…

Vivien and Violet made it to Tate's bedroom without being intercepted. The strong wind blowing outside made an eerie howling sound through the closed windows and a harsh rain pelted the dark glass.

"Shit," Violet said as she pulled the door shut. There was no lock. She turned to her mother, who looked drained and drawn.

"We need a weapon," the older woman said. "Just in case."

She didn't say it but they both knew she meant it was in case something found them that wouldn't be turned aside by a simple 'go away'. They both looked around but they found nothing that would help in the bedroom. Chad and Patrick had done a thorough job of making sure the room was weapon-free.

"The closet," suggested Vivien. "The coat racks in most of the closets… they're loose. They drop right into brackets. Try pulling the rod out."

Violet nodded and went to the closet. The rack was lined with clothes of Chad's choosing and a few of Tate's favorite ugly old sweaters. The sweaters never failed to catch Violet's eye because of their outdated style. They were all eyesores and she liked them because of their fearless individuality. They, like their owner, might put off many people but a select few could see the value in them. And she knew what they meant to him.

She grabbed the armful of clothes and pulled them off the rod, dropping them in a pile on the floor. If Chad complained later she would apologize for the mess - if there was a later. Once the rod was clear she pushed up on it. It stuck a bit at first then swung free. She twisted it all the way out and turned to bring it out of the closet. She spied a belt hanging from a nail right next to the door and thought it out of place. But she didn't stop to wonder why it wasn't hanging with the rest of the clothing.

"I got it," she said once she emerged with the wooden pole. "You don't know where the gun is, do you?"

Vivien shook her head. "Last I saw, I think Chad had taken it back. It might be in his room but I don't think we should try to go and find it."

"We can't just sit here," Violet debated. She braced the rod against the floor and gave her mother a look that was half determined and half pleading.

"I don't know what else we can do," said Vivien. She fussed over Joshua, smoothing his thin hair. "I think he's cold."

She went to the closet then and grabbed a soft flannel shirt from the pile of clothing on the floor. She used it to wrap the baby in. He grunted a bit but settled once she had him swaddled and tucked securely into the crook of her arm.

There was a rattling at the door then and both women turned toward the sound. Violet stepped forward and readied her clothing rod like a baseball bat. The door swung open to reveal…

Nora. Her curly hair was messy and the shawl around her shoulders was torn and askew.

"The baby!" she gasped, clutching at the shawl with one hand to keep it from falling as she tripped into the room.

Seeing Vivien and the flannel-wrapped bundle, she was visibly quite relieved. She found new strength to hurry over to the other woman where she checked on the state of the infant. She smiled then and pressed her other hand to her chest where her heart would be, were she alive.

"Oh, thank heavens!" Nora sighed. "Everything's gone completely mad!"

Violet pushed the door shut again and considered shoving the bookshelf in front of it. She doubted that would help much if anything really wanted to get in though.

"Yes," Vivien nodded. She let Nora take the baby. "We know. That's why we're here. The priest- There was a priest here. He blessed this room."

Nora rearranged the shirt around the sleeping baby's face so she could see all of it and held Joshua close. Then she looked at the other women in the room, puzzled. "Why would a priest come here?" She fluttered a hand dismissively, not really interested in the answer. "If you see him again, have him do the halls as well. I ran into a very nasty bug-like thing of a man out there. It chased me almost the whole way here. It tried to take my head off!"

Violet and Vivien exchanged grim looks while Nora glanced over at the door nervously.

"Looks like we're stuck here," Vivien sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed.

"But for how long?" said Violet. She leaned on her closet pole again like it was a spear. She really didn't want to be stuck in a bedroom while important things were happening elsewhere. "I should go…"

"Go where?" asked Vivien, alarmed.

"Don't be ridiculous," chided Nora, though she did it while gazing lovingly at the infant in her arms. "Whatever's happening out there, the men will handle it. Your place is in here."

Violet wasn't so sure. She wasn't convinced the men could handle whatever was going on in the house and she was growing more certain with each passing moment that her place was out there, with them, facing whatever was happening. Stuck in the bedroom with the mothers and baby was not where she wanted to be. It made her feel useless. Impatient.

"Mom…" she said, tone already petitioning.

"Violet," said Vivien. She didn't sound at all permissive. "It's too dangerous."

"Mom!" objected Violet. "I can handle this! Whatever it is, it can't kill me."

"We don't know what it can do," said Vivien. "Or what it wants. I don't want-" She choked on the thought as she turned it into words. "I don't want anything to happen to you. I don't want to lose you too."

She was referring to Ben and her daughter could tell. Violet softened a little and went to her mother. She held out a hand which Vivien took with both of her own.

"I'll be okay, mom," Violet insisted softly. Her eyes implored understanding. "You know me. You know I'm stronger than-" She almost said 'dad' but stopped herself. "Whatever's out there in the halls. I have to do what I can to help end this. We can't… we can't stay here like this."

Vivien wanted to object but she knew Violet was right, at least about the fact that they couldn't continue to just sit there waiting for whatever was going to happen.

"I'll come with you," she said and started to rise.

Violet shook her head. "No, mom. You stay here. I'll do better on my own and Nora…" She glanced at the blonde-haired ghost. The woman was lost in her adoring worship of baby Joshua. "She might need help. You know?"

