Work Text:
Grimizu
The dusty recorder clicked to life in the wake of the otherwise silent room.
Erin shuffled assuredly in her seat, the nylon of leggings- thin and overused; squealing against the faux leather and she raised an eyebrow in an outwardly jaded expression.
Even so, speckled amusement soon gave way to her true spirits as the head archivist she’d come to know cleared his throat.
“-Statement of Erin Lazarus, regarding her experiences post-death and her beginnings as the first paranormal entity to aid ‘The Magnus Institute.’
Audio recording by Ms. Lazarus herself-”
“Paranormal entity? Are you always so severe during these recordings?”
“Erin..” Came the grumbled response, Jon seeming mildly disgruntled with no real fire behind it as the other’s distorted chuckle rang within the very parchment of the walls.
“Relax Jon, I won’t waste your ever-so-beloved film. As you put it with Martin’s statements.” She gave a knowing smile.
“Your statement, please?”
There was an exaggerated roll of the eyes among the pale, feminine face. Jon still found himself slightly unnerved by the sight of them.
Despite having recruited Erin for some months now he could never seem to fully shake the heaviness that dragged along his heart at even mere glances at such.. Abyss.
Nonetheless, Erin had more than earned her place within the Institute, and grew to be surprisingly efficient and useful...If only she were more serious during certain conversations and matters.
Jon supposed he couldn’t be too awfully surprised however, considering the predicament of her very existence at the current.
Dark fingernails curled into the pale, deft fingers that grasped the desk’s underside to pull herself closer.
Jon winced at the screech of wood against tile.
“Well, hello there world.”
Erin glanced up at Jon with an amused grin as the archivist sat himself across the pale entity.
The recorder whirring calmly between them.
With the gust of air that was her surrendered sigh, Erin’s demeanor had changed completely as she finally gave into the memories that would lead to a successful statement.
Jon knew she’d been dreading this day, having noticed the scribbled “fuck you” in red permanent marker on his office calendar.
“June 15th, 2009.” She began.
“That is when my entire life had slipped through my fingers and fell into the deepest damned pit I could ever have imagined. Well, quite frankly I never could have imagined any of.. This.”
Pale hands waved around in a vague gesture as the words reluctantly spilled forth from her lips.
“It was my father’s birthday.. I can’t say for sure whether or not I remember him fully anymore. It hasn’t been that long since I- Since I died. But no matter how hard I try I just can’t remember faces anymore.
Trying to remember the people I knew when I was alive feels like searching through a dark room. One with no walls, no windows, just endless wandering and endless darkness.”
Jon could see that she realized she was rambling, but made no efforts to scorn her for it.
His voice was heeding as he questioned, “Your father’s birthday? Where did it all take place?”
Erin had seemed momentarily grateful and continued with a brisk ‘ahem.’
“Waterbury, Connecticut. That’s where I am originally from, I only remember it because you found my birth and death certificates. Sorry- You, Jonathan Sims found my certificates.”
Jon nodded in approval as he listened.
“We lived in an apartment complex on Meriden Street, it was just myself, my dad and my younger sister.. Casey? You said her name was Casey? Sorry, the names and faces are unrecognizable to me.
I only remember the events that occurred and how they did occur.”
“Casey Lilith Lazarus, aged 19 at death date on June 21st, 2012.”
Was the brisk chime that followed Erin’s confusion. Jon beckoned her to continue.
“Yes.. Her.”
“Anyways, ehm, so my mother died on the day of dad’s birthday. Casey and I were twelve and seventeen. I didn’t see how she died, neither did my sister. I only recall my father coming home one night looking more stricken than he ever had in all the years I’d been alive; there was blood speckled on his sleeve.
He told us that mom went missing during an appointment with a home inspector she’d been working with. My mom was a realtor.
My dad hired as many private investigators, phoned police, searched vigorously himself even, and yet.. Nothing. Just fell off the map. We never saw her again.”
