Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Clivesdale was sorta nice, all things considered. The people in town were nice enough, the high school was exceptional, and Pete was going to be closer to his family. 

Pete hated Clivesdale with a burning passion. 

He wasn’t really up for socializing, he missed his friends and classes at Hatchetfield High, and being with his parents was like a nightmare come to life. 

It was so fucking hard to get into anything right now. Pete hadn’t wanted to do a damn thing since his brother died. 

Ted, who in Pete’s opinion, really had done his best to be a brother despite how messed up the man had considered himself. Ted, who was often busy with work and could have his asshole-ish moments and was definitely something of a horny bastard, but had still been the person Pete looked up to and adored the most. Ted, who had practically raised Pete, from always being the designated babysitter when Pete was a toddler, to letting him come over whenever he wanted as a kid, to actually taking him in after Pete had a big enough fight with his parents to realize he’d be better off living away from them, anyway. Ted, who gave Pete advice about everything from school to girls to growing up, who’d never admit it but loved Pete just as much, who’d been, in his own words, determined to give Pete a more stable teenage experience than his own. Ted, who (despite what anyone else who knew him would say) was the greatest person Pete had ever known. 

And now Ted was gone. It was all so weird and sudden and wrong. 

One day Ted was dropping Pete off at summer camp, and then suddenly Pete left the hellhole only to find out his brother had been shot over the summer and he was dead and Pete didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye. And he didn’t even find out for a day, when after spending the night in their apartment by himself, he got a call from one of Ted’s co-workers (Bill, Pete thought, but it really had all been a blur) telling him what happened. And then his parents, who he hadn’t spoken to or even seen in nearly three years, called to inform him that he was going to live with them again. And then they didn’t bother to show up for another three days, all of which had been spent at his friend Toby Dabria’s house. Being home was too painful. 

Toby tried to be there for Pete, but it seemed neither teen could ever find the right thing to say. And Toby worked at Cineplex almost every night, so Pete didn’t even get to see his friend at the times he felt at his worst. Toby’s sister Melissa had always been kind to Pete, and though she still was while Pete was staying over, she made it abundantly clear that she never got along with Ted and wasn’t planning on saying anything about his passing. 

When his mom and dad finally came to retrieve him, they acted like they had struck some sort of custody agreement, and the only family that Pete thought ever actually felt like family wasn’t fucking dead. 

They never even gave Pete a chance to express what a mess he felt like. Upon retrieving him, they jumped right into everything they felt was worth talking about, telling him he’d love Clivesdale, and how his room and enrollment for senior year was already taken care of, and that it was so great to be a family again.

Pete wanted to scream about how if they were family, they wouldn’t have been so shitty to have ignored him when he lived with them and act like he never even existed once Ted took him in, and that Ted was the only family he’d ever had. But he didn’t. 

He just grumbled, “Sure,” and didn’t say another word the whole ferry trip to the mainland. 

After settling into his new room (which only had a bed with only sheets, not even blankets or a pillow, so claiming it was already prepared was a damn joke), his mother asked him what he thought. 

“I didn’t get to say goodbye. The last time I saw him, he made me walk to the entrance and drove off before I could say anything.” Pete said, quietly and monotone, still trying to process everything.

“I meant about the room, Peter,” she replied. 

“It sucks,” he snapped. 

Pete didn’t bother to even say another thing for the rest of the summer. He sulked in his bedroom, if it could even be called a bedroom, and kept waiting for the hurt to go away, but it just never did. In fact, everyday, everything just hurt more. 

He sometimes thought about Toby, and about Steph Lauter (whom he thought he had something good with since camp began), but it took far too much energy to try to compose a text message, let alone reply to all of their check-ins. 

It used to be when Pete was down like this he’d just go to Ted. 

Sometimes he’d even get up from bed, ready to find him, before remembering that he could never do that again. 

So senior year began and for the first time in his life, Pete didn’t bother to try in school. Even by coasting, he was passing his classes, barely, but it was enough for him, so why not let his grades slip if doing the bare minimum was enough? It’s not like school mattered anymore. It’s not like his feelings mattered anymore. 

Nothing fucking mattered anymore. 

Another thing to consume Pete’s mind: his parents’ house was weird as all hell. Despite the fact they had apparently bought it just in the past year or so, it was really old and had the strangest energy flowing through it. And weird things happened in the walls of the house. Pete could occasionally hear floorboards creak, or have to close a door he was sure he’d already closed, or things would move around on their own, and some nights, if he listened hard enough, he could hear whispers coming from the attic. Pete chalked it all up to the theory that he was going insane. Grief did that to a person, he supposed. But the inexplicable things freaked him out either way. It was probably worth investigating at some point. 

Not immediately, though. 

Someday. But not now. 

Lord knows if he tried pulling shit like that now, his parents would either completely ignore him or yell at him to move on and act normal for once. Polar opposite reactions, both equally likely depending on what mood they were in, and both equally likely to send Pete on yet another downward spiral. 

Pete considered running away several times. Often, he’d stuff his backpack with clothes and fruit snacks, get some cash for a ferry ride back to Hatchetfield, and hope he could just keep hiding in Steph or Toby’s house forever. The only thing particularly stopping him was his own cowardice, an excruciating anxiety in the back of his mind screaming ‘Ted wouldn’t want this.’

Ted would’ve hated to see Pete in the state he was and Pete completely knew it. And yet, he couldn’t just pull himself out of his depression. He couldn’t just get over it. He didn’t want to get over it, he wanted to be sad, and angry, and confused, and all that other shit that people are supposed to be when they’re grieving. 

School had been something else, too, besides the whole “not bothering with class anyway” mindset Pete had acquired. It didn’t matter that Clivesdale’s high school was great, or that they had chemistry classes that blew Hatchetfield out of the water. It wasn’t Hatchetfield High. That was the biggest problem with that school. 

It didn’t have Pete’s friends, or teachers, or the locker he’d used since freshman year, or a fool-proof escape route, or anything familiar about it at all. 

And Pete didn’t want to even attempt to socialize with his peers, which only just made school more miserable than it ever had been before, which only added to Pete’s bitter mindset. 

So actually, Pete’s hatred went much deeper than just Clivesdale. Pete hated everything and everyone with a burning passion. 

Fuck Clivesdale. 

Fuck school. 

Fuck his parents. 

Fuck everything. 

Fuck his life. 

Pete would have rather been dead, too, than have to keep living in his own head surrounded by a world that really didn’t give two shits about him or how he was dealing. 

But again with his goddamn cowardice. He was too scared of all the unknowns of death to go beyond pondering those thoughts and was even a little scared of himself for thinking them at all. 

Despite that, Pete never wanted to leave the darkness, either. It was much easier to stay bitter and invisible than to act like things could ever return to normal. It was easier to withdraw from everything than to face that nobody gave a damn about how he was doing. So Pete left himself to drown in his depression and to 

never

get

out. 

Chapter Text

Time is a strange, unstable thing. It splits and fractures into millions of different streams for every possibility that fate may take into account. Even the most familiar, constant ideas may be different if the right stream is created. 

For example, in most universes, Paul Matthews and Emma Perkins would have never dreamed of setting foot into Clivesdale, but in one particular split, it was nothing more than just another lake town, the one that they decided would be the best one to move to. Together. Like a normal couple. 

In this split, there were no singing aliens or nuclear bombs or vengeful androids and clones. There were just two average people who had been born and raised far from Hatchetfield, who got to meet each other under normal circumstances and be a couple, or something like it, without any danger of the horrors of Hatchetfield weirdness ending it all for them. This was the one place in the universe that Paul and Emma just got to live a normal life, even if they weren’t aware of it. 

But fate is just as strange and unstable as time. The difference is, it’s much more cruel. 

In this life, the closest they ever got to Hatchetfield was a big house in the little town on the other side of the Nantucket Bridge. 

A house that they were currently trying to remodel. 

The project was going rather slowly. 

“Paul, you need to think bigger about this! I think with the right paint color we could make the living room really stand out.”

“I think it’s fine the way it is,”

“God, you’re boring,” Emma said. She smiled and lightly punched him in the shoulder, making it clear to Paul she was just teasing him. 

“I wouldn’t say boring. More like simple.” Paul replied. 

“That’s what you say about black coffee and office jobs.” Emma said. 

“It’s not exactly wrong, is it?” Paul asked. 

“I guess not,” Emma said. “But you’d really rather leave the living room with white walls?”

“It’d save us the money from an extra bucket of paint.”

“Yeah, and be absolute hell to clean up stains.”

“What would even stain the walls?” Paul said. 

“Your coffee, other paint colors, bugs that fly into the lamp—” Emma listed. 

“The grubby hands of children?” Paul offered. 

They both paused after that. Children. That was a topic neither had yet addressed nor were ready and willing to address. 

“…no.” Emma finally said. “No, not…no.”

Paul’s eyes widened, a little embarrassed. “Yeah.” he replied. “I don’t…I didn’t mean…yeah.”

Emma took a breath, looking for any way to change the vibe of the conversation. “Unless you meant Tim?”

Paul laughed nervously, he didn’t mean Emma’s nephew and they obviously both knew it, but it was much easier to play along with the suggestion. 

“Yeah, that’s what I meant. He and his dad might visit sometime, and you know how kids are, so…”

Paul interrupted himself with a dry laugh. He didn’t know many kids, but he certainly knew that Emma’s nephew was one of the quietest people around, child or no. The idea of him being dirty and rambunctious was just too amusing to not chuckle at. 

Paul walked to the other side of the room. The floorboards creaked. They always creaked when he or Emma walked over that part of the room. Probably dangerous, given that there was an entire basement underneath them. 

“We should probably take care of this, first,” he continued. “We don’t exactly want to have guests over if our house is potentially lethal, right?”

“Exactly!” Emma exclaimed awkwardly. She took a breath. “Now let’s see how bad it is.”

The thing about the creaky floorboard is that in the two months since Paul and Emma bought the house, neither of them had actually stood on the dangerous spot at the same time. So even though they both knew there was a risk with that floorboard, neither of them were expecting to fall through the floor, tumbling to the basement the moment Emma joined Paul. 

They both lay there for a few seconds. The pain of the impact of hitting the floor was terrible. It hurt like a motherfucker. And then after a split second, it dissipated. Emma sat up with a gasp, trying to regain the air that had been knocked right out of her lungs when she hit the floor. 

“ SHIIIIIT !” she screamed. 

Paul stirred at the noise. He remained on the floor for a second, still lying down. 

He blinked, and finally spoke. 

“Emma?” he said. 

“Yes, Paul?” she replied humorlessly. It was barely a question. It was barely a response. 

“We just fell through the floor,” Paul said. 

“I know, Paul,” Emma said. 

Paul took a second to voice a response. 

“What now?”

“We go back upstairs, Paul,” Emma huffed. 

They both got back on their feet. Emma shivered. It was far colder in the basement than she realized. She made a mental note to adjust the thermostat when they were back on the second floor. Then after that she’d call someone to help fix the floor, maybe get some cardboard from the attic and use heavy objects to hold it down to use as a sort-of-bridge across the hole in the meantime, although that was probably just as dangerous as leaving it open. Not that danger had ever hindered her from much before but…she was shaken. She and Paul had almost died today. 

Paul reached the top of the stairs first. 

“Emma?” he said. “Don’t you think it’s…strange…that we’re both uninjured by that fall?”

“Maybe it was good luck,” Emma said, although she certainly had to agree that it was odd. 

“Emma?” Paul said again. 

“What?”

Paul was standing near the hole in the floor, his face drained of all color. “Is it just me, or are our bodies still in the basement?”

“Are our what?” Emma sputtered. 

She walked to join Paul at his side and looked down, greeted by the rather gruesome sight of their bodies bloodied up and bent in the most unnatural way, and also holy SHIT THOSE WERE THEIR BODIES. 

“I’m gonna throw up,” said Emma. 

“Do you think we can even do that?” Paul asked. 

Emma sighed. “No, probably not…Jesus Christ, Paul. We’re dead. We’re dead!”

Paul walked to the coffee table. He picked up a thick book. The cover read The Handbook For the Recently Deceased. Flipping through the book, he saw lots of passages about the afterlife, and hauntings, and lots of uses of the phrase “Black and White.” Occasionally there was an illustration of monstrous looking things. One that was mostly mouth, one wearing a mask with a gaping mouth and eyes, one that resembled a squid with the sheer amount of tentacles it has, one with an eye for a face, and a spider-like woman. The one that caught his eye the most was a goat man with matted fur and bulging eyes. Something about that one. It was the eeriest of them all. One of its pictures was labeled “T’noy Karaxis, Bastard of Time and Space.”

Paul stared at the illustration for a very long time. 

“Paul, what are you looking at?” Emma asked. 

“Take a look at this book, Em,”

He handed it off to her and she flipped through it. “None of these instructions make any sense,” she said. “‘Go to the Black and White on your own time, don’t accept help from any Lords in Black. The Queen in White should only be contacted in case of emergency.’” she read. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Paul replied. 

Emma kept flipping through the book. She came across the drawing of the goat thing. She cringed at it. She couldn’t quite help herself, the image just creeped her out. 

“You saw the thing, didn’t you?” Paul said. 

“That’s the creepiest fucker I’ve ever seen,” Emma said. “‘T’noy Karaxis…’ what kind of a name is that?”

“You’re not talking about me, now are you, Perky?” an eerie voice cut in. 

