A Ghost Story-Claire-Part 1

[black_hat]

Heh, a semi-start of a ghost story for Heroes. 

I've...introduced Sylarspawn. For shame. 

So partish one-ish...

Getting water wasn’t a challenge anymore.

 

The nights were longer, over a period of essence. Claire didn’t know what that meant, what the world was doing to make New York seem like Alaska for months in and out. If she had been able to be choosy, she would have preferred Texas to spend this cold hell in.

 

It was the trees, mostly. The fact that there were none. Instead, there were towers of buildings, remote and colder than the weather, and it made a part of her, as a person, seem incredibly small. Haunted and hunted. Afraid to go outside for the feeling of eyes, of watched-ness.

 

The buildings, the townhouses, and the apartments were empty except for a few permanent tenets. Some people hadn’t gotten out of the city in time before the virus came with the wind. A lot of them, however, had been in the process of doing just that, flooding the tunnels and bridges in their cars.

 

The cars were there at this minute, moment, second, like a still-life of a Dali picture, with warped metal giving them a melted, deranged look. The bodies were mostly gone by now. It had been fifty years later, after all. But yes. The snow had been falling pretty regularly now, and it was ashy, giving to the impression of volcanic ash. Claire knew better than to let it go to waste.

 

Every morning, she would leave metal plates and cooking pots to catch the snow and bring it in to her hidey-hole of a space. She would bottle the melted water, and be safe from the deaths of dehydration.

 

It was very quiet here.

 

&&&

 

She was like a child again, slushing and crunching through the snow in her boots. She walked through the fresh snow, humming to herself and smiling.

 

Claire hadn’t gotten use to…well, used to the idea of nothing mattering. She was purged, is what she was. The buildings, for instance. She had had so many selves in one life. A cheerleader, a daughter, a sister, a freak, a hero, a niece, and a mother. It was hard to believe how much of herself took place entirely out of her body.

 

Life had been one heck of an out of body experience, one big dance on the astral plain. Forever now, all the outer stuff—wiped clean, cut down. Way to be grounded. Forever now, she was an empty building with a few odd memories making some ugly furniture.

 

She hadn’t been able to pass on her lucky genes to her child when the virus hit in its full fury. Sickness. Sick. Depraved.

 

Ah, another self. Her child, her son, had been caught in the process of dying for days. She had been keeping him alive through blood transfusions, so he’d…ended up dying anew. An infant. Two weeks old.  What had she been expected to do? What?

 

It had always been ‘maybe this time, this time it will stick, this time, it will work…’

 

And when she had let him go, well, she couldn’t help but wonder if next time would have been the charm. She was selfish as well, to want a kid to live in a ghost-town of a world. Ironically, another child had almost made the year after the hand of God (as this virus was declared by the newspapers…the end of the world might as well be romantic, if inevitable).

 

A six year old girl. Maya’s child. His child. After her son had been dead in the grave, the girl, born out of a loveless, spiteful mess, kept going, having inherited something from her fucked-up father after all. Sheer endurance, bordering on insect-….

 

Claire winced in present time, straightening her scarf. That was an unkind thought.

 

It was also an unkind fact. At first, everyone had turned to her as the savoir, to her as the cure. Then it didn’t work, stick, take. The virus would outrace her blood, growing faster each time. And then they turned to her, the little girl, gathering around her frantically, as frozen people would around a fire. She had looked like a pincushion, back in those days, and Claire remembered she never complained.

 

So why had she…thought of him at the time, imagining him smirking at them all even in death?

 

It had been the just two of them, after everyone else had left them behind. Two outcasts of a sort, and even though Claire had…resented her…just a little, they had gotten along fine.

 

What had happened to her still made Claire sick at her stomach, sick in her soul, so she turned away from the current train of thought. It had been her fault. She had treated the child like an adult, and the girl had been seven by the time…if she had been more watchful, it wouldn’t have happened, and she wouldn’t be alone.

 

Then again, perhaps Jamie, blessed with a dead man’s name, was the lucky one.

 

Gotten along just fine…the girl with her presence had been the only thing keeping Claire sane. Now, her heart still on a hook, still going and going, her mind—she felt—was starting to fall apart. Just like the cars, the colorful televisions, and the radio…the nuts and bolts were shaking apart. Then again, she was afraid to ask herself: Jamie was going to get old. Would it be her son all over again? When Jamie was eighty and dying, and Claire had the syringe…

 

She realized she had bitten through her lip. She noticed more that…when she turned around to see her footsteps alone, to punish herself, to drive it relentlessly home, there were drops of blood in the snow.

 

Stop scaring

 

&&&

 

“…Yourself, please,” Clare said, her hands on her hips, trying to portray intimidation. “It’s freaking me out.”

