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angelanimedesaray · 4 years ago

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Wings in the Dark Chapter 6: Stories From the Dark

AN: I feel like this chapter should have been posted around Halloween, but there was NO WAY I was waiting that long XD Also its a bit short, I think, to me, it goes a little quick, partially because I didn’t want to have to write Levi wandering around this little town this whole time having all this meaningless chit-chat meant to fish information, I decided summarizing was best with detail where it counted XD

Characters: Levi, Fem!Vampire!Reader (Mentioned), Erwin, Various OCs and BG Characters

Pairing: (Eventual) Levi x Fem!Vampire!Reader

Warnings: Descriptions of Violence, Descriptions of Murder Aftermath, Description of Fatal Injuries, Description of Buried Alive, Descriptions of Injuries, Language

Word Count: 5188

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*Levi's POV*

While taking such a sudden few days off might have caused a couple bumps in the way things were developing around HQ, but he knew Erwin would be able to handle it and smooth things over, so he stayed focused on the task at hand.

Stripped of any signia, symbol, or uniform resembling clothes that could suggest that he was part of the military, Levi was dressed in plainclothes, having taken a carriage out to L/N’s supposed hometown early in the morning. He still arrived with plenty of time in the day to investigate the town and see what he could find on-site, taking in the small, easily overlooked town that was more of a loose collection of homes bordered by farms, with a central farmer’s market to keep some local trade and business going. Any serious buying and selling probably consisted in a day’s trip to one of the larger towns within Wall Rose, but it seemed they had basic foodstuffs here. He managed to find a blacksmith tucked away in a corner between a small grouping of houses, as well as an old, empty building that had a weathered carpentry sign in front of it. So there had been more trade smiths around here, before the town gradually lost those businesses.

Talking casually with the blacksmith informed Levi that a ways past the farms, there was a home that was the reason for most of their outside visitors--people who could afford to would put their elderly loved ones in the care center, and there was a separate building for the mentally ill to live comfortably and get the care they needed as well. Visitors to the town usually consisted of relatives visiting their loved ones in the homes, or they were descendants that had moved away but came back for the occasional hometown or family visit.

Which meant Levi, having no ties himself and not knowing about the homes, stuck out a bit despite his best efforts. The communities of small towns were tightly knit and they knew their own, so it couldn’t be helped, and he would have to deal with the fact everyone was going to be curious why he was here.

While talking with the blacksmith, he also heard that the carpentry shop had been the family trade for the Frazier family--the family who lost the daughter sharing L/N’s first name. With the murder of their only child, there was no one to take on the family business, and the building had fallen into disrepair after the parents had gone to the home outside town.

That had caught Levi’s interest. They’d been in the home for years judging from the sign alone, and the impression he’d received was that only the well off could supply their own stay at the home, or their family members paid for it. If there were no children to pay for them, and they’d only been a small carpentry business in a no-name town, how could they afford to be in the home? He doubted it was by the grace of the community, though it was a possibility considering the tragedy that had happened here.

Moving on from the blacksmith so he didn’t ask too many questions in one place, Levi made a mental note to make his way up to the homes to investigate the still-living parents of the original Y/N. Making his way to the farmer’s market, Levi perused for any small town hidden treasures and struck up conversations, looking for a town gossip to get talking about the town’s history so that he could eventually hear the more personal tale of the double homicide than the technical report Erwin had scrounged up for him.

While trying to get the man selling the baked goods to be a little more forthcoming, Levi overheard a small group of children, three or four gathered around each other as one of the older children attempted to scare the smallest of the group with a surprisingly gristly tale.

“...clawed at the wood of the coffin, screaming for someone to hear her, too afraid to realize her screams took up what little air she had. Her fingernails broke and blood coated the coffin, her elbow busted open as she pounded and shrieked for help, but no one could hear her so far beneath the dirt. Some say she did manage to break the wood, but halfway through the dirt falling on her she couldn’t breathe, and body’s still frozen in her silent scream, so close to freedom, no one above ground aware of the terror she felt before she truly died. Now, so she doesn’t feel so alone, Screaming Sally’s ghost crawls out of her grave and drags children like you from their beds and drags them into her coffin below ground.”

