The Others [IC/PG-16/Accepting]

[radio414 907]

Brian groaned. “I don’t know if that pun needs to be better or worse,” he said. “It got a reaction out of me, though, so I guess that’s something.” Still, to complete the joke, he reached out and flushed the toilet. It worked fine, if a little weak. The sound also served to tune out the whimpering that was now coming from the toilet. “Quit your whining,” Brian told the ghost.

He looked up at Carmen. “I bet that means the thing is still around, though,” he said. “We probably have to seal up the other restroom too and then see what happens. Whenever you’re ready.”

As they both exited the men’s restroom, Brian took a moment to stretch, cracking both his knuckles and his neck. It was a dangerous job. Nobody was denying that. But Brian hadn’t expected to be wrestling with school ghosts in cramped restroom stalls, stalling for time (pun not intended) as the mother of all scaredy-cats had to run around taping seals up where the ghost wasn’t. At the very least, he thought, he should be doing something productive too. “Here’s an idea,” he said. “If we both have seals it should be easier to stick one on the ghost itself. You saw how distracted it got when you pulled yours out; it completely changed its focus to trying to stop you. What’s it gonna do if we both have one, huh?” He went to the box of seals and jammed some into his pocket just in case. “Either way, my turn to be the pervert,” he said. “Let’s get it over with.”

The girl’s restroom was about what he expected. Maybe once upon a time in his youth, Brian might have expected a land of sunshine and rainbows and happiness contrasted against the men’s drab and dreary mundanity but nah, he was pretty sure they were all the same except with more toilets instead of urinals and he sure was right this time. Carmen had even placed all the seals in the same spots he had put his, like there was a single uniform look for this school’s restrooms even while it was under maintenance for ghost haunting. The one unsealed toilet was the same too; it was the one in the corner.

Brian checked Carmen had the flashlight on and ready, braced himself, and went in.

Thankfully, just like the aesthetic and the seals, the encounter with the ghost went much the same way as well. It was just as harrowing and all, but Carmen was still able to sneak by with a seal, and when Brian fought through and grabbed his own seals, the ghost indeed was stuck without a good way to defend itself anymore. That’s what Brian thought anyway, as the ghost fleed back into the toilet leaving itself whimpering once again. It was a pity -- he wanted to have managed to actually get on the thing, but this was good for now. Once again, he reached out and flushed the toilet. “Well,” he said, stretching himself out again. “Any more bathrooms in this school? You think those are haunted too?”

[Skaia 578]

With the two of them having sealed two bathrooms together now, Carmen let out a sigh of relief at the defeat of the ghost. She had found it strange that such a creature, that was as easily able to kill them would retreat after at the sight of just a paper seal, but she just chalked that up to the seals themselves being that strong. Whatever they actually were. With the two bathrooms having been sealed, though, Carmen was ready to leave the school with a job well done, no longer having to worry about a ghost trying to haunt her back at home for her transgressions in entering a bathroom she had no place in as well as from Shiki scolding her, or much worse, for failing at her job. It was then, though, that Brian mentioned other bathrooms in the school that she had realized her cause for celebration had come far too soon and was far too baseless. With the building as big as it was, it was natural that there would be more than two bathrooms in the entire building. Add to that she started to wonder about something else. What would happen if they actually removed the seals from these toilets? They weren't exactly functional like this - at least as toilets, one could still very easily sit on them when hiding from whatever form of authority or socialization they were trying to get away from! Though, the more she thought on that the more she realized she would be just as likely to run from a bathroom that looked like it housed some kind of unspeakable sealed horror. 

Realizing just how far their job was from being done, the girl let out a defeated, "uuuuggghhhh," before walking over and grabbing the toilet plunger out of the toilet. "Th-there's...yeah...more...I wanna go home..." Taking a weapon for self defense, one that seemed to serve its previous wielder no good, the girl slumped her shoulders as she walked out of the bathroom. In spite of the fact that they had gone through two bathrooms without much difficulty, the girl wasn't any less on edge as they continued to go and seal all of the other ones throughout the school. She kept expecting the ghost to do something different, or to grow more angry with them and just try to kill them outside of the bathroom, or for there actually to be one ghost per bathroom and they were actually just corralling all of them to have to fight a horde of ghosts at once. She also kept bracing herself for the seal to not work or for Brian to disappear every time any of them entered a new room or turned a corner or anything really. Thankfully, none of this had actually come to pass. Though she had become completely unbothered with both of them entering either bathroom. 

Once they had gotten to the last one the girl said, "th-this is uh....this is it..." Gulping as she took the first step into the bathroom, her plunger in one hand and seals in the other she let out an immediate, "gyah!" as the lights started flickering. She had done this every single time, but she was certain this time there was something more to it. As if the lights themselves were starting to flicker on and off with more intensity? Frequency? Both? She didn't really know how to describe it and she really didn't want to think too hard about what it meant. As such, she continued to put the seals on the toilet as she had done several times before. Once the second to last toilet had been sealed up, it was then that the lights went out fully yet again. "Eep!"

[radio414 907]

The moment the lights went out, Brian had the flashlight on and ready. He wasn’t about to get got again. He shined it on Carmen first, partially to demonstrate to her that they still had a light source, but also because he wanted to make sure she wasn’t cowering in fear at the first sign of adversity. If the ghost was going to be this aggressive just because they were going through and systematically eliminating all its potential hideaway spots, they needed to both be ready to fight back. Thankfully, she’d just been spooked, she wasn’t completely out of there just yet. But he noticed the flashlight was already running low on juice, or it was flickering like it was. “Typical,” he said. They’d just have to make do.

Now that he was thinking about it, though, it made sense that the flashlight would be affected by a ghost too. It was just as much a light source as the lights in the bathroom and just as shitty too. He took a seal and wrapped it around the flashlight. Whether it worked or was just a placebo, Brian couldn’t tell, but just in case, he left it on.

It meant waving around the light, though, and when it cast over the door to the final toilet stall, Brian saw a hand retreat back into the stall. Even with the light, he had to shift around and face directly into it to even get a hope of seeing what was in there.