 

It had worked, always, on Lyle. This, however, was different because Lyle had been laboring under the false idea that Claire could impose a rigorous silent treatment.

 

Jamie was quite aware of how much Claire needed her. The seven year old, who, yes, did need braces, grinned at her, upside down. For some reason, the kid always wanted to hang upside from something. Today, it was the edge of the bed, and her long, dark hair mopped along the floor as she laughed. Delighted.

 

“I really did hear something,” Jamie said, switching to being dead serious, her frown, from this angle, a smile. “Up above us.”

 

“Kid, you need a hearing aid. It was probably a cat, or something.”

 

“Or something,” Jamie intoned, her eyes widening behind her glasses.

 

“Look, I know you’re bored. But I don’t want you to get scared. Honestly. We just have to keep it together until…”

 

That did kill the playful mood. “No one is coming, auntie Claire.”

 

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, and went back to her normal activity of trying to make soup. The city had been down for eleven months. People had been dead for eleven months. She was trying to keep busy, until someone came for them. Of course, she kept her ability in mind, but surely someone else had to have survived. Someone else had figured out a cure, even though…nobody here could.

 

“Why don’t we leave, auntie?  I mean, what if we are supposed to go to them? Besides, I hate this city. Hate it.”

 

“I said, knock it off. Claire. Just Claire. Is that so hard to do? I’m not freaking Mary Poppins.”

 

“Yeess, tis hard to do. But okay, Just Claire. Everyday Claire.”

 

She froze. Possibly that last bit was unintentional, but she couldn’t hold back her anger as she placed the spoon hard on the counter and wheeled towards the door.

 

 “I mean it,” Claire bit out, gripping the frames of the door so hard that her hands actually did hurt. “If you’d just think—think!— about it, you’d realize that my little brother is dead. I could have been…would have been an aunt, okay. So. Stop being a brat!”

 

She turned to the stove, relieved when silence actually existed, but then when she turned back, she saw the lump under the covers. Oh great.

 

“Hey,” she soothed, walking toward the bed. Hesitantly. “I didn’t mean…um, I’m sorry, I’m…”

 

The lump quivered. “You’re not…you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s me.” 

 

“No…” came a whisper. “I’m…”

 

“What?” Claire asked, and lifted off the covers. The floral pattern on them seemed ridiculous. The whole apartment was so otherworldly, with other people’s pictures and scents and essences, that she felt like a criminal. Now, she was—to add—an abusive criminal at that.

 

Out came a ruffled, sniffling, little girl, and her heart gave a twinge.

 

“Annoying you.”

 

“No. Absolutely not,” she hurried to say, and gathered her up in a hug. She supposed she was not comforting, as Jamie burst into true tears. Her shoulder was already getting wet.

 

“Hey,” she repeated awkwardly. “Everything’s going to be all right, I promise.”

 

There was a muffled, wet sputtering in reply, drowned in little girl sorrows, and Claire pushed her away a bit in order to understand her.

 

“It’s not, it’s not, it’s not,” Jamie repeated, her eyes now totally haunted. “No, no, no. Everything, everybody, it’s so bad. I don’t want to stay here, anymore, I think there’s someone here.”

 

Inwardly, Claire groaned. She didn’t want to totally regress and say ‘told you so’ but…Jamie was always so inclined to become freaked out. Sometimes by mere self-suggestion. Like so.

 

And the last thing she needed was a panic-stricken seven year old bouncing off the walls in terror. She felt stupid, like she was keeping the end of the world, or the end of people, rather, a secret when Jamie could merely look outside and see.

 

Pay no attention to the idiot behind the curtain, please!

 

“Now, I guarantee there is no body in this building. I would have seen them by now. And they would have approached us by now. It’s been too long without other people…” She grimaced. Yeah, she was making this so much better. “I promise. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

 

“But I can’t do the same for you,” the kid lamented, and Claire was rather shocked by her sincerity. “I can’t. I’m so…”

 

“You’re a sweet, awesome, great person. I couldn’t have gotten through this without you, Jamie. I don’t know what I would have done.”

 

“R-really?”

 

“Yeah, really,” Claire answered, and hugged her again. The shivering in her back subsided, but only just.

 

“I…set traps,” Jamie admitted, in a confidential tone.

 

“….Come again?”

 

“Tape. I put a piece of tape on the door. And it fell off. It was on the floor this morning. We didn’t go out, did we, au—Claire?”

 

“Um, you put it there last night?”

 

“Uh-huh,” was the reply, with a vigorous nod.

 

“Well. Well, no. But tape isn’t that…sticky, it could fall off really easily?” Grasping at straws? Check.

 

“And before, I put a quarter out in the hallway. A week ago. And it was gone too!”

