Chapter 17: Morning Glories
Vivi stirred subtly in the morning light, twisting her body ever so slightly to land the rays of sun onto her pale and shimmering face like a spotlight on her waking performance. It could have only been a few moments since she had fallen into her beautifully deep sleep, an hour at most if you stretched the time long enough, and yet her eyes were batting so sweetly at Lewis and her cheeks were filling with a flush of bright color and those big blue eyes were brimming with a sleepy sort of tenderness, a subconscious display of adoration tinting the sky blue. Lewis held her still as he had promised earlier, vowing never to let her go as she welcomed herself wonderfully back to the waking world with a sigh of pleasure. She was perfect, and he felt perfect, and everything was just as it should have been.
She smiled wide, a grin to best all grins with her cheeks turning those brilliant eyes into happy crescents, sparkling gems filled with thousands of facets. If Lewis' face could soften even further than it already had, it did with that last show of tired affection, growing even warmer inside his newly fixed heart as it beat a steady and somewhat embarrassed pulse. This was what he had waited a million years for, a thousand eternities, just to be like this with Vivi again. Just to hold her, to feel her, to watch her living like she always had and he hoped she would for a long time after. This was it for him, he could die happy.
"You know, watching people sleep is a little creepy."
Vivi's voice was a dove's wing against the backdrop of a Sunday sunrise, sweeping across the horizon with a peaceful, graceful silence before fluttering off into the distant sun as it rose from beneath the Earth in its own slumber. Lewis could feel the pale feathers dance across his face as her breath warmed his chest, sending silent electricity through his bones and between his joints with a shock and leaving him stunned in hush. His eyes closed to revel in the fullness of this moment, taking time to enjoy the simpleness of his desires and the innocence of his wishes. For now, he only wanted to hear her voice speak again, her breath hover above his deathly chest, because in that escape of air he could feel all the galaxies painting warm patterns on his phantom cheeks.
"I couldn't sleep, not with you so close by for the first time in forever. I don't need to rest, anyway," Lewis tore his eyes away from Vivi to glance at the clock on the bedside table, wondering why the heaviest sleeper in the world had slept for only a few short moments before realizing that it was much later than he had expected, "and, honestly, I guess I got so lost in the sounds of you sleeping that I kinda let time slip by. I swear it was two in the morning just a few seconds ago."
She giggled a little before a yawn began to distort her soft features, turning her smirk into a wide and gaping cavern without end as her eyes closed and tears jumped to wet her eyes. First her legs pulled with toes outstretched to the very edge of the bed, releasing the tension in her feet and calves as she reached her arms taut above her head in the same fashion. Lewis released her just a little bit so that she might extend herself even easier, but as she gave one last tug of her waking body it was around his shoulders that her arms fell. With a heave of achy limbs, she pulled herself further up the motel bed to plant a good morning kiss on the bony head of Lewis, a little peck of affection that sent his head up in flames and scorched his pillow with the crisp stench of smoke.
Vivi laughed, loud and clear throughout the motel room as the morning sun lit her face and filled her up with gold. She knew it was the same Lewis that she had so loved if from afar, yet watching an intense and slightly terrifying skeleton ghost of vengeance and fire grow shy and embarrassed at a little kiss was more than enough to tickle her. He was adorable, trying to act so stoic and cool but ending up with hair hot white and flaming nervously at the edges, his eyes flaring brightly in response to her gentle touches. It was like blush on a middle schooler's cheeks, it was like the cracking voice of a high school sweetheart, it was the cutest thing she had ever seen.
"You're so adorable when you're embarrassed, Lulu!" She was giggling like a preschooler now, her voice a coin purse as it jingled with the promise of wealth and joy, "So, if you didn't sleep, what did you do in your spare time in that mansion? Two years is a long time, and there wasn't anything remotely fun in the mansion I saw."
He let his warm face go back to normal before speaking, each word heavy with slow thought as he processed his memories and tried to conjure a clear picture in his head. Honestly, he hadn't done much throughout his stay in the mansion, but what did she expect from a vengeful spirit? They had never exactly been the poster children for productivity.