Paul and Emma both glanced in the direction the voice came from. The goat thing stood in front of them. Well, presumably, it was the goat thing. Right now it looked more like a man in a yellow three-piece suit, but it had the same glowing eyes and horns as the thing in the book. 

“Don’t call me that,” Emma grumbled. “What the hell are you?”

“I’m another soul gone from this world, just like yourselves,” he said. “I’d like to welcome you to the whole being dead thing.”

“Gee, thanks,” Emma said sarcastically. 

“You’re the thing from the handbook,” Paul said. “T’noy…Karaxis?”

“You two can just call me Tinky,” the thing replied. “A ghost saying my real name won’t do any good.”

He walked around the room, eventually walking to the hole in the ground and walking over it as if there was an actual floor there. “Nice place you two had here,” he continued. “Too bad it’s changed so much.”

“What are you talking about? We died just a few minutes ago.” Paul said. 

“That’s where you’re wrong, Paul.” Tinky laughed. He stepped away from the hole, and almost instantly, the ground reappeared. “Time moves differently for the dead than the living. The first six months after your deaths are completely skipped over for your own sakes. A new couple has already long since moved in.”

Immediately, the house began to change. The old furniture disappeared, and the walls repainted themselves, and new carpets planted themselves into the floor. 

The front door opened and a couple, an older man and a middle-aged woman entered the house. They spoke quickly and quietly, but there was some sort of weirdly casual energy about them despite how urgent their conversation seemed to be. 

“How long have they been here?” Paul asked. 

“About six weeks,” Tinky said. 

The man and woman were becoming louder. Paul and Emma listened in. Paul felt a little bad at first, but the sudden remembrance he was dead quickly ended that. 

“We have to tell him at some point, right?” the woman said. 

“We can’t just pull Peter out of camp, he’ll find out in August,” the man said. 

“I still think we should take him to the funeral,” the woman said. 

“He’s a tough kid, he’ll be fine,” the man replied. 

Paul shook his head. “Whatever happened to them, their kid probably deserves to know.”

“Like they said, he’ll find out soon enough,” Tinky said. 

“I don’t know how much I like them being here,” Emma interrupted. “They’re really messing up the house, they’re completely remodeling it, interior and exterior.”

“How do you know that, Em, we haven’t left the living room,” Paul said. 

“I can just sense it,” she replied. “Besides, they don’t seem like exactly great people. That conversation alone reminded me of how my family would compare me to Jane. I feel bad for their kid.”

Tinky laughed. “Speaking of which, I need to go check out the funeral plans these lovely people mentioned. The man they were talking about, I’ve been dying to meet him.” He gestured with a wide smile on his face, baiting for some sort of reaction from Paul and Emma. “People. You humans can never take a fucking joke.”

Emma crossed her arms. “If you need to go, I recommend you do now before I beat your ass.”

“Fine, Perky, I’ll do that,” Tinky said. 

“Don’t call me that,”

“Noted. But if you ever need help getting these assholes out of your house, just call me.” Tinky cackled and faded away. 

Emma sighed. “What now?”

Paul glanced at the book in her hands. “I say we read that thing, then get rid of it,”

So while the jerks in their house discussed what renovation plans they had next, Emma and Paul got to work on the book, even though not a word of it made sense to them. 

After some time, they both got frustrated and decided to chuck the book then and there. 

One night, Emma entered the spare room, book in hand. The singular bed, currently lacking blankets and a pillow, told her the new people were in the process of making a guest room. Who ever would check a guest room? 

She slid the book under the bed, and resolved that that would be the end of it. 

Paul met her outside the door of the room. 

“What now?” he asked. 

Emma flashed a smug, angry grin. “We’re going to the attic, and we’re going to devise a plan to get those people out.”

Chapter Text

While Emma and Paul began to puzzle out how they could improve their situation, Joseph and Amelia Spankoffski lived on, blissfully unaware that anything strange was happening in the house. 

Pete, however, had been getting bad vibes from day one. Not just from his parents after their rocky reunion. Everything about the house was creepy as shit. Those creaky floorboards. The doors that wouldn’t stay shut. The noise coming from upstairs. The attic seemingly locking itself at random. And…what was that other important thing? Oh yeah, the fact that the previous owners died right inside the living room. Pete avoided the living room at all costs. He barely left his room as it was, but he’d had more than enough death for a lifetime and he’d rather steer clear of the site of the accident. 

His father did not take kindly to this. 

“You can’t lock yourself in your room forever, Peter,” he’d often sternly explain. 

“Fucking stop me, then. You can drag me out if you really want.” Pete retorted one day. 

“You’ve got an attitude, Peter, do you know that?”

“Wow, I never would have considered that!” Pete replied with seething sarcasm. “I’ll keep that in mind for the next time you or Mom tell me I’m too depressed or you say something shitty about Ted.”

Pete tried to shut the door, but his father took a step to stand  in the doorway and keep it propped open. 

“You were the good kid last time we saw you, you know,” he said. 

“You have made it more than clear to me that you think I was a golden child and Ted was a fuck-up, I don’t need a reminder,”

“I think he messed you up a lot in the past three years, too, Peter,”

Pete stood at the doorway and just stared at the floor, stunned. He wasn’t trying to be mean, but he was still bitter about how rocky his home life had been before Ted took him in. This passive aggressive, condescending, accusation filled blame game was something he’d never missed, not for a moment. Not to mention Pete was still grieving. All of this had made him realize he was probably the only soul that ever gave a damn about Ted. And if his parents really knew him, they’d know that he was rarely angry. He was anxious, he was easily frustrated by things he didn’t understand, he could be irritable when his diabetes was acting up. But he was never angry like this. His parents could have bothered to realize that if they knew him. And if they really knew him, they’d let him grieve. 

“It’s not fair,” Pete eventually mumbled. “You never talk about him, and when you do it’s just to bring up how terrible you consider him. And you expect me to move on and do the same. As if he didn’t basically raise me.”

“Don’t you ever discredit what we’ve done for you again,” his father retorted. “And do you want your mother and I to talk about him or not? I don’t understand your moods, Peter.”

“Ted would have,” Pete grumbled. He pushed his father out of the way and slammed the door. Before anything else could happen, he locked it and ran to hide out in the closet. 

For as bare bones as the room itself was, Pete’s closet was actually fairly large. Even after moving all of his wardrobe into the area, there was still more than enough storage space to keep all the things he didn’t want to unpack, and yet even more to just sit in the closet comfortably. In the two months or so since he’d moved in, Pete had retrieved a few items. His lamp, a chair to keep near his desk, a poster or two…most of his things remained packed away though. Books, a toy chemistry set he’d had for over a decade, a stack of CDs that Ted had given him, photo albums. They all simply sat in boxes and plastic bins, gathering dust while the likelihood of ever seeing the light again decreased a little bit more each day. 

Right now, Pete was going through these boxes in hopes for finding one thing in particular. 

His knapsack hadn’t been opened once since camp ended. The chocolates Steph gave him, a second Virginity Rocks shirt, and several stupid handmade wallets all sat in the bag, presumably just gathering dust. Alongside everything, the knapsack also contained a notebook. 

The notebook had been an early birthday gift from Ted, since Pete was still going to be stuck at camp during his birthday. Pete wasn’t particularly jazzed about the idea of turning eighteen while fundamentalists pushed all sorts of bullshit down his throat, and Ted had been able to tell from the moment their parents had texted him and demanded that Pete go. So he ordered a yellow, three subject spiral notebook, with the University of Michigan logo on the front and various pieces of trivia printed on the inside back cover. When Ted and Pete were driving to camp, Ted handed a wrapped parcel to his little brother and instructed him to put it in his knapsack. 

“And don’t open it until you’re settled in your cabin,” Ted insisted. 

When Pete eventually had a chance to retrieve his things (everything that hadn’t been confiscated anyway) he eagerly opened the gift and held the notebook in his hands. Pete had been confused at first. It felt like such an arbitrary present. He liked it anyway. He was planning on going to the University next year, and he was always in need of extra paper. It still seemed weird that if this was his birthday present, why it couldn’t have waited until he got back. 

Pete opened the notebook and saw a note written on the inside cover in blue ink. 

Petey, I know you’ve been dreading camp for months, and I already know you’re probably going to “overthink everything constantly” as you would say. Don’t be anxious, just enjoy the cute girls and burn the place to the ground. If that doesn’t work, write about it. I don’t understand your need to write down everything, but I can respect it. Soon enough you’ll have a comprehensive list of things to complain about, and you can always share them with me. I’ll see you in August, kid. 

When he first read the note, Pete clutched the notebook to his chest and grinned. God, he had the best brother. 

The note was the last thing Pete had to remember Ted by. 

During the summer, the only things he’d managed to write were “I am so fucking bored” and “Grace is being a little shit.” To be fair, those were about the only complaints he had that were actually worth writing. But two sentences. That wasn’t nearly as much as he’d initially expected. They seemed like the least of his problems now. One bad summer was nothing compared to a murdered brother. Pete had more than enough to complain about now. So he got up, grabbed a pencil from his desk, sat back down on the bed, and began to write. And he just wrote and wrote and wrote. He didn’t even think about what he was writing, he just did. Anything to finally get his thoughts out, otherwise he’d just keep overthinking everything constantly, just like Ted had warned against. 

Was there a point to all this? The one person he wanted to see this note never would actually see it, after all. 

Pete kept writing, anyway.

It’s not fucking fair, Ted. 

It’s not fair that your killer wasn’t brought to justice. It’s not fair that Mom and Dad don’t want me to talk about you. It’s not fair that you were practically the only family I had and now it feels like I don’t have anyone. It’s not fair that I didn’t get to go to your funeral because nobody bothered to tell me there would be one. It’s not fair that you’re dead . 

It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair. 

It’s so weird to think you’re six feet under back in Hatchetfield, because if I’m honest, I sometimes hope that you’re haunting me and I’m not crazy for all the things I’ve seen and heard in this house. Granted, it took awhile to start thinking that. For the first couple weeks, I was just hoping you’d get better and show up here and take me back home. I even had a dream about that the second night. “Bitter” is the only way to describe how I felt in the morning. 

And Mom and Dad don’t acknowledge you, except to dishonor your memory and/or tell me that I’m moping and nobody likes a moper. Is it so bad I just want to talk to them about everything?

Closure. It’s all that I need. 

Or maybe revenge. 

If I get shut down or ignored again I might just snap. 

They act like you never existed. 

If you can somehow read this from the other side, I’m begging you, show yourself. Send a sign that I can have any hope that things will get better. Please, Teddy. 

As he finished writing, the notebook slid off of Pete’s lap and tumbled to the floor. Pete sighed and hopped off the bed and grabbed the notebook. Rather than get back up, though, he stayed on the ground, lying on his stomach. He read and reread the stream of teen angst bullshit consciousness about ten times. It got more and more pathetic with every read. 

Pete glanced up for a moment and saw something shadowy under his bed. He felt his eyes widen. 

“What the hell is that?” he whispered to himself. 

He reached for the thing and pulled out a hardcover book with a black cover and an image of a translucent couple that looked like something out of the 1950s circled by six cryptid-like people drawn in different colors. The title was written in golden lettering: The Handbook For the Recently Deceased.  

“What kind of joke is this?” Pete muttered. There was no way this was a real book. This was satire. This was a gag gift you could find at Spencer’s or the comedy section of a bookstore. There was no way it was an actual book. There probably wasn’t anything actually written on the pages. 

Pete opened the book, hoping for the first laugh he’d have since the summer or any extra information on the book. There was nothing. No copyright date. No author. No summary. Just the text, Handbook For the Recently Deceased Press. Courtesy of the Black and White.”

Huh. 

Pete flipped through the book. It was mostly a lot of jargon he couldn’t fully process in his confusion. The text was occasionally broken by strange illustrations of the monster people (or at least, something resembling them) and labels and diagrams and all sorts of other things. 

This was either the most well-made satirical book ever, or something genuinely supernatural. 

Pete was not usually one to believe in the supernatural, but given that he had just been begging the universe for any sign that Ted could hear him and things would be okay…

He skimmed some more. He came across a chapter entitled “Dealing With the Living.”

What stood out most to him was a passage that seemed to actually glow as he read it:

Though apparitions can affect the world around them, the living usually don’t see ghosts. Live people have a tendency to ignore the strange and unusual.

Luckily for the universe, Pete’s life was anything but usual. 

He thought about all the strange things that happened in the house and how he told himself he’d investigate eventually. 

Well, as it turned out, “eventually” was today. 

This was worth leaving the bedroom for. Pete was going to find out exactly why the house was so creepy and the origins of the book even if it was the last thing he did. 

He should probably hold onto the book, though. Perhaps it would give him more answers later. Answers to life after death. Maybe even a way to finally say goodbye to Ted. Or better yet, join him.

He slid the book back under his bed. 

Chapter Text

After the first three months since the Spankoffskis had moved in, Paul and Emma had not had much progress in throwing them out. As it turned out, the living people couldn’t actually see them, and moving things around, shutting and locking doors, and other various stereotypical ghost things were not quite enough to scare them off. 

In fact, it didn’t seem the living people were even taking the possibility of being in a haunted house into account. 

Mostly, they just kept changing the house’s look on a whim and coming and going from the house on work days and simply being far too dense to notice anything going on beyond their own self-interests.

