful. She couldn't stop the shiver that racked her body, the grimace that took over her face.
"Oh, come on, I don't bite," Royce teased meanly in response to her reaction to his body and face, "Unless, of course, you want me to." There's a rough sound from the Juggernaut that startles her, and she looks over to see him growling, glaring at the Torn Prince. He must've found the other ghost's remark to be insulting, but it didn't anger enough to move him to rage.
She continued introducing the ghosts that Alex could see from her cell, but most of them didn't react, like they were lost in their own worlds. Either they were completely unaware of their surroundings, or they had been here long enough that they didn't care.
"The other ghosts down here that you can't see are the Hammer, AKA George, the Jackal, AKA Ryan, and myself, the Bound Woman, but my name used to be Susan." Alex wishes that she had a piece of paper to write all of the names down on, because she is very unsure of her ability to not fuck them all up. And with her own introduction out of the way, the girl seemed content, going silent. She reminded Alex of the popular girls at school, so friendly when it suited them, but their fakeness and disdain dripping from every word and smile.
"Alex, if you ever come across the Jackal, I want you to run, alright?" Jean tells her quietly, like she didn't want the others to hear, a strict expression on her face as her eyes stared at her seriously.
"Why?" she asked meekly, trying to sort through all the names, who the Jackal was according to her crash course.
"He's a very disturbed man, or at least the shell of one," she explained, before something like awkwardness crossed her twisted features, "And he's known for his violence towards females."
"Oh," she mumbled quietly, sliding down the wall to sit once more, hugging her legs to her chest. Jean seemed to understand that she was done talking to her for now, because the Withered Lover moved to the other side of her cell, chatting to the ghost the next cell. He seemed to be pretty good at conversation for being in literal pieces. Now that she had calmed down, she found goosebumps breaking out across her skin. Not only was her cellmate still staring at her silently, but it was actually pretty chilly in the glass basement. Given that the only occupants were ghosts, she's guessing comfort wasn't exactly one of Cyrus's priorities.
"So your name is actually Horace Mahoney?" Alex asked tentatively, like that question alone would earn her the wrath of the man across from her. But he didn't seem to mind, nodding his head in response. It made him more human in her mind; it gave the monster from before a name. And while he still was intimidating, both because of his size and ghastly appearance, there was no threat in his posture. Despite being trapped here against his will, he seemed generally calm.
"And you were the ghost in the junkyard? You killed all those people?" Again he nodded, and she noticed that he had no remorse for his actions, not to say that he was proud either. It was almost like those lives had been meaningless to him, like they were pests rather than people.
"But you didn't kill me." It wasn't a question, more like a clarification, and instead of answering her in anyway that mattered, he merely cocked his head, expression reminiscent of a deadpan. Apparently he had more personality than just the Juggernaut if the sass was anything to go by.
"Were those actually your dogs?" And yes, was that really the most important question? No, and judging by how Horace's mouth twitched like he was fighting back a grin, he thought so too, though he still nodded. But those junkyard dogs were the beginning of everything. She wondered how he could've just stood there and let them be abused. Or if she stepped in just in time to actually save those people. He had never responded on the message board after her first message, though she had left messages for him every visit. And had he been there?
"So were you with me the entire time, the whole summer?" After another affirmative nod, she almost felt like sighing in relief. Alex had thought it was unnatural, how much she had grown attached to the junkyard. In reality, it was just a literal scrap yard, yet being there had brought such a sense of comfort. And now she was beginning to suspect that it had been because of him, because he had been there the entire time. For months, he had let her into his territory, into his house. He had watched her play with the dogs, he had listened to her sing offkey to her guilty pleasure songs. Did that make them friends? Or had he simply been examining her? Why had he shown her such violence that fateful night?
"Why did you attack me?"
"It was after dark," he finally spoke, which honestly surprised her given that he hadn't said a word up to this point. No vocal answers to her questions, no whispers in the junkyard; if not for his more animalistic sounds, she would've believed him to be mute. But now he's finally said something, only to look away as he does so, a sure sign that he's lying or at the very least not telling the full truth. Not that she was going to call him out, given that she still wasn't confident in her safety.
"Why did you let me go?" And to that, he just shrugged. Obviously he had been capable of ripping her apart at any time, yet he hadn't. Alex wasn't sure if she meant in the junkyard or if she meant in the cube, or if it even mattered which instance. Either he didn't know why he had spared her, or he didn't feel like telling her.
