Chapter Text
Alicia Walker heard her Anatolian shepherd, Lola, barking before she heard the engine of her brother-in-law’s abomination of a van. “That’ll do, Lola!” She propped open the front door and watched her family approach. Her sister waved at her from the passenger seat, and her nephew got out of the God Awful Vehicle to open the gate and let Lola inspect him, which took longer than it did with most guests. She couldn’t hear him baby-talking the dog, but she saw him lean over to pet her and get firmly rejected, and laughed. Lola was aloof even by guard dog standards, and trotted ahead of the van, escorting them onto Alicia’s property. She barked once and puttered off to check on the goats once the van was parked.
“I knew you were thinking about getting a dog, Alicia, but you never told me you actually got one!” Maddie wrapped a one-armed hug around her shoulders, clutching an oversized suitcase in the other hand.
“We’ve got a gang of uppity coyotes that took a couple kids last spring, so I went from thinkin’ about it to doin’ about it.” Danny and Jazz came up to the door next, and she saw both of them peering in the direction the dog went. “Her name’s Lola,” she told them, “and I’ve got a bag o’ chicken hearts in the freezer. Iffin you bribe her enough, then she’ll let you hug her a little.”
Her nephew was a little cold - ice cold, not emotional cold - when he hugged her. Alicia made a mental note of it, but he had been a bit of a weirdo for some time now. And she had laws to lay down with Jack about where on her property the God Awful Vehicle could and could not go.
Maddie, Jack, Jazz, and Danny would be staying with their aunt Alicia for two weeks. It only took a few days for her to get to worrying about her niece and nephew. She knew that her sister and her brother-in-law loved those children to death, but she also knew that their favorite child was their research. This visit, the kids managed to convince her that their folks weren’t total crackpots, bless their hearts. Danny and Jazz had reasonably solid heads on their shoulders, and they would join into telling stories about ghosts making trouble around town. In the same breaths that they confirmed ghosts were totally real, they argued with their parents left right and sideways about if ghosts were bad . The way the kids saw it, ghosts were just people, only dead. Alicia thought that made enough sense, though it didn’t really say much on whether ghosts were good or bad. People could be good and kind, and people could be bad and dangerous. Alicia would know, and Alicia knew that something was making the kids' lives dangerous.
For the third day in a row, Alicia came in from feeding the chickens and the goats their breakfast to eat hers, and watched Danny and Jazz have a silent argument about who sat where. There was one seat in this old house where you could see every entrance and exit without turning your head much, and both of the children wanted it. She fondly remembered having that sort of half-telepathy with Maddie when they were that age, although they argued about much stupider things. For the third day in a row, Danny won their little face argument and Jazz sat next to him.
“I ain’t milked the goats yet, and that geezer Harvey next door keeps complaining about my animals in his greens so I ought to check the fences. You two wanna come with me? After ye finish eatin’ of course.” Jack and Maddie both had nocturnal tendencies, and they wouldn’t be up for another hour or so. Alicia wasn’t the kind of woman who ignored a red flag when she saw one. Not anymore. A talk was needed.
After the goats were looked after, Alicia walked the fence with Danny and Jazz, and Lola supervising from a professional distance. She decided to get right out with it. “How come you two always wanna sit in yer great-uncle Benji’s spot?”
Danny scratched at the back of his neck, a nervous tick he somehow picked up from Granny Suzie, even though she passed on when he was brand new. Genetics were funny that way. “Uh, who’s that?”
“That’s your uncle who was a veteran, right?” Jazz asked.
Alicia nodded. “That’s right, he was your grandpa’s brother. He was a painter. Did watercolors, mostly. When he wanted a little beer money to go wit’ his pension, he drew children’s books. But his personal work…” she shook her head. “He always wanted to have a view of every door ‘n every window. Got itchy-like if he didn’t have a nice solid wall behind him.” Jazz was watching her face, listening. Alicia could tell Danny was listening too, by how he kept one ear tilted toward her, but his head was on a swivel just like it had been. He didn’t used to be watchful like that. He was always interested, curious, but he didn’t look like the damn guard dog until he hit high school. “I’ve noticed you two are like that too.”
Jazz frowned. “Oh. Must be a side effect of all the ghost attacks, right Danny?”
Danny was staring down Harvey’s ridiculous, oversized scarecrow. “Yeah,” he muttered, “something like that.”
Alicia wasn’t convinced. “Are ye sure it’s not anything more than that?”
Danny turned to her sharply. The angle had him looking into the sun, and his eyes seemed green in the light. “Why would it be anything more than that?” he half-hissed. Jazz smacked him lightly on the arm and he un-hunched his shoulders a little .
