Chapter Text
I wake up completely dazed. And it's not normal. I shouldn't wake up at all, I'm dead, I can't sleep. I open and close my eyes frantically and shake my head. I don't understand what's happening to me, but I hate it. There's a horrible, empty feeling in my head. What’s happened to me? Where am I? What's going on?
As soon as I try to move, the burning sensation of the iron makes me scream. I'm strapped to a table, my feet and hands in large iron shackles. It's excruciating, but I don't want to cry because there's someone there, looking at me with satisfaction. A living person. Tall with long black hair, a grizzled beard, and wearing a long purple robe embroidered with symbols in gold thread. Magic. It crackles in the room. And he's holding a dozen dark blue marbles that look strangely familiar. What does he want from me? What did he do to me?
I scream:
"Let me go, you bastard! What the hell do you want from me?"
"Come on, come on, I already told you. Don't you remember?"
I don't. I don't remember what I'm doing here. I don't know what he’s talking about.
I don't remember anything except for what is happening right this second.
I grit my teeth to keep from crying in front of this guy.
I don't remember anything. Not my name. Not even my face. Everything's gone. Everything's been taken. By that bastard!
I snarl, clenching my teeth around the pain:
"You look like the kind of guy who can be called a bastard ten times a day and still need to hear it again, bastard. But if you insist, I'll also add that you're a real asshole too. Did you do this to me?"
"Did I do what to you?"
"Did you take my memories?"
"Well, he's sharp, that one... Interesting. Very interesting. Most of the ghosts who end up on this table take ages to understand what's happening to them and cry over their fate. You see, he seems to have kept his fighting spirit..."
He's talking to someone I can't see. I crane my head to find the person he's talking to. A woman. Also dark-haired, younger, maybe in her thirties, red glasses, modern, mid-priced clothes. There’s a resemblance between the two, in the shape of the nose and cheekbones. His daughter? She’s wearing a pouty expression as she nods mechanically, her nose buried in the notes she's meticulously taking.
She doesn't like what she's doing, but it's not because she's shocked by what's being done to me. She's bored. There’s no empathy to be expected from someone who's bored while someone else is being tortured.
I focus on the first person. He seems to take himself very seriously, with his magician's robes and his comments. I need to get him talking. I need to better understand what's going on.
“Who are you? You don’t seem like some kind of weirdo who randomly abducts ghosts. I’m sure you’re not just anyone. You have a plan for me, right?”
He bursts out laughing, very pleased with himself. Perfect. Tell me everything, cunt.
Meanwhile I frantically scan the room, looking for a clue, an instrument that might be useful later. Walls of enormous gray stone, engraved with runes. Wooden shelves strewn with books and parchments. A gigantic but unlit fireplace, containing a pot resting on a pentacle carved in stone. Long tables covered with alchemical equipment. Large earthenware pots containing who knows what. Electric lamps. A computer turned off. Racks hung with chains and weapons of all kinds, made of iron, silver, steel, enchanted gold.
This guy knows what he's doing. He doesn't just attack ghosts. He is equipped to take on all sorts of supernatural creatures. Very dangerous. It's going to take a solid plan; I'm not going to get away with this by rushing head first into the battle.
I force myself to take a slow breath to stop my rising anger. Oh, the fury isn't going away; it'll be there when I need it to smash my kidnapper's face in. But it can’t blind me. I need to see everything. Understand every detail. Find the flaw. Act at the right time.
Then I'll blow his head off with so much pleasure. That smug asshole will get what’s coming to him.
The mage plays with the little marbles in his hand– I'm not sure what they are, but I'm absolutely certain they're mine– and replies with a big smile:
"Oh, yes, I have a plan. And you'll find out in time. I have big plans for you, my friend…"
The woman interrupts him wearily:
"Hurry, we still have the other one to do.”
"He's asleep, we have time…"
"He's mumbling things and I don't like it.”
"He… Damn it. Give me the jar.”