The poor youngest was visibly trembling, tears of fright in their eyes before one of the other kids shouted and grabbed them, making the youngest shriek and cry as they laughed and continued to pick on them.

“Tch.” Levi turned to them, a glare in his eyes that he pinned on the older kids who should have known better. “Oi! Cut it out.”

Spooked by the scary voice, and even more so by the scary man they saw glaring at them, the older kids bolted, with the youngest running away once they were free of the older kids, most likely to run home and find comfort from a parent.

Levi turned his attention back to the stall in front of him, a woman beside him buying a basket of rolls as he scowled over the childishly cruel display he’d just seen.

“That’s one messed up horror story for kids to be telling each other,” he muttered, paying for a loaf of bread and waiting for the man to finish wrapping it for him. The woman beside him turned with a small shrug.

“All the children around here know about that stupid story about Screaming Sally. It’s been around for decades, and at this point, it’s almost a rite of passage to hear it eventually.”

Levi looked at her, sensing he might have someone who would be willing to share if he asked the right questions. “How did it start?”

The woman sighed, shaking her head. “Some poor caretaker for the graveyard by the woods about forty years back snapped after that double homicide and started trying to tell people one of the girls crawled out of her grave. Everyone knows it’s impossible, not to mention the grave was undisturbed when folks checked in the morning after seeing how sincere he was. They had to put him in the home because he kept insisting he saw it, and eventually the story turned into the Screaming Sally legend the kids are always sharing to scare each other.”

Levi’s head tilted slightly to the side, eyes widening momentarily in surprise as the unsuspected connection jumped out at him.

For the briefest moment, he was looking back up at Kenny years ago as Kenny shared some outlandish story to try and scare him. When Levi had called out it’s legitimacy and accused him of spewing a nonsense legend that wasn’t even possible, he’d suddenly appeared a little serious, a small frown appearing beneath the brim of that signature hat of his as he gave Levi the reply that now rang in his ears.

“There’s always a little truth to every legend.”

Pretending his surprise was over something else the woman had said, Levi took the chance to try and pry the local story from her.

“Double homicide? Out here?” Levi asked, suggesting that kind of thing never happened in places like this.

In his opinion, they were more likely to happen out here, since it was so damn isolated.

As Levi took his wrapped loaf, the two started to walk together, just a little further down the path as she indulged his curiosity.

“I know--it’s the darkest stain on this town’s history. Still unsolved, too--one of those locked room murders I think they call them. Y/N Frazier and Victoria Schultz. The Fraziers’ daughter had been out late the night before and came to her parent’s home to rest instead of going back to her own home. She was sick the entire next day, and her best friend Victoria came to visit her. Sometime between the moment Victoria and Y/N were in the room together to the time the Fraziers checked in on them a few hours later, some psychopath managed to find their way into the room, tore Victoria apart beyond recognition, and disappeared with the Frazier girl. Without the Fraziers hearing anything amiss! The police thought it might have been the Frazier girl, because it was the only possible explanation considering the bedroom door was locked and any attacker would have had to come in through the window, and neither girl made a sound, so perhaps Victoria knew her attacker--but Y/N’s body showed up on the edge of the woods a few days later, poor girl. They never found out who did it, or what exactly happened. It still haunts the people in the town who are old enough to remember it.”

As the woman spun the more personal version of the tale, Levi’s mind filled in the gristly details that had been in the report he’d read. How there had been hardly any blood left in the mutilated girl left behind lying on the bed, but far less in the room than there should have been, how L/N’s namesake had been found lying just within the forest’s edge, neck bruised and broken, as well as several bones, covered in bruises and lacerations. It was a closed-casket funeral for both. They had no leads, no one with a motive, no mysterious footprint or shadowy figure seen leaving the crime scene. They’d just been murdered out of nowhere, and nothing like it had happened anywhere near the town ever since. It was a sudden, violent anomaly in their history, and one that was going to leave a mark that would never disappear.

