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On a normal street with normal cozy warm houses and normal neat little lawns, snow dusted and cheerful, there is a loud, seasonal, markedly abnormal sound of church bells in the air.
Which is only abnormal, because no steepled church sits to house the bells clanging merrily.
And what’s even more abnormal, is that the sound seems to be coming from a one-story bungalow where a fleet of church bells could never possibly fit.
And, perhaps, in response to all this abnormalness, two figures get out of their van and walk carefully up the slightly icy brick walkway. Their breath rises as they talk. One of them has a large hand-made knit scarf wrapped around their neck.
The normal door frame they walk up to, coincidentally where the abnormal church bells seem to be coming from, is an old wood door with a stained glass window a bit worse for wear but still managing to be inviting and warm. Below the glass window is an ornate brass knocker. When the creaky old door wrenches open a blast of cool air rushes in and a blast of sound rushes out. A few flurries of snow fly through to fall and melt on the bristly shoe mat.
A young man with blonde hair looks between the two figures standing on his doorstep with a dusting of snow on their shoulders and says, without any preamble, “Please make it stop.”
-
The thing that needed to be stopped, please, right now, is the sounds of ecstatic church bells clanging and smashing in a cheerful cacophony, echoing so loud the front room table shivers. Small glass knick knacks vibrate and shake with tiny clicks, in a old hutch but nothing falls to the floor. The inside of the once-stylish-now-slightly-run-down house doesn’t resemble a church’s bell tower on Christmas morning, but it definitely sounds like it.
Newt, by this point suffering from an insistent headache and more than a bit done with the whole scenario, looks beseechingly at the two guys roughly his age standing on his doorstep.
“Woah.” One guy says with a grin, barely audible under the sounds. He’s got what looks like a large tool bag slung over his shoulder, and he’s wearing jeans and a uniform long-sleeved shirt under his puffy jacket that says 'STERN AND SONS GENTLE SPIRIT REDIRECTION' in an easy to read bright font that matches the work van parked in Newt’s driveway.
“I’m guessing we got the right house.” The other one jokes with a bashful warm smile. His hair is messy, curly, his freckles make him look younger than he probably is, judging from his shoulders and jawline. If mysterious invisible giant bells weren’t currently trying to drive Newt insane, he might’ve actually been able to form some kind of witty retort. But when he opens his mouth to answer the invisible non-existent bells seem to take it up a notch, clanging and ringing so that Newt has to plug his ears with his fingers and instead yell, pointlessly, while ushering them off the door stoop and inside the front hall. “You’ve got the right house.”
The taller one snorts and they step inside. Newt kicks the door closed behind him, fingers still crammed in his ears. The freckled one reaches into his tool bag, rooting around for a minute to pull out a small device that resembles a calculator, tapping silently at the buttons for a second before the calculator makes a cheerful beep and a tiny blue light near the screen flashes once.
The bells stop before the beep has a chance to disperse, leaving an equally ringing contrasting silence.
It’s, frankly, beautiful.
Newt lets out a sigh of relief that shakes his ribs, hands falling from his ears. “Bloody hell thank you. It’s been going on for hours.” He holds out his hand. “Sorry, I’m Newt. I called this morning.”
“Thomas Stern,” Says the freckled one with a grin, taking Newt’s hand and shaking it with a friendly firm grip. Thomas nods over his shoulder to where his partner is now rifling through the tool bag on the floor. “That’s my cousin Minho.”
“Hi, Newt says gratefully, already feeling his throbbing temple-headache receding. “What is that?”
Thomas flashes a grin. “Disruptor.” He looks around the house, the ceiling corners dusty, the wallpaper a faded yellow with delicate pink roses. The hallway runner carpet that Newt’s been meaning to pull up for weeks. There are porcelain cats on display in a hutch cabinet, paper doilies cover most surfaces that dusty pastel vases rest on.
