Chapter Text
Tom climbed out of the van with a quiet groan, stretching his legs. The gravel crunched beneath his boots as he stepped out into the cool night air. Gear loaded, cameras checked, flashlights clicked on. Same drill as always.
He looked up at the prison. Tall. Rusted. Heavy with silence. The kind of silence that pressed into your ears like cotton.
"I don’t care how much they’re paying us," he muttered. "This place reeks of agony and asbestos."
Eve chuckled. "Put that on a t-shirt."
Tom smirked faintly.
Then Sam elbowed him, a mischievous grin on her face. "Race you to the door."
"You’re on."
They took off at a jog, boots pounding on gravel, breath puffing out in the cold. For a second, they weren’t ghost hunters. Just two idiots chasing each other like kids on a playground.
Sam reached the door first. Nearly lost her balance.
Tom followed right behind her.
"Ha! I WIN—"
BANG.
The door slammed behind them.
Metal. Final.
Everything stopped.
They turned off their flashlights. Darkness swallowed them whole. Tom's heart rate spiked.
Sam grabbed his arm, almost scaring the life out of him, to drag him into the shadows.
Footsteps echoed.
The ghost.
His stomach twisted. He couldn’t see a thing, but the air felt thick. Like breath caught in a throat.
They ran.
Sam hissed something—a direction, maybe? Then she tripped. Flashlight tumbling from her hand, flickering to life as it hit the ground.
Cells. Rusted bars. Cold cement. Pale light.
"Sam?" he dropped to her side with a panicked efficiency. "You okay? We have to go, now—"
Then he saw it.
Blinking in and out like a broken signal.
A pale figure, flickering closer and closer.
He opened his mouth to scream, to move—
Pain. Blinding, white-hot pain.
Then nothing.
He wasn’t sure what had happened.
He was sure that he was going to die, but now, all of a sudden everything felt so calm .
There was a body on the ground.
Someone shouted. The voice sounded familiar.
He turned, being greeted with bright red hair even in this darkness. Sam?
She looked pale.
What had happened to her?
He tried to reach out only to be met with static.
It was like watching a blurry tv from outside the house.
Everything was dim and strange. He wasn’t scared. Not really. Just confused.
Light flickered nearby. Voices. Movement. Someone with wings? That felt wrong. But he couldn’t care enough to question it.
He drifted.
Something pulled at the edge of his vision. A kitchen table. A warm light. Someone calling his name.
He turned.
Oh .
It was dinner time, wasn’t it?
Now that he thought about it, he was quite hungry.
His old house. The smell of fried chicken. The laughter of his parents. Safe.
He was sitting at the table now. A kid again. Like he never left.
His parents smiled at him fondly.
Their faces were a blur.
He hugged them anyway.
The table faded. The chairs dissolved. Now they were walking.
Through a long tunnel. Dark. Endless. Damp.
It felt safe, although Tom couldn’t explain why.
So, he followed, consumed by a peaceful happiness he hadn’t felt in years.
Then he felt it.
A light.
Behind him.
He turned.
Warm. Bright. Radiating something that wasn’t quite comfort, but not pain either.
He looked back.
His parents were gone.
Instead, he was looking down to the ground, greeted by a corpse staring up at him.
It looked as though it had died recently.
With short black hair and narrow eyes.
He knew that hair.
He knew those eyes.
He’d seen them countless times in the mirror.
That was his own face.
That was his own body he was staring at.
Tom ran.
He couldn’t look at it.
At the corpse.
At himself .
He ran and ran but he wasn’t any closer to safety.
He tried to get away from the light.
It felt wrong.
He wasn’t supposed to follow it.
Something dragged him back. Tugging at his soul like it belonged somewhere else. Like it wasn’t done.
No, no, no, no—
Instinct screamed. He wasn’t supposed to follow that light.
The light grew brighter.
He reached for the shadows, but couldn’t feel anything
For a second, he thought to himself; “Is this what death feels like?”
Then everything went white.
