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[busybetty]

“I always do enjoy killing you,” Edgar growls into Lisa’s, Olivia’s, ear. His hand is tangled in her hair, and Lisa knows that he plans to throw her over the border of the property. She recalls what he’d said only moments earlier: ”Your home is gone. Your time is gone. There’s nothing left for you now but oblivion. A fate worse than death.” She shrieks as he hauls her forward, but a crack of thunder stops Edgar in his tracks.

There she is. Frances. She’s standing there, stone-faced, in their path. Each flicker of lightning overhead reveals her for what she truly is: a spirit come for vengeance. For justice. Lisa tears herself from Edgar’s grasp and stands back as Frances steps closer, joined by all of Edgar’s other victims. It worked. Lisa’d gotten through to them, connecting with them the same way she’d connected with Frances — the same way Olivia had connected with her. Every trophy Edgar had kept was now an instrument of his undoing.

The ghosts swirl and surround him, an ever-tightening circle until he has nowhere to go. Even his parents are there. His very first victims. They rip him from Olivia’s father’s body, and Lisa gives him the courtesy of a single goodbye before returning to Olivia. Her father is sprawled on the rainsoaked grass, and he looks up at her, at them, with a confused “Olivia? What happened?”

Once they’ve gotten Olivia’s mother and sister back in the house and into bed to sleep off the chloroform, Lisa dumps the bottle down the drain, then looks at Olivia’s reflection in the mirror. She has no idea if she can hear her, but she says it anyway:

“Have a nice life, Olivia.”

It’s a promise and a reassurance in one. Edgar is gone now, which means Olivia’s father won’t be doing anything dangerous, and their whole family has a full, long life ahead of them, together. If there’s a hint of jealousy in her tone, Lisa refuses to acknowledge it.

She has no idea what’s waiting for her when she stops possessing Olivia. She isn’t even sure she knows how to stop on her own. She’s only ever stopped by circumstance before. And once it’s done, what then? Is Edgar right? Will she vanish into oblivion, now that he isn’t anchoring her to her own home, her own time, for his own sick pleasure? And if not… the best case scenario is that she’s back in her own house, by herself. Her family moved on. She watched them go, and chose to stay behind to help Olivia. She’ll be alone. That might be just as scary.

Despite the uncertainty and the anxiety that lingers with it, the strain of the day catches up to her and to Olivia’s exhausted body, and Lisa sleeps.

When she wakes, she’s not in Olivia’s bed anymore. The first thing she feels is relief. She’s still here. She’s still somewhere, anyway, she still exists. And then she realizes she isn’t in her bed, either. She’s on the floor, where her bed is meant to be. Her carpeting is rough under her, catching on the knit of her sweater as she rolls over.

Her sweater. She isn’t wearing Olivia’s pajamas, or her own. She’s wearing the clothes she’d worn the day she died. Lisa sits up with a gasp, looking around, eyebrows pinching. Her room is empty. Her posters are gone. Her bed and nightstand are gone. No alarm clock. No walkie-talkie.

“Mom?” she whispers, the instinct bubbling up inside of her. She pushes to her feet and steps out of the bedroom. “Dad? Robbie?” She’s even got her Chucks on, her Walk-man hanging on her hip as she walks, then runs, through the quiet and empty house.

There are no paintings hung on the walls. No hall tables. No phones. Her couch and the TV are gone. The dining room table that had held dozens of the exact same meal, gone. Lisa stands, feeling lost and afraid, breath trembling as she stares now at the broad front door. She has no idea what to expect on the other side. Will it be a wall of fog? Will her parents be there?

Lisa steps closer, fingers curling around the knob. When she pulls the door open, it’s to a lawn overlooking a cul de sac, just like the one the house had been built on. Across the way, she can see empty lots with giant 'COMING SOON' signs by the edge of the properties. It's not anything like the houses she'd seen outside of Olivia's house, or the ones she remembers from before. She stops, looking up at the clear sky. There’s no fog pushing in against the yard. The sun is up and bright, though she can’t feel its warmth on her skin. She steps out onto the stoop, then down to the lawn.

This isn’t her street. Where the hell is she?

