Home for Horny Monsters Ch. 047

"Do you suppose she was trapped?" He looked around the room, then turned at the sound of footsteps.

Dana stepped around the corner carrying a small toolbox.

"There you are. So far, nothing major to report. Some roof damage and you need new windows. There was a temporary clog in the fountain, but Naia and I fixed it." She paused and surveyed the room, then looked at the harp. "So this is where she came from?"

"Yeah. I didn't get the sense that she was after me or anything. It was more like she was trying to run away."

"Makes sense. Maybe she got locked away in here and wanted her freedom." Dana set the toolbox down. "I took a peek in the room downstairs. Didn't see anything lurking about, but you should probably come down and check it out with me."

"Why?"

"Because it's full of all sorts of things. Easier for you to just come see it." Dana took a look around. "Far more interesting than this room. This place looks like it's been cleaned out."

He nodded, then headed for the door. Tink looked up from the harp, then set it down to follow. Reggie stopped at the stairs, then looked up.

With a series of grunts and squeaks, he sent the rat soldiers up the stairs.

"If anybody comes out of the third floor, we will know." He adjusted his plastic glasses and followed them down the stairs, holding Tink's hand to walk on his back legs.

At the bottom, they turned into the office and Mike saw Death standing outside the new room, bony fingers stroking his chin and a cup of tea in the other.

"Ah, Mike Radley, you have found a most interesting space. I have been waiting for you to join me, and—" Death's fiery orbs looked beyond Mike. "Is that a magical toolbox?"

"What?" He looked at the toolbox Dana was holding. "Why do you think it's magical?"

Death pushed Mike aside and knelt down to inspect it. "What sort of magic makes it float like this? And it seems to be following you, Mike Radley."

Dana frowned. "He has a weird sense of humor, doesn't he?"

"You can see him?" Mike asked.

"Of course, but we've never talked or anything." She pointed at herself. "I did technically die, so I thought that explained why I could see him. But whenever I tried to talk with him, he just kept looking at his maps. I figured maybe he was pissed that I got away or something, so I've just been leaving him alone."

"Mike Radley, who are you talking to?" Death was looking near where Dana stood, his bony brow furrowed.

"I'm talking to Dana. You... can you not see her?"

"I am capable of seeing anything with a soul, yet I only see you, the goblin, and His Majesty, the Rat King. Are you saying there is somebody else here?" Death held out a bony hand. "You may call me Death. I am pleased to meet you."

"Oh, I still have my soul. That's the problem." Dana reached out for his hand, but her hand passed through it. "I can't touch him, apparently."

"Her hand went through yours," Mike explained.

"Fascinating." Death stood up and swallowed some more tea. "You have brought me a better room to conduct my studies in, and an intriguing mystery. Today has been a wonderful day for me."

Mike shook his head in disbelief. "I'm happy for you, Death. Really."

Death let out a chuckle and stepped away from Dana. "I am learning so much in your home."

"Yeah, so am I." He shook his head with a grin, then turned to look in the new room.

It was well decorated, and had several bookshelves covered with a variety of items. On one wall was a large collection of pictures and some devices that looked like goggles with sticks on them, and the other wall had a large phonograph machine. Covering the walls was a bewildering assortment of artifacts that looked like they came straight out of a museum, and in the middle of the room was a large, ebony table with a stack of records on it.

"See what I mean?" Dana walked over to the phonograph. "Now that you're here, I can try this out and see if it works."

"Why do I have to be here?" he asked.

"In case it doesn't. Didn't want to take the blame." She smirked, and picked up a record and put in on the phonograph. Mike watched her mess with the device until the scratchy tones of an old record filled the room with soft music.

"Sounds like it works."

"Yeah. The record isn't labeled though, and I didn't take enough liberal arts classes to tell you what song it is."

"Tink like phonograph." The goblin moved toward the device, then took a step back. "But Tink no touch. Break too many times."

"Break it as much as you like," Mike told her. "I'll just have you fix it."

Tink grinned, and Dana handed her a record. While the two of them messed with the phonograph, he circled the room. What looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs had been carved into the sides of the shelves, and several of the pictures were printed in duplicate.

