April 7th, 1891 - An Inn in Muggle London
CONTENT WARNING - This thread is marked M to encompass likely discussions of depression, trauma, and suicidal ideation. (I'll slap additional warnings on top of particularly heinous posts, but this is a blanket heads up.)
Cash woke up screaming for the fourth night in a row, thrashing in his sheets, pulse racing.
His room was soundproofed and had been for years — no one came in running, no one could hear him, the sense that he wasn't alone when he woke up was surely just a side effect of whatever nightmare had woken him up. It took a few minutes for his heart rate to slow down, and he settled back into his bed. He rolled over to look out the window and try to fall back asleep, but there was still that anxiety-inducing sense that someone was here, watching him.
He watched the gas lamp out the window for long enough that the sky turned to predawn and started to gray. The time didn't do anything for his unease — if anything, the anxiety was sinking in bone-deep. Fuck. Cash rolled over and clawed in the drawer of his nightstand for his wand and one of the cigarettes he'd already rolled. He sat up and lit the cigarette with a silent spell, and took a drag from it.
The gray light of London before sunrise and the soft glow from the end of his cigarette illuminated it. There was a fuzzy black ball — it looked almost composed of static, although Cash was having a hard time looking at it directly — floating above the end of Cash's bed, and he stared at it almost blankly. He expected it to vanish. He'd never hallucinated visually before, but maybe it would just vanish.
It didn't vanish. He rubbed at his eyes and let smoke curl towards the ceiling, and the ball stayed there. The longer he looked at it, the more anxious he felt — emptied out, like it was dragging everything he was towards it. He looked out the window and then back at the ball, and it remained.
—
By the time the sun actually rose, Cash knew that the dark mass was real. When he reached to touch it his hand felt both chilled and as if it had been shocked by static electricity, and the longer he looked at it the emptier he felt. He waited out Lucius' departure — usually Cash didn't rise until his father left to do Lucius things, anyways — before he actually rolled out of bed, the butt of his earlier cigarette stubbed out on his nightstand. Cash dressed hurriedly. He left his room and closed the door tight behind him. Maybe they just had a — ghoul or something, although he had never heard of a ghoul like this.
He caught the last quarter hour of breakfast with Belphoebe, and managed to make appropriate small talk even though most of his mind was committed to figuring out what was going on his bedroom. As she rose to leave, Cash managed to tell her that he was going to that evening, and expected he may be out late — not because he'd had any previous plans to go to Excalibur's, but because he could not imagine facing the thing in his bedroom sober.
A few minutes after she left, Cash felt the same sense that he was being undone. With alarm, he turned around — and saw the same fizzling orb of blackness, behind him again.
Fuck.
—
By mid-morning, Cash established that the ball would appear wherever he went, and that it was making him feel — crazy. He smoked and tried to figure out what to do about this, how to handle it, because clearly it needed to be handled. He couldn't go to practice like this. He couldn't go anywhere like this, because — normal respectable people who had their shit together weren't haunted by random acts of the universe, this didn't happen to people.
He scrawled off a letter to Gallivan which hopefully encompassed everything he needed to say — something had come up, he couldn't come to practice, he'd see him later. He might have to come up with an excuse later because it would become abundantly clear that no Lestranges were dead, but that wasn't the first concern. He just had to tell Gallivan he wasn't skipping practice, not on purpose, and then he just had to figure out a way to get rid of this thing.
He knew someone who could handle hauntings.
He did.
He hadn't actually talked to Greengrass since the whole weird thing with dinner, although he wasn't avoiding him — they just hadn't run into one another at the club. And so Cash felt guilty about reaching out to him over this but what else was he supposed to do, just walk around with this thing appearing behind him, unbidden?
Cash had to go to the post office for this, no longer having his owl, and apparated from the sidewalk outside the Lestrange house so that he could beat the orb to following him. He mailed the letter swiftly and apparated again, finding an inn he sometimes walked past, and paid for a room with the same sense of urgency. It was less that he was planning on staying there and more that he needed somewhere sans magic to figure this out, because he didn't need rumors going around about this. His owl could find him there whenever Gallivan replied, and then he could use it — or the post office owl, or a Ministry owl, it didn't matter — to reply to Greengrass.
