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sephirthoughts · 1 month ago

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The Ghost of Shinra Manor

Chapter 5 of this

This chapter is a brief interlude just focusing on the bellhop. It's not a whole proper chapter, so it's part 4.5.

summary: It's been two years-ish since the events of Dirge of Cerberus. Cloud visits his hometown, and investigates a rumor of a ghost, haunting Shinra Manor. If you're surprised by who it turns out to be, you are beyond my power to save, comrade.

tags: g-g-g-ghosts!!! sefikura, sephiroth x cloud, sane!sephiroth (sort of), post advent children, post dirge of cerberus, canon timeline, delusions, intermitten amnesia, low drama, enemies to…whatever the hell they have going on

warnings: horror, ghosts being bullied, brief body horror, references to death, canon-typical violence

rating: teen and up [BE ADVISED: THIS RATING WILL CHANGE]

screenshots shamelessly stolen from @soundcrusher who also deserves 100% of the blame for my obsession with this guy

Part 4.5: About that Bellhop

The Gold Saucer’s renowned Haunted Hotel may have looked crazy and chaotic from an outside perspective, but in actuality, every element of the seeming disorder was thoughtfully curated. From the holographic ghost projections, to the mechanical hands flailing around in the ‘graveyard’, to the ‘haunted’ grandfather clock, to the gigantic, eerie sculptures and bizarre paintings, to the carpet, furnishings, and lighting—everything was specifically fine-tuned to contribute to the spooky atmosphere.

The bellhop was no exception. His seemingly haphazard facial bandages were wrapped exactly the same way every day, without a millimeter’s deviation.

His pillbox cap was carefully pinned so as to never fall from his head, or even sit askew. His uniforms were perfectly tailored and meticulously maintained, before the ropes and bandages were secured around his person. Even his idiomatic speech and outré manner of greeting guests, were part of the carefully orchestrated performance.

For all the willy-nilly whimsicality of the place, beneath the surface, it was a well-oiled machine, and he was the operator, running things with a firm and unflagging hand. He had even personally contrived and built many of the actual machines, which provided the delightful little scares that his guests enjoyed.

Was he a control freak? Some would say so, but that would be to mischaracterize him. He thrived on order, regularity, and most of all, rules, but he didn’t share the same rigid and fastidious attitude toward rules that most of those type-A people did.

To Benjamin, who had the mind of an engineer, rules were not restrictions, they were the operating principles, by which any given system functioned. Both the sheet music that maintained harmony in the orchestra, and the key to comprehending the inner workings of the cosmos.

Everything in the universe operated according to rules, from private business policies, to municipal regulations, to the fundamental principles of physics. The only way to truly be safe, was to know the rules, inside and out. The only way to be truly free, was to fully understand the boundaries within which that freedom existed.

Somewhere between the esoteric concepts of man’s law and eternal cosmic law, lay the rules governing the supernatural. Or rather, the so-called supernatural. Benjamin disliked that term, because the things people placed in that category were as much a part of the natural ordering of reality as any tangible, mundane thing. It was just that most people didn’t know the rules by which those elements operated, so they seemed scary and chaotic. Much like his hotel.

And this was, indisputably, his hotel. He may not own it, but it was his home. His territory. He knew it better than he knew himself. Like the face of a lover, he could flawlessly trace its every detail in his mind’s eye. There wasn’t an inch of the place he couldn’t walk blindfolded with perfect confidence (unless someone’s children were running loose underfoot, which often happened, and didn’t count against him knowing his way around).

Every evening, just before the shift change, he would come down from his hanged-man rigging and do what the other employees called ‘his rounds’. This consisted of scrutinizing each area of the hotel for proper cleanliness and ambience (he was notorious amongst the cleaning staff for his stringent white-glove inspections, which even included the inner edges of the ornate picture frames, that hung ten feet high on the walls), greeting guests, sending small gifts to one guest or another, adding little extra touches to room service orders, and herding stray children out of off-limits areas.

“Victoria, is that going to 1201?” he called down the hall, to a newly hired maid, who was pushing a room service cart out of the kitchen.

“Yes, Mr. Benjamin,” the girl answered.

His nose wrinkled behind his facial bandages, as he approached. “Something doesn’t smell right, do you mind?”

“Yes, sir. N—no, sir,” stammered his flustered young employee.

To her further discomfiture, her intimidating, possibly actually insane (also weirdly good looking despite having most of his face covered, she was just now realizing) supervisor lifted the silver cover, from one of the dishes, bent down, and took a deep sniff, of what appeared to be a BLT sandwich.