Alicia Walker was not an easy woman to intimidate. She arched one eyebrow, returning his eye contact. “I just told you. The both of you remind me too much of uncle Benji. You don’t act like yer expectin’ some specter to come out of a corner and startle you, you act like yer expectin’ somethin’ to hurt you.”
Jazz cleared her throat. “Um, you were saying great-uncle Benji was a painter?”
Alicia glanced at her and flashed her a grin. Good attempt at changing the subject, A for effort. “Yes, he was. I made the mistake of looking through the paintings he did for himself once. If you’ll excuse my language, he saw some shit. And I don’t need no higher education to tell that you two have seen some shit too.”
“I’m fine,” Danny grunted.
Alicia rolled her eyes. Men. “Well. I want both of y’all to know that if yer not fine, that’s alright. Yer mama and yer daddy love you both very much, but I know they got their heads in the clouds most of the time. I love you too, and I’m payin’ attention, okay? Iffin you wanna talk, or you want me to set up some targets and the shotgun so you can… get it outta yer system in a safe way, I’m here, alright?”
Jazz hugged her. “Thanks, aunt Alicia.”
Danny smiled weakly, and then glanced forward and stalked ahead of the group. “I think I found the hole in the fence!”
The kids helped Alicia repair the damaged section of fence, and spent most of the rest of the day exploring outside. She had ten acres; mostly graze for the goats and the chickens, plus a veggie garden and a half dozen apple trees. They had already stuck their noses in every nook and cranny inside the house. Alicia spent the day chatting with Maddie and Jack about installing solar panels. Jack was a bit of an absent-minded professor, bless his heart, but he was a good and grounded engineer. Who was Alicia to turn down a family discount? When she asked after the children, they gushed about Jazz graduating high school with a 4.87 GPA and going to the University of Wisconsin at Madison just like them, and they didn’t talk about Danny much at all. He was struggling , and they didn’t have any ideas worth spit why - not that they actually admitted it. Where the kids got a talk, their parents were fixin’ to get a talking to .
Evening rolled around, and Alicia walked out on the back porch to call the kids in. Her property was fenced and Lola knew to keep guests out of trouble, but it still seemed like it ought to be done. It got dark quick, when the sun slipped down under the Ozarks, and she caught a glimpse of some critter’s eyeshine. She opened her mouth to call the kids to dinner, and then did a double take. Those eyes were too high to be a dog or a goat, and the trees were further back on the property. And then there was a second pair. The eyes were too high to be coyotes, and they didn’t have wolves in Arkansas, and they were too forward-facing to be deer. It was a little early for black bears, they didn’t usually get uppity preparing for hibernation for another couple of months, but she couldn’t think of any other reasonable answer for the eyeshine. “Hey, get !”
The eyeshine flickered, as if the bears were looking over their shoulders to see who she was shouting at. “ Get !” she repeated, louder, and the bears were approaching. Alicia didn’t like to shoot wildlife, but she reached for the shotgun in the closet and loaded a few shells of buckshot anyhow. Bearskins were mighty warm, and Midwest winters were mighty cold. She didn’t hear Lola anywhere, and that dog was perfectly capable of scaring off predators on her lonesome. The conspicuous absence made her blood run cold as she slipped a finger into the trigger guard and aimed a few feet in front of where she reckoned the bears to be.
“What the fuck? ” shouted one of the bears, in Danny’s voice. They both rushed forwards into the full light of the porch.
“Aunt Alicia, Alicia it’s just us!” Jazz called, her hands in the air as they came into the light.
Butterflies and worse things fluttered and writhed in Alicia’s guts; she dropped the shotgun on the patio and her hands flew to cover her gasp. She rushed out and pulled both into a bear hug ( eugh ) and held back tears. Of course Lola hadn’t barked at them, Lola could see properly in the dark. “I am so sorry, I’m so sorry, I saw the eyeshine, I saw your eyes and I thought you were a couple of bears…” she reared back, looking at both of their nervous faces. “Why in hell do your eyes shine?”
“Uh, the portal?” Danny squeaked. “All the, you know, ecto-contamination. We’re a little mutated.”
Jazz nodded. “I had tapetum lucidum come in last summer,” she whispered.
“Oh, Jesus, Joseph and Mary. Okay.” Alicia kissed them both on their foreheads and herded them to the house. She paused to unload the shotgun before she forgot about it and then showed them the closet. “Alright, new rule! If y’all are going to be out after dark, yer both wearing a hi-vis vest, this is where I keep them. No exceptions, if I catch ye without one yer grounded until you go back to Amity Park, understand?”
Danny squirmed, scratching the back of his neck. “It’s fine , you didn’t actually shoot us.”
“And what if I had? I could have killed either one of you!”