This turned out to be a mistake, and the really stupid kind to boot. The ghost was in there -- because who else’s hand would just be floating around the stall? -- and the moment he got a clear look at it, it leaped forward, seized Brian’s shirt, and let out a wail that could rival any banshee. It was so shrill Brian nearly forgot to fight back as it pulled him back towards the toilet and he stumbled forward before he caught himself on the stall door.

“Carmen!” Brian called out, and thankfully she had at least some wherewithal, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him back, even if that wasn’t what he wanted. “No! Fuck! Give me a seal!”

He was still flailing a bit, so it was hard to actually get the seal in his hand, but they managed, and as soon as he had it he nearly flung it at the thing. As expected, the ghost retreated to avoid actually getting touched by the seal, but it didn’t disappear into the toilet this time. It was still there.

“Fuck’s sake,” Brian said, still catching his breath. “We’re gonna stick one of these things somewhere. What the fuck do you want, anyway?”

[Skaia 578]

Carmen had backed away after Brian had grabbed the seal from her, feeling that it was certainly his time to shine and defeat the ghost. Which is to say that she didn't feel the need to step in the line of danger, nor did she have any want to get anywhere near that thing's face, especially not after the bloodcurdling screech it had just given out. As the man continued to flail though, and swing the seal towards the creature's arm, it became a lot more difficult to keep track of things as the two of them were now in the bathroom stall. She could still see Brian and the light he was shining from the flashlight, but she could no longer see the ghost. Of course, Brian was probably able to see the ghost and since it seemed like he was trying to converse with it she could be reasonably certain that it was in fact still there. 

However, as her experience with planting her face into the table earlier had proven, just because she couldn't see something didn't mean she couldn't be afraid of it. In fact, it was the lack of her own visual confirmation that made it all the scarier. Add to that the lights that had completely shut off and her being surrounded by darkness as a result. And so, she slowly creeped up to Brian, just for safety sake, and had once more gotten a clear view of the ghost at hand. The girl gulped, trying to swallow her fear though all that had really happened was that she had begun shivering instead. While the anticipation of what was going to happen next was certainly killing her, Carmen felt like she was in quite the odd position. 

There it was, a man killing ghost, driven into a corner and whimpering. Carmen had never really been on this side of the equation in all her life, and so she wasn't really sure how one was supposed to be when confronted with a frightened creature. Perhaps if they just approached it it'd eventually hide back in its toilet like all the other times? That's what she certainly would do - if she could reasonably fit in a toilet of course. And if it retreated back into its toilet then she wouldn't have to deal with it directly, and if she didn't have to deal with it directly then she could get the job done easily! After all, this was still a job that she had to do or else face whatever wrath she might incur from Shiki. "Okay, okay, okay, okay, I can - I can do this, yeah, yeah," said to herself. And so, boldly, for once in her life feeling the strength of a hunter instead of the hunted, the girl took a step forward. "I can do this, I can do, I can do this. This." And then another. "This, I can...I can do this." And another. "I can- "

The ghost shrieked as she got close enough, lashing out with its hand as it had done so many times before and grabbing onto her wrist, pulling her towards her. Eyes widening as she saw the ghost's void face once more she shouted, "I can't! I can't do this! Ahhh, B-Brian, Seal! Seal!" She flailed her arm back towards the man, practically whacking him and really preventing him from moving forward in the stall before he finally managed to hand off the seal to her. With paper in hand, the girl flailed her arm about before finally going for a decisive swipe at the creature's torso. 

The paper seal had landed on the ghost. The ghost let go, shrinking away from the girl and curling up as its body slowly started to vanish. Then, when it had finally completely vanished, the paper seal that had been placed on it burned up entirely. With neither ghost nor seal left, the girl took a deep breath and stood up straight. Or, as straight as she normally did, asking, "d-did we win?" 

[radio414 907]

“Fuck,” Brian said again. It seemed over. There wasn’t any noise that would indicate a paranormal threat still lurked in the bathroom, and he swung the flashlight around too just to see if the ghost was still hiding somewhere, but it wasn’t. Speaking of the flashlight, Brian noticed it was back to a steady beam of light, if a little hindered by its cheap bulb. He went over and jiggled the lightswitches too. The lights were working just fine.

The last thing Brian did was find the spot where the ghost had faded away and brush the remaining ashes of the burned-up seal with his foot. Were they supposed to sweep that up? Couldn’t hurt, he decided. The paper towel dispenser was still stocked up, so Brian brushed as much as he could into one of those and tossed it in the bin. “I think we’re done,” he said. “Yeah, good job. Go seal up that last stall just in case and we’ll go tell that crabapple in the office she can stop doing her rosary and go to bed.”

All in all, Brian felt pretty good about the whole thing. Sure, his life had flashed before his eyes a few times and the ghost didn’t actually answer his question, but that was the way it went with ghosts, really. If it had been a demon, maybe it would have been a bit more chatty, but Brian had enough demons of his own to deal with, he couldn’t be too upset to avoid one more. They’d dealt with it all the same. A win was a win. That was something his fraternity would always say to him. “Just take the fucking W.”

Two things happened as he and Carmen made their way out of the school. The first was the aforementioned notification. Brian knocked on the door to the office and said. “Alright, you should be good. Just in case, don’t touch any of the seals for… a day or two?” He gave Carmen a look like he expected her to know how long these things were supposed to last but he kept talking. “Maybe a week just to be safe. Anyway, uh, leave us a good review on Ghost Yelp or wherever you found us. We’re getting out of your hair now. Have a good night.”

The other thing that happened was they got a text from Shiki: Good work. I finished early. Come to cemetery.

“Aren’t there, like, four cemeteries and another two graveyards in this town?” Brian said. “How’s Shiki expect us to guess the right one?” But his question was answered right away as he crossed the threshold out of the school and looked up from his phone, just across the street. “Oh, that one, probably. You know, I actually forgot that was there.” He looked back at Carmen and cocked his head towards the cemetery. “Alright, sooner we get this over with the sooner we can go the fuck to sleep,” he said.

[LordCowCow 840]

Graveyards at night were never pleasant places for most people. Even if one could logically separate the land from what lays beneath it there would always be a lingering feeling of unease. Especially so for those who knew that spirits and entities really did exist.

However Shiki, as had been proven time and time again, was not most people.