“Just as I suspected,” he declared, pointing accusingly at the food item, with the air of a television detective, identifying the murderer. “This is regular whole-wheat toast! But the guest in 1201 is gluten intolerant!”

Victoria was beside herself. “G—gluten intolerant?”

“Gluten intolerant! Meaning that serving him this sandwich would be tantamount to feeding him a dose of poison.” He leaned closer, with a weird leer, squinting one magenta-red eye. “You don’t want to poison our guests accidentally, do you, Ms. Victoria?”

“No, sir! I wasn’t—I didn’t!” the girl sputtered, near tears. “I only took the trays the kitchen gave me, I swear!”

“Uh. Sorry. I have a…kind of dark sense of humor,” Benjamin mumbled awkwardly. Then he caught himself and cleared his throat, shaking himself back into his dignified-but-deranged butler character; spine upright, hands folded at the small of his back. “Nothing to be upset about, young lady, just go back and have the kitchen make it again. And tell them to be more careful, this time.”

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir,” the girl nodded, practically running away with the cart. When she was halfway back to the service window, she slowed down and frowned to herself. “Wait…how could he smell that it was the wrong bread, from down the hall?”

Benjamin, oblivious to the consternation he’d caused, was already on the next floor up, escorting an elderly guest to her room on one arm, while carrying all of her heavy bags in the other.

Apparently, she had so much luggage, because she’d come for an extended vacation, with her daughter and two grandchildren, who would arrive tomorrow morning. She was the cheerful and chatty type, but she quickly got winded, and walked with a cane and a pronounced stoop.

“My old bones ain’t what they used to be. I’m gettin’ tired so easy, these days,” she puffed, holding gratefully onto Benjamin. “I hope those two rascals will go easy on their gran, this time.”

Her little chuckle turned into a dry cough, as a pair of pale, boneless, sinuous arms, were twisted more tightly around her neck. From behind her head, another head peered out, with a bulbous, mottled scalp, sparsely covered by stringy black hairs, which hung over its ghastly, semi-humanoid face.

Semi-humanoid, because its eyes were too large and far apart, to look really human, and its smile split its mouth open at a disturbingly wide angle, revealing rows upon rows of pointed teeth, like a lamprey.

In actuality, this creature was not the ghost of a human, at all. It had begun as a lowly leech sprite, and had cultivated a more human-like form, by feeding on the pure life force of human beings, over several thousand years.

Its lower half was still a tail, like a slug, but if one had the stomach to look closely, one would observe that it was beginning to divide into two, and that there were things almost resembling flippers, protruding from the end. Just a few thousand more years, and it would be able to walk among humans, unnoticed. Then it would live like a king.

“I think a good night’s sleep, in one of our hotel’s fine beds, will charge those batteries right up, Mrs. Geller,” Benjamin encouraged, squeezing the old lady’s gnarled hand. “When you wake up in the morning, you’ll feel like a huge weight has been lifted off you. I guarantee it.”

As he said those words, he glanced over, and for a beat, seemed to gaze directly into the enlarged, milky eyes of the creature hanging on her back. The parasitic spirit’s gloating grin froze, and a shiver raced up its developing spine.

Did that bellhop just…look right at it? No. No way. It must’ve been a coincidence. It had latched onto and slowly devoured the life energy of enough of these fools to know that humans couldn’t see or sense its kind, at all. It was the cunning predator and they were the oblivious prey. That was the way things were.

So, why did it suddenly feel like a fly, that had stumbled into the web of a very dangerous spider?

The troublesome bellhop walked the old woman into her room and set her bags on the bed. Then, to the leech spirit’s manifest annoyance, he proceeded to hang up her clothing, and conveniently arrange all her other things in the room, too, chatting amiably with her all the while.

The conversation mostly revolved around her grandkids and how they were doing in school and how fast they were growing, but he never appeared bored or impatient. The leech spirit was beginning to suspect there was something wrong with his brain, when at long last, the young man made to leave.

“You have a lovely stay, Mrs. Geller,” he said, with a courtly bow, as he stepped out of the room. “If you need anything at all, day or night, dial zero on your hotel phone, to reach my desk. If I’m not there, the call will be forwarded to my personal cell phone.”

“Thank you very much, Benjamin. Such a good boy,” the old lady replied warmly, thinking it was a pity her granddaughter was born about fifteen years too late to make a match with this fine young gentleman.

