expression.
“I personally like to think that I'm so sane I looped back around to just a little bit crazy,” I said. “I mean, come on. You have to be a little bit crazy to actually go around doing this sort of thing on a regular basis, right? But you have to be sane to do mathematics, and I totally can do that. It's how I work out how much I'm paid for it!”
Lydia did that thing where she opened her mouth without saying words. It made her look a little bit like a fish.
“What?” I asked.
“So... we are going to die here, then,” Lydia said.
“That hurts, Lyd. It does. Your lack of faith hurts me, right in my soul. Why you gotta hurt my soul?” I asked. “This is just getting old. I got Harry out there trying to hurt my body, and I got you in here trying to hurt my soul, and the universe in general seems to be doing its very best to hurt my mind. Is this 'Hurt Eric' day? Because nobody told me it was, and I think I deserve warning.”
“We are going to die. Die horribly. I have entrusted myself to the protection of a lunatic child.” Lydia moaned.
“Hey! I'm thirty,” I said. I then stuck my tongue out at her, because I like to stay young at heart, you know? “Besides, of the two of us, only one is giving the ghost limitless fear-based superpower, and it isn't me. Hint. Hint.”
Lydia looked like she was somewhere in between crying and slapping me, and settled for just sitting down on the floor in a huff, her skirts billowing around her.
Wait a sec.
Billowing?
I looked down at my own clothes, which were just now beginning to go from 'wet and sticky' to 'dry and sticky' after the whole mess with the bloody entrance hall. And yet, Lydia looked...
“Hey, Lydia,” I said. “I need to talk to you about your time living here again. One more time. Is that okay?”
“I told you... it's been so long, and I've tried so hard to forget,” She murmured. “I don't know how much else I can remember. I can try, but... it's so dark. So confusing. Even what I can remember does not always make sense to me.”
“Well, that's okay. I really need to know about one particular event,” I said, as gently as I could. I'm normally not much for preserving people's feelings, but in this case, the poor thing was really gonna need some help to deal. Therapy was the order of the day. I tried to think of a gentle way to break the news to her, but honestly, beating around the bush would just waste time. I needed to get this out in the open, and the direct approach was really my only option. “Lydia, I'm not gonna lie. Recalling this is going to hurt you. A lot. But I honestly think it is the only way I have to get out of being horribly killed, and the only way that you have of getting out of something far worse.”
I took a deep breath and asked, “Do you think you could remember how you died?”
Oh, hey. Her eyes really could still get wider. Who knew? The last thing we needed was her jumping back into blind hysterics, though, so I reached out a hand for her shoulder in as calming a gesture as I could manage under the circumstances.
“Please, try not to panic,” I said. “At the moment, it's just a theory, and I admit it doesn't make 100% sense just yet, but it's gaining more ground in my head than I like to admit. So try to stay calm, and we'll just take some time and look at the evidence together, okay?”
“There is no evidence of such insanity!” she snapped. “I am most certainly not...”
“How did you get into this house, Lydia?” I asked. “Today, I mean. You weren't here when I arrived. At the time, I was in too much of a rush to think about it, but I didn't hear you open the door, didn't hear your car pull up. You were here to warn me about something, so why bother being stealthy? Why not knock on the door, try to lure me outside? Because you didn't come in through the door. You manifested. Appeared from nothingness and took on a physical form already inside the house, just like our friend with the hook.”
“No! No, I... I came to warn you. I knew that you were moving into the house, and I had to warn you. I must have entered quietly, that's all. To avoid frightening you.” She said.
“Interesting choice of words. 'I must have' entered quietly. Because you don't remember doing it, do you? It's not just the time you lived here you can't recall easily, is it? Your memory is full of holes. Now, is that because you're a trauma victim whose mind isn't coping well, or because there have been large stretches of time, decades even, where there was simply nothing for you to possibly remember?”
“I... of course I...”
