Book 7, Chapter Nineteen – Bunsettling Events

The stairs were recognizably the same ones from Gacha Love, complete with the wobbly fifth step that both Edgar and Kaden commented on, and Dorian lifted Clara over. This time, Pandy warned the others about it, then checked it with a toe just to make sure she was in the right place. She was, and managed to catch herself before tumbling the rest of the way down the steps.

If a normal flight of stairs was ten to fifteen steps, this one was at least twice that, implying it went much deeper than just a regular basement level. The temperature shifted noticeably as they proceeded, actually getting a bit warmer than the above floors, which were themselves only a little warmer than the chill night air.

Glory pressed on a few of the large, solid stone blocks that made up the wall, nodding in satisfaction when they didn’t budge. “This place is a lot more defensible than the office. If you could convince Nox to let us come down here, we could-”

“No,” Nox said, his voice deep and echoing, though the elemental himself was nowhere to be seen. Pandy shivered at the sound of it. This was almost as bad as being in Professor Beeswick’s Domain. Which made her wonder just how much similarity there actually was. She was certain the house existed even without Nox, because it had remained standing – for some definition of standing which involved a lot of holes – even when the elemental was nearly destroyed, but did that mean it wasn’t also Nox’s Domain? Was that why the Avington House book could restore past versions of the rooms, or even recreate old furniture? What would happen if someone tried to take some of that furniture out of the house, or off the grounds surrounding it, effectively leaving the Apparition’s area of influence?

Glory scowled, reaching up to rub at her chest in a gesture uncomfortably reminiscent of the ones often made by people with stones implanted in them. Pandy could still sense the Tenebron there though, so hopefully Glory wasn’t secretly one of the surprisingly large number of people who had those stones. That would be a bad thing to find out at this late date.

After fifteen steps, the staircase turned sharply to the left, putting them directly underneath the central hallway on the first floor. Another twenty steps brought them to a door that matched the one above, right down to its unusually narrow width and innocent-seeming doorknob.

Pandy gave a small sigh of resignation as she reached for the knob, but to her surprise, it turned easily in her grasp, rather than stealing her magic and her blood. The door swung open, and Pandy braced herself, far from ready for the macabre scene she knew was coming. Behind her, Glory let out a dramatic gasp, then said, “That’s it?”

Pandy wasn’t certain when she’d closed her eyes, but she opened them again, only to see a large room that looked as if the occupant had simply gotten up and left quite some time ago. It could have been a once-luxurious hotel room, complete with everything a person might need, other than a way out.

A rotten mattress sagged between broken bedposts in a richly-carved frame that had to weigh two hundred pounds. Shelves decorated every wall, none higher than three feet, each one bolted to the wall so it couldn’t be moved. The books themselves were surprisingly intact, and Pandy made a mental note to come back down and gather them up for Beeswick. There might be something here that he wanted, and currying favor with a Dragon seemed like a good idea. Besides, they would probably make him happy.

“What is this place?” asked Isidor, slowly entering behind the others. He’d ended up at the back of the line, perhaps because he wasn’t as protective as Augustus or as nosy as Glory. He walked over to the dusty but extremely solid table and the heavy chair Pandy already knew was essentially part of the floor, and prodded a plate of mold. In response, the mold collapsed in on itself, releasing a cloud of black spores.

“Don’t breathe that!” Pandy said, and Isidor instantly stepped back, raising his sleeve to cover his mouth and nose while clutching Tempest to his chest.

Augustus pulled a cloth from his pocket, snapped it out into a large square, and dropped it over the expanding spore cloud. “Poisonous?” he asked Pandy.

She shook her head. “If it gets into your lungs, you have to go to the temple to be cleansed. I mean, you did in the-” She glanced at Glory, who was the only one who didn’t yet know this, and finished, “game.” It wasn’t like one word was really going to tell her anything, though the other woman was looking distinctly thoughtful, no doubt applying the single syllable to what she did know in an attempt to find a solution to what had to be a very strange puzzle. Did it even matter anymore if she did know Pandy wasn’t from this world? Pandy had already decided to trust her.

Augustus and Isidor both nodded, circling widely around the table and becoming significantly more cautious as they checked out the room. It wasn’t nearly as eerie when it was lit up as though someone had put daylight bulbs in all the nonexistent light fixtures, but gradually it became obvious what it was – a prison.

“Who was kept here?” Augustus asked as he used something that looked remarkably like a lacquered chopstick to shift the clothes around inside the wardrobe. Most of them were made of such fine fabric that they simply fell to dust as he moved them, and there were no shoes or belts in the drawers where those items would belong. In fact, there was nothing here that could easily be turned into a weapon.

“He called… calls? He calls himself Pierce,” Pandy said, crossing to a thickly padded chair that looked like a very comfortable spot to curl up and read. A built-in tray hung to the side, ready to be lifted and locked into place to hold a plate or cup. She stared at the large stain on the seat-cushion, only a little darker than the maroon fabric.

