Chapter 7

“And we’re finally home,” Zach’s father announced as they pulled into the small parking garage at the base of their building. Zach’s eyes flew open as his hands dove to his seatbelt. With a single click, it was off and he was throwing the door open.

“It’s about time,” he stretched out his arms and legs as his parents got out of the car too. He waited until they were both looking at the trunk to look over at the top of the car. He gave Blue a thumbs up which she returned after a second or two.

“Well it’s time for the fun part,” Zach’s father announced as he popped the trunk and started grabbing a pair of suitcases from the car. “Zach, do you think you could grab that last one?”

He looked into the trunk and at the suitcase containing everything he’d brought with him on the trip. When they’d left, he hadn’t even been able to pick it up without help. And technically, he still had help, just not the kind his parent’s would notice. He looked over at the top of the car before looking over to his parents.

“Sure thing dad, just give me a sec to warm up first,” his father nodded as he took both of the suitcases and started walking away. He made sure his mom was following after him when he quickly motioned towards Blue. The ghost glanced down at the trunk for a second before realizing what he was asking. He closed his eyes Blue flew into him. The Marble and Blue Flame Heart appeared in the void once more.

All that was left now were the chains. After all of their practice, Zach and Blue had come to the conclusion that in order to form the chains, they had to imagine a strong impact or switch. And to both halves of Gestalt, the obvious answer was good enough.

Zach’s fingers mimed a gun as Blue did the same. They both pulled the trigger and heard a bang followed by the chains wrapping around the heart and tightening into a vice grip.

Gestalt opened their eyes and quickly willed for their blue eyes and line on their chest to fade. It made the transformed state harder to maintain, but it was something they needed to do if they wanted to keep this a secret. Once they were sure everything was well hidden, they reached for the black suitcase with the skull and crossbones on it.

“Easy,” They whispered before reaching up and closing the trunk. They started walking out of the parking garage, following after [his/Zach’s] parents.

They flinched as they caught up to them by the door. They needed to remember to synch their thoughts when they were like this.

“You alright Zach,” [his/Zach’s] father looked over his back as [his/Zach’s] mother opened the door for both of them, “you look a little tired there?”

Gestalt narrowed their eyes and concentrated. They had practiced this before, but had never actually needed this trick before.

“I’m okay,” usually when Gestalt spoke, two voices rang out as once. But this time one voice rang out, clear and loud, while the other stayed a soft whisper. Same words, same pacing, but completely different volumes. It had taken a lot of practice to get it right, but it sounded too useful to not at least try it. After a lot of tires, and a lot of headaches, Gestalt had gotten it down.

Still couldn’t do it without feeling like someone had stuck a needle in the back of their head though. They’d have to work on that at some point.

“Well if you’re sure,” [his/Zach’s] mother trailed off as they gave Gestalt a raised eyebrow. Almost as though she could tell something was off, even if she had no what it was. They fought back a gulp as [his/Zach’s] mother silently let them in through the door and into the apartment building.

Half of Gestalt was hit with a wave of memories at the sight of the pristine white walls and blue and bronze colored carpets. Their arm trembled as they eyes went wide. If they dropped the connection now and in front of [his/Zach’s] parents, it would look like Zach had just collapsed after carrying a suitcase.

Either that or Blue would fly out of him and knock something over and then they’d have even bigger problems.

Either way, the problem and solution were both clear as day. They needed to get to a private place to split apart and they needed to get there fast.

“Come on, let’s go,” Gestalt said, Blue’s voice going up a by just a bit.

“Excited to see home again?” [His/Zach’s] father smirked as he followed after what he thought was just his son.

“Something like that,” Gestalt answered back as they turned the corner and saw the door to [his/Zach’s] apartment. Gestalt suppressed another wince and raced towards the door, setting the suitcase down and grabbing a pair of keys from their pocket. A quick turn of the wrist later, and the door was open and a desperate human/ghost hybrid hurried through it. They raced past the living room and headed into the apartment’s only hallway before throwing open the door, tossing the suitcase onto the bed, and then taking a second to look around.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Big mistake.

[Zach looked around the familiar room, happy to be home again/Blue held in a laugh as she took in Zach’s room which fit the boy all too well.]

“Ugh,” Zach groaned as Blue was blasted out of him. The ghost hit the horror movie poster on the wall and kept going until she was back in the living room. He knelt down in front of his bed and laid his arms down on top of it. Turning into Gestalt in a situation like this had been a terrible idea.

“Zach are you alright?” He heard his mother ask from behind his back.

“It’s like every bit of tiredness from the entire trip just hit me all at once,” he admitted. It was even the truth. Sure he made it sound like the trip itself was the source of his tiredness instead of many times he’d leant a ghost his body, but implications weren’t lying.

“Well you go and rest up for a bit. Your father and I are heading into town to buy some breakfast. You want anything special or should we just get you a Cuban like always?”

