Chapter Text
Erin has barely slept in a week. She puts in long hours at the firehouse instead, poring over half-written reports until the words stop making sense. Now and then she dozes off accidentally, head drooping onto the desk, and jerks awake like an electric shock. She goes to make more coffee.
The whistle of the jug lures Holtzmann out of her lab. She hoists herself onto the kitchen bench and watches Erin make their drinks; Erin’s got the formula spot on by now, so Holtzmann natters away about her current project. A couple of nights ago, she’d asked Erin to check her calculations, and Erin’s little adjustments had done just the trick. Holtzmann’s words start to blur together; Erin could probably keep up if her brain was functioning properly but she just listens to the rhythm of Holtzmann’s voice instead, nodding at the intervals.
Eager to get back to work, Holtzmann’s on the move as soon as the coffee’s done. She pushes herself off the bench, boots landing heavily on the floor, grabs the mug, and thanks Erin for the caffeine on her way out.
“Hey, Holtzmann?” Erin calls before she can disappear. “Could you do me a favour?” Holtzmann sticks her head back through the door, meerkat-like. “The spare PKE meter isn’t working properly, and I know you’re busy but -”
“Sure, throw it my way,” Holtzmann says. “I’ll work my magic.” She wiggles her fingers dramatically, wringing a smile from Erin.
“Oh, so you’re a wizard now?”
“Are you doubting my powers?” Holtzmann says.
“Never,” Erin says, trying to keep her mouth a straight line and failing miserably.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Holtzmann says, and she’s gone.
Erin returns to her stack of papers, grabbing the top one and beginning to skim the last page she’d written. After catching three different misspellings of the same word, she switches to numbers instead, eyeing up the equation Abby had begun that afternoon and abandoned to help Erin clean up a minor chemical emergency.
Frustrated, Erin had almost broken another flask a few minutes later by setting it down too hard, but when Abby had squeezed her arm and asked if she was okay, she’d lied.
“I’m fine,” she had insisted, and Abby had let it drop, sure Erin would tell her what was going on when she was ready.
Erin begins to write out the next line of the equation under Abby’s cheerfully disordered figures. There’s a logic to math she’s always found reassuring, going from one place to another in careful, ordered steps. The satisfaction of arriving at an answer is like clicking the last square of a Rubik’s cube into place - it just feels right.
The ring of the telephone startles her. By the time she’s remembered there’s nobody else who’s going to answer it, it’s gone silent again. She sighs and returns to the whiteboard, but her concentration’s broken. She decides to pay Holtzmann a visit, the faulty meter in hand.
She’s always slightly nervous to venture up there, never sure of what she’ll find – always something new and strange, and strangest of all, Holtzmann herself. Erin can hear her talking to someone, then realises there’s only one voice. Still, a conversation consisting of just Holtz is bound to be more interesting than most other conversations.
Turns out she’s muttering to a colourful assortment of wires that look like an exploded piñata. She breaks into a wide smile as soon as she spots Erin.
“Human! Come and distract me.”
“It’s just the PKE meter,” Erin explains, holding it up. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
“Yes,” Holtzmann says cheerfully as she pulls off her gloves and strides over to where Erin’s gingerly hanging back.
She’s been up there before of course, but not this late, not when it’s just the two of them in the building. The firehouse never seems big when Patty and Abby are there, but now it seems incredibly empty and Holtzmann incredibly close. She takes the faulty gadget from Erin, her fingers brushing Erin’s skin for a fraction of a moment that’s just long enough for Erin to register how soft they are. Surprisingly so, for someone who’s always in proximity to at least a dozen dangerous substances.
“So what’s the problem?” Holtzmann asks, inspecting it closely.
“It, um, didn’t register a ghost that was right in front of me,” Erin says.
“Cos it looks fine,” Holtzmann says, as if she hadn’t spoken. She glances up at Erin, realises Erin’s been staring at her instead of the meter, and her mouth begins to curve into a smile.
The phone rings. Erin stumbles back and goes to answer it, glad to escape, but Holtzmann follows her out of the lab. Her eyebrows are raised expectantly when Erin puts down the phone.
“We have a ghost,” Erin says.
Their destination is a run-down cinema that’s been out of business for a while. It’s all locked up and dark, but the caller, a frazzled neighbour in her dressing gown, points them down the alley to a side door and disappears.
Erin had on the phone attempted to get a description of the ghost or supernatural presence, but the only details she’d obtained were of strange lights and sounds, happening the same time every night. It’s strangely thrilling, she finds, to walk into an old abandoned building with little idea of what might be lingering beyond the corner of her eye. As a child, nothing would’ve scared her more, but with Holtzmann at her side and the prospect of acquiring data no other scientist has ever had, she’s buzzing like a live wire.
