Spring was newly arrived and the air was
fresh with the scent of new growth. The
pond next to their house had finally thawed and the roar of the waterfall
streaming into the water echoed through the small valley their house was
nestled in once again.
Chantia was only peripherally aware of it,
though. She was far more focused on the scene in front of her.
Arienne gave one look at her brand-new bed
before shaking her head.
“Uh-uh,” she declared and buried her head
in Sam’s shoulder, refusing to look at it any longer. Chantia sighed softly and
closed her eyes in resignation. They had been trying for several hours now to
get Arienne to sleep in her toddler bed, but the girl absolutely refused. The
delivery people had been late in delivering the bed, so they had been unable to
accustom Arienne to the bed before Renard had arrived. Now that he was here
though, Arienne only focused on the fact that he was using her crib.
“Ari, sweetie, you’re a big girl now,”
Chantia tried again. “Big girls don’t sleep in cribs. Babies do.”
“Uh-uh,” Arienne repeated obstinately.
Chantia gave Sam a pleading look, silently asking him to try and convince the
girl.
Sam gently swiped a tendril of hair out of
Arienne’s face, causing the girl to look poutingly at him, something she had
refused to do to Chantia.
“Won’t you do it for Daddy?” Sam gently
asked the toddler. Arienne absolutely adored him, and they had both noticed
that the girl had difficulty refusing her dad. She pushed her bottom lip out
further and hung her head, but sulkily nodded nonetheless, finally giving in.
Several minutes later, after being changed
into her PJ’s and lowered onto the bed, she abruptly changed her mind again.
“Uh-uh!” she declared again and reached out
to Sam, begging to be picked up again.
Sam closed his eyes with a grimace, but
still took the complication in stride, sinking down to the bed beside Arienne.
She immediately scooted close to him, clumsily throwing her arms around him and
hugging him tightly.
“I’m not going anywhere, okay?” he reassured
her. “I’ll stay here with you.” He gently stroked her hair until she finally
relaxed against him in sleep, allowing him to gently tuck her in.
The next morning she awoke before her
parents and upon realising she was alone in her new room, she threw a massive fit. Sam tried his best to
console her, but she remained out of sorts the entire morning, refusing to do
anything and generally just being a right menace. Chantia had thought she knew
exactly how to handle her child, but she suddenly found she was completely
unprepared on how to handle Arienne’s current behaviour.
Arienne calmed down once they arrived at
her aunt’s house. The weather was quite warm for a spring day and Mia had asked
Chantia to pay her a visit; both because she wanted to talk to her sister and
meet her nephew. Arienne was still sulking when they arrived at Mia’s house,
but she perked up at the sight of a new place to explore.
Mia was waiting for them by the door when
they arrived.
“Thank you for coming,” she told Chantia
after greeting her and cooing appropriately over Renard. “I've been meaning to
talk to you for quite some time now, but things have been fairly hectic
recently,” she explained with an apologizing tone in her voice.
“Is
there anything in specific you want to talk about?” Chantia asked as they made
their way to the door. Mia hummed in agreement and inclined her head.
“It’s about the ghosts,” she confirmed,
instantly gaining Chantia’s complete attention. “I think I might’ve found a way
to reverse Damnation, but I’m going to need your help to confirm whether my
theory will work or not,” she explained. “But more on that later. Let’s find a
more appropriate place to talk.” With that she entered the house, expecting
Chantia to follow her, but before Chantia could enter the house Arienne decided
she had waited long enough. She stepped in front of her mother, preventing the
woman from entering the house before eagerly toddling through the door herself.
“She seems to be quite the handful,” Mia
commented as she watched the child toddling into her house.
Chantia just sighed. “She is,” she agreed
resignedly, thinking of Arienne’s poor behaviour of that morning, “but luckily
not always. She’s usually rather very sweet, but she’s not very impressed with
us at the moment.” She explained to Mia the entire situation about the toddler
bed. Mia just shook her head in bemusement.
“I guess that’s another reason I’m glad I
don’t have any children yet,” was her reply.
A little while later, the two women found
themselves outside on the porch, finally ready to talk about the topic at hand.
“You
said you might’ve found a way to reverse Damnation?” Chantia offered, asking
the other woman to continue the conversation. Mia inclined her head, agreeing
with the statement.
“Temporarily, yes,” she agreed, “but it’s a
little complicated. I’m going to need your help.”
“What do you want me to do?” Chantia asked.
She was more than happy to help if it meant she could help her friends. Mia was
silent for quite some time before she finally spoke again.
“Will-o’-the-wisps,” Mia stated before
raising her eyes to Chantia’s. “Do you ever encounter them?” Chantia frowned a
bit, unable to see where Mia was going with the line of questioning, but nodded
nevertheless. She encountered them all the time. At Chantia’s nod of affirmation,
Mia continued. “Have you ever wondered how they fit into the scheme of things?