Trying to scare them off was becoming a chore, and since nothing ever stuck, Paul and Emma eventually both were rather reluctant to be the first to try anything out. It was as if they didn’t even realize the house was haunted, and they were ignoring all the oddities in favor of talking about more renovations or that Peter kid they mentioned when Paul and Emma first listened in on them. 

Paul had been putting a little more heart into it as of late, although the way he was going about haunting was still pretty half-assed.

“Paul, quit flickering the lights. It’s not working, they’re just going to replace them. Again.” said Emma. 

“Do you have any better ideas?” Paul asked. 

Emma sighed. “No, not really.” She buried her face in her hands. “This fucking sucks! What’s the point of being a ghost if you can’t scare people away from your space?”

The front door opened and shut as Emma looked back up. The Spankoffskis had left the house. 

“You think that counted?” Paul said. 

“Unless they could hear us this whole time and got tired of the scheming and complaining, I’m going to go with no.” Emma replied. 

“We could try getting help from that guy? Tinky, wasn’t it?”

“I’m not sure, Paul. He seemed like a bastard. I don’t trust him at all.”

“Well then maybe we should try rereading the book? Maybe it’ll have some advice.”

“Maybe it did, but I do not have the mental capacity to try to sit through that book again right now,” Emma said. “I’m going to the attic to brainstorm. There’s gotta be something we can do on our own.”

She stormed up the stairs, the top step creaking like it always would. Paul eventually followed behind, figuring a change in space probably would do some good. It helped that most of their stuff had been moved up there instead of sold off, so having something familiar would help too, probably. 

Emma was practically fuming with thought as she paced the attic, so Paul made a point not to disturb her. Instead, he elected to just stare out the window and let her do her own thing. That is, until Joseph Spankoffski’s car appeared in the driveway. It was stagnant for a moment, then Paul heard one of the doors slam, and out came a boy of about seventeen or eighteen with a mop of curly brown hair. Paul couldn’t see any other details from above, and he couldn’t hear exactly what the living people below were saying, but he could tell the teenager was upset about something. Shellshocked, even. 

His parents tried to reason with him for a few minutes, before eventually giving up and going inside. The boy still stood in place for what felt like forever, all while trembling and staring at the ground. He looked completely out of it, Paul couldn’t help but feel a little bad for him. 

“You’ve been staring out the window for a long time now,” Emma said. “What’s out there?”

“There’s another person now,” Paul said. 

“What?! Fuck!” Emma yelled. She rushed over to the window just in time to see the teenager finally regain composure and stumble inside. 

Emma and Paul both stood in place for a second. 

“That…might throw a wrench into our plans,” Paul finally said. 

“What plans? We haven’t done a thing that’s stuck.” Emma retorted.

“Well, maybe we should contact the T’noy…whatever guy. He did offer, and he might have some ideas.”

“No. We can do this without help. It’s our house!”

And for the following six weeks, Paul and Emma spent a lot of spare time walking around the house observing the current situation now that the boy was in the mix, and discussing what to do at night in the attic. 

They hadn’t actually come up with much. All they really had was what they had picked up on about the teen. 

They learned that he was the Peter that the Spankoffskis so often talked about, he had just turned eighteen, he was the Spankoffskis’ son, and he apparently hadn’t lived with his parents in years. He mostly stayed hidden away in the guest bedroom, and when he did emerge, he didn’t have much to say. He also always seemed drained and melancholy. Despite this, he still had some sort of genuine softness. Maybe it was just part of still being young, or maybe it was that he dressed rather nerdy, or maybe that was all just his natural charm. Either way, Emma and Paul both started getting their reservations. 

They both genuinely liked the kid, on some instinctual level. Neither of them admitted it, but they’d both feel terrible harming him. But there weren’t many other choices. 

Which meant more scheming and more reworking. 

While Emma tried to think of ways to mess with the living people’s minds, Paul considered the fact that despite being dead, they could still move things around. So maybe it was a bit cliche, but they both did want to find a way to at least not disturb the kid, so…

“Emma, I have an idea!”

“What is it?”

“Why don’t we play up being ghosts? We could use some sheets, and moan and scream—”

Emma laughed. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard.” she said. But her smile was fond, and she did consider it for a moment. 

“I guess nothing else we’ve tried so far has worked. What do we have to lose?”

“Great,” Paul said. He opened one of the chests containing their old things that the Spankoffskis had moved to the attic when they moved in. He handed one to Emma and draped the other over himself. 

“Alright,” Emma said. “Let’s haunt this bitch.”

Chapter Text

Pete was still feeling more than shitty, in all honesty. It had been worse before, up until he found the book, because then things were still shitty, but now he had some sort of glimpse into the truth behind death itself. More accurately, he had irrefutable evidence for the existence of the afterlife and ghosts, and he intended on fully decoding it and deciding the best course of action for him to take next. Whatever it took to see Ted again, he would accept it. And maybe he could even get some help? Pete could find whatever it was that seemed to be hiding in the attic, ask about their interpretation of the book, and what death was like, and if they’d met any other ghosts. That would help him draw his conclusions on what to actually do next. Summon his brother, or join him. And he needed all the help he could get, because several passages of the book were complete gibberish to him.

His parents seemed pleased he was finally leaving his room at all, although they weren’t completely happy with Pete’s half-explanation of what exactly he was looking for. Even still, this whole ghost-hunting thing was actually giving Pete the drive to not give a damn about any occasional comments they might have had about his behavior. Which was sorta nice. They still hurt, but at least he wasn’t making things worse by reacting. 

The actual investigation of the house had not been particularly fruitful, though. Pete was sure there was something or someone lurking upstairs, but he never found anything worthwhile during a given search. He was still fully convinced the previous owners haunted the house, but a chance at meeting them seemed to be slim to nil. 

What Pete didn’t know is that he always had the terrible luck of consistently entering the attic right after the ghosts would try to affect a different part of the house. 

And since he was getting nowhere, more or less, it eventually came to the point that Pete gave up and locked himself into his room all over again. 

Hey, it gave him a chance to read through the book some more, and hopefully decipher literally any of it. 

Not that he really did understand most of it, but he still kept trying anyway. 

One section caught his eye: “Go to the Black and White on your own time, don’t accept help from any Lords in Black.”

If Pete had to guess (or rather, optimistically hope for, since nothing about was particularly logical), he’d found some hint to what a (potential!) non-haunting afterlife could be. It didn’t explain what it was like, or who the so-called Lord in Black were, but at least it was something. 

Maybe that’s where Ted was. 

And maybe once (or more realistically, if) he ever found those ghosts, he could ask about the place, and they could find Ted for him, and then Pete could finally say something meaningful, something better than idle chit chat about dreading camp, and then he could–

What could he do? He didn’t think that far ahead. He didn’t know the rules, or whatever, how could he know that any of that could happen at all?

Jesus, was he overthinking this? 

Probably. 

Maybe it was time to put this ghost hunting thing to rest. Maybe he should just lie in bed and go back to being lost in thought about why everything sucked. 

That is the decision he would have stuck with if it didn’t take about three seconds for the sound of man and woman moaning to echo from the living room. 

He’d always heard whispers. Never moaning. 

It didn’t mean anything, he told himself. The ghost hunting attempts were over. The scientific method had failed him, there were no ghosts, no matter how much he’d wanted that to be the case.

Logically, it could be concluded that something very un-abstinent was going on in the living room. He’d corner his parents about the hypocrisy of sending their practically-adult son to a goddamn abstinence camp over the summer if it weren’t for the fact the very idea was a level of awkwardness he didn’t want to reach. 

‘But for god’s sake, they couldn’t wait until I was asleep to fuck?’ Pete thought as he listened and cringed. 

The moans got louder and closer. He already knew he was gonna regret opening the door, but good god he wanted the noise to stop. 

He got up from bed and reluctantly cracked the door open and glanced out. 

“Can’t you keep it down?” he yelled. “For fuck’s sake, it’s 4:00 on a Friday, at least wait for it to actually be night—”

He glanced up for a split second, not thinking much of it. Then he considered it, and looked up again. 

Two vaguely human figures draped in sheets stood before him. 

Not exactly what he was expecting, either as a weird sex thing or from hypothetical ghosts. Still trying not to jump to conclusions, he just asked “Is this part of a weird thing? Y’know, the sheets?”

“You’re talking to us,” a woman’s voice (but definitely not his mom’s) replied, nonplussed. 

“Frankly, I’m surprised too,” Pete said. “What are you, exactly?”

“Ghosts!” a man’s voice said, clearly trying to exaggerate his own creepiness. 

“Ghosts!” Pete repeated. “I knew something weird was in this house!”

“You knew?” the woman asked. 

“I found your book. I’ve been looking for you.”

“Looking for us?”

“I wanted to ask some questions,”

“About the book? I’m not sure we can help, kid.” the woman said. 

“I dunno, any insight at all would be nice,” Pete said. “Can we talk, like, without the sheets, though? It’s hard to take things seriously with them.”

The woman snickered. The man turned to her. “Okay, Em, you were right, it’s a little stupid.”

“It’s not totally stupid,” Pete said. “I’m sorta curious what you look like under there, anyway. Take off the sheets, please?”

They both did so, reluctantly. Pete wasn’t sure exactly what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t a couple of people who looked surprisingly alive and unscathed for having fallen through the floor and forty feet to their deaths. 

“You look normal,” Pete said. 

“Meaning?” the woman asked. 

“Nothing bad,” Pete said. “You just don’t look like stereotypical ghosts. You look all opaque and vibrant and shit.” 

“We can’t even see our own reflections, we’ll have to take your word for it,” the woman said. 

“Were you the owners of this house?” Pete asked. 

“Yep, for all of about two months,” the man replied. 

“What are your names?”

“My name’s Paul,” the man said, “she’s Emma.”

“You’re Peter, right?” Emma said, “Your parents talked about you sometimes when they moved in.”

“It’s Pete, actually,” Pete said. “Nobody really calls me Peter, ‘cept my dad. Hell, I don’t even call myself Peter and I picked the damn name.”

“Alright,” Emma said. “It’s nice to meet you, Pete.”

“You too,” Pete said. He opened the door all the way. “You wanna come in and sit down? Might be easier to talk that way.”

Paul and Emma entered the room as Pete reached under his bed to retrieve the handbook. He held it up so they could see as they sat. 

“I found this under my bed,” he said. “I don’t know if you were looking for it, or anything, but I have it.”

“We hid it on purpose,” Paul explained. “It got frustrating trying to understand it and that was our best attempt at getting rid of it.”

“Oh,” Pete said, “so how much of it did you understand?”

“Mostly that you’re probably not supposed to see us, and that the goat thing on the cover is a bastard.” Emma said. 

“What about the Black and White?”

“What about it?” Paul asked. 

“From what I could gather, it sounded like the name of the actual afterlife. Y’know, the next world, or great beyond, or something. Have you been there?”

“We haven’t left the house since we died,” Paul said. 

“So then have you met any other ghosts?” Pete asked, growing desperate. 

“Maybe one?” Paul said. 

“He was one of the guys from the book,” Emma said. 

“No one else at all?” Pete asked. 

Paul and Emma both shook their heads. 

“Dammit!” Pete exclaimed. “Of course it’s a dead end, everything is always a dead end—”

“Pete, why did you want to ask those things so bad?” Emma asked. 

Pete sighed. “It was kinda far-fetched, but I was hoping you could help me see my brother,” he admitted. “He died this summer, and a part of me hoped that maybe you’d seen him, or you knew how to contact other ghosts, or something…”

“Oh. We’re sorry, Pete, we just don’t have any more of an idea than you.” Emma said. 

“I think you’ve figured out more than we did,” Paul said. 

“I just want to see Ted again,” Pete muttered. 

“Hey, at least it sounds like you were close to him,” Emma said. “I had wished that I had been nicer to my sister before she died. You’ve still got the good memories, right?”

“I guess,” Pete said. “But he was really all I had. Mom and Dad and I don’t exactly get along, y’know?”

“We’ve noticed. To an extent.” Emma said. “I’m not sure we get along with them either.”

“They can’t see you, though. Right?”

“No,” Emma admitted. 

“I’m not sure we would, though,” Paul added. “We have very different tastes than your parents.”

“Plus, they’re assholes,” Emma said. 

“Em!”

“She can say it,” Pete interrupted. “It’s true. But back to you guys. What’s with the sheets?”

“To be honest, we were trying to drive your family out.” Emma explained. 

“I doubt that was gonna work,”

“We’ve been at it since your parents moved in,” Paul said. 

“If it makes you feel any better, I would have accepted it. I want outta here so bad.” Pete said. He looked back down at the book. “God, I wish this thing didn’t read like stereo instructions or something. That’d make things easier for all of us.”

“Sorry we couldn’t help you, kid,” Emma said. 

Pete shrugged. “At least I found you at all. It was worth a try.” He put the book back down on his desk. “Could we at least talk some more sometimes? I think I’d like the company.”

“We could work that out,” Paul said. 

“Thanks,” Pete said. He was quiet for a moment, before it hit him: perhaps they could all still help each other. “I have an idea,” he said. 

“Being?” Emma asked. 

“I don’t want to be here, you want my parents and me out. I want to know more about ghosts, you have first hand experience with being ghosts.” Pete said. “Maybe we can strike a deal. I’ll try to convince my parents to move, and until then we could all try to figure out this book!”

“Are you sure you could convince your parents of something that major?” Paul asked. 

