He Should Probably Get Checked Out
Lockwood would never admit it, but he was hurting. He probably should have gone to the hospital, or at least a doctor, just so he could get properly examined—especially his ribs, his ribs practically burned whenever he inhaled too deeply. But no, he’d just brushed off their worries and walked it off, however ungracefully. He knew the others could tell, with their looks of concern whenever he tried to suppress a wince or plastered on his usual mask just a bit more than usual. But what was done was done, and now they were on a job and they couldn’t do anything about it. Maybe if it got too much worse he’d go to get checked out in the morning. As for now, he’d just have to deal with it.
Placing down the chains was difficult, considering how heavy they were, but he knew if they were dealing with at least one Poltergeist (and possibly something else), he would need them. After all, filings wouldn’t do anything against a Poltergeist when they could just blow them away. He carefully placed the chains down in a circle close to the door, giving himself enough space to be able to exit quickly if needed. Lockwood could hear the others doing the same across the hall in the office. He smirked at the sound of George’s muffled grumbling, Lucy presumably making him do all the work whilst she honed in with her Talent.
As for his own Talent, Lockwood hadn’t seen a death glow in the bedroom just yet, but the muffled glow underneath the closet door told him one was there. After making sure his chains were in place, he pulled out his rapier and began to creep towards the door. It was just past eight, so it was doubtful he would need to use his weapon, but it was better safe than sorry.
A creaking floorboard made him flinch, but he kept moving forward. The last steps to the closet definitely felt different in comparison with the rest of the room, the surrounding air a little colder and giving off slight waves of malaise. Even the door handle was chilled, but not yet frosted over. Lockwood suspected that it would be later in the night, during the height of the ghost’s power.
Carefully turning the handle, Lockwood slowly pulled the closet open, painfully aware of the squeaking noise the hinges made. As soon as he caught even a glimpse inside the small space, brilliant light cast across his vision, blinding him. He staggered back a bit, blinking hard to try and dissolve the image of the death glow that was practically burned into his retinas.
“Shit,” Lockwood murmured as he quickly shoved his rapier back onto his belt, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand. His head ached from the sight, the death glow so strong that he would probably be feeling the effects until morning. “Ow.”
Stumbling back over to his chains, Lockwood gave himself a moment to settle. He abruptly dropped down into the circle, wincing at how he’d aggravated his bruised body by doing so. After a few seconds of just letting himself breathe, Lockwood patted down his pockets to check for his sunglasses. He cursed when he came up empty.
With a dramatic sigh, Lockwood gingerly stood up, blinking a bit more as he got to his feet. Hopefully he still had his spare sunglasses downstairs in his kit, because otherwise, he’d probably go blind before the end of the night.
“You alright, Lockwood?” came Lucy’s voice from across the hall once he’d exited the bedroom. She was standing in the doorway, looking like she had been about to head over before she’d spotted him. She’d probably heard him when he’d dropped to the floor.
“Yeah, just… Need my sunglasses. Found a death glow,” Lockwood explained, squinting at Lucy in the darkness of the hall. “Hopefully it won’t get too much brighter tonight.”
“That bad?”
Lockwood gave her a half-hearted chuckle before beginning his trek downstairs. “Barely opened the door and it blinded me.”
“Where was it?” Lucy softly called after him, still at the top of the stairs.
“Closet. I think I might’ve left it open, actually,” he responded, incredibly thankful for how the rest of the house was almost entirely dark as he descended the steps. It was still relatively early, but the sun had already gone down and none of them had bothered to turn any lights on. Artificial light and electricity did tend to mess with their Talents, after all.
Luckily for Lockwood, he did have an extra pair of sunglasses in his bag. And they weren’t even broken this time—wonderful. He pocketed them as he made his way back towards the staircase, doing a quick sweep of the ground floor just in case there was anything Mrs. Greenberg had neglected to mention. Lockwood didn’t want to come across another blinding death glow unprepared.
He’d been glancing over the living room when he suddenly heard a door slam and a yelp. Jumping back from the magazine he’d been examining, Lockwood looked up. It sounded like it came from upstairs.
Lockwood swiftly returned to the staircase, rushing up the steps two at a time with his long legs. “Lucy? George?” he called out as he reached the top, finding the office door shut. He tried the doorknob to no avail. “Shit. Guys? Are you in there?”
He could hear muffled shouts from the other side, followed by a loud crashing. Lockwood struggled to push down the panic that threaten to crash over him as he pounded on the door, shouting for his friends.
“George! Lucy! Someone say something!”
Bruises be damned, Lockwood started throwing himself against the wood, trying desperately to break the door down. He could hear more crashing, more shouting, but no words that he could make out.
“Fuck!” he cried out, his efforts to break down the door useless. He checked his watch, finding it was barely even nine. How the hell was the Visitor this powerful already? Usually it took at least another hour or so for them to be strong enough to start closing doors.
Cursing, Lockwood turned around, catching a glimpse of the bedroom across the hall. It was dark inside. No, not just dark—it was pitch black. He hadn’t been in there for a little while, but Lockwood knew it wouldn’t have gotten that dark in the span of less than an hour. Something was off. He crept forward, pulling out his rapier and letting his body get back into the stance he found so natural.
When he reached the doorframe, the blackness rippled.
Shit. He’d really been hoping that the second ghost wouldn’t be a Type Two as well.
Looking down, Lockwood could see that the chains were the only part of the room not covered in the pitch black. The Visitor couldn’t cross over them. Thank god for him having put them in front of the door. He stepped into the circle, careful not to disturb the chains. So long as he stayed there, he couldn’t be touched.
Lockwood thrust his rapier into the cloud of darkness, watching cautiously as it retreated a bit farther back. Definitely a Dark Specter. He pulled out a salt bomb and tossed it into the dark, feeling a sense of satisfaction when the cloud quickly shrunk into the corner of the room, revealing the bright death glow still visible from the closet.
Oh, great—the dark shadowy Visitor was also the one with the brightest death glow. If Lockwood put his sunglasses on and it attacked, he wouldn’t be able to see the thing. But if he kept them off, he’d be blinded by the death glow. Wonderful situation, it was.
Lockwood’s attention was brought back to the office across the hallway when something smashed against the door from the inside, audibly weakening the frame. Immediately, he jumped out of his circle and rushed over, smashing his shoulder against it at full speed. Lockwood felt something give, but whether it was his shoulder or the door, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was he could clearly hear the others now, along with the crashing of furniture and books.
“Lucy! George!” he shouted as he ran at the door again, this time for sure feeling the door give a little against the force of his entire body weight.
“Lockwood!” Lucy yelled back, sounding panicked. “Wait!”
Her cry came too late, unfortunately, as Lockwood had already thrown himself against the door a third time, finally breaking through. Before he had even gotten a glimpse of the room, he was immediately being blown back, the force of the Poltergeist enough to throw him into the bedroom.
Right past the chains…
…And straight into the wall.
Lockwood heard the sharp crack of his skull against the plaster more than he felt it, but that was really only because he had immediately started to lose consciousness as he slid down the wall. He distantly heard the yells of his friends as his vision went black, likely a mixture of both his incoming loss of consciousness and the cloud of the Dark Specter in the room with him.