I mean, into the tale Charlotte told us when we were children.”
Chantia frowned slightly. To be honest, she
had never really thought about it. All she really knew about them was what she
had learned back in university: that there were many myths and legends
surrounding them, but nobody really knew what they were.
“I’ve never really thought about it,” she
admitted honestly. “My guess would be that they’re somehow connected to the
Damned – maybe they are the Damned.
Why do you ask?”
“That’s what I thought as well,” Mia
agreed, “but when I thought about it, it didn’t quite make sense. If they are
connected to the Damned, why are there so many? Surely there can’t be that many people who refuse to move on
after death.”
“We’re talking about all deaths from the start
of time,” Chantia pointed out.
“That’s a long time, and a lot of people have lived – and died – since then.”
“I know,” Mia agreed, “but how long does
Damnation continue? Doesn’t it stop somewhere? And if it does, where does it stop? What happens to
those ghosts who had fallen so far into Damnation that they can’t go any
further? Do they move on? Do they linger in this world? These questions continued
to plague me, so I asked Charlotte a while ago. Her answers – though very
philosophical – were…illuminating.”
Chantia sat down, drawn in by the intrigue
of the conversation. “Oh?” she questioned curiously. “What did she say?”
Mia gave a short laugh. “Quite a lot,
actually,” she admitted. “Turned out I wasn’t too far out in my line of
thinking. There is a limit to
Damnation, but it’s not a physical one – it’s a metaphysical, emotional limit.
“You see, when a ghost falls into Damnation,
they lose the ability to experience emotion. One by one, all emotion disappear,
until only the one that caused them to linger remains. Everything they do – the
way they think, the way they act – everything, is influenced by that one
emotion. So in a way, indirectly, they become
that emotion.”
Chantia held up her hand, interrupting Mia
from continuing. “Hold up,” she stopped the genius. “How can people become emotion?”
“They don’t,” Mia agreed, “which is why I
said they indirectly become that
emotion. Humans are creatures driven by emotion. Everything we do is influenced by our emotions. We
make our decisions based on our emotions. Even when we believe we are making
our decisions based on cold facts, we are still relying on our emotions to
justify our actions. Now imagine you are only capable of one emotion. All of
your decisions will be made in such a way that that one emotion will intensify,
because you have nothing else to base your decisions on.
“Take
for example, sitting on a chair. A normal person will think: ‘I want to sit
down’. Why? ‘Because I’m tired’. Sitting down will reduce the energy
expenditure, causing the person to feel ‘relief’. Now imagine a person only capable of fear. That person will think:
‘I can’t sit down’. Why not? ‘Because the chair will collapse beneath me’. You
and I both know that won’t happen, because we trust the chair to be capable of holding our weight, but that
person won’t think that. They will literally only be able to think ‘the chair
will collapse’, so they will continue to be afraid of the chair, thus their
fear will intensify.
“Logically, the next question would then
be: how far can it go? How far can a Damned go until it’s not possible to
intensify that emotion any further, until the very limit is reached? When you
stumble upon that answer, that’s when you finally understand just what
Damnation is. It’s not about ‘losing yourself’. It’s about being so far gone
that there’s nothing left for you to focus on – you’re literally just a husk
filled with one emotion. You can’t even think
anymore. The Damned cannot ever move on to the World of the Dead, because they
simply cannot realise it’s possible.”
Chantia frowned in confusion again. “And
you believe you’ve found a way to reverse Damnation…” she enquired hesitantly,
trying to get the conversation back on track again. “So you’re…what? Gonna give
them back their emotions?”
Mia shook her head, disproving Chantia’s
guess. “No, that’s impossible,” she declared, “but I believe it might be
possible to simulate the effects of
some emotions, which will provide the Damned with a few moments of clear
thought. If someone can convince them in that time to move on, then they can be
whole again. There are no Damned in the World of the Dead, because the moment
they enter that world they regain everything they had lost.”
Chantia leaned back in her chair, finally
understanding what Mia required of her. “And you want me to try and convince them,” she stated.
Mia nodded in confirmation. “Well,
eventually yes,” she agreed, “but that’s not what I need your help with right
now. Right now, I need you to collect me will-o’-the-wisps.”
Chantia blinked in confusion and her mind
stuttered to a halt. How did
will-o’-the-wisps fit into all this again?
“Uhm, why?” she asked, trying to remember
what Mia had said about the elusive little spirits.
Mia sighed, apparently frustrated at
Chantia’s inability to follow her line of thought. “You do realise
will-o’-the-wisps are Damned, right?” she pointed out impatiently.
“That’s what I said when this conversation
just started,” she reminded the genius. “You just spent this whole time trying
to convince me otherwise.”
