The Gate ⋈ A Stydia Story

[ 02 ] ariel

She was shaky all day at school. The lockers seemed to slam shut louder and the voices of others resonated in her ears. The emptiness in her chest was still there, and it was an unsettling feeling that Lydia hadn't felt since she lost her.

Well now, she was seeing her everywhere.

Allison was all over the school, wherever she went. In between classes, she would see her clad the same white dress and bare feet. The figure of her would be weaving in and out of crowds, or ducking behind hallway corners. Lydia could never keep up with her.

But when she saw Allison again, scampering around the corner, she began to run through the crowds, dropping her books and bag to the floor in a sprint. She turned the corner of the hallway to see Allison a little ways down, hopping from foot to foot with childlike innocence as she made her way.

She didn't know why Allison was here, or why she was seeing her, but Lydia wasn't going to let her best friend get away again. So she kept running as fast as she could, the people around her looking with wide eyes and stepping quickly out of the way so they wouldn't get knocked over.

Her feet pushed off the ground and she continued down the hallway until she slammed into something- someone. That someone grabbed her shoulders and steadied her from toppling over.

"Woah- Lydia, you alright? Why were you sprinting through the hallways?" Lydia looked up to see Stiles in front of her. Her eyes switched between his face and the spot where Allison just was. Now, she had disappeared into thin air.

"I- uh, she was- she was right there." Lydia rambled, looking to the floor in thought and taking a hand through her hair. Stiles' eyebrows furrowed.

"Slow down, take a deep breath." She did as he said, and then he continued. "Why were you running through the hallway?"

Her brain scrambled for a way to describe exactly what she saw. If Allison had disappeared that quickly, then she wasn't real, Lydia thought.

"I-I didn't sleep very well last night, and I had this freaky dream. I think I'm just seeing things." He didn't believe her, but decided to leave it alone. Stiles would wait until after school and then get some real answers. The second bell rang through the halls.

"Well, second bell just rang. We need to go to English, even though you don't even have to take that class." He complained, placing a hand on the small of her back as they walked to the English classroom. She retorted sassily, claiming that she liked the class, but Stiles knew she just didn't have anything better to do. As they walked in the door, students were still settling down in their seats.

Lydia saw a new face setting at her desk, a cheeky smile plastered on his features. His attitude was practically transparent, and she bit back a snarky comment. "Lydia," The teacher called, pulling her from her thoughts. "We have a new student, as you can tell. He's going to be sitting in your seat until we can get an extra desk." She cursed in her head, but figured it was purely for good manners. "Grab an extra chair and sit at someone else's desk for today." Lydia smiled at Stiles as she said that, pulling a seat up to the side of his desk.

As the teacher drawled on about Spartacus this and Spartacus that, the two shared what they thought of the new student.

"He looks a little fake to me," Lydia complained, looking over her shoulder. Stiles scoffed.

"Have some grace, Lydia. I know he stole your seat but it's his first day." She rolled her eyes a bit.

"I know, I know, I'll be civil. But he just irks me the wrong way." Lydia bent over to get her notebook, remembering that she had dropped it out in the hallway. She groaned, and he looked at her in confusion.

"Excuse me?" She called to the teacher. "I left my notebook in my locker, can I go grab it?" The teacher nodded promptly, not railing on Lydia as she did other students. She left the classroom, walking swiftly through the halls, seeing her bag in the middle of the floor.

Hurrying to it, Lydia scooped it up and turned to leave, but her eyes slid to something else.

At the end of the hallway, Allison stood, facing her, the flower of blood still staining her abdomen and cheeks hollow with gaunt features. Lydia's breath left her, walking slowly to the girl.

As she came closer, Lydia noticed she was whispering something under her breath, an indecipherable message, repeating the same few lines over and over.

The horrible screeching from her dream arose again, plaguing her ears. Lydia felt the same iciness settle in her bones and brought her hands up to her ears, breathing heavily and attempting to block out the sound.

Allison still stood away from her, muttering the same words but Lydia couldn't hear it over the hollow voices. She dropped to her knees, refusing to shut her eyes from the other girl, a thumping pain in her head as the screams increased. The world around her warped into darkness, a sort of tunnel vision, blocking out everything but Allison.

The screams died down suddenly, and Allison whispered in a small voice, dry and cracked.

"Banshee,"

Lydia fell onto the ground, the tunnel closing up and her vision going dark.

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A drum seemed to go off in her head, pulsing through her temples. There was something beneath her, a cool surface, but nothing around her. She pulled herself into a sitting up position. Lydia was back in the void she was one night ago, a vast emptiness, but the space lacked the screaming voices. Instead, there was a single, wooden door.

She walked to it, grasping the metal handle and pulling it open.

As she walked through the doorway, she was greeted to rough stones and harsh floors. She walked further, down a long hallway, before coming to a large, empty room at the end.

The lights above her flickered on and off, an old woman coming in and out of vision with the lights. The light finally settled to a dull, yellow color that illuminated the space.

In front of Lydia sat a woman, face marked with age and roughly chopped strawberry blonde hair. There were two pieces of metal on her temples, covered with a cloth that had spot on the surface. Lydia instantly recognized it as electroshock therapy.

"Ariel," The old woman whispered.

The word seemed to set off a trigger, the lights flickering again as the woman convulsed in pain on the chair, electric sparks dancing across the metal on her head. It ceased again, and the old woman was breathless.

"Ariel," The electric became uncontrolled again, leaving the woman dazed and in pain.

Lydia's eyes widened as she tried to step closer, finding her body wouldn't move on its own.

The old woman began to whisper under her breath, the same thing Allison did. Lydia could hear it this time.

"a banshee est ululate, et stilla ad velum,"

The language was foreign to her ears.

"porta usque ad finem erit solutum et in fine exclamavit," Lydia felt herself being sucked back through the hallway, the vision of the woman shrinking as she flew.

"unde oportet quod mors."

Lydia was thrown back through the door she came through, hitting the invisible ground with a thump. She couldn't move her body, stuck in a motionless state.

The same screams picked up again as she lay, filling her ear canal with screeches of pain and suffering. Lydia shut her eyes, attempting to block out the sound, but they would not obey.

The voices cut again, and she wearily creaked open her eyes again. Darkness filled her heart once more as she saw the huge, black gate tinged with red ahead of her, opened wide.

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The Gate
[ 02 ] ariel