Chapter 31

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

MADDOX

“I just…” Monica’s eyes drop and her shoulders slump. “I just…”

“It’s okay. You’re safe to speak with us,” Avery says, voice gentle.

Something slams into Monica so hard she’s thrown off the couch, and when she goes to get up, it’s like when Hikaru had been pushed down by the ghosts, and she can’t rise. Avery jumps forward to help her as Monica starts screaming, “No, no, no, please. No. Stop! Please stop!”

Avery thinks she’s speaking to her and begins to pull back, but I don’t think she is. No… when Monica looks up and I see the terror in her eyes, I realize that something is not right. I need to get Hiro, and we need to quickly exit the building and get backup here.

“Avery, call backup,” I say, but the moment she reaches for her phone, she’s left staring at her arm in shock.

“What?” I ask as my eyes fixate on Avery’s arm. I can see the indentation of fingers digging into her skin. I can see the way her skin indents, but as she pulls back, she can’t seem to get away because to us… there’s nothing there.

Instinctively, I reach out, but of fucking course I can’t grab a goddamn ghost.

Monica sees it and her eyes get wide before she jumps up and runs, bolting into the kitchen where she grabs a knife, but for whom, I’m not sure.

“Get away! Get away!” she screams. “What have you done? You did this! You brought him back!”

The lights go out, and the only light in the room is streaming in from a streetlamp as Monica sinks down behind the kitchen island, knife clutched tightly against her chest as she drops out of sight. I grab my phone to call for backup but I’m getting absolutely no reception. Does the building itself not have any or is it caused by whatever made the lights go out?

“M-Maddox. Maddox,” Avery cries as I see the indents climbing up her arm.

How the fuck am I supposed to do anything against something I can’t even see?

“Hiro!” I yell, not wanting to leave Avery, but I fucking need him out here. I can’t do a goddamn thing. “HIRO!”

Nothing… did something happen to Hiro? Why isn’t he coming out here?

I begin to head in his direction, but Avery grabs me. “Don’t leave me. Maddox, what the fuck is happening?”

“Hiro can stop it,” I say, wondering why the hell he isn’t coming out here knowing the lights had gone off. And a ghost, who I have to assume is fucking Marshall, is out here with us. “Hiro!”

I start toward the hallway as Monica crawls out from behind the kitchen island, knife still held tightly, blocking my path.

“You guys bring him back. Every time I’m around you guys, you bring him back. I feel him constantly. His hate, his anger. But when I’m around you guys it’s like he’s still here,” she says, sounding almost delirious. “He’s destroyed my life. He destroyed everything. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. You were supposed to go away. You were supposed to go after your fucking mother. And then I’d have that to hold over you and if you ever came for me, I was going to get you caught and you’d go away for good, and he’d never be able to come back. But you came here. You brought him back!”

I have my gun on me, but I really don’t want to shoot her. I just need to get to Hiro, and everything will be alright.

“Put the knife down and get on the ground,” I warn her.

A sob escapes her. “It has to end. Please make it end.”

“I can only make it end if you drop the weapon.”

Monica shakes her head wildly, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You’re doing this, aren’t you? I can feel him when I’m around the two of you. On the plane… in the subway station… every time I’m around you, I can feel him. You’re doing this to me.”

“No, I’m not. Put the knife on the ground,” I order as I pop off the strap over my gun. Maybe if she sees it, she’ll respond, but I don’t even get a chance before I feel something tighten around my throat.

I grab for it, but there’s nothing there as my air is cut off. I try jerking away, but I can’t. I can’t move… I can’t breathe. I’m flung back, my gun sliding out of the holster it’s no longer locked into and skidding across the floor.

I try to reach for it as I see Monica moving toward me. Frantically, I twist as I hear pounding somewhere deeper in the building. It’s Hiro. I know it’s Hiro. I need to help him. I need to save him… but right now…

I can’t even fucking save myself. The tip of my finger touches the very edge of the gun, my nail digging into a groove, but it’s not enough. Not when this monster is pinning me to the ground.

Not when Monica reaches it, pulling it into her hands and aiming it at me.

HIRO

“Umm… Hiro… you need to get out of this fucking bathroom right now,” Reggie says, a catch in his voice.