“No, I was explaining what they are and why there are so many,” Mia disagreed impatiently.
“Weren’t you listening to anything I was saying?”
“Mia,” Chantia declared, “I know this might
come as a shock to you, but I can’t follow your thoughts. You leave out a few
too many vital steps for me to accurately follow you.”
Mia rolled her eyes and decided to forego
the potential argument. “In anyway, I’ve developed a device – with a little
help, of course – that will provide you with a means of collecting these
spirits. If you can collect me several spirits of each emotion type, we can
test out my theory and see if it works or not.” With that Mia disappeared back
into the house again to bring Chantia the device in question and Chantia took
the time to check up on her family.
Arienne were seemingly worn out by her
exploration of the house and were once again quite moody, but she seemed to
have forgiven Sam for leaving her in the toddler bed that morning. Sam and Carl
(Mia’s husband) were quietly watching TV together, so Chantia took the chance
to give Renard over to Sam as well. She had the idea the device Mia had
mentioned would require her to use both her hands.
Mia came downstairs with the device and
Chantia immediately appreciated putting her child down. The device was huge. Neither of them wanted to bother
the men or the children, so the headed outside again where Mia handed the
device over to Chantia and explained how it worked.
After that, Chantia spent several nights
out in the town, collecting spirits whenever she could find them. There were a
lot of spirits scattered throughout the town, but Chantia had difficulty
locating spirits with intense emotions, with the result that it took much
longer to collect the spirits than she had been anticipating.
“What exactly is it you do with these
spirits?” Chantia asked Mia one day when she brought her the latest batch of
spirits she had captured. To be quite honest, collecting the spirits and
forcing them into the glass cages that contained them bothered her a bit. She
understood the necessity of doing it if it meant they would be able to help the
spirits later on, but she still felt bad about doing it.
“I’m studying them,” Mia replied. “In order
to find a way to accurately simulate the effects of emotions, I need to
scientifically analyse what a certain emotion consists of. Studying these spirits
will allow me to identify the trends and patterns among them that will signify
similarities or differences.”
“But does it hurt them?” Chantia asked
concernedly.
Mia shook her head. “They can’t feel pain,”
she assured Chantia, “but even if they could, I’m still not hurting them. I’m
just taking energy readings off them. The only reason I need so many spirits is
so that I can get a reasonable sample size and reduce error as much as
possible. When I’m done getting my readings, I can start my experiments and see
whether my theory will work or not.”
“How long is this research of yours going
to take?” Chantia asked curiously. “I mean, I’ve been collecting spirits for
several months now…”
“Who knows?” Mia shrugged in response.
“This kind of research takes a long time, Chantia. It might be years before we
get any results. In the meantime, just keep bringing me more spirits.”
Chantia’s life fell into a fairly
comfortable rhythm. During the day, she took care of her children and continued
working on Helen’s case as much as she could. Her progress was slow as she kept
being stonewalled by people who thought she was only joking, but at least she
still made some progress.
During the night, she continued working as
a ghost hunter; banishing poltergeists and helping ghosts move on. Although she
was paid extremely well for each case she worked on, there wasn’t that much demand for a ghost hunter’s
services, so most nights she ended up scanning the town for spirits to take to
Mia.
To Chantia’s surprise, she didn’t get any
protests about her actions from the ghosts she shared a house with. The ghosts
all avoided the spirits as much as possible, but none of them ever complained,
to Chantia’s complete puzzlement. She had thought the ghosts would be extremely
upset about the captured spirits.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” she asked
Charlotte curiously during one of the few times the ghost looked at the
spirits.
Her answer was a long time in coming, and
when it came, it was utterly unsatisfactory.
“Bother me?” Another long pause separated
the soft whisper that was the rest of her reply. “No.”
She drifted away, leaving Chantia to wonder
about the truth of her words.
Angelica was a bit more elaborate, but her
answer differed a bit from Charlotte’s.
“It’s
uncomfortable,” the ghostly woman replied. “Seeing these spirits…it reminds us
that it could be us, someday in the
future. None of us likes it, but we understand why you’re doing it.”
“Charlotte
said it didn’t bother her,” Chantia pointed out, hoping to get a better
explanation for Charlotte’s enigmatic ‘no’.
Angelica hesitated before shaking her head
uncomfortably.
“Charlotte is…well, it’s not my place to
say anything, but…she is the oldest,”
the motherly ghost replied uncomfortably. With that she too drifted away,
leaving Chantia to conclude that it would be best to drop the topic.
It wouldn’t be fair of her to push the ghosts
any further.
_~…~_
I don’t know much about toddler beds myself,
but Ari needed to move into her room in order for Renard to have the nursery,
so she got one. :)
I think I went a bit overboard with the
explanation about the Damned. >.> I blame it on Mia being passionate
about the subject.