The duo would make their way through the graveyard without any direction for where they might find Shiki. Having to avoid trampling over graves, or tripping over gravestones, as they looked for the mysterious girl.

Eventually they would see a light and could follow it to its source.

The light itself was from a lamp, an old fashioned one with a flame instead of electricity lighting up the area, and Shiki was sitting next to it, cross-legged, in front of a gravestone. She had been looking, or at least facing as the paper in front of her eyes obscured them from view, at the grave when they walked up as though having a conversation with it.

She didn't move as they got closer and, if they would like, they could take a look at the gravestone before she said anything.

The name on the stone was Monika Georgiou and the dates below indicated that she had been 15 years old when she died. There was nothing else written on the gravestone.

Finally Shiki acknowledged them with a slight incline of her head. She didn't get up, nor turn towards them, but she spoke then. "Welcome back." And then, "what was she like?"

[radio414 907]

In terms of spooky things Brian had encountered that night, being in a cemetery during the witching hours didn’t even crack the top three. But that didn’t mean he had to enjoy it. If he had his way in life, he’d only be in a cemetery and/or a graveyard once ever, and that would be after he was dead. Alas, he was alive and paying ill respect to the dead who he was sure he was trampling over as he stumbled through the gravestones looking for Shiki. It was only when he realized a low star in the distance was actually a lamp that he made any sort of headway at all in that direction.

Thankfully, there really wasn’t anyone who even remotely looked like Shiki; he’d have recognized them anywhere, even as just a silhouette. Brian nodded when Shiki asked their question. “Ghost. Told you it was a ghost,” he said to Carmen, oblivious to the fact that he was the one who had introduced that ambiguity in the first place with his weird “demon, djinn, spirit,” ramble. He looked over Shiki’s shoulder to get a better look at the gravestone, taking it all in and adding a few more pieces to a puzzle Brian knew he’d never finish.

“She didn’t have a face. I bet that’s a pretty big change from how she was while alive,” Brian said. “And she was scared of seals now, too. Imagine being weirded out over a seal. Couldn’t be me.” He shook his head. “I don’t know, what do you want me to say? Shiki, the ghost tried to kill me, or at least drag me to some otherworldly dimension that two custodians had already disappeared into. It sucks that she died young, but she didn’t have to make that my problem. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for things like that when there are all these other stories about benevolent passings-on.”

[Skaia 578]

With the mission being done, Carmen was ready to pack it in for the night knowing that there was no ghost that would follow her home and try to kill her in her own bathroom. This was, however, a plan that didn't end up baring any fruit as the two were called by their employer to go meet up in a cemetery. The girl slumped her shoulders and let out a groan not unlike what one would expect from the living dead, as she followed after Brian as they made their way across the street. 

As the two finally encountered Shiki in the graveyard, their employer was sitting near a gravestone before asking them about their encounter. The girl, who was now equipped with the knowledge that it was in fact a ghost, really had no idea what to say. At first, she had simply been hiding behind Brian due to him being the one of the two that she feared less, however as he seemed to be rather upset by the question the girl shifted away from him and instead looked to hide behind a tombstone, all of which were too small for her and the thought of actually crouching and hiding in a cemetery filled her with a different kind of dread. 

As such, she nodded along with a lot of what Brian was saying before adding herself, "they um, they- they were very scary. Spooky. Long hair and made a lot of scary and creepy noises. Like uh," the girl took a breath, getting ready to try and imitate the howl and sob that she had heard only to realize that there were in fact two other people here and immediately clammed up, stopping entirely in her own tracks. "Ugh...well, it was, uh, really loud." Quite like Brian, she similarly didn't know what to make of the ghost. She had been mostly just focused on not dying and keeping her wits about her to really notice anything meaningful, and only stammered out as much as she did as she felt Shiki was wanting something more than just, 'was scary.' As such, she continued to, conflicted, cower behind a tombstone. 

Edited September 9, 2023 by Skaia

[LordCowCow 840]

“I don’t know, what do you want me to say? Shiki, the ghost tried to kill me, or at least drag me to some otherworldly dimension that two custodians had already disappeared into. It sucks that she died young, but she didn’t have to make that my problem. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for things like that when there are all these other stories about benevolent passings-on.”

"We see." Shiki replied. There was no indication in her tone if she was upset, surprised, or any other such emotion. Nor could they read her expression. All that was certain was that she acknowledged the answer. "We thought you might say something like that but we wished to be certain. It is as we expected."

"Ugh...well, it was, uh, really loud."

"Loud. Interesting. Not what many would take away from a ghost encounter. You are indeed an unusual one."

Shiki sat there still, facing the gravestone, and when she spoke next it seemed to be towards the grave. "One may be cold. And one may be fearful. Yet they were the ones to help you pass regardless. Do you see? Help may come from unexpected places if only you keep your mind open. I hope you take this to your next life. Goodbye then."

She stood up and turned towards them. "This was your first time working together. We are glad that you have completed the task. We hope that you will continue to work together in the future. The entities have become more active and it may no longer be acceptable to go after them alone."

She began walking back towards the van without any indication that she wanted them to follow. However she continued to speak to them after some time, her voice not changing volume even if they hadn't followed, "We are curious as to how you feel about your new partner...Also did you have any of the food we left in the fridge?"

[radio414 907]

Brian rolled his eyes but he resisted the urge to make an accompanying hand gesture as Shiki continued to commune with a girl that, again, had nearly killed them. Especially when Shiki called him cold, like, that was just uncalled for. He wondered how Shiki would have done it, too, like, yeah, maybe if he knew the magic words, he wouldn’t have to physically wrestle with supernatural horrors. Whatever. But as Shiki stood up and moved to exit the graveyard, Brian felt a small pang of sympathy, and he lingered by Monika Georgiou’s tombstone for a moment before chasing after his employer.

Shiki said other words, not that Brian caught all of them between his solemn reflection and Shiki’s obnoxious soft-spokenness. It sounded like he and Carmen were to be partners, though, continuing working together against the supernatural. Brian’s immediate reaction was, “Well, she better know how to drive. I’m not driving every single night,” but he managed to keep that one to himself. His next reaction, once he actually started thinking about Carmen, was “Shiki, you said it yourself. She’s terrified of everything. Why is she even here?” That one got almost all the way out of his mouth before he caught it.

