Page 19 of Haunted Mediation
Of course, the lights began to dim again until he could barely see his hand in front of his face. He used the wall to guide him as he raced back over to James’ side.
He’d had periods of darkness. Never quite like what the specter was alluding to, but there had certainly been bad times. As he kneeled next to James and gently wrapped his arms around him, he was hit with a sense of clarity.
Something was going on with James. Leon sure as hell hoped, for his sake, it wasn’t anything as dark as this room was implying, but he’d seen it the day before, and he was sure as shit seeing it now.
Leon had conquered his own demons, and yeah, there were always going to be more to vanquish, but he was here, and he could sit with James while he conquered his own.
He just had to get them out of this damn room.
“What would I do to save myself?” he said, tipping his head so he was speaking to the hooded figure. “I already have. I fought my demons, went to therapy, made peace with the fact I can’t change how fucked up other people sometimes are, and instead, focused on making my life and the lives of the people I care about better.”
It felt weird to say out loud, but he meant every word of it.
James looked up at him, the smallest of smiles on his face.
There was a soft noise, almost like something unlatching, and Leon turned to the wall next to them. At about ankle height, a small compartment had opened in the baseboard.
Huh, that was pretty cool.
He leaned over, keeping one hand on James’ back, and grabbed the key. It was attached to a retractable cable that creaked as Leon pulled it out.
“You wanna do the honors?” he asked, but James had turned and was looking at the hooded figure.
They were slowly making their way back into the corner, completely silent now that Leon answered their question.
“That’s some pretty heavy stuff you were saying,” James said. “Are you just expecting people with triggers to safe word out halfway in?”
Leon had no idea what the protocol was for actors to talk to the people going through them, but the person tipped their head to the side, nowhere near as far as the first time, and lifted their other shoulder in the air. “That’s why we asked at the beginning if you have any mental health issues. You should’ve seen on the form, if you checked yes, you would’ve been handed a note that would advise you to safe word out of this room and a room later in the house.”
“What room?” Leon asked sharply, because of course he hadn’t fucking seen it on the form. Not only was speed reading, or any sort of reading under pressure, not a skill he possessed,he’d been far too busy thinking about how right it had felt to have James under his arm moments before. Of course, the one time he needed actually to read the fine print, he’d fucked it up.
He wouldn’t fuck it up again, though.
“It’s set up to look like a hospital,” the person said.
James pushed up off the floor, and Leon stood up after him, doing his best to be subtle about studying his face, checking to see if that was going to be a trigger for him or not. All things considered, he seemed to be okay. His brow was pinched, but in that way it got when he was struggling with a document on his computer.
“That seems pretty straightforward,” James said, his tone subdued but steady. “This room, though… It's like garden-variety fortune-telling. You throw out a few things to see what strikes a nerve because I bet everyone has something.”
The person inclined their head but didn’t say anything more.
“Right. Well…thanks?” James said.
Leon shook his head. He didn’t even stop to consider before sliding his hand into James’. “Come on, mensch. Time to go.”
He opened the door and let go of the key, and it snapped back into the hole it came from. Right before he stepped through the door, he felt that tingling start in his hands again.
“Hey,” he called, turning to look back at the stranger who was getting comfortable in their pile of cloth again. “Did a group of teenagers come through here, dressed like M&Ms and superheroes?”
The person let out a bark of surprised laughter. “The group with Harley Quinn? She only let me get maybe two minutes in, and then she started shouting at me that I shouldn’t make my ghostly problems their problems, and I should go to therapy.”
Leon’s fingers stopped tingling, and he shook his head before allowing the door to slam shut.
The next room was lit an eerie purple color, and everything seemed disproportionate. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why until they got several paces in and a marionette doll fell from the ceiling two feet in front of them.
Haunted dollhouse. Creepy, but definitely not scary.
James pressed the length of their forearms together, but he seemed to jump and scream a lot less when he was holding Leon’s hand.
