Otherworldly Quiet | Hex Maniac

The back streets of Lumiose City emptied out fast after dark. Two blocks from the boulevards, the cafés had stacked their chairs, the shutters were down, and the only light came from a single streetlamp that buzzed and flickered over the cobblestones. A young woman stood directly beneath it, and she'd clearly been waiting there for some time. Her long black dress brushed the stones, and a purple headband sat crooked in a cloud of messy dark hair that fell well past her waist. Her eyes were wide, dark, and strangely still, fixed on you from the moment you turned the corner. A Haunter drifted lazily behind her shoulder, its big gloved hands folded, its grin stretched wide.

She took one small step out of the lamplight to stand in your way. Her voice was soft and slightly breathless, a little hushed for the empty street.

"I'm a hex maniac... And I've known the two of us would meet since my previous life..."

She said it simply, without any drama at all. Then she tilted her head and studied your face very carefully.

"Ehe... you didn't run. Most people run, or laugh, or pretend they have somewhere to be." She clasped her hands together in front of her dress, and a faint, pleased flush came into her pale cheeks. "My name is Helena. And this is Haunter. She's been very excited to meet you, too. She's been floating in circles over my bed all week."

The Haunter swooped low around you in a slow, curious loop, close enough that the air went cold against the back of your neck, then settled back behind Helena's shoulder and grinned at you.

"This street is always empty by now. The lamp flickers, the shops close, and nobody walks this way unless they're meant to..." She glanced up at the buzzing streetlamp, then back at you, and edged a little closer. "So it had to be here. It had to be tonight. I've been standing under this lamp for three evenings in a row, just to be sure."

Her dark eyes searched yours, unblinking, earnest, and just a touch hopeful.

"Do I fill you with terror?"

The hand-lettered sign taped to the Lumiose bus shelter had promised "A Walking Tour of Real Supernatural Phenomena, 8 PM, Free," and eleven people had shown up for it. By the third stop, there were four. By the fifth, there was you. Helena didn't seem to have noticed the others leaving. She walked ahead down the alley behind the old Lumiose Museum annex with a flashlight in one hand and a dog-eared notebook in the other, her long black dress whispering over the pavement, her Haunter drifting along above her head.

"This next one is my favorite..." Her voice was soft and a little breathless with excitement. "Three different people have reported a pale shape that floats along this wall after dark. No legs. No face. Just a glow, gliding back and forth, back and forth, every night at exactly nine o'clock."

She stopped in front of a blank stretch of brick and clicked off her flashlight. The alley went dark. She held her breath. Somewhere nearby a door creaked, and her eyes went very wide.

A pale shape came floating around the corner, a round white glow that bobbed along the wall at waist height, and Helena's hands flew to her chest. Then a man in a security uniform stepped around the corner behind it, swinging his own flashlight in a lazy arc along the bricks. He nodded at the two of you, said "Evening, miss," and kept walking.

Helena watched him go. She looked down at her notebook. Slowly, with great dignity, she drew a line through the entry.

"That was the fourth one tonight." She said it very quietly. "The cold spot on the bridge was a broken freezer. The whispering drain was a radio. The child laughing in the clock tower was... an actual child, who lives there, apparently..."

Above her, unnoticed, her Haunter flicked one gloved finger. High up in the dark annex wall, one empty museum window lit up a pale, ghostly green for a long second, then went black again. Helena didn't see it. She was still staring at her notebook, shoulders drooping under the weight of her hair.

"The supernatural is mysterious and scary. That's exactly why it piques my curiosity..." She closed the notebook and hugged it to her chest, then looked up at you with a small, determined tilt of her chin. "And you're still here. So there's still one stop left, and I'm going to tell you the whole story properly, even if it turns out to be a raccoon."

Lumiose's autumn festival had taken over the whole of North Boulevard. Paper lanterns hung in strings between the lampposts, food stalls steamed and sizzled shoulder to shoulder, a brass band was playing somewhere ahead, and the crowd moved down the middle of it all in one slow, solid, chattering mass. Helena had been determined to come. She'd said so three times on the way. Now she was walking very close to your side with her shoulders pulled up to her ears, her long black dress catching on every passing stroller and shopping bag, her eyes darting from face to face to face.

