Chapter Text
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Though no one had told him anything, it had not taken Eric long to come around to the idea that the dust might not, in point of fact, be dust.
Sometimes it formed shapes.
After years of growing accustomed to the muted air of Funn Funerals, Eric began to notice the seemingly autonomous nature of whatever it was that coated the floors and drifted along the walls. It moved in waves when he looked at it properly, tides that oscillated from or towards his feet in indiscernible patterns. It was fascinating to watch, and it never bothered him.
That said, he wasn't a fool. Even Georgie had shown some measure of concern about the amount of time he spent in Funn Funerals. He knew whatever this thing was, it wasn't natural, and it wasn't safe. He'd noticed himself getting tired earlier in the day, the way his body couldn't always do what he knew it was capable of, how his eyes had dulled from their vibrant blue.
If he were a wiser man, he might have taken these changes as threats to his life, but Eric couldn't find it in himself to entertain the possibility. It wouldn't make sense.
Because the thing haunting Funn Funerals loved him.
Whenever Eric walked through the door, he was greeted with an immediate and involuntary relaxation in his muscles (though it was often canceled out by the building's inhabitants) and a smell that reminded him of his grandfather's cramped library. He had long suffered from insomnia, from which his typical recourse was constant productivity, but after enough time at the Funns', sleep arrived with ease. The clean, lightly lemon-scented air of his home felt downright inhospitable in comparison. He missed that heavy-blanket sensation the instant he left it, the hard edges of the outside world reminding him at every turn where he would rather be.
If breathing came harder, it only made him slow down and focus. He couldn't run as quickly for as long, but why should he need to on an island that he could cross at a leisurely pace within half an hour?
He wasn't blind. He'd seen how it impacted Georgie in times of stress. In the few days when she and Antigone worked tirelessly to embalm Magdalena's clowns, Eric had helplessly glanced across the square whenever he could, as though he could see anything through their walls, as though his bearing witness could be of service. He had occasionally caught sight of Georgie bursting from the building and coughing up her lungs. The first time, he'd run out and offered to assist, but of course she'd refused. She'd just headed back inside, and she'd coughed irregularly for a week afterward.
Vivienne had complained endlessly to him about the Funn air after her brief attempt to brave it, and she was hardly the only one who'd mentioned it to him. It was suffocating, it smelled of death, it seemed to drain the color from everything, it always felt as cold and damp as if it were the center of a constant storm.
Eric knew there was something amiss, he knew whatever that thing was could make a person's life miserable, and he knew that, for whatever reason, it didn't do that to him. He couldn't bring himself to think too hard about it.
As their rivalry (somewhat) mellowed over the years, Eric's recreational time at the Funns' naturally increased. Then Georgie departed on her trip with Jennifer, and it only seemed the kind thing to bring over the occasional dinner, to keep the Funns company with conversation that bordered always on a fight, and, when allowed, to sleep on the floor that he found so inexplicably comforting. It didn't take him long to provide himself a cot. He missed the softly floating motes against his skin, but they were usually there by the time he woke up anyway, and he had to admit it was marginally better for his increasingly complaint-prone back.
On such occasions, Eric tended to awaken some time after his bone-deep 6 a.m. routine, which was why he was confused when he cracked his eyes open to find the room still dark, its sorry excuse for a window revealing not even its typical paltry light. If he'd been roused by a noise, he didn't remember one, and though he had been drinking, it was only a couple glasses of wine, and he was in need of neither a piss nor a vomit. So why was he awake?
Eric lifted his head, disorientation making him feel vulnerable in his flannel pajamas, and spotted a familiar figure by the worktable.
"Rudyard? Why are you up? Did you… need something?"
That Rudyard had been quiet for those few minutes was already an unsettling indicator of something terribly amiss. Rudyard, acting very un-Rudyard-like, paid him no heed and focused instead on (perhaps) his own hand. It would hardly be the first time Eric caught Rudyard in a pensive mood, but the utter stillness struck him as odd.
Eric delicately stood, overcome with the sense that too much noise would be unwelcome. The dim moonlight was blurring the edges of Rudyard's form. Eric could have sworn he looked broader, taller, his spine curved a little more like his sister's, but then, light and shadow can play funny tricks.
"Rudyard?" Eric called louder, approaching with tentative footsteps, ignoring the chill in his chest.
Rudyard's head shivered, disparate parts moving like nothing made of flesh could. Eric's breath caught as he realized what he was seeing. The figure remained still, but with his approach, it had begun to lose its coherency, lighter pieces floating away while those weighed down within churned in the discomfort of their shape.