Levi said goodbye to the woman with the bread roll basket, standing in the middle of the road with his gaze turned towards the homes he’d been told about, a thoughtful frown on his face.

It seemed he had two reasons to visit this place: the Fraziers and the caretaker.

Once there, as curious as he was, Levi decided against visiting the Fraziers and asking about the events of forty years ago. From what he’d been able to dig up, it was likely something that still haunted them to this day, and he wasn’t here to terrorize the elderly.

He did, however, pry into who was paying for their stay at the home. Once at the front desk, he suggested that he wanted to pay for their stay, asking after the amount it would take and how often, before insisting whatever payments they were making themselves stop so they wouldn’t have to pay out of their own pockets. At that point, he’d been politely turned down, the secretary informing him that the Fraziers already had an angel donor who was paying regularly for their stay at the home.

“Can I get a name so I can talk to them about splitting the payments?” Levi asked, leaning forward slightly in anticipation.

“I’m sorry, but...angel donors are what we call anonymous donors who don’t have any ties to the family but still pay for their care. We don’t know who makes the payments, only that they’re made regularly and on time, so Mr. and Ms. Frazier can spend the rest of their days here. I have no name to give you, not that I could, considering that would be sensitive information,” the secretary said politely, though there was a bit of a chill in her voice brought about by Levi’s questioning. He ignored it, busy mulling over this new detail.

He had no evidence to support it, no reason to suspect it, but what if the angel donor was L/N? He knew she was looking for ways to cut costs with how she spent her money, it was one of the reasons she had the tea garden at HQ--it would save her money in the future by cutting costs she spent on things like tea. And her lack of personal belongings could also be from a lack of money to buy nice things for herself. What if the money she saved from her salary was going towards the Fraziers’ well-being?

Again, he had no evidence. It was just a thought, a far-fetched theory, but it was something to take note of and consider, just in case it wasn’t far off the mark.

Getting the hint from the secretary and knowing he was at a dead end as to who was taking care of the Fraziers, at least for what he would find here in town, Levi moved on to the next objective.

“All right, well, I also came to talk to someone in the psychiatric home. He used to be a cemetery caretaker about forty years ago.”

Recognition immediately sparked in her eyes, as well as a bit of apprehension. “We’ll need you to sign in, as well as put down a reason for visiting.”

“Fine,” Levi replied, taking the paper she slid over and writing Jacob, no last name--not that he’d have one to give even if he was using his actual name--and then wrote down social visit before handing it over. Her eyebrows rose slightly and her gaze flickered up to him from the paper, and Levi gazed back at her calmly, waiting patiently for her to at least direct him the proper way.

“Room seventeen. Follow me,” she said, leading them out the door--since they’d been in the home for the elderly--and a little ways away to the other building that acted as the psychiatric home. Once inside she led Levi up two flights of stairs and down a fairly long hall to let Levi into the room marked seventeen in white paint. “Mr. Briarton, you have a visitor,” she said after opening the door, allowing Levi to step into the room and take in a man in his late fifties, early sixties, suspicious pale green eyes narrowed at Levi as he stepped inside.

“I don’t knows you,” the man rasped.

“Jacob,” Levi said bluntly, stepping deeper into the room and staying conscious of the fact the secretary was temporarily lingering to make sure everything was going to be all right. “I came to hear your story.”

“Hah? Here to mock an old man?” Briarton sneered.

“No. Just to listen,” Levi responded simply. Briarton sized Levi up for a moment, then looked at the secretary still standing in the doorway and gave a small wave.

“We’re fine, Janice, you can leave now. I’s knows the rest of you’s is tired of hearin’ my tale.”

“Are you sure, Mr. Briarton.”

“Eh,” he grumbled, and Janice sighed and shut the door, leaving the two of them behind. “Why exactly are you’s interested in hearin’ my story? Everyone else says I’m’s crazy. Locked me up for it, too!”

“I’ve heard the town legends. Someone I knew used to say there’s always a bit of truth to the legends. So I’m here looking for the truth,” Levi answered, leaning up against the wall with arms folded over his chest.