When it came down to it, Carmen was the one who had managed to get a seal on Monika in the first place. Brian wasn’t about to say she did all the work -- again, supernatural wrestling -- but she wasn’t just “there.” It wasn’t like he could have managed without her. And he knew that since, for a good portion of the night, he had tried! “Yeah, I guess I could work with Carmen again,” he said. “We perverts have to stick together.”

“…Also, did you have any of the food we left in the fridge?”

“What?” Brian said. “No, we went to Taco Bell like normal people.”

[Skaia 578]

Carmen didn't how she felt about being called unusual by Shiki, and she didn't think it was weird that someone would note something loud was loud. Of course, she was not loud and would never voice this out loud, instead continuing to stand by as Shiki spoke to the tombstone. Prior to a few weeks ago Carmen didn't really have any thoughts on the after life. Sure, she kind of wished there was one and that the dead would stay there instead of haunting the earth, but any actual specifics she didn't know of. She had always thought ghosts were real, or at the very least always had a real fear of them despite how impossible it would have seemed. Yet Shiki was speaking to their gravestone, both talking about helping them pass on and their next life. The girl still had no idea of what to make of that, whether it was something metaphorical or literal, and she didn't know how much her employer actually knew about such concepts. Obviously more than her at least. With her confusion about such a thing being unsolved, the group began to make their way out of the graveyard. Though, feeling like there was a fourth person involved in this conversation, and feeling awkward and fearful of not following proper social convention, the girl gulped before nodding her head to the tombstone. "Ugh, uh, bye." 

Shiki then moved to talking about their current working arrangements. More specifically, how they felt about working with each other. Carmen knew that this implicitly meant that she was going to have be doing more of this work; fighting ghosts, djinn's, demons, spirits, etc. That alone was more terrifying to her then having to work again with Brian. The man himself was also someone that Carmen wasn't exactly eager to see more of, though. He had been both rude and pushy and had even taken her flashlight from her by force at some point. Not to mention that Carmen wasn't sure why Shiki couldn't just leave everything to him by himself, after all Shiki themselves seemed to be doing as just one person. 

The girl did figure, however, that if she were still doing this task it would be considerably better to be with someone else then by herself, no matter who really. And Brian had also driven her and gotten Taco Bell for her as well. While he did speak up first, the girl shrinking away and letting out something of a pathetic groan at the memory that she was now and forever to live with the shame of being a pervert, she said, "uhhh....I would rather work with um, someone, then well uh, no one," the girl agreed. 

The girl again, nodded very swiftly, almost in a panic as Shiki brought up their food. "Y-yeah! We - we uh, didn't take any, uh, any of your food or anything."

[LordCowCow 840]

“What?” Brian said. “No, we went to Taco Bell like normal people.”

"Y-yeah! We - we uh, didn't take any, uh, any of your food or anything."

"Oh." Shiki said. They stopped walking for a moment and turned around. "That was for you. We did not know you would need permission. We thought you would be drawn to the food if you were hungry. We will keep this in mind in the future." With that they continued on towards the van. Once at the school they paused and looked at it. "Such an odd place. Many young people trapped inside and forced to learn." A small shake of the head. "Forced learning is no learning at all."

Then to the others, "we will take you home if you wish. Or wherever you need to go. There are no jobs open right now so you may do as you please until something comes up."

Shiki seemed to think about something then said, "I hear that people do things together to forge bonds. Maybe the two of you would want do that."

Spoiler

It's a short one because not much to say, take it at your own pace, when you feel like you had enough "down time" say so and we can start a new job. Don't have to take Shiki's suggestion obviously and if you want to keep playing out these interactions that's fine too. Really its all up to what you want to write honestly.

 

[radio414 907]

“I’m not opening a random ass-fridge in a camper van,” Brian said, “even if it is technically from my boss. Especially if it’s from my boss, actually. Not that Taco Bell is much better, but at least I can imagine some minimum-wage schmuck making a chalupa or whatever.” He looked Shiki up and down. “I can’t imagine you making food. Do you even eat?”

He sighed. “I’m just tired. It’s, like, four in the morning. I just want to collapse into bed and get any amount of sleep before tomorrow comes and I have to do all this shit I keep putting off. I’ve got library books I have to place an application for, groceries to shop for, and, to top it all off, I have leg day tomorrow, and we all know how bad it is to skip those. I can drive, you can drive, fucking Carmen can drive if she wants, but fuck, let me go home, okay?”

Shiki said something about him and Carmen forging a bond. What, was Shiki shipping them or something? What a terrible idea. You don’t have relationships with coworkers. Everybody knew that. The relationship inevitably fizzled, leaving an awkward tension that got in the way of everything. He’d seen it happen. Even the smartest of the smarties in academia who thought it might work for them fell prey to the same story. He looked at Carmen. “Um, no,” he said. “I’ll be fine just seeing her for work. I mean, I guess I can give you my number for convenience, Carmen, but the best I can offer is being a gym buddy or something. No offense, of course.”

[Skaia 578]

Carmen, still on edge was, similarly in line with Brian's thinking about opening Shiki's fridge. She didn't really doubt that Shiki could cook or purchase food, not that she really believed that they could either it was just not a thought that had ever occurred to her, but the idea of taking something from her boss's fridge without permission was an utterly terrifying and nonsensical one to her. Carmen was also fine with whoever driving home as well - anyone that wasn't her at least - and getting home. She wasn't exactly tired from the time of day, or rather the time of day had no bearing on her naturally tired state that was only exacerbated by the constant fear induced adrenaline life and job she lead, and still had things she had to check online and shows she had to watch. However, she was more than ready to get away from the graveyard, lest some other spirit pop out from beyond and attempt to haunt her through the night. 

When the topic of having to hang out came up, Carmen froze in place and looked to Brian, thinking about the idea of hanging out with him. On a good day she didn't even want to hang out with the very few people she considered friends, outside of hanging out online. As Brian offered to trade phone numbers, the girl pulled out her phone to trade contact, if for no other reason then having someone else to panic call in the event of a supernatural saying, "I uh...I don't...gym. And yeah I'll just um, stay home and uh, not. Yeah." The girl didn't add any sort of "no offense" to her comment before going onto the camper and getting ready to go home. 