“I’ve been told I can be very obnoxious,” Pete said. “I could make it work.”

Paul and Emma both remained silent, clearly considering. 

“So?” Pete asked. “What do you think?”

Emma and Paul looked at each other, then back at Pete. 

“What the hell, it’s not the weirdest thing we’ve tried,” Emma said, holding up her sheet. 

“So we’ll do it?” Pete exclaimed.

“We’ll sure as hell try,” said Paul. 

“Oh my god,” Pete said. “Thank you. So much. I promise I’ll do my best to help you—”

Pete picked the book back up. “Let’s start from the beginning,” he said. “Maybe between the three of us we’ll finally get it.”

Pete hopped onto the bed to sit in between the ghosts, and flipped to the first page of the book, and began to read aloud. 

Somewhere above the house, a goat man listened in, pleased with how things were going for the residents of his favorite little dollhouse. Now all he had to do was wait patiently for his next turn in the game. 

Chapter Text

When it came to bugging his parents into something, Pete always found that persistence was key. As a kid, that’s how he could convince them to stock up on extra chocolates, or to go to Toyzone (even just to browse), or let him the day with Ted. He never liked using the trick much (it always felt a tad manipulative) and it hadn’t really done him any good after he hit puberty and was no longer a little kid armed with cuteness and precociousness, but that wasn’t about to stop him from trying now. 

Because now he had a different tactic: being an angsty, obnoxious teen. 

Probably still a tad manipulative, but hey, he had a bargain to follow through on. 

One morning before school, three or so days after meeting Emma and Paul and having spent a lot of time analyzing the handbook, he put his plan into action. 

He leaned onto the table and looked at his dad. 

“So,” Pete said nonchalantly, “Can we move?”

“Why would we need to move, Peter?”

“Because this place sucks,”

“Is this about Hatchetfield again?”

“Maybe,” Pete said. “So can we move back home?”

“This is home now, Peter,” his dad sighed. 

“Hatchetfield is home. Clivesdale’s a fucking dump.”

“Language, Pete,” his mom interrupted. 

“You’re moving out for college in less than a year anyway, Peter,” his dad continued. “There would be no sense in making you unpack twice.”

“That’s not a no,” Pete said, secretly a little bit pleased.

Before his parents could actually say no, he grabbed his backpack and made his way to the front door. “I’m heading out!” he called. “Maybe we can talk about it more later, bye!”

He quickly shut the door behind him and turned around to gaze up at the attic window, where Paul and Emma were watching for him, awaiting some sort of signal as to how the first round of bothering his parents about leaving went. Pete waved and gave them a confident thumbs-up. With that, he turned around and walked to the bus stop. 

For the first time since camp, Pete was able to tell himself that it was going to be a good day. He didn’t even feel as miserable in school as he had before, and he found himself actually trying in class for the first time that whole school year, and he wasn’t dreading going back to his parents’ house for once. 

And that afternoon marked the beginning of round two. 

“Mom,” he began almost as soon as he found her in the backyard, “about this morning—”

“I know you miss Hatchetfield, Pete, but we’re not moving back,”

“Yeah, but what if I go to college there? Then we could all go since it’s just across the Nantucket Bridge, right?”

“I thought you were planning on going to U of M?” she replied. 

“I’m still in the middle of applications, what’s stopping me from sending one to Hatchetfield?”

“Pete, you and I both know that you’re getting into U of M, and you’ll accept that school’s invitation in a heartbeat.”

Pete stood in silence for a second. That accusation was very true. But still, he couldn’t just give up on his mission. 

“So is that a no, or—”

“Drop it, Pete,” his mom interrupted. 

“That’s still not a no,” Pete said, running back inside before it could actually become an explicit refusal. 

Day one, not a success. But he wasn’t suspecting that. If the plan ever worked, it was probably going to take several days to wear his parents down. 

There was more to look forward to, anyway. Namely, going to the attic and reading through more of the book with Paul and Emma. 

Their whole day had more or less been spent flipping through the book some more and watching the world move on through the window. In fact, it had been mostly silent throughout the day until Paul spoke up without warning. 

“Emma? Do you really think Pete’s plan is going to work?”

Emma had been sitting against the wall, rereading the same passage over and over. She looked up when Paul asked, and considered for a moment. 

“Not really,” she admitted. 

“I’m not sure I do, either,” Paul said. “So why did we both agree to help him so quickly?”

“Personally, I could just tell he’s going through a lot of grief right now. That can make a person do some pretty crazy shit.” Emma said. “Besides, I’ve been trying to look at it from his perspective. He’s barely eighteen, his brother is dead, he just moved into a stressful household, and he really wants things to feel normal again. I think he needed something to take his mind off things.”

“Doesn’t it feel counterproductive to help him with this, though?”

Emma shrugged. “All that, and I think he needed some company. I don’t know how he thinks things are gonna work out, I’m just glad he’s not cooped up in the guest room anymore.”

“We should tell him that at some point,” said Paul. 

Emma sighed. “I know,” she replied. “I just don’t want to be the one to crush him all over again.”

Right at that moment, Pete entered the attic, absolutely beaming. That was almost an unusual sight in of itself. In fact, that had been the first time that Paul or Emma had ever seen the boy smile before. As in a genuine, excited smile. It was certainly a nice sight in theory, but given the implications, he was probably very deep into the idea of moving out of the house soon. 

“Hi, Pete,” greeted Emma. 

“Hey,” he replied, already prepared to jump into conversation. “Can we start looking at the book? I’ve done what I can with my parents today. I didn’t expect much, I know it’ll probably take a month or two to wear them down but that still leaves plenty of time to work on this—”

Paul cut him off. “Pete, listen,” he said. “You don’t need to worry about getting your parents to leave if it’s going to be a problem.”

Pete’s smile faded. “It’s not going to be a problem,” he said quietly. “You want them gone, I wanna go home. It’s as simple as that.”

“What Paul is trying to say,” Emma said, “is that you don’t need to worry about your end of the deal. Begging them probably won’t get you anywhere.”

“But I want to uphold my end!” Pete said. “I don’t want to break a promise.”

“You don’t have to,” she assured him. “I have an idea. Let’s try to understand anything from the book before doing something rash. Maybe we can use what we learn to send a message.”

Pete stood in place, contemplating this. “That could work,” he said. “And it would be kinda fun, in a way. It would be like playing a joke or something. Kinda like how when I was nine, for April Fool’s day I flipped a bunch of the photos in Ted’s apartment upside down, and then kept insisting that a ghost must have done it. He didn’t believe me, obviously, but he still played along and went ‘ghost hunting’ with me. Except this would actually be something supernatural! God, I bet if he were here too, he’d get a kick outta this!” Pete suddenly stopped talking and sighed. “I’m rambling…I’m sorry, I don’t want to bore you just talking about my brother.”

“We really don’t mind, Pete,” Paul said. 

“Really?” Pete asked. “It just feels weird finally getting to talk about him, and not get told off for it. Mom and Dad never want to hear me talk about him.”

“We’ve noticed,” Emma said. 

“I would understand if it was a grief thing, or something, but I’m pretty sure they don’t even care,” Pete continued. 

“Hey, Pete, don’t you think that’s a bit unfair to assume?” Emma asked. 

Pete stood in silence, staring at the ground. He let out a dejected sigh. “Never mind,” he said. “Let’s just look at the book,”

Emma handed him the handbook. Pete sat down against the wall and began to read from where he’d last left off. Something about the creepy things on the cover, which the book referred to as Lords in Black. 

“The Lords in Black watch the affairs of the living and occasionally alert new ghosts of their own demise,” Pete read. “Among the five brothers, there is Wiggog Y’Wrath, Bliklotep, T’noy Karaxis, Nibblenephim, and Pokotho.” Pete looked up. “You said you met one of these guys, right? Which one?”

Emma cringed, remembering how unnerving the exchange with Tinky had been. “I don’t think we should tell you, Pete. For safety reasons. I wouldn’t want to grab his attention.”

“Okay, fine. That…kinda makes sense.” Pete said. He kept reading.  

“Webbenre, The Queen in White helps the dead adjust to being in the Black and White, should they choose to go. For some ghosts, it’s best to move on, and for some, it’s preferable to remain on the plane of the living. Should you choose to stay initially, you may eventually go on to the next world, but you are otherwise on your own. Go to the Black and White on your own time, don’t accept help from any Lords in Black. The Queen in White should only be contacted in case of emergency.”

Pete gazed at the accompanying illustration. While he’d seen a few pictures of the beings in monstrous forms before, this one showed them in more humanlike ones, albeit still somewhat off, and none of them were particularly distinguishable from one another that way. The only one Pete could guess with full certainty was Webbenre, who was almost certainly the woman with long white hair, a gown that seemed to be inspired by a spider’s web, and thin, arachnid-like limbs. All the others were all pretty similar to him, just five creepy guys with only slight variations in what was off about them, all wearing suits. Since the other pictures didn’t have particularly coherent labels, any guess was equally likely in his mind. 

Pete couldn’t help but wonder what all they did to oversee the living. Were they gods of some sort, each overseeing a different domain? If so, how far would that reach if there were only five of them? And if not, what was their real purpose? And how did they choose which ghosts to welcome to the afterlife? Things he hoped he’d find an answer to, but given how being wary of them the book encouraged, he doubted he’d actually get an answer. Which sucked a lot, but he supposed if Paul and Emma didn’t want to discuss what little they knew of them, they were questions best left unanswered. 

For now. 

If he ever began to wonder again, at least he knew that one day he’d get his own copy of the book and could ask these things himself should one of them greet him. 

A dark thought for sure, but it was a fact of life. Everybody dies. Pete was going to die one day. He just had the luck of already knowing what would happen next. 

He had been so lost in thought he had completely forgotten that he’d quit reading. Paul leaned over and tapped the page Pete had been staring at, snapping him out of his train of thought. 

“Are you okay, Pete?” he asked. 

“Hm?” Pete hummed softly. He finally broke his gaze from the illustration. “Yeah, just thinking about something. Sorry.”

He kept reading. About how the Queen in White could help fix things in emergencies (what a ghost should consider an emergency, however, was not defined) and that trusting a Lord in Black would lead to inevitable chaos (again, with no further elaboration). The chapter ended just as abruptly as it began, leading Pete to wonder how useful any of the information could have been. The next chapter was one he’d read plenty of times before, back when he’d first found the book, a chapter whose opening paragraph he knew by heart: “Dealing With the Living.”

He didn’t even have to look at the page as he began. “Though apparitions can affect the world around them, the living usually don’t see ghosts. Living people have a tendency to ignore the strange and unusual.” Pete recited. “Thus, the following is less about what to do should a living person find you, and more on how to cope with a live person being in your space.” 

He smiled proudly. Sure, it was only three sentences, but he still got plenty of joy out of having them memorized. Pete usually struggled with reading, so if that wasn’t enough, having the feeling of being strange in a unique way, and not the nerdy way he was often teased for, was a bonus. 

“You really have that part down, huh?” Emma said. 

“This was the first part of the book I read when I first found it,” Pete explained. “I dunno, it just spoke to me, for some reason. Like I was meant to find the book. And meet you guys, too. I read this paragraph a lot, whenever I needed to ground myself and not overthink supernatural shit. Sometimes it’s just as simple as, weird shit happens.”

“So, do you have the rest memorized?” she asked. 

“Not really,” Pete admitted. “So I guess I’ll go on.”

From there, it was a whole lot of ignore live people and they’ll ignore you, which Pete had to laugh at, since he certainly hadn’t been ignoring the idea of ghosts beforehand. But soon enough the book did mention something close to Paul and Emma’s situation. 

“Sometimes, a live person you wouldn’t want to share space with comes around,” he read. “There’s no one easy fix, but keep in mind that most humans would not want to live in a haunted house. Use that to your advantage.”

“We’ve been trying that,” Paul said. 

“And it hasn’t worked yet,” Pete replied. “But now you’ve got someone that could make your efforts much more obvious.” Pete got back up and put the book on top of a stack of boxes containing Paul and Emma’s old things and turned to face them. “I think I’ve got a new way to try to get them to leave.”

When it came time for dinner that night, Pete’s energy had been drained pretty badly. Anytime he wasn’t just talking with Paul and Emma, it seemed like he couldn’t keep a positive mindset (and really, that could be hard even around them). But a silent, stuffy dinner with two people he couldn’t really stand certainly didn’t help. 

Luckily, things were about to get entertaining, once Pete’s new plan was set into motion. Then maybe he’d feel like himself again, to an extent. 

The family ate in silence, and Pete kept waiting for a conversation to begin so he could hijack it with his new idea, instead of getting told off all over again for his attitude or refusal to quit grieving or his general sense of morbidity, or whatever, but nothing ever happened. So, against his own judgement, he jumped right in. 

“There are ghosts in this house,” he said flatly. 

“This again, Peter?” his dad replied, exasperated. 

“I mean it this time! I actually saw them!”

“Sure, son,” his dad said, clearly trying to dismiss the subject. 

“Really! Their names are Paul and Emma and they used to live in this house. They’re super grotesque, and kept yelling at me to get out of the house.”

“Peter, we’re not moving back to Hatchetfield,”

“I’m not asking to move back to Hatchetfield, I’m just saying that we shouldn’t live in a haunted house.”

“The house isn’t haunted, Peter,”

“Yes, it is,”

“Pete,” his mom interjected. “What is this really about?”