Then Thomas looks at Newt, at the rip in the knee of his corduroy pants and his hair in a messy low bun, the baggy black-and-white checkerboard shirt, the general ‘I am broke student and actually look fairly good doing it’ air that Newt is secure enough to admit he cultivates.
The house and owner clearly don’t match.
“Uh,” Thomas struggles, whipping his workers boots on the carpet. “You have a lovely home?”
Newt lets out a laugh. Minho pops up holding what looks like a car antenna, and cuts to the point in a way that Thomas tries to tiptoe around. “What gives? This your grandma’s house?”
“Great Aunt, technically.” Newt says ruefully. “She died-” When both of the contractors' faces fall Newt waves away any sympathy. “It’s fine, she was old and ready, she had a wonderful life. Which is why,” Newt gestures around to the old dusty house that looks a bit like a cross between an out of date TV ad and a horror movie set. “I can’t for the life of me figure out why the bloody hell she’s come back.”
-
A ghost hasn’t harmed a human since the Alive and After Convention of 1723, the landmark peace-keeping talks where delegates from across the world gathered together to sign agreements of universal rights, of education, of furthering understanding and resolve. Once the living figured out how to be peaceful, they realized that everything else already was.
Hauntings happen, the same way roofs leak and weeds grow in gutters, and what was once a violent tug-and-pull between Here-and-Beyond had, for the most part, turned into an easy coexistence with some occasional gentle nudging along. Spirits weren’t fully aware, as far as anyone could tell, and almost never formed a corporal body. They were imprints, memories, echos in large spaces, a particularly fierce wind in the leaves.
For the most part.
-
Stern and Son’s Gentle Spirit Redirection has a stellar rating and rave reviews. They write about the professionalism, the efficiency, the personable staff, and the reasonable pricing in a trade that very regularly gouges it’s less in-the-know customers.
That’s why Newt called them, after all. (After a frantic call to his father who seems to know both everything and nothing in a confusing but lovable array of real world skills and technological-illiteracy.)
After Newt ushers the two of them into the kitchen Minho and Thomas start down the list of questions clearly memorized from the small clipboard they trade between them.
“When’d you move in?” Thomas asks, managing to go down a checklist and still be earnest while doing it.
“About four months ago. I-'' Newt pauses. The kettle resting on the retro-electric stove starts to spout silent steam, mimicking boiling without a peep of a sound, lid bouncing like a cartoon. “Is that-”
“Totally normal,” Minho waves his hand without looking at the stove, shaking his head comfortingly. “Don’t give it too much attention, the more mental energy you expend the stronger the influence gets. So you think this is your aunt?”
Newt shrugs. “Has to be. She’s the only one that’s lived here. Her and her wife built the place in the seventies and her wife passed years ago.” The kettle draws his eye again. Newt stands up straighter, remembers that he’s actually an adult now and as a result has to actually do adult things. Like offer beverages when people come over, or call repairmen for nuisances. “Do either of you want water? Tea?”
“Nah. Thanks though.” Without asking Minho opens up Newt’s fridge, waving the car-antenna-looking-thing inside in a clear excuse to snoop. Newt likes him instantly. “So when’d you notice the activity start? Just with the bells or was there something before-oh man great beer I like you already Lizard Kid-something before that? A lot of the time spirits start out at night and people don’t even realize. You have any problems with the electricity? Lightbulbs that hum? Flicker?”
“Uh,” Newt feels himself frown absently, leaning back against the peeling formica countertops as he stares out the kitchen window across that faces the backyard and it’s tarp covered pool.
The past few weeks were a bit of a blur of studying at the library and bad weather, of slogging to and from campus with his back bowed against the wind and eyes squinting from the cold. His first chunk of coursework for his psychology doctorate was harder than he’d expected, seemed to require all his time and focus. Newt's gone from being one of the best in his program to being surrounded by people that were the best in their program, and he might be having a bit of a gifted-child-crisis about the whole thing.
Having your nose shoved so deeply in a book you don’t notice a ghost is, frankly, a bit embarrassing to admit.
