Sorry, its another kind of short chapter, but I tried to make it a little more poetic this time, really focusing on the characters' experiences and reactions. We're coming up on the main conflict of the story here, but after its resolved its not truly over just yet :))
He should have known better. It wasn't like He was going to kill her right then and there, but playing with His food for far too long not only let her put Him in His place, but also gave him the chance to regain control. That was certainly not the way He anticipated the rendezvous going, and the fact that He didn't notice the subtle cunning glint in her eye shrouded behind the dark eyebags has His gorge rising.
A scoff echoes through the dingy dark basement, and the tall spirit tosses a shard of ivory across the room, it lodges itself into a support beam, splintering the wood on impact. He's perched on the remains of the organ, soft light filtering through the overgrown basement window and falling onto His pale cheek, subtle blue veins visible if one gets close enough. Now, however, is not the time to approach the ghost. The water pipes are frozen over, the boiler room cold for the first time since just after his death. He can just barely feel the stagnant, cool air clinging to his incorporeal form.
There was a plan, believe it or not, a little experiment to conduct on the woman– and yet he let her slip through His vice-like grip. "Gahh should have really spent less time mucking about. Missed opportunity there, really." His blue eyes are fixed on the floor and the rubble before him, despondent. He tries to fight back the cruel and calculating section of his mind telling him to march back up the stairs and clock her over the head in return, maybe kick a few teeth out for good measure. Wheatley peels his arm away from his side and out to a small cellar spider, dangling from a thread within reach, and it gently settles on his white knuckles. He was never too impartial to them as a living person, downright frightened if anything. He retains many human follies, though the time he's spent alone, sinking into obscurity in tandem with this run down house has definitely changed this one.
It starts in his heart, a sickeningly sweet wave of energy, like adrenaline running through his veins again. He hangs his head in guilt and shame, honestly wishing above all else that they would just stop. The spider inches back at the intrusion on its space, the air continuing to chill, though it luckily can withstand a variety of conditions the temperamental ghost throws at it. That feeling he recognises all too well, most definitely signifying a new flower added to his resting place, and yet despite the tremendous euphoria it brings the young spirit, he knows how short lived it is. The brevity of his relief is chased away by a rush of hatred, now gently raising the temperature of the basement in turn.
Before he loses control of his limbs, he shoots a glance at the spider, the tiny thing idly exploring the crevices and topology of his large hand. He brings his palm slowly to his shoulder, allowing the small creature an escape from whatever wrath awaits. He lifts himself from the wooden fragments that litter the far corner, combing his hair frantically with his right hand. "Oh no oh no oh no, not again, please."
His voice snags in his throat, like something is physically stopping it—guilt, pain, or something far worse. Something that doesn't want him to regret, doesn't want him to stop. If only those two would just let him rot, let him drown in what he's done, instead of dragging him back toward something he can't be. There's no saving him. Perhaps there never was. If they knew what was really stirring beneath his skin, they'd stop trying. All malice, and wreckage, and guilt, and loathing. It would be so much easier to just let him be the monster this time. These feelings and urges are truly not new to him, the constant need to do… something, even though it directly hurts her. He's seen it before with the possession itch, though never to this degree.
Wheatley's hand twitches, leg stalling midair. He's certainly losing it now, his manic pacing morphing very slowly into a calculated saunter. He measures his next step and every movement, each jerk of the shoulder sending the cellar spider scurrying across his back in terror. He stalks back and forth, His hand tracing the concrete wall beside him, trying anything to keep his cool. His fingertips caress the wall, trying to feel every ridge of the weathered concrete, though he finds nothing but soot and grime that begins to collect under his fingernails. He flicks the dust off his hands, turning around and slowly leaning against the wall, and the spider emerges from the underside of his waistcoat, now travelling up the front panel towards the hand stitched grommets.
The voice slithers back into his mind, seething with hatred. 'They know not what they've done. The flowers make this killing all the more satisfying. And you, idiot, are no more than a willing participant—just a husk of the man you were.'
Wheatley drives his palm into his temple, as if smashing his skull over and over might shake the demon loose. But Moloch isn't something that can be rattled away. "Please—what could you possibly want with me, mate? What could you want with her?"
