#not beta-ed we die like Icee

[impawsiblecat]

100 Days of Deathduo

Day Nine- Reverse Phasmo Au Chapter 5/The final Chapter

Tw: Past character death

The final chapter! This is so exciting.

    The bottom half of the house is almost completely done. Pretty soon Clover will be able to work on the upstairs, will be able to put her own furniture and renovations in. While that does require her to visit the ghost, she doesn’t really think that will be a problem. After what happened last time, she has a feeling the ghost isn’t necessarily malicious. And they had looked so sadly at the music box, it was hard to view them as evil and harmful. Perhaps it was a naive way of thinking, but well, she just couldn’t.

    That didn’t mean that Clover was particularly excited to get to cleaning out their room, but well. It had to be done, eventually. At least she had a homemade walk in freezer, now. She was still gonna save that room for last. And invest in some hand warmers. And hope that the ghost wasn’t too much of a problem.

    What was an actual problem was the growing pile of papers and mementos. It would be resolved soon, hopefully. She had found an old address book, and had managed to get in contact with one of the previous people that had lived here. Clover was pretty sure it was the brother that had shown up in the pictures, and he had agreed to come and pick up the items. 

    Clover knows that theres a ton more he will probably want from upstairs, too, but the pile is just too big right now. And he mentioned he was only a few hours away, so it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle to get everything else to him later. 

    It’s always so strange when waiting for someone to come over, Clover thinks, as she sits on the stairs. She could clean a little more, but what if she gets engrossed in her work and forgets to listen for the doorbell? She scrolls on her phone instead, making sure to occasionally look outside the window.

    The man arrives shortly after, and sure enough, it is the brother from the pictures, except older, in his late twenties if she had to guess instead of a teenager. Clover smiles as she lets him in, and watches as he looks around the entranceway.

    “Hello, Clover, right? We talked on the phone.” The man says, and he continues looking around. “Oh, wow. I haven’t been here since, well, I guess you probably know by now, huh?” He says, smiling wryly at Clover.

    “Yeah, you would have thought the real estate agency would have mentioned it, but I had already bought the house by the time I found out, and it was cheap, and I had already imagined what I could do with the place. What can you do, you know?” Clover laughs, and then waves the man over to the neat piles she had made. “Uh, here’s the items that belong to you, I’ve tried to keep the ones that seemed important and sentimental, but there were a few that I threw away because time just got the better of them. I hope that is ok.” She says.

    The man nods, and starts to rift through the papers, the pictures and memories. “I never thought I would see any of these things again, thank you so much for doing this, I um…” he trails off, staring at a picture of him and his siblings. “I really appreciate it.” He says, sounding emotional.

    “Of course. It didn’t seem right to just throw them away. I don’t have anything that can carry it all, I don't think, but let me at least get a bag to make it easier to get to your car.” Clover says, leaving when she sees the man nod absently, lost in the memories he is sifting through. She grabs a trash bag from the laundry room she had been cleaning out, and brings it to the man.

    When she comes back, he is crying silently, and Clover freezes. She doesn’t know what to do with a crying stranger, so she sets the trash bag down next to him as subtly as she can and backs away. It doesn’t stop the man from noticing her, though, and he just wipes his eyes. “Sorry, sorry, I just haven’t seen many pictures since it happened, I almost had forgotten what she looked like.”

    Clover tenses up, because she has very clearly missed something. She wants to ask, but it is obviously a sore subject. It turns out, she doesn’t have to, as the man continues speaking anyways. “It was such a shock, when it happened, one day, she was there, and the next, she was not, and our parents deemed it too dangerous to stay here, because what if the same thing happened to my youngest sister too? I think it was partially because the memories here were too painful for them. We moved out the next day, barely had any time to get our stuff. I never thought I would see this place again.” The man says.

    Clover is reeling. Did the ghost do this? Did the ghost kill someone? They hadn’t killed Clover, though, hadn’t done anything to Clover except mess with her a bit. And yet, here is this man, devastated at the death of his sister. 

    “I’m sorry that happened to you.” Clover says sympathetically, not knowing what else to say. What else does one say, when a stranger is in your house crying?

    The man shrugs in response. “Thank you for saving all of this. It means a lot, remembering the good moments with her instead of only the sad ones. Ah, I should be the one sorry, unloading all of this onto a stranger.” He laughs wetly. “Hey, you haven’t seen a music box around, have you? It was her favorite.” He asks, and Clover tenses again, blinking at him.

    “It’s um. If I had to guess, it’s either upstairs or in the spirit world.” Clover says, and the man laughs in response. She doesn’t know how to tell him it isn’t a joke. At least it seems to have distracted him from his grief.

    “That’s fine, do you mind if I go look for it really quick? I would probably be able to find where it is, and it would be nice to see the rest of the house again.” The man says, and Clover doesn’t quite think that it’s the best idea to let him near the ghost that killed his sister, but she also doesn’t want to say no when its something that is obviously sentimental to him.