“Nothing odd.” Newt says finally.
First Minho and Thomas walk around the house, from the basement that held the huge old boiler up to tiny short attic by stairs that pulled down from the ceiling in accordion unfolding motion where they all have to practically bend in half between the rafters and insulation. Minho and Thomas chat as they wander amongst the doilies and dusty glass figurines, tapping walls, flicking light switches, holding something that looks like a retail pricing gun up to pipes and faucets, checking things off on the clipboard, in general using odd-looking equipment in odd-looking ways that seem to have little to do with Newt’s problem of potential property poltergeist possession. (Say that five times fast.)
“What’s that for?” Newt asks, admittedly a bit nosily if interested enough. He’s protective of the house, still feels a connection to the property despite his eventual goal of clearing it out with his parents blessing.
Thomas blinks as he waves the car-antenna-wand around the old crown moldings of the living room, collecting a slightly embarrassing number of cobwebs but nothing more. “It helps to establish para-activity levels in the airwaves.” He frowns in confusion. “Is this your first time with a ghost? Really? I thought everyone in England had a Ecto in the garden or a wraith in the attic.”
Newt shrugs, slightly British and hopeless. “I grew up in the suburbs. I doubt any ghost would pick a mid-level semi-detached over a castle down the road.” He feels a pang. He’s a bit homesick around this holiday season, regretting his decision to stay on campus and focus on his coursework instead of flying home. Newt knows he can be guilty of self-flagellation and he’s starting to worry he’s slipped into the habit self consciously.
“Huh.” Thomas nods, obviously interested despite his clearly reigned in curiosity. He’s practically vibrating with it. “Have you ever seen any of the old ones? Like, pre-Convention. Something ancient?”
“Once.” Newt says with a shrug as he leads them into the bathroom off his bedroom. “We went on a school trip when we were learning about the Convention in Seventh Year. We slept over at the old castle outside town. When the tower struck midnight the Lady walked from her bedroom to the lake. We got to watch from the windows. It was lovely.”
“Woah.” Thomas sighs longingly. His arms drop with the exhale and the car-antenna lets out a loud high pitch feedback whine that makes them all jump.
Minho jerks to a stop in the hallway. “Is that a signed Half-Moon poster?”
Newt looks up with a smile at the framed album image. “Yeah my other Aunt, she loved them. Family trait. They practically raised my sister and I on their first three albums.” Minho nods in clear approval.
In the powder-pink porcelain bathroom when they turn on the shower it blasts to life with water that looks scalding hot, steam rising off it in huge billows, but when Minho puts his hand under the spray he shivers, shaking his fingers dry. “Ice.” He says to Thomas, who adds another note on the clipboard.
“She couldn’t have turned into a poltergeist, could she? She was happy.” Newt says hopelessly, arms crossed and leaning against the doorframe. A headache starts to throb behind his temples again. That’s all he needs, something restless and mischievous to distract him. Aunt Mary didn’t seem the type to stick around, frustrated and causing undo mischief, distracting Newt and stressing him further.
“As long as there aren’t any messages written in steam.” Minho says confidently. They turn expectantly to the slowly fogging mirror.
“So how long have you guys been doing this?” Asks Newt conversationally as they wait, tucking his hands in his pockets.
They laugh in unison. With a look between them Minho answers. “Three generations. We’re the second set of Stern ‘Sons’. Our dads were the first. Our Grandpa started the business back in the twenties. He was a Viz, back before all the tech got invented.”
Newt perks up, interested. Someone in their town had ended up being a Visus. She’d gone off to work on some deep sea vessel determined to find the ghosts of whales. The paranormal sensitivity runs in families, and Newt looks between Minho and Thomas with new interest. “Are either of you?”
Minho laughs good-naturedly again, crossing his impressive arms. “No chance with me from grandpa. I’m adopted.”
“We're cousins and almost twins.” Thomas adds with a proud grin. “Two days apart.” He turns slightly bashful. “And, uh-” But he stops, looking suddenly towards the mirror again.