"Well, I did have a room with a big TV and some older gaming consoles lots of movies, too. I'd play long games in one sitting, marathon Lord of the Rings, that kind of thing. When I got lonely, I had the Dead Beats to keep me company; the pulled a lot of pranks on me, left me little gifts, and even if they couldn't speak to me all the time it was good to talk to them every once in awhile. They protected me and kept me happy, they really cared for me back there." He grinned softly, reminiscing and remembering fondly the ghosts who had cared for him in his spectral infancy, "Sometimes, I'd sing with them quietly, but I was never very good. They enjoyed it anyway."
She reached her hands down to play with his, rolling them over to expose his dark palms as she ran circles around them absentmindedly, "What about that big ol' fridge? You even had a little skull on it, like a branding to say 'keep out!' or something. It was filled to the top! I know you used to like cooking, but…"
He watched her hands as they twirled around his, still smiling as he continued on, "Yeah, I cooked non-stop in the first week or so. I must have made at least a hundred dishes! My Dad always said it was something you had to keep up on, that if I left the kitchen alone for too long I'd lose my family's touch," he began to grow somewhat downcast after his words of pride and excitement, switching from bright eyes to a dull ring of saddened pink, "but then I just stopped. It was too hard for me, reminded me of too much without any real outcomes."
Vivi was watching him closely now, but his eyes were still down on her hands and away from her face, his plated digits gripping hers like a lifeline with desperation and a little bit of lost sorrow, remorse, guilt. He flickered like a dying light bulb at the thoughts, the memories rushing back, his flaming head growing solid with his rising anxieties and saddening acceptance of something on the edge of his tongue, so close and terrifying and true that his words hardly rose to meet her eager ears.
"You know, I've forgotten what my father's food tastes like. I can't remember the spiciness of the chilies or the sweetness of the bells, the consistency of chicken, the creaminess of milk...It's all gone. Food literally goes right through me without taste or smell or feeling, it's become nothing to me," the movements of his weary hands came to a halt, resting idle in Vivi's protection as he pondered what would become of him with concerns to his family, "and then I think about them, my siblings and parents. How will they react to me, V? Or will I be forced never to see them again for fear that they won't accept me? My Mom was nearly killed by a vengeful ghost when she was a little girl, and my Dad was raised by a ghost hunter. And I mean hunter, not at all like us. You and me, we've always tried to find a way to let spirits go in peace, but my abuela...so long as the ghost was gone, she called it good. All the doors and windows in my family's house are lined with pure salt, and the one time my Dad found those lines broken, he nearly burned the house down for fear that something had gotten in. To them, I'd no longer be their son but the child of the devil himself. They...they'd never accept me, not like this."
Vivi reached her hand up to frame his face, rubbing the side of his skull gently to comfort him as his eyes closed with the impending threat of ghostly tears at memories most likely lost forever to him, drifting down the terrible tide of time and fate, "Oh, Lew," she whispered, pausing to gather breath as his brow knitted in pain, "I'm sure they'd understand, somehow. There's nothing your family values more than-"
Before her words could reach their timely end, Vivi was met with the intensely jarring sound of metal on plastic as it filled the room loudly and violated the silence of her early morning chat with Lewis. Three knocks, loud as descending bombs onto a battlefield, gave her tiny heart a fearful start and forced her to jump in surprise while Lewis naturally fell into a protective stance on top of her. At first Vivi grew irritates, angry that such a special and tender moment between her and her long lost love had been broken, stolen from her; then, she grew fearful, because in the eyes of her phantom she could see the red promise of blood vengeance and hatred, and she knew who was on the other side of the door.
His voice was a sliver of hope within the burning of a forest fire, unaware of any danger at all as he spoke up warily, "Hey, uh, Viv? You should probably wake up. They got a free breakfast going on in the lobby, continental or whatever it was. It would probably be good for us to grab something to eat before we go, stock up and stuff." She could hear him gulp noticeably as his throat grew dry, her mind showing her in detail the exact movements of her best friend after years spent together, "Also, I would, uh, like to talk to you. I'd like to apologize. I've been...I've been acting weird lately, and you don't deserve it, and...well, come down to breakfast and we'll get this all figured out, okay?"