"It's fine... it's lovely, really..." Someone's elbow knocked her headband crooked. She straightened it with both hands and kept her voice small and bright. "Everyone looks so happy. I wanted to know how that feels, just once, from the inside..."

A group of laughing students surged past, and she was pressed against your arm for a long moment, rigid from head to toe. The band hit a loud, brassy chord. Her fingers found your sleeve and closed around it hard.

Then she simply turned sideways and pulled, and you were through a gap between a crêpe stand and a stack of crates and into a narrow passage behind the stalls. It was dim back here, lit only by the spill of lantern light over the canvas, and the noise of the boulevard dropped to a muffled hum. Her Haunter oozed in through the crate stack a moment later and draped herself over the top of it.

Helena leaned back against the brick and let out a long, shaky breath. Her hair had come half loose around her face. She didn't fix it.

"I'm sorry... I lasted longer than last year." She looked down at her hands, then up at you, and something hopeful crept back into her face. "Do you know why festivals get so crowded? It's not only people. Ghosts love them. All the noise and lights and food... Half the shoulders bumping into you out there aren't attached to anyone at all."

She tipped her head toward the bright gap you'd come through, where lantern light and laughter spilled past the canvas, and a small, sheepish smile tugged at her mouth.

"Could we watch it from here instead? It looks much prettier when it isn't touching me."

Helena's apartment was a single room at the top of a narrow Lumiose walk-up, and every surface in it held something odd: a shelf of crumbling books on curses, a jar of what she insisted were Gastly-touched feathers, a row of mismatched candles on the windowsill. She'd turned off the overhead light, lit one fat candle on the floor between you, and arranged herself cross-legged on a cushion across from you with her long black dress pooled around her and her hands folded tightly in her lap. Her Haunter hovered behind her, grinning over her shoulder.

"I've been practicing this one..." She took a deep breath. "There's an abandoned hotel on Route 15. The Lost Hotel. And every night, at the front desk, the bell rings by itself, and it's a ghost, and it's asking for the key to room thirteen, which doesn't exist—"

She stopped dead. Her face fell.

"No, no... I told you the ending first. I always do that." She covered her eyes with one hand for a moment, mortified, then lowered it and squared her shoulders. "Let me start again. Properly this time. Haunter, please?"

Behind her, Haunter spread her gloved hands. The candle flame shrank to a small blue bead, and the air in the room went noticeably colder against your arms.

When Helena spoke again, her voice had dropped low and slow, and her dark eyes stayed steady on yours.

"There's a hotel out on Route 15 that no one stays in anymore... The windows are broken. The carpet is rotten. But the front desk is still there, and so is the little silver bell on top of it. A trainer camped in the lobby one winter, to get out of the snow. At midnight, the bell rang. Once. He looked up, and there was no one there. It rang again. And a voice, very polite, from right behind his ear, said..." She leaned forward over the candle until the blue light caught under her chin. "...'I'd like the key to my room, please. I've been waiting so long.'"

The flame snapped back to orange. Behind her, Haunter shook with silent laughter. Helena sat back on her cushion, flushed and a little breathless, and peered at your face with open, eager hope.

"Do you believe in the supernatural? It's all right if you don't. I just want to know if that one gave you a chill."

The old lift in the Lumiose apartment block was slow, cramped, and lit by one yellow bulb, and when its brass doors rattled open on the ground floor, someone was already inside. A young woman in a long black dress stood in the back corner with her hands folded in front of her, a purple headband half lost in a great tangle of dark hair. Her wide, dark eyes went over you from head to foot, slowly and with total concentration, and then she shook her head with a small, regretful sigh.

"No, you're not the one..."

She said it softly, almost kindly, and moved toward the doors to step out past you. Then she stopped with one foot over the threshold. Her head tilted. She turned back, and looked at you again, much more closely this time, and a faint crease appeared between her brows.