“Hmm…” Briarton hummed, contemplating Levi’s reason before he sighed. “I’s guessin’ you’s already heard ‘bout the murders, if you’s here.”

At Levi’s nod, Briarton skipped over the events that came before, and went right to talking about the burial. “Closed caskets they’s were. Victoria had a pine box, Mr. Frazier insisteds on makin’ Y/N’s hisself, out of willow. We’s buried them midday, six feets down in the grounds, six feets dried earth on those boxes. I’s told they’s were both dead for sures, no comin’ back--specially poor Victoria. Schultz’s weren’t allowed to sees hers it was so bad. Course we’s all thoughts abouts it, we’s all hoped back then the killer’d get caught. People kept comin’ by till it gots too dark and I’s closed the cemetery for the’s night. My’s job was to make sure no ones messed with the graves, and I’s was patrollin’ like usual, and for the’s longest time, I didn’t hear nut-thin. But sometime in the wee hours of the mornin’, as I’s was comin’ up on the girls’s graves, I saw somethin’ movin on the ground on tops of one. I’s went to yells at them, to tell ‘em kids to scram, cause that’s what I’s thoughts they were. But when I’s got close enough to see a bit better, I’s realized they’s was comin’ up from the ground--outta the ground. I’s was frozen in place, watchin’ them’s drag themselves out of the dirt, clawin’ across the ground likes a wounded animal. I’s was tryin’ to scream, but I’s couldn’t makes a sound.”

Briarton stopped, his wide eyes turned towards Levi. “Do you’s know how heavy the dirts is on a coffin? How hard it is to break open a coffin? Impossible’s what it is! My’s brother once locked me’s in one to scares me, and my’s mother lost it whens she found out. I’s was kickin’ and screamin’ for what’s felt like hours tryin’ to break out, but all I’s got from it was bloody hands and elbows. Ands that was without the dirts on tops of it. But I’s swears this girl busted out and crawled outta hers grave. Even if she’s managed to breaks the coffin, she’d’da been crushed bys the dirts. But she’s still crawled outta hers grave. She’s stood up, covered in fresh bloods and dirts, and she’s shoved dirt backs into the hole she’s crawled outta like a drunkard, gaspin’ and wheezin’ and wailin’ like a banshee, an’ then she’s disappears into the night. An’ I’s ran for help, jus’ to get calleds crazy and locked up in here.”

Levi listened to Briarton’s tale in silence, studying the man’s face closely as he spoke to see if the man truly believed every word he was saying. The terror in the man’s eyes was real, though, as he spoke of the impossibility of the haunting image, and there was no trace of insincerity in his face as he spoke. He truly believed in the tale he was telling. Considering the impossibility of it all, Levi also doubted, but he wasn’t going to call him out on in--enough people already believed this man crazy, Levi wasn’t going to add himself to the mix.

He only had one question.

“Who was the woman who crawled out of her grave?” Levi asked steadily, though the crawl of his skin as he said it told him he already knew the answer. He just wanted to hear Briarton say it.

“Y/N Frazier.”

The day had cooled--in fact, it was starting to feel chillier, the sun frequently hidden by clouds that seemed to be gathering across the sky, hinting at fouler weather on the horizon. After taking his leave of Briarton at the home, Levi went looking for the now infamous cemetery--infamous in his mind, at least--and had made his way to the grave of one Y/N Frazier, where he now stood in silent contemplation, staring intently at the headstone that had engraved upon its surface the girl’s name, a birthday and date of death that showed she had barely been in her twenties, and a brief, “Beloved Daughter.”

He wasn’t really seeing the grave anymore, though. His mind was a flurry of thoughts, theories, memories, information...none of the connections he’d made here made any kind of sense to him, but there were far too many to be ignored. There was something here, something that seemed to be staring him in the face, but he couldn’t see what it was, so he couldn’t use it. Not yet, anyway.

Maybe Briarton really was crazy, maybe he hadn’t seen Y/N Frazier crawl out of that grave that night and he’d simply snapped like everyone suggested he had. But there was nothing to have caused him to snap, no trigger. Not to mention, the sheer coincidence was far too strong to be a coincidence.