A letter ‘G’ slowly appears, as if drawn by an invisible finger. Condescension runs in tiny delicate tracks down from the letters.
A ‘E’ appears next to the ‘G’.
Then a ‘T’.
O
U
T
Newt sighs.
“GET OUT ” Written in the steam on the glass with shakey ominous letters. Newt groans. “Jesus she’s turned into a poltergeist-but she was happy-”
“Wait.” Thomas says, eyebrows frowning, bow lips turning downward into a natural pout. “She’s not done.”
A T appears.
H
E
R
E
Then a colon and a parenthesis.
“What the hell?” Minho says playfully.
The message sits completed. Newt reassesses the letters, once ominous but now, after fully revealed, has him remembering past birthday envelopes and Christmas cards.
Auntie Mary had been eighty-six. It’d be normal for her writing to get a bit messy and shaky.
GET OUT THERE! :)
Newt lets out a long slow sigh from his nose, trying to expel the strange mixture of affection-annoyance-old-and-comfortable-put-to-bed-grief.
Thomas frowns, looking at Newt puzzled. “Get out there? As in a place?” He’s guessed correctly that Newt’s already figured it out, and is more than a little inclined to keep it to himself. “Bet she’ll leave after you do the errand she wants.”
Newt wants to flush but manages not too. “Well,” He clears his throat, takes comfort in the fact that at the end of the day his poker face for embarrassment is still one of the best. The accent helps hide it with the Americans, at least. “I’ll take that into consideration.” He fusses with the edge of a pink wall tile for a moment. “But, ah. Is there anything you two could potentially do in the meantime? I’ve got exams coming up so I’ll be too busy…”
“Yeah man.” Minho says confidently. He stares at the steam message for another moment, hands on his hips, thinking. “You said she was happy?” Newt nods. Minho scratches his chin. “Huh. Alright. I’m pretty sure what you got here is a GCP, not a poltergeist.”
Newt blinks. “A what?” He asks while they trail back to the living room where there’s more space, falling onto the old corduroy couch.
“A Ghosts of Christmas Past.” Thomas pipes up helpfully. “A seasonal sub-category haunting. Usually brought on by concern, unfinished business, some kind of worry that hadn’t been resolved when they pass over. Certain pockets of the city are magnets for them this time of year. Graveyards, Churches, that kind of thing.”
“Great. Well. She was always festive.” Newt runs his hands through his hair, agitated. He doesn’t have time. His bun comes out and he doesn’t fix it. All of his Aunts furniture seems dusty, suddenly. He’s barely lived outside of the kitchen and his bedroom, and the light coming in through the large living room window that overlooks the snowy yard is winter white and bright, it makes the room feel as disused as it is.
“The good thing is,” Minho says while scratching away at his clipboard. “That ‘GCP’s are easy to take care of. We can install a gentle disrupter-it won’t hurt your Aunt-and she’ll still be able to do some stuff, a little bit of rattling, maybe the occasional cold spot-but it should keep everything pretty mellow until you can finish whatever she wants you to. And I highly recommend you do, GCP’s only get stronger this time of year.”
“Alright.” Newt says, managing to smile warmly despite the fact that he’s chewing his cheek, a hideable tick of nerves that he’s cultivated. “Thanks, yeah. That’d be great.”
-
“I have finals, Mary.” Newt snaps to the empty air, sitting up from his bed in a single straight motion. The sheets rustle. His bedroom is pitch black, except for the small dim square of his laptop sitting on his desk. He’d left it on to try and fall asleep to a droning sitcom, but now, coincidentally enough, the Mac seems to only be capable of playing slow crooning Christmas love songs in increasing volumes.
"Kissin' by the mistletoe-"
“Mary-”
"Santa baby-"
“Mary-”
"Everybody loves somebody, sometimes-"
“Fine.” Newt snaps angrily in the dark. He resists the urge to cross his arms like a pouting child. “Fine . Fine. If it's that big of a issue, I’ll go on a date.”