Oddly enough, Alex wasn't sure how she felt about him. She didn't hate him, even after seeing him brutally murder dozens of men, even after he had held her life in his literal hands twice. She was scared, but more so of what he was capable of rather than the ghost himself. In a weird way she had faith in him, that if he hadn't killed her yet, he wouldn't do so in the future without reason. Even after the first time he had attacked her, she still couldn't stay away. She had returned to the junkyard, returned because she wanted to talk to him. The woman wasn't sure what exactly she had wanted from him, if she had wanted answers or if she wanted a story. Even now she was still curious about him, about what kind of life he had lived, about what kind of person he was. And what was stopping her from asking now?
Though, maybe she should be less focused on her cellmate and more focused on how to escape from their cell. After all, there was a chance that Cyrus wasn't coming back down; that she would die in this cell of dehydration. Or maybe the act of opening the Eye of Hell would kill her? To let her out or to create any sort of opening in their glass enclosure would surely allow the escape of the Juggernaut, which wasn't exactly ideal for her captor.
She sighed, taking off the glasses for now and rubbing her temples. Alex was covered in bruises and dried blood, possibly had a concussion, and those damn ghost seeing glasses were giving her a headache. It made her feel slightly better to look up and not see the state of Horace. Of course she knew he was still there, surely watching her, and she could almost feel his presence. But not having to see his body, littered with bullet holes, increased her morale even just a bit. It gave her just enough motivation to try and come up with escape plans. But first things first; to examine every inch of her cell. So with a low groan she shifted onto her knees, beginning to study every seam in the glass. After all, it wasn't a perfect cube surely, the glass had to be glued together somehow. So maybe there was a way to separate the pieces, maybe a way to pry them apart? And this cage was meant for ghosts who were apparently bound to the inscriptions, something that didn't apply to Alex.
She focused her efforts on the wall and doors that led into the hallway; it wouldn't do her much good to create an opening in any other direction. But there didn't seem to be much to go off of. The doors were completely flush with the walls, and the mechanisms were outside the cell. And even though there were a few areas of interest, they weren't very promising. Peeling caulk and slightly warped metal corners didn't really matter, weren't serious enough to warrant her being able to shift the glass.
In the end, Alex was more crestfallen with her discovery of no weaknesses in their cell than when she had started. This time when she slid back down to the ground, she went all the way, laying flat on her back looking up. The coolness of the glass, while a relief on her bruises, made her shiver. Everything so was clean and clinical, it felt unnatural and wrong; just like this whole situation. The ceiling looked the same as the rest of the cell, with the lights and all electronics existing outside. From her position, all she could see was more metal and glass, distorted reflections of herself, and darkness. She wanted to cry, but she was too tired. And she was reminded of her cellmate when there was a tentative touch to her leg. Of course she flinched, instinctually searching for the cause of the contact even while knowing she wouldn't be able to see him without the glasses. But when she didn't get up, there wasn't another tap, so she assumed that he was just making sure she was alive. And wasn't that ironic; even if she died here she wouldn't be free.
"I'm fine, just tired. I didn't get any sleep, given that I was up all night and then passed out, which isn't as restful as you would think," Alex explained aloud, unsure if he was bothered by her chatter or by the way she was sprawled out on the floor of their cell. But, seeing as he had put up with her for months, she hoped that he was used to it. There was an answering grunt from nowhere, as if he was acknowledging that he heard and/or understood her. It made her petty nature preen that he was forced to make sounds to communicate now that she couldn't see him nod.
"It was only my first day in town when I found those guys being assholes to your dogs. I didn't even know that the junkyard was supposedly haunted or anything. I was just supposed to be there for the summer helping my aunt, and instead I spent everyday at the junkyard. Of course it was weird that I never met the dogs' owner, but they were obviously well cared for. I don't even know how you had so many bags of dog food and treats, given that you can't just go to the store; yet there was never any actual food. I guess I should've found that weirder, but I just thought you lived on takeout or something. Things were always moved, there was always progress on the scraps being processed and your hobby car being worked on; how was I supposed to know you were dead? I was so close to never knowing about you, so close to just going back to school for fall semester. But I would've always wondered, maybe even would've tried to visit on holidays. I felt more at home in your junkyard than anywhere I've ever lived." Alex mumbled as she rambled, eyes closed as she talked to the ghost that was surely forced to listen, given that he couldn't escape her. She wasn't loud, her voice just above a whisper. But as she talked, the ever grating sound of the other whispers faded out of focus, replaced by a low humming that seemed to surround her. Even as she trailed into silence, too groggy to continue, the humming didn't stop. It was almost hypnotizing, and she recognized it as the tune that she had originally awoken to. And as she slipped into sleep, she finally realized that it was one of the songs that she had played multiple times on repeat over the summer. Alex also came to the conclusion that Horace must be laying next to her on the floor, mirroring her position. Oddly enough, it allowed her to relax enough to let go of everything.