“What’s going on?” I ask a moment before I hear screaming. “Reggie, what’s going on?” Desperately, I start yanking at the door.

“Marshall’s using your ability to… umm… attack them…”

Panic tears through me that I’ve put everyone in danger because if Marshall is out there… they can’t do a damn thing about him. I try to push out my ability to make everyone incorporeal, but I can’t even see Marshall. How the fuck is that even supposed to work?

Keaton grabs my arm. “Hiro, yanking on the door is going to solve nothing. Check the window, can you get to the next room out the window?”

I rush to the window, but it’s one of the crank ones that only opens partway. Even if I could get out, there’s no ledge and we’re on the third floor.

“Can you break the vanity door off its hinges?”

“I can try,” I say, not sure what that’ll solve, but I push the door open as far as I can before kicking it hard enough that the screws pull loose.

“Wedge it between the doorframe and the door and try to use it to pry the door open. You could try the shower curtain rod, but it’s hollow and I think it’ll just bend,” Keaton instructs. I slide it in and shove against it, pushing against it with all of my strength when the wood snaps and I’m flung forward, slamming into the wall. It’s hard enough that I lose my concentration on the ghosts, who jostle me backwards.

Reggie looks beyond panicked. “Hiro?—”

“Reggie, stop!” Keaton says, shutting down whatever Reggie was about to say. “Hiro, you need to focus.”

“What was Reggie going to say? What’s happening?” I ask, and when Reggie looks away, dread tightens deep inside me.

“Hiro,” Keaton says firmly as he grabs my face in his hands. “Natalie and your grandpa are with Maddox. Worry about yourself right now. Focus. You have to fucking focus. You have to get out of this room. Everyone out there is relying on you . You are the only one who can do this.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you expect me to do! The fucking door is locked . My phone doesn’t work. We’re on the back side of the apartment, so even if I screamed and screamed, Shion's not going to hear us.”

The ghosts are pawing at me, grabbing me, watching me with frantic eyes. They’re convinced I’m next to die. They’re certain someone’s marked me for dead. They’ve refused to listen to a goddamn thing I’ve said or done, fixated only on those they’ve marked for dead…

But does that mean they’ll listen to me this time?

“Help me,” I beg. “Get me out of this room. I’m going to die if I’m in here. Get me out of this room.”

The energy inside the room turns panicked. I feel like I’m being hit, scratched, and shoved around, but when Keaton and Reggie begin pulling at the door, I grab it too. “Help me. The monster who killed you is going to kill me. Help me.”

One of them grabs on to the door, mimicking Reggie and Keaton, and another joins in. They tug desperately at it while I pull as hard as I can. The ghosts nearly shove me out of the way as they fight against the door that groans beneath them. I know a single one of them can knock a grown man down with ease; there’s no fucking way this door will stand up against them if they put their minds to it.

The door snaps back and I’m flung from it with such force that I end up crashing into the shower curtain and taking it down with me as I end up at the bottom of the tub. Pushing up to my feet, I realize the ghosts are all gone.

Have I changed something? Has getting myself out of this bathroom changed the course of events, just like they changed when Maddox started to engage with Vali?

“Hiro, be careful. Move slowly, Monica has a gun,” Keaton cautions.

“They’re gone,” Reggie says.

“What?” Keaton dashes ahead, and suddenly, I’m alone.

I try to move carefully but anxiety is knotting itself in my stomach, and I end up rushing down the hallway and into the living room as my heart sinks.

“W-Where are they? Reggie, where’s Maddox and Avery?”

“I… I don’t fucking know! I was with you… she had a gun… she had his gun,” he cries out.

“Reggie, stop, you’re going to alarm him,” Keaton says as the front door slams open and Shion stares at me.

“What the fuck is happening? I’ve been beating on this goddamn door,” he growls. “My phone won’t fucking work. The lights are out… where the fuck…”

“Reggie, Keaton, find them. Where are they? Where the fuck are they?”

“Oh, come on, Hiro. Let’s not panic,” a cold voice says from behind me. I turn slowly to look over at Marshall as he calmly walks into the room with his hands up. The blissful smirk on his face makes a chill run down me. “We were simply setting up. Come, now.”

