Forgotten - A Skulduggery Pleasant Fanfic (COMPLETE)

1

A/N: Okay, so this chapter is pretty long...but please if you could just work your way through it that would be awesome!  The rest of this story will have 1000 word chapters or less.  This one is at least two times that amount of words haha
So I hope you can get through this first chapter :)

Allara stepped out of the car and stretched, smiling.  Her friends followed, including their designated driver, 18 year old Cory.  All four friends went to the back of their car and got duffel bags and backpacks out, slinging them over shoulders, chatting and laughing.  The night was warm, the summer heat warming the air around them.  Allara turned towards the front door of the house, taking a deep breath.  She had a leather belt loosely tied around her hips, where her jeans began, and on it were various objects; a torch, salt, an emf reader, a recording device, a lighter, a silver dagger and various other ghost hunting materials.  Her friends carried the same things.
"Dude, this is so cool!"  Cory grinned, staring up at the old house.  It sat on an empty lot, surrounded by nothing but fields.  Part of its wooden veranda had caved in, and the front door was gone, leaving a gaping black hole in the front of the house.  Strangely enough, an old rocking chair sat in the corner of the veranda, overturned but looking safe enough to sit on.
"Dibs sitting on the chair!"   Erin ran over and jumped up the stairs to the veranda, jumping over the hole and tipping the rocking chair right-side up before falling into it.  She leaned back and sighed happily; "ah, this is the life."  The wood cracked under her and she jumped, climbing off the chair.
"Maybe you should be more careful!"  Allara laughed, watching her friend trying to find a way over the hole in the veranda.  Finally, she gave up and leaped over the railing, the wood splintering under the weight of her hand.
"You sure this is a good idea?"  Aaron asked, "I mean, Erin's breaking everything already, and we haven't even gotten into the house."  Both Allara and Aaron watched Erin running around the perimeter of the house, hollering and yelling, jumping up onto splintered old pieces of wood, just to break them.
"I think we'll be fine."  Allara nodded, smiling cheekily.  Aaron rolled his eyes and turned to Cory, who was busy getting things out of the car.  He pulled a heavy box out with a grunt.
"Hey, I've got the cameras."  He called out.  Everyone hurried over quickly, watching him open the box to reveal various different cameras.  He handed everyone a video camera, except for Allara.  She got a normal photography camera.  It was a worn old camera, one which had been through a lot, judging from the scratches and a small dent in the top of it.  Allara smiled at the camera, clicking it onto her belt.
"I don't know why you carry that old thing around."  Erin sighed.
"I have my reasons."  Allara punched Erin playfully, who responded with a shocked face and a return punch.
"You're so mean!"  She cried.
"Oh no hun, I'm an angel."  Allara winked at her friend and put her hands under her chin, looking up at the sky innocently.
"The angel that fell from heaven?"  Erin responded.
"Of course.  A fallen angel."  Allara laughed.  Erin was silent, thinking.
"That would explain why your face is so messed up, then."  She said suddenly.  Allara's mouth made a small o.
"Might need some ice for that burn, Al."  Aaron chuckled.  Erin grinned happily.
"Well would you look at who decided to crawl out of hell this morning."  Cory commented, side-eyeing Erin, who slapped him on the arm, "hey-ow!"
"If my face is messed up, I'd hate to see what people think of yours."  Allara suddenly spoke.  Erin took a moment to register the words, but when she did she laughed heartily.
"Touché."  She held out a hand to shake, and Allara shook it happily.  They let go of each other's hands and Erin clipped her camera to her belt.  She went into one of her shorts pockets and pulled out a pair of gloves, which she pulled on quickly.
"Let's get exploring!"  She wiggled her fingers at everyone, who nodded.  Aaron turned to Allara.
"Why does she only need gloves now, and not when she was practically pulling the house apart?"
"Who knows."  Allara shrugged and continued walking, catching up to Erin.  Aaron and Cory stayed a little behind her, due to the fact that they weren't sure whether she was going to accidentally throw something at them or break anything else.  Erin hopped up the stairs and to the house's gaping mouth.  The door, Erin could see, was leaning up against the inside wall, where yellowed plasterboard showed through peeling flakes of what used to be white paint.  Erin took one step in and the floor creaked loudly underneath her.  She laughed and took a few more steps inside the house, turning around to face everyone.
