He screamed as he fell.
The cry rang through the courtyard, off the castle walls and back into the rain. Then all fell silent.
King Boo hung in the air, frozen halfway to the well. Purple jolts tainted his aura and his crown glowed dully—its last dribbles of power bleeding out through the cracks in the gem, turning the rain to a halo of steam over his head. Soft tremors juttered through him as he stared, half blind, through the glow hanging before his vision. The notion that Mario would come bounding out again fluttered in his dazed mind. But no such thing happened.
The reds and purples of spilled magic reflected off puddles and lit the faces of the statues. Boos floated aimlessly in the air or lay panting against the ground, burned out by the overflow of magic they had saved him from. The King felt empty, cold, and tired.
He couldn’t remember the last time he felt tired.
A clump of more lucid boos had gathered around the lip of the well. The King limped towards them, and silently, they parted to give him way. He peered past the cracked, green-smeared boards into the darkness below.
There at the bottom, crumpled in four inches of standing water, was Mario.
A jolt of concern hit King Boo as he saw him, silent and unmoving. The idea that he was gone, that what lay there was only an empty shell, reared up in his mind. That was not what he wanted—not what he needed… But that fear was staunched as Mario shifted gently.
Mario groaned and shifted again, more substantially this time. His hands fumbling in the water then clutched at his head. His eyes opened blearily, and he peered around at the darkness, his harsh breathing echoing up the shaft of the well. Then he looked up, towards the white glow, and froze as he saw the King.
King Boo held his gaze, concern retreating further. Mario shuffled back, painfully and slowly, pressing himself against the wall. The understanding of how close he had come to defeat took hold of the King. He had underestimated him.
“Sire?” said one of the boos, shaking him out of his stupor.
King Boo mentally shook himself and glanced around at his boos; they stared back with haggard, drained expressions.
“The prisoner has saved us the trouble of moving him to the dungeon,” said the King, voice cracked and rasping. “Four of you stay here, make sure he doesn't somehow crawl out. The rest of you come with me. We have more pressing matters to attend to.”
And they left, limping back to Boolsome and the ambush.
• • •
By the time everything was settled in the lab the rain had started again. It wasn’t a drizzle either: big, cold drops battered the ground in a torrent. When Luigi couldn’t be persuaded to wait the shower out, E. Gadd again offered to walk him to the mansion. Luigi turned him down, opting for a full-out sprint to the porch instead.
He ducked inside, hands thrown over his head to keep the rain off, then threw his weight against the huge doors, forcing them closed. Shivering and dripping, Luigi glanced around the foyer. It was unchanged: grand, imposing, and brightly lit. He sighed and leaned back against the doors, grip loosening on the flashlight. At least his work hadn’t been undone in his absence.
Slowly, Luigi regained his breath and temperature, and with a last anxious glance over the room, pulled the gameboy from its slot.
He felt that same shaky sensation as the map booted, row after row of chambers flashing across the screen. Lock symbols marked the vast majority. Icons of the precious keys he had hovered over their corresponding doors, spinning slowly and glittering gold. They winked all over the map, from what seemed to be an attic to the farthest reaches of the basement, but Luigi didn’t see how to reach a single one of them. Some of them were close, and a few chambers seemed to need no keys at all, but they were straight back, past the heart-etched doors. Luigi glanced at the alcove under the stairs, thoroughly discouraged.
The webbing over the doors was gone.
He started and stared. There were the double doors nestled under the stairs, clean and clear. Luigi flipped the handheld closed, shoved it into his pocket, and stepped toward them. A tangle of dark scorches strung across their surface, fouling the bold pattern, and a faint smell of burning hung in the air. It was the only trace a web had been there at all. Cautiously, he rattled a handle. The doors opened without a sound.
A long, deeply-shadowed hallway swept to either side. A few dim candles accented the walls and thick, red carpet lined the center of the floor, fading into blackness as it fled beyond the light of the foyer.
Luigi hung back, eyebrows knit. The passage loomed like an open mouth into the heart of the mansion. Why were the vines gone? Had they been gone when he left for the lab? The creeping feeling that they hadn’t tugged at Luigi’s mind. What if these doors sealed behind him? The ghosts had webbed them shut once, why couldn’t they do it again? Trap him in the inner chambers...just as they had done to Mario.