“There’s nothing more to it. There. Are. Ghosts.” Pete grumbled, pausing between each word to emphasize his point. 

Pete had predicted that even if he hadn’t started the conversation, this was about how it would go. So that’s why he’d asked Paul and Emma to join the Spankoffskis for dinner. 

Right on cue, Paul lurked down the stairs with his hair intentionally messed up and an exaggerated crazed look in his eyes. He groaned, and using the same exaggerated tone he’d used when talking to Pete from under the sheets days prior, he screamed. 

“GET OUT!”

Neither of Pete’s parents looked up. 

From the living room, Emma let out a bloodcurdling scream, trying to invoke what her death had been like. Pete flinched, but it was all for the act, he had known it was coming. 

“What’s wrong, Pete?” his mom asked. 

“They’re here,” he said. 

“The ghosts?” she asked, humoring him.

“Don’t you hear them?”

“No, Pete,”

Pete picked at his food for several minutes. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was expecting to happen, if most living people couldn’t see ghosts, but he had still been holding onto the hope that if he staged enough creepy, inexplicable situations with Paul and Emma, maybe he could get them to see them. 

And yet. 

His father eventually spoke up. 

“Peter, you were finally adjusting. Why are you acting up now?”

“I’m sorry, am I not allowed to point out the weird things in this house? Or express how much I hate it here?”

“You were finally acting normal, Peter,” his father replied. “Can’t you just go back to that?”

“The hell is normal, anyway?” Pete grumbled. “Why do you suddenly care about me so much? After years of backhanded comments and arguments, and never contacting me once after I moved, but suddenly you care about me now? And only because I’m not a picture-perfect son? Because I have feelings, and want to go to my old school with my friends, and miss my brother?”

“Peter—”

“Don’t ‘Peter’ me, it’s gonna be followed by another way to belittle me!” Pete yelled. 

“We know you want to go back to Hatchetfield, Peter, but we’re staying here and that’s final. I don’t understand your frustration.”

“Ted would have. He was more of a parental figure than the both of you combined. He would have let me talk about what I’m going through and deal with it the way I need to.” Pete muttered. He stood up in one quick motion, rattling his plate and silverware against the table. “I’m going to my room.”

He stormed away before he could get a response. Paul and Emma rushed after him. 

“Pete! Are you okay?” Emma asked. 

“No,”

“Can we come in?” Paul asked. 

Pete shrugged and opened the door, and then made a beeline for his closet. He just needed a quiet place to sit. 

“Y’know Pete, after seeing more of the house tonight, I think your room is the only one that hasn’t been redone at all.” Paul noted. 

“Yeah, well, my parents left it alone so I could make it how I wanted, but I liked it fine as it is,” Pete said. “Besides, I didn’t feel like unpacking when I got here. Just the desk is fine.”

“You should probably unpack at some point,” Emma said. 

“What’s the point? I won’t be here for long.”

Emma’s tone shifted from cautiously humorous to pure concern. “How do you mean that, exactly?”

Pete shrugged. “I’m going to college next year anyway. No point in getting things out when they’ll be going halfway across the state with me soon.”

Pete curled himself into a tight ball and buried his face in his arms. 

Emma leaned down next to him. “Pete, don’t worry about the deal for a while, okay? It’s clearly causing distress. Paul and I will just be around to give you company, okay?”

“Whatever,” Pete said. “Can I just be alone? I think I need some time to myself.”

Neither Paul nor Emma verbally responded, but by the time Pete looked up several minutes later, they were both gone. 

The more he was alone with his thoughts, the more he wondered if life was really worth it. 

He wasn’t going to go back to Hatchetfield. His parents still didn’t give enough of a damn to have a real conversation with him. The one person he actually wanted to confide in was still dead, and Pete missed Ted like hell, and even with all this contact with ghosts and learning about the afterlife, he still hadn’t heard from him. And really, what was there to look forward to? College? It would be a miracle if Pete had the will to go to college in a year, let alone survive eleven more months in his parents’ house. 

Who said anything about surviving? Pete thought. You know exactly what happens when you die, and it’s not like anything there’s worthwhile in your life right now. 

Usually his instincts would overtake that little voice in the back of his head, that pure anxiety that would tell him that he needed to live on and Ted wouldn’t want him to go through with such a dark plan, and he just needed to hold out another day because he didn’t even know what to expect next. 

But he did know what to expect now. And he had people that would be able to help him adjust to the transition between life and death. And he wouldn’t have to argue with his parents anymore. And he’d have all of eternity to find his brother again. The more he contemplated, the more the voice in his head overtook his instincts. 

You can’t keep living like this, but you don’t have to, it said. You don’t have to stick around, Pete. Being a ghost is looking better every day. You’re better off dead. 

The longer he stuck with that thought, the more natural it felt to admit, especially since it had already been floating around for almost two months now. 

I’m better off dead. 

Without a second thought, Pete got up, grabbed a pen and his journal, opened his window, and climbed out. 

He made his way to the backyard, knowing for a fact that a ladder was out there, presumably from when his parents began remodeling over the summer. And he just climbed to the top, up until he reached the roof. 

He breathed in the crisp October air and took in the breeze. It occurred to him, he’d never quite appreciated the view of the lake from above before. It was a perfect candidate for the last thing he’d ever see before he finally ended his pathetic life.

Chapter Text

Back in Hatchetfield, starting when Pete couldn’t have been much older than seven or eight, odd things began occurring around Pete. Like, for the first time. 

Pete had been far more in-tune to the world than most other kids were. Not just in a ‘quiet and awkward kid that was content keeping to himself and constantly people watching’ way, although that was true, too. But he’d also always been able to notice things that other people didn’t, things that bordered on the paranormal. The odd. The strange and unusual. 

There were times as a kid when he would walk into a room and automatically sense that something was off, yet not know what was wrong. Just that there was an unseen presence nearby, some sort of energy that nobody else detected. Whenever he’d tell anyone of his unease, they’d laugh him off and dismiss him as an imaginative child. 

Or there were times around town where he’d see people that nobody else ever gave a passing glance to, not even to say hello. These ignored people never seemed to mind, but Pete often felt bad for them anyway. If he ever tried to approach one of those people, though, they’d disappear without a trace before Pete could get to them. Times like that never failed to make Pete feel a little guilty, and wonder what exactly had happened, since he could have sworn he’d just seen someone on the street corner. 

When he asked his parents about it, after a year or two, they said he was just being imaginative and paranoid. So then he told Ted all about it, explaining how innate his acuteness to people was and how it confused him that nobody ever seemed to see the things he saw or feel the the things he felt or understand inherent weirdness of the world as strongly as he did. 

“Maybe you’re just sensitive to that kinda thing,” Ted had said. He got up to dig through a bin filled with DVDs and came back with one Pete didn’t recognize. “You ever seen The Sixth Sense?”  

Pete had shook his head. 

“I think you’d like it. The kid in that movie was privy to shit like that, too.” Ted said. “You’re probably old enough to watch it. What are you, fourteen, fifteen?”

“I’m nine, Teddy,” Pete laughed. 

“Old enough in my book,” Ted said. “Just…don’t tell Dad I let you watch it. I’d never hear the end of it.”

That had been the first of many scary movies that Ted would show Pete (after swearing him to secrecy roughly ninety-five percent of the time). Late night movies with his brother quickly became one of Pete’s favorite pastimes. So at least his weird second nature gave him something good. 

As a nine year old, Pete didn’t think that hard about his supersensitivity to the world around him. As far as he was concerned, ghosts were still nothing more than fiction and Cole Sear was just a character that lived in a world where they happened to be literally real. As far as Pete still believed regarding his real life, he was just weird.

But at least the movie was entertaining (up until Pete got freaked out by the scene where the mother poisoned the ghost girl, but he put on a brave face to try to look chill in front of Ted).

As he got older, he became a lot more desensitized to his own sixth sense. In fact, Pete practically never even gave it a second thought after he was fifteen. It began to feel more and more like a distant childhood dream every day, and if it weren’t for the fact it kicked off his and Ted’s tradition of late-night horror movies, he probably would have more or less forgotten that it had ever had such an impact on him. 

As far as Pete thought now, his life had only been strange and unusual since Ted died. In reality, his life had always been that way, more or less, even if he’d never looked at it that way before. 

To put in simply, Pete was not aware that he’d always seen things from the next world. 

T’noy Karaxis, however, was fully aware that Pete possessed a touch of the Gift. And it was going to be incredibly useful to him once he could reenter the game that he had set up for Pete.

It would take just one more turn to shake up the status quo, given the looks of things. Tinky had already known the boy would get desperate and be willing to take some help eventually, after all. 

Humans always fell for his games in the end. That was just their nature. 

So he watched and waited to see what would happen next, and what his first move should be. 

Pete hadn’t noticed he was being watched. He was too caught up in furiously scribbling in his journal, trying to make his frenzied thoughts make any amount of sense so that his final words would actually mean anything once his body would be found. Whenever that would be. 

He’d already written and crossed out three other notes. Pete wasn’t about to waste any extra paper (or appear even more depressed and pathetic than he was), so he had to make this one count. 

Just like when he’d written that letter to Ted, he didn’t think too hard about what he was actually writing and just let the words flow from his pen. 

Dear whoever gives a shit:

By the time anyone reads this, I, Peter Spankoffski, will be dead. For as long as I’m trapped in this house, there’s not a damn thing left for me, and the future isn’t worth the wait. 

For as long as I’m here, I’ll never feel right. I can’t handle being belittled in Clivesdale and unable to go home. In Hatchetfield. Without my brother, the one guide I had in my life.

I’m completely and utterly alone. I’m ignored, hopeless, and invisible. So I 

“Isn’t that a desperate little cry for help?” a voice laughed from behind Pete. 

Startled, Pete dropped his pen and turned to see… something… reading over his shoulder. A thing that looked vaguely familiar. A thing with a three piece suit and goat’s horns. 

“Who the hell are you?” He asked coldly. 

“You can see me,” the thing said. It wasn’t quite a question, the thing seemed almost expectant that Pete would react in some way.

“Yeah,” Pete said. “You’re one of the guys from the handbook, right?”

“That’s right,” the goat thing replied. “You know about the handbook?”

“Yeah, I found a copy in the house. It belongs to the old owners.” Pete said. “It said you’re supposed to alert unaware ghosts that they’re dead…” Pete flushed red. In a tone that Pete could only (and scarily) describe as a mix between hope and fear, he asked, “Wait…am I dead already?!”

“Not yet, kid,”

“Dammit,” Pete whispered. It was to himself more than anything, but the goat thing still cared enough to respond. 

“Why would that matter?” he asked. 

“Because I want to die. I wanna be a ghost like Paul and Emma and my brother. I mean, maybe Ted’s a ghost. I don’t know. I didn’t even get to go to the funeral, so I haven’t seen him in months—”

“If you can see me or the previous owners, then surely you don’t need to be dead to see your brother,”

“I don’t know where he is,” Pete replied, growing more upset. He just wanted to talk to Ted, maybe get his brother to talk him out of doing something stupid and desperate, was that too much to ask? But that wasn’t an option right now. “So if I’m a ghost I could look for him in the afterlife, right? Besides, I hate my life. I don’t want to stay here, anyway.”

Pete hated to admit it, but he didn’t fully believe himself as he said it all out loud. He absolutely wanted to jump. But he also wanted to keep helping Paul and Emma mess with his parents, just for fun, even if it was a bit spiteful. And he had no guarantee that he’d find Ted after dying. And he was a bit put off by a spirit guide, or whatever the goat man was, already being there before he died for real. He took a deep breath, trying to cover the fact that all the factors that led to this very moment made him shudder, even just a little.

The goat thing noticed. 

“Look at you,” he said smugly. “You’re shaking. You’re frightened like a rabbit.” Seeing Pete’s glare, he rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you humans ever take a joke every now and then?”

“It wasn’t funny,” 

“Fine,” the goat thing replied. “Let’s just talk about this. What’s your name, kid?”

“Pete,”

“All the more fitting for a frightened little rabbit,” the goat man said. “Peter Rabbit, the baby of the family and more mischievous than what you’d expect at a first glance. Would you say that’s a fitting description, Peter Rabbit?”

“Quit that,” Pete grumbled. “Why do you want to talk to me?”

“To tell you that instead of attempting to break your neck by falling three stories down, you should give haunting another chance.”

“You know about that?”

“I’ve been watching over this house since Paul and Emma died. I know you’ve been helping them try to stage some scares for your dear old mom and pop.”

“Yeah. It’s been fun, I guess. But it hasn’t been working,” Pete said. 

“Because your friends are incompetent. Ever consider having someone with real supernatural experience do the dirty work? Maybe we could do something really cool to your folks together! Trap them in a time loop, stick them in living nightmares, kill them—”

“No!” Pete exclaimed. “I know I don’t like them, but that’s all fucked up! And you shouldn’t discredit Emma and Paul for being new at haunting. They are recently deceased. Now can you leave me alone? I’m gonna jump.”

“Wait a moment, Peter Rabbit. Listen. You hate your life, I hate it for you. We have that much in common. Maybe we could work together.”

A long, silent moment followed. Pete remembered the book saying that a ghost shouldn’t trust a Lord in Black. But Pete wasn’t a ghost, though. Yet. And he hated to admit it, but he was getting more than desperate to have the upper hand with his parents for once. He hadn’t decided what he’d actually do, he was quickly weighing all options in his mind, and it never hurt to have extra information. If anything, it would help him draw a conclusion.