The music clicks off, the laptop dims, instantly plunging the room into full darkness. Newt lets out a loud, annoyed, irritated sigh, hauling the huge heavy quilt up over his head and flopping back down to try and get some sleep.
-
Newt goes on a disastrous first date, spending more time staring out the coffee shop window at the flurries than actually looking at the man. All the awkward stilted conversation and clear lack of chemistry does is remind Newt what being with someone good actually feels like, and he arrives home more lonely than when he’d left. Walking back through the slush only makes his mood worse.
When he kicks his front door closed angrily he glares at the small cylinder device in the living room corner, all it’s lights blinking and reminding Newt of a ghost-weakening-internet modem.
Mary must sense his frustrations, because by the time Newt walks into the kitchen the kettle is already whistling, brought to a full boil seemingly independently. Newt’s eyes narrow when he glares at it, but he makes a cup of tea with the hot water anyways, sitting at the small old wood table to drink and stare out the window and start his revisions for class tomorrow.
“Thanks Auntie.” He grumbles begrudgingly against the lip of his tea mug to the quiet peaceful kitchen as he opens his book.
-
Newt and Sonya and their parents had shuttled from the UK and the States for every other holiday their entire lives, and the mid-afternoon Heathrow-to-JFK is as familiar as fireworks on summer nights in early July and cold Boxing-Day lazing in warm jumpers.
His Aunts were actually his Great Aunts, but basically they were Newt’s grandparents. His father had practically been raised by them.
Mary knew his breakup with Alby had cut him in ways that only first-disastrous-heartbreak could. She had been worried about Newt the last time he saw her. Still sharp and playful, but telling him in no uncertain terms with her papery soft hand resting gently on top of his that, “It’s a long life Newt, and it’s okay to want someone.”
-
“Was your grandma a matchmaker or something?” Fry asks absently. Newt’s closest friend in his program flopped sideways on the old corduroy couch in Newt’s living room, tossing a rubber-band-ball lazily in the air in a solitary game of catch. Fry and him had been a natural match of easy-going personalities, and in a field as demanding as theirs it’s nice to have someone that managed to both cram for exams and make it feel lazy.
Newt looks up from his spot where he’s spread out on the pale blue carpet, his various flashcards and highlighted notes mixing with a messy pile of stacked textbooks. “Not really. She just…” Newt taps his pen point against the textbook spine. “I think she thought I would get a bit caught up. In this. You know, school.”
Fry snorts. When Newt glares at him Fry manages to make procrastinating look engaging. For a few moments it’s just the rustle of paper, the scratch of writing. “It’s just,” Fry starts with a guilty smile. “You do kind of get caught up. In a good way, dude. You want to be a great doctor, you wanna help people, so you want to be good. But,” Fry avoids his eye. “One really good way to be a good doctor is to keep yourself healthy and happy and emotionally fulfilled, however that takes shape.”
Newt crumples up a blank page from his notepad and chucks the paper ball at Fry’s head playfully. “Stop being such a good doctor.”
“Right back at you.”
A small pendulum coo-coo clock above them chimes in three angry quick successions, the clock’s hands spinning around counter-clockwise. An owl springs out at them with tiny mechanized springs. Fry’s eyebrows raise. “I think you need to go on another date dude.”
-
“Listen, if the After is getting involved you should probably take the hint.” Brenda, Newt’s favorite barista advises him as she takes her lunch break. She pokes at her wilting free salad with a wrinkle of her nose, shoving it aside for her huge whip-cream covered drink instead.
The cafe down the block from Newt’s Aunts house is a bit dingy, more local-hole-in-the-wall, it’s trendy days clearly behind it. It’s one of the reason’s Newt likes it. The stains on the wood bar make it feel more lived, the chips in the mugs humanizing, the greasy stove that made breakfasts sandwiches never managed to disappoint. The radio plays slightly grainy winter wonderland music. Brenda’s hung holly wreaths and garlands with chaotic artistic expression.
