Act Sixteen: Eliciting a Reaction
No good athlete likes being benched. Forced to sit on the sidelines, watching the action, unable to do anything but provide moral support, likely enough to be heard by their teammates as any individual in the roaring crowd. Yet there’s more to it than being bored or put-out, convinced that their talents are being put to waste. It’s the feeling of being helpless. Seeing your teammates, your friends, face obstacle after obstacle, one mistake after another, with no way to step in and save them.
This isn’t a problem reserved only for athletes, either. Anyone being told by someone else, or simply by circumstances beyond their control, that they can’t do anything to step in and assist those closest to them is one of the greatest frustrations of the human condition. A family member waiting in the hospital while the doctors do their job. A victim of a bank robbery unable to fight back against their assailants. The reader, seeing the events unfold before them as their favorite characters face challenge after challenge, armed with knowledge they only wish they could share with the people in trouble.
Few people understand this unique emotion more than those held back by physical injury. All of the willpower, motivation, and reason to jump into action, without the ability. Rubble glared at the only mildly foreboding doorway with all the welcoming grace of a claymore mine. More than once he considered the notion of actually setting one up, held back only by the knowledge of his friends’ unfortunate habit of running headlong into a room with no consideration for their surroundings until a few seconds after the fact. His gaze rolled over the series of books, tomes, and notes that, up to this point, had done little to answer any of their questions beyond what they already had.
The Book of the Morrighan, as appalling as it was, had done little to answer their more specific inquiries beyond explaining some rather unsavory details of the spellwork found in the Groundskeeper’s house. The rest of the book, while darkly informative, had little bearing on their current situation. What they needed was more detail on the house itself, its previous owners, and about the spirit currently hosting what had to be the most uninviting evening party the house had ever seen. At least, in recent memory. Hopefully.
Indigo had taken up as much of the couch as humanly possible, falling back asleep with little issue. Even with the possibility of her friends in danger they couldn’t define, there was little she could do with her arm in its condition, and running in half-armed and blind would only put everyone involved in more danger. Rubble had encouraged her to sleep, anyway, even helping her set up some pillows to support her arm and let her collarbone heal.
Unfortunately, that meant that only two people were left to maintain watch, one of which had a concussion. Raven had since reduced the swelling on her head with some ice from one of the coolers, which, thanks to a recently developed drop in temperature across the entire house, was melting slower than normal, and proving rather useful, if uncomfortable. Taking a nap, however, was out of the question, as a head injury put her at risk of not waking back up.
Rubble also didn’t feel safe falling asleep again, as he didn’t trust Raven to be able to hold her own against whatever the newest threat would be in her condition, and lack of experience. Not that his hobbled form was doing him much good. He’d rather walk into the dark naked and unarmed than admit it, but the pain in his leg had reached rather unfortunate heights, a side-effect (or rather, effect) of his injury that everyone from his doctors to his therapists to the damn dog had warned him about. He of course had pain medication, but anything stronger than Ibuprofen would put him in even worse condition than he was already in, and he might as well at that point go to sleep anyway.
He leaned uncomfortably on the arm of his chair, casting a sideways glance at Raven, who had taken over monitoring the equipment, if only to keep herself busy. His eyes rolled over Indigo, who was snoring mildly in her own little world, hopefully far away from this one (and the nightmare she’d had the first time round). Eventually, his gaze fell on the covered-up body of the poor puppet girl that had danced into the room only hours before. He’d lost all track of time, incidentally, and was merely guessing at how long it had been. Of course he could look at a watch, or clock, or computer screen, but in his experience they were about as reliable in a haunted house as a screen door on a submarine.
Ideas rolled around in his head as to exactly what to do with her, as even her morbidly preserved form had started to give off an unfortunately familiar foul odor, one that had filled him like spoiled drink at the Fall Formal. Eventually, he settled on one, and forced himself up to his feet, his leg protesting in impressive and unwelcome ways as he righted himself. Raven looked over the top of the monitors as the movement caught her eye. “What are you doing?” she asked, if only to know where to stand to be out of the way.
“I think we should burn the body,” Rubble groaned, leaning on his crutch and pivoting to face her.
“She’s just taking a nap you… god!” Raven bellowed, pinching the bridge of her nose.
Rubble looked at her in confusion until her misunderstanding caught up with his. “Wha-NO. Not Indigo. The little girl! JESUS.”
Raven looked around the room for half a second, before her eyes fell on the bulging form underneath the coat, and she blushed sheepishly. “Oh. Yes. That… I mean… her. Well, ok, but the smell would be quite awful, wouldn’t it? It’s not like we have any ventilation in here.”
“Well, wasn’t there a great big wood stove in the kitchen?” Rubble pondered.
“Oh, sure, let’s hop on over to the other side of the house, leave Indigo here by herself, and the both of us can take our injuries to the far side of the building while hauling a corpse with us. There’s no way that can go poorly,” Inkwell said dryly.
“...Well, is there a CLOSER place we can light a fire without burning the whole thing down?” he grumbled.
“We could, you know, NOT burn the body. At least until we’ve either run out of things to do, ways to keep warm, and good ideas in general, or someone somehow fixes this mess and we can all walk outside,” Inkwell reasoned.
“OR,” Indigo barked, startling the two of them. Raven rushed to steady Rubble, who had spun on his good heel and missed the step with his bad. He gave her a grateful look as he leaned back on his crutches again. “We could NOT yell a bunch when someone is trying to sleep here?” Zap finished grumpily.
“Sorry,” Rubble groaned, taking the hint from Raven’s continued manhandling to sit back down. “I just… to say nothing of the smell, I don’t like the thought of that girl’s body just sitting on a couch like that. It’s not right.”