The couch sagged beneath him.
Tom blinked. Confused.
Wait.
This was Laurelei’s house.
From back when she still lived with her mom.
Sam and Eve were arguing. Something about what to watch.
Skye sat in a chair, listening to her friends’ bickering with amusement. Toby sat on the couch next to Tom, playing a game on his phone. Laurelei leaned on the armrest beside him, giving ideas here and there.
“What about Shaun the Sheep?” Sam joked.
That certainly got Eve to shut up, mostly because she burst out laughing.
“Shaun the Sheep? What are you? A toddler?” Toby asked sarcastically, although he was also smiling.
“Well, it’s just something stupid to be honest. But it’s basically Tom, right? I mean, you’ve got to see the similarities. They’re literally both sheep!”
Tom squawked. “I’m not a sheep! I’m a goat hybrid!”
They ignored him.
Laurelei was already pulling it up.
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. It was dumb. So dumb.
But that was on par for his friend group.
The rest of the night he was exclusively called Shaun.
Some might call it mean but Tom didn’t mind
He loved his friends.
After that Sam had refused to call him Tom again, just to mess with him.
The rest had followed her lead.
After a while it got normal.
He was Shaun now. So what?
It always brought a smile to his face.
He loved moments like these.
Then he heard a sniffle.
Wait.
Where was it coming from?
He turned.
Darkness seeped into the edges of his vision.
“Shaun!” someone shouted from somewhere far away.
Eve.
She sounded broken.
Why was that?
He can’t remember ever having heard Eve in such distress.
But she sounded happy at the same time.
Strange.
He opened his eyes.
Everything was too bright.
His head throbbed. His chest ached. His glasses were askew, and nothing made sense.
Toby’s hands helped him up. Eve hovered at his side.
He blinked at them, dazed. “What… happened?”
His voice scraped from his throat like sandpaper.
“The ghost… it got me , I think. I remember it was there, and then… ”
He shook his head slowly. He didn’t want to think about that.
“I thought it was gonna kill me. Then nothing. Just… gone. ”
The panic from earlier settled back in.
He had almost died, hadn’t he?
How had he survived?
Was the ghost still here?
He had to warn his friends!
Get them away from her—
“You’re outside,” Eve said softly, stopping his spiral. “You’re okay. You’re not in there anymore.”
He blinked again. “Outside?”
She nodded. “You made it. Somehow.”
Outside was safe.
The ghost couldn’t get him here.
He heard someone approaching.
He looked up.
It was Sam.
“Have a nice nap, Sleeping Beauty?” she asked dryly.
“Not really,” Shaun muttered. “My head hurts.”
Eve stood, glaring. “What is wrong with you?”
Sam shrugged.
Tom didn’t understand Eve’s hostility. Wasn’t this how Sam normally acted?
A bit rude—yeah—but nothing that warranted such an angry reply.
So, Tom just looked back towards Sam, grabbing the hand she had offered him a second before and letting her help him up.
“How… did I survive?”
Sam looked at him. An uninterested attitude completely undeserving of what Sam said next.
“You didn’t.”
Tom froze.
“What?”
“Ghost,” she said.
Well, he supposes that makes sense. But how was he alive, now?
“I think he got that far, Sam,” Toby muttered, reflecting Tom’s thoughts perfectly.
“A group of investigators helped you.” Sam elaborated. “More specifically, their angel.”
Shaun looked down.
Pressed a hand to his chest.
His heartbeat was as present as ever.
How could it be beating if it had stopped earlier.
He turned toward the prison. Fear clouding his eyes.
He took a shaky breath.
He had died in there.
He knew that now.
He wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for that angel.
“I want to thank him,” he whispered.
Sam steadied him as he stumbled forward, towards the group of strangers who were watching them.
Tom looked at the large figure with white wings, the angel.
“Thank you,” he said quietly and sincerely.
The man smiled.
“No problem, buddy.”
How could somebody be as selfless and kind as him.
I guess he’s an angel for a reason.