Taking a deep breath, Luigi pushed off from the door he'd just closed and straightened. Alright, come on, Luigi, he thought. You can do this.
After fleeing the entrance in favor of the other upstairs door, Luigi had found himself in a small dead-end hallway. There were several doors lined up and down on either side; interestingly, the two on the left were different, decorated with engraved patterns of hearts and stars on them. Luigi wondered what they could mean.
Since the brutal destruction of the chandelier, all had seemed quiet; so with a now slightly recovered resolve Luigi headed for the first door on his right.
Peeking inside, he found it surprisingly warm and dim within. A low fire burned in the fireplace, as if someone had recently been here and might at any second return. Looking around with the flashlight, Luigi soon found that it was a study or library; a giant wall of books surrounded the fireplace from floor to ceiling, with a sliding ladder leaned up against one wall. There was also a writing desk and a big inviting rocking chair.
Pausing, Luigi glanced around cautiously, then let himself in. For a moment he looked around silently, thinking that he should try elsewhere; it was then that he spotted the first ghosts.
They weren't exactly the ghosts he had encountered previously; instead it was more of those little colorful things - Luigi thought of them as flying fish - and some more slightly bigger ones that were completely white. Looking carefully closer, Luigi suddenly realized what they were.
Boos were not an unfamiliar creature to Luigi. He and his brother had been fighting them for as long as he could remember; but never had Luigi seen any this tiny. Now, they seemed almost as harmless and carefree as the flying fish they mingled with, lingering around in air aimlessly.
Carefully, Luigi inched closer and took out his vacuum, feeling the braver because he was at a size advantage. Seizing the nozzle, he had soon cleaned all of them up.
He was just about to turn away and head somewhere else - Mario obviously didn't appear to be in here - when his eyes caught sight of an open book left lying out on the desk. Instantly curious, he paused and looked at it with a skimming eye. It was some sort of diary.
January 8, it read. Shivers the butler finally lost it today. The old coot had a breakdown outside the conservatory and apparently died from heart failure. We all know it likely wasn't as simple as that... but no one is complaining. We have enough tragedies to lament as it is.
Someone was trampled by one of the master's horses last week on the grounds with an apparently fatal blow to the head. Shortly after that the boys went. I don't know the reason for it... but for some reason it's difficult to care.
Lydia has since been insane. She now spends all day in front of her mirror and hoarding cash, insisting she'll need it soon. What for, I have no clue.
The rest of the staff and most of the others have quickly trickled off day by day. After Sue's unfortunate passing, people have stopped caring. It is strange... but none of us feel a desire to keep this up the way it is anymore.
We buried her out by the path. She wished for eternal rest, but if she'll really get it is beyond any of us.
Mr. Luggs, as we had all expected for months, also bit it not too long ago. Even the old guard dog went shortly after the chef stopped giving him the leftovers. I imagine he'll find something else to eat soon enough out by the boneyard.
Everyone out here has been odd - even myself - since that day. Or perhaps it was even before then; sometimes Melody insists that the mansion speaks to her. Silent whispers, echoes of a brighter past; and a darker, uncertain future.
Nana went in her chair, working her needles to the last. Slim hasn't come out of the billiards room for days - no one has thought much else of him. And Jarvis, the hunter and that old foolish artist have been locked up in the attic even longer. Sometimes I wonder if they're the wiser for all this.
Shadows linger at every corner - things that weren't always there before. Sometimes it even seems as if there are strange people in the mansion. Wisps of those running and wandering, from another time and another place, as if they've lost their way. Unfamiliar and odd... yet they seem to be afraid of something I cannot quite perceive. What does it all mean?
I have lost hold of what is existence anymore. There is something terribly wrong in this place, I know...We need some sort of order in this forsaken mansion... a king...
I heard that someone stole the chef's best knives earlier. It feels strange, but I am calm... such an ordeal does not feel out of the ordinary.
I have been so caught up with Lydia's fits lately. Ever since we found the bitter truth she has been prone to moan and cry; the child's room has been waiting empty since she can't stand to redecorate. I still thought I heard noises in there earlier.
Come to think of it, I thought I heard Lydia screaming earlier... but I'll figure it out eventually. I'm sure I already know what happened.
Why does it hardly matter? Why does no one care??
We are trapped... all of us are caught. Others come but nothing changes. They only ensure that we are all lost...
Will this ever end? Or is it already ending?
I am not sure of anything anymore. I only know we will continue here until someone plays his new game...
Will he save us? Can he save himself..?
Please... please... come let us free...
Blinking in utter shock, Luigi slowly straightened up from his terrible read and stared at the wall, lost in his thoughts. The weight of what he'd just read almost felt too heavy to process, too awful to believe...
And the master. It spoke of others... it spoke of another who would come. What could it...?