Erin absently scratched one of the eyes beneath her one of many turtlenecks, hissing slightly in pain as she scratched a bit too harshly.
The writhing squeal beneath the shirt covering her neck made her twitch uncomfortably.
“My dad never gave up, you know?”
Erin downcast her gaze onto her fingers, the edges of skin lacing her fingernails darkened.
“For seven long years he still never gave up on looking for her. I remember seeing him every night. A flashlight in one hand and his concealed tucked into his jeans.
He’d kiss us both before leaving into the night, of course now I can only see muddled gray in place of his face but.. Somehow I can still see the sadness he barely was able to hide every time that he left..
Sometimes he’d be gone for weeks, sometimes months and, it very quickly became my job to take care of Casey.”
Erin glanced at her hands again, no.. Jon remembered; Casey’s hands.
When Jon glanced back upwards their eyes had locked and his gaze hurriedly searched for anything else to stare at.
Her eyes darkened even more so, and somehow her voice distorted into that odd electronic reverb that reminded him of Michael’s brief visit.
Yet Erin, unlike Michael; never seemed to add any residual malice or eerie horror.
Her verbal distortion would emerge purely from her own distress, and sometimes rage.
“Date of your father’s disappearance?” Was all he asked.
“Uhm, fuck. November 3rd? I think, yes. November 3rd, 2011. That was the last I ever saw him again. Once again like always, it was 10:30 at night, he would finish packing supplies, kiss us on the forehead, and leave.
He’d be gone for long periods of time but I cannot stress enough how he’d always come back. Our father never would have left us, ever. He spent all that time looking for our mother, he never would have just.. Given us up.”
She sighed but with a fierce determination halting her gaze.
“Whatever happened to my mother, happened to him too.”
Both archivists untensed slightly as a pair of birds twittered outside the adjacent window. Erin couldn’t help but smile slightly at them. The freeness in their graceful movements and their delightful ignorance of the evils in this world.
“After that, we called the police. Of course, they didn’t pay us much mind. Two young girls with no nearby guardian calling the police? A prank it must be, surely.
It was only after they saw the records of our mother’s disappearance that they started to take it more seriously. I was only 19 at the time and was in no way able to support myself and my sister.
Dad wouldn’t let us get jobs or go out. Said he didn’t want us walking into unnecessary danger.
I knew immediately that he just didn’t want us to end up like mom. I finally got a job while they passed my sister through foster homes like she was a lump of meat. I always wanted to take care of her myself, of course but..
The American legal system didn’t deem me fit enough to take care of my own damn sister. Annoying twats. Casey had a mental disorder that often made her act like a young child, so she was never able to take care of herself. Even after legal age..”
“So how did you end up from America to London, England of all places?” Jon had been waiting a long while to hear this portion of Erin’s statement.
She had not told them anything of how she, American-born that she was, popped up in such a far off area of London.
“Casey got adopted.” Erin smiled weakly.
“An Older English couple saw her and immediately decided to be her.. ‘Saviours.’ Next thing I knew she was put on a plane to fucking England.”
Jon perked a brow at her choice of words, Erin didn’t give a damn.
“Anyways, I immediately knew that I refused to live in separate countries from the only real family I had left, so; I booked a ticket and went after her.
'Definitely didn’t think it through, I’ll admit that..
I just knew that I couldn’t be without her; and so, I arrived a week after she’d already been living there with the couple. They were kind enough, I suppose.. They seemed happy to let her come meet me after I got off the plane.
I was so happy to see her again, Jon. Feeling her squeezing the daylights out of me after I rushed through baggage claim was just.. Bliss.”
Her reminiscent quirk of lips dissipated then. An abrupt loss of deliberately positioned facial muscle.
“Soon I went on living alone in one of the cheapest apartments I could find. I spent a lot of time with Casey of course but as time went by her ‘adoptive parents’ seemed to be allowing us to meet less and less.