A pile of dust. Dust quivering in imitation of something that looked almost but not quite like Rudyard.
"Christ," he breathed. "No wonder they're both insane."
The subtle movements quickened, and Eric took an instinctual step back. As his socked foot fell against the floor, a layer of the dust dropped away like a curtain, revealing another sculpture hidden beneath the first. In a heartbeat, the figure transfixed by nothing had altered itself into staring straight at him.
A loud curse froze on Eric's tongue, the sudden numbness of his body all that kept him from turning tail and running for the door.
The figure, stationary once more, had only an impression of a face. There was a familiar nose (though it kept losing particles), and an approximation of a mouth, and a stern brow above the pits where eyes would have been. This was unmistakably a Funn, and if Eric were to gamble, he would bet it was Funn Funerals' previous proprietor.
Eric's mouth moved to form the word Hello. When he gave breath to the shape, it came out, "I'm sorry."
He sounded like he hadn't since he was eight, small and scared. He wanted to hide. He knew that he couldn't, and that he'd never be able to. He was stuck.
"I'm sorry," his mouth said again. "I didn't mean to upset you, please, I'm sorry!"
The approximation of a stare stayed on him, and as he continued apologizing for something he couldn't name, his lungs had to work harder and harder to breathe. He was gasping for air and—crying, he realized. Crying like the first time he'd broken his arm, uncontrollable and unending. His struggle to obtain oxygen caused his balance, finally, to break. He fell to the floor on pins and needles, his hands hardly feeling the dingy wood beneath them through their intense cold.
"Please," he begged the figure, which had lost much of its cohesion but not its bone-chilling familiarity, "I can be better, please!"
On the second floor, a door slammed open. The sound caused the remaining shivering particles to drop, leaving a conspicuous pile of dust and nothing more. The sob already in Eric's mouth emerged, and then it was over. His heart calmed. His breath steadied. He blinked his vision clear and wondered what the hell had just happened.
"—kind enough to allow you to sleep in my house," said Rudyard, marching down the stairs, complaints coming into focus as he approached, "and you repay me with a racket in the middle of the night! Well, it's not quite eleven, but some of us still need sleep dear God what have you been doing in here?"
Rudyard's gaze was, reasonably enough, on the dust coating his chair and the surrounding floor several layers thicker than normal. Then he turned to interrogate the presumptive culprit and was further disturbed by the state of him.
"Eleven?" echoed Eric, who could have sworn it was three in the morning.
Rudyard grabbed his shoulder and pushed him back, forcing him off his hands, before manhandling him upright. Eric's balance hadn't returned, nor had the pins and needles fully left, but his terror had fled him so quickly he could hardly remember it.
"Chapman? Chapman!"
"What?" said Eric, blinking back into reality.
Rudyard glared, and Eric was too tired to tell if he was angry or worried. Not that the latter could come without the former, where Rudyard was concerned.
"Don't agitate it," he said. "You'll only make things worse."
"'Agitate it?'" Eric pondered, trying to remember what exactly had just happened. "I didn't do anything, he was there when I woke up. Or maybe he woke me up."
Whatever Rudyard was feeling, it intensified. He looked furtively around as though checking for intruders.
"What do you mean 'he?' Who was here?"
Eric realized how ludicrous the answer was only as it left his lips: "I think it was your father."
Rudyard recoiled.
"Why would you say that?" he snapped. "He isn't—I've never—"
"No, I'm sorry, I mean... it looked like him, or, like you really, but it was just the dust. Thus the," he gestured wordlessly to the detritus on the chair. "It fell apart when you slammed the door."
Rudyard stared at the pile as though it were about to re-reanimate and start berating him.
Sensation had returned to his legs, so Eric stepped closer and gently called, "Rudyard?"
Rudyard's attention snapped back to him, though his eyes had more of their frequent wildness than a moment prior.
He declared, "You shouldn't sleep here."
That took Eric aback.
"I—"
"Tonight," Rudyard amended and cleared his throat. "You shouldn't sleep here tonight. Go home, I'm sure we'll see you tomorrow."
It was a sentiment that had been expressed to Eric many times, but Rudyard had never before said so out of concern. Eric, despite his instincts to the contrary, agreed.