“The afterworld isn’t getting involved, one very nosy Aunt is.” Newt grumbles back, checking his phone for any messages. He’d called Stern and Sons Gentle Spirit Removal an hour ago, mostly because his small sad Christmas Tree he’d lack-lusterly set up with Sonya and her girlfriend Harriet via Facetime last week is now, currently, (presumably) still floating upside down three inches from the floor, along with every other piece of furniture in the living room.
Brenda’s eyebrows raise, saying without actually speaking a word, that she highly disagrees. She wipes her hands on her aprons absently, grabbing a carrot stick out of Newt’s tupperware. “I’m just saying, maybe there’s a reason she’s back now, you know? You’ve been in that house for months and she only just popped in.”
Newt scowls down at his notes, thinks of how the Christmas tree had spun lazily and without commitment, ornaments falling with soft thuds onto the carpet. “Yeah. ‘Just popped in.’ Right.”
-
“Man.” Minho says with a laugh. He’s crouching down by the modem, adjusting power levels and dials. “You’ve got a hell of a haunting here man.”
When they shake goodbye in the doorway Minho pauses. “So, what’d you think of Half-Moon reunion? They killed it on the encore. And dude,” He shrugs, flapping his work-jacket’s collar to straighten it. “You should really go wherever she wants you to, this is the most stubborn GCP I’ve seen in a while.”
-
Newt goes on another date. This time with someone from school, not his program but within the same field. It’s fine, but a bit boring, but there’s nothing there that makes Newt feel like he’s done a shot of hot whiskey, no flutter of excitement and warming of fingertips and nose.
When he gets home the old ornate wood AM/FM radio glows to life, it’s dials spinning up quickly and cheerfully, blasting out a grainy exuberant rendition of 'It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year'.
Newt yanks his hat off his head and whips it in the general direction of the sound.
-
Newt doesn’t go on another date after that.
Instead two days later he calls Stern And Sons for a stronger wavelength-disrupter-what-have-you.
A girl popping bubblegum audibly over the phone tells Newt that someone will come by and install a new one between noon and four.
Snow starts falling in the darkening sky just as Newt opens the front door after a firm cheerful knock. “Oh.” Newt says lightly.
Thomas smiles up at him from one step down, in a similar company shirt under his unzipped parka. “Minho told you if you didn’t do the task she’d get stronger.”
Newt sighs, steps aside, and waves Thomas through the front door. “I’ve just been a bit busy and it’s not exactly an easy-” He’s cut off by a gurgling sound from the basement.
With an audible groaning whine Newt hears the boiler die a sudden annoyed death in the basement below their feet. The radiator in the front hall makes low soft clicks as it cools. Newt sighs. Thomas tries to stifle his laugh, tugging on his tool bag strap. “Alright, lemme see the disrupter. For her to still have this much influence the thing’s gotta be faulty.”
But after a few minutes of tinkering with the modem’s wires Thomas whistles, sitting back on his knees and taking out his phone in the same movement. “Listen, looks like your Aunt is sticking around, ‘GCP’s aren’t usually this stubborn-”
“I’m thinking of a different adjective actually-ow Mary.” Newt snaps, rubbing his forehead where a pinecone ornament from his small sad Christmas tree hit, tossed across the room by invisible force.
Thomas doesn’t bother to hide his smile this time even as he puts his phone up to his ear. It rings audibly before being picked up with a loud click. “Hey Min, do you think you could bring by a booster? That GCP at 235 Torrance street is still acting-” Thomas stops to listen. Newt recognizes Minho’s voice if not the words, everything a small phone-speaker distorted hum. “Yeah, Newt.” Thomas turns to Newt. “Min wants to know if you’re cool to wait for an hour and then he’ll be by to drop off the booster, he’s out on a different call-” Thomas pauses again, listening. He rolls his eyes. “ And if you’ve heard the Half-Moon remastered version of their ‘Live at the Park’ show?”
