Chapter Text
Four is scared.
That’s not really news— he’s always scared, even though Dad says he shouldn’t be and gets mad at him whenever he cries or wets his bed, saying that he should be past this childishness, as if the ghosts aren’t always staring and bleeding and screaming at him, never letting him sleep.
When Dad said he’d start his special training, at first Four felt very excited— Dad rarely paid him any attention but now he was going to spend time with him and only him, and Four would finally get to make him proud with his powers and maybe then Dad would love him too!— until they actually got to the cemetery, and Four saw how many ghosts there were there. How many monsters.
His excitement didn’t last long.
But Dad didn’t let him leave, even as he cried and begged to him, wanting to be back home under the safety of his blanket— instead he told him to conjure the ghosts and talk to them, not seeming to listen as Four tried to explain through his tears that they were already there and that he didn’t want to talk to them, didn’t want to have to see all the gore that would surely never leave his dreams. Not even when Four tried to find some new useful power that would save him from them and maybe even impress Dad enough to help and take him anywhere else but here, or when he tried to escape, time after time, getting hurt in the process when he tried to force himself through the bars of the tall fence just to get away.
None of it helped him listen. Dad didn’t care.
(Why didn’t he care?)
They did that five times, always at night and always ending with Four whimpering and failing to do what was asked of him, before Dad gave up and locked him in the cemetery’s mausoleum instead, telling him to get rid of his childish fear— that only then he could be of use.
(Why didn’t Dad love him?)
Four shudders at the thought of that place. He still has nightmares about it.
He doesn’t know if he will ever not have.
(Rotting corpses screaming at him, their faces warped in anger and their bloody wounds all in view as they tried to touch him with skeleton-like hands, tried to grab and to claw and to hurt, his name being repeated over and over until it blended with their inhumane wails and cries for help. But he couldn’t help them, why didn’t they understand that? Useless, useless Number Four. He couldn’t help anyone, not even himself.)
(The ruptured eardrums he got as little souvenir from that night was only proof of that.)
It didn’t use to be so bad before. They were still there and still scary-looking, with all their wounds and twisted bodies, but a lot of them were just sad and quiet and some were even nice to him. Kind. Like that one french lady who used to sing to him during breakfast, her voice familiar though Four can’t remember why. The bad ones only really seemed to show up in the dark.
Ever since the mausoleum though they now follow him everywhere, haunting both his days and his dreams and refusing to leave. There’s no way to escape them, no way to be safe. And Four doesn’t know how much more he can take.
But he has an idea.
Four sneaks past Mom, making sure to walk closer to the walls and keep his footsteps light— she’s charging, but he knows it doesn’t take much to wake her up, as he’s gone to her plenty of times in the middle of the night to ask for a glass of milk or cry about his soiled sheets— until finally he reaches the bar downstairs in the living room, his objective all along. He takes a few breaths before quickly grabbing a bottle at random, not wanting to lose his courage. He can do this. He already came this far.
He knows what booze is, of course he does— he’s not a naive little kid anymore, he’ll be nine in just a few months!— and he once was haunted by a ghost that would always whine about missing it, about wanting to get drunk and forget this whole death thing, to be happy and numb again.
Four thinks happy and numb sounds pretty great to him.
He opens the bottle with both his hands, almost letting it slip and fall before managing to grab it again at the last second cursing himself for his own clumsiness, twisting his nose at the smell of it when he takes a sniff of the liquid inside. It smells disgusting. It tastes disgusting too, Four quickly finds out— but so do the insects and the mud Two always dares him to eat, and he never backed down before. He won’t do it now.
It’s worth it, to not be scared anymore.
Even if he knows that he shouldn’t and that doing it makes him bad, that Mom would be upset with him if she found out about it, and even if it makes him even more weak in Dad’s eyes, more worthless, more of a disappointment— even if it proves Dad right. Even if the ghost had died because of his drinking and even in his death didn’t seem to be able to think about anything else but it.
Even if Four needs to drink it every day, just to feel better.
It’s worth it. It has to be.
And when the ghosts start to quiet down after a few more sips, he knows he made the right choice.