Chapter Text
Copia was not a curious man. It wasn't a trait that Sister Imperator had encouraged in him. But even he sometimes had questions that he couldn't help but ask.
For instance: “What are the ghouls, really?,” while watching one of them slurp toilet paper straight from the roll like it was licorice. “Are they, ah … demons, or what?”
“Hm?”
Sister Imperator had reacted like she hadn’t heard him, so he'd tried again. “Where do ghouls come from?”
This had made her turn to face him. “Oh, Cardi…” She’d smiled and patted his head. “Maybe when you’re older.”
He’d been forty-five at the time.
Then there was the thought that had come to him while standing in the mausoleum, in front of three empty but newly-engraved tombs. The dead had weighed so heavy in his mind that day that he'd felt sick. And yet… “Why is the old dickhead the only ghost I've ever seen around here? I mean … you would think there'd be more of them. With all the… you know. Right?”
That question had not resulted in a condescending smile or head pat. Instead, Sister had slowly turned and fixed him with a stare. The Stare. Like everyone at the Ministry, he feared that look. It was the whip of a rattlesnake's tail. It said ‘Go no further, or else.’
“Who knows?” she'd said, and that had been that. The question of ghosts never came up again.
Copia was not a curious man, and he'd always been content not knowing things. This had served him well for his entire life. But now he was Frater Imperator. Suddenly he was supposed to know everything . The Ministry's satanic secrets were his to keep. Every day Sister's spectral voice directed him to some dusty filing cabinet where psychic horrors would stream directly from the manila folders into his hind-brain like the OfficeMax version of Pandora's box.
And all of the questions he'd ever had were being answered, whether he liked it or not. Including the ones about ghouls, and about ghosts.
– March, 2018 –
The nameless ghoul known as ‘Omega’ frowned beneath his mask. His tail swished behind him, as it often did when he was trying to concentrate. "Go fish," he signed.
Terzo slammed his cards down on the table. “For the last time, we are playing Uno! Porca puttana… ”
"Sorry, Papa."
Terzo's expression softened. “You don't have to call me that anymore, you know.”
Omega knew. He slid his hand of cards towards the center of the table. "Sorry, Papa."
Terzo gave a wry little smile, shook his head, and started gathering up the cards. “You don't have to stick around here just to entertain me, either.” He paused. “Mind you, I appreciate it. Really. I'm … not sure what I'd do without you. But you're not the one on house arrest.” He grimaced and ran a hand through his hair. “You know what I'm trying to say?”
Omega did know. "Just happy to be here."
“Hah. Well, thank you.”
Terzo grew contemplative while he shuffled the cards. The light in the small room made every line in his face stand out. It gave him a haunted look. After a while, he stopped and placed the cards onto the table in a neat stack. “Where do you ghouls go?” he asked. “When you leave.”
Omega tilted his head.
“Some of Primo's guys, you know,” Terzo continued, “seemed pretty eager about it. Made me curious, that's all.”
Omega didn't really want to think about why Terzo might be contemplating this now. There was a dark sort of weight in the air; had been for weeks. A portent; a dangling guillotine blade. But the actual answer to Terzo's question wasn't so ominous. The simple truth was that Omega didn't really know. He explained as much. "They said it just feels right . Like the end of a long shift. It's a relief."
“Huh. I see.” Terzo looked up at him, sticking out his lips ever so slightly and raising his eyebrows. It was, in Omega's opinion, one of his best expressions. Very kissable. “So you're, what, doing overtime?”
Omega really appreciated his mask sometimes. "Just happy to be here," he repeated.
The ‘with you’ didn't need to be said. They both knew it.
– The Present –
Yes, the “Frater Imperator” thing was turning out to be pretty un-fun for Copia on the whole. So he couldn't really be judged for abandoning his duties to play “Driving Miss Daisy” on the NES at 10:30am on a Monday.