Meanwhile, the leech spirit breathed a sigh of relief. It must’ve imagined that bloodthirsty glint in the human’s eyes, after all. He was finally leaving, and talking his weirdly oppressive aura with him.

Just as the door clicked shut behind the bellhop, however, a strange thing happened. Hundreds of wire-thin strands of something black and sinister swarmed in, under the door, raced across the room, and leapt at the old lady.

These horrifying things bypassed her, however, and whipped around the leech spirit, so fast, it didn’t even have a chance to react, let alone evade them.

Its reedy arms let go of the old woman and it fell to the floor, its ragged fingernails clawing impotently at the black strands that were winding around its face and throat, burning and itching wherever they touched, while more of them encircled its body, quickly binding its arms to its sides. The harder it struggled, the tighter they squeezed, cutting painfully into its flabby, white flesh.

It quickly realized that it was being dragged toward the crack under the door, but it couldn’t even kick up a proper fuss, with all these horrible threads covering its mouth. The thing gurgled and wriggled pathetically, as it was forcibly squelched through that small gap, squished and flattened, and then stretched out the wrong way, making it a ridiculously miserable sight.

It didn't even connect these bizarre strands to the bellhop, till it saw that the other ends were attached to his gloved hand. The spirit was enraged to the point of spitting blood, that this worthless human dared do such a thing, but it was completely helpless.

All it could do was weep inwardly for the injustice, of such an old and powerful spirit, nourished on thousands of human lives, properly feared and venerated among its kind, being casually towed around, behind a whelp of a human bellhop, like a particularly ugly sack of rubbish.

After a humiliating circuit of the hotel, the boy stopped in a back hallway, and unlocked an unobtrusive door, with a brass key, which opened on a dark, narrow stairwell.

The leech spirit had an ominous premonition. It was currently serving as the world’s most unappetizing dumpling, though, so it could only bear with being dragged up the stairs, its deformed head thunking against each step, along the way.

At the top of the stairs, the bellhop entered a small, rather outdated room, and shut the door behind him. The leech spirit sensed the aura of other ghosts, all over the place, but they were comparatively weak and useless, not even a match for itself, so it immediately gave up any ideas about being assisted.

Standing with his back to his captive, as if to show his utter disregard for it, the human removed his bellhop cap and set it on a dresser, then slowly unwound the bandages from his head. The spirit’s stubby body curled up and began to tremble, where it lay on the floor, and for good reason.

As the bandages came off, the thickest, heaviest black qi that even that ancient creature had ever seen, came curling off the boy’s body, like smoke from an incense burner; running in little wisps and rills down to the floor, where it pooled around his well-polished shoes.

Ghosts and malicious spirits loved black qi, normally, and gravitated toward it, but this was so intensely dark, so concentrated and potent, that it was another matter, entirely.

It was the difference between basking in the ambient warmth from a fireplace, and sticking your hand directly into the naked flames. Darkness at this strength and purity would obliterate any spirit it touched, of any alignment.

“You like to feed on the energy of humans, don’t you?” the young man’s pleasant voice asked, over his shoulder.

When he turned to look down at the spirit, it saw that his pale, fine-featured face was crisscrossed with deep, blue-black cracks, which seemed to have something squirming and writhing beneath them.

His crimson irises were gone, and his long-lashed eyes had turned pitch black, sclera and all, as if they weren’t eyes anymore, but pits, opening upon the formless void.

If it had the capability, the leech spirit would have (quite understandably) pissed itself in fright, as the deceptively weak-looking human knelt down over it, and smiled eerily.

“I’m human. Why don’t you try feeding on my energy?”

As he spoke, in a resonant rasp, that grated painfully in its spectral ears, that noxious, black qi spilled out from between his lips, instantly corroding the spirit’s exposed flesh, wherever it touched.

“What’s the matter? Too rich for your blood?”

The beset creature could only thrash and howl in its bonds, half-mad with terror and agony and bitter resentment, as the cocoon of black threads constricted viciously.

The very last thing it saw, as it was torn apart and devoured by the Darkness, were the ink-black eyepits of that demon in human skin, observing its suffering with an expression of cool disdain.

Just as that abyssal miasma digested the last traces of the unlucky leech spirit, there was a brisk knock at Benjamin’s door.

“Benny, are you in there? I know you’re on your lunch, but the guests checking out of 1304 have a problem with their bill, and they’re demanding to see the manager. Can you come help?”

“Sure thing, Ann,” Benjamin called back cheerfully, as thousands of black, spider-silk tendrils retracted into his body. “I’ll be down in two shakes!”