Silence. A rare gap in the whispering. A brief respite—but he knows better. If Moloch isn't answering straight away, He's calculating, thinking millions of years into His future. A future none of them may ever be around to see. Why would He reveal His plans to something as insignificant as a pawn on His board? Unless, of course, the suffering it would cause was worth it. Wheatley recoils, wishing he could pull the words back. He doesn't want to know. But his choices mean nothing here.
'Her vocal tendencies—or lack thereof—are a disappointment. A worthy victim, yet how can I make her one without her words?' Wheatley presses his head into his hands, crushing his glasses against his screwed-up eyes. He's already learned the hard way that no amount of screaming over the voice can drown out something inside his own mind. 'I wonder how much it takes to break someone with a will like hers…'
The words crawl under his skin, nestling deep. 'And you, dear fool, are the lure in this scenario. The bait… and the hook.' Moloch's prodding sets his nerves alight. His vision blurs, his throat tightens, his head pounds. The bitterness creeps in—simmering just beneath the surface, without cause, without warning. Only the murmurs in his skull, pulling him apart thread by thread.
Just like usual, nothing's quite working to quell his mounting ire, so he moves further into the corner, installing distance between him, the decaying organ, and most importantly the boiler room. With one last ditch effort, reluctant to hand over control until he absolutely must, Wheatley resorts to counting the evenly spaced support beams in the room, then the variety of pipes on the far wall, to finally the cracks that creep across his right spectacle from her suckerpunch. He definitely deserved that.
He brings his quivering arm up, fist forming in front of his face as he screws his eyes shut in misery. A shuddering sigh escapes his lips and he brings his balled up hand back hard against the concrete beside him. A webbed pattern forms around the indent his fist makes in the wall, and his brows knit together in the middle. Wheatley uses his hand to shove his glasses up his face yet again, then spies out of the corner of his unbroken lens a thin crooked leg peeking out of his hand.
"Oh you poor thing," he coos, and pivots his hand around to inspect closer. Following the trail of webs across his body and all the way up his palm, what lies at the end of the spun thread is the crushed body of the arachnid. What remains, a flattened carapace, a few crooked legs, a measly smear running down his hand. In his desperate attempt to take back control, he snuffed out the life of this tiny creature who rests limp on his palm. Even when in control of himself, he can't help but hurt the beings around him. Who would truly want to coexist with a creature like him? "I–I didn't mean to, oh gosh I'm so sorry little one I…"
He moves his hand away again, feeling the slight tug of the web it built up around Him, and that feeling intrigues Him. Something so tiny, miniscule in comparison to Him, can wind up a material far tougher than even metal itself. He ponders its life, its meagre existence amounting to far less than a smudge He wipes onto the wall again in disgust. Something so small and meaningless to Him, like her affections towards the ghost, still has him wrapped around her finger… So what would make the transpose any different? If she's going to weaponize these feelings against Him, then perhaps all is truly fair in love and war.
The two proceed along the road, side by side, engaged in what can scarcely be called a conversation—Caroline, ever poised, speaks fluidly while her companion remains silent, her thoughts poured instead onto the pages of her well-loved notepad. Even though she barely grazes the surface of the pavement, Caroline's heels rhythmically click with her saunter, punctuating the quiet evening. Her cloak swirling as she moves with a practiced grace. Though her gaze remains largely fixed ahead, she spares the occasional glance at the younger woman beside her, curiosity flickering in her keen eyes as she notes the fervour with which she writes.
Chell, in her haste, stumbles slightly over a gap in the pavement, and before she can fall, a hand darts out, steadying her with an effortless precision. "Mind yourself, darling. Enthralled as you are with that little notepad, I should hate to see you sprawled across the pavement like some common drunkard. Now, do not dawdle—hand it over at once, and I shall tend to your queries. Should others arise, you may add them in due course."
Taking the proffered book, Caroline skims the hasty, uneven script, her expression softening with something akin to sympathy. "I must say, your resolve is commendable, given all He has set upon you. Now, to your first question—do tell me instead, did the lights flicker? Or the music stutter?"