This is more of a reconnaissance mission than a bust. They’re both suited up, but neither has bothered with the heavy proton packs; Holtzmann’s assortment of smaller gadgets, ever expanding, should be enough to pacify anything supernatural they might encounter. Erin swings the powerful torch beam in arcs, revealing gnawed carpet and rows and rows of seats, faintly red beneath the dust. It looks like it was once a theatre, gold and extravagant. Erin wonders if it’s still beautiful to a ghost.
Holtzmann calls her name. She’s watching the curtain, behind which small shapes are moving. Erin gets into position, bracing herself for whatever emerges.
“Ready?” Holtzmann says.
Erin nods.
Holtzmann tugs on the pulley and the heavy curtain begins to open jerkily, inch by inch. Suddenly the rope flies from her hands, the curtain snapping all the way open with a bang. On the other side, there’s a flurry of movement – rats, scattering as the light hits them.
“Aw,” Holtzmann says, disappointed. “I always wanted a pet one.”
Erin’s brow crinkles in disgust. “Really?”
“Course. It could’ve kept me company in the lab,” Holtzmann says. She nudges Erin. “S’okay, I got you now. You’re much more interesting.”
Erin’s not sure how to take that, but she’s saved from coming up with a response; Holtzmann grabs her arm and points to the back of the cinema. It’s full of shadows, with one striking exception: there’s a light on in the projection room.
They’re both almost blinded when the projector itself clicks on, sending a ray of light straight into their eyes. They stumble away from the screen. With a little distance, the images on it begin to coalesce into recognisable forms. They’re black and white, places and people long gone, more like a dream than a movie – certain details sharp, the rest a blur.
“We shoulda brought popcorn,” Holtzmann says.
There’s no voices, no music, no sound at all. The people talk and laugh and dance in silence. Erin focuses on the outfits in an attempt to date the manifestation, but her knowledge of fashion is limited and the images don’t linger on anyone long enough to get a clear view.
A silhouette stamps itself over the strange tableau, a silhouette of a woman with her hair in curls and a feather waving on top. She’s standing in front of the projector.
Erin and Holtzmann move up the aisle towards the back of the cinema, climbing the shallow stairs and scanning ahead for a door into the haunted room. They don’t find out whether there is one or not: the woman passes straight through the wall and floats towards them regally.
She’s monochromatic, as if she just stepped out of a black and white movie. Her silver dress shimmers as if she’s under a spotlight. Colour and sound begin to seep into the onscreen display, intensifying with her approach, and the images begin to clarify too, like a video finally played at the right speed.
Holtzmann has her hands full as she struggles to get all their monitoring equipment running; Erin gives her a hand. Neither of them really want to resort to weapons just yet, the interplay of the spectre and her surroundings too intriguing to break apart without further study.
“We’re losing her,” Erin says, trying to keep her eyes on both what she’s doing and the subject of their investigation as she drifts serenely past them. The volume of the music continues to mount, and their gadgets are getting noisy too as they detect the ghost’s presence.
“Do you wanna talk to her?” Holtzmann says, preoccupied with the contraption on her hands. “It might give us enough time to get some workable data.”
Erin drops everything and heads for the front of the cinema, hoping to intercept the ghost in her tracks.
“Hello?” she says tentatively, but it’s as if she’s invisible. She gets right in front of the ghost and waves her arms like she’s signalling to a plane, but the ghost drifts on, no change in her melancholy expression, and Erin is forced to duck before it touches her.
She passes above Erin, still at that slow steady pace, and disappears through the screen. In her absence, the colour begins to leach away, the music softens, and eventually the projector shuts off, plunging the cinema back into darkness.
They poke around for another half hour, exploring the many cobwebbed corners of the old building, but there’s nothing more to see on the supernatural side of things. As for the projection room, it’s empty, the thick dust on the film reels undisturbed. The machine itself, however, is still warm.
“Well, we got one thing out of it,” Holtzmann says, nudging Erin as they head back to the car. She holds up the PKE meter Erin had given her at the firehouse. “Definitely not broken.”
Erin’s stomach drops.
“What kinda ghost was it having problems with?” Holtzmann asks, her curiosity piqued.
“One of the ones last week, I can’t remember which,” Erin says, not meeting her eyes. They’d done three busts in two days and had all been ready to drop at the end of it, but Erin has a good memory for detail; Holtzmann’s counted on it many a time.
There’s a moment before she shrugs and says, “tell me if you remember.”
By the time Erin gets home, there isn’t much of the night left. She figures she’ll be safe and collapses into bed, so tired she’s asleep in minutes.
She figures wrong.
The numbers on the clock have barely changed when she wakes with a jolt, heart racing and dread collecting deep within her before she knows what to be afraid of. A second later, she remembers, and squeezes her eyes shut in denial. She doesn’t need to look. She’s seen it before.
There’s an old woman standing at the foot of her bed. An old woman who’s been dead for three decades, and Erin still can’t shake her. She berates herself for forgetting to bring a ghost trap, a proton pack, anything, home with her this time. Instead she lies there stiffly, fists clenched, and does what she’s always done: count the seconds until the fear begins to numb.