"Weird." He held up a picture of a dig site. The pictures seemed old, but the clarity of the image was amazing. In the one he held, a large statue was being excavated. "Why are there two of every copy?"

"Oh, neat." Dana picked up one of the goggles and held it to her face. "These are stereoscopes. Here." She took the picture from him and set it in the frame, then fiddled with a knob at the top. "Now look."

When he held it to his eyes, he saw the world of the picture extend into three-dimensions. "That is pretty cool."

"Right, Mike Radley?" Death's voice came from over his shoulder, and he nearly dropped the stereoscope. Death had found a stereoscope of his own and was looking at a picture of a pyramid. "This is way more interesting than a map."

"I'm sure." He looked around, then spotted a large statue tucked in an alcove clutching a scepter. "Is that Anubis?"

Dana looked up at the statue. "It might be. Certainly looks straight out of the movies, doesn't it?"

"Wasn't he a death god or something? Shit." He set his stereoscope down. "Let's leave for now. I feel like we're just going to end up cursed or something if we go digging through all this stuff without the necessary precautions. Last thing I need is to unleash the mummy's wrath or something."

A loud screech filled the room, causing him to jump. Everyone turned to look at Tink, who had lifted up a panel on the phonograph, causing the record to pop off. The goblin blushed, then lowered the panel.

"May I continue to use this room, Mike Radley?" the Grim Reaper asked.

"Yes, but no fighting with Anubis." He pointed at the statue. "There's plenty of room in my heart for both of you."

"You are a good soul, Mike Radley." Death held the stereoscope to his face.

"So... upstairs?" He looked at Tink and Reggie. The goblin and the Rat King nodded, and they left Death behind to enjoy the pictures in the room.

"Hello?"

Beth hovered in the void, her eyes on a shape in the distance. There were no stars, no ground, just blackness, save for something that looked suspiciously like an antique lamp post. She tried to kick or swim through the void, but was unable to discern any sort of movement.

From all around her came a low pitched buzzing sound that turned on and off intermittently. She wondered if she was hearing voices from the real world, or if this was some dumb version of purgatory.

Typically, when she and Jenny exchanged places, she was unconscious for all of it. She wondered now if her soul was already inside of the device, slowly being extracted into the lower chamber.

She would have shivered at the thought, if she had a proper body.

The light from the lamp post flickered, and she realized that she was moving closer to it. She let out a sigh, relieved to see something other than a yawning void around her.

Her limbs were transparent until she stepped into the light of the lamp. The lamp post stood on a round patch of cobblestone roughly ten feet in diameter. Curious, she crouched down and looked at the edge of the island she was on. The ground flickered and expanded with the light of the torch, and she tried to feel the edges of the ground with her fingers, only for her hands to vanish once they were outside of the light.

"Light equals matter. Okay." She walked around the edge of the island, but learned nothing new, then turned her attention toward the lamp.

It was ornate, and roughly ten feet tall. The flame inside was far too bright to look at directly, so she focused on the wrought iron structure beneath. Intricate patterns shifted along the length of the lamp, and the flickering light above cast twisted shadows down its length.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

The voice startled her, and she spun on one foot, her back slamming against the lamp.

"You!" she hissed.

"Me." Oliver stepped out of the darkness, wearing a white button down shirt and dress pants. His red skin was paler than usual, and his tie had been undone, hanging limply over his shoulders. "Or, at least as much me as I ever remember being."

"So you survived." She stepped around the lamp, putting it between her and the demon. Mike and Yuki had rescued her from an eternal damnation with the demon by putting a dagger through his head and then popping the dimension he was trapped in, like bursting a bubble. With nowhere to go, it was assumed that Oliver had simply ceased to exist.

"And you'd be right, in a manner of speaking." Oliver grinned, without a hint of malice. "Of course I can hear your thoughts. You are literally just a soul right now. It's like reading a book for me."

"How are you here?"