Chell pauses, considering. The thought had not occurred to her at the time, yet as Caroline speaks, the truth of it settles in her mind. No dimming, no faltering of the record player—signs so often indicative of supernatural interference had been curiously absent. She shakes her head, slow and uncertain.
Caroline nods. "As I suspected. It's much simpler when in the upper echelons of the manor, but the basement has far less indication of a hunting spirit. I suggest you keep out of there until the time is right, lest you misinterpret the signs and pay the cost."
They round a corner, the looming silhouette of the house coming into view, its empty windows staring vacantly into the dimming light. "To answer your inquiry, no—I do not believe He intended to kill you. Not then, at least. His intentions, however, remain obscure even to me." She flicks her gaze back to the page, scanning the second query. A pause, an inhale, and she speaks again.
"As for what He desires of you—and, indeed, of him—" her lips press together, just for a moment, before she continues, "I can claim no full understanding of Moloch's internal machinations. I do, however, know this: His power is sustained through unwavering devotion, through those who abandon all else in His name— devoted followers, people with nothing in their hearts but piety, and nothing in their mind but adherence. No outer desires, love, strength, or mental fortitude is acceptable from a worshipper. Should one refuse to submit, there remains but one final use: the binding of the soul, an eternity in servitude. He does not simply take life; He prolongs suffering well beyond the grave."
The final question halts her. She lingers on the words longer than necessary, before silently returning the notepad and lengthening her stride. "That, dear girl, is a tale I shall keep to myself. If you must press, you may ask of my dealings with Moloch, but not of the manner of my passing. Anything further—I bid you refrain."
They pass through the iron gates and approach the house proper, its weary bones settled into silence after the chaos of the previous night. Caroline moves ahead, and though she cannot stray far from Chell without the organ key in her possession, she gestures for her to follow. Within, all is still. Even He, for now, is absent.
In the disordered parlour, Chell hesitates before the two solitary chairs. His was always the one by the window, books often left face-down upon the cushions, as though he might return at any moment. Her own seat lay opposite—but Caroline, without hesitation, claims his. Lifting a charred and crumbling copy of Machiavelli, she tosses it aside with a careless flick of the wrist.
Chell, still standing, pens her next question and hands it over. 'Why did you summon Him?'
A beat of silence. Caroline exhales, shifting ever so slightly in her seat. Yet she did say she would answer.
"As you are no doubt aware, I was a healer of some repute in my time—an herbalist, a medium. My gifts were sought after, my craft respected. Yet such things cannot coexist peacefully with men of… ambition. My husband, Mr. Johnson—the mayor—was such a man. A powerful name, a calculating mind, and a growing distaste for a wife more renowned than he.
"He sought to diminish me. To turn my art to scandal, to render me reliant upon him alone. My practice, once revered, was declared heretical. My clients grew fearful. And the spirits–" she grows silent again, pondering her next words. "Well, the spirits I once consulted fell silent when I sought their advice, their omens and visions yielding nothing of worth. And so, in desperation, I looked higher. I sought the aid of one who promised the restoration of all I had lost… and, perhaps, even more than I had been expecting to negotiate. Yes darling, I sealed a covenant with the very same demon possessing this house– I own it now, it is my fault, though can one blame me for my dogmatic husband poisoning my public life?"
She falls quiet. Hands clasped in her lap, back straight, expression composed. The matter is closed.
Chell, hesitating, scrawls her next inquiry, though the weight of it makes her cautious. She glances up before turning the page toward Caroline, as if bracing for a storm. 'Did we perform the ritual correctly? And if not—what now?'
Caroline's lips quirk in something resembling amusement. "I'm afraid not, dear. No mere charlatan or 'demonologist', however over-medicated and under-qualified, could provide you with the knowledge required for such an undertaking. Fortunately for you, you no longer require his guidance." her eyes glint with amusement at their amateurish attempts of ridding the house of the demon, but she knows when to halt her jesting and get to the point.