“Medianoche, and could you buy me an apple juice? I think we drank the last of it before we left,” Zach asked and waited a few seconds in silence.

“Oh right you can’t see me,” he heard his mother whisper as he smirked into the bed. She must have been nodding along to his requests. “Okay, we can get all that. Might need to head out to buy some groceries after though.”

“I think I’ll just stay home,” he admitted before hearing the door close behind him. A few seconds later, he heard the front door opening and closing, leaving him alone. Or at least mostly alone.

“So what’s a Media… what did you call it again?” Blue asked as she floated back in through the wall.

“Medianoche. You know what a Cuban sandwich is?” Zach asked as he got back to his feet and pushed the suitcase up to wall. He sat down on the freed up space on his bed and looked over at Blue.

“Well, kind of. It has a lot of meat right?” She answered even as her eyes darted around the room and she tried to not laugh.

“It’s basically like that, but on a slightly smaller but sweeter kind of bread,” he finished explaining before staring at Blue who was tying way too hard not to laugh. “Its fine, you can laugh.”

“What is this room?” She exploded into laughter and started spinning around as though to see all of it at once.

The walls were painted a dark gray, but were barely visible under the mountain of horror and monster movie posters covering them. He had two separate bookshelves on separate walls. The first had a small section for school related books and was otherwise filled with books on monsters, ghosts and other supernatural entities. The other had its shelves covered with toys and figures of movie monsters, some of them old enough for even Blue to recognize. He had a desk which would have normally been for schoolwork but was instead covered with more books about ghosts. And to top it all off was Zach’s bed. Instead of a normal pattern or a solid color, his bed was black and covered in skeletons.

“I have a style and regret nothing,” he simply put it, refusing to elaborate further. All this did was make Blue laugh even harder.

“I mean… I guess it all goes together?” She said before laughing again. After a second or two, she stopped and floated over to the desk. “Oh man, where did you even find all this stuff?”

“I know a few places around town,” he explained as he dragged himself out of bed and towards the desk. He had left his book on rural hauntings in the American mid-west open. They’d been in a hurry to leave and he hadn’t had time to close it before they left. “Of course, who knows how much of this stuff is true or not. It’s not like I got to try out any ghost hunting techniques on Samuel Pickerpepper.”

“Ghost hunting techniques? Like what?” Blue asked as Zach picked the book up and snapped it shut before putting it back on the shelf. Instead of answering right away, he grabbed another book from near the top. He placed it on the recently freed up space on the desk and let Blue read the title. “Common Ghost Hunting Techniques of North America? This is a real book?”

“Not only is it real, it’s the most expensive book in my collection. And I can’t even check to see if any of it works.”

“Wait, why can’t you try it out?” Blue asked as Zach gave her a concerned glance.

“Blue, I’m not going to throw salt at you or stab you with a piece of iron to see if they work,” he explained as Blue huffed at him.

“I meant on other ghosts, dummy,” she crossed her arms as her words processed in Zach’s head.

“Oh,” that makes more sense,” he paused and look at the book in front of him. “But how are we going to find more ghosts? It took me almost four years to find just one haunting, how am I going to find more?”

“Well you have me around, maybe I can help you find ghosts?” She pointed out. “It’ll give us something else to do while…” She trailed off before freezing in place. Zach heard her whisper under her breath. “I forgot to tell him.”

“What did you forget to…” he was interrupted when the ghost dashed at him and ‘grabbed’ him by the shoulders.

“I remembered something!” Zach’s eyes went wide. “When we were on the bridge, I looked at the city and I remembered seeing it before. I was going the other way but it was the same view from the same bridge.”

Blue opened her mouth like she was about to say something else but hesitated at the last moment. Zach was so busy thinking about the implications that he’d almost didn’t notice it.

‘Almost’ being the keyword. He made a mental note to talk about it later. There were bigger things to do with this info first.

“So seeing stuff from when you were alive will help you get your memories back?” Zach asked as Blue franticly nodded her head. “So if we just walk around town long enough…”

“We might unlock one of my memories,” she finished for him. “That was what I was thinking too.”

“We should get going,” he said as he turned towards the door, and was then stopped by his stomach growling with enough force that the dead could feel it. Mostly because Blue was floating right next to him, but the point still stood.

“Maybe we can start after your family comes back with breakfast?” Blue pointed out as Zach rolled his eyes and tried to ignore Blue’s snicker.

“You know what, maybe you have a point,” he walked over to the other shelf, the one filled with toys and statues. “You want to talk about horror movies until my parents come back?”

“You know what, sure why not?”

Zach spent the next few minutes going through all the major monster and horror movie figures he owned, as well as a few other collectables. By the time his parents were back with breakfast, Blue had learned that maybe she didn’t like horror movies all that much