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“Stop,” Specs said, holding out a hand to block Tucker’s path.
He looked down at the hand that now obstructed him, half thinking about the fact that he could walk right through, risking only snapping the offending limb like a toothpick. “What?”
“It doesn’t want us to go in there.” He pointed ahead at the seemingly empty room.
This was supposed to be a pretty routine operation, an abandoned house that “urban explorer” types had been reporting strange shadows and moving objects in. There wasn’t so much something to “fix” there, as there was something to maybe investigate and learn about, so Elise had given them her blessing to go check it out on their own. They still had the blog to maintain after all, and that counted on having a constant stream of new cases coming in.
“What? How do you know?”
“It said so.”
“Well I didn’t hear anything.”
He rolled his eyes. “No, you wouldn’t.”
He stifled the urge to ask what that was supposed to mean with an annoyed grunt, and asked instead, “Well, can I still take photos?”
Specs paused for a second, as if listening for something, and then spoke again, tone hushed and unsure. “Yeah, I think that’s okay. As long as you don’t actually physically go in.”
Tucker spared another beleaguered look in Specs’ direction, but reluctantly resigned himself to taking the photos they had come to get.
They wrapped up their little investigation, although Specs seemed jumpier than usual. That wasn’t necessarily an indication of anything, the guy was like one of those little chihuahua type mutts at shelters shaking every second of the day. It was just as likely that he’d swapped a Mountain Dew for a Redbull earlier as anything serious having happened. Still, the incident earlier was weird as hell.
They carried the equipment back out to the van. Well, Tucker carried most of it, and Specs made a performative show of scooping up some of the distinctly lighter detritus and carting it out.
They sat there on the back of the van then, as had become routine -- a chance to savor the fresh air before getting right back on the road, excused with the practical justification of looking back through the photos, notes, and sketches they’d produced. True to form, Specs was already paging through his sketchbook. It was well into the night by then, evidenced by the black sky and clearly visible stars. Out there on the outskirts it was easier to make out constellations, less light pollution and all that.
On that same subject, he noticed Specs trying to angle the page so it caught some errant reflections from a nearby streetlamp and simply reached over and tapped on his modified glasses to turn on their lights. “Don’t strain yourself.”
“Thanks.” He was, evidently, still getting used to them.
They fell into something of a comfortable silence again for a minute or so, before Tucker shifted and spoke.
“So, do you want to explain what that was back there?”
“What do you mean?”
He huffed but resisted the urge to rip his own hair out over how dense his partner was being. “You said you heard the thing.”
“Mhm?” Entirely too nonchalant, as if he wasn’t even listening.
Tucker held his hands out exasperatedly as if to say “Well?”
It was only then that Specs genuinely squinted. “Do you-- do you not… know? I’m--” He fumbled with his hands. “The term is clairaudient. It’s-- I hear things.” He fell back on his instinct to downplay it, suddenly feeling like he was under a microscope.
“So, you’re trying to tell me that you’re psychic?”
“A little bit, yeah. It’s the only way I can keep up with Elise. Look closely next time and you’ll see. I start writing, like, a half second before she starts talking.”
Tucker blinked, trying to dig through his memory to see if that was true. “Yeah, no, Specs, I didn’t know that.”
“You’re sure? I thought, I must have--”
“I think I’d remember if you told me you were psychic.”
He frowned. “It’s in the zine. I know you read the zine.”
“I skimmed it.”
“You--”
“Sue me. A lot of it was bullshit.”
“It wasn’t, but--”
“You said that ‘evp’ stood for ‘electro voice phenomenon’.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Electronic voice phenomenon.”
“Well that’s a minor mistake.”
“And all of your photos were faked.”
“But they were representations of real events.”
“That you made in photoshop.”
“I used GIMP actually. It’s open-source and just as good.”
“Okay, screw you.”
“And, I only said they were based on actual events, the real selling point was the writing--”
“You’re getting off-topic. Why hasn’t this ever come up before?”
“Why would it?”
“You can see ghosts and you’re wondering why it wouldn’t come up?”
He held up a finger as he corrected him. “I can’t see them. I can only hear them. And I can’t--” he exhaled like he was about to make a major confession. “I can’t control it, okay?”
“So, what? You’re bad at it?”
“No, I literally can’t control it. I can’t focus it, and I can’t turn it off, and it sucks so bad. I'd give it up if I could."
He quirked an eyebrow. "Would you?"
He looked down, half-embarrassed. "...No, it's really cool, actually. But it does really suck too."
“How does it even work?”
“It’s the same as… normal hearing, right? It’s always on, and even if you try to focus on just one thing, all the rest is always there in the background.”
“Still. Sounds pretty useful.”
“It’s not. I promise. We got lucky tonight. They don’t usually speak to me in full sentences like that.”
“But even if you’re just hearing spirits in general, that’s--”
“I have no visual context for anything that I hear.” His tone was on the border of confrontational and technical, like he’d explained this exact thing time and again, “A lot of it blends into background noise -- the cocktail party effect and all that -- and the rest, even when I can place the sound, it’s hard to center it in 3D space, so I can hear footsteps but it’s harder to tell you what direction they’re going, and then to add to that, it’s-- they move so fast, they disappear, so even if I can tell you exactly where a scream is coming from, whatever was there could be gone literally the next second. A lot of them are silent anyway, and then I really feel useless. I genuinely couldn't even tell you if there was anything here right now, unless it did something really notable. Otherwise, it's all just background noise.” He sighed. "And it's not just spirits-- it's energy. So, even a particularly strong emotion can set it off."
"Emotions have sounds?"
"When they're strong enough, yeah. At least to me." Already anticipating Tucker’s follow-up question, he added, "Don't ask me what they sound like, I can't differentiate them."
