Sixty-Two ◑ The Revenge

“Hi, miss,” the man closest to Lucille sneered. “It’s been a long time.”

He took a step forward, his feet hovering on the floor. The small movement made his form flicker, his face no longer distinguishable. Around him, the other ghosts got their faces blurred out as well, as though the action of one could affect them all. Lucille retreated, extending her arms to shield Agnes.

“Are you scared?” another woman called out, but this time the voice was scattered. Her words seem to be said by many others at once, echoing all around. “You know you should be.”

She was scared. More than that, she was terrified. The memory of the talking statues at the Arkham Manor resurfaced in her head, intensifying the fear burning at the pit of her stomach. She'd barely survived that. How much more now, when she was face to face with them, with the pressure of saving Agnes?

No idea. She had no idea how she would go through this, but she still stood her ground and said, "I'm not scared."

The ghosts’ low laughter reverberated in the walls. The sound resonated in Lucille’s ears, but she could feel it on her feet like a vibration. Behind her, Agnes let out a barely audible whimper, clinging onto Lucille like a scared child.

“But you are,” the woman pointed out, and this time, the other figures spoke in unison. “You are afraid. Just like we were.”

With that, more figures began to materialize seemingly out of thin air. The more ghosts showed up, the fuzzier all of them got. Now they were merely humanoid shapes, free of any discernible features that would separate them from the rest.

The lack of identity should’ve made Lucille relax a little, or at least calm down enough to come up with a clear way of escape, but no. Pure panic was gripping her to the point that she was gasping for air. For the first time since she’d gotten here, the cold was biting on her skin. The chapel, which was huge in its own right despite being caged inside a house, now felt as small and as cramped as a broom closet.

It didn’t help that the figures were slowly looming over her, slowly drawing closer.

“Back off,” she warned, but her voice contained very little conviction this time. She could hardly swallow. “Don’t you dare.”

Agnes’s hands were freezing against her back, even with the fabric of her dress separating them. However, this wasn’t what made her shudder. This wasn’t what made nausea creep up her throat like fresh bile. It was the sheer number of ghosts before her, the fact that they were still gaining numbers by the second, and the realization of what kind of life she had been forced to live.

A life she brought upon to herself, a life she once was proud of.

How many people had she punished? Just how many had she stepped on and didn’t care about right after? How many lives had she cut abruptly?

How many promises of betterment and chances for forgiveness had she taken with no remorse?

The answer was right in front of her, increasing, ever growing. . . .

And hungry for revenge.

As though on cue, the entities picked up their pace and attacked at once.

The first thing that met Lucille was the dark energy that they carried with them. It hit her like a punch in the gut, causing her to inhale sharply as the force descended on her with the impact of a brick. Instantly, her mind started to get flooded with memories, the ones she had seen in all the time jumps she’d done to get to the present.

From her wedding to her death, everything came rushing back. However, there was one memory that lingered a lot longer than the rest, and that was Agnes’s death.

Lucille’s knees went weak, but she stayed upright and kept herself in between the ghosts and Agnes, even as they rushed towards her in a combined wall of white smoke. They had the force of a strong wind, almost like a tornado without the spinning. Their anguish, their regrets, and their pain were direct stabs to her skin, creating scrapes and even drawing blood despite being intangible.

She was being pushed back, her footing getting unsteady. She shielded herself as the wave of the ghosts carried broke the benches and caused them all to slide forward in a flurry of crashes, dust, and debris. Agnes let out a yelp and wrapped her arms around Lucille to pull her back behind the altar, but even that began to erode. The dead flowers were nothing but dust being blasted against the brick wall.

But still, she held her place and kept her eyes open to it all.

*I have to see,* she told herself. *I have to accept.*

As she watched the streak of white and listened to the muffled cries, she realized that these ghosts couldn’t truly hurt her, that perhaps they didn’t really want to. They were only bound to be here, locked in all the negativity and the past. All of them. Including her.

And they all just needed to let go and be let go.

“You broke us,” the ghosts said in an eerie collective chant. “You ended all of us.”

“I know.” Tears began to brim Lucille’s wide eyes. Her outstretched arms began to sag. “And I will free you.”

Lucille closed her eyes momentarily, thinking of that moment at the beach with Dimitri and Keiran, when she released the bracelet that held her back. Slowly and weakly at first, a thin layer of bright red flames began to appear on her skin like lava boiling over into the surface of the ground.

When she opened her eyes, the room was still swirling with the white smoke and the debris, but there was a certain shift in the atmosphere now. The spinning of the ghosts was still impossibly fast, but it was no longer aggressive. If anything, it was eager, excited, like the promise of freedom gave the ghosts a fresh boost of energy.

They were still touching her, colliding into her. And while their contact made her skin prickle, they no longer hurt her.

She willed the flames to grow bigger, to flow out of her. The fire burned brighter, its warmth engulfing the room and erased all the traces of the snow from outside. The cuts and the scrapes on her skin began to close, the blood seeping back into her body.

And bit by bit, the ghosts began to fade—no, separate. Their combined bodies began to split into separate visible entities, which began to develop clear features once more.

Lucille recognized them now. All the ones she had punished in her long, sad life. She remembered their stories, some stronger than the others, some sadder, and some more somber.

But they were stories nonetheless. Some of it she helped create. Some of it she ended without a note.

She raised her hand, and instantly, red light exploded in the chapel, causing the ghosts to disappear in a blink of an eye.

Lucille expected the air to feel lighter, for some of the darkness to fade, but no. Even though the chapel was still and silent now, there was still that low hum on the walls and on the floor. It was pulsating too, as though the house was one gigantic heart that only began to beat after she used her magic.

She turned around to Agnes and take her hand, but Agnes was frozen in her spot. “Agnes, we have to go.”

“You can’t just leave,” she whispered. “You have to kill him, Lucille.”

Lucille’s throat tightened. “But we should—”

“It’s not him anymore,” Agnes interrupted, seizing Lucille by the shoulders. “He’s around this house, he’s everywhere, but it’s not him. He turned into something else.”

“A god?” Lucille hedged.

Agnes shook her head. “No. He became . . . I don’t know. But he’s not human anymore, Lucille. He’s something else, something worse. Before, he still considered my pain. He still stopped himself from accidentally turning me into what I am now. He just snapped one day and I saw it in his eyes. He’s not all there anymore. It’s like the worst parts of him had taken over. It was when the ghosts started to appear. He seemed to have pulled them with him. That was when I broke out of my cell and tried to get to you, but the ghosts stopped me every time.”

Lucille remembered the dark aura that surrounded the house, the ominous aura it gave off even from miles away. She had heard about people turning into mere manifestations of their vilest qualities, like the *mania* spirits back in the Roman era, but never had she heard on one so powerful it could cause other ghosts to appear.

“You have to end him,” Agnes continued, her words rushing out in panic. “You have to end this. It’s the only way to—”

“To die a certain death.”

Both women flinched at the sound of the voice. They turned to face the source of the sound, and standing at the entrance of the chapel was Cade.

“So it’s true, then,” he said, his lips curving to a smile. “You’re here, and you’re back for your final death, Lucille.”