“Yes and no.” Newt says with a grin. “But I’m looking forward to both.”
“Okay.” Thomas pops to his feet again in a single athletic movement. Newt tries not to notice it. Uh,” Thomas looks around like he’s trying to find the right words. “Listen, I can take off, if you want. But I can wait around for Minho and just make sure there aren’t any other signs or stuff if you…” He blows his hand over his fist to warm his fingers up. The temperature in the house has already dropped with the heating switched off, Newt can feel the chill pressing against the door and windows. The grandfather clock in the hall chimes angrily.
“Do you want a cup of coffee?” The words are out of Newt’s mouth before he can think about them.
“Yeah,” Thomas smiles. “Okay.”
-
Steam rises from the teapot spout when Newt pours the liquid on top of the instant coffee crystals. The oven is on and open a quarter to try and keep the kitchen warm. It’s quiet but peaceful, not awkward even though it should be. Thomas shakes his head to sugar but nods to cream which makes Newt like him more, an almost impossibility at this point. The cream swirls thickly in his cup as he stirs with the tiny brass spoon that Newt had given him.
“So,” Thomas nods around, elbows resting on the small wood table and arms crossed easily. “This doesn’t feel exactly like your kind of decor.”
Newt snorts over his cup. “No, thanks for noticing.” He takes a sip, Thomas watching him expectantly for the other half of the explanation. “I haven't had much of a chance to clear it out. I was in my last year of undergrad when my Aunt passed. No one knew what to do with the place. I don’t think my parents were quite ready to sell it, you see.” Below the table Newt toes his sneaker into the kitchen floor. “So when I got into my doctoral program here it just felt…” Newt shrugs. Serendipitous. It felt serendipitous. Campus being so close, the empty house sitting here, how Mary herself had been a doctor. Past and present and future combining.
But he’s worried that’s an oddly personal thing to admit to an almost-stranger.
“By the time I’m done with my program this thing might be half-livable.” Newt adds finally after another sip.
“What’s your program?”
“Psych-doctorate.” Thomas whistles. Newt snorts. “It sounds stuffier than it is. I just like people.”
Thomas cracks a grin. “That’s a good thing to like if you’re going to be talking to them as a career.”
“When’d you know you were a Visus?” Newt asks, leaning forward on his elbows. The kitchen’s starting to warm up, the oven a dull red that feels like their makeshift fireplace. The one hanging stained-glass ceiling lamp is dimmed a bit, and the snow looks especially bright through the window. For the first time this winter Newt thinks it looks nice.
Thomas grins sheepishly. His long fingers trace the rings faded into the scrubbed wood table. “I was always kinda just...good at ghosts? I guess? I scrounged out an old ghoul knocking around in my primary school’s basement. My uncle was chasing around a specter on his farm for weeks and then I found it’s Marker in the barn after like five minutes. Minho and I both worked summers when we were kids in school. It’s great cash and I can do it part-time with college.”
Newt puts his mug down with a small half-smile. “Do you, by any chance, see dead people?”
Thomas laughs. “That’s a total urban legend. It's just because of the name. 'Visus', latin for sight. That's the first thing everyone thinks, but you don’t see anything. You just kind of…get a feeling about something. Kinda like second-hand deja vu.”
"Huh." Newt blinks. No one's every really described it that way. It honestly sounds a bit uncomfortable. “You asked if I’ve ever seen one of the old ones? You haven’t?”
Thomas shrugs understandingly and matter-of-fact. “The older ones in the Americas aren’t partial to colonial descendants. They don’t really choose us to interact with. Which is, you know? Pretty understandable.”
Newt nods. “Makes sense.”
“Can I-” Thomas’s mouth closes and opens again. “You know if whatever your Aunt wants you to do isn’t something your comfortable with, there are other things you can do, you know? Redirection, a Seance to help communicate with her. You’ve got options if you don’t have time to take a trip to wherever she wants you to go.”