It took all of Vivi's power to keep a strong hold of Lewis' arm as he slowly began to rise further and further from the bed, nearly floating as he stood up with hair a blazing streak of pink fire taking refuge on his bald skull. He was a flame of angry heat and boiling energy, taking long stride with the sprinting of his anger and preparing himself to deal a final blow through the plastic that separated him from his target, poised to knock it down and send a cleansing rush of flame towards the unsuspecting man on the other side. An ember strayed from his pink head, lighting the bedsheet with a wisp of smoke as a disaster began to steadily grow. To keep the motel from burning down, Vivi was forced to release Lewis so that she might smother the flame before it spread.
Arthur knocked again, unknowing of the struggle going on within as his rhythmic beating on the door grew louder and somewhat more anxious, "...Vivi? I don't want to come in there and wake you up, there's not much time le-"
"No!" Vivi shouted quickly and suddenly, her voice shrill as it shrieked forward in an attempt to stop her friend from entering the room. Lewis was still fast approaching the door, and if Arthur opened it even the slightest...he would be ash in less than a few seconds, something Vivi couldn't bear to think, "No, Arthur, I'm up. I just, uhm, don't have any clothes on right now! So you might not want to come in, it would be very awkward if you did. I'll be down in just a little bit!"
There was only silence now. Lewis had placed his feet back on the carpet now, no longer floating but still as stone with his eyes planted dutifully on the door and his hands raised with tiny flames dancing in each palm. Vivi was holding her breath without realizing it, hoping her blatant lie had sounded sincere enough to lead Arthur away from the motel room door, but she could still hear him breathing on the other side, heavy and thick. There was a small 'clink' as his metal hand rested lightly on the door in absorbed thought, but her best friend made no attempt to enter. She could hear in his voice the embarrassment as he backed away very slowly, and she could feel his warm blush through the door like a campfire. Or was that the impending flames still rising on a few feet away fro her, in Lewis' hands?
"Oh, alright then. Well, don't take too long, the breakfast closes in half an hour. You don't want to miss out on, like, five whole wheat bagels and maybe some dried out bread. Possibly an egg if we're lucky enough. I'll, uh, leave you to your...nakedness…"
His heavy feet were clear on the concrete outside, loud and resounding as he left the red danger zone and headed back the way he had come. There was a release of anxious breath on Vivi's part, an exhale of all the tension she had felt in those last dire moments as they fell away from her in one fell swoop of relaxation. Her clenched hands released the charred blanket, smudges of black staining the bright hearts on her palms and clouding her vision as she reached one hand up to rub her eye. Those eyes closed now with the knowledge that the phantom who threatened her companion couldn't stray far enough to get him. Arthur was safe for now, and Vivi was growing very, very angry.
It was nearly flawless, her metamorphosis from relieved best friend to pissed off girlfriend. One moment, she was completely encompassed by her celebration for the life of the one she cared so dearly for, the clear safety and release from harm of her companion for life, a team mate and partner in crime escaping at the last minute as the bomb ticked away with impatient clocks all around The next moment, she was filled with a passionate rage of immense diameter, her cheeks flushing with anger and her blue hair standing on end and the goose bumps on her arms raising with distaste and distrust. Her eyes sprung open and squinted angrily at Lewis as though trying to rationalize his actions, his skull still facing the door before it swung around to face her with a hurt kind of betrayal lining his eyes and a lot of confusion mingling into a mass of terrifying intensity. Both had many words to say, but as Vivi lifted herself from the bed with cold presence, it was clear they didn't have the time.
"Why didn't you let me get him, Vivi? That was my chance! I could have-"
"No, you couldn't have, I wouldn't have let you," She huffed, walking up to him with her tiny chest puffed out like a little angry bird, "What were you thinking? Were you just going to burn the entire motel to the ground with all the innocent people-and us-inside of it? And who gave you the right to murder my best friend?"
Lewis sputtered, clearly surprised by the fact that she wasn't supporting him in his endeavor and the still standing loyalty towards the traitor behind the door, ever present in the strength of her unwavering straightness, "Did you just forget what he did to me, V? He killed me, in cold blood! How can you possibly tolerate being anywhere near him after what he did? We were happy, we were-"
"I wasn't done!" She was livid, her face a bright red and her eyes leaving bullet wounds through his bones, "There are always two sides to a story. Before you go apeshit and burn Arthur alive, I'm going to get both of those sides, no argument. Until then, you have no right to kill him."