"Spoooopy!"  She whispered, wiggling her fingers again.  Allara was about to respond when she noticed a dark shape flit across the hallway behind the stairs, at the back of the house.  Her mouth dropped open, and she was about to say something, but evidently she hadn't been the only one who noticed.
"Hey, is there someone else in the house?"  Cory asked.
"What?"  Erin raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, I saw that too."  Allara said, "back behind the stairs."
"What are you guys talking about?"  Aaron asked, "have you heard how squeaky the floors are?  If someone was there, they would be loud." 
"Yeah.  I didn't hear anything."   Erin shrugged.  Cory and Allara shared looks.
"Yeah, I guess we were just seeing things.  Shadows and that."  Cory shrugged.  Erin grinned and continued into the house, Aaron in hot pursuit.  Cory and Allara looked at each other again.
"Gh-"  They both spoke at the same time.
"You go first."  They said again.  Allara shut her mouth, nodding to Cory to let him talk.
"Ghost?"  He whispered.
"Maybe."  Allara replied.
"Hm."  Cory walked into the house, his heavy footfalls seemingly shaking the foundations of the falling-apart home.  Allara followed, hand on her torch.  The moonlight streaming in the smashed windows cast an eerie glow in the house.  She walked into the first room.  Nobody else had been in here yet, it seemed.  The dust on the floor was undisturbed.  She could hear Erin talking, loudly, to Aaron somewhere else in the house, and Cory's heavy footfalls had gone silent.  She guessed he was filming somewhere.  The room was an empty square, save for a long fallen chandelier of what might have been silver at one point, but was now rusted and broken.  She bit her lip happily.  Perfect photo opportunity.  She pulled her camera out and went over to the chandelier, taking a few photos.  She almost squealed in excitement at how good they were turning out.  She stood up, hearing the floor squeak beneath her.  A breath of cold air blew across the back of her neck, raising goosebumps.  She shrugged it off.  Her back was facing the window, anyway.  The wind was a refreshing change to the muggy summer heat.  She flicked a plait over her shoulder as she looked around the room, seeing a faint outline of her shadow on the opposite wall.  She sighed, put her camera up and took a photo of the wall.  She clicked her camera back onto her belt and went into the next room, a kitchen of sorts.  She heard footfalls above her, and a few particles of dust fell around her in a shower.  She coughed.  Hadn't she told the others to stay away from upstairs?
"Hey, Erin!"  She yelled.  Silence.  The first hints of dread settled themselves in Allara's stomach.  But then,
"Yah?"  Erin called.  Allara swallowed, relief washing through her.
"Are you upstairs?"  She called.
"Nah."  Erin responded, "I'm down here with Aaron." 
"Which room are you in?"  Aaron called.
"Kitchen.  You guys?" 
"A bedroom of some kind.  There's an old rusted bedhead or whatever you call the thing in here.  Oh, oh!  And there's a massive hole in the wall!"  Erin yelled, her voice getting louder with her excitement.  Allara raised an eyebrow.
"O..Kay?"  She replied, eyebrow raised.  No response.  Allara shrugged and turned back to the kitchen.
Her heart stopped.
For a brief second, she had seen someone, at the window.  A dark shape.  But as soon as she saw it, it was gone.  She ran over to the window, peering out.  Nothing.  She looked down.  Nobody.  Just some empty fields and a pile of rotting wood.  Taking deep breaths, she stepped back from the window and walked backwards until she hit the opposite bench, which was covered in a thick layer of grime and dust.  She accidentally touched it with her hands, and gagged at the sticky dryness.  She brushed her hands off, but whatever was on that table was now on her.  She sighed and wiped it on her jeans.  They were an old pair, anyway. 
"You're good, Al.  You're alive.  It was just your nerves."  She whispered to herself.  Taking a deep breath, she ran her hands over the two plaits in her hair to calm herself. She opened her eyes and looked around the room.  Empty.  Obviously.  She pulled her camera out and began to take photos, never turning her back away from the window.  Finally, satisfied with the photographs, she exited the room into the hallway behind the stairs, the one which she had seen the shadow figure in.  She decided to pull out an EMF recorder and a spirit box, and sat them down in the middle of the hall, before sitting in front of her.  She pulled a recorder out to record any audio she might catch.  Pressing the record button, she began speaking.
