Chapter 78
An Old Man's Sob Story
"Our minds are all jumbled together in here, stupid bitch," the ghost continued to snarl.
I kept the power in my hand and twirled around. "You're a really unpleasant old geezer, you know that?" My fist came back around, aimed again for his head.
This time he held his hand up and tendrils of the ectoplasm came down and wrapped around me. The stuff kept coming. I batted at it but it was no use and before I knew it I was wrapped up similarly as Stephen. The ghost flipped his hand down and the slime brought me to my knees.
"Stop!" Stephen shouted. "You can punish me all you want, forever, I don't care. Just let her go."
His words were sweet... but dumb.
As I predicted, the ghost latched onto his emotions immediately. "Ahh," he said. "You care a lot for this girl, don't you? I think torturing her will be much more of a fitting punishment..."
Stephen continued to protest but the ghost made his way closer to me, his clawed hand reaching for my head.
But I was ready for him. As soon as he touched my head, I activated Mind Link, rushing out at him with my mind before he could do anything tortuous with his. He wasn't prepared for that at all and my energy overpowered him and the great jumbling of minds went a layer deeper.
Suddenly, I felt like I could feel and see both the ghost's thoughts and Stephen's. The latter was overwhelmed with worry for me, still calling out for the ghost to stop. But the ghost's mind provided something stranger: memories. They were jumbled, and full of rage, some directed at Stephen but not all of it. They were formless, rushing and tumbling all over themselves.
I thought one question, sending it beaming into the ghost's head: "Why do you hate Stephen?"
Stephen's mind calmed down, hearing my question too and, together, both of us were treated to the play by play of what brought the ghost to this sad way of being.
#
It started like this: an older gentleman, slaving away at a typewriter connected to a computer, still stubbornly refusing to give up the old ways completely. He had dedicated his entire life to the written word but, so far, all it had gotten him was a few published books to middling success. But he was on the cusp of greatness. A deal for his magnum opus was just about to go through. Hope radiated from his being for the first time in decades.
But then... the collapse. The world died from... something. The man couldn't recall those days, just a jumble of bad that resulted in the creation of the Interverse and the great exodus away from the Earth. In the midst of all that, no one cared about books. The man held onto the hope that things would normalize that eventually humanity would need words again.
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In the meantime, he created the writing nook. Hoping to make a refuge for fellow writers in the turbulent transition into the world ruled by numbers. He collected members, a small trickle of them, most as old as he was. Things were...decent, for a time. They banded together, supported each other. Like minded individuals riding out this wave together.
But as time passed it became clear it was not a wave any of them could ride to the end. A sickness, the last of it's kind, one final send off from the old Earth. Older people's minds and bodies could not fully make the transition to the Interverse and, over time, they began to die. The Admins worked tirelessly to find a solution but to no avail.
The older generation was wiped out, the man given a front row seat as everyone he cared about in the writing nook slowly dropped like flies until, one day, it was just him.
He wrote out the rest of his days, typing away on his digitally constructed typewriter, filling the world made with codes and keys with the last of his words. He died, mid sentence. And the final word, sentence, paragraph, page, and even the last story itself were all lost and forgotten, the man and his work just a blemish of the old days.
#
Stephen and I watched all these things unfold, feeling the sting of it all as the ghost relived each painful memory. It was heart breaking, and Stephen felt it extra hard, what with being a writer and all. Yet, we both were left with one big question, which we both voiced at the same time: "What does that have to do with us?"
The ghost's mind didn't like that, not one bit. It physically reacted, becoming a churning sea of red hot fury. I was brought back out of one layer, and I was back to staring at Stephen on the wall and the ghosts face, contorted in rage. The green ectoplasm that had me tied up was now red, hot to the touch, as the green glow in the entire room was replaced with the red.
I had no idea what was going on but none of it looked good.
"Stephen!" I yelled over the churning of the red sea. "I'm out of MP, use Mind Link again!"
"I'm trying but I can't reach him anymore!" He yelled back.
"Don't do that, get us out of here!"
I expected him to ask how and really I was asking myself the same question. I just figured we got into this mess with a Mind Link, it had to be the way out, too.
Stephen nodded and closed his eyes, working his mental magic into hopefully some form of escape that didn't leave us trapped here for all eternity.
The ghost's eyes were rolled back in his head, he hovered up near the ceiling, his arms spread wide as the red all around us churned and burned, starting to break down the room. If this place represented Stephen's consciousness I could only assume that it breaking did not mean good things for his continued survival and sanity.
"You want to know what it has to do with you, Stephen?" The ghost's voice boomed from all around.
I saw Stephen's eyes flicker open for a second at the sound of his name echoing all around. But he quicky shut them again, trying to stay focused on the task at hand.
"Because you ruined the only surviving remnant of my existence in this cruel digital hellscape!"
The room rumbled at the force of that last sentence, his anger swelling.
"I watched you and, at first, I thought you were someone that could be a good thing. I saw you toiling away at your stories. Actively creating with the written word. It was a joy to behold."
His voice had changed to a gentler tone, but the room didn't stop decaying.
"But then you changed. You brought so many people here, the amount growing by the day. Changing everything until this wasn't even a place for words but more of the scum that infested this world. People that only care about pleasure and numbers and how they fucking look and sound. You work tirelessly to erase everything that I stood for!"
The room split in half, in the cracks a huge empty space of nothing but the red, an endless void of rage just waiting to devour us.
Stephen in particular. Kind of a nice change of pace that I wasn't the villain's main focus for once, not gonna lie. But it didn't do me much good. It looked like we were both going to lose our sanity to this grievously wronged writer guy.
"Now, die you traitorous whelp!" The ghost roared, the writing nook exploding at the seams, red raining down from every direction.