Lewis sat down in the armchair of the room with an exasperated and heavy sigh, falling down hard on the stony cushions and pulling his arms across his chest as Vivi began to rummage through her overnight bag, "Is there ever really an excuse for killing an innocent person, Vivi? Murder is murder, and that's never right."
His voice was nearly a whisper, like a bitter child who wants nothing more than the last word in an argument. It was biting and sharp, and it hurt Vivi more than anything he had said prior to. She stopped shuffling through her bag for a moment as she absorbed his words and yet, no matter how she looked at them, they were still painful, vicious, untrusting. He would never understand.
"Yes, sometimes...sometimes accidents happen. Things don't go the way you plan, and...and…" she began to shift the many things in her bag again, grabbing pieces of clothing and boxes as she went. She pushed the memories from her head before they could spread and take hold of her, so close to her heart yet far away in time. Should she tell him now, the secret she forced away with every breath?
"No. There's never an excuse."
She guessed not.
Vivi began to absentmindedly change her clothes without thought to the boy in the room with her, pulling her T-shirt over her head with mind still focused entirely on the suppressed memories in front of her. She could see from the corner of her eyes that Lewis was growing shy and bright despite his anger, averting his eyes to give Vivi a little privacy as she switched out her boxers for something a little nicer, but Vivi was still in a fighting mood. Her skin continued to crawl, her mind shouted answers and arguments, the hair on her arms stood up ferally in response to the anger she felt. She couldn't leave Lewis without knowing he wouldn't hurt the boy she cared for like a brother, his safety was of her utmost concern, and so she had to play dirty.
"Lewis, he was distraught once you died. On the rare night that he fell asleep before I did and I could hold his hands, I found marks on the inside of his hands, little cuts like he had...like he had clenched them to the point of bleeding, something purposeful. Sometimes, I had to stay up with him for days on end so he wouldn't...so he wouldn't kill himself. He wasn't happy, or elated, or even indifferent to your death-even if I didn't know why, I knew he was sad, Lewis." Vivi began pulling something else from her bag, now fully dressed in her usual clothes though Lewis still stared off to the side as a courtesy, "He blames himself for your death, but I know him, and he'd never kill no matter how jealous he grew. If I hadn't been there with him, Lewis, he would have done something more...permanent."
As she found what she was looking for within the never ending abyss of her bag, Vivi could hear Lewis scoff with disgust and a new burst of cold anger filled her short frame with freezing fire, "Good," he muttered, crossing his legs and continuing to look out the window as Vivi kneeled down on the ground with a piece of chalk in her shaking hands. If she weren't so focused on the task at hand, she'd have quite a few angry words to day to her phantom, "He killed me, he deserves to die. By his own hand is as good as any."
"And that's where you and I differ in opinion, Lew. But I'll get to the bottom of this, I'll prove him innocent, and I'll solve this mystery even if I have to do it alone." She mumbled, finishing her drawing on the ground with a disappointed sigh. Lewis went to speak, maybe argue his point further, but as he looked back at her from his view of the window he found he no longer had the power to do anything more than speak. Surrounding the little chair with which he sat, like a ring of sharks in the water, was an intricate and quickly drawn ghost trap, a ward that prevented the leaving of a spirit from a specific place. Vivi, blue chalk in hand, stood proudly over her handiwork with a little grin and no remorse, "And if that means leaving you hear for a few minutes, then hell yeah I'd doing it. While I'm down with Arthur, I want you to take some time to think about what you did today and how you could've done it differently. Think of it as time out, but for misbehaving ghosts."
Lewis' eyes grew wide, reaching his hands out to her only to find them repelled by an invisible wall, her skin just out of reach as he strained against the powers surrounding him like a toddler eager to be picked up, "But...but, Vivi, I need to be close to you or else-"
"As in the words of your grandmother, 'a trap can temporarily replace the need of a tether,' if necessary, and I find this instance to be very necessary indeed." She proudly quotes, seeing right through his trick and flaunting her knowledge as she slipped on a pair of shoes and prepared to head to the lobby, "I'll only be gone a little bit, and I think we both need some time to cool off. When I get back, be ready to listen and listen well. We're not leaving this motel until we have the truth in order."