This, of course, pissed me off and I went to confront them one day. It was June 19th, 2012.”
Tanned hands began to tense slightly after the date mentioned, although Jon would never admit it willingly. Erin’s statement thus far had certainly been one of the few to get under his skin; he needed to get it together.
Erin regarded him silently, just waiting as she looked to him while she gathered her thoughts. Staring absently as though his visual presence would aid her in finding the right words to say.
“I knocked on their door.”
Her voice shook in silent fury, voice distorting once again.
God, Jon hated it.
“They lived in some massive mansion that quite frankly could’ve been a modern castle. I banged on that door and demanded they let me in; I was so angry.
Before that it had been three weeks since they let me see her.”
Erin’s hands curled into fists.
“They were always giving some half-assed excuse before sending me off. By that point I hated them, I hated them so fiercely because of my own loneliness and lack of purpose that I did not think before I marched off to their home.
It was almost night, the sun was setting. I stood there, incessantly banging and desperate to see her.
Finally, the door just.. Opened. Opened by itself.
Immediately I should have figured that there was something wrong the moment I stepped inside but..
I didn’t.
I kept going.
It was horribly dark, I could barely see a mere foot in front of me; the only light coming from the door I had left open. That didn’t last long though, and it shut right back up behind me.
‘Casey?’ I called, “Casey!’ I called again. No one bothered to answer.
By now, I was fed up enough with all of it as I trudged up the stairs to where I knew her bedroom was. My phone was clutched to the point of breaking as I used it to light the way.”
It was at this point that Erin lurched her body forwards and held her head in her hands, her elbows skimming the surface of the desk.
The new position gave way to just enough fabric that one of the eyes on her neck were partially exposed and in Jon’s view.
He knew her eyes were yet another topic of sensitivity for Erin, she seemed to have many.
Jon couldn’t find it within himself to blame her for this, despite his multitude of questions that swirled his mind whenever she came within his sights.
But, the eyes.. They were unlike anything he’d seen on a paranormal entity before. Her body, supposedly, was covered in them; the very reason Erin kept herself covered from neck to toe.
Even the majority of her hands save for her fingers.. Had coverings over them, donned by her thumb-holed sleeves.
What didn’t escape his notice though, was that she seemed to try to take control of her physical appearance in regards to the eyes.
She wore many pieces of eye-shaped jewelry.
He supposed it did make some sense, willingly donning yourself with the very thing that was forced onto you.
Personally, Jon didn’t think them all that ugly.
They appeared as tattooed outlines of human eyes, but the head archivist knew they were far deeper than that. Sometimes they escaped her control and contorted into real eyes, blinking and weeping.
She had told him before that the tattoo appearances were a façade that she had learned to conjure.
That she didn’t want them showing at all, but, this was a sort of compromise in case their true appearance were somehow seen despite the modest clothing.
Jon felt for her, in a way. The small, scarred circles that plagued his face and body had given him some insight into how she must feel.
...Yet deeper within himself, he knew it could not compare.
“I found her door eventually. My hands flew to the knob as I had the overwhelming feeling that something was very, very wrong. My heart pounded, it felt like blood was thumping in my ears as this feeling grew so rapidly until suddenly, my head was whispering.. ‘Do not. Turn around.’
I tried the knob again, jiggling fiercely as the hairs on my nape stood as if electrified. I was panicking.
Finally, the door gave way and I stumbled inside Casey’s room. Before I could register the state of the room I turned and slammed the door shut, locked it. There were.. Footsteps, and they stopped just outside the door.
I realized I was crying as I turned again, my back sliding down the door as I hid my face in my arms and sobbed. Sunk down to the floor, I froze as I realized the door was wet.
My back was now wet from whatever it was on the door that I had slid down on.
I slowly looked up to take in the room. The footsteps from the opposite side had stopped.
What I saw when I blinked past my tears and focused on the room.. Jon.. It was..”
She stopped.