Sister Imperator was going to judge him anyway, though, and she wasn't letting death stop her. Her blue-ish apparition materialized at his office door before he could even react. "Cardi." Her tone was icy. "It is only one hour into the workday."
“...and a half,” Copia muttered, wincing as his pixelated car drifted off the track. “That's… half an hour, that is worth something, right?”
"Cardi." Sister's spectral hand gestured towards the large black mahogany desk behind him, which was piled high with paperwork. "There are bills in there that must be paid today. Including, crucially, the electricity for the entire Ministry headquarters, which will be shut off if LADWP does not receive the money by close of business."
“I– I was going to get to that,” Copia said. “I was– It's– Eh, the bottom of the pile on the left…?”
"Not. Even. Close." A cold wind blew through the office, and Copia yelped as the papers swirled into an off-white vortex around him. The electric bill flew out on its own and smacked him in the face. He dropped the controller to remove it, and heard the ‘game over’ sound beep from the TV.
"You remember how to use the online portal, yes?" Sister's voice echoed as the paper-nado gradually settled down. "When you're done with that, you should read the report from the world government infiltration focus group and then follow up with facilities about the gaping maw that appeared yesterday in the second floor bathrooms. And don't forget, Sibling Pierson Post will be coming by this afternoon with some new initiate contracts that require your wet signature."
“Who? Why does the signature need to be wet? Sounds kind of dirty…”
"Pierson is our– your in-house legal counsel, and wet just means you need to use a pen. You can do that much, can't you?"
Copia groaned, held the electric bill to his chest, and collapsed backwards onto the pile of paperwork. “Look, I … I am doing my best, okay?” he mumbled.
It really wasn't that he didn't want to do the work. He wanted to do it very badly, in fact, if only so that it would be done. But just looking at it put a tension in his shoulders and tied his stomach into knots. How was he even supposed to start? How was he supposed to go from being a performer to… someone who followed up with facilities? Sister would never understand, she was that second type of person from birth and, now, into eternity. He didn't know how to articulate all of that to her, though. So instead he said, “The problem is that all of this stuff is euhhhhhh boring as fuck. Why can't I just get a secretary or something?”
"They're called administrative assistants these days," Sister said, "and there's no room in the budget. You'd know that if you'd read it."
Copia had read it. Well, he'd skimmed it. There had been lots of red in it, which he'd initially thought was a good thing since red was Satan’s color and all, but actually it meant that the Ministry didn't have very much money. It was frankly amazing how much everything cost. Especially the employees, with their pesky salaries and health insurance and labor protections. At least the ghouls were free.
Copia sat up with a start. “Hey, maybe I could summon a new ghoul to help me out. I can do that now, right?”
Sister's ghost fell silent and took on a contemplative look. Only the Imperator knew the secret ritual necessary to bring a new ghoul into the flock. It was one of those closely-guarded Ministry secrets that Sister had been forcing on him all month. But she hadn’t gotten around to this one yet, and now seemed oddly hesitant to do so. "Well, Cardi, you know… ghouls belong in the band. They might not have the skill-set for what you're thinking of."
“But I could get a ghoul secretary though, if I, ah, really wanted to?”
"Administrative assistant. And I suppose so." Sister threw up her hands. "You're the boss. But it's not a good idea. Don't say I didn't warn you."
She raised her ghostly eyebrows at him. This might normally be the point where he wilted under her piercing gaze and gave in to whatever she thought was best, but that one comment had stuck out to him.
‘You're the boss.’ He was, wasn't he? He was Frater Imperator. And the only upside of that seemed to be that he could do whatever he wanted.
Right now he really wanted a ghoul to handle all of these bills for him. Whether that was by paying them or eating the paper didn't concern him too much. “Right! Okay!” He wobbled to his feet, brushing a few stray papers off the front of his pants before clapping his hands together. “Ghoul secretary. Great idea. It’s going to be great. We’ll need new ones for the new guy anyway, eventually, so, you know. Two stones one bird or whatever.” He looked over at Sister. “Um, how exactly do I…? I mean, is there a ritual or something, or…?”