With an exasperated sigh, the woman hands him a glass jar, already filled with marbles of all sizes and colors. The mage throws mine in. I desperately try to count them, I think there are ten; when I come back for them, I absolutely can’t miss one; they're mine, they're part of me. For his part, the mage leaves without wasting any more time with me, eager to take care of this mysterious other. So there's at least one other prisoner here, and he's scaring them. Good. That's good news.
The second mage carefully closes the jar, places it on the table next to the one holding me prisoner. About ten inches away from me, but given my handcuffs, it might as well be on the moon, it would be just as impossible to reach.
She takes out a small stone tablet engraved with runes. I say to her:
"Okay, I get that the circumstances aren't ideal, but I'm sure I can be useful. Just let me try. I bet you want something I can find for you. I'm really good at…"
"Don't bother," she whispers. "Yes, you will be useful, but we’re busy right now. Don't worry. We'll come get you when we need you."
I hear a door opening, a mixture of mechanical clicking and the creaking of dying wood, and a heavy breath, almost a rumble. A creature has just entered the room. It's a... I've never seen anything like it. Well, I don't know for sure, but I don't even understand what I'm looking at, even though my other knowledge of magic has been perfectly fine so far.
It has a torso, two legs, two arms, and a face made of wood. The rest is held together by clicking copper gears. And shrouded in blue-gray mist. It's magic, no doubt about it. But magic that makes no sense. Where is the source? It would take an insane amount of energy to make this thing work. How...
The thing's growl sounds like the whimpering of the wind as it turns its expressionless wooden face towards me, and I feel, without understanding why, an immense pain for this thing. There's something inside the automaton and it shouldn't be there.
It could be a soul.
The idea that this is what awaits me makes me scream in terror and flail stupidly in my restraints. No more acting smart and searching for information, I just want to run away, and if I can't run away, I beg that this thing won't take me...
The second mage sighs and strokes the runes on the stone tablet in a certain order. The creature places two iron shackles around my ankles connected by a chain, which is connected to a longer chain that the thing holds in its hand. Then it frees me from the table. I clutch the piece of furniture with all my might and frantically search for anything I can use as a weapon, but it's too late. The thing pulls its chain and drags me along the floor as if I were nothing more than a screaming bundle of feathers.
The woman sighs, "It'll be a lot less unpleasant for you if you get back on your feet and walk nicely with the guard, you know... Well, what do I care?"
She leaves without waiting for my answer, of course. The guard drags me down a stone corridor. There's no way to grab onto a groove; it's far too strong. I try to phase shift to pass through the floor, but as long as the burning iron tortures me, I'll remain too material to break through anything. I writhe on the floor, trying to find any weapon within reach. Nothing.
We turn down the corridor and everything changes: the walls become covered in beige paint, the floor is linoleum, fluorescent lights illuminate the hallway. Still no weapons, still nowhere to hold onto. Arriving at the end of the corridor, the guard pauses at the top of a staircase, and I finally follow the magician's advice and get back on my feet. It doesn't really help. Being so close to the eternal roar of the dying thing that powers this automaton terrifies me. I hope, oh I hope I don't end up like this. I'd do anything not to end up like this.
I examine the thing out of the corner of my eye as we descend the stairs. The weak points. It's held together by magic, but it's riddled with weak points, fragile joints, and mechanisms that would easily break. I'm not sure I can do anything about the source of magic locked away somewhere in there-- probably in its torso, the only solid, perfectly sealed part-- but there's a way to incapacitate it. Without its arms and legs, this thing won't be able to do much damage. A good old-fashioned metal rod slipped into the right place might even do the trick...
With the iron chain? It'd be horribly painful for me to fight with, but I'm willing to try anything. No, what worries me is that it'll only get caught in the gears without breaking them. I'd have to hook it to a support point first to make it more solid, and even then... Shit, it’s too risky! All I'd need is a simple fucking stick!