He bought a large bottle of gin on the way. Just in case.
—
And that was where he waited, rolling cigarettes and smoking them until the room felt hazy with it, replying to Greengrass' notes and trying to think about something other than the staticky ball. He was drinking the gin, but slowly — Cash had some vague idea that some gin would take the edge off of whatever was going on with the orb, and that too much gin would just make him more panicky.
He got a reply from Gallivan, tucked it into the pocket of his jacket, which eventually Cash draped over the chair at the desk in the room. He tried casting lumos on the ball, as if that would make it go away, and felt as if his head was splitting. He laid on the made bed in the inn and blew smoke rings at the ceiling.
He told Greengrass that the orb wasn't dangerous, and he was not sure that it was the truth — he was just sure that he didn't want a Ministerial record of himself being followed around by it. And the orb didn't feel dangerous. It was leaving him alone, other than hovering around in a corner of the room, as if it was waiting for time to tick by, too.
That was before Cash started replaying some of the worst things he'd ever done, or which had been done to him, on a jumped-up loop in his brain, anyways. The girls he'd been talking to for Lucius — a screaming match with Eli he didn't really remember — the danger he was very quietly putting Gallivan in just by continuing to kiss him — a replay of some of his most gruesome Quidditch injuries, almost like he could still feel them.
A door blasting off the hinges and then —
He drank more of the gin. He kept the room dark, although the blinds were up — he didn't want to light any of the candles and he didn't trust himself to cast magic with that thing hovering in the corner. He rolled cigarettes faster than he could smoke them, as if that would get him out of his own head. His pulse was racing again.
A knock came to the door, finally. Cash got off of the bed — it was vaguely rumpled now, because he'd been lying on it for so long, but Cash was vaguely rumpled now too. He held his cigarette between his teeth as he fumbled with the latch and unlocked it, and there was Greengrass, he'd almost felt like he wouldn't ever come, but he was here and maybe it would be easy to get rid of the — whatever this was.
"Hey," Cash said, trying for a smile, as if this was normal. He did feel a faint burst of hope because if Greengrass was here that meant he wasn't alone. He stepped aside to let Greengrass in through the door, glancing over his shoulder at the thing in the corner.
Maybe this would be easy to handle, now that Greengrass was actually here.
He didn't trust that it would be easy.
His room was soundproofed and had been for years — no one came in running, no one could hear him, the sense that he wasn't alone when he woke up was surely just a side effect of whatever nightmare had woken him up. It took a few minutes for his heart rate to slow down, and he settled back into his bed. He rolled over to look out the window and try to fall back asleep, but there was still that anxiety-inducing sense that someone was here, watching him.
He watched the gas lamp out the window for long enough that the sky turned to predawn and started to gray. The time didn't do anything for his unease — if anything, the anxiety was sinking in bone-deep. Fuck. Cash rolled over and clawed in the drawer of his nightstand for his wand and one of the cigarettes he'd already rolled. He sat up and lit the cigarette with a silent spell, and took a drag from it.
The gray light of London before sunrise and the soft glow from the end of his cigarette illuminated it. There was a fuzzy black ball — it looked almost composed of static, although Cash was having a hard time looking at it directly — floating above the end of Cash's bed, and he stared at it almost blankly. He expected it to vanish. He'd never hallucinated visually before, but maybe it would just vanish.
It didn't vanish. He rubbed at his eyes and let smoke curl towards the ceiling, and the ball stayed there. The longer he looked at it, the more anxious he felt — emptied out, like it was dragging everything he was towards it. He looked out the window and then back at the ball, and it remained.
—
By the time the sun actually rose, Cash knew that the dark mass was real. When he reached to touch it his hand felt both chilled and as if it had been shocked by static electricity, and the longer he looked at it the emptier he felt. He waited out Lucius' departure — usually Cash didn't rise until his father left to do Lucius things, anyways — before he actually rolled out of bed, the butt of his earlier cigarette stubbed out on his nightstand. Cash dressed hurriedly. He left his room and closed the door tight behind him. Maybe they just had a — ghoul or something, although he had never heard of a ghoul like this.