*
Eric had a massive, top-of-the-line mattress which had provided him a good bit of comfort through years of not actually sleeping in it. He'd appreciated the space to toss and turn, always a cold spot somewhere to press against his face, endless options as to arranging any visitors. These features had lost some of their charm as his time in Piffling piled up. He had not gone so strange as to actually prefer a cot to a mattress, but the space felt stifling, and with increasing frequency, he calmed himself to sleep by picturing the tides of the Funns' dust—drawing towards him, then away, nearer, farther. Nothing was as relaxing.
The next day, he tried to visit for lunch, but Rudyard rushed him out the door. "Terribly busy," he'd claimed, which could feasibly have been true but stung anyway. Some shimmering particles escaped on the air currents, landing gentle across Eric's cheeks. He found his worry somewhat abated for a while, but Piffling's friendly sun never allowed the dust to survive long.
Needing a distraction and wanting it to be effective, Eric invited Vivienne around to his so he wouldn't have to eat in silence. She informed him that she was busy receiving cunnilingus and hung up. He thought it was a bit much to answer the phone at all under such circumstances but had too healthy a fear of what Marlene could wreak upon his mortal shell to hold it against her. Instead, he called Nigel, who came right over, reliably lonely due to his perpetually busy husband.
After giving Timmy an appropriately exuberant greeting (who's a good boy! who's a good boy! ohhh you are! yes, so good and handsome and FLUFFY!), they sat at Eric's kitchen table. Over two beautifully prepared sandwiches—alright, so Eric wasn't a chef, he couldn't be great at everything, he wasn't Georgie—Nigel squinted at him.
"You haven't invited me over to get an exorcism out of me, have you?" he asked suspiciously. "You look like you've seen a ghost. Ooh, is that why your mirrors have disappeared?"
Eric laughed off the playful question. It was true that the mirrors scattered around Chapman's had been gradually removed. It was the same in his private quarters. What hadn't been disposed of were hidden by prettily patterned sheets, easily lifted to the side when necessary. He'd been making an effort to break some of his worse habits, many of which occurred while staring into mirrors. This wasn't information he felt Nigel needed.
"All I'm looking for is conversation, I promise," he said with a winsome smile. "No ghosts around here, just the usual corpses."
"If you say so," Nigel accepted around a bite of sourdough. He swallowed, then continued with an added note of sincerity, "We do worry about you, Dezzy and I. All that time at Funn Funerals…"
"I know," Eric assured him, failing to sound like he took the worry seriously.
"That air is no good, Eric! Even Rudyard looks healthier now that he spends so much time in the hall's cellar."
"That may be because he's eating more than one meal a day."
"I've done funerals for people who died in there, you know."
"Yes," Eric answered, drawn out and disbelieving. "I don't know that it was the air that killed them. I have heard things about, ah, the previous owners."
"I just don't understand the appeal," Nigel shrugged. "But as long as you're taking care of yourself."
Eric wished very badly that he were across the square.
The meal concluded pleasantly enough, leaving Eric in silence after all.
He supposed suffering a vision that made him cry harder than he had when Rudyard broke his ribs could be a cause for concern he ought to contemplate, or perhaps seek spiritual guidance about. He supposed also that he should consider if it were a nightmare. Stress had given him stranger dreams in the past. But he knew somehow that giving in to such an explanation would only be avoiding a truth he had long accepted and chosen to ignore:
Something even odder than its proprietors resided within Funn Funerals.
The proprietors, it so happened, who kept peering at him through their nigh-opaque window, which wasn't terribly uncommon. Eric couldn't quite place if the twins were glaring in anger, wondering if they'd have to bar his entrance again, or checking that he wasn't running around the island with his pants on his head, raving about ghosts.
There was no doubt Rudyard had told Antigone about the previous night's events. In all likelihood, they'd managed to get the news to Georgie. But one vision of Funns-past wouldn't mark him as delusional forever, right? Rudyard and Antigone had to understand the nature of their house guest better than he. Surely they couldn't banish him from the premises merely for being a witness.
Or maybe they thought he'd piled up some dust and, out of cruelty, claimed to see an apparition of their father. In which case, they'd be well within their rights to keep him out. He only hoped they knew him better than that.
For fear of exile, Eric did not return to the Funns' that day, satiating his social needs by bothering the invariably fluffy Timmy, who had yet to really warm up to him despite Georgie having left him in Eric's care nearly four months previous. But the following evening, he knocked on the door with his arms full of eggplant Parmesan, which he'd obtained from a cozy Italian place that had popped up in the absence of Chapman's various eateries. He was allowed entrance.
A barely-present itch all across his skin dissipated the moment he stepped inside, and he sighed his relief. No one spoke of ghosts or fathers.