[ Lisa doesn't know she can leave the property, so her debut is a little different! Come check out the new brick Georgian in the new cul de sac and say hi to the new resident ghosty! ]

Comments

[femmejosephine]

The non emergency number got a lot of calls every day and most of the time no one needed to be sent out. In this case, though, some construction workers at a subdivision that was going up in the suburbs had called in the sudden appearance of an entire house with at least one occupant. They'd said it appeared to be a relatively young girl and that she'd seemed to be a little distressed. The combination of all those details meant that Nikita was sent out in the fly-car to check on things.

She parked a little down the street to avoid further worrying the person by pulling up directly in front of the house. There were foundations here and there, but not even frames. It was weird to have an entire house in the middle of everything. It even had a lush lawn and some trees.

She saw a goth-looking teenager on the front porch, so she started up the front sidewalk. She wasn't carrying any of her gear, although her pockets were, as usual, full of useful things.

"Hi," she said easily when she was within earshot, but she didn't get too close, just to avoid seeming like a threat.

[busybetty]

Lisa hugs herself, reaching up to fiddle with her necklace, only to discover it isn't there. Her Walkman headphones are, though, so she grabs onto that instead. She tangles the wire around her fingers and bites her lip.

"...Hi?" she says, looking confused and anxious. The woman on the sidewalk isn't a ghost. She can tell that immediately. But she's definitely talking to Lisa. There's nobody here behind her for her to be talking to. But chances are, if she can see her, then this woman doesn't know Lisa's a ghost. She has to act normal. "Um... can I help you?"

[femmejosephine]

"I think that's my line," Nikita replied. Her stance was still easy and relaxed and she wasn't getting any closer.

"We got a call that someone here might need some help. Is it just you here right now?"

If there was someone else in the house that might come running out of the door and attack her, she wanted to know about that. Not that she expected the girl to admit that if it was a trap, but there might be some tells.

[busybetty]

It wouldn't be her line if they were where they supposed to be, Lisa thinks. If they were where they were supposed to be, this woman would just be randomly walking up to Lisa's house, and Lisa asking can I help you? would be totally normal.

Just like it would be totally normal for her parents to be home right now, so Lisa glances over her shoulder at the empty house, then crosses her arms and looks at the woman.

"No," she lies, putting on her best 'adults are so stupid' expression. It feels like it falls flat, but right now, it's the best she's got. "My parents are just inside, so." She swallows the waver that tries to enter her voice and glances around to mask the anxious blink that's come back. The barely constructed houses aren't doing anything to help her situation. Even she can tell that her lie is falling apart before it's fully formed.

[femmejosephine]

That was a lie, and it wasn’t a good one, but Nikita didn’t blame her for it. She was alone and scared and she didn’t want to admit to either of those things. It was understandable.

“Well, if they come outside, I’ll explain this to them too,” she replied calmly. “My name is Nikita and I work for Darrow Fire and Rescue. You’re in the city of Darrow, which I know isn’t where you were before. You did manage to bring your house with you, though. That’s a nifty trick.”

[busybetty]

"What do you know about where I was before?" she asks, which is meant to be haughty and defensive but only reveals that Nikita is right. Lisa crosses her arms and tries to stay firm. If she believes hard enough, then maybe Nikita will, too.

[mightymouse06]

Mouse is in her usual state as she walks down the sidewalk — headphones on, eyes fixed on the screen of her phone. The number of people here she texts with on a regular basis is vanishingly small, her focus for the last six months less on socializing and more on surviving, sometimes in the most unfortunately literal sense of the word. Between showing up in the middle of an actual fucking Purge, like from the movie The Purge, and then one wrong step sending her into some nightmarish alterna-Darrow, even all of the bullshit from home would seen like a breath of fresh air. It gets under her skin.

In a depressingly familiar way of dealing with that, she searches the internet about it. Back in her room, her laptop has about thirty-some tabs open in a browser, but staying put in the Children's Home for too long makes her feel claustrophobic. She can just as easily read on her phone screen. In true obsessive fashion, she's done little else for the past couple of weeks, trying to find out as much as she can about that other Darrow, the one with ash raining from the sky and monsters stalking the streets, and going down whatever research rabbit holes it takes her.

She's in the middle of an article about urban legends — ugh — when a blur of motion in her peripheral vision draws her attention. She stops and looks, then looks again. She's walked this route before, and she's about ninety-nine percent certain that that house was not there the last time she came by here. Likewise, she's pretty sure houses don't get constructed that quickly.