“How would we start that, exactly?”

“Well, Peter Rabbit, I can’t gain control over a house unless a living person says my name three times. So if you want to work with me, you definitely can’t throw yourself off now.”

“I don’t know your name,” Pete said. 

“Unfortunately, I can’t say it out loud,”

“How about charades, then?” Pete asked, currently still slightly more in favor of jumping off the roof. 

“Hm. Well, you can try,” the goat man said. 

His whole form instantly changed into an abstract array of light, shapes, and colors, then into an actual goat (well, a weirdly yellow goat, but still), and then back into the incoherent mess. After a few seconds, he changed back. 

“I think I understand less than before,” Pete said. 

“Well, why don’t you just check your handbook? I get a mention in there, you know.”

“I don’t have it with me,” Pete said.

The goat man grinned like he was suddenly feeling superior. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. He reached to his left and pulled a copy of the book seemingly from nowhere. 

Pete stared at the goat man. He was surprised (even after actual run-ins with ghosts, he was surprised to find he could still get surprised by odd occurrences), but at that point, he was too tired to really show it.

“How’d you do that?” he asked flatly.

“Don’t worry about it, Peter Rabbit.” He tossed Pete the book. “Skim through it, make your guess. I’ll wait.”

Pete sighed. It looked like he had no choice but to play along with what the goat guy wanted, even if Pete hadn’t decided how he wanted to go forward.

“So what happens if I do this?” Pete asked. “What exactly can I expect from agreeing to let you help me?”

“We can work that out when you say my name,”

“Why can’t you tell me it yourself again?” 

“It’s part of the rules placed for us. We’re not supposed to bother the living unless they want us to do something.”

Pete got the idea there was a reason for that. After all, there was very rarely a written rule for no reason. There had to be a story.

“Is this a violation of that rule?” Pete asked.

“Not if you’re intentionally summoning me,” 

“But you approached me ,”

“To stop you from offing yourself, Peter Rabbit,” the goat man reminded him. “Wouldn’t you rather weigh your options before doing anything rash?”

“I’ve been doing that this whole damn conversation,” Pete retorted. 

The goat man coldly stared at Pete for a few moments. 

“You like science, Peter?”

“It’s Pete,” Pete said. “And…I guess,”

“Then how about this?” He continued. “Look at your situation like the scientific method. Your current variable, the wusses in the attic, are always part of a failed experiment. Maybe instead of changing how you use them, you try an entirely different variable?”

Pete rolled his eyes. “You’re acting like I’m treating this as a hard sell,” he sighed. He did totally see this as a hard sell, actually. But he hoped playing along would end the conversation. “Fine. If I agree to say your name, will you drop it already?”

“We’ll see.” the goat man laughed. “Go ahead and make your guess, Peter Rabbit.”

Pete groaned but opened the book anyway. He wasn’t exactly sure why he did. Not really. He’d basically made up his mind, he was still going to jump when the conversation ended. And yet, here he was, indulging a being that he knew he probably shouldn’t. Maybe it was to get him to finally shut up and leave him alone when he turned back around. 

He already knew he couldn’t be talking to Webbenre, given she was the only female presenting being in the group and had the whole spider theme, and even if he couldn’t put that together, she probably wouldn’t go out of her way to bother the living since she seemed to be the one that had to clean up after any messes left by the others. So. It definitely wasn’t her. And he figured it wasn’t Nibblenephim, that name fit way too well with Mouthface, as he’d taken to calling the creature always illustrated in pink. And with that in mind, he probably wasn’t probably wasn’t Bliklotep, either, since that had vibes of Eyeball Guy. With blinking, and everything. 

Since they were all color-coded, and the goat man had an overwhelming amount of yellow going on, Pete determined that he just had to flip through the book until he saw something goat-like and/or yellow, and pray it was labeled. So he just kept flipping through the book continuously until anything even kind of matching such a description caught his eye.

Soon enough, he landed on a sketch of what appeared to be a goat man, but with way more emphasis on the “goat” part, and right underneath in yellow lettering was exactly what Pete was looking for. 

T’noy Karaxis, Bastard of Time and Space.

Pete turned the book around to show the goat man.

“Is this you?” he asked.

“Aren’t you clever, Peter Rabbit?”

“Quit fucking calling me that—”

“Relax, kid, no need to snap or anything,” was the reply. “Now go ahead, say my name three times in a row and we can work out something with your parents.”

“T’noy Karaxis?” Pete said. He paused. Then he grinned. “So, you want me to say ‘T’noy Karaxis’ again?”

“In a row, Peter,” 

Pete relished in the dirty look being thrown at him. Oh, if looks could kill…

Never mind, that was awful wording, Pete thought. Or maybe a bit apt. Maybe both?

“Right, of course,” Pete said, “But while we’re still talking, I have to ask, do you have any nicknames? Something that’s easier to pronounce than T’noy Karaxis?”

“If you tried using it, it wouldn’t work,”

“Why?”

“It has to be my real name, and it has to be said by a living person. That’s just the rule.”

“So you suddenly care about rules?” Pete asked, barely able to cover his snickering. He’d already known he was going to drag the bastard around a bit before stepping off the ledge, but he hadn’t anticipated just how fun it would really be. Almost made the last few moments of life worth extending. Almost.

“Don’t be a smartass, Rabbit—”

Pete laughed sharply. “I knew I could be obnoxious, but it’s never taken this quickly to frustrate anyone. Now c’mon, at least tell me your nickname. I don’t really feel like saying your real one every time.”

The goat thing groaned. “It’s Tinky,” he said. “Now let’s get this summoning thing done already.”

“Fine, alright!” Pete said. He took a deep breath and shut his eyes tightly, really wanting to sell the idea that he’d actually go through with it. “T’noy Karaxis, T’noy Karaxis…”

He paused. He let a moment of silence pass, slowly opened his eyes, and saw Tinky clearly anticipating being fully summoned into the physical world. So Pete let more silence pass. Tinky’s smile did not falter, but his eyes were slowly losing all of their joy. Pete took a step closer to him.

“To be honest,” he said, really enunciating the tuh in the first word, just for extra salt in the wound, “I’ve already decided I’d rather kill myself anyway. But thanks. For all of whatever just happened here. It gave me my first real laugh in lord knows how long. Anyway, see you. Or not.” 

“You don’t know what you’re rejecting, Rabbit,” Tinky snapped.

“I don’t fucking care,”

Pete stepped closer to the ledge. From directly underneath him, he heard someone yell “There you are!” Pete tensed, expecting his parents to scream at him, but by the time he looked down to check, Emma had already climbed out of the attic window and pulling herself to the roof, with Paul following behind her.

“Pete!” Emma exclaimed. When she reached the top she grabbed him by the shoulders and looked him in the eye. Pete glanced slightly above her to avoid having to stare into her gaze for too long.

“Pete, what the hell do you think you were doing?” she asked.

And suddenly, all of Pete’s emotions began to catch up with him. Fear, sadness, remorse, appreciation, anger…why did his thoughts on the whole night suddenly feel so complicated? Tears began to well up in the corners of his eyes, though he tried to ignore them, in hopes everyone else would too.

“Huh?” Pete said. Just like that, the waterworks kicked in, but much to his appreciation, it wasn’t too severe. He wasn’t sobbing, he was…just upset. Upset Ted was still dead, upset that the world kept preventing him from trying to find any answers about what happened to him, upset that he was crying in front of other people.

Paul climbed to the roof and joined the two of them.

“We went to check on you,” he explained. “We got worried when you weren’t in your room.”

“Sorry…” Pete mumbled. “I just wanted…I just thought, maybe if I was de—”

Before he could finish the thought, Tinky interrupted, “Why don’t you two let Peter and I finish our conversation?”

“You again?!” Emma yelled.

“I was trying to give him the offer of a lifetime,” Tinky gloated. “I offered to help you get rid of the Spankoffskis before he came along, but, no, you had to do it yourself. Look where that’s gotten you and the poor kid. Now I’m just trying to give him a handle on life.”

“And I said NO!” Pete exclaimed. Right as he did, Emma and Paul both turned to look down at him with glossy, unfeeling eyes. And the way they turned was unnatural, almost marionette-like. It gave Pete a chill watching them both turn into something so uncanny so quickly.

“You should listen to T’noy Karaxis, Peter,” Emma said.

“He can help!” Paul added.

Even their voices sounded controlled and unnatural. Pete hated it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw them both step closer to him. He took a few steps out of the way and stumbled back to the very place he’d been sitting and writing his note in the first place. Back where he started. Of course. He looked up and saw Tinky was mimicking the way a puppeteer controlled marionettes. It clicked in his mind why.

“Let them go!”

Tinky grinned wickedly and did so. Paul and Emma both gasped.

“That suuuucked!” Emma rasped under her breath.

“What was that?” Pete demanded.

“Possession, Peter Rabbit,” Tinky said. “Really, I thought you were the smart one.” Ignoring Pete’s glare, he continued, “Really, any ghost can do it, I’m surprised not even those two assholes didn’t try it out yet.”

“Any ghost?” Pete repeated. “Why, is it hard to pull off?”

“Any ghost. It’s the easiest trick to learn.”

“Well, Tinky, I guess I won’t need you at all,” Pete said. With a smug grin he walked over to Tinky. “Thanks for offering, though, I’m sure I’ll keep you in mind.” He pushed Tinky a little closer to the ledge.

“Hey, really think about what you’re rejecting here!”

“I already have,”

“Don’t you want a friend who can help with your brother—”

“Paul and Emma can help, but thanks!”

“Peter—”

Using all his strength, Pete shoved Tinky off the side of the roof before he could keep offering more.

“Pete!” Paul said.

“Relax, Paul,” Emma said. “The bastard was already dead.”

“Or something like it, anyway,” Pete added. “Besides, you heard what he said. Any ghost can do that possession stuff!”

“What are you planning?” Emma asked.

“Nothing specific yet,” Pete said. “I think you two should fill in the gaps. Dad likes to host dinner parties for his colleagues sometimes. I think next time he does, you two should crash.”

“Pete, that didn’t work tonight,” Emma began.

“Because they couldn’t see you. But if you possess them, they’ll be forced to acknowledge that the house is haunted, and maybe if it’s bad enough, we’ll get out of your hair!” Pete said. “It would be like creating a living nightmare! Just…temporarily!”

“That means a lot of different things to different people,” Emma said.

“Sure, but if you twist it enough, anything can become scary,” Pete said. He turned to look at Paul. “Let’s start with this: Paul, what would be your own personal hell?”

Chapter Text

Pete didn’t breathe a word of what happened on the roof to his parents. Nothing about Tinky, nothing about the new scheme he and Paul and Emma were planning, and certainly not that he had even ever been up there in the first place. 

They didn’t need to know, anyway. Pete didn’t want to explain to them what he almost went through with. He didn’t particularly want to tell them about what entailed in the conversation he had with a demonic goat. And he really didn’t want to ruin the surprise that he’d been preparing for them with Paul and Emma. So two long weeks passed, and he never told them anything. Really, Pete had decided, things would be more simple, if not better, that way. 

The first real conversation he’d had with his parents after the incident was, luckily enough, something he could get behind. But maybe not for the reason that his parents wanted him to be. 

Pete had been picking at his breakfast, lost in a train of thought about Tinky, and chatting with Paul and Emma, and the usual daydream in which he’d summon Ted’s ghost and they could be together again, which eventually led into good old normal depressed reminiscing. Pete poked the fried eggs on his plate. Back home, he’d typically just stick a frozen waffle or poptart in the toaster, make another one for Ted, and call it good, and Pete had always been fine with that. A real breakfast wasn’t a bad thing, it was just unusual. A change in pace. And even if he was fine with it, it just wasn’t the same without…

And that’s what Pete had been thinking about when his dad attempted to get his attention. 

“Peter, we need to talk,”

“Huh?” Pete looked up, surprised at the sound of his name. 

“We need to talk,” his dad repeated. 

“About what?” Pete asked, hoping it wouldn’t be a confrontation about his little break down two weeks prior. 

“You just need to know that we’re having a dinner party on Friday,”

“Whatever,” Pete said. He didn’t care that much about what the actual party was for, but this might have meant the sign he was waiting for to start his new experiment with Paul and Emma. “Your co-workers from the university, I presume?”

“This will be the first time they’ve seen you in years, Peter. Make sure you’re on your best behavior.” His dad replied. “Maybe drop your fascination with the supposed ghosts in the attic when they’re here.”

Pete groaned. “Is that all you’re worried about? That I’ll embarrass you in front of all the other old guys with tenure? You don’t have anything to worry about, career-wise, y’know—”

“Peter—”

Pete sighed. He looked down and returned to poking his eggs with his fork. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll be on my best behavior Friday. I promise.”

Pete recognized he probably reacted far too strongly. But…something about the conversation just set him off. The expectation to be perfect, and pretend there wasn’t a thing in his life he hated. No way in hell he could make that happen on a whim. 

Pete was done talking with his dad. 