He caught the last quarter hour of breakfast with Belphoebe, and managed to make appropriate small talk even though most of his mind was committed to figuring out what was going on his bedroom. As she rose to leave, Cash managed to tell her that he was going to that evening, and expected he may be out late — not because he'd had any previous plans to go to Excalibur's, but because he could not imagine facing the thing in his bedroom sober.
A few minutes after she left, Cash felt the same sense that he was being undone. With alarm, he turned around — and saw the same fizzling orb of blackness, behind him again.
Fuck.
—
By mid-morning, Cash established that the ball would appear wherever he went, and that it was making him feel — crazy. He smoked and tried to figure out what to do about this, how to handle it, because clearly it needed to be handled. He couldn't go to practice like this. He couldn't go anywhere like this, because — normal respectable people who had their shit together weren't haunted by random acts of the universe, this didn't happen to people.
He scrawled off a letter to Gallivan which hopefully encompassed everything he needed to say — something had come up, he couldn't come to practice, he'd see him later. He might have to come up with an excuse later because it would become abundantly clear that no Lestranges were dead, but that wasn't the first concern. He just had to tell Gallivan he wasn't skipping practice, not on purpose, and then he just had to figure out a way to get rid of this thing.
He knew someone who could handle hauntings.
He did.
He hadn't actually talked to Greengrass since the whole weird thing with dinner, although he wasn't avoiding him — they just hadn't run into one another at the club. And so Cash felt guilty about reaching out to him over this but what else was he supposed to do, just walk around with this thing appearing behind him, unbidden?
Cash had to go to the post office for this, no longer having his owl, and apparated from the sidewalk outside the Lestrange house so that he could beat the orb to following him. He mailed the letter swiftly and apparated again, finding an inn he sometimes walked past, and paid for a room with the same sense of urgency. It was less that he was planning on staying there and more that he needed somewhere sans magic to figure this out, because he didn't need rumors going around about this. His owl could find him there whenever Gallivan replied, and then he could use it — or the post office owl, or a Ministry owl, it didn't matter — to reply to Greengrass.
He bought a large bottle of gin on the way. Just in case.
—
And that was where he waited, rolling cigarettes and smoking them until the room felt hazy with it, replying to Greengrass' notes and trying to think about something other than the staticky ball. He was drinking the gin, but slowly — Cash had some vague idea that some gin would take the edge off of whatever was going on with the orb, and that too much gin would just make him more panicky.
He got a reply from Gallivan, tucked it into the pocket of his jacket, which eventually Cash draped over the chair at the desk in the room. He tried casting lumos on the ball, as if that would make it go away, and felt as if his head was splitting. He laid on the made bed in the inn and blew smoke rings at the ceiling.
He told Greengrass that the orb wasn't dangerous, and he was not sure that it was the truth — he was just sure that he didn't want a Ministerial record of himself being followed around by it. And the orb didn't feel dangerous. It was leaving him alone, other than hovering around in a corner of the room, as if it was waiting for time to tick by, too.
That was before Cash started replaying some of the worst things he'd ever done, or which had been done to him, on a jumped-up loop in his brain, anyways. The girls he'd been talking to for Lucius — a screaming match with Eli he didn't really remember — the danger he was very quietly putting Gallivan in just by continuing to kiss him — a replay of some of his most gruesome Quidditch injuries, almost like he could still feel them.
A door blasting off the hinges and then —
He drank more of the gin. He kept the room dark, although the blinds were up — he didn't want to light any of the candles and he didn't trust himself to cast magic with that thing hovering in the corner. He rolled cigarettes faster than he could smoke them, as if that would get him out of his own head. His pulse was racing again.
A knock came to the door, finally. Cash got off of the bed — it was vaguely rumpled now, because he'd been lying on it for so long, but Cash was vaguely rumpled now too. He held his cigarette between his teeth as he fumbled with the latch and unlocked it, and there was Greengrass, he'd almost felt like he wouldn't ever come, but he was here and maybe it would be easy to get rid of the — whatever this was.
"Hey," Cash said, trying for a smile, as if this was normal. He did feel a faint burst of hope because if Greengrass was here that meant he wasn't alone. He stepped aside to let Greengrass in through the door, glancing over his shoulder at the thing in the corner.
Maybe this would be easy to handle, now that Greengrass was actually here.
He didn't trust that it would be easy.
MJ made this!