“What the fuck have you done?” I ask. “Keaton… Keaton, do I run? If I run, it’ll drop his hold.”

“Monica has a gun,” Keaton says, and I don’t even know what the fuck to do with that information. All I can think about is Maddox lying there after he’d been shot.

“I’ll do whatever you want, please just let him go,” I beg.

“Perfect. Then right this way. Right this way,” Marshall says as he leads us over to a staircase I hadn’t noticed. There’s a little hatch at the top that I push open and find that we’re outside on the roof.

Monica turns toward us, gun held tight in her hand as Maddox and Avery kneel before her, both of them with their hands bound behind their backs.

“Tell her about me,” Marshall orders.

“Okay,” I say as I watch him go over and caress her face. It’s definitely not a sweet gesture; no, the twisted look on his face makes me feel like he’s possessive of her.

“Tell her.”

She shudders, jerking back as terror sweeps across her face and her hand tightens on the gun she has fixated on Maddox.

“Monica, please put the gun down,” I beg. “Please.”

Marshall’s cold eyes shift to me. “TELL HER ABOUT ME. If you don’t… I will kill him. You care about this one, don’t you?” he asks as he starts toward Maddox. I could possibly make him incorporeal if I grabbed him, but what if it doesn’t work? He clearly holds a significant amount of power. I was incapable of controlling my grandfather… and this ghost… this ghost seems to be on a level of his own. And if I rushed forward, would she shoot?

My grandfather slides in front of Maddox, and Marshall sneers at him.

“You really think you’re a big man, don’t you?”

“Hiro, she’s fucking terrified,” Natalie tells me. “I think you can talk her down. She doesn’t want to do this.”

“Monica, I can see the dead,” I say.

Her eyes get wide, and her gun quickly shifts off Maddox and onto me. Reggie and Keaton slide in front of me, but I’m not quite sure what they expect they’re going to do if she pulls the trigger, so I nudge them to the side a bit so I can still see what’s happening.

“He’s lying!” Maddox yells. “I told you it’s my fault. It’s my fault you’re feeling him.”

“He won’t go away. He won’t go away… I have to make him go away,” she says, tears streaming down her face. “Make him go away!”

“Killing either of us won’t solve anything. You said you can feel him all the time. We haven’t known you that long!” Maddox tells her.

“Marshall, what can I do to help you move on?” I ask.

“It’s really simple. I want her to kill all of you, and then I want her to shoot herself in the fucking face so we can be together forever,” Marshall says.

Real fucking simple.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because she is mine ,” Marshall growls.

“She is not yours. She is her own person.”

“No! No… I don’t want to be his,” she says, letting out a choked sob. “He fucking haunted me in life, and now he’s still haunting me in death. I can’t escape him. I can never escape him.”

“Monica, how do you think hurting any of us would help you?” I ask.

“Because he stops hurting me when I do,” she says. “You don’t fucking understand… It feels like there’s this darkness crushing my body, weighing me down. It’s so hard to move. I feel like I can’t breathe… but… it gets better when I… when I help others.”

“When you manipulate people into killing others? That’s when it’s better?” I ask.

Marshall laughs. “You don’t understand anything, Hiro.”

Monica shakes her head wildly. “No! I’m helping people.”

“Who are you helping right now? We are here to help you,” I say. “Please, put down the gun and I can make him go away.”

“If you can make him go away, make him go away right now! If you make him go away, I’ll drop the gun. I promise, I’ll drop the gun. But you don’t understand what it’s like, feeling as though something is… suffocating you every minute of the day. I can… feel him. Please… make it stop.”

Marshall laughs harder as he stands in the middle of us and turns in a circle like he wants to pull it all in. He mocks the terror on Avery’s face and the anger on Maddox’s. He laughs at the ghosts who flock around us, all listless other than my own who are wanting to do something but are incapable of stopping him. “You can’t fucking do anything or you’d have done it by now!”

And I realize he’s right. He’s too fucking strong. I could possibly make it so he couldn’t touch us, but how long would that last? He’d just find her again no matter where she was. She’d never be able to escape him. Hell, he could haunt me for the rest of my life as well.

