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flowercrowngods · 8 months

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part 1 | ao3

shattered on the cliff’s edge, trapped by the tides

— a steddie ghost story —

part 2 / 7

Soaked through by the icy water and the howling winds, and weighted down by shock and fright, Steve’s legs may as well have been made of lead as he, slowly, with a racing heart, accepts his fate and enters the lighthouse.

He flinches, hard, when the door falls shut behind him, as if pushed by an invisible force, and he flinches again when a wave crashes violently. It’s almost as if the lighthouse is shaking with the impact, but maybe that’s just him.

“Okay,” he breathes, whispering because he doesn’t dare to speak any louder, lest the unending darkness might be disturbed — and something tells him that it wouldn’t take all that kindly to that. “Okay.” Once more, with feeling.

Before he can move and find an oil lamp or even just a candle to bring some light into this place, something thumps from somewhere up the stairs he cannot see.

He knows that, just like ancient manors, lighthouses have a life of their own, knows they’re prone to moving and moaning along with the tides, with the wind and the water — but that was not the settling of wood or metal. That was something else.

“Hello?” he calls with a trembling voice, closing his eyes at the echoes of his own voice travelling up and down the tower he is being made to call home for the foreseeable future. “Is— Is anyone there? I’m… Well, I’m Steve.”

Images fill the space behind his eyes, horrible visions of the old keepers luring him here to murder him, out of sea madness or cannibalistic urges, or just to have a bit of entertainment out here, just for a while. Other images, then, of ghosts coming to haunt him, to drive him to the brink of madness, to the railing all the way up on the tower, and watch his descent into—

Another thump. The sound of a door opening, the wood groaning, the hinges creaking, everything insists the lighthouse protesting its new inhabitant.

And then, through the pitch black darkness, a whisper. Travelling down towards him, growing louder as it comes closer and closer and—

Steve takes a step back, his breath coming in shallow rapidity as he reaches for the handle and finding it unmoving.

Run, the whisper says, sounding more like an inhale than anything else — and is the air getting thinner? Run.

Another wave crashes into the lighthouse.

Run.

The whispering voice is in his head now, loud for all of its tonelessness.

Run!

Steve stumbles backwards, his body too frozen with cold and fear to catch his fall. His body collides with the wall and he slides down, covering his ears with his hands to keep out the noise, to keep out the world as he tries in vain for the fear to subside.

“I’m sorry,” he says, hiding behind his knees like a little boy, scared of his father’s raised hands and his brothers' gloating. “I’m sorry, I mean no harm, I’m just— I’m here to fix the light. I’m here to make sure it’s— everything’s, everything’s fine. I don’t mean to disturb, I’m sorry. I’m Steve. I’m sorry.”

Everything stills then — or maybe it’s the cotton in his ears and the staccato of his heart that drown out everything else and remind him that he’s painfully, desperately alive. And mortal.

But the whispering stops, and so does the groaning up ahead, and silence falls. An unnatural silence, not even broken by the ocean waves outside.

It’s like the lighthouse has stilled to listen to him.

It’s something Robin told him once (or rather, debated at him while he was letting her rant wash over him in a whiff of fondness for his best friend in the whole wide world):

“Ghosts don’t know your intentions, right? So it’s only fair to communicate with them. It’s you breaking into their house, after all. Well, unless they’re haunting your house, but even then it’s fair to assume they have been there all along and you either deserve the haunting and had it coming, or you’re just the poor lad caught in the crossfires. Either way, worth a try, right? If even those still alive assume the worst, I would think an eternity spent in the aether is unlikely to be beneficial to your judgement of character.”

Steve had waved it off then — or, in his case, smile patiently and waited for her to answer his initial question from half an hour ago before she went on a tangent on aether and ghosts and the supernatural; she’d been spending too much time in the library.

“You learn a thing or two about haunted houses, growing up in a family such as mine,” he’d said, and then, “Dinner?”

A pang splits him down the middle, regret and uncertainty tearing at him concerning Robin’s wheareabouts and her safety. She must be safe. She must be!

“They say you don’t like— you, uh, strangers. The locals said you don’t like when people come here, so I’m sorry, but… I’m sorry. I have to fix the light. I’m Steve.”

It’s madness, it must be. Early onset, although his father would have a thing or two to say about that, would claim it had always lived in him, would claim the way he looks at men is proof of that and reason enough to have him hanging in the streets.

It wasn’t madness back then, Steve knows, vehemently, desperately knows. But this? Talking to a lighthouse, speaking into the darkness like it’s sentient even just a minute after he first set foot into it? It must be. He’s never been superstitious, has never been prone to ghost stories or supernatural appearances like Robin.

But something about this place, something about the way it has been haunting his dreams, something about Old John capsizing is enough to make even the calmest man lose his wits.

Something tells Steve that talking with the darkness is the right thing to do, if only for his own comfort.

He looks up, his head thumping against the brick wall behind him, as steps approach. They still, right in front of him, and he’s staring into nothingness, almost expecting to make out a shape. Expecting for the next breath to be his last.