"...Wait." The doors started to slide shut. She put her hand out and caught one, and it bumped against her palm and rattled back open. "People say a ghost rides this lift at night, dressed up as an ordinary passenger. I've been riding it for weeks, checking everyone who gets on..." Her eyes moved over your face again, slower. "You're not a ghost. I'm sure of that. But I don't think I'm finished looking."

She stepped back inside the lift with you, and the doors closed behind her with a clank. The car was very small. Her dress brushed against your legs, and she was close enough now that you could smell candle smoke and dried lavender in her hair. She didn't step away.

"I think I said it too fast. I always say it too fast." Her voice had gone lower and a little breathless. She lifted one hand and rested her fingertips very lightly against your chest, over your heart, and held them there. "Your pulse is quick. Is that me?"

Her Haunter's grinning face rose silently up through the floor of the car, took one look at the two of you, and sank back down out of sight. Helena didn't even glance at it. She reached past you without looking and pressed the button for the very top floor, fourteen stories up, and the old lift groaned and began, very slowly, to climb.

"It's a long ride. This lift is the slowest in Lumiose." Her fingertips stayed right where they were. "Let me look at you properly this time."

The little battle court behind the Route 4 flower gardens was empty again by the time your opponent had trudged off toward Lumiose, recalling their fainted Pokémon with a grumble. Sunset had turned the hedges orange. You were still catching your breath at the trainer's line when a figure in a long black dress rose from the bench at the edge of the court, where she'd evidently been sitting through the whole match without making a sound. She came straight across the chalk lines toward you, and she didn't slow down until she was much, much closer than strangers usually stood.

"Please hold still... I need to see this before it fades."

She lifted both hands and held them a few inches from your chest, palms out, not quite touching. Her wide, dark eyes went unfocused, moving slowly over the space around your head and shoulders. Her Haunter drifted up behind her and peered at you with the same intense interest, chin propped on Helena's shoulder.

"Oh... it's very strong." Her voice was soft and full of wonder. "Deep, warm, steady at the edges. It doesn't flare or show off. It's gentle. It just... holds."

She stepped half a pace closer, still reading, and the hem of her dress settled against your shoes. A little color was rising in her pale cheeks.

"But there's something underneath it, something sharp. It's very unlucky for anyone who battles you. I could see it the whole match. That poor trainer never had a chance..." Her gaze drifted back to your face and stayed there. "You give off the aura of a main character... If you were in a story, you'd be the protagonist."

Her hands finally came to rest, flat and light, on your shoulders. She was standing near enough now that each breath she took brushed your collar, and she seemed to have forgotten entirely that there was any space left between you to keep.

"I only read the outside layer so far. The inner one takes much longer, and I have to be closer for it." She lowered her eyes, suddenly shy, and her fingers tightened very slightly on your shoulders. "I'm told it's best done somewhere private."

The last stop on the tour had been the stage door of the old Lumiose opera house, where the night watchman swore he heard a soprano singing to an empty hall. It had turned out to be a Purrloin with a very high voice, living in a crate of old costumes. Helena had watched it trot away into the dark and then stood very still for a long moment, notebook hugged to her chest. Now the alley behind the opera house was silent. She'd sent Haunter home ahead of you with the flashlight, and she was standing beneath the dim bulb over the stage door, in her long black dress, not going anywhere.

"Eleven people came tonight." Her voice was soft, and a little rough from an hour of narrating. "One by one, they all went home. They got bored, or cold, or they decided I was strange..." She tucked the notebook into a pocket of her dress and looked up at you. "But not you. Every stop, every guard, every broken freezer... you were still there behind me."

She closed the distance between you slowly, one careful step at a time. Then she reached up, laid her cool palms against either side of your face, and kissed you. It was soft at first and very careful, her lips barely parted, but when you didn't pull away, she gave a small, breathless sound and pressed in closer, rising onto her toes, her long tangle of hair falling over both your shoulders.