    “I um. I don’t think that is the best idea?” She says awkwardly. “But I guess if you really wanted to…” Clover says, gesturing towards the stairs. “Just be careful, I suppose.”

    The man tilts his head at her, and then starts to go up. “If I would guess, it is probably in her room, or the room attached to her room. She used to call it her secret hideout, but it was really just a glorified storage room our parents allowed her to make forts in.” The man says, and Clover can only feel dread as he goes toward the ghost room, which was apparently his dead sister’s room. She doesn’t want to interrupt his stories, though, and so he continues on into the room. The door to the storage room is open, and she can see things have been moved around.

    “You really should get a heater for this room, it’s always been one of the coldest in the house.” The man says, as he turns and looks around in the dresser in the room. And then Clover sees the ghost. Outside of the room, which she didn’t even know they could do. The man hasn’t noticed them yet, and Clover tries to gesture to the ghost to stop, to go bac. The man is continuing to ramble on about stories from the past.

    The ghost doesn’t listen to her. She doesn’t know why she expected them to. They are just standing there, silent, staring at the man, with wide eyes. Clover isn’t an expert in ghost facial expressions, but she can tell that something is wrong. They are looking at the man with the same expression as they looked at the music box.

    The man turns around then, presumably to ask Clover something, but he catches sight of the ghost and yells, scrambling backwards, and Clover winces. She remembers when that was her. The man looks terrified, and then confused as he stares at the ghost that is staring back. And then Clover, watches, bewildered, as his expression turns hopeful.

    “Icee?” He asks,  and Clover feels a shock go through her at the words. The ghost slowly, slowly nods, and the man reaches out to touch her shoulder. His hand passes right through and he shivers, looking disappointed. He turns to Clover. “This is real, right?” 

    All Clover can do is nod, and the man looks like he is about to start crying again. She leaves the room. This doesn’t seem to be a moment she should be a part of.

    Instead, Clover heads back downstairs, to the pile of pictures. She looks closer at the middle child. Now that she is looking, she doesn’t know how she didn’t pick up on it before. The ghost looks different from the person in the picture, of course, and they look younger in the picture, with skin that wasn’t frostbitten and brown hair instead of silver, but the eyes are the same shape, although the picture shows them as a vibrant purple instead of the the silvery gray Clover remembers of the ghost.

    She stays down there while the man converses with his dead sister upstairs, and she doesn’t say anything when he comes back down with red rimmed eyes. She simply helps him pack the rest of the photographs and load it into his car. On the way back from it, he speaks up for the first time since going upstairs. “Uh, if it’s not too much to ask, can I come visit them, sometime?” 

    Clover blinks in response. “I don’t see why not. I doubt they are going anywhere.” She says, and then pauses. “Um, by the way, what is your name? I forgot to ask it earlier, you were too busy looking through the photographs.” 

    The man laughs a bit before responding. “You can call me Slushee. And uh, my sister is Icee. Our parents thought it was funny.” He says. Then, he becomes somber once more. “Take care of them, ok?” Clover doesn’t have to ask who he is talking about. She just nods, and waves as he gets in his car and drives off.

    Clover goes up the creaky stairs and through the room into the storage area. “So. Icee, is it?”

    The breaker is off. Again. And Clover smiles as she goes upstairs, the stairs that she fixed a few weeks ago. They no longer squeak, and the wood shines with the sunlight streaming in the widows, which have new curtains. 

    She goes into a room that no one stays in, at least no one living, but she has decorated the bed with a new bedsheet and has put pictures on the walls. The frames may be new, but the memories shown are old and well loved, from what she can tell. Her breath freezes in here, and she lets out an involuntary shiver. That was a newer development, as the ghost occupying the house had moved when this one was cleaned up. Not that it is that clean now. Clover can see shoes thrown across the room. It's a way to keep in contact with the living world, from what she can tell, and she isn’t going to make Icee stop even if it means waking in the middle of the night from hearing a thump.

    Not that she could stop Icee if she tried.

    The music box is in the cabinet, and Clover very pointedly does not touch it. She has learned her mistake on that one, and it is obviously very sentimental to Icee. Clover walks through the room to the storage room, which has also been cleaned up. It has a pillow fort in it, and sometimes Clover will go in there and watch a movie or read a book, just relaxing. Oftentimes she feels a ghostly presence next to her. 

    A ghostly face pops up before she can get to the breaker arms held up and a terrifying expression on their face as they breath out cold air, and Clover pretends that she didn’t jump as she holds a hand to her heart and laughs. “Icee. Why would you do that.” She says to the ghost, who also laughs before disappearing again.

    The breaker is turned on once more, and Clover speaks again to the air around her. “Your dad called. He may come over tomorrow if that is alright with you.” She feels a cold puff of air on her wrist. Once, for yes. “Alright then. It’s settled. Are you up to watch a few episodes of atla?” There is another puff of air, and Clover smiles.

    “Alright. Let me just get my laptop.” She says. The air around her turns cold, a sure sign that her friend is here. The experience is definitely not one she would have expected to have, but it is the one she got, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.