[LordCowCow 840]

Night, as it does, fell. And then rose up with the sun the next day. It seemed like an ordinary day. It must have rained some overnight because the grass outside was covered in a frosty sheen as the rain had frozen over and then partially melted. At the start of the day and even through most of the day there was no message of any sort from Shiki. However if they at any point checked the news they might realize that something would be coming.

And in fact when Shiki did message, around 6 PM, she simply linked to a news article. However the link messed up and so they would have to copy the link themselves to actually go see what it was.

It seemed that morning a teenager was found in an office building, curled into a ball and stammering wildly, by police who had gotten reports of a break in.

Apparently the boy was heard as he was being dragged out shouting "He's gone! He's gone! It took him! It was him but it wasn't him!"

While no other explanation from Shiki followed one of them would find Shiki's van outside, wherever they happened to be, with a sticky note on the steering wheel saying to pick up the other one, and with directions to where they would be.

Even if said other person wasn't in the same place as when they got Shiki's message the directions would lead them to where they were at the time.

Once both were inside a radio that was sitting on top of the fridge started up and Shiki's voice came through. "Hello. We are Shiki. Please take care of this occurrence before the night ends."

[radio414 907]

True to his word, Brian did everything he said he was going to do. Gym came first, because it was more convenient to shower after and just use that as the actual shower for the day, even if it meant trudging out of bed after only a few hours of sleep. It wasn’t enough time to get a stupid dream, at least. He kept his gym playlist in the instrumental section; it was one less distraction and let him think about the previous night a little bit more.

This was the job, huh? He’d only been at this for one, maybe two weeks at most. Couldn’t some spiritual haunting happen during the daytime? Like, he didn’t really want that. He didn’t actually want Shiki to come barging into his daily routine and muck everything up, but also, despite desperately needing the job for personal, spiritual reasons (pun intended), so far he hated himself afterward every single time. Gym helped with that part, at least -- he could turn that hate into something productive.

He was still sore from wrestling with that ghost last night. He’d already forgotten her name, so the ache was the only thing she’d left behind.

Next was actual work, and since he had already had to rely on sheer discipline to make it through leg day, there was little left for the monotony of research and paperwork for more research. If he could actually comprehend a whole paragraph at a time, he’d have probably enjoyed these ancient tomes a lot more. Part of Brian was already anticipating having to read everything all over again. The applications got sent out okay, though. That could practically be done entirely by computer. There were a thousand little widgets that could lift all the book’s information and turn it into a request form. Brian just had to click what he wanted. It was still busywork, reading summaries and trying to glean if it was useful or not, but still.

Brian didn’t go grocery shopping. He took a nap instead and put it off until tomorrow. What was Shiki going to do, obligate him to incur even more sleep debt by finding some other supernatural force to inflict upon him? And Carmen now, too?

The amount of four-letter words he uttered when he saw Shiki’s message and, moments later, Shiki’s van parked outside his apartment was immeasurable. He still put on a jacket and went to it, but each step earned an extra one. “Fine,” he said -- another four-letter word -- as he reached the driver’s side door. “Alright, let’s do this.”

Once Brian had actually parsed Shiki’s handwriting, following the instructions was easy enough. It was hard to go wrong with “turn left” and “turn right” even if that was all that really was written down. He spotted Carmen right where Shiki had said she’d be and rolled down his window as she approached. “Hey,” he said. “Hopefully you had a better day than I did, because I bet it’s about to get a whole lot worse.”

[Skaia 578]

With the job having been finished and Carmen having gone home, she did not immediately get to bed. How could she? After all, she had yet another harrowing life or death experience with the paranormal and while even her paranoid mind was able to figure out that that specific ghost was not going to be a problem to her anymore, she didn't know if there was anything else that would appear in the middle of the night to attack her. And well, she probably would've been awake at this time of the night regardless of her job anyway. So, getting home, the girl walked into her apartment room, booting up her PC and taking out her tablet. With stylus pen in hand, the girl started to draw feverishly into the early morning. 

When she awoke next it was already three in the afternoon. Slowly picking her head up off her desk, having fallen asleep there, the girl briefly recoiled as she looked at her screen. In part because what she had drawn had evoked the same feelings of unease from last night; a picture depicting two girls making their way through what was presumably a school corridor in the middle of the night, a flash light being their only guide and just behind them lurking in the darkness was a strange humanoid looking figure covered in seaweed, as if it just emerged from  a bog, stalking them from the darkness. The second reason this caused her to recoil was because she had drawn a few unnecessary lines all over the place when she was falling asleep and had to get rid of those before posting it to her blog. 

After she corrected her work, Carmen went about her day as normal. Eating a cup of instant noodles and a bagel for lunch, lamenting at the state of the pantry and just watching videos on art, the paranormal and random cooking videos, granting herself knowledge that she would never make use of. It wasn't until she was up for a few more hours that she realized she didn't have anything for dinner and was probably going to need food soon. It was then that she received a message from Shiki. While the girl was typically incredibly wary of clicking any strange link from even a trusted source, she didn't dare not to click something that Shiki had sent her. Checking Shiki's messages, though, were never enjoyable and this one in specific was almost like one of those cursed chain mails, making her wonder if she'd have to send it to ten other people - she didn't even have ten other people to send it to! - or be cursed. Thankfully that was not the case. Unthankfully it was essentially a posting for a new job. Letting out a defeated groan, the girl decided to get her shopping out of the way now before the mission fully started. 

After a brief trip to the convenience store, bags of snacks and instant meals in hand, the girl was shocked and unnerved to find that pulling up to her was none other than Shiki's van. That Shiki knew where she was even when not at home was nothing short of unsettling and the girl was terrified to get closer to it, until the door opened to reveal that it was just Brian. While the man certainly didn't give her any sense of comfort she had at least worked with him and knew him to be not a ghost, or she at least believed he wasn't, and that he was stuck in the same situation as her made her reluctance to get into the car both more evident but easier to work through. "Ugh...I barely started my day..." The girl groaned as she walked on board. She placed her groceries down in the van and then was startled, hopping in place as the radio had Shiki's voice come through it. "I don't want to go someplace like that but uh, I guess...we should go?"