Brow furrowing, she pulls her headphones off, letting them hang around her neck. The girl in the yard looks even more confused as she does, which is in itself incredibly confusing. "Um, hi?" she offers, sounding characteristically uncertain. "Is everything okay?"

[busybetty]

There's a girl. She isn't Olivia, or Frances, or any of the other girls Edgar killed before or after his death, but she's there, petite and dark haired and big-eyed. Lisa isn't sure what that means: is the girl a ghost, too? Does she have something to do with Lisa's empty house? She turns to look at it, but she gets no looming sense of dread or anything else to suggest it's anything but a building. She looks back to the girl in the street and walks closer, stopping well inside the edge of the lawn, just in time to hear her speak.

“...What?” she asks, not because she hadn't heard the question, but because that's one of the most ridiculous questions she's heard to date.

Is everything okay? Of course it isn't. Lisa woke up in a literally empty house, her family in heaven or wherever ghosts go when they follow the light, and she's alone, in an unknown time, in an unknown place. She's facing a stranger who can see her, which has to mean she's a ghost, except Lisa can tell she isn't a ghost, which means… What? What does that mean? Lisa reaches up to fiddle with her headphone cord.

“I, I mean... I don't know, I... I don't know where I am?”

[mightymouse06]

"Oh, shit," Mouse says before she can stop herself, cringing even as the words leave her mouth. Not exactly a helpful response, and one that's bound to make all of this even more daunting than it already would be. As hard as she might try, though, tact is not always her strongest suit, and she really doesn't know how the hell this keeps happening to her. She is quite possibly the least equipped person to explain what Darrow is in the whole city. The circumstances of her own arrival only compound that.

At least this girl hasn't shown up in the middle of some kind of crime-is-legal spree. A quiet house in a quiet — well, aside from the construction — part of the suburbs is maybe the easiest way to soften that particular blow, though that still isn't saying much. That scale being from completely insane to an immediate matter of life and death means it's bound to throw anyone for a loop regardless.

"Sorry," she adds quickly. "That was, like, the worst possible thing to say. Totally did not mean it like that."

[busybetty]

The laugh Lisa laughs sputters out of her like a candle flame guttering on too much melted wax. It isn't funny, but it is at the same time, because Lisa can think of worse things to have said. Welcome to Hell is up there. Hello again, Lisa is there, too, at least if the voice was Edgar's.

But instead the girl has a girl's voice, and she seems genuinely sympathetic, but Lisa still doesn't know what any of it means.

"Do you know?" she asks, trying not to sound desperate. "Can you... help me? I need to get back. I need to find my family."

[echokeeper]

A new street. A new... there's a particular term for it, the way it goes round, dead-ends in a circle of houses. It's a term Norah's never needed to know or use. Abbie would know. Abbie would have a lot of thoughts and ideas about this, surely.

But Abbie isn't here anymore, and Norah is determined not to wallow about it. At least not when there's something new to investigate. And Abbie would investigate, if they were here. It's the least Norah can do.

There is only one house on this whatever-it-is, flanked by empty lots. Norah has a rather resigned suspicion that this is to do with a new arrival. How novel, not to be the only newcomer to bring a land feature and entire building with her.

Sure enough, as she draws near, the lone house's front door opens and a young, stunned-looking girl steps out. Norah pauses. Children are decidedly not her specialty. And this one looks very uneasy indeed. But that is a reason to press forward, not to shrink away like an uncaring coward.

So she draws a small breath and comes a little closer. "Hello," she calls. "Are you all right?"

[busybetty]

Lisa's head snaps towards the voice, and she feels a surge of relief. Another ghost. That shouldn't actually be a relief, because it means she's still in some sort of afterlife, with no sign of her parents, her house completely barren — but honestly, at least she isn't alone.

Lisa steps off the stoop and moves towards her. The concrete curb is as good a reminder as any of how far she's allowed to go, and the toes of her Chucks stop just before it. Now that she's closer, Lisa looks at the woman, taking in the dated look of her clothes, and it's here that she realizes something... isn't quite right. The woman is a ghost, for sure. But she's unlike any ghost Lisa's ever met.