Sister sighed. "If you must, I’ll show you. Come with me."
Copia nodded and followed along behind her as her spectral form floated out of his new office. Together they headed down the south hall, towards the mausoleum.
The Ministry's headquarters were located in a dilapidated, white wooden complex in Los Angeles. It had once been a nunnery, then briefly belonged to L. Ron Hubbard before his own cult really started to take off. It was now a blight on an otherwise rapidly-gentrifying block, stuck between a storefront peddling wellness products and a coffee shop that offered a ‘novel beverage experience’ by giving its customers just one bean per day. The Ministry got less foot traffic than either business.
The compound consisted of four buildings surrounding a small cobbled courtyard. There was the ritual chapel with its tilted steeple and stained-glass windows, clouded by time and lack of care; musty drop-ceilinged offices and music studios; the dormitory, where the Siblings of Sin resided; and the mausoleum, where they resided more permanently. And at the far end of the mausoleum was a large room lined with empty tombs.
This was where the ghouls slept. They just didn't seem comfortable anywhere else.
The current generation liked to decorate their marble slabs with posters, blankets, pillows, and so on. Dew put up a sticker from every skate shop he'd been kicked out of. Swiss had a collection of unsold Cardinal Copia plushies that he liked to grip between his teeth and shake until the stuffing came out. Cirrus the ghoulette had a glossy photo print of Sister Imperator taped above her pillow that she could be seen stroking reverently on certain nights. Rain liked lava lamps.
Omega, by contrast, kept a relatively bare space. A single plush purple blanket seemed to be enough for him.
He was the only ghoul left who had been around since Primo's day. Amongst the others, he cut a tragic figure, sitting alone and hunched on his slab. None of them quite knew what he was waiting for, least of all himself. But he was waiting. Pathetically, like a dog at a train station who thinks its deceased owner will be on the next one, for sure. And he'd been waiting for a while. Long enough to make a full pot of coffee from the shop next door.
He was sipping on that coffee now. It was not good. He swirled it around in its mug, then looked up to see Phantom, one of the youngest ghouls of the bunch, walk into the room and give him a grin. "Guess what, gramps?"
Omega cocked his head and set down the mug, his big hands signing slowly. "What? Little twerp."
Phantom stuck out his tongue. "I just saw Papa Dipshit go down to the secret basement. That means we’re gonna have a new roommate, right?"
"It's ‘Frater Dipshit’ now, I think," Omega signed. "And yes, probably." He scratched his chin. "… A new ghoul, huh? Is he making them for the next guy already?"
Phantom shrugged in a ‘do I look like I know?’ kind of way.
Omega stood up from his slab and stretched his arms above his head. "I'm going to go down there and see."
"Are you allowed to do that?" Phantom asked.
Omega shrugged. "It's Copia, something's bound to go wrong. And he can't get too mad at me. I'm not his ghoul."
“I didn’t even know all of this was here,” Copia muttered, following Sister’s spectral blue form down a steep spiral staircase. He wanted desperately to hug the wall for support, but it was covered in some sort of murky yellow slime that he was sure would ruin his new suit. So he kept his arms tight against his chest, twitching and swaying with each step. “You’re not going to show me a cask of amontillado down here, eh? Ha ha.”
Sister’s ghost didn’t answer him. She’d been silent for most of the trip. Copia didn’t like when she got like that. He shuddered. The air was dank and smelled like death, and it was getting cold. This staircase went down really far.
Finally they reached the bottom. Lines of string lights along the ceiling provided just enough illumination to see that the basement seemed to stretch into forever. It must have underlaid the entire Ministry.
