Creepypasta 2 (Patreon)

And now, the creepy conclusion...

Creepypasta 1

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Jakari stared at the wall where she had seen the specter, but it was only bare aluminum. On an inexplicable hunch, she pulled the bright red lenses over her eyes and stared at the wall, but it looked no different than it had a moment ago—just redder.

But she’d been sure she’d seen someone standing right here… So, she thought on the sight a moment longer. She’d always had an excellent memory for details, for faces. She hadn’t seen what color his eyes were, though they were wide and sad, almost haunted. His pelt had been dark—all except for his ears. Both of those were light.

The commander gasped. She’d hallucinated someone—just as the residents of 20401 had! That could only mean that in her brief moment inside, she’d been exposed to the same noxious gas that had poisoned the tenants.

Without delay, she rushed off to the nearest med-bay—the one on 20, not her usual doctor up on 5.

In minutes, she sat back on an exam table, breathing pure oxygen from a plastic mask.

“Just breathe in and out, nice and calm,” the doctor said in soothing tones. “Nothing to worry about. If you did get a whiff of something bad, this should help flush it from your system. Meanwhile, I’ll take a small blood draw and see if anything shows up there. Do you know what might have been leaking?”

Jakari shook her head as she sucked in oxygen. Lots of different things got piped around the ship. The most dangerous stuff was kept in canisters and shipped by runabout to minimize the risk of leaks, but even then, most gasses were dangerous if you breathed too much of them.

“Where was this?”

She took the mask away from her muzzle just long enough to say, “20401.”

“20401, hrm?” said the doctor, typing the address into his computer tablet. “I don’t see any reports from engineering, so that’s no help. 20401? Isn’t that next door to where Deastaan lived?”

Though it sounded familiar somehow, she didn’t recognize the name and reacted only by raising her ears.

“Deastaan,” he said again, trying to prompt her memory. “Nice guy. Dark fur, light on his ears—I did his autopsy last week. What a mess!”

Oh! Her eyes went wide. Murders were rare aboard the White Flower II, but they did happen from time to time. Deastaan had been beat to death by one of his friends who was convinced the poor guy was sleeping with his mate.

Jakari had no idea whether Deastaan had actually cheated with the murderer’s mate, but the case had been noteworthy for its brutality. Not only had the murderer used only his fists to kill Deastaan, but the body had gone undiscovered for a few days until the neighbors had reported a bad smell…

Had she seen the victim’s disembodied spirit? The notion wasn’t completely absurd. Though Deastaan’s birth token had been passed to a new Happy Couple once his body was discovered, the two might not have conceived just yet. After all, it had only been a few days.

Where did souls reside before reincarnating into a new body? No one ever talked about that.

This whole line of thinking was leaving Jakari on shaky theological ground, and the geroo religion didn’t include priests or other spiritual authorities to ask.

The doctor excused himself to go test Jakari’s blood, leaving the commander sitting idle in bed, breathing from the mask. She realized that she still had the laser eyewear in her paws, and with nothing better to do, she dropped them over her eyes.

As her eyes adapted to the red filter, she was surprised to find a thin band running horizontally around the med-bay, about half way up the wall. She removed the goggles, then put them back on. Whatever this band was, she could only see them under the red filter!

She stood from the exam table and cocked her head, stepping closer to the wall. The longer she stared, the more clear the image became. It wasn’t a line per se… It was a line of small symbols not unlike the ones Ateri’s crew had been etching on the insides of the wall-plates in 20401.

What were these symbols? They certainly weren’t Geroo glyphs. They looked a bit like Krakun runes but … older perhaps? More angular, less rounded. Yes, she was certain that they had to have a krakun origin, but it was anyone’s guess what they meant.

The longer she stared, the more the runes seemed to dance and pulse, the less Jakari suspected that she actually had been poisoned. Whatever was going on here had a logical explanation, and she was going to find it.

The commander pulled the mask from her face and shut off the oxygen flow. The pulses seemed to run across the length of runes, so she followed them—across the exam room and out into the corridor.

The doctor was preoccupied and didn’t notice her leaving. A few of the crew passing by waved, but only one paused long enough to comment, “Fancy eyewear, Commander!”

She winked at him through the red lenses. “Scavenger hunt,” she lied. “Looking for my clues.”

“How fun!” he laughed as he padded away.

The runes led Jakari down the corridor and to the ship’s central ramp. She followed them up and up, stewing the whole way. Whatever was going on here, Ateri clearly knew about it. He had assigned that crew to etch runes in 20401, and they must have done these too.

Whatever they were for was another matter, but the fact that he had been keeping secrets from her? That was unacceptable.

The runes led her up to the middle of the ship—Deck 13. From there, she followed them down the main corridor to the ship’s reactor. There, the runes ran along the deck, encircling the reactor itself.

But the runes didn’t end there! They spiraled up the walls of the reactor itself, crossing over themselves, and wrapping the chamber in a mesh of glowing symbols.

She stared at it, wordless, for the longest time before a voice to her left shook her from her thoughts, her inquisitive mind trying to unravel the mysterious symbols like a cub trying to pull a fancy bow and ribbons from his Visitor’s Day present.

“Leave us,” said Captain Ateri in a loud, clear tone.

Jakari snatched the goggles from her face and realized that all the engineers stationed at the reactor were staring at her. After the briefest pause, they filed out in silence and closed the door behind them, leaving her alone with her mate.

“What are you … doing here?” she asked in a quiet tone.

The big geroo with the jet-black pelt said nothing for a moment. He continued to lean back against the wall, his eye staring at the reactor. “Praying,” he said at last.

In frustration, she snorted. “Since when do you believe in souls?”

“Since always,” he said. “Me more so than anyone else on board, I suspect.”

That made her laugh. “And these markings? Your secret little crew made these?”

Ateri shook his head. “Nah,” said the captain, “these have always been there. The krakun were very precise in their specifications of what must go where.”

He glanced at her. “Not in the design specifications that engineering gets to see, of course, but I’ve known about them since I became Captain.”

“And you never told me”—her voice strained and hurt—“about these … these…”

“Wards,” he completed for her, “to guide the souls.”

“What?”

Now, he looked at her. “It’s a secret, of course, but our religion has it all wrong. Souls don’t reincarnate. A soul is created afresh when each new cub is conceived.”

“Oh?” she asked, not wanting to believe. But she could feel pieces falling into place within her mind. “And Deastaan’s soul in 20401? Those that die in med-bay. I suppose those taken to the recycler as well… Where do they go? Do these ‘wards’ guide them here?”

Ateri nodded in silence, staring at the reactor once more.

“For what purpose?” she pleaded, wishing he would at least look at her. “To contain them within the reactor’s core? To keep the souls of the dead from haunting the ship?”

“I wish,” he sighed, “then I could come down here and truly pray to Sur’an. Perhaps if I stood close enough to the containment vessel, she could even hear me.”

“Ateri—” whispered Jakari.

“There’s a reason they don’t allow us to live past sixty,” he whispered, “why they cull us before we’ve really gotten too old to work.”

She reached out to him, her pads stopping just before touching his pelt.

“They need us to die young, before all our vitality has leached away,” he explained, “or else our souls wouldn’t be vigorous enough to power the ship…”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ono7dDcvo3uLGU2CJGo3I2WpgekfeVL4oGS_arTE3vk/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?