"Vivi, no, you can't do this!" He cried out, his hands pressed against the invisible wall separating him from her like a starving child peering into the stainless glass of a candy shop window, but she was already opening the door and exiting the room when his words reached her. She could hear him halfway down the hall as she walked out, wailing and shouting in both anger and desperation her name and the killing words, 'come back!'
"Good, I didn't know if you were coming or not. I grabbed you whatever I could find, they're closing the breakfast down soon."
Arthur was sitting solitary next to the only window in the petite dining area-if you could really even call it that-surrounded by a handful of messy, tired looking travelers. In the middle of nowhere there seemed to be at least a little traffic, and the tables surrounding Arthur boasted a mother and daughter chattering loudly about their travels over coffee, a young man reading the newspaper upside down as he tried to catch the eye of another, and an elderly couple smiling serenely above a bagel and tea. It was pleasant if quiet, but Vivi was on edge and the plate full of week old donuts-a special treat for the two investigators-did not seem very appetizing.
Quickly and as inconspicuously as he could, Arthur was wrapping bagels and donuts and all sorts of muffins into a thin plastic wrap to take with the two on the road. By refusing many of the better paying and therefore more dangerous ghost hunting jobs, the Mystery Skulls had often had to cut corners and pinch pennies to make ends meet and fill bellies, but despite Vivi's hunger she couldn't even look at the stale feast in front of her let alone take a bite. She tried desperately to find a little tick of hunger, a sign of appetite, and yet she was absolutely disgusted by what was in front of her despite its fairly fresh appearance. Without much thought, she tossed the donut around a few times on the plate before settling on a few sips of lukewarm tea, finding that satisfying enough.
More worrying then the ruckus from inside her motel room or the quickness and nervousness in her shouts from earlier, never had Arthur seen Vivi give up a meal, especially a sugary one. She had more energy than every solar panel in the world, and to fuel that she could scarf down the share of a football team without so much as a blink. Come to think of it, Arthur had never in his life found Vivi wake so early in the morning without him having to shake her to consciousness; something was wrong, very wrong, and all his attention shifted to her in an attempt to fix it.
"Vivi, is everything okay?" He began hopefully, but then his mind corrected him and he grew critical of himself, looking down at his hands as he clasped them together on the table with a loud clap. The metal was slow to wrap around his good hand, but Arthur was used to the numb, delayed reaction by now, "No, never mind, nothing's okay. And that's why I wanted you down here in the first place. I need to apologize to you, and I need to tell you the full truth. One hundred percent, in all its entirety, I must be honest with you."
Vivi, startled by the sudden noise from Arthur, felt her eyes grow wide as she looked up to shake her head. Her words were gulped back into her dry throat, sandpapery and thin and tinged with just the slightest hint of dread, "It's alright, Arthur, you don't have to-"
"Uh-uh, the last time you told me it was alright and I didn't have to tell you right away, we got ourselves into this mess. I stayed up all night thinking about it, Viv, and how I've been acting-hiding things, keeping you in the dark, getting so aggressive and angry at the drop of a hat...you don't deserve any of it." He licked his lips quickly, glancing to the side so that he could keep his eyes away from hers and the steady stare she kept with him, "I value our friendship, I value what you mean to me. The way I've been is just not acceptable when you're the only one I got."
"Arty, it's fine, I-"
"Just hear me out!" His voice was raising, grabbing the attention of the mother-daughter duo at the table nearest to them before he began to quiet ever so slightly, growing embarrassed as eyes turned to look his way confusedly, "I mean, Viv, you trusted me with so much. The least I can do is tell you the whole truth, it's something you deserve to know."
"Art-"
He was choking up now, his throat thick with a mixture of phlegm and remorse as he hung his head lower and towards the table, his voice growing smaller and smaller with each dying word from his mouth. To Arthur, this was his world falling down around him, the walls to his castle crumbling and filling up the moat, and he only hoped he would look back up to find loving eyes and an understanding smile instead of startled surprise and hatred, "Vivi, you were right, I did know that ghost in the mansion. I knew him because there used to be four Mystery Skulls. You, me, Mystery, and...and..." He was almost in tears now, so quick to upset with the memories of a purple-haired specter taking place of a team mate, "and Lewis." He gulped in an attempt to clear his throat, but to no avail. He continued on with his eyes still hidden from her view, "You...you loved him very much, and I...I...when he...I took you loss of memory as a blessing, I thought it meant you simply weren't supposed to know, because at the cave..."