Luigi stiffened—the more he considered it the more sense it made. The heart doors had never been locked—they couldn’t have been. The only thing blocking them had been the webs. If those hadn’t been there when Mario arrived…
He edged into the doorway, angling his light as far along the passage as he could. To the left it ended a short distance away, barred off by a door he knew to be locked. To the right it stretched on out of sight.
“Mario, are you there?” He shouted. A few bats fluttered in the rafters, but that was all.
Luigi stepped back again, eyes darting between the dark hall and the double doors. This was where he needed to go, he was sure of it. But he’d be no good to anyone if he got himself trapped too. He glanced around the foyer, looking for some sort of safeguard. A burrow rested in the alcove—small, its drawers all hanging open, slicked inside and out with dust—but it was solid wood and heavy. Luigi moved the oil-lamp on top of it to the floor then, bracing his weight against its side, slid the burrow forward, pinning one of the doors open against the wall.
He didn’t know how much good that would do, but it was something. He took a long, shaky breath, adjusted the straps of the poltergust, and plunged into the darkness.
He half expected the passage to seal behind him despite his precautions, but it didn’t. The hall stretched away in front of him, long and unbroken, light leaking in from the foyer making the darkness seem darker. Disturbed bats shuffled in the rafters as he passed, and the polished frames of paintings glowed softly in the faint candle light.
Luigi shuddered. He couldn’t see the paintings properly, just a dim glare leaping across their darkened glass, but he could imagine the eyes staring down at him well enough…. He caught the closest more fully in his flashlight, but it wasn’t a portrait. It was a painting of the castle itself, from a younger, more prosperous time.
He shuffled on, swinging his flashlight back and forth over the width of the hall, beam glinting off the dust in the air and tangling between the legs of the end-tables. His eyes flicked unconsciously to each painting as he passed. Most were quaint bits of art—flowers, trees, buildings, the ocean—but every once again faces did appear: sallow, faded portraits of sad or unpleasant looking people. He tried not to dwell on them.
“Mario—” Luigi called, but his voice came out pitifully small. He swallowed hard and shouted again, as loud and clear as he could.
“Bro, where are you?! Answer me!”
The call wavered down the passage both ways, choked in the darkness. But this time there was a response: a sucking of air, shuffling, and low giggles of excitement.
Luigi’s throat constricted and he spun around, teeth grit and eyes darting across the passage, hand fumbling for the poltergust nozzle. Nothing was there. Again the jabber of ghosts echoed up the passage. Luigi’s hair bristled, but they seemed a long way off, tucked away behind locked doors.
Chancy was the worst of it, he reminded himself firmly, and the baby was gone. He just had to find Mario and the two of them could leave, leave the professor to his ghosts….
All the same, he didn’t stow the poltergust nozzle.
The carpet muffled his steps as he continued down the hall, and the patter of rain grew fainter until he could hardly hear it. His own unsteady breathing filled the air, accompanied by the rattling of the Poltergust with the jolt of his stride. The gibber of ghosts grew more apparent. Most were faint and far away, but occasionally they broke out much closer, sending him turning round and round on the carpet, knuckles white against the Poltergust nozzle. Shadows fluttered on the walls; whether they were just the wavering of the candles or following shapes, he couldn’t tell. He tried to hum, anything to break the silence, but it came out high, crushed and quavering.
He didn’t know where he was going.
Gradually Luigi’s steps slowed and he glanced around the hall. Doors lined the passage around him, but he had no idea which were passable. He backed against the wall and, eyes still darting, reluctantly stowed the poltergust. After a failed one-handed attempt, Luigi put his flashlight in his mouth and fumbled the gameboy from its slot, thumbing its casing nervously as he waited for the map to boot.
He had already passed one of the rooms it would seem—down a passage he had walked by a short time ago—but there were still three doors near him, one of which didn’t need a key at all. He traced the route with his eyes, memorizing the path. When he was satisfied he folded the gameboy and slipped it into his pocket—
A squeal broke out over his head.
Luigi shouted and scrambled away, tripping over his own feet. The flashlight clattered to the ground as he fell, rolling across the carpet. From above him came a wavering laugh, and he scrambled back on all fours. The new ghost peered at him with bright eyes, lulling from between the rafters. Luigi whipped out the poltergust and leveled it at the ghost suction whirring, but this time, nothing happened. The ghost laughed at him again.