His eyes widened when he realized how heavy her breathing had become. Her face, hidden still in her hands.
“It was.. My parents. Well, at least, I am so sure it was them. Casey’s entire room was covered in red.
The walls, the floor, the damn ceiling even; all of it just covered in a thick film of coagulated blood, and there.”
She paused again, tightening her fists more furiously.
“Right in the middle, were two skeletons hung up by the neck on nooses. One more decomposed than the other. One male, one female. And both of them.. They both wore my parents’ wedding bands…
They were the only thing I could focus on at that moment. So long.. So, so long without knowing what had happened to them. How the hell had they ended up there?”
She managed to slow her heaving after a long while.
“I’d been in this house many times before, and especially in Casey’s room. Never has there ever been corpses.. My parents’ corpses in my sister’s fucking room.
That is something I would have very blatantly noticed from the beginning.”
“And.. Where was this house located?”
Jon jotted down most of the dates and specific locations thus far, he knew he’d look into them himself later.
Erin had made him promise that whatever investigations he’d undoubtedly make, that he’d be the only one in the Institute to make them. ‘It’s not that I trust you,’ She had said; ‘It is just that I trust the rest far less.’
“Dean Lane, in Winchester, England. Not too far from the Institute now that I think about it. I guess coming here is something that was always supposed to happen at some point. More so, I think that whatever killed my parents.. What killed me.
I think it wants me to make a statement. That’s probably why I’ve been putting it off for so long. I worry that once I finish this statement, once you start investigating what happened. Start investigating them. That they’ll come here.”
Self-depreciative chuckles quietly left her then, and she shook her head as she finally lifted it up again.
“I don’t want to see them ever again.”
“What happened after your discovery in Casey Lazarus’ room?” He tried to urge her to continue.
This statement was growing a bit too long but vital nonetheless that she finished it.
“Sorry.. I uh. It’s hard to say. All I remember now after seeing the corpses was the door crashing open behind me, and my entire body flew and cracked against the wall.
I hit my head and blood erupted from behind me. Somehow I was levitating against the wall, as if gravity shifted and made the wall the floor; and I was simply laying upon it.
That’s when I saw it, my head throbbed painfully and I could feel my brain bleeding into my skull. My sight was stained red from the blood that seeped through my lashes.
Yet there, in the doorway of Casey- Casey Lazarus’ room were two red figures. From the little that I could manage to see it looked like they were tall, lanky and elongated humanoid figures, they had no discernable facial features at all;
and they were both identically covered in blood.”
Erin breathed the last statement with some sort of verbal finality, and she visibly relaxed.
The head archivist supposed it was because she was close to the end.
“They both moved at the same exact time, without delay from either of them; moving in perfect synchrony. The last thing I saw was their heads turning to look at me, blood dripping from their faceless faces.
I was in so much agony, so sure that every bone in my body was shattered. At that moment, I could only remember my sister, Casey Lazarus. There was so much I wanted to say to her, too much that I still wanted to do with her.
I wasn’t ready.
Then, well...then I died.
I wish I could say that there was some bright light at the end or some heavenly afterlife with radiant gates and blissful smiles.”
Pale arms waved around uselessly as she displayed her blatant satire in regards to the concept of heaven.
Her unsaid meaning uneased Jon and he felt his skin prickle.
“There was not.” She quipped.
“That dark, unending room that I described earlier? Yeah, that’s what it was really like. But.. As I kept walking, suddenly rows of many doors appeared on either side of me.
They stretched on for miles with no walls that connected them.
You could go between each door frame and find that you could simply walk around the back of them. I was confused and disoriented; but I knew that I was dead. This was either hell or purgatory which is all I knew. I was only half right.
It took a few moments, but then the doors all opened simultaneously and before me within each door were flashes of all of my memories. Casey’s birth, my first school play, even the time I screamed at a young, crying Casey for accidentally letting my pet rat loose to run away outside.
