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The small town of Miraculous was a quiet place, all things considered. According to word of mouth, the most exciting thing to have happened in the past several years had been a lackluster flashmob spearheaded by a group of twerpy tweens. Perhaps to compensate for sheer utter boredom, the town was constantly buzzing with gossip over the mundane lives of the residents, and served as a fertile breeding ground for rumors. It felt to Alya as though they were just waiting for the tiniest tidbit to pounce on when it came to her family, the town’s newest arrivals.
If they were waiting for something sordid, they would be sorely disappointed. Her dad worked long hours as a vet tech and her mother was busy being the new owner of a local diner, so the most people could say about them was that they were passionate about their jobs. If Nora had still been living at home, the gossip-mongers might have had more to work with, but the eldest daughter of the family was off living her independent life as the champion boxer Anansi.
Alya’s younger sisters, Ella and Etta, would no doubt gain a reputation as troublemakers in a few years time, but as of yet they were too young to do much more than track mud everywhere and steal candy from cabinet shelves they weren’t supposed to be able to reach.
No, if the townsfolk wanted something juicy, the smart money would be on Alya Cesaire, restless teen, backbone of steel, and budding reporter with dreams of becoming an investigative journalist.
And by god, she was going to give them something to talk about.
It was a sunny day in early October that saw four teens wandering the streets after school had let out, and one was milking their time together for all she was worth before needing to go babysit her siblings.
“I’m just saying,” Alya said as she kicked a crumpled beer can down the sidewalk. “The legend only persists because people are too chickenshit to prove it wrong.”
Her friends groaned, but she continued.
“If we just-”
“For the last time,” Marinette said. “We have better things to do than trespassing onto private property to prove some local hocus pocus false.”
“And that house has gotta be structurally unsound,” Adrien said.
“You guys suck,” Alya, instigator of this particular conversation, said. “Like, majorly.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be watching the twins tonight anyway?” Marinette asked.
“Maybe,” Alya said. “But they’ll fall asleep eventually, and with how late they get home, it’s not like my parents would know that I left.”
“Until you post something to the MiracuBlog,” Nino said. “Then they’ll know and be aware of your lawbreaking.”
“I’ll burn that bridge when I get there,” Alya said dismissively. “Back to the matter at hand- you claim the myth is bogus, yet won’t take a quick look around?”
“Does private property mean nothing to you?” Marinette said.
“It’s abandoned!” Alya said. “Who gives a shit?”
“You’re going with or without us, aren’t you?” Nino asked tiredly.
“Yup,” Alya said in confirmation. “But if you come, you get to say ‘I told you so’.”
- - - - - - -
The house was surrounded by a fence, but the gate swung open with no protest and the front door was unlocked.
“That’s suspicious, right?” Marinette whispered.
“Come on.” Alya stepped into the foyer.
They turned on their phones’ flashlights and began to explore. The entrance was pretty boring, containing a coat rack, a hatstand, and little else. Alya, friends dogging her footsteps, chose a random doorway and entered a long hall. Turning around a corner, their combined beams of light illuminated a figure who gasped.
In front of them stood a small boy, who stared at them with huge black eyes.
“Jesus Christ,” said Alya, giving voice to the first thought that popped into her mind. “It’s a sickly Victorian child.”
The scarily thin boy, whose skin seemed practically blue, somehow looked offended at her very accurate statement.
“’M not,” he said. “Don’t look like one, neither.”
“Do you live here?” Nino asked.
“Yep,” the boy said, seeming unbothered by their invasive presence. “Do you want some tea? I’ve been told it’s polite to offer guests refreshments.”
“Not a Victorian child, my ass,” Alya muttered.
“Alya, be nice,” Marinette said.
“Guests?” Adrien repeated, bemused. “Doesn’t that require an invite?”
“Shh!” Alya scowled at him. “Don’t you think it’s weird that someone’s just- I don’t know, living here?”
“You mean the person right in front of us who can hear this conversation?” Nino said, shooting his friends a look.
They stopped talking.
The boy gestured at them to come along as he faded into the shadows at the edge of the stretch of hallway that their flashlights had illuminated. With a careless shrug, Adrien followed the boy, his friends exchanging a glance before they, too, walked deeper into the darkened house.
The flashlights simultaneously flickered and died, leading to Alya immediately stubbing her toe, and she muffled a curse. She tried to open her phone, but it wouldn’t respond to her touch, and so she was stuck blinded in an unfamiliar place. Weak moonlight gave her only a vague outline of the others, save for the boy, who almost glowed in it, and she had no choice but to follow him further in.
The hallway was pitch black, with all of its curtains drawn, but the Victorian child walked with confidence, avoiding all obstacles with ease even as the interlopers stumbled in his wake.
A thump sounded, and someone squeaked.
“Sorry, Marinette,” Adrien apologized. “I didn’t mean to walk into you.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “You couldn’t see where you were going.”
The house creaked and groaned around them, like an old man enduring a restless night. Despite all windows and doors being shut tight, air rushed past them as the house itself emitted a sigh, and Alya’s skin prickled with goosebumps.
Then, the darkness lifted as their host pulled on the chain of an antique lamp, its lonely bulb flickering on to cast a yellow glow reminiscent of flames along the shadowy walls. It was a shining beacon of light in the dimness of the moonlit night, and Alya couldn’t quite prevent a sigh of relief from escaping her.
In contrast to the aged lamp, the electric kettle the boy was filling with water was shiny and new, plugging into a socket in the wall. The whole kitchen gave tonal whiplash, a bastard of modern appliances and ancient decor. From a glass-fronted china cabinet, the boy pulled four delicate teacups with matching saucers, a sugar bowl, and a miniature jug. As the electric kettle rattled and whistled in the background, he filled the bowl with sugar cubes, placed silver tongs beside it, and poured from a carton of half-and-half into the jug before returning it into the sleek refrigerator it came from.