I could run from this place, but clearly his attachment to her is so strong that he can manipulate her emotions, even when I’m nowhere near here. Why is his attachment so strong? Because he’s manipulated her into thinking that she’s nothing without him?

“Monica, I can only help you if you help me.”

“You think… You think I did this to myself?” she asks.

“I think he’s abused you to the point where you think you deserve this… where you think that this is normal.”

Monica shakes her head. “No! I fucking killed him! I killed him so he’d stop. I killed him. He’s a monster and I finally killed my monster, but he just won’t die.”

“We need that strength right now to stop him. You can’t give in to him now. So why are you listening to him?”

“Because it doesn’t matter if he’s dead or alive,” she answers.

“Hiro, it’s so cute how hard you’re trying,” Marshall says.

I was able to force Peter to move on, but wasn’t that because his connection to Ambrose weakened? Can I do that here as well?

“You are giving him strength, Monica. He feasts off your emotions and the torture he causes you.”

Marshall scoffs. “You are manipulating her, not me.”

“You told me…” Maddox starts. “You told me that my mother shouldn’t be who I think of every night… You told me there’s a way out of the toxicity she’s driven into me. That she’s manipulated me into protecting her instead of telling others who could help me. You claimed that I was still protecting her. You know what he’s doing to you… you know how to help others going through the same thing. You try to give them strength… so let us give you strength to end this. Stop relying only on yourself and the toxic words he’s driven into you.”

Monica’s hand is shaking as she steps back. “Fuck… I can’t keep doing this.”

“No, you can’t. So fight against him. You know what he wants you to do. You know him so well that he doesn’t even need the ability to speak to you for you to do it. Stop focusing on him and focus on yourself. Live for yourself.”

“It’s been so hard. Everything… my mind has been in such a dark place because he haunts me constantly. I can always feel him there. And this… what I was doing to save others was finally giving me some relief. He was allowing me to breathe again. He was allowing me to sleep.” When she sets the gun down, she jerks away from it like it’s a snake that might bite back.

Shion grabs it as Marshall stares at Monica in displeasure.

“She’s always disappointed me. Ah well,” he says as he turns toward Maddox.

My ghosts slide between him and Maddox as he gives them a sour look. I rush up and grab his wrist, and he glances down at it before trying to grab me, probably planning on choking me or otherwise hurting me. Keaton yanks his hand away, driving it behind his back, but Marshall just smirks.

“What are you going to do? Arrest me? I’m fucking dead,” he says with a grin. “Oh no… whatever will I do?”

“I’m going to force you to move on,” I declare, having no damn idea how I’m going to do that. I grip his wrist tightly, unsure if he can get away even if I don’t let go, but really not wanting him to dash off. Before I can do anything, the ghosts that had crowded around the bathroom rush forward, grabbing desperately on to him.

“You guys again… don’t you…” Marshall pauses as he jerks back. “No… what are you doing?”

I hesitate because… I also don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. It’s like this strange darkness is wrapping around him as they drag him to the ground, forcing me to let go of him. There are so many ghosts that I can’t even see what’s happening as they block my view of Marshall, but the air feels thick, and the looks on the faces of the living tell me I’m not the only one feeling this odd shift in the air.

“Please! Stop!” he screams, and then his cries just… end.

Silence hits so quickly that it’s almost eerie as the ghosts disappear just like that and I’m left staring at the spot where he’d lain. Spite caws, snapping me out of my fixation as I realize that what looks like a dark shadow has colored the ground. Spite cocks his head before stepping toward it, but the moment he gets close, he jerks back, like something terrifies him. He cries out, flapping his wings quickly as he rushes to me.

“Hiro, are you okay?” Maddox asks as Shion swiftly unties them.

“Y-Yeah… he’s gone…” I say, but I find myself unsure of what that means.

Avery rushes over to contend with Monica as I hurry toward Maddox.

“Are you okay?” I ask him.

“Fine now that I know you’re safe,” he says as he wraps me in his arms.

“Can… you see that shadow on the ground?”

He glances at it. “Yeah… what is that?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “It’s… where his ghost was… before he disappeared.”

“Like… moved on?”

“No… I don’t know.”

Maddox pulls me close as sirens sound outside the building. I grip him tightly as I take a deep breath, just… happy to have him back in my arms.