“In the game, he’s already here when you come in. Just a flickering, ghostly figure, but definitely here.” Crouching in front of the chair, she pointed to a shallow bowl worn into the floorboard, as if something had rolled around there so many times that even the solid wood had finally yielded. “He starts out as an older man, but-”

She bit her lip, taking out the wooden top she and Isidor had found on the third floor of Falconet. The boy’s brows went up when he recognized it, but he didn’t interrupt as she placed it on the floor, the pointed tip fitting comfortably into the groove in the floor. Either the tip had been replaced at some point – unlikely, given the wear on the rest of the body – or magic kept it from eroding away.

“Just stay back,” she told them, looking around at each of them. “Whatever happens, don’t… don’t say anything. Especially don’t ask any questions.” They all nodded, though Empress Glory looked a bit rebellious, and Pandy pulled the metal plunger up, then – carefully balancing the top – she pushed it down again. The top began to spin.

The room darkened, more closely resembling the images she remembered from Gacha Love. Dust and cobwebs sprang into sharp relief, and deep shadows stretched out, emphasizing the way the shelves were bolted to the wall, and the empty chains dangling from each of the bed’s four posts. A figure sprang into sharp relief against those shadows. He was middle-aged, unremarkable, quietly reading a book. Then he flickered, and he sprawled in the chair, eyes staring and a second, gaping mouth cut into the flesh of his throat. Flicker. He was younger. Screaming. Froth dripping from the corners of his mouth. Flicker. Older again, but still screaming, his eyes bulging from his head. Flicker. Sleeping peacefully, chest rising and falling, a book open in his lap. Shackles bound his wrists and ankles.

While his age changed, he never looked younger than forty or fifty, not until the top began to slow and wobble, and a young boy with curly black hair and bright green eyes climbed down from the chair, reaching for the toy. He caught it and pressed the plunger down again. It whirred back to life, the sound shockingly loud in the dark room where even the breathing of its living occupants was muffled by dust and time.

“Hello,” he said politely, looking and sounding so much like Thaniel that Pandy shuddered. The coloring was wrong, but otherwise the family resemblance to all three of the Conroys was surprisingly strong, given the generations that lay between them. When he’d been chained to the chair, eyes closed, Pandy would have been hard-pressed to be certain he wasn’t Bryan, especially now that Bryan was so thin and prematurely aged.

“Hello, Pierce,” Pandy said, then stalled. At this point, the game would have had Clara ask who he was, but Pandy already knew the answer to that question. Game-Pierce became gradually older and more unhinged as he explained that his father, Preston, had trapped him here, then left him to die. He was the one who told Clara where most of the hidden traps and secrets were, though she had to pay him in Stamina for every answer. Of course, that meant most players only got one or two answers out of him before triggering an attack when their Stamina reached less than twenty-five percent, which was the first and most common way for players to fail the Haunted Mansion sidequest.

But Pandy already knew the answers to all of those questions. She had a different one. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the little wooden box containing Zheraphon’s stone. She tensed as she lifted the lid, ready for the ghost to go straight into attack-mode, but while the phantom’s eyes locked onto the black crystal oval, he didn’t reach for it.

Usually, the game gave Clara a choice of three questions to ask. Pandy rather desperately wished for either Keros or her usual cheerfully over-helpful System. Something was definitely wrong with the System though, and if Augustus was right, and it only knew what she told it, then she couldn’t ask it for help or suggestions. But really, there was only one thing she could do.

In Gacha Love, using a gacha spin would grant an extra, usually unavailable, option. For instance, if you’d played as a defensive Clara – Pandy’s preference – at a certain point the game might offer you a choice of hiding, retreating, or asking your love interest for help. With a gacha spin, Pandy could get any of the other options possible for that moment in the game, including the ones exclusively for an offensive Clara: attack with a weapon, attack with magic, or attempt to force her way through.

When Clara met Pierce, as with every other prompt in the game, the player could use a gacha spin to get another question to ask. Unlike other times, however, that question was always the same, requiring only a single spin to reveal it. The problem was, if they selected it, Pierce would instantly attack. There really wasn’t any benefit to that, since defeating him used up Clara’s Stamina, and there was no treasure in the room, so after the forums confirmed that no one ever got a different option, they all just stopped trying.

Now, however, Pandy said, “Can you tell me how you ended up here?”

For the first time, Pierce looked up at Pandy, meeting her eyes, the vibrant green of his own fading away. In fact, all color fled from the ghost, leaving him as grayscale as the world Pandy saw when she used the Avington House book. His eyes were black. As black as Nox’s, now that Pandy thought about it.

Those eyes expanded, though the crouching ghost didn’t move. His body shifted, changed, turning into the thing Gacha Love called a Ghoul. His fingernails stretched, digging into the floorboards. Jagged teeth grew out over his lips, allowing thick drool to escape. His whole body stretched impossibly, bending in places no human body was meant to bend, each limb like an iron bar wrapped with taut wire, barely concealed beneath leathery skin. Behind Pandy, she heard shuffling, but no one moved to interfere. Not yet.

The top continued to spin as the Ghoul stretched out taloned fingers and touched the Dark stone.