At the bottom of the stairs, the scenery changes again. Wooden panels on the walls, red carpet on the floor. This place makes no sense. And I'm starting to realize I was so focused on the automaton that I hadn't memorized the route. It wasn't that complicated, there were a few detours, but it still feels like a labyrinth...
I understand when we turn right three times before ending up in another huge corridor, this time with green brick walls. Damn it. Even the prison is magical. Normally, turning like that should have brought us back to the wooden corridor with red carpet. If it didn’t, it's because this place is changing. Disarming the guard and removing the iron chains won't be enough to escape. What a mess...
Another staircase, veined white marble. Where did this wizard get his decorating ideas, from a musty catalog from a vintage hardware store? Did he roll a die to choose the most random colors possible? If the goal is to make us feel lost and helpless in an overly complicated place that's beyond our control, it's starting to work. I grit my teeth. No. I'm lost, but not helpless. I'll get out of here. I just don't know how yet.
One last detour, black parquet flooring and raw concrete walls, and we arrive in front of a door made of an iron gate. The creature activates a rune on the wall to open the door. I watch closely; it hasn't spoken a magic word, a touch of its immense finger was enough. The rune is too far from the door to activate it by passing an arm through the bars, and the bars are too tightly woven to fit a ghost's arm through them anyway, yet another problem, but I can find a solution. We enter a large circular room.
Raw concrete walls and floor, about twenty yards in diameter, ten yards high at the highest, a ceiling that slopes down in a regular bell. In the center of the ceiling, a skylight about one yard in diameter illuminates the room, unless it's a lamp, in any case it's very insufficient. The center of the room is bright and empty, the corners are plunged into shadow, and it's there that there's movement that I sense more than I see, it's from there that extremely human murmurs come. The iron door remains open behind us.
The guard leads me to a spot on the wall where he attaches my chain to an iron spike set in the concrete, then steps away. He closes the door from the outside, pressing the rune on the wall again. That's interesting. The door remaining open as long as the guard is in the room is a serious oversight in terms of security. But during the entire maneuver, I don't try anything. Without a weapon, it would be useless... he'll come back for me sooner or later. Until then, I need a plan and, above all, some equipment.
I look around. Now that I'm closer, I can make out in the shadows other ghosts tied like me along the wall. To my right, there's a woman, recently dead, a car accident I'd say, given the bloody, glass-covered wound that eternally runs down her face. If she's in a state where it shows the appearance she had when she died, it's not good; she's mentally and emotionally exhausted.
On the other side, there's a child, about ten years old. He must have been dead for a long time, judging by his clothes: short pants, a canvas cap, and a thick wool coat. He must’ve come from the Second World War or the years of hardship that followed. He's calm, crouching against the wall. Regardless of the age of death, ghosts who have been on Earth for a long time are the ones who have resources.
I mimic his position to find a way to relieve the pain of the burning of my iron shackles. It works; by placing them firmly between the wall and the floor, there's a position where they're no longer in contact with my tortured ankles, which can finally heal. I let out a sigh of relief.
A voice calls out to me from the other side of the skylight, too far away for me to see who it is. The voice of a grown man, tired but confident:
"Welcome to the pit, boy. You must have questions?"
"A lot, yes, but I'll start with the basics: Hey everyone, how do we get out of here?"
There's a bit of laughter in the room, including from the kid to my left. Good. Not everyone has lost their fighting spirit, even though the invisible man replies:
"You don't get out, kid, that's the principle of a prison. Except when the guard comes for you, of course. And then you never come back."
Kid? Automatically, I ask:
"Wait, they took my memories away before they brought me here. Why are you calling me kid?"
I'm tall, taller than the two mages who locked me away, and I feel confident. I know a lot about magic and combat. I didn't ask myself the question, but I was sure I'd have died as an adult.
Another voice answers me– also male, younger, more amused:
"You died as a teenager, I'd say you were between fifteen and twenty. You must be from the '80s, judging by your outfit. A fine life force, though. And we've all lost our memories. We think it was the kind of marbles the mage put in his jar. It's all our very first memories."