Her amusement dims, replaced by sharp focus. "A summoning—and a banishment—require certain formalities. It requires the target entity to hold court with said summoner on their own terms. To expel such a being is no simple feat; a hymn, an invocation—something of significance to the spirit is required. 'Were the words ever spoken?' is often the wrong question; But, were they spoken correctly? I suspect not."
Chell does not react, merely turns the page, scrawling out a new question with deliberate care. 'Why is the attic boarded up?'
The change in Caroline is immediate.
Her gaze turns poisonous, her lids dropping almost instantaneously when the notepad is brandished before her. Her fingers clench around each other, each tendon in her hand tensing from the seemingly simple question, and it has Chell flinch back slightly, dropping the notepad. The temperature in the room feels as though it has dropped dramatically, and goosebumps litter Chell's exposed arms. She shivers, and falls back into the seat behind her. The ghost does not move, does not reach for her, and yet the threat is tangible, filling the air like a storm on the horizon. She looks just as menacing as she did on those nights Chell spent paralysed in terror, being raked and abused by the ghost before her, but she still seeks to make no move to injure the poor girl. "That," Caroline says at last, her voice smooth but laced with iron, "is knowledge beyond which you are privy to. Move on with haste, my dear, or you may grow to regret your inaction."
Chell's reaches to the floor for the notebook once more, her eyes refusing to leave the menacing spirit before her. Hands tightening around the notepad, her own pulse loud in her ears, but she does not press further. As she writes the second last question she has haphazardly on the page, she peeks over it periodically to check up on the spirit. She seems to have not lost her hardened facial expression, clearly leaving no opening for discussion on the last topic. Chell gets the hint, even though it's essentially bashed over her head at this point, don't talk about the attic.
Instead, she writes again. 'What hymn must we sing?'
Caroline, in an instant, is herself once more. The threat dissipates, the poised grace returning, as though the last exchange had never happened. "Why, sugar, that depends entirely on the spirit at hand! Of course, given your… unique distaste for all things verbal, I suspect I shall have to take the lead. Each entity requires something different—a specific instrument, a song of their epoch, a chant in the appropriate tongue. For Him, Italian or Latin shall suffice. And worry not, dear—it has worked once before."
A final question. 'What will become of you?'
Caroline smiles, though there is something distant in it. "Oh, my dear girl. If fortune is kind, I shall be as far from this rotten place as the bounds of the afterlife allow. And if rest awaits me, I shall embrace it."
"Get out, get out, get out," he muttered feverishly under his breath, his body curled into the tightest corner he could press himself into, as if he could make himself small enough to slip away entirely. He rocked slightly, his fingers twitching restlessly against the creased fabric of his sleeve, searching for some kind of anchor. Anything to hold onto. Anything to keep himself tethered here, in this moment, and not slip further into the pit Moloch had carved out inside his mind.
He needed distraction. He needed something—anything—to keep his thoughts from circling the drain, from tumbling headfirst into the whispers growing ever louder. With trembling hands, he flipped open his manuscript book, scrawling out scattered notes and half-written bars of music, but even that was slipping through his fingers like sand. The melodies, the harmonies—where once they had been a refuge, now they felt distant, hollow, warped by the presence clawing at the back of his mind. He could barely hear them over the insidious murmur beneath his thoughts.
Tossing the book aside with an irritated grunt, he rifled through his pockets, pulling out a small handful of objects—trinkets, tiny keepsakes, things he'd collected over the years, over the decades, in a desperate attempt to hold onto something real. He ran his thumb over the worn edge of a small teacup, now the cheap ceramic colouring had almost disappeared. A crumpled photo of himself, the only remnant of a night he barely remembered but somehow couldn't let go of. A medallion—gold once, though dulled with time—plucked from the floor of some forgotten ballroom and resembles a waning crescent moon. A pocket watch that hadn't ticked in over 60 years, but still rested heavily in his palm like it imprisoned all that lost time since inside each gear, each pinion, even the mainspring itself.
Most of them were worthless. No monetary value to speak of, just scraps and relics of a life long past. But sentimentally? They were worth more than all the cash in his leather wallet combined, more than anything he could have stolen in the years since. They were proof that he had existed, that he had lived, that once—just once—he had been someone who wasn't this.