The water came to a boil, and their host added it into a teapot containing an infuser full of some blend he’d scooped from a package of loose leaves. The grandfather clock in the hallway ticked away the silent seconds while they waited in the orange-tinted light for the tea to steep.
“I’m Adrien,” Adrien said, breaking the awkwardness of the atmosphere. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You too,” the child said, and began serving the tea. “Would you like some cookies?”
“No tha-,” Alya began.
“Yes, please,” Nino cut her off.
“Nino!” she hissed, kicking his shin under the table.
“Marinette.”
“What?” Marinette looked at the boy.
“Alya. Adrien. Nino.”
“Yeah?” Nino’s brow furrowed.
“Names have power,” the child, who was definitely glowing and blue now, said.
“Shit!” Alya sprang out of her chair, Nino and Marinette doing the same moments later.
“Language,” Adrien admonished, even as he got to his feet with the rest of them. “There is a child-”
The being began to float, laughing, and they took an instinctive step towards each other.
“A child?” he mocked. “A child ?”
The four teens pressed closer together.
“I was, once,” he said thoughtfully. “But not since I was reduced to a skeleton in the basement. I was so lonely, with no one to play games with.”
“A fucking ghost?” Alya said.
“Not exactly,” the undead being said, skin on his cheeks becoming transparent to expose his teeth in a skull’s grin.
He blew some kind of powder from his palm, and it quickly filled the air, causing them all to cough while he watched impassively.
“Sweet dreams,” he said softly. “We’re going to have so much fun .”
- - - - - - -
The small town of Miraculous was a quiet place, all things considered. According to word of mouth, the most exciting thing to have happened in the past several years had been a lackluster flashmob spearheaded by a group of twerpy tweens. Perhaps to compensate for sheer utter boredom, the town was constantly buzzing with gossip over the mundane lives of the residents, and served as a fertile breeding ground for rumors. It felt to Alya as though they were just waiting for the tiniest tidbit to pounce on when it came to her family, the town’s newest arrivals. It was almost eerie, how the faceless residents whispered to each other in the corners of her vision as she passed them by, watching her hungrily.
Alya wasn’t sure what they expected, considering she was just a girl from-
A girl from-
The small town of Miraculous had always been a quiet place, all things considered. According to word of mouth, the most exciting thing to have happened in the past several years had been a lackluster flashmob spearheaded by a group of twerpy tweens, but Alya couldn’t remember such a thing ever occurring. Perhaps to compensate for sheer utter boredom, the town was constantly buzzing with gossip over the mundane lives of the residents, and served as a fertile breeding ground for rumors. It felt to Alya as though they were just waiting for the tiniest tidbit to pounce on when it came to any of their neighbors.
“C’mon,” Nora slung an arm around her sister, gripping her shoulder tightly, painfully. “I need to talk to you about something.”
Her eyes were pure black, instead of-
Instead of-
“C’mon,” Nora slung an arm around her sister, gripping her shoulder tightly, painfully. “I need to talk to you about something.”
Alya dug her feet in, but was still dragged towards the basement by her much stronger sister.
They didn’t have a-
Have a-
Alya dug her feet in, but was still dragged towards the basement by her much stronger sister.
“Why are we going there?” she asked.
“I’m going to teach you a new game,” Nora grinned, translucent cheeks turning her smile into a skull-like leer. “All disobedient children should learn it.”
Alya was thrown down the basement stairs, bouncing off them and landing in a heap at the bottom.
“Nora?” she asked. “This isn’t funny, Nora.”
“On the contrary,” Nora said. “This is going to be hilarious.”
She punched Alya in the jaw, causing her teeth to sink into her tongue, and blood filled her mouth as tears of hurt confusion welled in her eyes.
“You are going to sit here and think about what an ungrateful insolent brat you are,” Nora said. “And you are going to know for every excruciating second of boredom, darkness, loneliness and hunger, that you deserved it. And you’ll know it’s true because the person you trust most said so, and condemned you to this fate.”
Alya scrambled to her feet, but not before the door was slammed and locked.
A squelch sounded behind her.
A pile of fleshy sludge and bloody goo was condensing into an amalgamation of muscles and internal organs fused together unnaturally, too many fingers and teeth snatching at the air as intestines spilled across the floor like unraveling rope and three exposed hearts beat out of sync.
Bodily fluids dripped from the thing’s surface, as it shed loose eyeballs from the tattered skin stretched across one of its twisted ribcages.
“What the fuck?” Alya took a step back, and a rotting eyeball was crushed beneath her foot. “Gross!”
“WE ARE THE SOULS OF THOSE WHO CAME BEFORE YOU,” echoed overlapping voices. “ONCE THE NIGHTMARE HAD WORN US DOWN AND ABSORBED OUR TIRED SPIRITS THAT WERE DEVOID OF ANY HOPES OF ESCAPE. AND YOU TOO SHALL JOIN US. YOU SHALL SOON BEG FOR THE RELEASE FROM SENSE OF SELF AS YOU SUFFER THE TORMENT BROUGHT UPON YOU FROM THE TWISTED CORNERS OF YOUR OWN MIND. YOU WILL BE MORE THAN WILLING TO SUBMIT SOON ENOUGH.”
“What?”
“QUITE SIMPLY, I AM THE MONSTER IN THE BASEMENT. AND YOU ARE TRAPPED IN HERE WITH ME.”
With mounting dread, Alya noticed that the floor was littered with skeletons.
“ SCREAM IF YOU WISH. NO ONE WILL HEAR YOU.”
The thing lunged.
Alya screamed.
No one came to save her.