I nod automatically before adding:
"Yes, that's the first thing I remember too. He took away my memories, started strutting about his grand schemes and the fact that he had big plans for me, then the woman with him told him about another prisoner who was mumbling while he was supposed to be asleep, and he left quickly. Then the woman called the guard, who took me through some kind of maze, all the way here. Does this happen often? How long have you been here?”
"Hard to say," the first male voice continues. "He doesn't take the ghosts in the order he brought them. It could be weeks, maybe months for the older ones. He could bring several new prisoners in a row, or nothing happens for days.”
"Do we know why we're here? What does he want from us?"
To my surprise, it's the woman to my right who answers, almost hysterically:
"He wants to harm us! He's going to kill us all!”
The male voice answers her a little too aggressively for my liking:
"Oh, shut up, Bloody Mary. You're already dead, have you forgotten again?”
I grimace. I know some ghosts remain on Earth because their death was too traumatic for them to pass on to the afterlife. They obsess over what caused their demise, sometimes to the point of forgetting they're dead, and can even be dangerous, both to the living and to other ghosts.
But sometimes, by understanding what happened to them and helping them resolve it, we can help them take the plunge and gain perspective on their own death. Scolding them doesn't help, especially with someone who has forgotten the cause of their trauma and is suffering the consequences without understanding where it came from.
I try to calm things down by saying directly to her:
"Don't be afraid. I know that with the amnesia, this is all very brutal, but that doesn't mean we won't get through this. You're dead and you're a ghost, like the rest of us. You have your own powers. We'll get out of here.”
Another voice—female, older—emerged from the shadows, further to the left:
"And how do you plan to do that, young man?"
Young man is better than kid, but it's still not what I want. Of course, none of us remembers our own names, so everyone spontaneously assigns nicknames to each other. I have no intention of mine remaining Kid. I don't know where this confidence comes from, but I know I can do something. The mage took away my memories, but not this certainty engraved in me: whatever the problem, it's up to me to solve it, and I'm willing to go freeze in Hell if I can't solve it.
Not to mention we have to escape before the mage uses us, and I'm almost certain that what he wants to do to us has something to do with the horrible automatons he created as guardians. The others don't seem to have formulated this hypothesis yet. Either they don't know much about magic, or they prefer not to talk about it so as not to depress the group, like me.
How can I know anything about magic? What kind of life, or death, could I have had?
I'll see later. For now, I have to convince the others:
"Their system already has several flaws. The guardians are a kind of golem that works by magic. I don't know how to deactivate them, but if I get my hands on something sturdy, a staff or a metal rod, I'm sure I could break their joints. Once they can't move anymore, we can take the key to these iron handcuffs and escape. Or I'd need something to pick the locks, anything thin and metallic, preferably one that can be folded. The door opens by pressing a rune on the outside, like a button. It won't be easy to activate it from the inside, but it's not impossible using the chains.”
"You know how to pick locks?”
I don't know where I got this idea, but yes, I'm sure I know how to pick locks. I've forgotten when and why I learned it, but the technique itself is still vivid in my mind, and I automatically move my fingers to mime the necessary movements. Slide the lockpick along the gears, feel the moment the resistance changes, hear the click, move on to the next gear. Yes, no doubt about it, I know how to do it. It's hard to examine my shackles in the dark, but they seemed crude enough that a metal rod would suffice.
Replied that yes, I know how to do it, I searched on myself. After all, if I'm that good with locks, I must have some equipment on me, right? Maybe the mage took it off, but maybe not...
Nothing in the pants pockets, nor the jacket pockets—very cool, the jacket, I love the patches and pins I can make out. It's in the inside pocket that I feel a piece of wood much too big to actually be there. Without understanding, I pull. The piece is endless...