Luigi rolled to the side as the creature lunged for him, Why Didn’t it work? More ghosts materialized up the hall, babbling at the fun as Luigi slithered under the roof specter’s grasp. They drew closer, cutting off his path of escape. Then Luigi saw the yellow shaft of the flashlight splashed across the far wall...
With a desperate yell he dove for it, but the roof specter loomed in his way, long arms scrabbling at the slick case of the poltergust. Mind white with panic, Luigi reached the last few inches for the light. It rolled under his fingers, just out of reach, then back-spun into his shaking hand.
A glow of orange and gold wavered across the wallpaper as the bystanding ghosts bore down on him. The roof ghost, apparently not interested in sharing, scolded like an ill tempered squirrel. Luigi felt the pull on the poltergust canister slacken, and he rolled to the side, casting the beam of the flashlight into the bickering threesome. The air split with their shrieks as the roof and the orange ghosts took the light to the eyes and vanished. The third, a kind of yellow ghost Luigi hadn’t seen before, stared at him like a deer in the headlights, shocked.
Luigi skittered backward and scrabbled to his feet, fumbling at the wall for support. The orange ghost appeared again, a snarling kaleidoscope of pointed teeth. It darted for him with a hiss, and Luigi staggered to the side. He ducked the flailing arms of the roof specter as it reappeared and slashed again with the light, poltergust already whirring.
He downed his three harassers as fast as he could, and then another and another as they appeared. But the lights didn’t come on this time.
Angry yattering rose up from the dark corridors, rippling like musical scales. Luigi spun in the middle of the hall; shadows jumped across the walls in the wake of his light, twisting in an amalgamous mass of motion. Bright figures dripped in and out of sight, eyes filled with anger and anxiety. Luigi’s hands shook on the nozzle. They were all around him, and more seemed to be coming, drawn to the commotion like moths to a flame. The hall chilled as they pressed around, drawing the heat out of the air with their sheer numbers. He didn’t wait for the mob to find their courage. He turned and ran.
The ghosts yowled with excitement as Luigi bolted, hands shielding his face as he crashed through their invisible ranks. They tore after him in a wave, chattering like a nest of disturbed magpies. He rounded a corner into a passage identical to the last, head ringing with the sound of his pursuers. The door—the unlocked door was here somewhere. He jerked on handles as he ran. He didn’t dare consult the gameboy, not with ghosts swarming at his heels.
One of them finally gave, and Luigi threw himself inside, slamming the door behind him. A purple puncher followed him through and he downed it with the poltergust, its last wail striking up an enraged shriek from the ghosts outside. Luigi pressed himself into the far corner of the room, teeth clenched and shaking all over, waiting for anything else to follow him through. But nothing did.
The yattering outside the room persisted for a while, but nothing showed pluck enough to follow—not after the puncher. Gradually the sounds dissipated, drifting away in clumps down the passage. Luigi’s knocking knees crumpled and he slid down against the wall, holding his chest and breathing hard.
It was a long time before Luigi looked around the room.
He shuffled his feet, eyes still wild, and flinched as he put his knee in a puddle of water. His flashlight bounced off a mirror on the wall as he stood, etching the room in light. It was a tiny space, hardly big enough for the washbasin and tub it contained. A faint smell of damp and mildew hung in the air, and the drip and splatter of a broken pipe seeped from behind the curtains guarding the tub.
Luigi froze, eyes fixed; the curtains quavered and shook, odd shadows playing behind them in the reflected light of the mirror. After a moment of rigid panic, he strained forward, jerking the curtains away and leveling the poltergust at whatever waited inside.
The ancient, claw-footed tub glinted back at him, white porcelain clouded with age and long cracks running through its frame. The remains of its old tap lay at its head, rusted almost out of recognition, but that wasn’t where the water came from. Piping—the professors work, without a doubt—ran up the wall in a haphazard snake beside the tub, ending in a viciously leaking showerhead. The stray water battered at the curtains and dribbled down onto the floor, where it slithered away along the cracks in the tiles.