Everything I’ve ever known flashed before me in each of these doors as I kept walking. The more I walked, the farther down my life the doors displayed. I don’t know how long I walked for, but it felt like years and seconds at the same time. Then, there was one door that finally caught my attention.
Casey, grown as the last time I saw her was laid unconscious in a hospital bed. I’m not sure if I had a heart anymore at the time but the sight of her felt like my heart was being pulled from my mouth and without thinking I leapt through the door.”
A tear slipped past her eye before she fiercely wiped it away, smoothing her fingers against one of her wrists, as though she was feeling for something.
“Before I knew it, I was in the same hospital room. Glancing at Casey in bed. There was a tube down her throat and gauze wrapped tightly ‘round her wrists. The couple was there, they were both weeping.
I didn’t fully understand the situation and I called out to them. ‘What happened? What did she do? Is she okay? What day is it?’
They didn’t acknowledge me at all.
I was reminded then that I was dead, of course they couldn’t see me.
All I could do by that point was scream with the most rage and helplessness I’d ever felt in my life, yet, all it came out was a shrieking, inhuman sound.
I can’t describe to you in accurate detail how it sounded, but it was like a wounded beast, distorted by tv static. I was startled out of my desperation by a voice.
A small, lost voice.
One that I knew very well.
I turned around, and sure enough; there she was.
My sister.
My dear, beautiful sister. She stood over her lying body, a faded duplicate of herself.
‘Erin.. Am I dead?’ She asked me, her eyes were so wide and she stumbled to embrace me.
She couldn’t.
We merely phased through each other. It was so.. Odd. When her form passed through mine it felt like those lonely, drunken nights I spent curled over a toilet bowl. We both realized as she turned and waved her hand through my own that we could not touch. We both began to cry without tears.”
“‘Casey..’ I looked at her lying body’s wrists. ‘What did you do?’ I asked.
Casey just cried harder.
‘We found you dead in my room. We went to go get ice cream.. But, we came back because I forgot my phone and you.. You were dead Erin. You were dead and bleeding on my floor.’
‘You saw mom and dad then?’ Casey only looked more confused by my question.
‘Mom and daddy are gone Erin, don’t you remember?’ Casey looked at me as though I was spouting nonsense. ‘I didn’t want to live without you Erin. So I- I went to meet you in the After.’”
Erin’s hand swiped over her face, her fingers dragging her eyelids in an unsightly way.
She was tired. Jon knew.
“The After..?” The archivist asked.
“My sister’s version of ‘heaven.’ My family was never the religious type. My mom was some sort of spiritual Agnostic, and my father was more Atheist than anything. I suppose I followed more into my father’s footsteps in regards to belief, or lack thereof. Obviously I’ve changed since then. But Casey, her adoptive parents were teaching her the Christian bible, she grew to like it but never liked the word ‘heaven.’ So she called it, ‘The After.’”
“And how old were you and your sister when you both died?”
“I was 24, I found out later in the hospital room from looking at the calendar and Casey’s chart that she died on the 21st of June. Two days after my death, she was 19.”
“You mentioned Casey Lazarus had a mental illness, did that have to do with her death?”
Jon felt he already knew the answer, but he needed it in verbal verification.
“Casey was diagnosed with Atypical Asperger’s when she was five years old. She was always fairly high-functioning but there were some days that.. Yeah, they were hard to control.”
Jon nodded. “Continue at your ready.”
“After that, it was just endless conversation. Talking while staring over her body. Her pale, lifeless body.
Her long hair had been stained red with her blood. Barely anyone came in or out after two days. Soon Casey began asking questions.
‘So is this the After?’ Was the first.
‘Do you think Mom and Dad are here?’ Then the second.
I didn’t know how to answer any of them.
Soon after that, though; after an hour of sitting by her bed, Casey’s ‘spirit’ form began to...glow. Her EKG monitor began to chirp rapidly after having only displayed a faint heartbeat for two days, she gasped even though we had no breath, and her physical body did the same.