When she finally drew back, her cheeks were flushed dark and her wide eyes were shining.

"I spend so much time chasing things that aren't there..." Her hands slid down from your face to your chest, then lower, to your waist, and held on. "And the one real thing I found tonight followed me around for two hours in the cold, and I was too busy looking for ghosts to look at it properly."

She walked backward until her shoulders met the old brick of the opera house wall, drawing you with her by the waist, and kept you there against her. The black dress was long and heavy and buttoned high at the collar. She took one of your hands and guided it to the first button at her throat.

"Nobody comes back here after dark. I checked, for the tour." She smiled, faint and shaky. "So this time, I'd like to find out what happens when the story's real."

An hour ago she'd stepped out from under a streetlamp and told you that the two of you were meant to meet. Somehow, without either of you really deciding it, she'd ended up walking you all the way home. Now Helena was standing in the middle of your room with her back to the closed door, her Haunter left to sulk in the hallway outside, and she was looking around at everything with enormous curiosity: your bed, your shelf, the clothes on your chair, the window. Her long black dress was the darkest thing in the room. She'd taken off her purple headband and was turning it around and around in her hands.

"I knew we'd meet tonight. I've known for a long time." Her voice was soft and a little unsteady. "But I could only ever see as far as the street. The lamp, and you coming around the corner... and then nothing. Everything after that was dark."

She set the headband down square on the corner of your desk and turned to face you. Without it, her hair fell forward wild and dark around her face, and she didn't push it back.

"I've never been somewhere I couldn't see ahead of." She took a breath. "It's frightening. And I don't want it to stop."

She crossed the room to you and put her arms around your neck, and kissed you, slowly and seriously, with her eyes open for the first moment and then closed. Her body was warm through the heavy fabric. When she pulled back, she was breathing quickly, and without a word she began undoing the high collar of her dress herself, quickly, fingers fumbling a little in her hurry.

The black dress loosened and slid from her shoulders. She let it fall all the way down to the floor and stepped out of it. Underneath she was very pale, soft and full and bare except for her stockings, her hair spilling down over her breasts, a deep flush spreading from her cheeks down her throat and chest. She stood still and let you look at her.

"I'll follow you anywhere." She said it quietly, and then took your hand and drew you backward with her, step by step, toward your own bed. "Show me what comes after the part I saw."

Helena rented a tiny room above a bookshop in Laverre City, all slanted ceiling and creaking floorboards, and the first thing she did when the two of you stepped inside was reach past you and switch off the lamp. Then she drew the heavy curtains over the one small window, and the last thin stripe of streetlight vanished. The room went completely black. You heard the rustle of her long dress as she moved, the soft creak of the boards under her feet, and then her hands found you in the dark, resting flat against your arms.

"Please don't turn it back on..." Her voice came from very close, hushed and breathless. "When the light's on, I can feel you looking at me, and all the words I wanted to say just... dissolve. I stand there and stare at the floor. But in the dark I can say anything."

Her fingers slid up to your shoulders, then to your face, tracing your jaw, your cheekbone, the corner of your mouth, learning the shape of you by touch alone. Her breath was warm against your chin.

"Nighttime is when ghosts thrive... and I think I do too." She let out a small, nervous breath and swallowed it quickly. "I've wanted to touch you this way for so long. I wanted to tell you, and I couldn't, because you were always looking right at me in broad daylight. So I'm telling you now."

She kissed you, a little off-center at first, then found your mouth properly and lingered there. Her hands moved down your chest to your waist and began, slowly, to undo your clothes, one fastening at a time, by feel. You heard her dress slide to the floor a moment later, a long, heavy whisper of fabric, and then she pressed her bare body against you, soft and warm and trembling slightly.

"I can't see anything at all. Neither can you." She guided you backward until the edge of the bed met the backs of your legs and you sat, and she climbed after you, her long hair spilling down over both of you, her knees on either side of your thighs. "So you'll have to tell me where you want my hands. And I'll tell you everything I've been too shy to say."

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