Luigi shone the flashlight into the tub from another angle, checking for odd shadows against the far wall. But nothing appeared. It must have been the water itself causing the movement he saw. He backed away from the water splattering from the leak and gave an uneasy glance over the rest of the room, hair on the back of his neck prickling.
A pair of cold, noodly arms slid around his neck from behind.
Luigi was rather a vocal person; he was known for making all sorts of odd sounds, much to his chagrin. Despite this, outright screaming was not something he did frequently. This time he made an exception.
The ghost’s grip constricted, cutting the sound to a choked gargle. Luigi clawed at his throat as he was dragged backward, writhing under the lack of air. But the creature held on with an iron grip. A white tingle shot through Luigi’s spine and down his arms. It was the ghost’s turn to shriek, howling bloody murder as electricity cracked across its form. For a second it seemed unable to let go, then it blew backward, slamming into the wall so hard a shower of plaster flakes fluttered down around it.
Luigi dropped to the floor, coughing and wheezing as he sucked down air. The other ghosts in the room exchanged concerned looks and darted through the walls. A moment later, the lights came on.
Luigi staggered to his feet for the second time, swaying under the nauseating remnants of the creature’s drain. His Thunderhand. All this time in this blasted place, and he had completely forgotten it. Then another thought struck him: The Poltergeist. He looked over either shoulder then grabbed at the trailing hose, flipping its ‘on’ switch, but the suction whirred to life without issue. He returned the hose to its slot with a shuddering sigh and collected the flashlight from where it had fallen under the tub.
Luigi stayed there for a long while, resting in the protection of the light. Its bare furnishings didn’t leave much to check, but he turned the room over anyways, poking into the corners and patting down the one shelf with a still-trembling hand. He did turn up something: a little black key from the shelf. With no other reason to stay he breathed an anxious sigh, and with the new key clutched in his hand, retrieved the gameboy from its slot.
The new key didn't seem to be of use to him. It was much smaller than the others, and only returned an error when he slid it into the gameboy’s key-checker. He pocketed it all the same, sliding it in with the papers he had forgotten to return to the professor, and returned his attention to the map.
The next door was only a few yards away, just around the corner from where he was now. There seemed to be another, unlocked chamber leading off of it as well. Luigi’s attention lingered on this adjacent room longest. There was another symbol over it, one he hadn’t seen before. It didn’t seem particularly special, just a blank grey box, but none of the other rooms had it, at least as far as he could see. What it meant, Luigi had no idea, but he’d find out soon enough. He took a quick shuffle through his keys, picking out the one which corresponded with the room and tried it in the gameboy to be certain.
He gave a wary glance at the door leading onto the halls. All was dead beyond; not so much as a snicker seeped through the wood. Luigi took a deep breath through his nose and put the gameboy back in its slot. Flashlight and poltergust coupled in one hand and key closed in the other, he stepped through the door.
The trip to the next room was fast and uneventful. He all but ran through the dark passage, head ducked low and poltergust ready. He could have sworn he saw shadows trailing behind him on the walls, but even if he was right, the ghosts didn’t show themselves.
The room itself gave him a bit of trouble. At first glance it appeared to have double-doors, but on closer inspection one of them turned out to be for show. Once he figured them out, Luigi fumbled the large, gold-leafed key into its slot and pushed softly into the chamber.
A kaleidoscope of color met him as he stepped through the doors. It was full of ghosts: troops of them all along the floor in spinning, vibrant clumps. Luigi went rigid, flipping off his flashlight and very nearly backing out of the room again. But the ghosts paid him no mind, just continued about their business without so much as a glance in his direction.
They weren’t anything like the ghosts he had seen so far. They twirled just above the ground, and had proper bodies and feet. They looked like shy-guys for all the world, except that they glowed, and Luigi could see the colored tiles through their shimmering forms. Some of the creatures carried spears of some sort—a two-pronged silver trident. They swung them gracefully, almost like batons, as their partners wove beneath them. The sound of a harp rolled from the other end of the room. It was soft, but perfectly audible in the thick silence.
Luigi’s gaze drifted across the rest of the chamber—passing over delicately patterned tiles, chiseled plaster, and curtained alcoves tucked away to the sides—coming to rest on the harpist at the far end of it all, standing next to a large, dark harp. It was almost humorous to see the white shy-guy’s little hands running over the instrument, playing the faint, simple tune on what strings remained. Quite near it rested a small, bright-colored door: the door leading onto the adjoining room.