Indigo considered him thoughtfully, then looked around the room. Eventually, her eyes settled on the trunk they’d carried the books and other supplies in. The heavy, iron trunk. That you could easily fit a grown man into, let alone a little girl. “How bout that?” she asked, pointing at the box.
Rubble followed her finger, his eyes landing on the trunk. Immediately, he tried to think of all the ways that could go horribly wrong, But in fact, it wasn’t a terrible idea. It was solid metal, and even if it did grow hot, it likely wouldn’t melt any time soon. The worst that would happen would be burning the floor beneath it, a problem quickly remedied by finding a few even pieces of stone to set underneath it. Even if the fire grew to big, the trunk was airtight, and all they’d need to do would be to slam the lid shut to cut off the oxygen.
Raven seemed to consider the same idea. “That… might work, actually. I mean, we’d need to set it ON something to keep the wood floor from catching, but I believe there are some stone bookends floating around here. And if not, I’m not exactly concerned with taking a few loose bricks out of the crappy fireplace in the other room. And before you get any ides, I mean CRAPPY. We might as well cremate her on the damn floor,” she added, when Rubble looked ready to inquire about the fireplace.
“Yeesh. Well, ok. We have… a plan, I think?” he mused instead. “I mean, at least its something to DO. Now come on, let’s get to work.”
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“Ok, so far we’ve only got one way out, which is up. Dusty, have you found anything?” Twilight asked, as DD knocked on the bare floor, his ear to the ground.
“Not yet, but there’s still a bookcase or two I haven’t checked, and I’m only halfway done with the floor,” he replied, scuttling about like the world’s nosiest horseshoe crab.
“Wonderful. You… keep doing that. Treble, any luck?” she redirected, moving to join him in his hunt through the formerly locked bookcases.
Treble shuffled through another in a growing pile of books, throwing it to the side. “Nothing immediately relevant, although I can understand why they had Bones’ Old Man’s work floating around. There’s enough magical theory and spiritual research here to start your own goddamn Brakebills. Hell, I’m finding stuff we could have used in earlier cases, which just makes me that much more eager to find any other living members of the Inkwell family and PLANT MY FOOT UP THEIR-”
“OK, OK,” Twilight interrupted. “I get it. Don’t suppose there’s anything we can use against… whatever this big bad monster ghost thing is?”
Treble pointed a finger at the smaller of three stacks he’d created. This one only had one or two books, as opposed to a great misshapen pile to his right, and a slightly better-stacked and only slightly bigger stack in front of him. “Those two are the only things I’ve found with anything I’d consider relevant. Spooks will know more once he’s recharged. The big-ass pile is either in a language I don’t read or is way far out of left field. Middle stack is stuff I fully intend to take home as danger pay. If there’s anything in the big pile you can read, have at. Otherwise, the bookcase to your left is also unlocked.”
Twilight looked back and forth between the somewhat disgraceful pile of forbidden knowledge, and the freshly broken-into bookcase of untouched tomes. “You know, had someone told me twenty-four hours ago that I’d have to make a choice between ancient arcane texts on the floor and ancient arcane texts in a bookcase of broken glass, I’d have backed away slow.”
Dusty rolled his eyes so hard they almost tumbled across the floor. “Yeah, we get that a lot, too.”
Twilight shrugged, carefully prying the bookcase open, and picking up a book at random. She’d barely opened the book, however, before a great scream rang out, and she dropped the book to the floor with a thud. “What was that?!”
Treble and Dusty immediately sprang into action, Treble pulling her away from the book, while Dusty leapt at it like a housecat. In fact, he was on all fours as he glared daggers at it, waiting for any kind of reaction. He leaned in, and smacked the top of it, poked it, and even flung the cover open. When none of that elicited a response, he stood up and looked at it strangely.
Then the second scream shook the room, emanating, it seemed, from the very walls. Even Spooks, in his exhausted state, snapped awake, looking around in sleepy panic. “The hell was that?!” he grumbled.
“That’s what I’d like to know...” grumbled Twilight.
Dusty looked around. “That sounded like… the house. So either Mr. Big doesn’t want us poking around these books, or-”
“Rubble found a way, yet again, to piss off the big bad,” Spooky groaned. Though he was smiling.
“Why… why are you smiling? Why is that a good thing?” Twilight demanded, slightly disturbed.
“Because-”
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“-anger means weakness,” Rubble explained, covering his face to mask his lungs from the fumes emanating from the trunk. The girls stood on the other side of the room from the flames, eying him warily as he smiled at the fire. Seeing the confusion on their faces, he continued, “If the big nasty is getting pissed at us, it means we’re getting close to something he either doesn’t want us to find, or doing something that threatens his power. So either burning this body is weakening his grip somehow, or the boys and Twilight found something that He doesn’t want us to find. So our best bet, right now, is to keep doing exactly what we’re doing.”
“That’s all well and good,” Indigo mumbled through her sleeve. “But where exactly are we going to find, and I can NOT believe I’m saying this,” more kid’s corpses to burn?”
Some of the enthusiasm fell out of Rubble’s face. “I… have no idea. But I imagine we’re going to find at least one or two in our travels,” he added spiritedly.
“Travels? You’re not suggesting...” Raven said weakly.
Rubble nodded, and adjusted his brace until the pain subsided just a little bit. Pocketing a few prescription meds that he really should have taken a while ago, as well as some heavy and pointy metal things from their assortment of goodies, he hobbled along with his crutches, whistling to himself.
It didn’t instill any confidence in either of them when they realized the song was “A-hunting We Will Go.”