"I'm that little part of me that Oliver left on you. Maybe, in a way, I'm technically just an offshoot of the original, or what's left of him." He held up his hands to reveal that, despite the light's presence, they were semi-transparent. "I'm afraid that something like this is beyond my own knowledge, at least, until you ask me about it. Upon your destruction of my dimension, the universe hung on a coin toss involving the fate of the demon you knew as Oliver. Should he be freed and dumped back into the material plane? Or was his place in eternal destruction? His opinion could hardly be asked, as that cursed blade kept him from waking."

"So he is gone."

"He is, but he isn't. The Void is funny like that. By nature, non-existence is a paradox. I can have an empty box, or a full box, but the Void itself cannot be an empty box, because that would imply that something exists in the first place. I guess you could say that he went to the same place that your dreams do when you're awake."

"You mean like the Dreamscape?"

He laughed. "Hardly. I mean your ordinary, run of the mill dreams. When you meet a stranger inside of them, where have they come from, and where do they go? Did they truly live full lives until you chanced upon them, and have they died upon your awakening?"

"This sounds suspiciously like an effort to get me to discuss philosophy with you."

"Or maybe it's an attempt to get you to ask the right question so that I may decide what my fate is to be." He circled to the left, but Beth moved, keeping the lamp between them. "You see, I'm not sure what I am. I'm a ghost of a shadow of a memory at best. In fact, I have no true memory of a time before this moment. I am still everything that Oliver was, but everything I know, I know from your memories. Now I wonder if I'm simply a figment of your imagination."

"Then I guess you want to know what comes next?"

He nodded. "When you wake, do I die? Will I persist again? Is my eternity conscripted to this all too brief and bleak existence, or is there some hope of salvation?"

"Sounds like you're wrestling with the same shit people do every day." Beth leaned against the lamp post, pressing her cheek against the cool metal. "Until I met everyone at the house, I wondered those same things. Is there life after death? What happens to people when they die? All that fun stuff. Those questions account for a majority of mankind's decisions, in my opinion."

"Oh?" Oliver sat down, as if on a chair, but none was visible. "You have my curiosity."

"Do we have souls? What's the meaning of life? If I do this, do I get into heaven? All those things. You can either live in existential terror over every decision, or simply accept that you just don't know. Approach death in the same way that you approached birth." She arched an eyebrow. "Welcome to being a fucking human being."

"And what would you have of me? Should I not know what will happen when you leave this place? I'm not even sure what this place is." He looked over his shoulder into the darkness. "Nor am I sure how we are here."

A loud buzzing sound filled the space, loud enough that they both covered their ears until it was over.

"What the fuck was that?" Beth growled.

Oliver's yellow eyes flashed. "Magical dissonance. Whatever is holding us here is struggling to contain us. We are hearing a physical manifestation of a magical ripple effect."

"Oh." She realized she hadn't meant to ask the question. "So you don't know what's causing it?"

"No. You asked what that noise was, and that's all I got." He stood from his imaginary chair. "And you remember that I cannot lie."

"That I do." But what if the rules had changed?

"You would have no way of knowing." He grinned, his teeth on display. "I've decided that I want to play a game."

"And what if I refuse?"

"Well, such a refusal would indeed be your choice, but consider this; I have no idea what will happen to me when you leave this place, if I will live or die, but now I wonder what would happen to me if I were to find a way to dispose of you instead. Perhaps my fate would be the same, or maybe I would be allowed to go free in your stead."

"You have no idea how much I fucking hate you."

"I have some idea. While I don't remember existing before this moment, I do have access to those shared memories." He licked his lips. "It's a weird thought, isn't it? If not for my memories, perhaps I would be a different creature, yet here I am, ready to make the same mistakes all over again."

"So what's the game you wish to play?"

"Hide and seek."

"There's nowhere to hide. We're surrounded by darkness."

"Then I think I will let you hide first. If I find you, you have to ask me the question of my choosing."

"What's the question?"

"How do I get out of here? We could skip the game and you could simply help me."

Beth swallowed the lump in her throat. There was no way she could let him out. "And if I refuse?"

Oliver fanned out his fingers, revealing long talons. "I spend whatever time I have left shredding your skin off your body, or maybe even bite pieces of you off until I'm full. Maybe find a way to curse you to the same fate I suffered."

"Why even give me a choice?"