"This is Allara speaking.  It is currently-"  she checked her watch, "1:15 am, on the thirty first of October.  Beginning recording."  She placed the recorder down next to the spirit box and switched it on.  The sound of static seemingly filled the house, loud.  She switched the EMF recorder on and almost immediately it lit up.
"Hello?"  She asked.  Static.  She let it go for a few minutes, waiting for a response, before asking a new question.
"Who's here right now?" 
"Me."  A response almost immediately.  Allara jumped at the sudden break in static.
"Who are you?"  She asked, suddenly shaky.
"Human."  It responded.
"What is your name?"  She asked.
"Carl..ton."  The voice broke off.
"Do you know who I am?"  She asked.  Silence.  Then a voice, right in her ear.
"A..lla..ra...."  The voice was distinctly male, gravelly and menacing.  Allara screamed and leaped up, looking at the space she had once been.  Empty. 
"Holy..Al, was that you?"  Cory yelled from somewhere.  She couldn't bring up the energy to respond.  A few minutes later, Cory came around the corner and found her staring at her shaking hands, terrified.
"Hey, what happened?"  He looked over at the EMF recorder, which was silent.  The spirit box and the recorder seemed to have turned themselves off as well.
"I wanna go."  Allara whispered.  Cory looked at her, shocked.
"Al.."  He began.
"Let's just go home?"  She asked, looking up at him.  She had tears in her eyes.  Cory hesitated, then nodded, leaving her while he picked all the stuff she left on the ground up and put it in his backpack.
"Hey, you sure you don't just want to get some breaths of fresh air?"  Meh asked her.
"I'm sure."  Allara's voice shook.  Corey nodded and walked with her outside, leaving her with the car and the carkeys. 
"I'm going inside to get everyone else.  Feel free to sit inside the car."  He patted her shoulder and left his bag with her as he went back inside the house, calling the others' names.  Allara unlocked the car and climbed inside, placing Cory's bag on the driver's side and shutting the door behind her.  She watched the house silently, the darkness inside just adding to her fear.  Her hands still shook violently.
Finally, she realised she needed something to distract her thoughts and turned to the radio, switching it on.  Green Day was playing.  Normally, she would have sang along, played the air guitar or drums, put the windows down.  But right now, with dread in the pit of her stomach and worry for her friends overtaking her thoughts, she wasn't listening.  The house seemed to loom over the car menacingly, the moonlight no longer casting a calming glow, clouds darkening the land. 
Two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes passed, and Allara's worry became ever worse.  She thought about stepping out of the car, trying to find everyone, but something in her told her to stay in the car.  She reached for the handle a total of ten times before her worry and dread disappeared and turned into anger and determination.  Why was she hiding in the car over a voice when she could be inside, helping Cory find the others?  She opened the door and climbed out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition and the radio on.  She started toward the house somewhat tentatively, before she cursed herself for being such a wimp and strode forward purposefully, stepped up the stairs and into the house.  The old, rotting door still leant against the wall inside, but for some reason, she felt there was something different about it.  She inspected it, looking at the worn brown paint, the hole in the bottom left, the rusted metal door handle.  Nothing seemed to be off.
But then she saw it.  Along the middle of the door, almost impossible to see in the dark, was a streak of something wet and dark.  Allara took a sharp breath in and pulled her torch out of her belt, hesitating for a good while before turning it on. 
A dark red, almost brown substance was streaked along the door in three long stripes.  Shaking now, Allara turned to look down the hallway.  A few more spots of the liquid and some more stripes along the wall led up the stairs.  Her torchlight shook as much as she did, and she took a step forward.  She had to find out what was up those stairs.  For a brief second, she realised she was the dumb blonde white girl from all those horror movies.  She cursed herself silently for being stupid.
At least she wasn't a cheerleader.

She decided to search the bottom floor first.  She stepped into the room with the fallen chandelier.  Empty.  The kitchen held little except for a shard of bloodied glass lying on the counter, almost like it was placed there intentionally.  As she walked around the bottom floor, Allara suddenly noticed how deathly silent it was.  Only her footsteps and breathing could be heard in the otherwise silent night.  There could only be two explanations for this.  Either Cory, Aaron and Erin were still alive, but something or someone was keeping them quiet, or...
