Chapter 12
Some Harsh Truths
Warning: this chapter contains the mentioning of a past event depicting a school shooting. If you feel uncomfortable or triggered by this, skip it.
'Look, I'm just going to cut to the chase. I got some information for you regarding Lisa Young. Sent some officers to the oil site, the one at the outskirts of Wattson. She's at the oil tanks. And you might want to question that husband of hers. He's the one who is behind all of this, trust me.'
Short but straight to the point: that's how Darby planned this conversation to be, telling the police all they needed to know and nothing else. It was honestly a goddamn miracle that such thing as a payphone could still be found in this world and wasn't a relic of the past after all, and what luck to find one exactly here in Wattson. It just so happened to be located near the supermarket and not one single other vehicle, aside from theirs, occupied any space on the parking lot. It was just the two of them, just how he preferred it; the last thing he needed were some witnesses to come forward to give any clues about the identity of the mystery man who helped solving the case. Whoever was on the other side of the line didn't need to know his name, that one lead to Lisa's final resting place was all they were going to need, that's how Darby saw it. He did not want to be heralded as the hero who helped solving the case of the missing woman and her unborn baby by the media, that's not what he was hoping to accomplish by agreeing to expose the truth about Lisa's fate. He was keeping his promise, that was all, and if this would put that murderous piece of shit of a husband behind the bars where he belonged, he was more than happy to spill the beans to the police. Now that he had said everything that needed to be said, the blonde ghost hunter wasn't planning on sticking around. Before the 9-1-1 operator could even ask him for his name, he promptly hung up and turned around, sticking his hands into the pockets of his black jeans to protect them from the cold. Taking in a deep breath and slowly breathing while looking up at the night sky, he knew that this marked the end of his work for today. Another spirit chained to this realm was laid to rest (without putting up a frustration-fueled fight, much to his surprise), he had prevented things from escalating to the point where the living would be harmed, that's all he wanted to accomplish. Just another day's work in the life of a ghost hunter. But still…
There was no point in denying it, Darby knew; what happened to Lisa was beyond godawful. Tossed away along with her child like they were nothing more but garbage, all because her husband wanted a new life with some lousy mistress… you truly had to be one cold-blooded, heartless son of a bitch if you could pull off something like this. It would only make sense for anyone to get angrier and angrier the more they thought about all of this, but Darby Allin simply could not afford to let this get to him. Not now, not ever. This was all part of the job, in the end. All part of the life he had chosen to live.
His hands still remained in his pockets as he calmly walked back to the van, where Cora was waiting for him on the passenger's seat. Even from this distance, the blonde ghost hunter could tell that even now, she was everything but okay. It was like she was not even seeing him approach, as if she had left her soul behind on the oil site. She was staring at something invisible that was a thousand yards in front of her, her reddened eyes void of any sign of life whatsoever and the skin around these eyes still blotched with the same redness that had formed when she broke down in tears earlier. Her mouth was frozen into a flat, emotionless line. Her near-catatonic trance could not even be broken by the sound of Darby opening the door of the driver's side, or when the vehicle slightly shook when he entered and sat down. Darby couldn't help but briefly glance at the broken mess that was his temporary traveling companion, unsure of what he could say to her. Christ, she has been like this ever since they left the oil site… He had allowed her to cry over the sheer cruelty behind Lisa's death for as long until she no longer had any tears left to trickle down her cheeks, which did eventually happen after a minute or five. By then, her bawling had been reduced to soft sobs, until she at last turned completely silent, aside from one question she asked him after wiping off her last tears from her cheeks, her voice barely above a whisper: 'Can we please leave?' Ever since then, she hadn't spoken one more word, let alone make any noise, not even a single sob.
There was no longer any reason for them to stay longer than needed, Darby then decided. The job was done and he highly doubted that being forced to spend the night on the parking lot in a town that she was bound to forever associate with something truly horrendous was going to do her any good. The further they would get away, the better.
'We're getting out of here.' he said while switching on the engine. 'We'll see where we're gonna sleep, I'll figure something out.'
Unfortunately, Cora appeared to be too deeply caught in her trance to even respond to that, her eyes not even able to produce a spark of relief upon hearing these words. As soon as the van's headlights lit up the concrete in front of them, Darby pushed in the gas pedal and soon they left the parking lot behind… along with the unseen, unnoticed presence of the heavily-tattooed man clad in all black who had been silently observing them from the dark alleyway across the street.
The only road that would lead them out of here and eventually get them in the direction of Autumnfield turned out to be a long stretch of road that was barely lit by the bare minimum amount of lampposts they did bother to install in the gravel on the right side for the sake of securing whoever passed through here some safety, surrounded by nothing else but massive, empty fields with long, sun-dried grass that briefly rustled with the gust of wind the passing vehicle would bring along. There had been that vain hope of Cora slowly but surely coming around as soon as the place that was bound to be forever linked with the gruesome murder of a pregnant woman far behind in the rear view mirror, though it would quickly turn out, much to Darby's dismay, that he had been proven wrong about this. It did not matter if they had left that one town she would most likely swear never to visit again no matter how much time would eventually pass; the increasing distance between them and Wattson did absolutely nothing to give Cora the strength she was going to need to pull herself out of this, her face having remained frozen into that same lifeless, depressing mask she had worn earlier. The thought of this being practically the same like driving around with a corpse in the passenger's seat promptly crossed Darby's mind. Over and over again, he would glance to the empty shell of a young woman without moving his head for a millimeter, hoping during these seconds that some life or emotion would emerge from her, one way or another. Not even as much as a sniffle could be heard from Cora.
