Lucy's Day Off (A Lockwood and Co. Fanfiction)

Chapter 8

Lucy's pov

The ribbon inside the silver glass flared a bright red all of a sudden. The whispers were beginning to increase in volume in my head; I could start to make out the words.

"It was an accident..."

Somehow, that voice seemed familiar. But honestly, I didn't care. There was so much pressure on my head that I just wanted to fall down on my knees. If this ghost was making me feel like this before it was unleashed, then I may just want to give up now.

"It was an accident..."

Jacobs, in his weird alien-bug suit, crossed over the length of iron chains and undid the latch on the silver glass case. He quickly jumped back as the ghost within rose up from the ribbon.

The ghost was a very accurate representation of the girl she used to be. Her face, arms, and legs were dappled with freckles over her pallid skin. In fact; she was so pale, her red hair in two pony-tails looked like blood next to her snow white skin. She wore a cute summer dress that was red with pink flowers. She had wide-frame glasses, which highlighted her round eight-year old face. Her emotionless face stared at mine, but I could tell that it was all a facade as I could detect her hatred and misery.

"It was an accident..."

Of course. She was one of the many people I felt guilty about, seeing as she had died while I was on patrol with her. Her name was Regina Jones.

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It was just another warm July night in our little town, the kind of night where you don't have to wear a jacket and the breeze playfully ruffles your hair. Stars arched gracefully across the sky, and the full moon provided mysterious illumination. 50 years ago, people would have been out basking in the glow of the moon, sharing stories and s'mores over a flickering campfire.
But this is not 50 years ago.
This is now, when Britain is dealing with the dead that can kill with a single touch.
And this night, I will get to witness this fact, although at the time I didn't know it. Right then, my only concern was the fact that I had been assigned with this annoying little eight-year old girl.
At the time, I was 11 years old and I had already been in our town's agency for three years. Normally, I would patrol the town with one of my friends like Julie or Alphie-Joe, but tonight we had a new trainee named Regina Jones, who happened to be Agent Jacobs's niece. She also happened to be really annoying.
Take her voice, for example. Every time she talked, her voice sounded nauseated, like she had a bunch of snot stuffed up in her noise. And, the stuff she talked about in her nauseated voice, was so stupid, pointless, or annoying; or maybe even a combination of all three. Plus, she followed me around wherever I went. She was like an annoying puppy that would require all of your attention and would snot and slobber all over you.
But, her uncanny ability to be annoying aside, she was patrolling with me tonight, and she at least carried all of our agent things around so I didn't have to. She didn't have a rapier yet, and this was her first night of patrolling. As we walked down Main Street together, she fixed her little ribbon in her hair. As I looked and listened for any sign of ghosts, she started to talk in a whiny voice.
"Ugh, this stupid breeze is messing up my hair! My ribbon is starting to fall out! You know, Lucy, this ribbon belonged to my mother before she died. I love it so much, though, it's just fabulous! Lucy, I'm bored! There are no ghosts in this town, let's just head back to headquarters and talk with Uncle! Maybe he will give us snacks! C'mon Lucy, please? Please, please, please? Pretty please? You can't say no if I say pretty please! Let's go! Race you!"
With that, she dropped our bags and ran around the corner, out into the place where I had been detecting whispers earlier, despite her whining. "Regina, come back! You're going to get ghost-"
Before I could finish my sentence, I heard her scream and saw flashes of plasm. I brandished my rapier and ran around the corner.
Regina lay face-down some distance from the ghost, her limbs flung out at odd angles like she had been picked up and thrown like a rag doll. I charged full on at the ghost, neatly slashing it to shreds with my newly earned rapier. But the ghost would reform in a few minutes, so I stooped and dragged Regina some distance from the ghost. Under the light of the ghost lamp, I could see a huge blue mark on her chest.
On her first night of patrol, she had been ghost touched.
I cried out for help from my fellow agents, but I knew it was already far too late for Regina. Upon hearing my desperate pleas for help, her eyelids fluttered partially open.
"Lucy," she whispered. "Please give my ribbon to Uncle. He will need it to remember mother."
I gathered her tiny body up in my arms. "Regina, you have my word that I will. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so, so sorry," I whispered into her hair.
I looked into her face once more. Her eyelids slowly started to close, and she gave a weak smile. "Don't worry about it, Lucy. It was an accident..."
Julie came with her patrol partner and ran over to me and gasped in shock. Regina Jones was dead.
-----------------------------------end of flashback-----------------------------------------------
Now the ghost of this girl repeated her last words to me, hatred emanating from her just like the streams of plasm that pushed against the ring of chains around her.
"It was an accident..."
Jacobs's voice was muffled because of the weird headpiece he wore. "She was only eight, and you let her wander off and get ghost-touched!"
"Well, it wasn't my fault! She ran off on her own before I could stop her! It was an accident!" I yelled.
"Accident, was it? Accident, that my only niece comes back as a ghost? Accident, is it, that ghosts don't manifest unless they have a reason to? Well, as much as I would like to have my revenge, I think that someone else wants it more," Jacobs said.
"This is also experiment, by the way. How do ghosts react to the people who had had a hand in their death? Do they treat them differently, or do they attack them like a normal agent?" Maggie held a clipboard and pen in hand, to record the results of this twisted experiment.
I shook my head dejectedly. "You are crazy. Both of you are. I'm not a variable in your experiment, I'm not a piece in your game. Please, for the sake of all of us, just let me go."
I could feel the waves of menace from the ghost, even through the heavy duty iron chains coiled around the Source. Between the ghost's evil whispers and the throbbing of my head, I could tell that this isn't a ghost that I would want to fight.
"Sorry, no can do, if we let you go we would get in trouble with DEPRAC. I'm afraid that even if Regina doesn't get her revenge on you, I sure as hell will," Jacobs said.
With that, in his weird metal alien-bug suit, he stooped and undid the iron chains, unleashing the full wrath of Regina Jones upon me.
"It was an accident..."

A/N: I'm sorry about the huge 4 month wait! I will probably release a huge author's note chapter to explain where the hell I have been. Also, if you will notice the "It was an accident..." part isn't any different from the rest of it in the latter part if the chapter. It is still the ghost saying that, but I couldn't find the button that italicizes the words. Sorry about that, and sorry about the wait.
Love,
Eepster