Chapter Text
The cameras flash. Voices of reporters blare like sirens as their owners begin to close in around the car. Their faces show faintly though the van’s tinted windows. Will closes his eyes and grimaces. He can feel Beverly watching him.
The escort that keeps the paparazzi at bay forces them to wait at lest twenty more minutes before they are allowed to enter the house. Curfew will set in soon, and, much to Will’s dismay, the jabbering of the crowd has not dispersed. Curfew is in ten minutes and no one had moved from their place.
He sighs. Will grips the cold handle of the car door and it slides open with a familiar metallic clunk . He seizes his backpack and a duffle from the very back seat and swings his legs out of the car, touching down on the curb. He’s getting out on the side of the van nearest the house, but the upswing of noise still rattles him. It rattles him every time.
Voices close in on him from all sides; the bombardment is enough to trigger a headache. The dying sunset stings his eyes. He keeps his head down and his eyes on his feet, forcing himself towards the house.
It would be a cold day in hell when Will Graham of all people would give an interview. Reporters were alway too loud, too shiny and happy, they smiled too wide, too much, all the fucking time. He’d rather be ghost-touched.
Will can feel the malice emanating from the building itself, the strange sentient presence that stirs when you approach its doors. It becomes agitated. The souls that have been locked inside the house, so concentrated, so terribly trapped that no concept of the world outside exist to them are what give the house it’s malice. Some of the Visitors are like this.
Those that remember their lives before, those who can maintain some semblance of normalcy even as they remain deceased, they reach out. They are lonely, so they reach out with dead, pale, thin fingers clawing at you, begging you to join them and to end their misery. And when they do, they pull you with more then just their hands. They make you want to join them. They want you to die. You want to die.
Will faces arms reaching out to him on both sides of the barricade. He chooses the dead. He does every time.
Will knows Jack and Beverly watch him each time they arrive at a house like this one, the way he ducks his head and leads the group out of a desire to reach the door. The cross the threshold with haste.
You’re supposed to do that anyway, but Will hates the clashing voices of the people outside. He know why they crowd and clamor and claw at the barrier like the Visitors do. He nearly slips on the snow-dusted steps in his haste to reach to door.
He realizes as he fishes through his pockets that Jack has the key. Will sighs. Against his better judgement, Will faces the crowd, focusing on Jack just a few paces behind him. He brushes past Will to unlock the door as Beverly comes up behind him, flanked by Price and Zeller. They close in around him, as if to protect him, when in reality he should be ushering them into the house.
They are so young- too young -to sacrifice their lives like this, but he too breaks the unspoken norms. Will shouldn’t be doing what he does. He should have stopped a long, long, time ago.
Will is the first to pass over the threshold, and the last one to survey the dusty, cobwebbed foyer. Will is the one to shut the door behind their group as they file into the house with their gear and their rapiers strapped to their belts.
Will remembers when he wore one of those navy blue coats. He remembers the weight of the iron chains in his duffle and the sachets of iron and salt. He remembers the cool cylindrical comfort of the canisters of Greek Fire. Will shakes off the memories at the door, letting them slip out into the open like a flock of doves fleeing some unknown disturbances in the forest.
Jack has already sent his team out into the house while the night is young to scope out a place where they can set up shop for the night. Will stares down the dimly lit hall, knowing it will be long. The house is too quiet. Will forces himself back to reality as the agents flash their flashlights through the hall, peeling off into separate rooms. Will closes his eyes for a moment and lets himself Hear. Just a little bit.
There’s a windy sort of echo, a hole somewhere in the fabric of the house. He shuts himself down.
Zeller is first to arrive back, shortly followed by Beverly and Price. They all say the same thing, but Will isn’t really listening. His Sight is passable at most, but even he sees the frightening absence of death-glows. Cavities in reality. Holes. Dark, empty holes.
They say that the dining room will be best to set up in, and they have to move quickly, darkness will be setting in soon. Will is the first to sling a duffel bag over his shoulder and guess his way towards the dining room. He moves the duffles, but as they make it to the dining room he steps back.
Dropping his bag from his shoulders, Will unbuckles the straps and pulled out a thermos, twisting open the cap and draining some of the liquid. The warmth grounds him for a moment.
He watches as Jack sifts through a manila folder, flipping though papers, records, and notes in the dim light. Katz, Zeller, and Price strike matches and touch them to candle wicks, lighting the candles and setting them on the long table. They light lamps and flick on extra flashlights, gathering the light sources into one glowing mass.
Price digs out a pack of family size Oreos and peels back the plastic, taking two and biting into one. Jack disregards it, flipping open the folder. Zeller and Katz gather, taking cookies in turn, sipping from their thermoses. Will is the last to sit.
“Okay team, we’ve gone over this once, but we’ll do it again. This house is dangerous. Where Visitors are concerned, no one is safe, but with this house’s reputation we take no risks. We cut no corners. Do I make myself clear?” There’s an echo of yeses and mm-hms from around the table. Will does not speak.
Jack goes on to explain the history of the house, about how after the owner’s death (one shrouded in controversy and mystery, apparently) there was an upswing in paranormal activity in the house. Will loses the thread. He lets his mind settle and permits himself to dip his toes into the water just a bit. Just a bit. He can feel the gentle pull of the house, a tug that Will knows will lead him somewhere, at some point...but not know, not know.
“...not known how they got there, but they were ghost-touched. That’s about it, get your magnesium flares, two each, be careful with them. Price, get the duffles, Zee, get the iron chains. Katz, you take the lead- Graham,” Jack pauses and snaps twice near Will’s face. “Graham, you okay?”
“Mmh?” Will grunts, fighting against the anchors that pull him down into the house.
“I said, are you okay?”
“Mm...yeah, I’m good.” Jack pauses before gesturing to the doorway as his agents file out.
Will ducks through the doorway and into the house behind them. Into the night.