Abruptly a loud sound, like the slow and careful creak of a rocking chair, sounded behind him, snapping Luigi to the present. In an instant he turned, on high alert, to stare around the room, coming to rest at the rocking chair which still sat, empty and inviting. Suddenly it didn't seem so empty somehow.
Luigi froze, staying silent as a statue, and watched for the presence he knew was there. Finally, several long seconds later, it creaked.
He had known, but still he gasped. Instantly going on the attack, he snatched the Poltergust 400 and turned on the chair, pausing at the last second as if to give the ghost a chance to redeem itself. And then, silent and almost sorrowful, the man appeared in the moving chair.
He was tall and thin, dressed in some sort of blue bathrobe. A surprisingly well-groomed red hair and beard adorned his bluish-toned face, which was otherwise shockingly human. The only thing that sold it away was the eerily real place where his feet should have been; instead there was only a legless tail.
Slowly letting out a breath as if it had chilled him to the core, Luigi raised stricken eyes to the man's glowing ones. For a moment they only stared, silent and still; and then at last the man spoke.
"Are you... the one?"
His voice was surprisingly human; though little above a low murmur, it still seemed to echo in Luigi's ears. On the man's lap rested an open book; he had no doubt that the diary he had read was none other than the man's himself.
Luigi opened his mouth, staring into the ghost's seemingly empty eyes. There was so little life behind them; and yet, he still detected the tiniest trace of longing.
It was then that he finally found the voice to speak. "I... I can do this for you... but that's all." Looking down briefly on the vacuum in his hands, he fell silent.
Tilting his head with the slightest of interest, the man followed his gaze. "If that is what you have come to do... then do so."
Meeting Luigi's frightened eyes, he spread his arms, as if asking him to do as he would. The startled ghost hunter slowly clutched the vacuum, scarcely believing that he could do it all on his own. But it had already been written of the one who might come to let them rest.
~
Shaken and torn, Luigi closed his eyes with a heavy sigh. Laying a hand upon the doorknob of yet the next one on his agenda, he tried to forget the sensation of having ever met the man. None of this was foreseen. None of it meant anything at all; so he shouldn't let it bother him so. Pushing open the next door down the hall, he somehow already knew what he would find inside: the man's grief-stricken wife.
It was dark and cool inside - almost everywhere was like that. He found two small beds against the opposite wall, accompanied by a small vanity in the corner - with a mirror. So this was bed room number one - how many more were there?
He had hardly entered before he saw her appear. Exactly as promised, perched before the vanity with brush in hand, the ghostly lady with golden hair turned to face him. She was clad in a pink robe similar to her husband's; and glowing eyes and skin aside, she still somehow retained what must have been her former beauty. Unafraid and eerily passive, she sat where she was and stared. Lydia.
Perhaps he could offer her repose; perhaps the Poltergust was the long-awaited answer to her inner darkness. He was frightened beneath it all, and the creepy sight of her would never, ever slip his memory; but thinking on all she must have suffered, all the likely years she had been trapped... and Luigi was willing to do what he must.
Lydia needed only a few moments' glance to come to her own decision. Remaining seated where she was, she made just the slightest of condescending faces and turned back to her solid reflection.
"Fellas... you may have him."
With a wave of her hand that sent Luigi's heart to his shoes, she said, "Do however you wish, and make it awful too. Let him suffer as we have."
Turning back again to fix Luigi with golden eyes brimming with insanity, she nearly whispered, "May he feel what I did." The scowling smile played her lips for only a second as she turned away.
"Boys, tonight you play! For at last another one comes, one we might be allowed to keep. I'm sure he's got something desirable on him."
Luigi, backed against the door and white as chalk, nearly turned to stone at the sight of the two purplish ghosts that appeared from nowhere before him. They were small and ugly, but nevertheless seemed pleased to do the lady's command.
"He is surely here for the one we couldn't have. He will know this house's misery! And the starving spirits will feast happy on his bones." Turning yet again to meet the boy's eyes, she smiled triumphantly. "And yet, I sense he wants something more... to search. Searching is futile - he may search forever if he so desires! All he needs do is follow the crimson trail." Pausing to laugh aloud, she added, "After all, it can't lie!"
The wavering voice came at him from all sides, surrounding him, teasing him. It was cruel and yet, it somehow awakened within him sadness. Still beneath there was unchained fear, but on top was the sadness. It wounded his heart like a blow.
He might have done it from anger. He might have done it for revenge, to prove the gleeful ghouls wrong. But when Luigi caught the ghosts that mercilessly plagued him, sucked them away into the bowels of the machine, he felt nothing but fear and sorrow. Like a machine his arms did the work, and his head barely thought what to do.
He was like an outcast - and they wanted him to become one of them.
~
Moving on feet like lead into the room across the hall - a promising prospect, with elaborate hearts carved into the designs on the door - Luigi tried to maintain as blank a mind as possible. Every turn, every new second seemed unreal, like a scene from a terrible nightmare... but it never ended. It never ended... and every moment that faded into the next was a terror before his waking eyes.
