The last of the sold-out audience, a group of chattering, energized townspeople, finally shuffled out of the Grand Hall, their footsteps echoing on the porch before fading into the night. The great oak door thudded shut, and a profound silence, thick and heavy, descended upon the room. Donnie Keller leaned heavily against the velvet-draped table, his knuckles white, his entire body trembling with an exhaustion that went far beyond simple fatigue.
Tonight had been "Captain's Night." For over an hour, he had been nothing but a vessel for the boisterous, bellowing, relentlessly cheerful energy of Thomas Terence. He had roared with laughter, he had sung sea shanties, he had recounted tales of daring naval escapes and barroom brawls in ports of call from Barbados to Singapore. He had channeled the raw, unfiltered life force of a man who had lived loud and died... well, ignobly, but he'd certainly lived loud. The performance had been a massive success. The crowd had loved it. But now, in the aftermath, the hall felt strangely empty, and the air still seemed to crackle with the leftover energy of the spectral sea captain, a phantom static that buzzed against Donnie's frayed nerves. He felt hollowed out, as if Terence had used up all of his spiritual and vocal energy, leaving nothing behind but an aching throat and a deep, bone-deep weariness.
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Later that night, the harsh, fluorescent lights of the Schroon Falls General Store felt like a slap in the face after the gloomy, flashlight-Gothic ambiance of the manor. The store was a small, cluttered market, its narrow aisles packed with a little bit of everything. It smelled of floor cleaner, refrigerated dairy, and the faint, sweet scent of penny candy from the jar by the register. Donnie pushed a rickety, squealing shopping cart down the canned goods aisle, the very picture of mundane, domestic life.
The cart, for the first time in his adult life, was beginning to fill with actual food. A carton of eggs. A loaf of thick-sliced bread. A bag of real, ground coffee, not the instant kind. A large jar of pickles, because some habits were too comforting to break. And, nestled on top of a package of bacon, a thick, beautiful steak. It was a victory lap in grocery form. As he scanned the shelves, looking for a can of baked beans, a low, gravelly humming escaped his lips. It was an unconscious sound, a tune that seemed to bubble up from some deep, forgotten well inside him.
"...Oh, Salty Meg, the port rat's queen," he hummed, his voice a low, rumbling baritone, "the finest lass I've ever seen…"
He stopped, his hand hovering over a can of beans. He recognized the tune. It was "The Ballad of Salty Meg," a boisterous and slightly bawdy sea shanty that Terence had insisted on "singing" during the séance. He hadn't just performed the song; he had absorbed it. The realization was unsettling, a small, strange hiccup in the quiet of his own mind. He shook his head, grabbed the can of beans, and pushed his squealing cart toward the checkout line.
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The checkout line was short. Mrs. Janson stood ahead of him, her basket filled with tea and biscuits. She was humming softly to herself, still buzzing from the night's performance. As Donnie waited, his cart bumping gently against the front of his legs, he unconsciously shifted his stance. His feet spread apart, wider than usual, planting themselves firmly on the cracked linoleum floor. He rocked back and forth slightly, a subtle, rhythmic motion, as if bracing himself on the deck of a rolling ship. Without thinking, he hooked both of his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans, a classic, confident, almost swaggering pose. It was a posture of command, of a man at ease with his own power. It was Terence's pose.
"Such a wonderful evening, Mr. Keller," Mrs. Janson said, turning to him with a beatific smile. "The captain was in fine form tonight. So much... energy!"
The sound of his name snapped him out of it. He looked down at his feet, at his hands hooked into his belt. He felt a hot flash of embarrassment. He hadn't chosen to stand like this; his body had simply done it. He quickly pulled his thumbs from his belt and brought his feet back together, his posture shrinking back to its usual, less confident slump.
"Glad you enjoyed it, Mrs. Janson," he mumbled, his eyes fixed on the candy bars by the register. She didn't seem to have noticed his strange, temporary transformation. But he had. And it sent a cold, sharp sliver of unease through him.