When he returned to his room, late that night, Benjamin had a low fever and was aching and stiff all over, from exerting so much of that dark power, dealing with that creature.

He knew it was dangerous, and was aware of the heavy toll it took on his body, when he let it have its way, but he couldn’t just stand by and let evil things prey on innocent humans. Then he’d be no better than the rest of the monsters.

He changed out of his uniform and hung it up neatly, then went to the bathroom, to take out the contacts he was required to wear for work, which made his cat-slit pupils appear round, and splash some water on his waxen face.

With a shudder, he avoided looking directly at his own reflection. He couldn’t stand seeing those hideous cracks, close up and in the light, like this. Fortunately, the meal seemed to have made the thing inside sleepy, so at least nothing was squirming around under his skin, at the moment.

He was too nauseated to eat properly, so he opened a bag of salty-vinegary potato chips, which always calmed his stomach, for some reason, and sat down at his desk. Exhausted as he was, he still had half a gig of scanned books and newspapers and journal articles, from the public archives, to go through, for Cloud Strife.

It was too bad he couldn’t take time off work and just go up to Nibelheim, in person. He’d be able to tell what his shapeshifting-amnesiac ghost’s deal was, right away. And even if he couldn’t, he’d at least be able to get rid of it, for him.

Though, to be perfectly honest, he wasn’t entirely convinced Cloud wanted to be rid of the ghost, as much as he would have Benjamin believe.

Benjamin’s theory, based on nothing but intuition, was that the ghost’s attachment was Cloud. If so, it stood to reason that Cloud was also somehow attached to the ghost, too, despite his claim that he had killed the man and would prefer him to stay dead.

Could a strong, mutual attachment have something to do with the ghost’s abnormalities? Doubtful. If that were the case, every person you had particularly strong feelings about would be hanging around you, after they died. That would muck up the natural order of life and death on the Planet, resulting in all kinds of imbalance, and eventually, total chaos.

Benjamin gave a little shiver. Though he loved order and rules, and observing systems working in perfect harmony, there was a part of him, deep down, that was thrilled to the marrow by the idea of flicking the spinning top. Upsetting the equilibrium, just to see it all come crashing down.

Not from malice, but from pure curiosity. A gnawing desire to find out what would happen, next. What new things would arise, when the old ones were destroyed. Because, as much as he hated to admit it—hated himself for the perverse pleasure he took in the idea—he knew that chaos wasn’t actually against the rules.

God is change and death his prophet. The raging fire purges the detritus from the forest, leaving clean and fertile soil for new life. Entropy consumes order to feed chaos, which routs out stagnation, so that the system can be reborn.

Order leads to chaos leads to order. It was breathtaking to contemplate.

��But I’m against all the rules, so where does that leave me?” he muttered, to himself, as he munched on a chip.

Gradually, as he scrolled through page after page of dry, long-winded, historical text, he began to droop. When the tiny words were dancing and blurring, on the screen, he leaned back to rub his eyes and stretch, knocking a pencil off his desk.

Before it hit the floor, a long, reddish thing, that looked sort of like a thick, rubbery ribbon, dropped down from the ceiling, caught it, and replaced it on the desk.

“Thanks. And…gross,” Benjamin said, wiping the pencil off on his pant leg. “I told you not to pick things up with your tongue, Dan.”

The blue-faced hanged ghost, dangling above his head, who’d had the appellation ‘Dan’ bestowed upon it, when this human began living in the room it was haunting, sulkily retracted its tongue.

Meanwhile, a skeletal hand, attached to an equally skeletal arm, sticking out of a black cloak sleeve, which was notably not attached to the rest of a cloak, emerged from the shadows behind Benjamin, and set a steaming mug on the desk.

“Warm milk and honey! Thank you, Mort!” he said eagerly, then hesitated. “But this’ll put me to sleep. I still have a lot of work to do.”

The skeletal hand jabbed his arm with its forefinger bone and pointed to the clock, then the bed.

“Alright, alright,” Benjamin grumbled. “You’re pretty bossy for a disembodied appendage. Mm, this is really good, though, so I forgive you.”

The hanged ghost, which was still pouting from being scolded, rolled its bloodshot eyes at the skeletal hand, and inwardly berated it for being a suck-up. It felt a certain sense of entitlement to the room and its inhabitant, since it was already here, when the young quasi-human arrived, and didn’t like the other ghosts getting too cozy with him.

The day Benjamin moved in, the hanged ghost hadn’t seen a living person in over a decade, which was when this disused room, in the old annex of the hotel, had last been rented to guests. Needless to say, it was extremely pleased to finally have something to do.