I think I'm the first to be amazed when I pull out an enchanted cricket bat out of nowhere. A real bat, truly enchanted. It can fit in my pocket and interact with the outside world as well as hit other ghosts. Amazing. I know enough magic to know how complex the runes needed for this kind of object are; I must have paid a fortune for it! No wonder the mage didn't look for it; who would have expected to find such an object on a guy like me!
I'm starting to wonder. I know how to pick locks, I know how to fight, I have a very valuable magic weapon...
There's little chance I paid for it, is there?
Oh, hell. I'm definitely a fucking thief.
Fine. Who cares. The important thing is that I have a weapon, and it'll help us get out of here, at least as much as it will help establish my authority. Because now, no more little snickers in the dark when I mention an escape plan. Everyone whispers, and I know very well that what's being passed from one ghost to the next is the information that yes, I have a weapon, and no, my plan isn't stupid. Perfect.
"So?” I ask again. "Are you going to help me, yes or no? I swear we're all going to escape together. We're not leaving anyone behind. Are you with me?”
There are several more or less enthusiastic yeses, but also doubts. Another voice whose origin I can't at all identify– high-pitched, nasal, on the verge of panic:
"No, it's too dangerous! You'll make us all... they can make us disappear!”
“Only if they take us one by one,” I reply with a confidence I don’t quite feel.
But I must convince them. Those who remain here will meet a fate worse than Death itself, I’m sure of it. I add with all the strength of conviction I can muster:
“That’s why we must act together and stick together no matter what. I know that mage is strong, but he’s rendered us all powerless by attacking us individually. We can defeat him with numbers. And he has prisoners who aren’t ghosts. If we free them in exchange for their help, they can help us win. Each of us, dead, alive, fairy, monster, we all have our strengths and weaknesses, our superpowers, and our inviolable rules. By helping each other, we will be invincible! And it starts now, here, in this prison. So, are you with me?”
This time, the yeses are more numerous and more confident. They're starting to understand. Very well.
"But even if you manage to beat a guard, who knows how long it will take them to arrive? It could be anytime…"
"Like I told you, there was a second prisoner who was giving the mage trouble while I was upstairs, so the guard shouldn't be long in coming back. The problem is, he might not come to my side. So, either we know where he's going and someone takes my magic bat to fight him, or we find a way to lure him to me.”
The boy suggests:
"We can use Bloody Mary. We all know she's ready to break down. If we tell the guard we saw her start to blink, he'll know she'll soon transform into an orb and he'll come for her. That's what they do every time. But you'll have to take your chain off first; it's out of your reach."
The woman with the bloody face curled up in a ball, head in her hands, whispering in terror little "No! No!" sounds that were as much protest as sobs. It broke my heart. I needed to reassure her before I put the next part of the plan into motion.
"It'll be okay, Mary. Don't worry. I won't let that thing touch you or hurt you. Look at me. I have a weapon. I'm going to use it to protect you, okay? Trust me.”
For a moment, I'm afraid she won't listen to me at all, but then she finally raises her head. My bat seems to reassure her a little. In any case, she nods. Good.
I only have one more detail, and not the least: the chains.
It's the child again who suggests the solution:
"If a piece of metal is really enough for you, you have what you need with you. Your earring."
Surprised, I raise my hand and find a metal spike attached to my ear. I hadn't paid attention to it, even though it had grazed my neck a few times. I unclip it, and yes, it's perfect. Almost a dagger, or a four-pointed star, or maybe a cross. Regardless, it's extremely stylish and very practical. Gilded, but it's not gold, it's the ghostly reproduction of a cheap piece of jewelry, which suits me just fine; it'll be more brittle but less soft than gold jewelry. Contact with the iron will make it strong enough to be usable. If I'm careful, it will work.
I fumble around until I reach my handcuffs. The burning sensation from the iron on my ankles has subsided once I've found a more or less tenable position, but it returns as I begin work. It hurts at the slightest touch, and I often have to take breaks for the worst of it to pass. But it works. It takes me less than five minutes for the first lock to break. I can't help my triumphant smile.
Now that's what I call a well-executed plan.