His breath hitched, and with a sudden sense of urgency, he gathered them all up, pressing the assortment of items to his chest for a long moment before cramming them into the deep crevice of the rubble beside him. He shoved them under a solid support beam, tucking them away as carefully as if they were made of glass, hidden from prying eyes. Just in case. Just in case he lost himself completely. Just in case there was nothing left of him by the time this was over.
"No—" he gasped, but the fight was slipping. He was slipping. His mind felt unmoored, like something else was pressing into the spaces where he should be. It starts in his fingertips, a tingling wrongness that snakes up his arms, settling in his shoulders like an unbearable burden. He clenches his fists so hard his nails dig into his palms, but he barely feels it. He focuses on that anyway despite no pain registering, grounding himself, desperately trying to keep hold of his limbs.
"You're not getting me," he croaked, voice barely more than a whisper. "Not again."
The laughter that followed was cold. Distant. 'And yet, here you are.'
Wheatley tried to move, to push himself off the broken remains of a support beam that crumbled only minutes earlier, but his body refused to respond. A jolt shot through his spine, and he staggered forward, legs stiff and unwilling. The muscles in his jaw clenched against his will. His fingers twitched again, then curled. He took a step. Then another. No. No, no, no.
He felt the pull like a chain hooked into his ribcage, dragging him towards the basement door. The stairs yawned ahead, darker than before, stretching impossibly upwards, swallowing what little light filtered in from around the door's frame. The house was awake now, shifting and groaning, the walls pressing in tighter. The air felt thick, charged with something ancient and vile.
He planted his feet, tried to dig his heels into the floor. "I won't," he spat through clenched teeth, though the resistance was slipping. "I won't hurt her!"
Moloch sighed, almost disappointed. 'Oh, you moron. That was never up to you.'
The pull became a yank, and he stumbled forward, his own limbs betraying him.
"No! No no no no no I don't want to you can't make me–"
He's hunched over on his knees at the bottom of the staircase, resisting the demon's orders emanating from the deep recesses of his subconscious. The basement is dark, as decrepit as ever. The cobwebs around the entrance are tugged off the walls by his creased and dusty white shirt, strong as sinew and sticky as fresh blood. His eyes are fixated, unblinking on the ground below him, so obviously fighting an internal battle– yet the stalemate can't continue for much longer. He's not strong, he realises, and he's definitely not strong enough to fight Him off. She's always been the brains, but maybe this time she has the capacity to be the strong one? He needs to tell himself something positive or he's going to lose it all together. Physically and mentally.
Still stumbling up the stairs in a disjointed amble, the door creaks open before he even reached it. Not by his hands—he hadn't even lifted them from the walls that they press all his strength into—but by something unseen, something far greater than him. He leaves a trail of hand indents in the wall from his desperate fight to regain control, still refusing to give in, but he's never been particularly strong of mind, and it's proving to be his downfall. His resolve crumbled long ago, the insults cutting deeper than any lacerations She gave him when he was alive. The stairway behind him, once steeped in shadow, is now illuminated by the rest of the house where Caroline and Chell were still conversing, blissfully unaware of the incoming reckoning.
He tried to call out, to warn them, but the words died in his throat. His voice was no longer his own. The house held its breath. The lights flickered once, twice—
Then cut out entirely.
Wheatley's body jerked forward, and the last thing he registered before his consciousness sank beneath the waves was the feeling of his own hands tightening into fists. Ready to strike. He wishes he could say 'and everything went dark', but Moloch truly made sure all were willing and present participants in this mess He's made. His ears pick up on further noises, most would be imperceptible to her, but Caroline definitely notices from her chair. The soft clicking of the locks– the back door, the front door, the window frames, anything leading outside. The basement door slams shut behind the tall puppet-of-a-ghost, and Chell's up in an instant. "He's cutting off all the exits," Caroline hisses to the shorter woman.
Chassis Wheatley but Ghostley edition! https/ripplespate/778371541260976128/for-the-people-who-are-still-alive-chapter-1?source=share
Oh and sorry for the major character death ))): The spider did nothing wrong smh