His eyes shone. "Because we are tied together. And you know how much I love my games."

Shit, shit, shit. Beth backed away from the lamp post. "I'm not going to agree to anything."

"Doesn't matter. I'm going to count to twenty to give you a fair shot." He winked. "And when I catch you, we'll see who comes out on top. This time, you don't have your friends to bail you out. It's just you and me here, and whatever lies in the darkness."

"But I—"

"One." Oliver covered his eyes with his hands, then let out a scary laugh. His fingers were now triple their original length, with inch-long talons. The scene was almost comical because his head disappeared in his over-sized palms. "Two."

Beth bolted out into the darkness, her body disappearing. The little island receded behind her, and she chanced a look back. Oliver stood beneath the light, but she could no longer hear him.

Realizing that she could move backwards just as fast, she turned to keep an eye on him, then drifted sideways a bit. It would be no good traveling in a straight line, especially if he could move faster than she did.

The island was tiny now, and the universe buzzed again.

The demon lowered his hands and leapt toward where she had been, slapping the light out of the lamp post. Flames scattered into the darkness, creating a weird pattern of visions to emerge as unseen objects caught on fire. Her mind twisted about in an effort to understand what she was seeing. The entire world briefly looked like a crystalline lattice, then exploded with light.

"Oof!" She had fallen hard onto the ground, rolling on a patch of grass.

"Beth!" A voice from her past called out to her, and she looked up to see that she was lying on a soccer field. She now wore a jersey and a pair of gym shorts. Scanning the area, she stood and brushed herself off.

"What are you doing over there?" The voice asked again, and she rolled her eyes. It was Janine Lucillo, her best friend from middle school. Her family had moved away the summer before freshman year, and Beth had been devastated.

She turned around to see the plucky brunette running toward her, arms waving in the air. Beth surveyed the area. Yep, it was her former middle school. However, from where she stood, the middle school looked like it had been painted on the wall, and even the clouds above were suspect.

It was like a giant soundstage. Anything farther than a hundred feet away was clumsily made or just painted on the background.

"Hey, I've been looking for you." Janine grabbed her by the hand. "I needed to talk to you about something."

Janine looked so small.

"What is this place? Why are you here?"

Janine frowned. "Um, so, like, my dad found a new job."

"Uh huh." Was this some sort of trick? She didn't see anybody else nearby, but needed to keep moving.

"It means my family has to move." Janine's eyes were watering up now, and Beth looked at her again.

"Oh." This was a memory. In fact, this was the day that Janine told her she was going to have to move. The two of them had cried all afternoon, then ridden their bikes to the mall for ice cream. But why this memory?

Janine was crying now, having the other half of a conversation that Beth wasn't participating in. She wandered away, leaving the distraught teen behind her. The school was the only building that was nearby, but it had been painted onto the horizon. She wondered if the door to the building might work. If so, the school would have plenty of places to hide.

The whole world rumbled again, and Beth looked at the sky. Other than the birds that had been painted over the clouds, everything seemed fine.

She broke into a jog, and immediately noticed that the definition of the building changed as she grew closer. The building painted onto the wall appeared to stretch and distort toward her, suddenly becoming real. Beth looked back over her shoulder to see Janine and a younger version of herself painted on the soccer field. Both of them were crying and holding each other.

It was like the island, only now she was the light. Was it the same way for Oliver? Was he running toward a picture of her right now, just waiting for it to become three-dimensional?

The middle school was built of brick with large glass windows. She couldn't quite see through the glass, but the interior looked like it was painted on as well.

Pulling on the door, she stepped inside and froze. There were dozens of versions of herself running around, all of them different ages.

Curious, she picked one to follow. It was the sixth grade version of her, and she was running to her locker with her hand over her mouth. Once Beth drew close, the little girl disappeared and Beth now wore her outfit.

Something was in her hand. It was a piece of paper, and she lifted it to reveal that the writing was obscure, but the large red F on the page was not.

"Oh." She remembered this. It had been a book report, and while everyone else had chosen things like The Babysitter Club, she had written a full report on a book she had found under her mother's bed. The title was long lost to her, but she remembered getting in trouble for writing a report on smut.