The other possibility was something Allara didn't want to think about.  She stepped into the room that she realised must have been the one Aaron and Erin had been in the last time she spoke to them.  A large hole had seemingly been bashed into the wall, leading into the room opposite.  She would have been surprised that someone would be so excited over a simple hole in the wall, but knowing Erin, she wasn't surprised at all.  An old rusted bed lay in one corner of the room, a single shred of moonlight alighting on the broken and dangerous mattress, springs sticking out of the stained cushion.  Allara would have been taking a million photographs of that image right now if she wasn't in such a terrifying situation.  Judging the room to be empty, she stepped back out into the hallway and entered the opposite room to the one with the bed, the hole in the wall perfectly illuminating the rusted bedhead.  Another perfect photo oppurtunity.  This room was large, long and very empty.  There weren't even any light fixtures.  She could see dust particles dancing in the air around her, the torchlight illuminating them brightly.  Finding nothing there, she moved to step back outside the room when she saw a dark shadow person on the other side of the hall.  They were staring at her.
"Holy mother of all things Winchester!"  She whispered to herself, ducking back behind the doorframe.
"I saw you."  The same male from earlier said, gravelly voice no longer ghostly, but more...human.  Allara stayed quiet.
"Come out, Allara.  I know you're there.  Don't make me come to you."  The man continued.  A high pitched shriek came out of Allara's mouth, and the man laughed.
"Come on, Allara."  He said.  Her brain rushed through thousands of possibilities.  She could cover the doorframe with salt.  She could throw her camera at him.  She could run to the other side of the room and  climb through the hole; hide under the bed.  She could leap out the window and bolt for the car.  She could...she could...
"Allara."  A hand gripped her wrist and she shrieked.  She was pulled into the doorframe, the cold hand gripping her so tightly she thought he would break her wrist.  Tears started to run down her face.  She looked into the face of an old man.  His skin was all wrinkles, and his eyes had since seemed to cave in on themselves, simply small slits in his face.  A wide mouth grinned with blackened teeth.  The man twisted her wrist and she cried out in pain.
"Come with me, I'll show you your friends."  He said, "then you can join them."  She tried desperately to pull away, but his grip was too strong.  He led her up the stairs, to a room towards the front of the house, the only room with a door still on it.  He slowly opened the door, and it creaked loudly.  Hurriedly, he shoved her into the room and shut the door. For a minute, Allara wondered why she was in this room.  It was empty.
But then she saw it.  A darkened shadow, made up of three different people, was on the opposite side of the room.  She slowly reached for her torch, morbid curiosity getting the better of her, but she had dropped it downstairs.  She creeped towards them, calling her friends' names softly.
"Aaron?  Cory?  Erin?  Are you there?"  She asked quietly.  She reached the first mass and bent down, leaning close to see if she could notice anything.  The air hung heavy with the thick smell of iron.  She noticed that the person's face directly matched Cory's.  Allara's face lit up.  He was smiling.  His hood was pulled up on his jacket, but he looked okay.  He looked fine.  Maybe he had pretended to be dead.  She nudged him, tried to get him to wake up.
"Hey Cory, Cory!" 

And then his head fell off.

It fell to the ground with a sick thwack noise, and rolled a few feet.  Allara stared at the space his head had been a few moments before, and she started screaming.  She screamed so loud she was sure the whole neighbourhood could hear her.  The screams seemed to echo around the fields and paddocks, reaching far away houses where people were sleeping peacefully.  It made the dogs start howling and the cats start hissing.  It made the ground shake.  The man in black smiled and walked into the room, seeing the girl's screams had faded into sobs.  She was lying in the fetal position.  He was about to step in, to finish her off as well, when he noticed something.  A cloud hovering above her.  The thing impossibly, unbearably, seemed to be comforting her, seemed to be helping.  He couldn't see it touching her but he knew it was.  He knew it was patting her back.  He knew it was whispering kind words into her ear.  He took a step backward, ready to leave, but the floor squealed and the impossible thing's head lifted.  It saw him, and in no time it was in front of him.  He couldn't see it, but he knew it was there.  And as he stood, in fear of the thing he could not understand, he felt its cold hand slip into his chest, grip his heart and squeeze it.  His last few seconds of life were terror-filled.