'Cora, just think about this…' Darby said, finally interrupting the silence between them that had been going on for minutes; could it have felt like an eternity to Cora, perhaps? 'We have kept our promise, remember? We have told her that we would tell her story, they know now. Everybody will know. They're all going to know about what that fucker has done to them and he's going to rot away in prison for the rest of his life. There's no way that he's going to get away with this, he's going to get what he fucking deserves. They're going to make his life hell, Cora, I can already guarantee you that. You no longer have to think about this any longer, it's done. It's over.'
Right on that moment, the blonde ghost hunter saw something in the distance that would immediately confirm that they had thankfully decided to listen to that one brief phone call that was made on the parking lot. They were bright enough to light up the sky at the horizon. Somewhere in the seemingly endless fields, Darby could tell that there were maybe four or five police cars with active lights had gathered at a certain location in the fields, coloring the sky red before promptly switching to blue, which would be repeated over and over again for as long as they were going to remain on that place, which Darby could guess, was going to be a long, long time. They had found her, no doubt about it. The search of Lisa Young and her baby would come to an end tonight. Seeing this would also confirm that to Cora, right? There was no way in hell that she possibly couldn't see those lights lighting up the sky above the oil site. Glancing into her direction once again, Darby could feel a sharp jolt of frustration spark through his head. Nothing had changed. Cora's eyes, still completely void of any emotion or life whatsoever, remained glued to the road in front of them, as if she was doomed to remain a motionless doll for the rest of her life. Needless to say, everything he just told her in an attempt to make her snap out of it had gone completely unheard. Darby's grip around the steering wheel then tightened to the point where his knuckles turned pale.
Alright, that's it.
The blonde ghost hunter didn't bother giving any warning beforehand when he promptly steered the van onto the side of the road, crushing countless of pebbles underneath the wheels before he slammed his foot on the brake and turned his head to face Cora.
'If you're going to be depressed as fuck after hearing one sad story from a ghost, you will never be able to live the life of a ghost hunter!' he yelled at her. 'You better go grab your shit now, get out of my van and walk to Autumnfield, because why should I fucking bother to keep driving you around?! I told you about this, Cora! I told you it was going to be hard! But you can't handle any of this!'
This sudden outburst of fury turned out to be the one thing that could at last snap Cora out of her trance, bringing her back to life with an anger to match Darby's. 'Oh fuck off, Darby!' she responded, her voice now anything but a whisper. 'Don't you act like this didn't affect you, because you're the one who pulled her out of that oil tank! I've seen it, you know? I've seen your face! You were fucking horrified by what you saw! And don't you dare telling me that I'm lying, I know what I saw! You can act all collected and shit as much as you want, but I know that this has shaken you up as well! So don't act like you're not bothered by this too! This was fucked up and you know that, Darby!'
'Do you seriously think this was the most fucked up case I've ever worked on?! You don't want to know what I have seen throughout these years!'
Absolutely nothing about this was a lie. If Cora would have been present on his side during these cases way back then, Darby would have hated to see what kind of state she would be plunged in afterwards; perhaps something even worse than leaning dangerously close to full-blown catatonia, that was probably for certain. If any other person lived a life like Darby Allin's for the past ten years, they too would eventually come to decide to cast all emotions during their work, no, their life mission if they wished to keep going with what they are doing and choose to hold onto the level-headedness that they were going to need to survive. Each time Darby would think he had finally seen it all, another haunting would cross his path that hid a story that would prove to be far crueler, saddening, horrifying and sometimes downright even inhumane than all the others. Traveling all across the country had showed him that in every state, regardless of any area, there would always be people who were capable of doing the worst things imaginable, which would always result in the frightened, confused, frustrated ghost of their victim (sometimes even plural, in some cases) being doomed to haunt this world. Darby didn't feel like it at all to say this out loud, but there were definitely some hauntings that stood out above all the rest, which he would remember for the rest of his life, all because of the cruelty, horror and sadness behind them. No, there was no way that he could deny that the story of Lisa Young wasn't going to be part of them, for she was now the newest addition of the worst cases he could think of. He could still vividly remember the time where he had been exploring the storage units of an apartment complex in New York that were haunted by the ghost of a girl who couldn't be older than five years old. Dressed in her beloved, blue, sparkly princess costume that had been ruined by the blood that had been splattered on it, she gave him the saddest look a child, be it dead or alive, could ever produce and asked him if he thought it would still be possible for her to become a well-known Disney princess who possessed the power to create ice even though she was now missing both of her arms. Past newspaper reports revealed that her severely schizophrenic mother had decided to forgo all kinds of medication when the supposed voice of 'God' convinced her to do so and led her to believe that she would only need the teachings of the Bible to live a good life; and it was that same voice of 'God' who told her to crudely amputate her daughter's arms with a cleaver so that she would be granted access to Heaven and leave her mutilated body in the storage unit for His angels to come pick her up. And then there was this one haunting at a campus of a prestigious college in Oregon, where Darby had to try his hardest to soothe the suffering of the terrified, teary-eyed ghost of a female student who was this close into entering the Restless phase, who couldn't comprehend how she could ever end up like this while her dreams of graduating and becoming a doctor was just within her reach. The reason why she suffered this fate was all because of her date, who had slipped something in her drink during a party at the campus, and when they passed by the pool as they headed back to their dorms shortly afterwards, the world was spinning in front of the girl's eyes before everything went black. That scumbag had then proceeded to ravage her unconscious body, but whatever he had used to drug her caused her throat and nose to fill up with vomit, which made him run off and leave her there to choke. These were the stories that would forever stick with Darby as some of the worst stories he had heard, but these all happened years after that one case that was the absolute worst of them all.