Then something else caught Luigi’s eye: something reasonably more concerning. A much larger shape hung in front of the harpist: shades of red and blue hardly visible in the wash of the other ghost’s light. Hackles raised, Luigi watched the forms thicken and dim in time with their gentle spin. More human ghosts.
Luigi swallowed hard and readjusted his grip on the poltergust, pondering how best to proceed. He didn’t see how the ghost hadn’t noticed him—not when the others he encountered seemed so on top of his presence. Maybe they had noticed, and just didn’t care. That concept was strange as well, but these ghosts were occupied…
Cautiously, he began inching along the edge of the room.
Sweat beaded on his forehead as he crept his way along, back to the trim, still-damp boots occasionally squeaking on the tile. The dancers came precariously close to him in their whirling, only feet away, but they still paid him no mind, though he could have sworn the harpist gave him a dirty look.
Gradually the song came to a close and the room began to still. The merriment ended and the colorful dancers broke up in a moment of reprieve. The human ghosts towered over the rest of the couples almost comically. They bowed gracefully to each other, and arm in arm, removed themselves from the dance floor, drifting away to claim a curtained alcove.
Luigi could see them clearly now: a man in a sleek red suit and a woman with curling blonde hair and a flowing gown. Their eyes were on each other as they came, smiling and talking quietly between themselves. The woman laughed at something Luigi couldn’t hear, and looked up gracefully, eyes coming to rest on him. She dragged to a halt, pulling her companion to a surprised stop beside her, eyes distinctly coming to rest on the poltergust in Luigi’s hand. Her uneasy, intense gaze traveled upwards to his face before changing to a guarded, uncomfortable smile.
Luigi stepped away sharply, only to slam into one of the shy-guys who had strayed from the dance floor.
He gasped as the chilly sensation bit through him. The shy guy startled too, squealing and flailing as it darted away. At the sound of its partner’s distress, another, larger shy-guy ran to its aid, letting out an aggravated squawk and brandishing its spear.
Luigi pointed the poltergust and pulled the trigger.
The shy-guy recoiled from the suction, though it didn’t seem to affect it much at all. Then away flew its mask, turning end over end through the air until it collided with the poltergust nozzle with a clatter and stuck. The creature went rigid with shock. Luigi caught a glimpse of a dark, black hole, glittering yellow eyes staring back at him from its depths. He backpedaled and the mask fell to the ground, shattering like porcelain across the bright tiles. The shy-guy shrieked and fell back as well, weapon clattering to the floor as it hid its face like a bashful boo.
The room erupted into chaos.
Some of the shy-guys vanished from sight instantly, taking their masks and spears with them. The rest ran yammering across the floor like a nest of kicked ants. Luigi shrunk back from the mayhem, flashlight flitting across the panicked ghosts and poltergust ready. The unmistakable shimmer of the humanoid ghost wedged between him and the crowd. Luigi leapt back in alarm, colliding poltergust-tank first into the wall. The woman faltered and Luigi whipped the nozzle up at her, pulling the switch. She reeled away with a startled cry, suction tugging at the hem of her dress. The other human darted in front of her with a flurry of red suit, shielding her with his arms as he hustled her further back.
Something caught in Luigi’s chest as they retreated away from him: the woman cowering behind her partner, hands cupped over her mouth in horror. He half lowered the poltergeist. The room had gone dead quiet. What remained of the shy-guys had collected in the far corners of the room. Every set of eyes were on him now, peering fearfully. Nothing moved. Luigi took a staggery step backwards and, ducking his head, ran for the door on the other side of the room. None of the ghosts followed.
Luigi burst into the next chamber and slammed the door behind him, planting his back against it as if to pin it closed. The sound of his own rasping breath filled the little chamber and he shook. The room behind him remained silent. He swallowed hard, forcing down the frog in his throat. Fear tore at him, but there was something else, too. The strangest feeling of guilt. He slid down against the door, eyes closed, flashlight and poltergust gripped in both hands as the jittery light played across the ceiling. They were ghosts. They wanted to catch him, to hurt him—just like Chancy, the hall ghosts, everything in this place. Because the poltergust gave him the advantage...that was the only reason they hesitated.