To be totally fair, that isn't a big pool, but still.

Shaking her confusion, Lisa says, "Can you help me? This... This isn't my neighborhood. I don't know where I am, actually, which feels weird to say when my house is right there, but my parents and little brother are gone, and all the other ghosts are gone, too, and—"

She stops herself and takes a breath she doesn't need, huffing it out to try to ground herself.

"I'm sorry. Let's start simple: what is this place?"

[echokeeper]

The initial dread of the work that lies ahead, for which she feels so absurdly under-qualified — not just a new arrival but a child — is washed away in an instant at the words other ghosts. Norah blinks. This girl is... Should she have realized? She looks more solid than Norah does at the moment, but there is a faint sense of familiarity there. She brushes that question aside. There are more pertinent things that need answering.

"The place is called Darrow," she says, and sighs quietly. "I can answer most of your questions, because what has just happened to you also happened to me, some time ago now. Though I cannot promise you will much like the answers." She looks over the strange house behind the girl, then back at the girl herself. "Starting simple, as you say: my name is Norah, and we've both been... brought here, by some unknown force, to live. As it were." She smirks a bit humorlessly, and cannot help looking at the house once again. "Was this your haunting place?"

[busybetty]

Norah makes a joke, and honestly if she weren't a ghost, Lisa would probably be insulted. It lands a bit better coming from another ghost, and she lifts and drops her eyebrows, lips pursed, in a no kidding kind of way.

At the question, though, Lisa hesitates. That's exactly what it is, though, isn't it? It's the house she died in, and she's a ghost, so...

"Yeah," she says, glancing back at the brick before looking at Norah again. "I'm Lisa."

[echokeeper]

Lisa refrains from questions for the moment, for which Norah is moderately grateful, though she knows it's only a delay of the inevitable. And she does not begrudge anyone their questions; it is the constant reminder of how many are unanswerable that grates so tremendously.

But for now, she nods, looking at the house and all the lots that surround it. "Most who are brought here are... Well. They are not ghosts," she says. "Most simply arrive as themselves. You and I are somewhat unique in that we seem to have altered the landscape by bringing our haunting places with us." She tilts her head in consideration. "The implications are fascinating. Particularly since I can now move about as I wish." She realizes she's been thinking aloud, and refocuses her attention on Lisa. "I don't know if you were bound to yours as I was, but here, it seems the rules are a bit different." She considers this, then adds somewhat apologetically, "I don't know if that's a comfort or not."

[afeastofthirst]

The suburbs of Darrow could be anywhere. At least, they could be in nearly any small city in the relatively modern United States in Shion's version of the world, pleasantly nondescript and neatly ordered. Pretty little houses sit along the road, thinning out as the path gives way to a cul-de-sac, construction ongoing in the afternoon sun. More little boxes made of ticky-tacky are on the way up. He feels for the neighbors. So much construction has to be a pain to listen to day in and day out.

It's enough for him to think that today is, perhaps, not the day for him to be searching the area after all. He's been down this road before, looking for clues or ways out, with no luck, but the Darrow below spit him out near here once. There might be something to that. Or there might not be, but either way, the drone of jackhammers is incredibly annoying.

"Doesn't that drive you crazy?" he calls to the girl, standing on the porch nearby. She's got one of the only finished houses on this end of the block, but the price of the home is enduring all that. "Just bang-bang-bang all day. I'd think even school'd be better than listening to that."

[busybetty]

She looks at him like he's nuts, or speaking an entirely different language.

"... What?" she asks. It isn't that she didn't hear him. She doesn't understand why he's asking. Does he think she's been here the whole time? Has she been here the whole time? She walks closer, stopping well before the edge of the lawn. Her arms are crossed in front of her, jaw set in a stubborn way that suggests, if he knows to look, that she's pretending not to be freaked out. Something about him sets her teeth on edge, but she isn't sure what. He isn't a ghost, and probably he isn't evil. She knows what evil feels like.

Maybe it's just that she's in a totally new place, her family gone, her time gone, with this guy asking her a totally off the wall question. She has... way bigger things to worry about than some jackhammering across the way.