Expecting… something.

But nothing happens, and the sound of the ocean returns. The darkness seems less impenetrable as a sliver of light falls in through a side light up above.

“Thank you,” he says, as stupidly as it is soundless, his voice buried beneath fear and dread.

Miraculously, the darkness seems to fade a little more.

Enough, eventually, for Steve to get up and dust off his trousers in an attempt to look presentable, or to shake off the residue of his fright — if only it was merely residue.

Now that the darkness has lightened, he keeps his eyes fixed to the spot where he feels like he can make out a shape in the dust. Maybe it’s just his mind playing tricks on him, though, maybe it’s just the expectation of finding a spectre that makes one appear.

Madness, he reiterates. But something about it doesn’t feel right. He doesn’t feel mad. And the steps never receded. If they were not an illusion, something created to steal the grounds from beneath his feet, playing with his senses to warp his perception of reality and the truth, then something — someone, quite possibly — is still standing right in front of him.

He looks on even long past the point of impolite staring, searching the dust for a shape that only appears in his periphery when he moves his eyes.

It feels rather undeniable, though, that someone is watching him.

“Hello,” he says at last, having regained some of his voice and footing. His hands clench by his sides, though, his body revolting against speaking with an apparent ghost.

The darkness doesn’t answer, and neither does the dust. But with the memory of urgent whispers still on the forefront of his mind, Steve is almost grateful for it as he carefully reaches for his bags and stars to move so slowly that it might almost be a mockery of the situation if his legs weren’t so shaky.

The weight of an invisible gaze rests on his shoulders and settles in the bones of his neck. It takes everything in him not to rub at it — he has no idea what the darkness would take offence to, and he already feels incredibly lucky to have made it this far with his life still intact and only his sanity and his pride having taken a crack along the way.

He thinks of Old John again, thinks of Good luck, kid. He almost asks the darkness about him, but he bites his tongue just in time. The stairs are steep and if he fell, given an invisible push, chances are he wouldn’t remain as alive as he is right now.

So he swallows and feels his way along the wall up the stairs. When he finds an oil lamp, he reaches for the matches in his bags — blessedly dry — and lights it.

It’s almost blinding, the shine of the flame that sets to illuminate the way, but Steve feels his gaze drawn to the foot of the stairs where the spectre is still framed by the door. Still appearing to look at Steve.

Stalemate is one thing to call it, maybe, this tension in the air, the weight of their gazes accompanied by the stumbling of Steve’s heart and the trembling of his hands.

Steve swallows and continues with his ascent of the winding stairs, never once losing the feeling in his neck. He finds more lamps along the wall and lights them until they lead him to a set of chambers that in any other lighthouse would have been down at the bottom or even in another building altogether, leaving room in a large house or a tiny hut for the keepers to reside in. But none of that is possible out here, in the middle of the sea, towering on top of cliffs that already make it nary impossible to get here.

The lighthouse is prone to flooding if the wind shifts or the ocean remains ruthless in a storm, so everything needs to be located above the threat of sea level.

He finds two bedchambers, the beds unmade, a richly stocked pantry that will last him several months if he keeps it locked away from wet air, and an almost inviting kitchen. A burnt smell wafts from the oven, grown stale over time but a certain bite has never quite managed to air out, and when he takes a look, he finds what was supposed to be bread still in there. A coat hangs on a rack, another is hung over the back of the chair, and another stool has been thrown over.

It looks for all intents and purposes like someone was just here. Like someone is still here.

What happened to the old keepers? — That does not concern you.

A shiver runs through him and he tries not to succumb to the terror that seems to lurk inside these walls as he starts a fire in the hearth. He is exhausted, adrenaline rushing from his body and leaving behind only apathetic tiredness and a longing for rest. He doesn’t even remember the light, his head filled with fog and exhaustion.

Once the fire is going and he is sure there is enough coal for it to last all night and keep him from freezing to an early death, Steve falls into bed without dinner. He only has enough strength not to retreat into a dead man’s unmade bed, instead finding new bedding and linen to make it his own.

He doesn’t sleep on that first night, but he falls into a haze thick enough to be unable to move as the whispers return, knocking and hammering along the walls almost rhythmically, as if waiting for a signal.

There is no time, they say, though he cannot be sure the next morning if he dreamed that or if he really heard it echoing along the walls.

Run. Leave. There is no time.

Tick.

And the night remains dark.

tagging: @klausinamarink @steviesummer @auroraplume @dragonmama76

#steddie #steddie fanfic #steddie fic #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things fic #stranger things #dio words #spooky lighthouse au #if i tell y'all i am writing these things on my phone within the last hours of the day... :p #i have never done anything spooky so this is my lame attempt at eerie atmosphere i hope i succeeded i hope it doesn't suck #steve will be more in character soon but for now he's stressed and scared and haunted hope that helps #ao3 will take a while to update sorry #i feel like this one's vastly different from part 1 in tone and pace but i'm trying not to obsess over that as i still regain my words #tried to keep this one shorter than yesterday’s hence the rather abrupt ending sorry bebés

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