So, he entertained the possibility that the bizarre and impossible happened, that Y/N Frazier somehow survived, a mistake had been made somewhere and she was buried alive, and managed to crawl out of this very grave. Ignoring the impossibility of that scenario still didn’t give him many answers. If Y/N Frazier was still alive, she would have been sixty, seventy years old by now. L/N back at the Scout Headquarters was in her early twenties, and very clearly /not dead/. So, L/N definitely wasn’t this Y/N Frazier.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t be related somehow. If the original girl did survive, it would be possible for L/N to be Frazier’s daughter, maybe even grand-daughter, though that was starting to push the theory beyond what he was willing to suspend believing as impossible.

One thing the Screaming Sally horror story had made him remember, and that Briarton’s recounting had brought to the front of his mind to offer him another connection, was the conversation the other day between the rest of his Squad and L/N.

He remembered the tremble in her hand, the stillness in her posture, the flash of soul-deep fear, trauma, and pain in her eyes as L/N had softly stated that her biggest fear was being buried alive.

He had something big here, but he wasn’t sure where it fit in this messed up puzzle he was trying to solve, and was missing some key piece that connected it to something else. He needed more than ever to see what she was doing in the Underground when she snuck out at night--whatever it was, he was convinced at this point it was the missing piece he needed to make sense of all of this.

But first, he needed to do something that would give him a definitive answer amongst all these legends and tall tales.

It was a new low for him, he knew that. The entire ordeal felt wrong and filthy on an entirely new level, but it was something he had to do. No one else had thought to look, to disturb the grave of one of the murdered girls to see if there was any validity to Briarton’s claims, to the stories of Screaming Sally. Everyone brushed it off as nonsense and went about their day, probably because it was so certain, and it was easier to believe the horror stories were nonsense.

Levi didn’t have that luxury. He didn’t have the certainty, and the easier route was not the one he was going to take. He needed answers. So, he’d returned briefly to Headquarters in order to enlist Erwin’s help to give him the opportunity late that very same night to dig up the grave and settle once and for all whether Y/N Frazier had died. It would help clear up some of the questions and theories when he found her body in the coffin, and it might put them back at square one in figuring out why this place and this name had been chosen by Y/N, but it would help bring them back to a world that made some sense, and it would help weed out a few questions that these legends and stories had brought up.

He didn’t want to think of the implications if the grave was empty. He doubted it would be, but if it was...then this entire mess went far deeper than he could ever imagine.

Perhaps that was why Erwin agreed to help him, why he’d paid off the caretaker to make sure the grave was empty but leave the section Levi was going to be in undisturbed until Levi left. Erwin clearly hadn’t approved of disturbing a gravesite, especially the gravesite of a murder victim, but Levi had strongly believed it was necessary despite his own misgivings, so Erwin had relented.

Now, Levi was in a hole that passed his head, digging the last few inches to the willow coffin Y/N Frazier had been buried in, filthy and tired but determined to get to the bottom. Just a little further, and he would have his answer. He would see the bones in an undisturbed grave, fill in the grave once more, go home, wash up, hate himself for a while for doing this to confirm what he already knew, and then go back to trying to figure out why L/N seemed so deeply connected to this place.

He hadn’t found any bodies frozen on its way to the surface, so he could already rule out the legitimacy of the children’s scary story about Screaming Sally, at least.

The shovel Levi was using scraped against something solid, and Levi paused. Here it was. He’d found it.

Kneeling down, Levi started brushing away at dirt so he could find the coffin lid, fingers brushing against wood, hand brushing a little harder to smooth away dirt--

He had to pull his hand back as he unexpectedly came into contact with splintered wood sticking up into the dirt, piercing his hand and drawing blood as he jerked in surprise, breath catching.