“And then there's the physical evidence before our very eyes.” I continued. “Your clothes are oddly formal for this day and age, and especially for this situation. A full dress to go to an old house out in the country? Most women would throw on jeans and a t-shirt, not a gown. Especially not a gown like that, which is very clearly not in any current fashion I've ever heard of. And I can't help but notice that despite the fact we've had a house full of crazy trying to kill us for the last twenty minutes, that dress isn't even wrinkled. No stains, no tears in the fabric, not even wet after we took what amounted to an impromptu blood-bath. My hair looks like I've been through a heavyweight boxing match, but yours isn't even out of place. You don't have any wounds after we went through the fucking gauntlet out there, not even a scratch. In what world does any of that make sense?” I pressed.
“I... you're a grown man. Strong. Armed. The monster sees you as the greater threat, of course, and he chose to focus his efforts in that direction, clearly.”
“Disregarding the fact that this does absolutely nothing to explain the whole thing with how I am covered in blood after swimming in blood, and you are not,” I said, just the tiniest bit impatiently. “you do have a point. He definitely did focus his efforts on me. No question there.”
“There! You see, it, the explanation makes perfect sense...” She said, her voice trailing off uncertainly. Denial is a universal trait, it seemed, whether you were alive or not.
“Oh, come on. Even by my standards that barely explains anything. And besides, you're missing the most important thing: The ghost went after me a bit too much considering you were there being all generally weak and easily-murdered. You were the perfect target and he never once even tried to hurt you. All his little creepy-crawlies went for me. You went through a whole room without anything going after you! And when we got near here, when he broke out the hook personally, he went for me. Most telling, when you jumped in front of me back there, he held his blow. He's not trying to kill me first, he's trying to kill me only. He is totally ignoring you most of the time, actively avoiding you the rest of it. Why do you think that is, Lydia?”
“I...” she said, very, very quietly. Poor thing looked on the verge of tears. “I don't know. I don't know why it's always me, I don't...”
“Always you,” I said. “Because this has happened before, and more than once.”
“No! It can't, it just can't, I...”
“You remember what I said, when we met?” I asked her. “According to records, nobody has lived in this house in over forty years. I thought the agency was just being incompetent, but they weren't, were they? Because you lived in this house way more than forty years ago, didn't you? Tell me, Lydia... what year do you think this is?”
“I... I...!”
“Easy question, but I know it's hard to remember things. Just try to focus, okay? Take it slow.” I said.
“T-the... the year of our Lord... nineteen... hundred and three.” She whispered, In the quietest, smallest voice I think I'd ever heard.
“You're...a bit over a century off.”
“Oh, God.” She said softly, her eyes welling up with tears. I had expected her to rage, to keep denying, to call me a lunatic. This was worse. “Oh God, no. No, no, no...”
“Lydia, you said your last name was Talman,” I said. “I didn't think at the time, I was too worried about getting you out of the house, but... when Ha
rcourt Stanfield died, he had no living family, did you know that? Last of his line. And so, when he wrote up his will, he left his properties and company to the vice-president of his firm, Edward Talman.”
“My Edward.” Lydia said, a tear running down her cheek. “My poor Edward. He tried so hard to be brave. He did. But it just wasn't in him. He was no fighter. He was always a clerk at heart... I used to laugh, to tell him his first love was numbers, and I would always be second. He never wanted this house, he loathed the countryside, but our Madeline loved it so. For her, he kept it as a summer home, where she could ride the horses when the weather was good...”
“Madeline was your daughter?” I asked. I felt bad doing it, but... the pain seemed to have unblocked some pipes in poor Lydia's mind. She seemed to be accepting her situation, and with acceptance was coming a return to memories she'd tried for a very long time to suppress. I needed to do whatever I could to keep them flowing.
“My little one,” she whispered, her tears flowing freely now. “She loved this house, but was always afraid to sleep here. I never believed her when she said she heard voices from the attic. If I had...”
“That's how ghosts usually work,” I said. “They move slowly. Building up a tiny reservoir of fear that they feed on to grow stronger, manifest more visibly. They keep repeating the cycle, over and over,