 

[LordCowCow 840]

Their destination was out on one of the main streets of the city. An area which crammed many different businesses right next to each other. Each building by themself weren't incredibly large but they all formed one huge chain across several streets.

The office building they were set to investigate was smaller still. And crammed so tightly between two other buildings, a cake shop and a barber, that there was hardly any room between.

The building itself was two stories tall despite being so narrow and made of red brick. There was no sign indicating just what kind of office it was and neither of them remembered it. In fact even as they looked at the building they couldn't bring to mind ever once seeing it before. It wasn't as though it suddenly appeared, or that the space had been empty before, it was simply so unobtrusive that they must never have given it more than a passing glance.

It certainly didn't seem like a place that would have some sort of supernatural entity in it.

When they went up to the door, off-white in color with chips in the paint, they would soon discover that the door was unlocked. According to the news report the boy had broken in and had been discovered when people noticed the door wide open. Yet despite the police having been there it seemed that the front door was open for anyone to walk right in.

They found themselves in a hallway. The walls and ceiling were both painted in a bright blue color. To the left there was a coat closet and to the right a rack where a couple of umbrellas rested. Across from them was another door, this one the same off-white as the front door but in slightly better shape, which was partially open.

When they crossed the hall and entered they'd find themselves in a square-shaped room. The floors were wood and the walls painted yellow. To the left side there were two filing cabinets and next to that a printer. To the right was a half-empty water cooler without any cups. Next to it was a plastic garbage can full of used cups.

Four desks, with around five feet tall L shaped walls blocking them from each other, were around the middle of the room. On the wall across from them were three posters.

One, a picture of people on a rowboat, with the caption "Teamwork". Another, a picture of a rainbow breaking through clouds with the caption "Attitude." And the third, a picture of a field of corn with the caption, "Growth".

To the left of these posters was another door, this one closed, that looked like the one they had entered from. Next to that was a small wire trash can half-filled with various garbage.

Spoiler

Make sure to ask for anything specific you see, hear, smell, feel, whatever you want. I will say that I will probably be very particular about what can and can't be done and wanting to know what you both do.

"Map"

Any discrepancies in description and the "map" let me know its not intentional.

 

[radio414 907]

At least Shiki’s instructions were easier to find this time than some videotape hiding out in the back somewhere, Brian thought. Carmen seemed to echo his lack of enthusiasm, though given what little he knew of the girl, maybe that was just what she was like. He didn’t try and probe further into her or anything as they approached their destination building. He didn’t care to.

The building itself looked innocuous enough besides the lack of police presence. An office space between a bakery and a barber could easily be used for both if the owners weren’t doing all their business needs on their laptops at the counters or whatever. Or it could be one of those rent-a-office type deals that Brian heard about years ago. Not that Brian was a big fan of renting in general, of course, but he only thought about it in his own terms. It wasn’t enough to just leave a building be haunted, especially based on speculation.

Brian sighed. “We don’t even know what we’re dealing with,” he said. “And not even in a ‘demon or djinn or spirit’ way. Last time, we had a pretty good guess where the thing was. Didn’t have to poke around too many bathrooms before we found her. Let’s see what’s back here.”

He gave the back of the van a once-over. The box of seals was still there -- it looked like it hadn’t even been touched since the night before. They were definitely taking that. He also grabbed a spirit radio, tossing it in the box and hefting the whole thing up. Once Carmen grabbed whatever she wanted as well, he headed inside.

It smelled like capitalism in there, which was normal for an office, but still, not the greatest. Brian was so used to the academic airs of a library or the sweaty miasma of the gym that he had to take a few breaths to get acclimated. The actual appearance of the office was normal, too, with the aggressively twee posters and a printer that surely only worked half the time and open workspaces because something something cubicles bad. There was probably an article about that somewhere, and a research paper about socialization.

“Well,” Brian said. “Let’s get started.” He placed the box of seals in the center of the room for convenient access, turned on the spirit radio, and started moving around, listening to the random static for any hint of a word, or anything else that might betray paranormal influence. So far there was nothing, but there was no reason to get discouraged yet.

[Skaia 578]

With the two of them having made it to the office building proper, Carmen was a bit hesitant to go into yet another haunted building so soon. The plain and mundane office building before her had its own sort of dread to begin with, more to do with the general horrors of an average 9-5 work shift and having to work in office filled with people. It was like school only she was even more likely to get yelled at for not doing her work properly. "But...that sorta happens already...hehe..." The girl mumbled and quietly laughed to herself at this, as Brian began to talk about his discontent with the job. Carmen hadn't even thought about their lack of knowledge with what they were dealing with, feeling nervous to actually walk through the door at all for fear that it could cause some kind of paranormal happenings. 

Letting out a sigh, as they began gearing up to head into the building, Carmen had the presence of mind to take two flashlights with her this time. That way if one was unruefully taken from her grasp again she had a back up. With her mediocre perpetrations complete, the girl walked in after Brian only to find that her worst fears were in fact confirmed upon entering the office building. Which was to say, it was in fact a regular old office building that you could see on any TV show. That happened to take place in an office at least. 

 As she began her own investigation of the area she looked around before deciding to go the scariest place. The place where one was most likely to chance any kind of encounter in an office building. The water cooler. Looking at the half empty cooler, the girl flicked it with her hand, seeing if anything jumped out. When nothing did she thought that there was a chance that there could be some kind of strange ghost or haunt, possessing the cooler itself that would be triggered upon the use of it. With trembling hands she reached out, getting ready to push the tab down before she realized she had no cup to put the water in. While this was not particularly vital to her experiment she thought it would be rude to splash water on the floor and that anyone watching via a security camera would see her do that and chew her out later at her own home. The legal fines alone were enough to scare the girl into being considerate. Unfortunately for her there were no cups to use, as they were all currently in the small waste bin to the side of the cooler. 

Looking at the bin, then the cooler, the girl cautiously made her way over to it, shuffling the garbage can under the cooler directly. Gulping nervously, she flipped the cooler on to let water flow from it. And...nothing happened. Well, the cups got wet as water did indeed come out but there was no ghost or anything that had come to attack her. Letting out a sigh of relief the girl then stiffened up again as she realized that she had actually made no real progress in the investigation and the unknown was still just as unknown. 