It was dangling from an exposed ceiling beam, in a far corner of the room, plotting how it would scare this idiot out of his mind, later tonight, when the idiot in question came around with the feather duster and politely asked it to move, so he could clean out the cobwebs.

The hanged ghost nearly fell off the ceiling. It had never been spoken to like this by a human, before. Why wasn’t he scared? How could he see him? Why was he dusting out all the lovely cobwebs??

Too stunned to know what else to do, the hanged ghost just did as the human asked and moved. He had planned on dominating the interaction, but he’d lost the initiative, now, so all he could do was hang around and stay out of the way, while the human cleaned the place, from top to bottom, while humming jaunty little tunes to himself, and everything.

“I’m Benjamin. I guess we’ll be sharing a room, now,” the human said, with a bow, after he’d finished his cleaning. “What’s your name? Have you been here long?”

The hanged ghost could only stick out its long tongue and gesture helplessly.

“Oh, sorry. You’re a hanged ghost,” Benjamin said, with a wince. “Of course you can’t talk. In that case, I’ll just have to give you a name, myself. How about…Dangly Dan!”

The hanged ghost, who’d had just about enough of this shit, made his most ferocious and terrifying grimace. Far from being frightened senseless, as would have been polite, Benjamin only laughed merrily and said, “Dan it is! Good to meet you, roomie!”

Thus began Dan and Benjamin’s cohabitation. As it turned out, it wasn’t so bad. Benjamin’s cold, windy yin energy made the place exceedingly comfortable to Dan, and Benjamin seemed to like having someone to chat to, so things proceeded rather amicably.

Dan had not considered the possibility of his human’s aura attracting other ghosts. That is, not until the skeletal hand sticking out of the cloak-sleeve followed Benjamin home, one day, and much to Dan’s disgust, never left.

Not only was it an eyesore, it was always showing off, arranging little trinkets in ways that made Benjamin laugh, and doing the dusting and sweeping, even though no one asked it to. It liked to act as if it was attached to a whole being, which preferred to keep its true form hidden, but Dan was of the firm opinion that it was just a shitty arm, putting on airs.

Their fourth roommate, the drowned ghost, had crawled up the tub drain to lie in wait, in Benjamin’s bubble bath, one night, to which he had apparently taken great umbrage. Dan had been dozing above the radiator, when he was startled out of his senses by a shriek, a splash, and a crash, from the bathroom.

There was a scuffling noise, then an irate, bathrobe-clad Benjamin dragged the drowned ghost out to the kitchenette, wrapped up in the shower curtain, and proceeded to give her a stern lecture about decorum and modesty, and how it was improper for men and women who were not married to one another to share a bath, while she shivered and dripped all over the kitchen floor.

After Benjamin cooled down, he apologized to the stupefied ghost for losing his temper, and told her that she was welcome to use the bath, so long as he wasn’t using it at the time, and provided she didn’t make a mess. She was christened ‘Eliza-bath’ (as punishment, one could only assume), which Benjamin mercifully shortened to Liz.

Since then, she’d been inhabiting the drains, and had undertaken the chores of dishwashing and cleaning the bathroom. Dan didn’t really mind having Liz around, since she stayed in her lane, and wasn’t a self-important nuisance getting involved in everything, like that stupid arm.

The final roommate was a creeping shadow, that lived under Benjamin’s bed, and minded its own business. The only reason Dan didn’t completely forget it existed, was because sometimes its weird eyeholes would open and peer out at him, when he was picking up Benjamin’s clothing from the floor. Also, if anything rolled under the bed, it would helpfully push the item back out.

Having finished the warm milk and honey, Benjamin put the mug in his tiny kitchenette’s sink and went to brush his teeth. When he returned, the pale and bedraggled drowned ghost (clad only in her long, murky, seaweed-like hair, goddess help us) had crawled up the sink drain, and was washing the mug, while blithely dribbling water all over the floor. The skeletal hand was used to this, however, and was chasing her around with a dish towel, mopping it up.

“Thanks, Liz, you’re a peach,” Benjamin yawned, as he passed by.

Dan, still desiring to redeem himself after being scolded, dropped his long arms down, to pull back the bedcovers and fluff Benjamin’s pillow.

“Nighty-night, Dan,” the young man smiled sleepily, as he was carefully tucked in by the monster from other people’s nightmares.

Dan returned a positively blood-curdling grin, before an indistinct, shadowy shape slithered up the side of the nightstand, and shut off the lamp.

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