Chapter Text
Sometimes, ghosts were anchored to a certain location, unable to leave unless contained within a vessel of some sort. Sometimes, that location was a person, and the ghost spent the rest of that person's life following them. Sometimes, ghosts were young, and weak, and unsure about the circumstances of their death, flitting in and out of focus and unable to move on until confronted with the details of their demise. Sometimes that made them strong, and angry, and sometimes it made them move on. There were so many different kinds of spirit, Vivi had explained to him over coffee on that day they walked out of their psychology class.
Lewis became vaguely aware of time passing and splitting into three chunks: The Before, The Green, and The Ongoing. Now was The Ongoing. He drifted around the cave, guessing which stalagmite had pierced him. He sometimes saw bats fly. Featureless spirits who had been dead for so long without ever knowing why they couldn't rest followed him, offering nothing but company and slightly discordant humming noises. Lewis found himself regarding them as pets.
There was a strange feeling in his chest, that would be cold and aching if he could feel physical pain and any sort of temperature. After the green flames, and the blood, and the screaming, and the hand on his back had soaked in his memory, the not cold/not pain settled in. That's when he thought of Arthur flying farther away as he had fallen, and so much rage had clouded his mind, expanding until it almost felt solid, heavy. He was dead, his body gone, and he couldn't see how it could be so.
Over time, Arthur's nervous smile twisted into a nightmarish death mask, at least in Lewis' memory. His touch carried the damp rot of the grave and his voice became indistinguishable from the sad, empty echoes of this tomb. The nervous, scrawny young man in Lewis' memory withered into something barely human, a creature rotting to the core, buckled under the weight of Lewis' death, and he still could not pity it.
Sometimes, he thought of The Before, and weak flames of his past licked at him; he remembered seemingly random moments, disjointed but as fresh as the water that pooled around the cave. Vivi on Coney Island that time, eating an enormous ice cream cone following a successful investigation, the open skies of Nevada above him as Arthur took the night shift driving, Mystery's joyful barks when any of them arrived home, warm nights, Vivi's laugh, that week they spent broke when a client withheld payment and they made it into a contest to see who could prepare Ramen in the most bizarre way, and eventually it devolved into the passage of time. Haircuts and birthday cakes and insurance renewals for the van and prescriptions to be filled and so many dull tasks that he hadn't considered to be representative of his life flowing away.
The soft violet shapes that wandered the cave were of some comfort, occasionally merging through Lewis or nuzzling his current form (what did that even look like?), but carrying with them the threat of Lewis becoming one of them. It was impossible, he told himself, if anything, he was becoming stronger. Just the other day, he had managed to pick up a small rock and throw it. When he first arrived, it simply would have passed straight through what used to be his fingers. He still remembered how he died, parts of his life. He still burned with anger at a man he thought incapable of hurting anyone.
There was something else in the cave, and it hated the man too.
HE WASTED NO TIME IN THROWING YOU TO YOUR DEATH, BOY.
Lewis nodded. One of the small, humming purple spirits briefly managed to almost tug at his sleeve. He ignored it.
YOU DO REALISE THAT HE LIVES. HE HOLDS HER AT NIGHT AND CONTINUES TO LIVE ON. AND YOU ARE HERE.
He could almost feel the rough surface of the wall he rested against. He could never tell where its words were coming from. It felt as though the cave itself raged against Arthur for adding to the lost spirits that resided in it, or at least that it wanted Lewis to.
But why? Because of Vivi? Had he wanted her for himself, was everything he ever told Lewis a lie? He felt what would be his insides throb green and hot and furious. He was to spend eternity patrolling a miserable, damp cave because of an unspoken dispute? He had known Arthur for so long, so many nights, so many miles on highways at two in the morning, and he had doomed him to this.
Sometimes, he remembered Vivi's face. The last thing he had seen. He looked up, and saw the monster, all sickly betrayal and glowing eyes, standing over him, then turned his head to the source of the screams. She wouldn't remember, the cave assured him. She would remember him, of course; he'd become too deeply embedded into her thoughts for her to forget him entirely, but the moment he fell would be wiped from her memory until she found herself racing away, slipping and scrabbling up that slope.
It should have made him feel better. It didn't.
One of the strange, formless spectres hummed by. Lewis swore that they sometimes sent a sad, sympathetic smile his way, despite them being so devoid of features.
In the dark, sight gradually comes to mean less.