So, she instead moved her search to the desk nearby. It seemed pretty standard; a cup filled with pens, a computer and a photo a dachshund wearing a deerstalker hat and a collar with a tag that read "Sherlock." The girl let out an audible, "heh," at this before looking at the desk. Nothing seemed completely out of the ordinary and the computer didn't seem to be on either. The girl decided to confront her fears once more, doing exactly as she had with the cooler and, trembling, had moved to turn on the computer. Nothing happened. 

The girl let out a sigh of relief as nothing happened. Then, froze again. Nothing had happened. That was certainly not normal. The girl gulped nervously, remembering the flickering lights from the last mission before she looked to the photo of the dog. "What would you do Sherlock?"

[radio414 907]

Brian wheeled around “Who are you calling Sherlock? Oh.” Carmen was talking to a picture. He thought about saying some more but just rolled his eyes instead and went back to pacing around. He got to a wall and turned, circling the room, only watching out in case Carmen moved, but otherwise looking at the spirit box and listening intently.

Apart from the medium-grade noise music coming from the spirit box and making sure to stay out of Carmen’s way as she continued to ponder the artistic merits of a gimmicky pet photo, nothing grabbed his attention. No words, ethereal, from the spirit box, or otherwise, made their way to Brian’s ears, and nothing else supernatural happened either. Near the end of his lap around the room, though, he did come across a printer, and following Carmen’s lead, he started fiddling with that instead. A few button-presses here, lifting the copy lid, checking the paper tray… Brian did anything he could to stir a reaction from the printer.

Still nothing. He checked if it was plugged in, too, and it was, so the nothing was technically unusual, but still within the realm of normality for printers. He went and grabbed a seal from the box and stuck it on the printer anyway. “All printers are haunted,” Brian said. “Maybe if I stuck a seal on the printer at the library it’d stop eating all my copies.”

This seal, though, did not exorcise the printer-not-turn-on spirits like Brian had hoped. He turned back towards Carmen. “Well, I’m pretty convinced there isn’t anything weird over here,” he said. “Unless…” He wrenched open a file cabinet and riffled through the various papers, but they were all legible and terribly ordinary. Even the most poorly written piece of academic fluff couldn’t get Brian’s eyes to glaze over faster than they did scanning those files. “I guess we could give those posters a poke or something in case there’s some secret escape tunnel, but I’m ready to go upstairs or --” He pointed across the room “-- wherever that door leads, anyway.”

[Skaia 578]

Carmen had looked to the door that had Brian had pointed at before. The girl gulped at the prospect of having to go through the door in front of her, knowing that unknown thresholds were always the scariest to cross. The girl hastily walked up to it only to take the last few steps to the door at an exceptionally slow pace. Her whole body was quivering as she looked at the door in front of her, gulping every step of the way, and examined it. It was, at the end of the day, just an ordinary door. The kind that she had had no problem opening any other point in her life. And as she reached out her hand to open it, shaking as she clutched the handle, she would find that this time was no different either. 

Opening the door she would see that beyond the door was a hallway. And beyond the hallway, or rather as a part of it, was a split. To the left, she did not know. To the right, a staircase. The girl stood at the threshold, paralyzed at the thought of having to actually cross the doorway for fear of something - anything - jumping out and tearing her limb from limb. Or maybe some kind of spectral entity would make its presence known and mess with her in some kind of manner. However, it was just a hallway. There was nothing she could see and having opened the door it was possible that she had already caused herself to be permanently haunted. A downcast expression on her face as she stared the ground, shivering still, a wry smile appeared on her panicked face as she said, "I-I'm doomed anyway....heh..." Before gulping one last time and crossing into the hallway. 

The instant her foot went into the next room she immediately felt something off. She had every instinct to run away from the door but flight or fight was no longer an option as she had been locked into her choice to walk through the door already. Both gravity and momentum were working against her body and it wasn't as if she could react in any way other than simply noticing. And so she stepped through the door. 

Into a room. 

She looked to the right. There was the water cooler with the now oddly placed trash can in front of it. She looked to the left. There was Brian by the printer. 

The girl didn't say anything at first. Paralyzed at the idea of what had just happened. What had just happened? She had left the room and ended up in the same room, albeit at the opposite end of it. She knew what the hallway looked like and it wasn't this. A thought that she had entered a room that was the exact replica of where she was and now she was in some kind of bizarre copy space entered her head and to see if this was true the girl could only think to back up. Take a single step back through the door she had just come from. 

And now the hallway was in front of her again. Blinking rapidly trying to process the curse that this building seemed to be under, she simply looked over to Brian, who was in fact still in the same spot. With a terrified expression on her face the girl let out a, "ehhhhhhh?"

[radio414 907]

Another thought Brian had was if any of the files had any contact information on them. Maybe if they could find someone’s email or phone number or something, they could ask them what problems there might have been in the office that could lead to a haunting (or whatever this was, anyway). The problem with that was that he had to scrutinize random pieces of paperwork again, and he was already falling asleep at even the notion of that. Still, he did grab some at random and was about halfway through when Carmen’s yelp interrupted him.

He looked up. He’d seen Carmen move towards the far door out of his peripheral vision while he was struggling with the paper, so he was surprised to see her so close to him now. It was like she had just gone through the near door back into the room, which seemed impossible. But his mind quickly rationalized it. “That was fast,” Brian said. “What’d you do, scamper around a hallway upstairs, get spooked, and bolt down the stairs at the other end?”

“Huh? I- no? Yes? It's well uh, very scary but I- uhhh, eh?” Carmen looked down the hallway then back to the door they had come from, then to Brian, frantically pointing at the hallway and moving her finger in a circle. “It’s uhhhhh…”

“Well, yeah, I could guess that,” Brian said. “You came in through that door again when you left through that door.” He mimicked Carmen’s circle gesture, narrating as his finger circumnavigated empty space. “You went out, went around, back down, and…?”

Carmen just kept stuttering. “Eh? But, no I didn't… did I? Uhhhh…” and Brian ignored most of it. He was already moving across the room to the other door. Carmen’s babbling briefly flirted with coherence, “I uh, I just came through that door? From uh, here?”