 

“Okay, that was probably me bumping it with my foot, Jamie!” Claire protested. “If you go looking for something like that too hard, you will find it.”

 

“It found me, though. I think they are watching me through the vents. I don’t like it, so I…”

 

Ah. That’s why Jamie had been on the couch. It wasn’t because it was more comfortable than the kid’s room…damn. How unobservant had she been?

 

Claire placed her hands against the girl’s cheeks, and saw near-hysteria in dark, solemn eyes. She wondered how she could think anything else of Jamie, that she wasn’t just a sweet, scared kid. It kind of made her afraid of herself, a much more ever-present fear than vent-people.

 

“You should have come to me if you were so afraid. I’m here for you, and-.”

 

“No!” Claire jerked back, stunned. Jamie bounced off the bed, her eyes seeming to glow and her hair every which way.

 

“If you don’t believe me, then you can’t help me! That’s what they want!”

 

“Who are they?” she demanded, hitting her lap with her fists, losing her temper in pieces. Piece by slow piece.

 

“Everyone went somewhere else! Where do you think they went?! Mom told me. She said she’d never leave me! Well! There you go, that’s where they all are, in the walls, and they come out at night!”

 

She gaped, feeling absolutely ill. She had really let Maya down. She had dropped the ball so badly it made her head spin.

 

“That’s it. We are leaving. I mean it, when the snow clears up, we are gone.”

 

“Won’t help,” Jamie insisted, smug with her religious fatalism.

 

“Then let them look,” she replied, almost as smug. “Let them try to mess with us.”

 

Jamie looked awed, tilting her head thoughtfully, looking small and bird-like with her defined cheekbones. Already, as a kid, Claire could tell she would be a beauty. A wigged out beauty, but hey. No one would be around to see.

 

Another wince, another digging of nails into her palms.

 

“Meanwhile, we are going outside for today,” she forced herself to say, becoming a cheerleader for a losing team. “Get your coat. We are going to have a snowball fight, and the winner gets to decide what to watch tonight.”

 

Videos upon videos, there had been a war waged between the two, pretty much nightly. Cartoons versus actual people, nature shows versus reality television, etcetera.

 

“How about for the week…”

 

“Oh, confident are you! You are totally going to lose!” Claire jumped up and ran for her coat.

 

“Hey, that’s not fair!”

 

She laughed as Jamie struggled with her coat, which she was already outgrowing with gangly arms and all.

 

“Boots, too! And a scarf! And some mittens!”

 

Jamie scowled, and battled with her boots. They weren’t her size. Claire borrowed them from this family’s closet. A bit…uncomfortable, but necessary. It was really kind of sad, in a way, more for Jamie than those long gone. Most of what this girl revolved out of was connected to death. Now, past the name, which…Claire wondered why such a thing was necessary.

 

That wasn’t. This, she knew, and felt as if maybe the name alone had locked Jamie in with her, side by side. It was as if they were the ones who were dead and forgotten…

 

“I’m not wearing a scarf. It could get caught and strangle me.”

 

She winced as if struck. “Er, okay. Fine.”

 

Claire turned away, and shifted from foot to foot. Thinking about what to do with what appeared to be a problem in a few days. Give or take.

 

“Maybe we’ll go in a week. Snow or no snow…” she muttered, really seeing how it sounded out-loud more than anything else.

 

“Where?”

 

She smiled, shrugging, ignoring the desperate knowledge that eventually, Jamie would go somewhere while she was pretty much

 

&&&

 

Null and void.

 

The old elevator shaft greeted her like an old friend, and she gave it wide berth. Fifty years later, the elevator had remained in the same spot, caught between floors. She expected it to fall, but Claire hoped to be gone before then.

 

She didn’t know why she stayed here. There were plenty of houses to occupy. In fact, she could travel, go any place she pleased. She felt like the only reason was not to forget.

 

Opening the lonely apartment, Claire walked in and looked around. She did this, each time, every day. It made her feel as ghostly as possible, and she thought, in her sixty seven year old wisdom, that perhaps there was a point to people in the walls.

 

Or vents.

 

It had a sense of being, the vents. A breath-like flow, reliably, coming out of pitch. Sure. Why not?

 

Only she didn’t see it then, and now, it was much too late, as it always was.

 

She had no purpose.  None. The virus had killed birds, you see, and the old pigeon coup that Peter had shown her once was full of a litter of bones. Dogs, too. Dog-gone.

 

Claire laughed, at nothing, and turned to go to bed. But out of nothing, there was a strange guilt. She had…um-well-kinda killed someone. And if anything, even out of nothing, there should be retribution.

 

This, she believed.

 

So, always, as she lay in bed, and it grew quiet, she would stare at the vents.

 

And wait.