No…

A few more careful brushes with his hand, and he was staring at a coffin lid that had been busted open, shards of wood buried in dirt, but the hole clearly enough for a person to crawl out of. He froze where he was as he stared at the sight before him, the odd, irrational fear that a hand was going to burst out of the hole and grasp his wrist strangely flashing through his mind before he pushed it aside. He wasn’t breathing anymore, an admittedly trembling hand reaching out to pull back the lid, just to double check and confirm what he was seeing.

The grave was, in fact, empty. The coffin was busted open with gouges that had old red stains upon them, as if it had been punched and clawed through from the inside.

His blood running cold and his breaths shallow, Levi had to fight not to think of the haunting image Briarton had described, the fear in L/N’s eyes, and the mental image of a woman trapped in this grave screaming and crying for help, having to tear apart her own body and defy all odds to crawl her way to the surface, tried not to imagine the terror of being buried alive like this.

Kenny had been right. There was always a bit of truth to the legend. He never imagined it would be this much truth, though.

When Levi returned to HQ, the first thing he did was clean himself up and get changed. Then, he made himself some of the tea L/N had gifted him, choosing one of the blends meant to calm in the hopes that it would help settle his nerves after what he’d seen.

Outside, he might still appear stoic, but inside, he was shaken.

Once he was clean, he had his tea, and he felt he had a better grip on himself internally and he was ready for the conversation, he went to Erwin’s office and very solemnly relayed his findings to the man, who looked no less disturbed by this unexpected turn of events than Levi had been. They’d expected some kind of secret while digging into the truth about L/N, they hadn’t been expecting a full blown conspiracy on this level.

Once Erwin was up to speed on Levi’s findings, they started to hash out some theories and details, both of them well aware that they were still missing something crucial as they attempted to make a broader picture with the pieces they were currently in possession of.

The running theory they were working with was that Y/N Frazier was L/N’s mother. It was the most logical connection they could come up with, even though it dumped a whole new slew of questions into this mess.

Why did Frazier run after she crawled out of her grave? Why not return to her home and family, alive and well? Why leave the town behind and everyone in it believing she’d died so terribly? Why never come back to tell who had attacked her and her friend Victoria? What happened that night forty years ago? How had she managed to crawl her way out of a grave? Why had she instead disappeared somewhere inside the walls never to be discovered or heard from again, hiding her true identity remarkably well? Or more importantly, how had she been alive? How did she survive those injuries? Had a mistake been made and she’d been assumed dead? Was the report faked?

How was the Underground supposed to come into play in all of this, and what part did L/N have in it as well? If Frazier was indeed L/N’s mother, was Frazier still alive and living in the Underground? Was that why L/N went down there every now and then? Why not bring her mother to the surface with her? Why, when she came to the surface, did L/N take Frazier’s first name and not use her last name? Why not use her real name? How did the events of forty years ago play into now, and how had it had an affect on L/N?

As always, whenever they uncovered something about L/N, it always came with a thousand more questions. They could theorize all they wanted, but it wouldn’t bring them closer to finding the answers that they craved at this point.

And still, despite the shock and the...unease he had felt to find the empty grave and realize the reality of what happened in that town--or at least part of it--Levi still felt like there was another reality altering twist in this dark tale that was unraveling in front of them that would be far worse. He still felt like they were far off the mark, that the still failed to understand the reality of what they were stepping into. More than ever, Levi felt there was something dark behind this, and he began to feel the first hints of malice surrounding these secrets.

Whatever L/N was hiding, at this point, Levi knew it had to be dangerous.

Erwin’s concerned eyes probed Levi’s expression as Levi gazed at the empty teacup in front of him, well aware that despite his feeble attempt to calm his nerves and thoughts, he wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight.

“Levi--” Erwin started to say in a grave tone of voice, but Levi cut him off. He knew what Erwin was about to say, and he already knew what he had to do next.

“I know. All I’m waiting for now is for her to make the next move. This time, she won’t shake me.”

Next Chapter---->

Levi Tags: @clary-quinn @humanitys-hottestsoldier@whalerus @sunny-flo @thirstyforsometea

Wings in the Dark Tags: @regalillegal @animeluver23 @theshylittleelfgirl @queenthorin1 @dilucs-thighs @sociallyanxiousmouse

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