Newt snorts, finger tracing one of the rings left on the old comfortable table. He’d sat here on summer mornings eating breakfasts of sugary cereal before spending the whole day in the backyard pool. “No, it’s not that. I-” He clears his throat, feels himself smile ruefully. “She meant, ah, ‘Get out there’ as in seeing people. She was a bit worried. I had a bad break up in undergrad and haven’t been serious with anyone since. She was always a bit of a romantic. Wanted everyone to be in love the way she was.”
“Oh?” Thomas says, eyes flicking up and then back down to his coffee cup quickly. Newt can tell by Thomas’s eyebrows that he’s listening intently, then wonders where he’s gotten such sudden confidence that he can read the guy who’s here to perform the spectral equivalent of cleaning the eaves troughs.
Newt clears his throat, rolling his shoulders and sitting back in his chair, letting out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “She was usually right, which only made her more stubborn. That’s what my dad always said. ‘It’d be easier if she wasn’t so right all the time.’” Newt feels his smile get bigger. “I guess I should feel more insulted than I do. I mean, she clearly isn’t particularly confident in my own abilities.”
“I really don’t think the problem is-” Thomas’s mouth closes with an audible click only to pop open again a second later. “I mean you’re-” He scratches the crown of his dark messy hair in a twitching movement. “Just, you know.” He looks out the window, the moles dotted along his cheek and neck noticeable with his flush.
Newt tries to smother his smile in his coffee’s steam. When he looks back up Thomas is still staring intently out the kitchen window, it’s edges crisscrossed with frost. “This is a little unbalanced, you know Tommy. I’ve got a embarrassing relative trying to set me up from beyond the grave.” Newt teases. “What about you?”He asks quietly and not entirely on purpose. Thomas’s eyes flick back to him, warm brown and bright, curious. “Have anyone special for the holidays?”
Thomas’s eye flick up again, head raising to look fully at Newt. “No, um I-”
“Yo!” Minho calls down the hall from the front door, shattering the kitchen quiet and making both of them jump. They both stand suddenly for some reason, wood chairs giving muffled clatters as they skid back from the linoleum. Minho appears with a confused frown. “Hey I was knocking.” He brandishes a large duffle bag. “I got a booster. I’m telling you man, I wish I’d met your aunt. She must’ve been a friggin force.”
“She was.” Newt says fondly.
-
Installing the new modem takes less time than Newt’d like. The minute it blinks to life the boiler clanks back on loudly from the basement. The Christmas tree shakes a small cloud of pine needles down in annoyance.
"Alright," Minho sighs. "She shouldn't be able to do much more than some rattling, but give us a call if she can." Minho offers his hand. As they shake Minho wishes him luck again with a large wolfish grin before heading out to the truck to warm it up while Thomas packs up the last of their tools.
“So,” Thomas says finally, standing and offering his hand to Newt. It’s chapped and warm, Newt let’s it go on for three heartbeats too long. The thing that snaps him out of it is a tiny rustling noise above them in the doorway. They both look up. From the floral wallpaper a small sprig of mistletoe is blooming out of the wall to hang above the door way that they’re under.
Thomas laughs, soft and maybe a bit disappointed, dropping Newt’s hand with a quick air of reluctance. “Better keep up the search.”
“Yeah.” Newt says quietly, heart beating loudly in his ears. “I better.”
Thomas turns after a final wave and Newt closes the front door, standing in the quiet. He rests his forehead against the stained glass, watches his breath fog against the cold surface.
Then Newt pulls open the door. Thomas has only made down two porch steps.
“Thomas?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you maybe want to-”
“Yes.” Thomas says instantly, staring intently and earnestly up at Newt. He’s lit up from the light spilling onto the snow in the shape of the curved doorframe, looking every bit a stained glass painting.
Newt smiles, chewing happily on the inside of his cheek. It starts to snow. Newt thinks that he'll probably think back on this moment often. “Alright.”