“So, you can hear feelings, but you can’t tell them apart.”
“Basically.”
“That’s gotta be awkward.”
He nodded. “All the time.”
He thought about the intricacies of emotional perception, the facial micro-expressions and the body language details. All the social cues he was supposedly meant to be able to pick up on, that everyone else seemed to get on the first try. He thought about love, attempting to distinguish it from arousal, from attraction, how the physical sensations (quickened heart rate, nervous glances, sweaty palms) were the same for excitement, or worse yet, fear. And how they all sounded the same to him.
He thought about, years ago, when Tucker had only just recently moved into his garage, and they’d been sat out there, watching one of the crappy Friday the Thirteenth sequels on their dinky little tv just because it had been on. (An edited for tv version too, less blood.) And Tucker had turned to face him suddenly, and unceremoniously said, “you’re on the spectrum, aren’t you?”
“Probably,” he’d replied. It was either that or ADHD, or very possibly both, and he’d never been formally evaluated for either.
“Same.” was all Tucker said, and he turned back to the screen just in time to see Jason Voorhees stab someone with a corkscrew.
In his little moment of reflection, he’d gone quiet, and the ambient noises of nighttime were all that filled the open space. He didn’t dare glance over at Tucker, some anxious part of his brain having him convinced that if they made eye contact, he’d just about crumble into dust. But he could feel his partner’s eyes on him, and balled his hands together in pursuit of a sensation to focus on and stay sane.
He was still looking straight down, voice just slightly rough when he spoke up. “Stop staring at me. It isn’t schizophrenia, I’ve been tested.”
“No, I didn’t think that. I’m just curious, is all.”
“Curious about what?”
About everything, he wanted to say. He wanted to know everything about it, equally as fascinated as when they had first met Elise, the concept of psychic abilities with proof to back them up would never stop amazing him. He forced himself to start with one question at a time, though, anxious not to scare him off. “Well, I guess, how long have you been able to do this?”
He tried to recall. “Since I was… I don’t know… six?”
Tucker didn’t reply just yet, just kept looking at him expectantly.
“You’re waiting for some revelatory event for when I realized I was like that kid from The Sixth Sense, aren’t you?” He put on a half-mocking spooky voice. “I hear dead people...”
He shrugged. Yeah, kinda.
“There isn’t one. It’s the same story a lot of people have. I thought everyone heard that stuff all the time, turns out they don’t. My parents tried to get me to grow out of it, turns out I couldn’t. Here we are.”
“I can’t believe you’ve known for that long and you’ve never talked about it with me. Dude, if I had a goddamn X-Men power like that, you wouldn’t be able to get me to shut up about it. And especially not to my best friend.”
“Well I don’t bring it up a lot, ever, really.”
“Why not? ”
“Because it makes me sound fucking crazy!” Something seemed to snap in him like a dam bursting, a spilling of pent up frustration coming out on waves of his raised voice.. “You try meeting girls-- or guys-- or whatever-- and telling them that you hear ghosts! It doesn’t go well. And that coupled with trying to make friends and knowing that at random intervals you might have a murder victim screaming in your ear about justice that isn’t coming-- it--” His voice started to sound a little choked. “It's really upsetting. It’s upsetting, and it’s scary, and it just happens to me. I’m either completely useless, or I’m having these… horrible out-of-context auditory nightmares that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I wouldn’t even wish them on you, so.” He breathed a laugh, but nothing felt funny. “I spent a lot of time alone, afraid of things that I couldn’t even see, and I tried my best to shove all that down. I had enough stacked against me making me the ‘weird kid,’ y’know? I wasn’t exactly looking for more to add onto that.”
Tucker flinched at the outburst, not used to his friend going off like that. His mind wandered briefly back to his thoughts from earlier, conjuring images of Saint Bernards cowering from yappy purse-sized dogs. He fidgeted where he sat. “Sorry I asked.”
Specs felt a pang of guilt hit him and shrunk inwards slightly, trying to relax his tone of voice. “No, it’s-- it’s okay. It’s interesting, isn’t it?” He managed a weak smile. “I’m like a human spirit box. It’s great.” The tiredness was clear in his voice, and he slumped down, resting his head against Tucker’s arm.
They stayed like that for a while, just sitting, breathing. Specs let his eyes fall shut, winding down from the emotional high and the long day that all investigations were. Distantly, he wondered if he fell asleep right then, if Tucker would shove him awake, or just carry him to the backseat. He didn’t get the chance to find out, however, because Tucker made a noise like he had figured something out.
“Hm.”
He stirred, cracking his eyes open. “What’s up?”
“I could probably build something for it.” His tone was almost stoic, like he was about to do some great heroic service.
“Oh?”
“To help you focus it. Your spirit box comment got me thinking. Those things work by shuffling through every frequency, rapid-fire, so that it listens to them all. But you’re already listening to them all, so I’d make something that’s the reverse. Something where you could isolate a single frequency, and then only listen to that.”
His brow furrowed as he ran it over in his head. “That could work.”
“Of course it would. I’d build it so it would.”
Specs snorted, and Tucker could feel the movement of the laughter where they were touching. “Of course you would.”
“Do you hear anything right now?”
“Right now? Things are mostly nice and quiet.” He paused as if listening, and then gestured with his hands, much like trying to demonstrate the size of a caught fish. “One big energy, maybe.”
“Good energy?”
“I think so.” It was a sort of gentle buzzing, like an electrical hum that almost pulsed, a calming thrum like a heart beating. Soft, not overwhelming.
“That’s good, then.”
Soon enough, they’d be back on the road, driving back home to show Elise their findings like preschoolers proudly presenting their macaroni art to their long-suffering teacher. But for the night, there’s enough time to waste time, and they elected to revel in the quiet while together while they could.