are more like a very, very low-key divine being than a ghost. Like a guardian angel, really. They watch over a house, protecting the family that lives there from malevolent spirits and black magic,” I said. “They can be created from a lot of different ways, and one of the most common is if a family member dies in protection of his or her bloodline. I'd say you fit that bill pretty well. And you're definitely not alive, so you must be some kinda spirit, but you aren't a ghost. You must be something, right?”
She laughed bitterly. “And so I must be this spirit? Oh, clearly. Why, just look at how very powerful I am! Clearly, my daughter thrived from my protection. And certainly, I have done so much good in save the other poor souls who dwelt here.”
“Sarcasm is an ugly color on you, cupcake,” I said. “And for your information, I actually did consider that, and I think I know what happened. I bet the blade went right through you and into her. You died to protect someone who died immediately as you did. You were a guardian spirit with nothing to guard, and you went dormant... until someone else moved into the house.”
“And? I tried. As with you, I tried to warn them, and it did no good. They died, and I could do nothing to save them. Any of them,” She snarled.
I took a deep breath, preparing to maybe get punched again. “Actually, it made things worse.”
“... Explain.”
“Well, it's... your 'creation', your transformation into a spirit, was highly irregular. You became a spirit to protect someone who was already dead before your rebirth, so you didn't become a Lar in the normal way. It's possible your lapses of memory until I forced you to recall was a result of that, more than the trauma. You weren't, for lack of a better term, 'complete'. You didn't have the real drive to protect that Lares should have, since you lost your first and most important protectorate. You were alone, and had no clue what had happened to you, and you had just lost everything you loved and were fading in and out of existence, unable to think clearly, just aware that this house is dangerous and you had a deep, driving need to protect anyone who chose to live here. But you didn't know how, and, well... you were very, very afraid.”
Lydia's eyes widened. “Then, you believe...”
“Yeah,” I said, wincing. “That's the missing piece. That's why he's so much stronger than I expected, why your fear, in particular, super-charges him so much. You're a spiritual being like him, a creature of pure energy and emotion. And he's been feeding on you for a hundred years. It's given him power that he shouldn't have. He might be closer to a demon than a ghost at this point, frankly. It's... gonna be a pain to deal with this.”
“Then it was my fault.” She said, shrinking down into herself again.
“... Nooooooooooo,” I said. I rubbed the back of my neck and very carefully did not look her in the eyes.
“Do. Not. Patronize. Me,” She snarled.
I sighed. Sad fact was, from a certain point of view, it was her fault. Her spiritual nature and the constant mind-numbing terror she was filled with as a result of the bizarre circumstances of her death and rebirth had given Stanfield ludicrous powers. She had instinctively manifested to protect anyone who lived in this house from him, and in doing so had given him the power to do basically whatever he wanted to them while she watched helplessly. And with each repeat of the cycle, she grew more and more afraid, less and less able to accurately touch her own memories. If I hadn't... well, I could admit it, used her family's memory to screw her mind a little bit, I doubt she ever would have realized what she was or what was going on in this house.
“It wasn't your fault, per se,” I said. “I mean, it's not like he wouldn't have killed those people without you. It's just, well, you made it a lot easier for him to do it, really. So you're not a murderer. You're more like a weapon!”
For some reason, she didn't look cheered by this.
“And you tried to save them. I mean, that counts for something, even if your good intentions were possibly just the instinctive result of your half-finished transformation into a guardian spirit, and were definitely of no use to anyone in the end,” I said.
Lydia started to sob again. She was muttering something in between tears, which sounded a bit like, “It's all my fault... it's all my fault... it's all my fault...”
This might be a good time to mention that the things that go through my head and the things that come out of my mouth don't always match up perfectly, and the latter often don't have quite the desired effect. It's possible I'm not a people-person.
“I like your dress?” I said. It seemed like a nice, safe thing to bring up.
“Just... leave me alone...” She gasped, once again in between wracking sobs.
Well. Fuck.