Vivien nodded then reached out to hug her daughter. The girl was so tough and independent. Though they were on good terms, they didn't touch often because Violet wasn't a touchy-feely person by nature. But in this instance Vivien felt the need to trump the girl's desire for personal space. It was a mother's right. It also allowed the older woman a moment to brush away quickly the two hot tears that tried to escape her without Violet seeing.

When her mother let go the teen girl took her closet rod and headed out into the hall, tugging the door shut behind her. She glanced around, immediately on alert. It was incredibly dark in the hallway; oppressively dark. It reminded her of the darkness she'd seen when her family had toured a cavern when she was little. She could actually feel the dark then, like a physical presence sitting on her skin and filling her nose. It was a big feeling of smothering nothingness. She felt just like that in the upstairs hall of Murder House.

Only here she could hear distant sounds. Weird sounds she couldn't identify. She gripped the rod tighter and headed carefully in the direction of the stairs by memory since she couldn't see. She thought about shifting past them down to the ground floor but she was afraid she'd leave the pole behind if she did. She had never successfully carried a real, solid object with her when she shifted through space and she had tried. And as silly as it might be, she took comfort in the solid presence of the stick.

It was kind of funny, she supposed, that she'd been so concerned with wanting to retain her human qualities when she really had no idea what she could do as a ghost. She'd seen some of the other spirits do some pretty amazing things but she hadn't really done much apart from seeing how many ways she could destroy herself and recover from it. She decided that she would have to find a balance between exploring what she could do now and trying to maintain her humanity. Because she really would feel better if she could do something like what Kyle had done to her at the school, pushing her back several feet with just a touch. She wasn't confident in her latent abilities to want to try new things that might not work, in a situation this out of control.

So she kept the wooden closet rod and moved slowly through the darkness.

…

Downstairs, Father Jeremiah took a few hasty steps back away from the door and Rubber Man. The black-suited individual stalked after him menacingly, more terrifying than any half-remembered dream the priest had experienced. Jeremiah turned a little to better shelter Michael from the monster.

"Stay back!" he shouted at the shiny black creature.

Rubber Man hesitated but kept coming so Jeremiah kept backpedaling toward the stairs. He almost tripped backward when his heel hit the bottom step. Rubber Man tensed ready to spring when a sudden movement in the hallway to his right distracted them both. The creature that once was Hayden shot out of the hall behind the stairs in a blur of motion and slammed into the rubber-suited individual, carrying them both into the far wall. The femme-monster quickly pinned Rubber Man and with an unholy screech tore at him with all six of her arms.

It was a gruesome sight to see the dragon-like beast disembowel the other spirit but Jeremiah couldn't make himself look away. He was transfixed with the horror of it all.

"Dad!" Violet shouted from the stairs behind the priest.

Her voice broke the paralysis and pulled Father Jeremiah's attention off the carnage. The she-beast also looked up and she hissed at the teen to Jeremiah's left. Covered in blood and gore, the creature launched itself at Violet next.

The girl on the stairs screamed but didn't flee. Instead she jammed one end of the closet rod she had with her against the bottom stair to block the monster. The patched-together woman was moving too fast to shift plans or motion and she rammed herself full-tilt into the pole, impaling the main portion of her grotesque torso brutally. It must have struck something important because the creature staggered back away from the small group at the stairway. She still had the pole lodged in her midsection when she disappeared. Rubber Man had also vanished during the melee.

Violet looked to the priest with wide eyes. "Get him someplace safe," she panted. Then she sat down heavily on the bottom stairs to collect herself.

Jeremiah nodded and hurried for the door. This time nothing stopped him on his way out.

"Violet!" Tate's voice reached her from the basement stairs. Shortly after he emerged and ran to her. He grabbed her up from the steps in a powerful hug, squeezing her tight. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she assured with a small smile to prove her words.

"What about Michael?"

She shook her head when he pulled back to look at her. "I don't know. Father Jeremiah's- I think he took him to the hospital. They just left. They'll be safe, I think."

Chad and Patrick both emerged from the basement then. Both looked dirty and battered but in one piece. Tate had released them and the she-beast from the same vault-like room in the far reaches of the basement. Both of the men looked like they needed some rest. Violet suspected she did too.

She was about to say as much when the earthquake struck.

…

Author's Note:

We're almost halfway through the last episode now. What better way to mark that milestone than with an earthquake?

So as I was reflecting on this multi-episode fanfic, I considered how many of the horror movie/show tropes I'd managed to include. I felt I should nod to as many as I could over the course of writing this monster. Then I was out with friends one afternoon and I realized I'd overlooked one of the most basic horror movie tropes of all.

"I haven't impaled anyone!" I blurted out in the car.

Fortunately I was with friends who know what I've been writing and they were able to correctly assume that I was talking about this fic and not me, personally. Although that is true as well: I haven't done that. But I knew I had to impale someone in this story. It happens in every horror serial out there. And even in many non-serial horror shows and films. It's a tried-and-true given - it's just not horror till somebody gets impaled.

So. There's the impaling for you. And another baker's dozen of cultural references too. Let's see. "The horror of it all" is a song from Return of the Living Dead pt. 2. The bug-monster Nora dealt with is a nod to the bad guy in Men in Black, who still gives me the heebie-jeebies. The reference to a dragon ties in with many occult-based films, which in Revelation in the Bible, is almost synonymous with the devil. Violet having to move through palpable darkness was largely inspired by the Paranormal Activity films, which I watched around the time of this writing. The Exorcist and the Amityville Horror also factored largely into this Episode.

Check back for the next installment!