What Lies Beneath

Chapter Fifty-Six: The Gatekeeper's Destiny

"You stupid little-" Sophie didn't let him finish his sentence as she flung him to the other side of the room.

"You think that the house chose you to come here so you could murder us? Are you really that ignorant?" Charlie growled through the blood in his mouth.

"I don't care why the house chose me!" He jumped to his feet and rushed her. Sophie easily avoided his attack by stepping to the side and slamming her closed fist into the back of his head. The assault sent him face first into the floor.

"You really should. After all, you were doing its bidding weren't you? Was that not why you came into my room that day in search of something?" Sophie threw the question out like a dog bone and waited for him to fetch.

"So what?" Charlie tried to get up off the floor again, but Sophie held him there with an invisible force.

"Weren't you curious? I mean, I would be. A house starts talking to me and tells me to go find something, but doesn't tell me why? No red flags for you?"

"I am a red flag!"

"No honey, you're a dog with rabies. You never stood a chance in this place. I mean come on, the house actually had to give you a weapon to increase your odds and you still ended up here." Sophie started laughing again.

"How did you know about that?"

"It doesn't matter. The point is you were sent here to find something. Did you find it?" All the laughter was gone from her voice. It was time to get serious.

"No!"

"And why not? Were you simply not looking hard enough, or did you get distracted by your ridiculous bloodlust?" Sophie knelt down beside him and played with a strand of his dirty blonde hair.

"I am going to kill you." His words were calm. A clear threat, but it didn't matter. Charlie was going to die soon and there was nothing that anyone could do to stop it.

"Please, like I'm scared of you." She lifted his head and slammed it into the floor. "You were so consumed with your hunger that you didn't even bother to ask the simplest of questions. Why you?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You weren't looking for something, you were looking for someone. I mean think about it. You are a murderer. A clear psychopath.So why would the house bring you here if not to kill someone? A specific someone, and yet you messed up the thing that you were supposed to be good at."

"What are you talking about?"

"Did you know that this house doesn't have a soul? That's why it's so lonely, why it craves the souls of those who step through its doorway. When a human is deemed soulless, they are considered, ruthless, without emotion, but this house was different. It felt lonely and angry. It just wanted a friend, to feel something beyond the life it had known. So, it reached out only to be rejected time and time again. Your purpose was to find its soul, but you failed." Tears welled up in her eyes, but she blinked them away. She needed to be strong. She was supposed to tell him before he died.

"You can't find a soul. You are either born with one or not." Charlie spat the words at her. He was right, that was how it normally worked for human beings, but she was talking about a house.

"Such a narrowminded notion. Have you not noticed the place that we have been in for weeks? This isn't a normal building. Everything that makes this place is alive. It has been around longer than you or I, and it will still exist long after we are gone." Sophie paced around the room looking at all of the destruction from the earlier fight. This house was alive, and this was its body, a body that had been attacked and torn apart by this menace.

While Sophie was distracted by the carnage that surrounded her, Charlie pushed himself off the floor. He was tired of listening to her, but most of all he was tired of getting beat down by a pitiful child.

Sophie knelt by the pile of broken shelves, unaware of Charlie's recent actions. To a normal person they would look like an ordinary pile of wood on the floor, but she could see the blood oozing from every crack. The house had suffered from this battle more than those who took part in it. She gently laid her hand on one of the pieces as tears ran down her cheeks. She would make this right. She would make sure that this damage would not go unpunished.

The world around him was spinning, he wasn't going to survive for very much longer, but that didn't mean he would have to go before ridding this world of her. With that thought, Charlie rushed Sophie again. He was only a few feet away when the house began to rumble. The sudden shaking caused him to stumble over his feet and come to a complete halt.

Without warning, pipes broke through all four walls and penetrated his sad excuse of a body. Still moving, the pipes lifted him up off of his feet so that he was dangling above the floor. Sophie didn't bother turning to look at him, instead she stayed focused on the broken shelving.

"I warned you. From the moment you were born you were destined to die within these walls. The house made you, gave you gifts and talents, but it was you who failed to use them correctly." Sophie stood up from the floor, her hands moving in every direction. As she did this the shelves lifted off the floor and repaired themselves. Charlie watched, blood spewing from his mouth and every wound that now consumed his body.

Sophie turned to face him again as the last shelf replaced itself. The last thing that Charlie saw before the house took him away was her glowing golden eyes.

"It's done." Delphine's .

"What's done?" It was Joe who asked the question, but Greyson wanted to know too. They had been sitting silently in the hallway per her orders up until that point.

"Charlie is dead. Sophie killed him."

"Sophie killed him? How is that possible? She was such a tiny little thing when I met her." Joe said the last part to himself. What had this house turned her into?

"What does that mean for us?" Greyson asked the question this time. He was new to the whole being a ghost thing, but that didn't mean he wanted to stay in the dark forever.

"I don't know yet." Her words were filled with an ominous undertone. It was the truth. She didn't know what it meant for them or the house. Everything depended on Sophie's choices. What came next was all up to her.

AND WITH THAT THE BATTLE IS OVER, NOW WE MOVE ON TO THE WAR. DID YOU THINK THAT THE STORY WOULD BE OVER NOW? NOT QUITE, THERE IS STILL A LOT MORE COMING YOUR WAY WITH CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN: GUARDIAN. 

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