This time it was the prospect of a child that had never existed. He had been meant to exist; or perhaps a 'she' judging by the pinkish character of the child's room. But it was far too late now; and Lydia would not be bearing children ever again. Now, hopefully, she might find that peace her husband had yearned for.
The little bedroom was a heart-wrenching sight; miniature table and chairs sat in one corner, tiny crib in the other... a mobile hung idle from the ceiling, waiting for the baby to giggle at its twirling animals. And lingering freely all about the darkened place where numerous little boos and flying fish that illuminated the room with their soft light.
Feeling moved by something beyond just fear, Luigi brought his vacuum to life and turned on them. Was it respect? Sorrow for the one who should have dwelt here? He didn't know.
Clearing the room of the ghouls that plagued it, Luigi was greeted with a surprising revelation: the lights overhead, all of which he had long since assumed did not work, abruptly came to life, filling the place with an almost homey light; and all at once he felt extremely saddened. It was as if in one moment reality hit him more; and suddenly he gasped.
Lydia had said... the crimson trail! That didn't mean the deep red carpet that trailed the hallway; it meant...
No. No... he was not eaten. That did not happen... something as such was impossible.
Mario was still alive.
~
Shallow breathing heaving in and out as through a terrible filter, Luigi at last came to pause, weary to the bone, outside the welcoming door to E. Gadd's lab. Well, in reality it didn't appear at all welcoming; but it was what awaited him inside that mattered.
The professor had soon after called Luigi back to the lab for a short respite. Contacting him by Game Boy, just as he'd promised, the old man had followed up on his search for the supposedly missing nozzles for the Poltergust.
Now, just relieved to see a real living face again, Luigi let himself into the lab with an enormous sigh.
"Ah, Luigi! Great job making it back in one piece. It's not so bad with a machine like that at your side, eh?" E. Gadd asked jovially - far too much so for the time of night. What time was it right now, anyway?
"It was... I don't know," Luigi breathed, too overwhelmed to talk of his encounters. It seemed like so much had already happened; far more than he had ever dreamed he'd see.
"Well, as you know, I found my elemental nozzles," the professor went on, holding up a couple of odd metal sticks. They didn't seem at all impressive at first to Luigi - but on closer inspection he saw that they did indeed appear to be attachments for the vacuum handle. Instead of an actual vacuum, however, they each had a big rubber stopper on the end of a tube - one in red, one in blue. He could only guess they were for fire and water.
"They're an old prototype but hey, just about everything here is just a prototype of something else I've yet to build. I'll just let you hang on to those," he added, handing them over to Luigi. "You can easily switch 'em whenever you need it. Consider it a present from the doctor! By the way, before you go, I want to show you something," he went on, gesturing towards the door nearby that Luigi had been wondering about. "I'd like to empty your vacuum."
"Empty it?" Luigi questioned, trailing the professor into the neighboring room.
As soon as they entered Luigi nearly lost his breath for a second. He had never seen so much machinery all working together in harmony in all his life!
It was a giant room-length machine; it appeared very homemade, but still incredible. Giant gears rotated along the back wall behind some sort of conveyer belt with various overhanging gadgets and such. He had utterly no idea what it did, but Luigi was thoroughly impressed.
"Yup! Say hello to my Ghost Portrificationizer," E. Gadd proudly announced. "This here took me twenty years to develop. It turns the ghosts I catch into paintings!"
Luigi blinked. "Paintings?"
The professor nodded. "It's the safest and most harmless way to store them. I'd show you my gallery if you're interested..."
"Maybe another time, thanks," Luigi interrupted, perhaps a little unkindly. "I just... what does putting them in a painting do? How does it even..."
E. Gadd laughed. "I knew you'd say that. Here, plug in the Poltergust 400 and I'll show you."
Inserting his vacuum into the slot at one end as the professor indicated, he stood and waited as the machine began to roar to life, gauges moving furiously. They watched in silent anticipation as the conveyors moved along, finally depositing what appeared to be two big picture frames at the end.
Picking one up, E. Gadd turned to show him. "You see? Preserved. Ta-da!"
Luigi stared. There on the canvas, staring straight back at him with those golden yellow eyes, Lydia tossed her perfect hair. It was the same angry spirit who had threatened him cruelly, suffered much... and yet now, something was different.
No longer did she hold that infuriating hairbrush. No longer did her eyes drip with pain and scorn, so that she almost looked happy... and with head lifted, her image appeared almost proud. She had been released of the nightmare at last.
Staring at the silent painting, so many thoughts came to Luigi at once. There was not a grudge; not even sorrow this time. He didn't understand how one could be sealed in a painting and remain unharmed there... but that didn't matter. She was at peace.