1994

Tate wakes up in the basement.

It is dark, and he is frightened. He isn't sure why; he's been in the basement plenty of times before, but his heart is hammering against the walls of his chest. His breath is short and ragged. Has he been sleeping? Has he had a nightmare? Why is he down here?

He sits up groggily, trying to remember. Snatches of images, like the remnants of dreams, cling to his consciousness before dissipating. He remembers blood. His own? Other people's?

His eyes are adjusting to the light. He looks down at his hands, and finds them spotless; unblemished. And yet the memory lingers; a feeling like something is wrong - deeply, deeply wrong - something that he has done. People crying. Begging. Bodies on the floor.

He moves his hand up his own torso cautiously. As his fingers trail over the place where his heart lies, still beating madly beneath his flesh, the realisation hits him, bullet-quick and straight to the chest.

He'd been shot. His body was been riddled with bullets. He'd been bleeding, badly - had died. Must have died.

But there are no wounds. Why aren't there any wounds? Why is he still alive?

"Have you figured it out?"

Moira stands in the corner, though he's sure she wasn't there a moment before. Her arms are folded across her chest and her expression is unreadable.

"Figure what out?" he scrambles to his feet, looking around nervously. "What are you doing down here?"

"You're a little slow, aren't you?" Moira shakes her head, regarding Tate with a slow, appraising look. She looks sad, he decides. Or maybe disappointed.

"What am I doing here?" he asks, fists balled in the too-long fabric of his sleeves. He mirrors her body language, folds his arms across his chest defensively. "Did I...did you drug me or something?"

Moira laughs, humourlessly.

"You're dead Tate."

"What!"

"Dead. Think about it. You remember."

And he does. Her words dislodge another uncomfortable flurry of memories. The police storming into the house. The cop demanding to know why he'd done it as he lay on the floor, dying. Nobody helped him. His mother screaming in the hall outside.

Only it's like he's watching it from outside his body. Like he's watching a movie. Like it didn't quite happen to him.

"Fuck..." he mutters, his face crumpling, eyes watering. He won't cry in front of this fucking woman. He won't.

Moira sighs, shifting awkwardly, one foot to the other. She's restless, uncertain how to behave in this situation.

"I'm sorry." she says at last.

"...why?" Tate manages. He's still trying to control his emotions, but it's hard. Nausea is uncoiling within him, a sick serpent sneaking up his oesophagus, bloated with the poison of memory. He knows what he has done, deep down. Layers of denial are peeled back, exposing the truth, revealing the gross, violent work of his final day alive.

Moira can't decide what to do with her hands. She folds her arms again. Unfolds them. Places one hand on a hip, then moves it awkwardly to her shoulder, fretting with a loose strand of hair.

"Because I didn't think it would go this far."

"What do you mean?" Tate looks at her in genuine confusion, pleading silently for an answer to his questions. He's scared - no, terrified. He feels sick.

"When I sent you down here to the basement, years ago. I didn't think..." Moira falters, running out of breath "...I just wanted your mother to know what it felt, to lose someone. To have her facade of a perfect life crumble and to see it for what it really was; a farce. I wanted her one shining glory - you - to fall apart. To suffer, and in suffering, bring her down. I wanted her to know the same pain that she caused me - that she caused my mother, when I disappeared."

"Huh?" Tate is shaking. He chokes back a sob.

"I'm dead, Tate. Your mother shot me in the head when she discovered your father on top of me in her bedroom."

"You're lying."

"Why would I lie?" she throws up her hands. "Your father was forcing himself on me, and your mother didn't like that. She shot me, and then she shot him."

"So you're a -"

"Ghost. The same as you."

Tate leans his back against the wall, squinting his eyes shut tight to prevent the spill of tears.

"I didn't anticipate the hold the thing in this basement would have over you," Moira continues "...and for that I'm sorry. I didn't mean for -" she looks away from him, her voice dropping low "...so many lives. So many innocent people."

"I killed them?"

"You did." Moira confirms. "You killed them, and then the police came. And then they shot you dead in your own bedroom."

"Why would I do that?" the tears spill down his cheeks anyway. His words come out in jabs and shudders. "I don't understand - I don't get it...why don't I remember it right?"

"The thing that haunts this basement feeds on you, Tate. It has ever since you came down here when you were younger - but most particularly when you started talking to it. It took what was in you; all that rage and anger, all that sadness at the loss of your father, and it fed on it. It spewed those half-digested chunks of malice and violence back into your head. It worked on you. And in time there was enough of a connection that it could take hold properly - that it could ride on you, like a sort of parasite." Moira clears her throat. She looks guilty.

"It is stronger when you lose control. When you're experiencing any strong, primal emotion. Or when your consciousness is altered artificially, through drugs, through alcohol..." she pauses, drawing a breath. "That thing is a part of you now, Tate. And it is using you. It used you to commit those murders, it wanted you to die, because in death your connection is only strengthened. There is even less to separate the two of you now that you're both of the spirit world."

Tate's head reels. He thinks he's going to be sick, but when he bends double to vomit, he retches dry and empty over the old bathtub.

Moira watches him in silence.

"What can I do?" his face is tear stained, contorted in fear and misery "...I'm dead...I know I can't change that but...how can I get rid of it?" his hands scramble over his own head and neck, as if perhaps he can dislodged the evil presence by doing so. "How do I make it go away?"

"I'm sorry," Moira says again. Her eyes are watering now, too. Her cheeks are flushed. "I'm sorry, Tate. I don't believe you can."