Who: Echo and Boyd Langton When: Backdated to Sunday night Where: Her borrowed cabin in the wilderness What: Echo gets haunted by someone she hoped to never see again Rating: Low Status: Closed; Narrative
Echo was never alone, but she was lonely.
Staying by herself in a hunting cabin she’d found wasn’t the way to fix that, she knew, but it simplified matters a whole hell of a lot. It gave her the opportunity to let the others in her mind stretch their legs. Have discussions. Experience the world. Live. Anyone observing her, as one voice told her, would diagnose her with an extremely severe case of MPS. For Echo, it was just her way of dealing with her own not-so-personal ghosts.
“Is that what you’re telling yourself these days?”
The voice was familiar, and the woman knew instantly that she was dreaming, even as she turned and came face to face with the man she’d once trusted. With my life. She also knew, in that instant, that this dream was different from those she’d had before; it was nothing like what she’d experienced in the Attic, the way her dreams normally seemed to go. Another voice in her mind told her that this was a real ghost, not just another piece of her memory.
“How are you here?”
“Uh-uh. That’s not how this works. I ask, you answer, you ask, I answer. At least one of you should know that, Echo,” he chastised her in that gentle way she remembered, eyes warm but still strangely blank. Not how he’d been after being wiped, but just before that, when she’d realized just how twisted he really was. And God helped her, a tiny part of her had missed his voice, just a little. “Or is it Caroline now?”
“She’s here. She’s not happy to see you. In fact, most of us aren’t…but we all know you can’t fight a ghost.” Echo answered simply, studying him, unwilling to take her eyes off of him for even a second. “As for the first question, it’s the easiest way to deal. Your turn.”
He gave a faint chuckle, then spread his hands. “To be honest with you, I’m not really sure. But at least now we know the answer to what happens if you’re a doll when you die. Your spirit doesn’t move on; it just kind of…hangs around. Always.” Stepping closer, one of his large hands lifted and reached out to her face, tucking back a dark stray hair as he narrowed his gaze at the woman whom he, despite everything that had happened and the way she felt, truly did care for, even now. “Haven’t you ever wondered that, Echo? What would happen if you were killed one day, not backed up onto a wedge, the way Paul was. If you and all those in your mind simply…ceased to be. No more eternal life.”
Boyd’s hand fell away, and he studied her curiously. “As for Paul, you don’t even know where he is now, and you don’t let yourself think about him. I wonder how he would feel about that.”
“I think you just answered your own question,” was her response. She deliberately did not back away, not allowing him to intimidate her even though several of her personalities wanted to run. Or fight. “And you have no right to even say his name. Now, is this your current plan? Bug the hell out of me while I’m trying to get a little shut eye? Because as master plans go, it kind of su-“
Her eyes opened suddenly at a sound from outside the cabin. Moving swiftly to the window, Echo picked up a compound bow and eased the shutters open, gaze narrowed when she saw a zombie shambling by. Taking aim, she fired a bolt through its forehead, then turned away from the window to gear up. Echo shoved the dream to the back of her mind, choosing instead to get to work.