Chapter Text
It happens in the middle of the night. A pair of eyes stare out through the darkness of his bedroom, and Chris draws in a breath and does not scream, thank you very much, and scrabbles for the first thing he can find to protect himself: his clock, the glowing red time of 2:14 disappearing as he yanks it from its plug and hurls it with all his might at the intruder.
But the figure standing at the foot of his bed holding a machete isn't the newest horror anthology antagonist. It's just his cousin.
The clock bounces harmlessly off her shoulder, but she has the gall to look offended. “Okay, ow.”
Chris flicks the lamp on and presses his fingertips deep into his eyes. If he pretends hard enough that she's not here, maybe she'll go away. Like a nightmare. Or an annoying friend.
The problem with this is that Zeph still has the machete, and he would not put it past her to have forgotten about his newfound squishy human-ness and stab him for fun's sake.
“What,” he says, “are you doing here.”
“I need you to look at something for me.”
Chris gestures uselessly at the spot where his clock used to rest. “Now? At, Christ's sake, two in the bloody morning?”
Zeph shrugs. “Who cares what time it is?”
“I do!”
“Tough,” she says. “You're coming with me.”
And then her thin fingers wrap around his bicep and the world tips sideways.
When everything reappears, Chris notices a few things: one, Zeph has his clock clutched alongside the machete in her other hand like she's stealing it. Two, they're back in the static of the place formerly known as home. Three, the ruins of his uncle's gothic mansion are gone, and in its place –
“No,” Chris says. “Absolutely not. I am going back to bed.”
“I'm not taking you home until you tell me what you think,” says Zeph.
Standing in place of the gothic mansion is a monstrosity of its own right: neon pink and reflective yellow stucco, a white front door with a cheerful round porthole window. It looks for all the world like they've just walked into a gaudy cartoon, except there are shadows dripping off the rough edges of the stucco, and the whole thing is highly unsettling. Also blinding, which is horrifying because if it's blinding to his human eyes, all the other creatures in this place must be in pain.
Zeph turns to him, grinning that too-wide grin. “I redecorated.”
“Evidently.”
“You're gonna come inside.”
Chris levels his cousin with his deadliest early-morning glare. It is utterly ineffective. “Come on,” she says, and then, apparently giving up on him, she grabs his arm again and blinks them both into the house.
The thing about shadow-travel is that it works well enough for the spirits, but significantly less so for humans.
“Really?” Zeph says, unimpressed, as Chris knocks his forehead against the nearest wall and tries to control his stomach. “You gave up all this so you could get nausea?”
“An unfortunate side effect,” Chris mutters. The wave of nausea passes, leaving behind the shadow of an exhausted headache. He raises his head again, rubbing at his forehead, and looks around.
Somehow, the inside is worse. Each wall is different, either equally bright as the outside or in the realm of ‘putrid’ – sick green paired with construction-orange paired with magenta. The hall to the left is lined with floor-length mirrors. In the sitting room to the right is a sofa that looks like it’s been modeled after a cockroach, or something, and if Chris glances further there’s a collection of – for lack of better words – fucking creepy dolls.
Chris looks back at Zeph. She’s vibrating.
“So?” she says.
“You certainly hated your father,” Chris says weakly.
“No shit. I killed him. Yeah, his ooh, dark and creepy, this is the haunted mansion and everything has to be neat and proper thing was kind of overdone. Anyway. What do you think?”
“You actually want my opinion?”
Something crosses Zeph’s face, and for a moment – if Chris didn’t know her better – he’d swear it was a flash of vulnerability, like his opinion actually mattered to her. Real or not, the flash is enough to make him question if he should be completely honest. And then he questions the questioning. It’s too early for this.
“It’s,” he says, finally. “Full of, uh, personality.”
Zeph’s shoulders slump. “You don’t like it.”
Her face is turned away. Chris catches a hint of her extra joints nosing up from beneath her skin. “No!” he says. “Or, er, yes, I mean… it’s.” Scrambling to find something nice to say about the place, he gestures at the chandelier over the door. “I like that I can see.”
“Chris, that’s the lowest bar.”
“And that it’s colourful?” To his horror, she turns further, slumps more, and seems to dissolve a little bit. “Oh, no, please, listen –”
And then he cuts himself off, because he’s heard this sound before, and it’s the trademark metal-on-glass sound of her laugh. She’s laughing at him. “You’re a menace,” he says instead, quite mild, considering. “I don’t know why I ever put up with you.”