But they hadn’t attacked him, and the look on the woman’s face—she looked as scared as he was.
Luigi gave a long, shuddering sigh. It misted out in front of him in a white cloud, dissipating into the room. He wasn’t here to fight ghosts. He was here to find Mario. Slowly, he looked over the new chamber.
It was short, dark, and bare. A single candle flickered on the wall, casting a sorry puddle of light. The room looked the same as the dance hall—heavily patterned wallpaper and high, etched trim—though the floor was dark boards rather than colorful tile. An old mop and bucket lay on the floor and a large round table rested on its side, propped against the wall, stacks of decorated chairs flanking it on either side. He didn’t know what he had expected, but it had been something more than this.
Luigi edged forward, eyeing everything carefully. The musty smell of basement filled the chamber, and compared to the rest of the house, the air was frigid. The stacks of chairs threw tall, spindly shadows across the walls as the light played through their legs. Nothing moved.
He looked behind the table and under the chairs, poked in the corners, but there weren’t many places to look. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for. It was a dead end: a regular, useless storage room. Confused, Luigi placed his back to the wall once again, peering over the chamber a final time. There were no rafters here, no creeping shadows on the wall. With half an eye still on the room, he pulled out the gameboy horror and checked the map again.
There was the mark, a grey box, the only one in the mansion as far as he could see. But there was something strange about the chamber. He inspected the room again, then the map. The gameboy showed very clearly, this chamber ran the length of the ballroom. As it was now, it wasn’t even half that size. He was missing something, he was sure of it. Not sure what else to do, he made his way toward the out-of-place wall.
The gameboy beeped. Luigi glanced down at it sharply, whole body tense with surprise. After a moment it beeped again, the light on top of the device blinking an urgent yellow. Nothing had changed on the map. There didn’t seem to be any warnings. It definitely wasn’t the professor calling, Luigi had that tune permanently seared into his memory by now. He navigated away from the map, back to the daunting home menu, but nothing had changed there either. He didn’t dare explore the interface further for fear of messing something up or losing his way to the map. Hesitantly, he powered off the device and slipped it into his pocket again. But that didn’t stop it in the least, it just continued to protest, giving muffled chirps through the bulky cloth of his overalls.
After another moment of hesitation, Luigi turned his attention to the wall again. Waist-high trim ringed the room in a series of beveled panels, but in the middle of the wall, were the trim met the wallpaper, hung a loose shred. It looked more like a peeling tendril of wallpaper than anything useful, but a closer look proved it something very different: it was a poster, stuck to the wall by a single strip of clear tape.
Luigi squinted at the smudged ink. From what he could make out, it was a poster for an old science fair, and it clearly wasn’t part of the house’s original decor. The faded shape of an outlandish contraption took up most of its front, with a smudgy title thrown across it in a bold, futuristic font. Underneath it, in a much smaller type, was a near unintelligible slur of ink. Though he could almost swear one of the words was “Gadd”. Careful not to damage it’s thin fibers, he held it up to the light, trying to make it out, only to reveal a small red button embedded in the wall beneath it. After a moment of hesitation, Luigi pressed it.
A low grinding struck up somewhere behind the wall, and he stepped away sharply. Slowly, two of the panels pulled back and slid out of sight with the clunk of a latch falling into place. The new doorway was tiny, probably not meant for humans at all, rather toads, or given the dancers in the other room, shy-guys. Though it must have been perfect for the professor as well. When he was sure everything had finished moving, Luigi shuffled to the opening, shone his light into the space beyond, then hesitantly slipped inside.
The mechanism of the trap-door was clearly visible on the inside of the wall. A tangle of colored wires and gears on a track. The walls were littered with more posters, some old, some almost new, and a few framed pieces of paper that seemed to be certificates of some kind. A few heavy-duty crates rested in one corner; new crates with the symbols of businesses Luigi recognized, though most were stamped with what appeared to be E. Gadd’s personal seal.
In the middle of the floor rested a heavy metal cap, not unlike the caps which were in the training room. A bundle of wires snaked away from it, tacked to the floor and up the wall, ending in a metal slot. The slot looked an awful lot like the gameboy’s niche on the poltergust.