He’d rather talk more with Emma and Paul anyway, especially if it meant working out the details of the plan to possess his parents. Pete even convinced them that if they wanted to try it out, they could practice on him (“No way, Pete, we don’t know how it’ll actually affect you,” Emma had objected, though she reluctantly changed her mind after Pete pointed out he was their only option, more or less). The extra time spent with the couple led Pete to learning about what their lives had been like before they died. He got to hear about Emma’s adventures in Guatemala after she graduated high school and her young nephew who, by sheer coincidence, apparently also lived in Hatchetfield. 

“Small world,” Pete had noted. It made home feel so much closer, and Paul and Emma more like family. Or something like it. 

Paul insisted he wasn’t nearly as interesting, but Pete insisted that he was just as nice to talk to and would always listen intently to anything Paul had to say about himself. It was never much, just the occasional work story, but Pete enjoyed the talks anyway.

Even then, Pete felt that nothing would ever top the best thing Paul had ever told him. On the roof, when Pete had asked Paul what his personal hell would be, he was ready to work with anything. But never in a lifetime would he have been prepared for Paul’s answer. 

What was Paul’s personal hell, exactly?

“Being trapped in a musical.”

Pete thought about that every fucking day. 

Three days before the party, while the three were prepping for another practice session, Paul had been telling the story of how he met Emma in the first place. She’d been forced to audition for a musical, and he was dragged to watch it, and he hated every moment of it. Except for some of Emma’s lines, of course. So he worked up the nerve to talk to her after the show, and from there, they’d shared a sixteen year road to…something. Or nothing. Hard to say when they were, well, dead. 

“That’s…a sweet story, actually,” Pete said. “But there’s something else I gotta say, before we start.”

“What?” Paul asked. 

“Your personal hell is objectively hilarious,”

“No, Pete, really!” Paul insisted. “Think about the implications, musicals are just weird.”

“How, exactly?”

“Imagine having no free will of your own because you’re magically compelled to sing and dance for no apparent reason,”

“You gotta suspend your disbelief, Paul,” Pete said. “Most musicals aren’t literal. Besides, I won’t have to imagine. We’re about to practice on me.”

Paul winced. “I’m only helping because you begged. Watching people sing and dance makes me uncomfortable.”

“You hate musicals that much?” Pete teased. “That makes me almost sorry. Almost.”

“Maybe you should be,” Paul replied, though it was clear to Pete that it was as lighthearted as his own teasing.

“I would say you should die mad about it.” Pete grinned. “But like, given the circumstances…”

“Maybe I will.” Paul said. “One day when what’s left of me fades into nothing, I’ll make sure to use my last words to remind the world that I still don’t like musicals.”

“Hey,” Pete said, “At least you know what hill you insist on dying on.” As he said this, a realization creeped onto him, something he’d never wondered, up until now.

“Can ghosts...die?”

A silence enveloped the room. Pete’s question hung in the air. Emma eventually shook her head. 

“I doubt it, Pete,” she said. “You can’t kill something twice.”

“No,” Pete said. “I guess not.” 

‘Or at least,’ he thought, ‘I hope not.’

The very idea was almost disturbing. What if Ted was already long gone? Or what if he lost Paul and Emma, too? What would death for the dead be like, anyway? Complete nonexistence? What would that even be like, to not even exist?

He was overthinking. Again. Goddamn it.

He could almost hear Ted laughing at him from the other side. He always used to do so when Pete was in a mood, but then he’d put on some music and brew a cup of tea to help calm Pete’s nerves. 

That was something to look forward to when…if …when… whatever. Something something, Pete seeing Ted again. That would be something to make life worth enjoying again, soon enough, if he had the right luck, yadayadayada. Knowing his luck, though, he wasn’t expecting much.

He decided to put it out of mind. There were more immediate things to worry about. For example, perfecting the art of possession. After all, it was supposed to be a simple process.

“Let’s just work on the plan,” Pete said.

“Okay,” Paul said. He looked at Emma. “I’d rather you start, though.”

“Whatever,” Emma said with an exasperated smile. She turned to Pete. “So, you insist on going the obnoxious theatre kid route. Got any requests for the test run?”

Pete nodded. “You know ‘The Rum Tum Tugger’ from Cats?”

Emma mimed retching. “Of all shows, you choose Cats?”

Pete shrugged. “The song’s a bop.” He said simply. “I take it you’re not a fan.”

“I can name maybe four musicals, and that’s by far the worst one I know. It’s just cats introducing themselves for two hours until they decide who gets to die.” Emma said. “Do you like that musical?”

“Oh god, no,” Pete said. (While he was talking, Paul turned to Emma and said, “The plot of Cats is what?”) “I’m indifferent to musicals, overall,” Pete continued, “but Ted liked them. Not that he’d ever admit it but like, if you watched him during a live performance or when he was listening to really—what’s a good word?—ballad-y music, he would get, like, really obviously into it. And for some reason only God knows, his favorite musical was fucking Cats!” He cringed. “Everything I know about that show, I’ve learned against my will. But at least Ted and I could agree that that song is pretty fun.”

Emma sighed. “I’m guessing you’re dead set on your choice, then?”

“Oh, no. Not for the actual party…maybe for today’s practice, though. How’d you come to that conclusion?”

“It meant something to your brother, so it clearly means a lot to you, too,” Emma said.

“Okay, wow,” Pete replied. “You called me out. I think Ted would have thought this whole thing was funny. Forcing people to listen to a weird song from a musical that tends to really divide people’s opinions. I dunno. Maybe I’m kinda doing this for him, too.”

“You still plan on looking for him?” Emma asked.

“Eventually,” Pete said. “Maybe after I can finally move out. Even then, I’m not holding my breath.” 

He reached into his pocket for his phone and pulled up the song on YouTube. The video buffered for what felt like forever (he really needed to add trying to figure out what was wrong with his parents’ wifi to his to-do list, and probably best if he did so before sabotaging the party, or probably more importantly, finishing college applications). While waiting for the song to start he looked back up at Paul. “By the way,” Pete said, “Don’t feel obligated to try to figure out the lyrics or follow the dance in the video. Since it’s just a test run and everything. And also since it’s clear you wouldn’t like it.”

Paul didn’t respond (verbally, anyway. He did grimace a little). Pete pressed play on the video, set his phone down, let his muscles relax, and prepared for Paul and Emma to do the rest. 

Without another beat, he felt his arms begin to sway and his legs move forward on their own. Just out of curiosity, he tried to resist, but found that he was truly unable to oppose the ghosts’ control over his body. 

Maybe a bit unnerving. But that added to what he was going for.

Perfect. 

The song kept playing, and though it wasn’t always on beat, Paul and Emma (mostly Emma) were moving him along in a little dance. 

Pete couldn’t help but let himself get lost in the moment, forgetting about the music, Paul and Emma, and the circumstances themselves. He was simply taken back to everything before camp, to times when Pete would be lounging around the apartment, reading or studying or writing in his journal, and then Ted would put on the worst music imaginable, and Pete would dramatically sigh and beg Ted to change the music, though in a tone of fond exasperation. Ted would always respond “What, don’t you want to be cultured?” and Pete would always jump at the chance for more banter, and he really did secretly enjoy the music. Even if he did still think it was kinda awful. It was what Ted liked, that was enough.

The memories were truly so vivid that Pete hadn’t even realized that the music had ended and Paul and Emma had already quit making him dance until he heard a clap and Emma say his name, apparently concerned.

“Hey. Pete.” she said. “Are you okay?”

Pete, snapping back into reality, stood straighter and made an effort to look her in the eye. “I’m fine,” he said.

“Are you sure? You looked almost disassociated. I know firsthand possession sucks, are you sure you’re okay?”

“No, I’m fine. Really.” Pete assured her. “In fact, I think I kinda needed that.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” Pete said. “Just…it’s perfect. There’s no way there could be a better way to crash the party.”

Over the next few days, Pete, Paul, and Emma added more steps to the process. More complicated dancing, more natural movement overall, and (much to Paul’s contempt) singing.

By the time the final trial run was over on Friday afternoon, Pete had no doubt he was finally going to make his wishes heard and himself seen.

Revenge or closure, whichever comes first. Well, why not kill two birds with one stone?

He could wreck the evening, and it was going to be fan-fucking-tastic.

He even made an effort to look extra nice and play along. Combed hair, a nice (well, nicer) tie, the whole shebang. He absolutely had to sell that he was upholding his promise to be a “normal” son. Whatever that meant.

And so he was polite when his dad introduced all his co-workers (though he couldn’t remember who was who if he tried) and he was cordial enough (if not in a rather forced way) when they asked him questions about school and how he liked Clivesdale and just generally tried to talk to him like a relative they hadn’t seen in a year, and he was quiet as they all talked boring college professor stuff over dinner. Pete wasn’t really listening enough to care, nor did he eat much at all. He was just waiting for the fun to begin.

He’d worked with Paul to find a song he could tolerate. Something short, simple, and didn’t require any dancing too elaborate, and they would choose a song from that album to practice to the day of.

Pete found his mom’s old Harry Belafonte records. Sure, the music was from the ‘50s, but it was going to work. Sometimes the classics really did work best.

So now Pete was just waiting for the perfect chance to make some sort of comment about ghosts or the afterlife or something, signaling Paul and Emma to start the music and proceed to possess the whole party, sans Pete, anyway. He really was just here for the drama by now.

At some point, one of the guests looked at him.

“So, what do you do for fun, Peter?”

Time for the hilarity to really begin.

“Ghost hunting,” he replied nonchalantly, as if it was the most normal and expected answer to such a question.

His mother coughed uncomfortably, while his father just stared at him, as though he was trying to get the message across: remember what we talked about.

Thing was, Pete didn’t promise to not talk about the ghosts in the attic. He just said he’d be on his best behavior. Right now, he was still upholding that. Technically.

Pete smirked as his father said something like, “Forget that, that’s just a phase he’s been going through since he moved in. He thought there were ghosts in the attic.”

“There are ghosts in the attic, I keep telling you!” Pete insisted.

He was no longer on his best behavior, and Pete was relishing in finally getting to act out knowing he’d have the upper hand.

“Peter, we talked about this,”

“Right, right. Sorry, Dad.” Pete replied, playing up his politeness once again, but not at all meaning a word of it. “I’ll shut up now.”

Back to observing. Back to waiting for the first sign that something fun was about to finally occur, the plan he and Paul and Emma had been practicing all week—

(“Anyway, like we were discussing earlier,” his father continued)

—and any moment now—

(Joseph Spankoffski suddenly choked on his own words, unable to finish his thought)

—there would be a sight to truly behold.

An uncomfortable silence spread throughout the dining room. Pete quickly looked behind his back to the kitchen door to see Emma and Paul poised to take full possession of the party. He grinned at them. Now it was time for what he’d been looking forward to most: watching shit go down.

In fact, the pure delight Pete had when his dad belted out the first two notes (“DAAAAY-O!”) had been nearly impossible to disguise. Pete had to hide his face in his hands to quickly get one laugh out before he put on a straight face and looked back up.

“What’s wrong, Dad? Are you feeling alright?” he asked. He wasn’t sure how much he was actually selling his fake-concern, he felt a little too smug about finally getting to make it obvious the house really was haunted.

A beat of silence passed. “Yes. Yes, Peter, I’m fine,” he replied. “Like we were saying—” he tried again. 

But once again he was interrupted by an outburst of singing, and once again Pete could barely cover his amusement. 

And one by one, all of the adults followed, forced into a song and dance number. To the fucking Banana Boat Song of all things. Hilarious if you’re an onlooker. Hopefully terrifying if you’re one of the people forced in. 

There came a point where Paul actually turned the music on, leaving him and Emma (once again mostly Emma) to lead the party in a dance break. 

“Peter,” his father hissed under his breath, “what is going on?”

“It’s like I kept telling you,” Pete said, at full volume, just to make sure everyone heard, “the ghosts of the last owners are still here! And they want us out!”

“You tell them to let us go!”

“That’s not up to me, Dad. I’ll let Paul and Emma decide when to end this for themselves.”

“If you can really talk to those ghosts, Peter, you can get them to stop and ask what they want from us!”

Pete opened his mouth, about to argue that what they wanted was for the Spankoffskis to leave, or at least be a little more tolerable. Before he could say anything, though, one of his dad’s coworkers managed to speak up through the music as well. 

“Think about what you could do with this!” he said. “If this really is a genuine haunted house, we could present it to the university, we could start an entirely new field of legitimate paranormal research!”

“What?!” Pete exclaimed. 

All the adults seemed to think this idea was absolutely brilliant. The background music stopped playing, and with this, the guests began to chatter about what fun the apparent possession had been and how exposing real life hauntings could be so innovative for society, and so much other bullshit that Pete felt nauseous. He’d failed so badly, and now Paul and Emma we’re gonna pay, too. Pete couldn’t stomach the idea of sticking around to hear too much of the talks. With very little attention given to him now, he ran into the kitchen without a passing glance given to him. By the time he’d shut the door and turned to face Emma and Paul, he was unable to hold back his back tears of disappointment and anger. 

“Are you okay, Pete?” Emma asked. 

“No!” Pete yelled. “They liked it, now Dad and his colleagues are gonna—”

“We heard,” Paul said. “We’re sorry it didn’t work.”

“We were supposed to be out of your hair right now!”

“We’ve still got time to change their minds,” Emma said. “Maybe we can improvise something by the end of the night,”

“They were supposed to be scared!”

“Pete, we’ll figure something out—” Emma promised. 