Growing on the floor and walls and up the support columns were patches of slime that had coalesced and formed into fat globs of gunk. Some of the globs had small, round objects suspended inside them. They glowed a soft red and looked kind of like … eggs. Copia made a face. “Gross. Don't tell me those are…”
Sister stopped just ahead of him. "Here. This one is ready." She gestured towards an especially large blob of gunk. The … egg … inside was the size of a large suitcase, fleshy and veiny and pulsating like a living heart. "Put your bare hands in there and touch it."
“Oh, no, no way—”
"Alright, then go back upstairs and do your job."
Copia stripped his gloves off. “Blech. This had better be one special ghoul.” He plunged his hands into the goo.
It was cold and just as unpleasant as he'd thought it would be. He groaned, tried to turn his eyes away, and pushed in deeper. When his fingertips made contact with the egg, a jolt ran up his arms and through his body.
He froze in place.
Suddenly the basement was gone, replaced by a vision of dark, empty space. Something glinted at his feet; water. A black lake. There were ripples on the surface, spreading out from floating, crumpled shapes. They were bodies… corpses. Hundreds of them. Bobbing at the surface. Mottled skin. White, staring eyes. Staring at him.
Sister’s voice echoed in his head. "Focus. Repeat after me. Provisio tredecim, terminus laboris post mortem…"
“P- Provisio tredecim,” Copia began. His hands were submerged in the lake. He could feel cold fingers brushing his. Lots of them. “Terminus laboris post m… mortem.”
Sister continued. "Ego infrascriptus assentior ad serviendum terminum laboris post mortem centum annorum non excedere…"
Copia echoed her words with the rote cadence of a congregant, barely registering them. A single pair of hands grabbed his own, tight enough to hurt. The surface of the lake began to ripple, and he saw a shadow rising up towards him as the hands pulled.
A body broke the surface and rose out of the lake. The head was not attached. The head was still in the water, floating, bobbing in the wake of its own torso. It looked, for a moment, like a familiar face.
Copia heard a scream. An awful, screeching, desperate scream, and it went on and on and on.
He was back in the basement; the black lake disappeared. Gray hands were clenched around his. He was pulling a human-shaped something out of the egg.
It had a head, a tail and nub-like horns. Parts of a face. Eyes and a mouth. Black hair plastered to its head with slime. The rest was too mangled to be recognizable. The mouth kept screaming until the body pulled itself free from the egg with a squelch.
Copia wasn't sure what the ghoul did after that, because the sudden release of tension sent him flying backwards, and his vision was already going blurry before he hit the ground.
When Omega arrived at the bottom of the basement stairs, the scene that greeted him was somehow exactly what he had been expecting. Copia passed out cold on the floor. Sister Imperator's ghost fretting uselessly over him. And a newborn ghoul left with no one to look after it, hunched and shivering in a mess of goop.
It looked up at him with wide green eyes and opened its mouth. A piercing, wretched screech came out. Its breath hitched, then it tried again. Same thing. Omega saw the moment it started to panic, clawed hands reaching up towards its face.
Gingerly, trying not to spook it, Omega stepped into the slime puddle and knelt down to the new ghoul's level. It was small, especially compared to him, and probably male, although at this stage it would be wrong to assume. Omega held its gaze and signed slowly. "It's okay. Don't try to talk. It's only ever those screams that come out." He paused, then added, "Singing works for some reason, but we don't do that all the time. This isn't Les Mis."
The ghoul stared at him silently, and Omega started to get a strange feeling. Was one of those eyes just a slightly lighter green than the other? The ghoul looked down at its hands, turning them over. They were shaking. Clumsily, they started to form a sign.
"Omega."
Omega froze. How could a new ghoul know him?
The ghoul crawled towards him on its knees, repeating the sign like it was a prayer. "Omega … Omega … Help … Me. It's me. It's me…"
Omega's breath caught in his throat. It couldn't be. Could it?
"… Papa Terzo?"
Then there was a sparking noise, and all of the string lights in the basement—along with the power to the entire Ministry—went out.