“Oh, shove off.” Zeph turns back to him and she’s grinning again, still quaking a bit with leftover giggles. “I saved your life.”
“And I thanked you for it. We’re even.”
She swings the cord of the clock like a lasso, incredibly proud of herself. “So. You hate it.”
Chris doesn’t bother to sugarcoat. “It’s absolutely horrendous. Honestly the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m so glad you think so,” she says gleefully. “That was the whole point. Well, that and, you know, the furthest thing away from what dear old Dad did with the place. It comes with the added bonus of everyone being too confused to challenge me right away.”
“I don’t think they’re confused,” says Chris. “I think this is the definition of sensory overload.”
“I can make it worse. Should I make it worse?” Zeph waves a hand, and the chandelier glows ever-brighter, a poisonous neon green. “I could also make it smell or something.”
“If you do that I might properly vomit,” Chris warns. “I gave my opinion. Can I go back to bed now?”
In a flash, the machete is in Zeph’s other hand and pointing directly at his throat. He barely stops himself from leaping backwards; instead, he stands, stock-still, as his Adam’s apple brushes the metal of the blade.
“Yeah, okay,” Zeph says, lowering the machete. “Also, that was good reflex. How have you gotten better at that?”
“Miraculously, you’re not the only one who poses a mortal threat to my well-being,” says Chris. “Robert shot me once.”
“Oh, I like him.”
She deposits him horizontally, about a meter above his bed. In that brief second of falling, Chris wonders if this is going to define the rest of his human life, if the universe truly hates him that much – and then he lands, and thinks of the happy mischief in Zeph’s eyes, and figures it could be worse.
And then he realizes that Zeph still has his clock and decides that no, actually, it couldn’t be.
“Anyone seen Chris? He’s not usually this late.”
Particularly not for Saturday morning rehearsals, when Saturdays are their only full rehearsal days in the theatre – normally he’s there before any of them, making notes on sets and wrestling with his over-annotated script.
Scattered across the stage and front row seats, the complete set of the Cornley Drama Society waits for their director, who is currently missing thirty-seven minutes past the beginning of rehearsal. Vanessa has been pacing circles around the small crescent of set spikes, shuffling against the tape. “Should we check on him? Last time he disappeared–”
“Last time he disappeared, it was because of a whole evil family blackmail plot,” Trevor reminds her from the corner, where he’s been testing extension cords on a floodlight. “I don’t think he’s got enough drama in his past for this to be a recurring theme. Especially not twice in a year.”
“Mm.” Vanessa wrings her hands together. “Should we start rehearsal, then? It would be better than sitting and waiting.”
“Excellent idea,” Robert declares. “We’ll start with unit six. I need Sandra and Dennis onstage right now, please.”
One hour and four minutes into rehearsal, the main doors slam open with such force the entire building shakes. Sprinting in is Chris, casually slowing to a speedwalk as soon as he notices they’re watching him, dropping his bag on a chair at the back. “First of all,” he says, “I am so sorry.” He fishes his script out with frantic hands. “Where are you-? This looks like – oh, what is it, scene three, unit… eight?”
His eyes are wild around the edges. The theatre is dead silent.
“You heard me,” he says tightly. “Eight.”
It’s Vanessa who takes the first step off the stage and into the house next to him, though the others aren’t far behind. “Where have you been? Are you okay?” Alongside the wild eyes, it looks like he’s just rolled out of bed: his shirt has been buttoned incorrectly, an unshaven shadow ghosting across his chin.
“Long story,” Chris says. “Midnight kidnapping. Need to get a new alarm clock.”
He winces at his own words as the cast collectively blanch at him, varying levels of concern and horror across their faces. “Not like that,” he amends. “My cousin decided I had to give my opinion on her new lodgings.”
He’d told them about the fight, the politics of it all, at some point during their original onslaught of questions. The destruction of the place that had trapped them just as well as it had trapped him. So maybe they’re all relieved to know it no longer exists; he can’t tell. Somehow after oversleeping a whopping three hours he’s still exhausted.
“And?” Robert prompts. “Your opinion?”
Chris waves a hand. “Disgusting. Unit eight, please, we haven’t got all day.”
“Well, now you have to tell us more.”
It’s not that he means for rehearsal to turn into two-hour sharing circle. It just kind of… happens that way.
He doesn’t quite have the energy to argue, anyway.