The air temperature drops sharply about ten feet into the cave, leaving Austin shivering, goosebumps rising on every inch of exposed skin. He can see his own breath in front of him, hanging in the air in a cloud of condensation. Richard and Naberius don’t seem to notice. Austin rubs his arms, then brings his hands up to his face and breathes into them, trying to keep his fingers from going numb around the handle of the flashlight. Naberius gives him a curious look.
“Is something wrong?”
“It’s cold,” Austin says shortly, trying to keep his teeth from chattering. “Probably means there’s a spirit nearby, or -”
A wave of nausea washes over him, hard and sudden enough to make him double over and drop the flashlight. The ground feels like it’s tilting under his feet. Austin digs the toes of his shoes into the dirt, wrapping his arms around himself and gagging as bile rises in his mouth. In the next second, he’s throwing up, his vision graying around the edges as he lurches forward. His throat spasms and his stomach roils until there’s nothing left in it, and Austin’s dry heaving on his hands and knees.
There’s a pressure in his head that reminds him of the way the lake felt, before it possessed him. He can feel something inside the mine, not very far ahead, something big and destructive and wrong. Every part, every muscle, every molecule of his body is screaming not to go any farther. Austin gulps in deep breaths, trying to go slow, clenching his hands in the dirt until grime and dust is embedded under his fingernails. He blinks hard several times and wills himself to stand up, using the wall of the tunnel as a crutch to support his weight as his knees threaten to buckle underneath of him.
“You okay, Aust?” Richard asks, hovering over him in concern.
Austin nods mutely. He takes a tentative step forwards, then another, and another, before letting go of the wall. He’s expecting another wave of nausea to hit right away, but it never comes. Before he knows it, he’s yards away from the spot he threw up.
“What happened?” Naberius asks, once Austin is walking relatively normally. He’s picked up the flashlight and is holding it behind Austin, the beam of light bobbing jauntily as he walks.
Austin shrugs. “I get these, uh, premonitions sometimes, I guess? It’s kind of like a danger sense, when something really bad is about to happen, or something powerful is close by. I got it when I went to the lake house, too.”
It’s still freezing cold in the mine shaft, and he shivers, rubbing his arms again. The tunnel is strangely blurry up ahead, like it’s filling up with fog. Austin checks the walls for the entrance to the offshoot tunnel, the one that leads to the part of the mine where Otter attacked him and Rabbit, but it’s nowhere in sight, even though he must be close by now. The fog gets even denser in the few moments that he’s paused to look around, until he can barely see his hand in front of his face. The beam of the flashlight does nothing to cut through it.
“Do you see this?” he asks Naberius, glancing at the demon over his shoulder. Naberius nods slowly, his mouth drawing up into a puzzled frown.
“Is this unnatural?”
“For a mine shaft? Very.” Austin looks up at Richard, who looks equally confused. “What do you think?”
Richard rubs a hand over his mouth in thought. “Spiritual activity, definitely. But you’d think something that required a blood sacrifice would manifest more physically than this.”
Right. This seems more like normal ghost behavior than a bunch of dead souls glued together into one entity. Austin’s stomach still feels sensitive, ready to clench up again at a moment’s notice, but he tries to breathe past it, letting the residual nausea roll through him. His throat is tight, and he swallows to try and open it up, wincing at the acrid taste in his mouth.
“Hello?” he calls out into the thick clouds of mist. “Is someone there?”
“Oh,” the mist says back to him. “Um, yeah. I think I am.” It pauses. “Let me - uh - I’m not really sure how this whole thing works, but -”
The mist begins to consolidate, compacting itself into a vague blob that gradually begins to look more humanoid, sprouting limbs, then a head, then hands and feet. The final product is a chubby teenage boy with glasses and acne scars, hovering about a foot off the ground, curly hair drifting around his face in a weightless nimbus. Concern is etched into his features as he looks at Austin, Richard, and Naberius, and he fidgets, scratching the back of his neck, saying nothing.
“You’re one of the teenagers who died here, I’m guessing,” Austin says bluntly.
The boy smiles. He looks washed-out, like an aged photograph. Most new ghosts do. His color, and his ability to stay humanoid, will probably come back gradually, as he gets used to being incorporeal.
“That’s me,” the boy says. “I’m Al. Uh, nice to meet you, I guess. Though, not really.”
He gives a nervous little chuckle. As the last of the mist dissipates, wounds starts to surface on his body - long, bleeding gouge marks on his arms and legs and throat. Austin winces. He knows those will go away in time, too, but they’re not pretty to look at.
“How many ghosts are in this town?” Naberius asks, his voice carefully polite. Austin laughs.
“Do you want an exact number?”
“Well, I -”
“I’m kidding. I don’t know. A lot, though.”
“Ah.” Naberius hums pensively. “Well, someone should report this town to Death and the Reapers, but that isn’t my responsibility.”
“I don’t know about any of that stuff,” Al says, “but you guys probably shouldn’t be in here. Unless you’re trying to get yourselves killed, which really isn’t any of my business, I guess.”
“We’re not,” Austin assures him. “Actually, I’m trying to get rid of the thing that killed you.”
Al blinks, his face shifting from worried to surprised. “Oh. Well, uh. Good. I mean, you still probably shouldn’t get near it, but -”
“Do you know where it is?” Richard asks gently.
“Yeah. I mean it hasn’t really moved since…” Al grimaces. “Well, since it killed everyone. It’s back in there. I think maybe it went to sleep or something.”
He jabs a thumb over his shoulder, pointing into the darkness. Naberius raises the beam of the flashlight a little, letting it bounce off the uneven walls and wooden beams, illuminating nothing but more of the tunnel. Austin strains his eyes for any sign of something else, and suddenly feels sick again. He puts a hand on Naberius’s arm as his vision begins to gray out.
Naberius looks down at him curiously. “Are you going to throw up again?”
“Hopefully not,” Austin grunts, closing his eyes and clenching his teeth. It’s a struggle to get words out without vomit coming along with them.
“I told you, that thing up there is really bad,” Al insists, his voice a little shriller than before. “I don’t want you all to have to die like the rest of us did just because you’re trying to get rid of it. Can’t you just rope off the mine or something? I don’t think anyone else will want to throw parties in here after what happened last night.”
“I’m fine,” Austin says, breathing hard. “I’ve seen worse. I’ve fought worse.” He digs his nails into Naberius’s arm and takes a shaky step forward. “Let’s go.”
“Are you sure?” Naberius asks, more curious than concerned, at the same time as Richard says a low, hesitant “Austin -”
“Let’s go,” Austin insists, dragging Naberius forward with him as he keeps walking. If he focuses on the ground, on his shoes slapping against the dirt in between the mine cart tracks, the nausea isn’t so bad.
“Good luck,” Al calls after them, faintly. Austin can’t help but turn around and look, but the boy is already gone again, vanished into mist.
1) wow austin is just like me fr fr (the throwing up) 2) austin jones wins self sacrificing idiot award for the 10th year in a fucking row