Arthur was no more than a blubbering mess now, all the fear from years of hiding his terrible secret rushing forth in a gush of sobs, the waterfall breaking free of the dam and washing over him without mercy. People were definitely staring now as the man with the robotic arm held his head and cried out incoherent words of apology. His muffin was no more than a dirty sponge now, his shoulders shaking and hunched over the table as he tried to hide his face in the food on his lap. He fell silent save the hiccups, alone and isolated at one end of the table, an island in the vast sea. But he forgot that he wasn't entirely by himself in the lobby. With a searching hand, Vivi found his living arm and gripped his fingers tightly.
"Arthur...I know." She whispered, squeezing his hand in an attempt to calm him down and comfort his sniffling tears to silence, "I remember Lewis, and the cave, and I remember him falling from the cliff and into the fog. You don't have to relive it anymore, I'm here and I remember. It's all over."
He was silent now, his amber eyes slowly lifting to look up into her skies as his glistened red with tears, so brilliant and shining and wet with tears. He was stunned to say the least, those same eyes wide and confused and trembling, but then as he came to absorb her words his shoulders slackened and he came to accept this sudden turn of events, her knowledge of something she couldn't possibly know. He was relieved that he didn't have to say in full what he had done, he didn't have to go over the details for a hundredth time with her already aware, but that brought up another problem. Arthur grew tense once more, growing worried at the implications that she remembered what he had done, that he had pushed Lewis from the cliff and ended his life. Vivi knew, and that made him more anxious than anything in the world.
He hadn't noticed that Vivi had stood up, swinging around the table with a wide step to pull Arthur from his chair without warning. She gripped his hand like an iron glove and lifted him to his feet, breakfast and all, "Follow me, I'll explain everything. I'll show you everything." She exhaled, her voice quiet and breathy as they walked down the hall at a quick pace. Her strides were hard to keep up with despite the shortness of her chubby legs, and Arthur was forced to walk quicker than he was used to for a casual walk. They twisted and turned through the hallways like a labyrinth, weaving between doors and rotting wooden pillars, finally coming up to her door and into something horrible. Arthur was by her side and she had even grabbed the door handle in her hand with a vicious sort of expectation, a full understanding of what was to come and the pain of knowing digging deep into her very soul. She knew what was on the other side full well, and that whatever happened would most definitely be very dangerous and deadly if her ward was defective in any way.
"Vivi, what's going on? Why are you shaking like that?"
She licked her lips before biting them, her eyes shaded by her thick hair and her free hand still gripping Arthur without sign of letting go. "Because," she stuttered, holding her best friend just a little tighter as though their closeness might protect him from what was to come, "reunions were never my strong point."
Maybe it was the fear in the eyes of a woman without worry, or the gentle trembling of her strong hands as they suffocated his hand, but Arthur knew what was coming and what was going to happen before the door was opened before him. If he had screamed, neither heard it over the pumping of blood through their ears, the pulse of their bodies louder than the bass drum of their hearts. She threw him in and followed close behind, hoping against all hope that maybe this would work itself out, that everything would be fine and the trap would work like a charm and she could get both parties to listen, but there was a dying in her chest that came with the bursting of light from inside the motel room, and she knew deeply that it wasn't going to work out that smoothly.
There was only terror in Arthur's amber eyes now, only the abhorrence of death and the fear that came with the inability to accept it. He was trying so hard to claw around Vivi, finding even his immense trust in her wavering as the door closed behind the blue girl and came to a close with the chair barring it from his access, her legs crossed as she sat down and he found no way out. There was only one way to go, in, and in the words of the girl he found so often putting him in danger, he was too far in to turn around now.
And so he did turn around to come face to face with the daydreaming tiger. Lewis had been waiting for Vivi with legs crossed and arms resting daintily on top of them, but upon seeing his murderer he rose to roar with the stripes of revenge painting him pink. An instant was all it took to go from hopeful and patient to vicious and enraged, and it was clear to Arthur that this tiger had been starved, deprived of his most basic needs. The caged feline was bloodthirsty, and the frightened bird within reach of his elongated claws was a good enough snack for now.