Luigi hung back, not sure what to make of all this. A sense of foreboding hung over him, despite the room’s apparent emptiness. He pulled the device from his pocket again with half a mind to call the professor, before realizing he didn’t know how. Maybe he should go back: check the other room, and see if you couldn’t figure out how to contact E. Gadd. But there was that slot on the wall...
He stepped toward it hesitantly, giving a wide berth to the cap on the floor, gameboy still in his hand. The further he ventured into the room, the faster the device’s incessant beeping became. But he had come too far to turn tail now. He knelt down and tried the gameboy in the slot. Sure enough, it fit like a glove. The device gave a yip of recognition; the display went solid green and the light on top turned red, the space to input a code floating dead center on the screen. But before he could do anything else, it changed to twisted pixels, and the beeping died.
Luigi took a step back, eyes darting uncertainly, then jumped as a harsh rattling filled the room. It was the hatch. Thick volumes of white smoke poured out as it snapped open, spilling from the darkness beneath. A cackling filled the room as the smoke began to solidify, morphing into a writhing cloud of boos. Luigi yelled and peddled backwards as they flooded the room, filling it with ghastly white light. There were more boos than Luigi had ever seen in his life.
• • •
Mario sat crumpled in four inches of water, a frigid drizzle of rain filtering down through the opening of the well.
He had waited for king boo to follow him down, finish him off. But that had never happened. Now he was alone, wet-through in the dark. How could this have happened? It was a cold, rhetorical question.
Slowly Mario raised his hand. The power star lay flat on his palm, exuding the slightest glow of light. It had taken most of the fall; it was likely the only reason he was still alive. The star began to grow brighter, floating upward in a limp, dazed sort of way, as if it were waking from sleep. It tried to bond to him again, but Mario could feel how little energy it had left. He pushed it away gently, willing it to return to the observatory.
The emotions of power stars were complicated things, but Mario knew indignation when he felt it. He sighed internally and pushed more firmly, trying to impress upon it the importance of the situation. The boos would be back for him, likely soon. He didn’t want them to find the power star when that happened.
Finally, reluctantly, the star obeyed, limping into the air over his head. It approached the lip of the well hesitantly, then streaked away into the air, heading for the tiny sliver of tower visible through the cracked boards.
It was dark and quiet. The boos never showed up.
After a while, Mario tried to get up, only to fall heavily back into the water. Every inch of him was bruised and stiff. His head swam. But he wasn’t through yet. He refused to be through.
Finally he managed to get to his feet, staggering against the wall. His leg screamed as it took his weight again. He ignored it, raising what he could muster of a fire in one hand. The stones he leaned against shimmered, slick and wet, echoing with the lap of water every time he moved. As narrow as the well-shaft was, he could hardly make out the stones on the far side. But there was a deeper patch of darkness to his right, and a faint draft. He staggered forward, groping with his fire-filled hand, then stumbled over a stone step, falling into the water again. Spluttering, Mario pushed himself up, rekindling his light. Four stairs led up from the bottom of the well, two of which were under water, into a low, stone doorway and a narrow passage beyond. He hauled himself up the stairs, water pouring off him in rivers, and limped down the passage.
The walls were wet and rough under his hands, a mixture of bricks and natural cave. His slow, trudging steps echoed back at him, mixed with the drip of condensed water from the roof. He could hardly see the stones at his feet through the measly light he had, but he continued blindly forward, feeling along the wall as best he could. The air was thick with dank moisture and the smell of green sludge. Just as he began to worry that he had stumbled into a cavern below the castle, he felt an indent on the wall, and something that wasn’t stone. His brow furrowed and he turned toward it, bringing his fire right up next to it. It was a door.
It was rusted almost beyond recognition—if Mario hadn’t been groping along the wall he probably would have missed it. A handle poked out at him, rusted as well, but less so, as if someone purposefully kept it clean. It was a more modern type of latch, too with a lever on the underside of the handle. Mario wrapped his hand around it, pressed the lever, and pushed. It wasn’t locked.
It took Mario a few moments to get inside, shoving at it’s heavy, stiff frame. Only once he got through did he realize that a pile of empty crates were stacked against in on the inside. He squeezed through the crack he had created, and not bothering to replace the crates, pushed the door shut behind him.