Nurses and Casey’s doctor rushed in as the monitor beeped wildly and her body just started to thrash around.
‘Erin!’ She practically squealed at me. ‘I can see Mom and Dad, Erin!’ I remember she was so joyful about it.
Now me? I didn’t know what to do, but I had the sickening feeling that she was dying; and somehow she was seeing the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ that I never got to see.
I smiled at her, not wanting to ruin her moment of happines; but I really wanted to cry then.
She just- beamed at me; even as a ghost she bounced up and down like a child wanting ‘uppies’ from their mother.
After a short while she finally looked to me and pointed to just beside me. ‘Mom and Dad, Erin! Can’t you see them?’
I shook my head.
Casey’s glowing form frowned and her brows quivered, like she was listening to someone talk. She looked back to me from where she said Mom and Dad were, and said the very last thing I never knew I ever wanted to hear.
‘Mom and Dad say you can’t come home yet Erin.. Why are they saying that?’
I choked.
Darkness felt like hundreds of hands, clawed hands sinking into my skin.
At that moment, I felt that I could believe that it was Mom and Dad. I desperately wanted it to be Mom and Dad.
Casey looked far more sorrowful than ever, and she stepped closer to me. Her radiant light felt.. Warm, somehow.
The first warmth I’ve felt since I died.
With a sudden maturity I’ve never seen from my little sister before, she laid her hand on my shoulder; suddenly able to solidly touch me.
‘Mom and Dad told me that I need to do this for you Erin. That you have a purpose that you need to finish before you come home.’
I was surprised, and awfully confused. ‘A purpose?’ I was bewildered.
‘Say these words, Erin.’ She ignored everything I said and kept on with this..whatever it was.
‘Case-’ I tried, but. She was stubborn.
‘Say them, I don’t have much time. Erin, please.’ Her grip on me grew tighter, more urgent. All I could do was nod by that point.
She then began saying something in Latin, at least I think it was Latin?
I’ve only ever heard it once from a movie. I’m trying to remember the words.”
Dark fingers scratched through her scalp and carded through the short, blonde hair. Her brow furrowed in searching before remembrance glimmered in her eyes. Then her brows furrowed again and she looked up at the archivist.
“I have no idea what they mean. But they’re the reason I’m in this body.” She sucked in a harsh breath.
“Accipio hoc corpus.
Is what Casey said, and soon as I repeated it.. I definitely butchered the pronunciation.. but, my sister faded in a shower of bursting light.
She was gone, and it grew dark.”
Erin waved her hand in no particular direction and sat up straighter.
“Next thing I know, I’m waking up in a hospital bed. Casey’s adoptive parents hovering over me like some wounded lamb. Their faces were tear-stained.
I wanted to vomit.
Very quickly I realized.. I’m in a hospital bed, with Casey’s guardians. I wanted to scream but I was choking on the breathing tube shoved down my throat. My arms tried to pull it out but it was too secure.
I was panicking.
At that point I felt I knew what had transpired but I was too hysterical as I clawed at the tube in my throat. Then again there was that electronically distorted shriek, but at the time I didn’t realize that I was the one making that sound.”
Erin rubbed her arms gingerly, wincing slightly as she skimmed her fingers over the eyes.
“I felt wounds bursting open all over my body. God, the pain was unfathomable. I vaguely Casey's guardians running out of the room in stark fear along with the nurse that ran in trying to keep me from tearing the tube out of my throat."
Erin breathed deeply.
"I blacked out again, when I woke up again I was in my old apartment huddled over the toilet. Throwing up violently. Some part of me was thinking that everything that happened was a dream.
There's no way I died, Casey didn’t die.
Next I was wanting to grab my phone to call Casey.
Now, this was where I had officially confirmed that, no. I definitely did not dream any of it. Standing up, I caught a glimpse of someone in the mirror that did not resemble me. I saw blonde hair, and dark, soulless eyes.