The one case that nearly got to him and almost made him give up.
It happened two years into his career as a ghost hunter. One day, a student who felt like society had wronged him in some way decided to become the special kind of monster that the likes of Klebold, Harris, and many others were and would forever be remembered as such, by committing a massacre at his school, Riverstone High, in Ohio. While the majority of the students, teachers and faculty members managed to escape with their lives (though many had sustained injuries that required treatment, as well as the mental scarring), five students didn't make it out alive, all having died from a rain of bullets; after this, the monster who had caused all of this had turned the gun on himself. One month after the horrendous bloodbath, it was reported on the forum that the air would feel extremely cold in the school's hallways at night, accompanied by sobbing, screaming and a violent attack on a thrill seeker who had trespassed to see if he too could catch a glimpse of this haunting. Darby had known damn well what he was getting into, having heard of the massacre before he got to Ohio. He thought he had been ready for this, he thought this was just another night on the job, he thought he was hardened enough to pull this off and lay these souls to rest… But as soon as he explored the hallways that night and came eye to eye to the five rampaging ghosts that had by now entered the Mindless phase, he felt it too.
He felt the rage that coursed through their grotesquely shaped bodies, all of them torn to shreds by bullets. Their rage was nothing else but justified. During the days where they had still been alive, they were young kids that were filled with ambition and hope for the future and occupied with their ultimate goal in life, whether it would be a career in sports, shining on the silver screen or playing their heart out in front of an audience that occupied sold-out stadiums. All of them were going to chase their own dream after graduating, firmly believing that they were going to come true one day. And all of those dreams were taken away in a blast of violence and death, all because of a deranged lunatic that had once been attending the same classes with them, dooming them to haunt the school's hallways, chained to this world by their own frustration of being unable to move on and to eventually rampage when their fury would fully consume them. Darby remembered standing there, completely frozen in place as he stared at the rampaging specters charging towards him, ready to unleash their fury upon the intruder that had entered their grounds. For that split moment that he could still so clearly remember, he shared the rage with them. This was too unfair, too cruel, too inhumane... But the one thing that enraged him the most was the fact that the one who caused their pain wasn't here with them. That deranged bastard must have felt like his sick, twisted goal was completed, which made him easily move on to the afterlife, while his victims were stuck here and had been turned into monsters. The unfairness of all this, the cruelty… Darby was barely able to finish the job. After that, he had spend a whole hour screaming in anger and punching the steering wheel inside his van on the school's parking lot.
He had come this close to entirely giving up on ghost hunting on that night, and yet, he eventually made the choice to keep going, swearing to never let his emotions interfere with his work, ever again, for this was the life that he had chosen.
'Do you see now, Cora?' Darby said, having managed to fully calm himself down. 'This is the reality of being a ghost hunter. This is how it is. You will come across many terrible things, whether you like it or not. Here's the thing: even if you have an absolutely rotten day, you still have to push yourself to keep going, or else there's no point in living a ghost hunter's life. And if you think about it… the same goes for a 'normal' life as well. No matter how hard shit can get, you can't let it get to you and tear you down to the point where you remain miserable. You're going to fall, many times, but you have to get up and keep moving afterwards. That's all you can do, and hell, it's the best thing you can do. That's how you will survive in life.'
Cora opened her mouth to reply to this, but then quickly shut it, because she couldn't argue against this; Darby was absolutely right, she knew.
'We have done all we could for Lisa.' Darby continued. 'We have helped her move on and laid her soul to rest. She no longer has to suffer the way she did, and now we're going to have to move on. So… what is it going to be, Cora? Are you still thinking of grabbing your stuff and start walking to Autumnfield? Or are you going to stick around for a bit longer and keep going? Whatever your choice will be, I won't stop you.'
It was completely quiet in the van for the following few seconds. It was all Cora needed to make up her mind, feeling that this was the right thing to do. 'I'm staying.'
Not long after the van was steered back on the road again, she told Darby that she needed to take a nap.