He was punched immediately by the smell of gasoline and an acrid, chemical scent he couldn’t identify. He looked sharply around the room to see workbenches, cabinets, and shelves: their compartments and drawers thrown open and shelves emptied. Flickering blue light strips hung on the walls, casting the chamber in a shabby, wavering light. Gears, wires, tools, and sheets of metal glimmered dully on the floor. Strange contraptions lay in every corner, smashed to pieces.
In the center of the floor rested a particularly large contraption, spanning a good half the room with it’s length. It was a conveyor of some sort, meant for processing something. What, he couldn’t even guess. Of all the devices in the room, it alone was undamaged, and a swath of clear floor stretched around it.
Mario picked his way across the chamber, staggering between the remains of outlandish machines and snares of wire as he made for the open space. He leaned against the machine heavily, grimacing. This must be the laboratory the twins had talked about. And Henry had mentioned mushroom drops...
Mario glanced around the wreckage, trying to guess where a medical kit might be, though he didn’t know how he was going to find anything in this mess. The whole place had been torn apart with a vengeance. He sincerely hoped the professor hadn’t been here when this had happened.
Most of the lab seemed dedicated to mechanics, but there was one corner that seemed dedicated the chemical science. If the professor made his own remedies: that was the best place to start. Mario shuffled toward it, wrinkling his nose at the acrid, eye-watering smell. One of the metal shelves lay flat on the ground in a halo of broken glass and bright-colored stains. Next to it, a chemistry set was smashed to pieces on a workbench, stains of strange liquid splashed across the back wall and the stones of the floor, or collected in drying pools across what was left of the beakers and pipes. There in the mess, was the white and red of a med-chest.
Mario picked it up shakily, retreating under one of the blue lights and fumbling with the stiff latch. Finally he got it open in an explosion of gauze and bandages. Several vials rested in the nest of disturbed medical supplies, labeled with strips of white tape and a hand-lettered scrawl. Eventually he managed to dig out the little brown bottle labeled “mushroom drops”.
He unscrewed the top and smelled the contents just to be sure. The distinct smell of the miniature mushrooms wafted up thickly. Most of his problems were past mushroom drops by now. What he really needed was a stiff one-up, or maybe an ultra mushroom, but he would take whatever he could find... He downed the bottle in one swallow.
A familiar tingling, cramping sensation and a sickly wave of tiredness swept over him as the tincture took effect. The room wavered and he sat down against the wall. But he couldn’t stay here for long. He had to get moving again.
Clumsily, he dug back into the medical chest, pawing through the rest of the vials and trying to read the disastrous labeling. Two were antiseptics and a third seemed to be a vomit-inducer. What the fourth one was, he couldn’t even guess. He took the antiseptic vials in one hand and pulled away the sopping, red-stained brace on his shoulder.
Rings of purple and green bruising swelled away from the slowly-leaking puncture wounds. The skin just around the bite was white, swollen, and tender. He could only imagine what his leg looked like by now with all the abuse it had endured. He regretted not saving any of the tincture for applying topically.
Mario let a few drops of antiseptic fall into the wound and quickly covered it with gauze. It burned like fire, and his eyes watered. When the sensation had subsided some, he replaced his sleeve again, wrapping a new brace over the top of it.
His movements became more steady as he worked. The edge of his pain was evaporating as well as the worst of the stiffness. He was such a fool for coming here unprepared. Things could have gone so much differently tonight if he had only known—
A yell cut through the silence. Mario went rigid, every muscle coiled. It was a terrified, panicked yell—one he was all too familiar with.
It was Luigi.
Notes:
I’m back! And with the longest chapter in a while, too!
I was really worried about this chapter in the early stages: it just seemed like Luigi landing in one mess of hot water after another. But everything fell together in the end, and I’m actually pretty happy with. It adds a lot of elements to the narrative, laying the groundwork for Luigi’s interactions with the ghosts moving forward as he gets ready to supplant Mario for center stage.
It’s true there are a lot of ghost encounters here, and the flow isn’t as balanced as I’d like because of it, but as I keep saying, that’s what editing is for. Once I have the whole story laid out I can polish out the rumples. For now, though, I just gotta keep going with what I have.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the chapter. I’ll see you next time, and I'll try not to take so long about it. Until then, please let me know what you think of the story so far! I would love to hear!
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