Danny muttered something under his breath that Alicia didn’t hear, but it made Jazz scold him by his name and she heard that.
“Care to share with the class?” she drawled, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.
“Oh, uh, it was just a dumb joke.”
“ Please , mister Danny, do tell us what was so funny.” In the back of her mind she knew she wasn’t being terribly fair, but fear and guilt made her venomous.
Danny looked like he wanted to sink into the floor. “I was just saying, if you had hit us - or me, at least - it wouldn’t be the first time.”
Jazz winced. Alicia felt time slow to a crawl. “What, in the hell, does that mean?”
“Well, I’m more ecto-contaminated than Jazz, cause of my accident, and, you know. Sometimes the anti-ghost security system shoots at me?”
“ WHAT? ”
Danny held his hands up. “It’s fine, it’s fine, I remember to dodge most of the time!”
“Most of the-” Alicia clasped her hands in a praying position and took a deep breath. She felt her face turning red and burning. Dear Lord, have mercy on my fool sister and her fool husband, because I won’t have a drop. She rested her hands on Danny’s shoulders. “Danny? Look at me, and listen to what I say. I am about to yell my head off, and before I do that I want you to know that I am not mad at you . Ye haven’t done nothin’ wrong, and your safety is my number one priority, okay?” That was how you talked to a troubled kid, right? Jazz was giving her a thumbs up, so she figured that was decent.
“Uh…”
Alicia cleared her throat, spun on her heel, and marched into the living room, bellowing. “ MADELINE JANE WALKER FENTON! ”
Maddie raised one eyebrow from her position on the couch, going through an old photo album with Jack. “Alicia Gail Walker?”
“WOULD YOU LIKE TO EXPLAIN TO ME WHY YOUR SON SAYS HE’S BEEN SHOT BEFORE?”
Maddie and Jack leapt to their feet. “You’ve been shot? ” Maddie demanded, rushing to Danny.
“By the security system , not a real gun !” Danny cried, like it made a difference. He backed away before Maddie could get to him, and Jazz slid into the space between them, clutching her mother’s arm and muttering comforts. God damn, why did it look like they had practiced that?
“I mistook yer kids and their glowy eyes for a pair of bears and almost sprayed ‘em down with buckshot, and apparently , this is just fine , because yer damn security system shoots at Danny so often that he remembers to dodge ,” Alicia sneered, getting in Maddie’s personal space.
“We should have anticipated the eyeshine causing mistaken identity problems,” Jack muttered.
“No shit, Sherlock. Did you leave that big brain of yours at the altar?”
“Don’t bring my marriage into this,” Maddie spat, “I know you don’t like Jack-”
“Right now I don’t like either of y’all!” Alicia snapped her fingers in her face. “Have you noticed yer kids act like they’ve been off in the trenches? Or are you too busy spending every waking hour in that lab of yours?”
“We may have missed things, but not because of our work, it’s hardly our fault that the kids are never home-”
Alicia gripped her sister by the shoulders and bodily shook her. “THE KIDS ARE NEVER HOME BECAUSE YOUR SECURITY SYSTEM SHOOTS AT THEM, MADDIE! If I had a fancy-schmancy security robot that took potshots at you - and by God I’m tempted to build one - y’all wouldn’t be too keen on that, would you? You made this problem, you and Jack, and y’all can fuckin’ fix it or so help me I will sue for custody.”
Maddie opened and closed her mouth a few times, then looked to the children, pained. “I know some of our tech mistakes you for a ghost, Danny, but you never told us the security system shoots at you.”
“Yeah, well, usually I remember to dodge so it’s no big deal, right?”
Maddie extracted herself from Alicia’s white-knuckle grip and pulled the kids into a hug. Neither of them looked terribly comfortable with that, but Jazz warmed up to it. “Yes, it is a big deal. I suppose I see why you’re always off with Tucker and Sam, and why you’re always at the library.” She kissed them both on the forehead. “When we get home, Jack and I are gonna take down the security system and rebuild it so there’s no more friendly fire, okay?”
Danny grimaced. “I… okay. Sounds good.” He slumped into the hug and squeezed Maddie back, and then Jack had the three of them wrapped up in his wide arms. “ Dad , you’re crushing me,” he whined.
“It’s good for you, I’m squeezing the teen angst out.” Jack squeezed a little harder, lifting all three of them onto their tiptoes before releasing them to ruffle Danny’s hair. “You can talk to us whenever you need to, Danny-boy. We’ll always listen.”
Alicia saw Jazz screw up her mouth like she had sucked on a lemon behind Jack’s back, and shot her a sympathetic look. Listening wasn’t their forte and probably never would be, but at least now they seemed to grasp what the stakes might be if they didn’t try. That was… a start. And a start would do, for now.