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Back in the sterile, white-tiled bathroom of Unit 4B, the contrast between his two worlds had never been more stark. Here, everything was clean lines, smooth surfaces, and the faint, chemical smell of bleach. The sink was a sleek, modern basin, the faucet a single, elegant curve of polished chrome. It was a room devoid of history, of dust, of ghosts. It was his sanctuary within a sanctuary. He had finished putting away the groceries—real food filling his once-barren refrigerator and cupboards—and now he just wanted to wash the grime of the day, and the lingering psychic residue of the manor, off his hands.
Next to the sink, on the clean, white countertop, sat a new bar of soap, still in its plain paper wrapper. He had bought it on a whim at the General Store. It was called "Purity Pine Tar Soap." It was a dark, almost black, utilitarian-looking bar, the kind of old-fashioned soap his grandfather might have used. He unwrapped it. The paper crinkled loudly in the silent bathroom. A strong, sharp, piney scent immediately filled the small room. It was a clean, bracing smell, the scent of a deep, dark forest. It was a smell that should have been calming.
Donnie turned on the water and reached for the bar of soap. His fingers were just about to touch the dark, coarse surface of the bar when it happened. A wave of emotion, violent and inexplicable, slammed into him. It was a tidal wave of pure, blinding RAGE, so intense it made his vision swim. And mixed with the rage was a deep, scalding humiliation, a sense of being made to look like a fool. The feeling was so powerful, so overwhelming, it was as if a switch had been flipped inside his brain. And with the emotion came a lightning-fast flash of a memory that was not his own.
IMAGE: A dark, rectangular shape—a bar of soap—slipping and skittering across a wet, wooden floor.
SOUND: A woman's voice, sharp and cutting and full of aristocratic scorn, saying a single word: "Ignoble!"
The flash was gone in an instant, but the rage remained. Donnie physically recoiled from the sink as if the bar of soap were a venomous snake, as if the polished chrome faucet were white-hot iron. His hand flew back, and he stumbled backward, crashing against the bathroom door with a thud that shook the cheap, hollow wood. The rage was a living thing inside him, a hot, roaring fire. It was an alien presence, and it was screaming for release. He felt a genuine, terrifying urge to smash the bar of soap into a thousand pieces, to shatter the sink, to rip the faucet from the wall, to destroy the entire bathroom.
The wave of emotion vanished as quickly as it had arrived. One moment, he was a vessel of pure, homicidal fury; the next, he was just Donnie, leaning against his bathroom door, his heart hammering against his ribs, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. The silence of the room rushed back in, amplifying the sound of his own frantic pulse. Confusion, cold and absolute, flooded the void where the rage had been. He stared at the sink. The water was still running. The bar of pine tar soap sat innocently by the drain, an object of immense, unexplainable dread. That rage... that wasn't his. He was a man of quiet scorn and weary resignation. He didn't have the energy for that kind of volcanic fury. And the memory, that fleeting image of the slipping soap, the sound of Maria's voice... that wasn't his memory.
A terrifying realization began to dawn, a slow, cold sunrise of horror in his mind. He looked down at his own hands. They were trembling, not from fear, but from the phantom echo of the rage he had just felt. For the first time, a thought, a truly terrifying thought, entered his mind. This wasn't just a performance. The connection to the roommates, to the Spectral Siblings, was not just a trick of his voice. The voices were not just voices. Something was real. Something was bleeding through. The carefully constructed lines between him and them, between the performer and the performance, were blurring.
Slowly, hesitantly, he looked up and met his own eyes in the bathroom mirror. He saw his own pale, shocked face, his wide, terrified eyes. But for a split second, just a flicker, the image seemed to warp. His reflection wavered, and for a heartbeat, his face was momentarily overlaid with the indignant, ghostly scowl of Terence, his brows furrowed in humiliated anger. Then it flickered again, and he saw the severe, judgmental glare of Maria, her eyes cold and sharp. It was a trick of the light, a phantom of his exhausted, overwrought mind. It had to be. But the possibility that it wasn't, the possibility that he had just seen his ghostly roommates looking back at him from inside his own skin, sent a chill of pure, unadulterated terror through him. The first real crack in his carefully constructed reality had appeared, and he was afraid that if he looked too closely, he would see that the whole thing was about to shatter.