Halloween I.F. – “Going Dark” – Day 15

 [ Please read the instructions before commenting! ] 

Bannick had said if they were going to survive this, Fern would need some friends. They felt officially past being capable of doubting the reality of this—they had to go forward assuming this was real. They could find a way to cope with all the implications of this later.

Four threats. Three of them were also possible friends, or at least, enemies of the last one. 

The radio didn’t seem like one of the threats: Bannick had pointed out it was used for communication when they’d asked about contact. Plus, Aris had also appeared on it, not just Bannick. So hopefully they were right about this.

The mirror. The tree. The wardrobe was obviously another. And then the fourth… all they had to go off was their dream, but the hunger under the house…?

Okay. So they’d make plans. No point in unleashing another threat unless they were sure they’d get an ally out of it—at this point, they weren’t sure they should be introducing any new risks without trying to ameliorate them. They pulled out their notebook, and wrote:

Hello! I would let you out if you agree to not harm me. Do you want to be friends? Yes/no?

Yeah, that was about all they could think of in the moment. They laughed incredulously at themself, then slid the paper through the crack in the wardrobe door, wiggling it in. For a long moment, they didn’t think it’d go, but eventually it tipped through. They imagined they heard the soft sound as it slid down the other side of the door.

Silence. They leaned forward a little.

A huge bang, sudden, against the wardrobe door, followed by a sharp wail in a feminine voice. They weren’t proud of it, but they fell backward, scrambling on their ass, before forcing themself to stop and stay where they were. There was no more screaming, but a few long, steady scratches began to sound on the inside of the wardrobe door.

Slowly, Fern crept closer.

They thought they heard a voice. They couldn’t be sure, it was so quiet. It reminded them of  all those whispers they’d heard before, and for a moment they withdrew again, but thought: fuck it. Fern forced themself to listen.

“Who…” the voice whispered, almost on the edge of hearing.

Should they reveal their name? Maybe they should keep the alias, even if this time it wasn’t being broadcast anywhere—if the radio previously had even been a broadcast, and not just something shared inside the house. Names meant something in folklore, though it just figured that they’d pick Guy, when they weren’t. “Call me Guy,” they repeated again, anyway.

“…am… I?”

Ah. That introduced some difficulties. Fern cleared their throat. “You don’t know who you are…?”

“Don’t know… friend… killer… foe… unless…”

She didn’t finish the already-incoherent sentence. But that was fair. If she didn’t fully remember herself, she wasn’t willing to ally. Or maybe couldn’t, even.

Well, Fern wasn’t going to let her out if she didn’t agree, though. Better let her know that. Transparency, etc. “I promise I’ll try to get the answer to that,” they said. “Also I noticed you didn’t agree to be friends, so I’m not unlocking the door yet. I’ll give you time to think about it and try to find a way to help you, okay?”

They didn’t hear an answer, but that horrible scratching started back up again. Fern got to their feet, feeling queasy, and backed away. Suddenly they very much wanted not to be in this room. They shoved the key into their jeans pocket, grabbed the jewellery box, radio, and amber, then fled.

Back in their room, they felt a little better, which was a wild thing to experience under the circumstances. Their heart rate began to slow back to normal, and they shuddered. Of course, they hoped to let her out at some point—Fern didn’t want to leave some poor lady trapped in a closet forever—but wanted to ensure their own safety first. So that meant finding her identity, or getting at least one of the other threats on their side.

Might as well work on both. They examined their ill gotten goods as if they might hold the answer. The amber shape was probably just a bug, part of the vast amount of collectible clutter that the woman had accumulated. They could try to crack it open if there was a compelling reason to, but given that amber could sometimes be pretty valuable, they weren’t going to do it unless it seemed relevant in some way.

The jewellery box, though… that might include some hint of her identity, and this was a broken lock that probably wouldn’t be discovered, if those things even mattered at this point. They carefully slid the screwdriver between the lid and the base and leaned on it like a lever until they heard the snap as the lid suddenly popped.

It was full with a massive amount of tangled jewellery, chains wrapped on chains, a big old jewellery blob. Fern made a face. Okay, so there might still be some clue to her identity there. It would take a few hours to sort, though, so they might as well write notes for the tree and mirror first, the same as they’d done for the wardrobe, to try to get the process kicked off of making new friends. The other two would also probably need time to think, after all, and they could deal with the jewellery then.

But what to write…

While Fern pondered, they glanced at the radio again, a little nervously. The Lully song had finished and obligingly moved on to one by Charpentier. After a moment, they switched the channel. They were deeply in some strange realm now, and maybe some codebreaking would be necessary…?

Sure enough, there were number stations again. They wrote down the numbers as they happened: 7 8 6 20 24 24 14 20 0 18 10 4 3 5 14 17 12 20 18 8 2 0 13 3 19 7 4 13 2 7 0 13 6 4 3 2 7 0 13 13 4 11 18 19 7 0 19 18 17 4 0 11 11 24 7 4 0 17 19 1 17 4 0 10 8 13 6. A long pause, then they repeated.

That converted to…

GHFTXXNTRJDCENQLTRHBMCSGDMBGMFDCBGMMDKRSGSRQDKKXGDQSAQDJHMF

Absolute nonsense. They almost turned the radio off at that, then drew a deep breath, and looked down at the letters again. It wouldn’t do to give up too early.

They fiddled with the first few letters a bit, shifting them backward by one, then forward. Abruptly, the letter patterns begin to make more sense. It was double ciphered!

Slowly and laboriously, they shifted each letter by one until they had a complete message.

HI GUY 

YOU ASKED FOR MUSIC AND THEN CHANGED CHANNELS 

THATS REALLY HEARTBREAKING

“Oh, ha ha ha,” they said aloud, the sound sharp in the room, and turned the radio off with a snap. Then they just put their head in their hands as they forced themself to breathe steadily. Don’t get tilted. So there was nothing useful there. That too was just something Bannick was playing with. But maybe he had thought it was funny. Maybe this would all be a bonding moment.

They should get those notes out before doing anything else time-consuming, one way or another. They still weren’t thinking of any particularly good notes, especially in the exhaustion after that snap of annoyance, so they just wrote what came to mind instead. Why not? It was the same vibe that they’d left with the wardrobe, and they might as well treat all three the same to start.

Hi. I have heard I have released you from your prison, or at least, did something to help you become active again. That’s great. I’m a big fan of prison abolition. I would like to be allies with you, not enemies. Are you willing to ally against another threat? Yes/No.

Sure. Good enough. They copied it identically for the second note, and then frowned at them both, trying to decide. Mirror or tree…

Mirror first. The mirror seemed more likely to be tied to Bannick, and the two of them had already had some kind of build-up of some kind of interactions. They could drop the tree’s note off last.

Triple-checking that they had their tools and the spike still, they headed down to the basement, bee-lining for the mirror. For a moment, they felt a bit stupid: unlike the wardrobe, there was nowhere to put the note ‘in.’ But it was probably enough to wedge the note into the frame. Hopefully the creature—Bannick?—would still see it there. 

They’d just managed to successfully wedge it in when they noticed movement out of the corner of their eye.

The tapestry was moving faintly, as if in some kind of breeze. Behind it was darkness.

Had they left the cellar door open-? They stared at that fluttering tapestry, trying to remember what they’d done when they were down here last.

Shff.

And that was the sound of movement behind them, coming from the mirror. They turned, and saw a hand emerging out of it as if from water, fish-belly white with a faint sheen to it, like meat that had gone off.

Between those two things, they froze, uncertain what to do or where to go.

[Comment below with a suggestion for Fern. ]

◀ previous | index | next ▶