[afeastofthirst]

"The construction," Shion says helpfully, jerking a thumb over his shoulder to point at the scaffolding across the street. It's not like it's important, just idle chatter, but she's looking at him like he's grown a second head or something. All he's doing is taking a walk and making an observation! Not everyone is as friendly as he is, sure, but he kind of thought over-familiarity was a staple of the suburbs, actually. It's why they always live as much out of the way as they can, wherever they move. The seven of them never need other people sticking their noses into their business.

This house, he realizes as he looks past her to examine it, doesn't look so new. It's not old or decrepit or anything; it blends right in with everything else. But it doesn't have the shiny newness he'd expect from a new development, which is odd. Maybe it was the first one up.

"I wouldn't have thought they'd need more real estate in Darrow. Who even moves here?"

[busybetty]

He's still talking like she has any idea what he's talking about. Lisa's losing her patience, but then he finally drops a clue. Darrow. That must be where she is. Some city somewhere, but how the hell did she get here?

"Wh- Darrow?" she echoes, and feels stupid and slow. It's reminds her of before she wanted to believe the truth, and she hates it. "No, look," she snaps, more angry at herself than at him, "I'm not supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be—"

Where? Where is she supposed to be? There's nothing left for you now but oblivion.

"What the hell is going on?" Her tone is still terse, but there's a desperate edge to it.

[afeastofthirst]

Shion's eyes widen in surprise, and he mentally kicks himself for making assumptions. Sure, it's a reasonable one to have made when she's standing on the porch of this house like she's supposed to be there, but assuming things is a good way to land himself in trouble.

"Hey, it's okay," he says, and then it hits him: he's going to have to be the one to explain this place to her. He's never had to do that before, and it makes him uneasy. Something about it feels too real, his stomach twisting itself into frenzied knots. "It's — or maybe it's not." He steps slowly closer. This isn't a conversation to have across a lawn, but he doubts it would take much to spook her. Spook her more, rather, because she's looking pretty frantic herself.

"This city is Darrow. I'm not supposed to be here either. That's kind of how this place works." His bonhomie has given way to something more gentle, sympathy in his expression. "One minute you're home, the next — poof, new city, no idea how you got here or where you are. I just figured you were one of the locals and this was your house."

[lickaboot]

Helly is still adjusting to life. There's so much to it and she barely knows where to start. One thing that she's still getting used to is the part where she doesn't have the greatest barometer for what's normal and what isn't. So when she's walking to the store and catches a girl in the corner of her eye standing in a doorway, not moving, Helly pauses.

Then she asks herself, if she saw Dylan or Mark do this, would it be weird?

Irving would definitely pull this shit, so he's out of the question.

That's how she decides -- yeah. Weird.

"Hey," she says, tentatively, approaching. "...are you waiting for someone?"

[busybetty]

Lisa looks at the woman when she speaks, and the first thing she's struck with is the fact that this person isn't a ghost. She's pretty, the kind of pretty Lisa used to wish she were before she grew into her nose and realized her cheekbones are nothing to scoff at.

But she's definitely not a ghost. Lisa would be able to tell if she were, now that she knows what she's looking for.

It takes a second for the words to sink in, and she shakes herself.

"What?" she asks. "I... yeah, I guess I am. Except... I don't think they're coming."

[lickaboot]

Helly's brow furrows. It's just a twitch, a barely-there movement, but she knows that whoever it is that she's waiting for isn't coming. After all, as much as Helly's enjoying her freedom, she's also beginning to realize that it can get real lonely.

"Can I ...?" She gestures to the area in front of the door. "Do you live here? Am I allowed to just walk up, or is someone gonna shoot me if I get any closer?"

[busybetty]

"What?" Lisa says, caught off guard by the woman's fear of a gun, of all things. She has to remind herself that it's possible that she doesn't know Lisa's a ghost, and likely that she doesn't know the house is completely empty.

"N-no," she says. "No, there's no gun, um. You can... come closer, I guess."

[lickaboot]

"Okay. Good to know," Helly says, trying to keep her hands in sight, just in case. Paranoia's been hard to shake, if she's honest, and she wants to make sure that she doesn't lose her spot here just because she did the wrong thing.

She really doesn't want to learn about whether this place has its own fucked up break room.

"I'm Helly," she says, getting close enough to the front door. "Hi." This feels simple and weird, but then, so does everything here. "What's your name?"