I had been trying to get her to abandon her fear, focus her on some useful emotions, and I'd really had something with that that nice solid rage I'd inspired for awhile there. Pissed off and wanting to destroy the thing that destroyed her family, that was a solid, constructive emotion. That would have been helpful. I could use the backup. But I guess I'd gone too far, unraveled her actual history too much and made her realize that it was, in most ways that mattered, worse than she'd thought. Poor thing was in a bad place already, and it looks like I pushed her over the edge into straight-up and wholly useless despair.
You see? This is why I professionally kill stuff instead of trying to be a therapist. It's so much easier.
“Look, it really isn't anything you can be blamed for, you kn-” I began.
“Leave me alone!” she roared, in a voice that made my every bone in my body vibrate like I'd been tied to a jet engine.
And that was the fun part.
Far worse than anything physical was the soul-deep sensation of someone not so much 'walking on my grave' as putting on steel-toed boots and dancing a tango on it. A shock of despair and hopelessness and desperate, aching loneliness that ran through me, driving me to my knees like everything that had ever made me sad my entire life suddenly happening again, all at once.
I totally did not cry. At all. Shut up.
Still, it was unpleasant. Like, really horrible. I didn't wipe away tears from my eyes and stood up, taking a few steps back from her to seek... well, the closest thing to fresh air I was gonna find in a semi-haunted murder closet.
Damn. Was that how Lydia felt right now?
Oh. Um. Crap.
“Lyd? Nothing personal, but your voice sounded, um, awfully phantasmal there. Just getting a bit ghostly on me. Just... just throwing that out there. Figured you'd want to know.” I said. Ghosts were defined by their emotions; fill one with sufficient darkness, and it can end up turning into something way, way worse. Just look at old Harry, who really was halfway to being a demon at this point thanks to nothing more than a hundred years of deep-rooted sadistic psychopathy and om-nom-nomming on Lydia's spiritual energies.
I didn't know if that applied the same way to Lydia, who wasn't technically a ghost. But there was a very real chance that her despair could alter her existence, turn her into a pale shadow of what she was, a lost soul in the most literal sense of the word. Or worse, a twisted monster inflicting pain on others to help her forget her own suffering. I didn't know if it was possible, and I really didn't want to find out. Lydia was okay, when she was lucid. Brave, tough, a bit impatient but that was okay since she made a decent straight man. And really, isn't that a super-witty monster-hunter like myself really needs? Someone to make us look even funnier by association?
Also, I didn't want to be killed, and having her in my corner seemed the best way to manage that. Especially if the alternative was her going all crazy and monstery; Old Harry was trouble enough without giving him a girlfriend to hold people down while he played with them.
But it was mostly the other thing, I swear.
I am very altruistic.
“Look,” I began. I had already proven a few times here that I wasn't the best therapist in the world.
Or even a good one. But I was the only thing available, and I needed to give it a shot, right? I probably couldn't make it worse. Or, more accurately, I guess I should say 'I probably couldn't make it worse again'. “You haven't made the best accounting of yourself. And it's easy to beat yourself up over it, I know that. But the fact of the matter is? You're a decent lady. You mighta done some bad things, but it's not like you did any of them on purpose. It was really just a long string of bad luck on your part. Really bad luck. Insanely bad...”
No! No, bad Eric! You are fucking it up again, now be more reassuring before she starts crying again! I thought, catching myself before I ruined the situation for the third or fourth time.
“Look, my point is, you have some stuff to feel guilty for, maybe, but it's guilty in a 'mistake' way, not an 'evil' way,” I said. “And that's not so bad, right? Certainly not worth falling into existential despair over. So how about a smile?”
“... a smile.” She said dully.
I smiled. You know, to show her how it was done.
“I am dead. My family is dust. And I have spent countless years...”
“Only a hundred, actually, not that hard to count to one-hundr-”
“Countless years!” she snarled. “Feeding the monster that took them from me! Aiding him as he tortured and murdered countless others!”
The voice like a rumbling jet