But Brian was still following his own train of thought. “I mean, I didn’t see any stairs on that side, but I guess that doesn’t mean there weren’t any.” Indeed, now that he was closer to the door, he could see through a small window where there was a bit of staircase just in view. “I could have just missed them. Yeah, there’s the stairs right there on this side, at least, so just wait there and -”

And he stepped through the door and crashed right into Carmen, who had done exactly as he’d asked and not moved from her spot.

Both of them tumbled to the ground. Brian groaned. This was his fault, really. He had completely ignored the supernatural just because there was nothing else in the room that had tripped anything. At the same time, it was also Carmen’s fault. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” he said as he pulled himself to his feet. “Alright.” He said it again. “Alright.”

Brian massaged the back of his neck. “I mean, I guess that answers question one. I imagine we just gotta seal the room up. But then question two is how we do that and not be in the room when it’s sealed. Well, I guess question one really was ‘What the hell was that kid screaming about?’ but I’m sure that’s part of the answers to the other questions. Hey, hand me a flashlight, would you? Just in case something even worse happens.”

He went back to the box in the center of the room and grabbed a handful of seals too. He said, “It’s just an Escape Room if you think about it,” and he said it for his own sake just as much as he did for Carmen’s.

[Skaia 578]

"Eh? Eh? But I - I," Carmen couldn't help but try to respond to Brian's comment about her lack of communication and stammered off instead. As the man brought up the idea of sealing the room, Carmen wasn't entirely sure what that entailed. Maybe the could just close the doors and seal them both like that? But then what if the room was the ghost and then they would obliterate themselves when the ghost was destroyed. That wouldn't be preferable. Though it was probably less painful then standing here for all eternity and wasting away in a ghost room. Maybe it was preferable to that. Still, Brian's assurance that this was in fact just an escape room did help ease Carmen's mood. She hadn't really had much experience with escape rooms, typically the idea of being stuck in a room or series of rooms and having to rifle around every little thing in order to find one's way out did not sit well with her on multiple levels. However, in this instance it just meant that she was living in one giant puzzle and puzzles were meant to be solved. There also wasn't anything particularly scary about this puzzle, unlike the visible ghost they had seen last night, though her hairs were still standing on end and her shoulders were still hunched forward with her head pulled back in the same way a scared child attempts to retreat from a situation. But that was just how she always was. 

Deciding to go look for the answer she decided to check one thing she hadn't yet in this room. Looking at the posters, all of which were taped to the wall, they also seemed to have some kind of generic maxim on them to motivate the employees. She wasn't really sure what to make of them, the girl herself having little in way of motivational posters at her own work space or home, but she was positive that they would only serve to unnerve her rather than inspire were they around. Tapping at the posters, nothing seemed to happen. And while she would have been able to remove them, quite like the water cooler, she was afraid of damaging private property and also being caught on camera doing so. Tape left marks on the wall sometimes after all. So instead she just lightly pulled back on them, to try and see if there was anything behind them. 

Though the left and right were blank, the middle one seemed to be hiding something underneath it. Reflexively, seeing anything other than wall, Carmen let the poster snap back into place and took a few seconds before allowing her newfound curiosity to be satiated. All that was there was a crude drawing of several sticks figures kicking a one with devil horns labeled "boss." A smirk crossed her face as she imagined doing so in her own work place, simply letting out another short, "heh." 

After seeing the drawing the girl let the poster snap back into place and walked away. Though amusing as it was she didn't end up finding any real clues to the puzzle at hand. Disappointed, hanging her head, the girl looked back at the posters before a thought crossed her mind. She looked over to the doors, and then to Brian. Walking towards one she said, "uh, um, oh, uh Brian could you uhhhh..." The girl had a hard time voicing herself after the last time she spoke not being able to get her message clear enough across, but started moving her fingers rapidly as if to say, "walk." "Through there- the uh, the door. At the same time...." The girl pointed to herself and the door next to her. Once it was clear what she meant she got ready to cross the threshold and when the two entered at the same time they...exited at the same time too. Having not passed each other or collided they were merely now at opposite ends of the room once. 

Hanging her head in defeat the girl said, "I uh...sorry, I just thought...Escape Room..." The girl pointed at the first poster and muttered, "teamwork..."

[radio414 907]

“No, it was a good idea,” Brian said. “You were thinking outside the box. It just so happened that the room had that thought first.” He walked over the long way back to Carmen. “But I think it’s safe to say the doors aren’t how we’re going to get out of here. Not right now, anyway.”

Brian was surprised Carmen had had an idea at all. He still remembered the helpless girl who could barely function her way through dealing with a ghost haunting from just last night. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if that happened again. He might just leave her there, he realized, which was mean, sure, but she’d deserve it. Of course, he didn’t have to make that decision yet -- it was just a stupid thought. In any case, back to the problem at hand.

“If the doors are out,” Brian said, “there are six other ways I can think of off the top of my head to get out of here.” He pointed at each of the four walls, then up at the ceiling and down at the floor. He also moved over to a chair and felt its weight in his hands. It was pretty sturdy, which was good. He didn’t want to look around for anything else that was better, tearing the office apart for something that could smash it to pieces. The ideal thing would be a fire extinguisher, but apparently, ghosts or whatever this was didn’t believe in fire safety.

That was a thought for a few plans down the line. Brian filed that one away for now. Instead, he put all his energy into running to one of the walls and whacking it with a chair.

The results were not great. Even after a couple of whacks, Brian only managed a small hole in the wall. It was progress, but it was a brute-force sort of progress. He put the chair back down. “We’ll call that Plan B,” he said. He rubbed his shoulders and looked up at the ceiling. “Or Plan C or whatever. It’s a plan. My turn to ask you to do something, then.”

Brian returned the office chair to the desk he’d gotten it from and hopped up on the desk, brushing away all the little keepsakes and doodads with his feet to create a relatively stable standing space. With that established, he reached up and pushed away one of the ceiling tiles. “A member of my fraternity swears you can do this,” Brian said. “Carmen, you’re smaller than me, you think you can get up there and, uh, I don’t know, find something out that way?”