Eyes that were staring right back at me from the mirror.”
She chuckled despite herself, some of her good-hearted nature seeping through to combat the heavy air between them.
“The eyes that I know you hate so much, Jon.”
Jon sputtered with indignance and he glared straight into them purely to make a point.
“I- I don’t hate them. They are just.. Unsettling, at times.”
Erin grinned a toothy smile, her ever-present playful smirk. Jon wanted to swat it off her face with one of the nearby files on his desk.
“Don’t stare too hard Jon, you’re making me blush.” Was the over-confident reply.
“Oh snuff it and continue, your statement has gone long enough already.”
“Putting a timer on someone’s trauma Jon? You practically stalked after me around the Institute for months to get me to agree to making a statement, from what I remember..”
She mocked contemplative consideration as a darkened fingertip brushed across her chin.
“Now, I did not stalk. It was imperative to have your official statement for our records seeing as the anomaly that you are.”
Erin rested her sunken cheek upon her knuckles, regarding this. “Yes.. Anomaly. So I've heard it many times since I’ve been here.”
The archivist knew well that she hated being referred to as anything but another normal human, yet, Jon could find that there was no other way to get her to be serious and focused most times.
After all, she was an anomaly. Whether she accepted it or not. He began fingering through the pages of an old Latin dictionary as she continued to speak.
“I looked in the mirror and saw Casey’s face where I expected mine to be and that sealed the deal. It happened, everything actually happened.
My fingers pressed against my- Casey’s face; and again I was crying. I cursed, threw my belongings everywhere, and destroyed the dusty light fixture that hung broken from the ceiling.
The apartment was my silent prison for over a year, I only ordered delivery; having them always leaving it at the door and my skin hadn’t seen direct sunlight for that year.
Whenever I had my frequent fits of rage the eyes would open and stare at me from wherever they lay burrowed with this new body that I inhabited. Many times I contemplated following after Casey until I would remember her words, ‘I had a purpose.’
That’s when I decided to get off my ass and start living again, even if it was in Casey’s body. To this day I never understood why I couldn’t have my own body back. Perhaps those monsters had destroyed it beyond repair..
I don’t know.
I finally decided to leave that dark, dismal place and cut my hair, covered as much of myself as I could, and discovered I could mask the eyes as tattoos.
From there you know the rest.”
“Yes, but for the recor-”
“For the recording, yes. I know.”
Pale hands and dark fingers waved him off in dismissal.
“2016, after your little run-in with Jane Prentiss is when I discovered the Institute. Michael told me about you lot and well, I decided to come for a visit. After finding out of my abnormal abilities I did not bother to hide from the other ‘paranormal entities’ such as myself.
The things lurking in the dark no longer frightened me. So, when I bumped into Michael.. Well, rather he sought me out; it was not unusual for me as I had seen many like us before already. Michael seemed surprised, the memory of his expression is priceless to this day.
He thought me human, and well, in a way I am human. I breathe, rely on food and water and sleep like any other human like I used to when I was alive in my own body. I am alive, but I am also not completely human.. Anymore.”
This made Jon look up from his reading to regard her,
“So, what are you then?”
She chuckled, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
He sighed with half-hearted exasperation.
“Well, on another note. After some quick research for a translation..” Jon tapped the hardcover of his tome and Erin shifted closer to peer at the contents.
“It seems that the phrase: ‘Accipio hoc corpus,’ quite simply means; ‘I accept this body.’
Casey Lazarus willingly offered her body to your soul for whatever the purpose your.. Parents had made her aware of.”
Dark eyes snapped from the volume’s pages to peer up at him, the hazel pigment not quite reaching her own from the way Jon could see himself mirrored darkly within them.
The pale lips quirked into a weak smile and she muttered;
“So it would seem.”
Jon shook himself from his stupor and rested a calloused fingertip against the smooth plastic button, “Statement ends.”
The button clicked and the film circlets stilled.