Chapter 7
After "the dead hand of destiny" touched Valentine's forehead, she fell back expecting a vision, one that failed to arrive. She did go into a sort of dream, but it was just about her love of surfing, the rolling regrets of how she had to abandon the sport at an early age, since her father moved her to America for his work. Rune noticed that Valentine's candle was still burning when she seemed to come back from an apparent trance.
"What happened?"
Valentine shook her head, "Nothing."
Rune looked at the others swiftly, "What about--"
"I'm pretty sure I found my ghost . . . uh . . . guide, or whatever." Dean said.
"Totally." Kiki said.
"I don't think I have one . . . " Valentine had a rare tremor in her voice.
"It's OK," Rune said, "You can still come with me, I'll try to keep you and Shizuko close to me, just don't get separated. You still in?"
"I suppose," Valentine was in a rare mood for her, moderate depression, and disappointment. Valentine was not afraid, she was scared of nothing, but she was down because she was left out. She was never left out of things.
Wednesday came, and Rune arranged a meeting. The mood was the same as a seance, which it basically was, since Rune called up the three spirits to attend.
"Like I said, you don't need a guide to go, but also none of you are obligated to come with me." Rune said to the living, "Thank you for being here, Nikki, is it? and--"
"Autumn, but you can call me GG, for Ghost Girl"
"Oh . . . Kay?"
Nikki said nothing, but GG spoke volumes, recounting much of her past life, how she found Dean and how she had feelings for him, also summarizing what she knew about the Ghostworld, explaining in detail what skills she could bring along to the party, finally apologizing for the fact she could not divulge everything about the afterlife.
"Well, that sums it up, " Rune said, casting a rude glance in GG's direction, "Thanks to someone's briefing, we are pretty much prepared."
Night fell on Thursday, it was time. Dean could not begin to imagine what was going to happen, so he became extensively apprehensive. He spent hours just tapping his fingers on a table until Rune arrived.
Without any kind of summoning, Shizuko grew out of her own shadow, and slid/walked to a wall in the front room, adjacent to the stairway. She did not show her face through her stringy hair, or even raise her head, but she lifted her arms; Her long fingers poised, her fingernails were black and broken talons. Slowly, methodically, she scratched the walls, using the entire length of her arms. Her pace speeded over time cracking out hunks of crumbly plaster.
"Not gonna get that deposit back," Kiki said.
The plaster glowed in a sort of light, and the chunks started falling to a splattering sound, and the plaster took on the appearance of strips of festering flesh, and oozy globs of fat. Dean noticed red streaks developing, he thought Shizuko's fingers were bleeding, at first, but of course that could not have been right, Shizuko was already dead. It was not her fingers that were bleeding, it was the wall.
The telephone rang, Valentine answered, "Hello . . . hello?" she dropped the receiver on the cradle, "Nothing . . . static."
Shizuko's arms were moving so fast they were hard to track, like the convulsive movements she had made in Dean's dream. when the hole she made was almost large enough to walk through, the top seemed to drip with a disgusting mucus, but more importantly a sickly light started filtering through, like the light of the full Moon, but it was only a weak imitation of that glow. Shizuko dropped and crab-walked into the hole, followed by Rune, who partially unsheathed her katana. The rest of them tagged along into the Ghostworld.
Once they went through the portal, there was some rough terrain, rocky and sandy with scrub grass, as one might find near the ocean. There was no ocean to be seen, or even heard. "This is only the gate world, it's a few days march to the passage to the entire system." Rune told them.
As they walked, Rune explained more about the Ghostworld, casting furtive glances at GG, making sure she stayed shutted up. "The body you wear is just a sheath, more or less, cast off at death. Sometimes you get a new one, or cross over forever. But sometimes someone becomes Earthbound, trapped to haunt a locality for an extended time, incorporeal, or they come here, for some semblance of physicality."
Valentine woke up from the awe and bizarre circumstances that led up to this journey they were undertaking. "Why are we even here? "
"Shit!" Rune said , "I got so caught up in everyone being so willing to come with me I forgot. there are some powerful entities uniting to make this realm the final afterlife, but these worlds are actually the place that the idea of Purgatory came from, and the powers that be instructed me--"
"Hold it right there," Valentine said, "Where's my weapon? Also . . . how do you know?"
"Shizuko. Shizuko is my guide, she has to be a tracker for what you call . . . er . . . angels, it's her penance, and she tells me where to attack. Oh, being alive in the Ghostworld is your greatest weapon"
"I want a sword."
"Can we go back, now" Kiki asked, she thought she saw Nikki Lyn nod to that.
"Sorry, it's too late, my bad, I guess I should have explained better. "Rune threw down her infamous smile.
"I really want a sword . . ." Valentine said.
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