Ghosting

6

"Really?"

"Jesus Christ!" Thomas swore, stumbling away from Logan, who'd appeared right behind him.

"No, Logan Fernsby," Logan raised an eyebrow, then turned his attention back to the writing. "If you did not kill me, then who did?"

Deceit shrugged, writing some more; I don't know his name.

"Hm," Logan thought for a second, "Was it the one who lived on the second floor, the room right next to mine, brown hair and eyes, textbook attractive male?"

Deceit nodded, and Logan frowned. "Godsdammit! I knew James hated me but really?! Pushing me down the stairs?! All over that stupid crossword game!" He was gesturing wildly, too deep into his hatred of this James person to notice when he hit Thomas in the face with one of his sleeves. "I was almost out of here! I had my entire life ahead of me but no, apparently my crime of having a superior intelligence was far too much to allow me to live, Mother Maiden and Crone!!"

"Okay-" Thomas but in, interrupting what was surely about to be a very long rant, "So, this James person killed you, not Deceit?"

"Obviously," Logan huffed. 

Wow. Just like that. "So we can let Deceit out of the basement?"

"Not quite," Logan spun on his heel to face Deceit, "Why did you attempt to kill Thomas?"

Deceit put his hand towards them in a "stop" motion, and Logan turned back to Thomas. "Well? Do that hand thing."

"Why can't you? It was your question."

In answer, Logan flapped his stupidly long sleeves, almost taking out Deceit. "It only works through skin-to-skin contact and these were made so that I could not roll them up and use my hands." He sighed and shook his head, muttering, "You pick ONE lock and suddenly you are cursed for eternity with long sleeves."

Impatient with how slowly the clearing of his name was going, Deceit snatched Thomas by the wrist; You scared me.

"I scared you??" He laughed nervously, thinking of how Deceit had looked; eyes wide open, mouth open so wide it looked like his jaw had unhinged, and screaming like freaking Satan-

But maybe it was an act or something. Maybe Deceit had just instantly decided that the best course of action was to scare Thomas away. It wasn't like Deceit could run away, being locked in the basement, and he couldn't have hidden either-

Deceit nodded. Right.

Oh... so the link worked both ways... Thomas immediately regretted comparing Deceit to Satan.

"We'll have to give it some thought," Logan interrupted. Deceit huffed, shoulders slumping. "Don't worry, it should be decided by morning. I just need to speak to the others."

Thomas followed Logan up out of the basement, where Patton was waiting and looked over his shoulder at the hopeful demon... Was Deceit really a demon? Did he have a real name? 

After conversing quietly with Patton for a few moments, Logan turned back to Thomas. "We should see if there's a file on him in the attic. They kept them in the attic."

Oh great. So his haunted house had an attic? "What attic?"

"They closed it off after I jumped off of the roof," Patton informed him. "It's behind the plaster where the stairs to the fourth floor end at the wall. I can show you where."

Even better. A hidden attic in a haunted house... with files on dead people... Thomas was beginning to think he should never have moved to Florida.

"But how will we know which one is him?" Thomas pointed out. "We don't even know the guy's real name."

"Every file includes a picture," Logan said briskly, already starting to the fourth floor, "I'm sure we'll be able to figure it out."

Sure.

-

Patton felt along the wall at the top of the stairs, tongue poking out of his lip slightly. After a few minutes, he seemed to find what he was looking for and stepped back, gesturing to a nondescript part of the wall. "There. You've got to press against there to open it."

Oh god... Thomas stepped hesitantly up to the wall, pressing lightly against where Patton had indicated. To his despair, the wall swung open with a dry shriek, revealing a pitch-black staircase.

Secret door... to an abandoned attic... in an old insane asylum... okay then.

Thomas turned on his flashlight and swept it over the stairs, which were ancient wood and covered in cobwebs. Taking a deep breath, he started up them, wincing at how they creaked ominously under his weight.

And he'd thought the basement was bad.

The stairs led up to what looked like an ancient greenhouse, glass windows opaque with dust and crumbling pots littering the floor. Patton kept his gaze down, taking Thomas' hand and leading him through the mess to a door at the other end. This one opened with little resistance, and Thomas, followed by the two ghosts, went inside.

Ancient metal cabinets lined the walls, each inscribed with rusted metal numbers that spelt out dates. Logan hummed. "Let's see, I died in thirty-nine, and Deceit was here before me... hospital opened in 1900, so that's about thirty-nine years to work with. I'd recommend starting in the thirty-five area and starting up, seeing as that was when electroshock was introduced here and it was ended two years after I died... Hm." He yanked open one of the cabinets and thumbed through a few files, biting his bottom lip. "Let's get working."

It was slow work. Logan was adamant they put every file back where it belonged, and they had only the light from Thomas' flashlight to go by.

"Logan," Patton interrupted the silence that had settled over them from his spot sitting on the floor, waving a file, "Is this him?"

Wordlessly, Logan took it and scanned the first page, "Damien Deshu, admitted at age thirteen... died from malfunction of electrical equipment at age fifteen... I believe it is." His face was grave as he continued to read, "Oh my..."