Pete didn’t want to figure something out anymore. All he wanted was to have some form of control over his own life, mourn his brother for as long as he wanted, not be questioned for stating the truth, be seen as more than just a mouthpiece for the people he was trying to help, too. 

“No, goddamn it! I can’t keep living like this!”

“Pete, you can’t try jumping again—” Paul said, fearing the worst. 

“I’m not,” Pete muttered. He walked back into the dining room, Paul and Emma following close behind, still trying to make sure he wouldn’t do anything desperate. But there was no stopping Pete now, nothing could deter him from summoning someone who could do something, maybe the only one that could. 

“T’noy Karaxis,” Pete said, quietly but harshly. 

From behind him, he could hear a voice eagerly pipe up. “So glad you changed your mind, Peter Rabbit. I promise, you will not regret this.”

“T’noy Karaxis,” Pete said again, building volume. 

The silhouette of a man with goat horns dressed in a three piece suit was now visibly fading left of Pete. “Really, kid, we’re going to make a fantastic team. Now, give me just one more,”

Pete looked around. To his parents, who had noticed the scene he was making and stopped to gawk at him. To Paul and Emma, who looked dejected and infuriated, and hoped that Pete would go back on what he could do. And then to Tinky, whose eyes grew wild with excitement, ready to give Pete exactly what he wanted. 

He deserved to get something he wanted for once. He wanted peace for Paul and Emma, to have his brother back, and his parents out. 

“T’NOY KARAXIS!” he shouted. 

Just like that, a fully translucent Tinky stood to his side, and from the stares of all the adults at the table, it was obvious he could be seen by everyone. 

“It’s showtime, Rabbit,”

A yellow light filled the room, concentrated itself into a path, and shed a spotlight on Paul and Emma. 

Pete’s dad looked like he was genuinely terrified, like he was finally ready to listen. “Peter, are those—?”

Far too late for that. 

“The ghosts? I told you, didn’t I? That they’ve been here, keeping me company? They’re the ones that actually care about me.”

“Peter—”

Pete was done listening. He wasn’t going to put up with his parents’ push-and-pull-until-it’s-too-late ever again. He was finally getting something resembling revenge AND closure all in one, and god, such a feeling had never existed before, and he’d never felt so good. 

He just grinned proudly and said, “Don’t ‘Peter’ me. I’m done being your scapegoat teenage son. I’m done only being seen when you figure out that something’s wrong.”

He watched as all the grown ups were lifted from their seats, the doors unlocked, and they were all thrown out of the house together with one flick of Tinky’s wrist.

“It’s our house now, Rabbit,” Tinky said. 

“What if they come back?” Pete asked, suddenly panicked that he hadn’t thought this through. 

That fear all but disappeared just as fast when Tinky said, “Remember, I’m the Bastard of Time and Space. If you’re that worried about it, I’ll just freeze everything outside.”

“You can do that?”

“Anything for someone as special and in need as you, Rabbit.”

By now, Pete would normally have snapped and demanded to be called by his own name. But in reality, he was still riding the high of the moment and couldn’t care less. 

He nodded. “Do it.”

He heard the doors lock again, and rushed to the window to see the whole world outside the house freeze in place. Cars stagnant in the road, nighthawks floating midair, and his parents and their guests, having run off, either for safety or help, now stuck on the sidewalk. Pete was not a petty person, not typically. But right now, he was enjoying every second of the aftermath, unable to stop thinking: power trips were underrated. He never wanted this feeling to end. 

He wasn’t invisible anymore. And he was never going to let himself fade away ever again. 

Chapter Text

Ted, you wouldn’t believe everything that’s happened lately.

It’s been about a day since Tinky and I took over the house. I think. It’s kinda hard to estimate with time being frozen outside the house and all. But I’ve slept once since then and I don’t think my internal clock isn’t too completely thrown off yet, so if it hasn’t been a day, it’s been close.

Paul and Emma are sorta pissed that I decided to summon Tinky after all, but what other choice did I have? Dad was gonna expose them, study them, make their whole existence some big fucking extravagant phenomenon. The theme park version of the afterlife. I wouldn’t want to spend eternity being nothing but a show for other people, that sounds miserable. So of course I did it. They’ve tried to help me, it’s only fair I tried to help them.

Besides, I’m starting to think that maybe Tinky isn’t completely terrible, y’know? I’m still not sure if I 100% trust him, but things have been nice enough, I guess. I don’t know exactly how everything worked, but he messed with space to make the guest room look like my room back home. So that was cool. It makes everything feel closer to normal. And he said he’ll explain things from the handbook later, if it ever matters. I’d be down to finally learn about some of the stuff in it, there are still parts I can’t figure out. 

The best part of this is that I kinda feel like a little kid all over again. I spent years thinking I had an overactive imagination, but we always got to make up for it with fake ghost hunting and kickass Halloweens and all those horror movie nights. And now it’s like I’m living out all those things for real. Like, I’ll genuinely never forget watching The Sixth Sense with you that night, or connecting with Cole and being convinced for years I had the sixth sense, too. (Which? Maybe I do?) I’ll  ALSO always remember pretending I wasn’t scared shitless by the scene of the ghost girl’s death. 

Anyways. Soon enough I’m gonna see a REAL haunting. I’ve liked observing what Tinky does and how the house changes. I’m trying to figure out how it all works, if I’m really gonna have to be so close to the next life, it wouldn’t hurt to know, right?

I’m rambling…I just wish you were here to see it all, Ted. You’d get such a kick out of it. 

I can’t believe I’m still talking to a fucking journal like it’s actually my brother. 

Pete sighed as he scratched out the last sentence from his newest note. What was he thinking, really? Just because he consistently used any current notebook to complain and get out the emotions he usually wouldn’t otherwise didn’t mean that it was actually going to do anything in the long run. Besides, what was expressing his feelings, or whatever, compared to actually taking a stand and gaining control of the house and his life? One worked, one didn’t. He didn’t have to keep this up.

Pete held his pen close to the page, debating whether to cross the whole page out. He decided against it. For sentimental reasons, he supposed. This journal was the last remembrance he had from Ted, after all, and he needed to use each page effectively, and crossing out a whole page just because it read as a long and sappy monologue would just be wasteful. 

Right now, Tinky was out of the house. Something about having to go back to the Black and White and check on a few select souls (if he cared for even a few human people at all, that could have been a good sign) and that left Pete alone in the house. Mostly. 

He could hear Paul and Emma’s murmurs from upstairs, though he couldn’t make out what the conversation was about. Pete hadn’t talked to them since the incident at the dinner party, Emma had not wanted to hear anything about it. He was terribly bored, though, time being frozen and all, and he really wanted to reconcile with his first (only) friends in Clivesdale. He went upstairs, knocked on the door twice, and patiently waited for any kind of response. 

Nothing immediate. 

“It’s Pete,” he said. 

After a long moment, the door finally opened for him. He entered the attic and shut the door behind him.

“Hi,” Pete said quietly.

“You finally came back around, then?” Emma asked. She sat on an old trunk on the other side of the room and stared out the window.

“I got bored of sitting around,” Pete said.

“Yeah? Well, I’m getting bored of looking at the same fucking scene outside.” Emma replied. “Least you could do is get that bastard to unfreeze everything again.”

“No way in hell!” Pete exclaimed. “If we did that, Mom and Dad and those assholes they work with are gonna come back eventually, and they were gonna make your afterlife miserable. You’d just be lab rats, forever—”

“We can take care of ourselves, Pete,” Emma said.

The room remained silent for a long, tense moment.

“I just don’t wanna lose you guys, too…” Pete said softly.

Emma sighed. This was going to lead into another soliloquy about his older brother, wasn’t it? There had to be a point where Pete would seek help through his grief, surely. She wanted to appreciate the sentiment, but after everything that had just gone down several hours ago, she couldn’t say she was willing to let Pete put that off any longer. In fact, she almost told him off then and there, but Paul spoke up before she could.

“You weren’t going to, Pete.”

“I couldn’t take the risk!”

“That’s how you felt at the time.”

Pete sighed. “Just…please come back downstairs? I kinda miss you two.”

Emma shook her head. “I’ll come back down when you make the goat leave.”

“That’s not happening.”

“Why not? I thought we all agreed he was a bastard.”

“Well what if he’s not?” Pete asked. “He stopped time, and that saved you two. He bent space to make my room look like the one I had at home. And he told me that he went back to the Black and White specifically to check in on a few select souls, maybe he does care about some people.”

“How do you know it’s not an act?” Emma said.

“And if it really isn’t?” Pete insisted.

“Pete, I don’t have time to argue about this,” Emma said. “But I don’t trust him. I’m not leaving the attic until you’ve calmed down and he’s gone.”

Pete scoffed. “Fine. Whatever. See if I care anymore.”

He did. Very much so. But he wasn’t going to show it, he wasn’t going to acknowledge that he hadn’t trusted Tinky in the first place either, he had to have the last word again. God, he had never known how good it felt to do so. 

So he slammed the door behind him and stomped down the stairs and back into his new old room. With his bed in the corner and a window right above it, and the white nylon carpeting that was always such a pain to keep clean but now he couldn’t care less because it was so nostalgic, and the Star Wars posters on the wall, and the drawers for his clothes, and everything right in place like it should’ve been. This was his room. Not the empty space with an unmade bed and a desk. This. The cluttered, lived-in tiny space that wasn’t meant to be a bedroom in the first place but worked so well in the end. A miniature piece of chaos in a shifty apartment. A bona fide Spankoffski mess, straight outta Hatchetfield. 

Almost exactly like things should be. 

Almost. 

Getting his room set back up with magic or whatever was cool and all, but it was nowhere near as gratifying as the first time he’d done it. During the last weekend before eighth grade began, after a week of sleeping on the couch, Ted had decided it was time his little brother finished the whole process of moving in, and so he and Pete set up his bed and bedside table and hung a small curtain on the window and hung up all his posters and put all his belongings away, like Pete had always lived there and he hadn’t just escaped his parents a few days prior, with the brothers cracking jokes all along the way. It had taken all day, but when the deed was done, Pete had felt more at home then than in any previous time in his entire life. Yeah, the instantaneity of getting it all back was cool, but what could ever replace a day with Ted?

There was exactly one new addition to the room: a photograph sitting on the bedside table, which he actually unpacked and held onto before the room was transformed. The photo had been taken on Pete’s first day of kindergarten. Pete usually couldn’t stand any photos of himself from before junior high, and this photo shouldn’t have been an exception, with the pigtails and missing front tooth and all that sickening sweetness, but he actually sorta loved the photo. Ted stood with him outside Hatchetfield Elementary, his arm wrapped tightly around Pete, and both of them were grinning like it was a fucking trip to Disney World and not just the first of many first school days. And even for being barely six years old, he still remembered so clearly what Ted had said to him right after the photo was taken, just before Pete had to go inside. 

“You got this, kid. Now go raise some hell.”

Pete hadn’t done anything remotely close to such on that day. In fact, he’d spent most of the day sitting in a corner overwhelmed by the amount of other kids around him and the thought of socializing with all of them. But Ted’s words stuck with him, and he always repeated them to himself on every subsequent first day of school. 

He’d never succeeded in doing so until senior year of high school. Oh well. Better late than never. And the fact that it wasn’t a metaphor, he’d literally raised some hell. Made things all the better. 

Pete’s long, winding train of reminiscing was finally broken by a flash of yellow light, and the silhouette of a man with goat-like horns stepping out from it. Tinky has returned from whatever seeing humans in the afterlife entailed, finally. Pete noticed that in his hand was a shiny, intricate box. It seemed to have a million designs all at once, changing with every look at it. Mesmerizing as it was, Pete didn’t get to stare for long. 

“Were you waiting for me, Rabbit?”

“What’s that?” Pete asked, pointing at the box. 

“What’s what?” Tinky looked down at his hand. He held up the box. “This? This is a special artifact. This is the Bastard’s Box.” He handed it to Pete. 

“What’s it for?” Pete asked as he took it. 

“It’s my personal door into the Black and White. But for humans, it’s like a scythe and Hell itself all in one. It’s the cause and place of death for particularly deserving individuals.”

“Huh,” Pete said. He ran his finger along the edge, searching for a crease, trying to guess how it might have worked. 

“Don’t attempt to open it, Rabbit,” Tinky said. “Just looking inside is enough to break a human’s mind. You’re not particularly deserving of that.”

“Noted,” Pete said. He tossed the box to his side, letting it land on a pillow. “So. You said we’d have a real haunting today?”

“That’s right,” Tinky replied. “But first, you need to learn a few things.”

“Like from the Handbook?!”

“No, no. Nothing from the book. For as long as we’re in control of the house, you’re an honorary ghost. And that means you’re bound by the same rules as a ghost.”

Pete stared at him, a bit confused. “Like what?”

“Number one: you are not to leave the house. You can climb to the roof or sit on the front patio, but other than that, you’re stuck here for eternity.”

“You’re not bound by that rule,”

“It’s different for me. I was never human in the first place. And even then, this isn’t my house, is it?”

“I guess not,”

“Number two: you can be as miserable as you want. Go all out with the black and mourning for all I care. Ghosts don’t have much to be happy about, and neither do you.”

“Sweet,” Pete said. At least someone understood. “And rule number three?”

“Never trust the living,”

“I’m there already,” Pete said.

“Perfect. Welcome to ghosthood, Peter Rabbit. You’re going to have a hell of a time.”

“Does that mean you’re gonna show me a real haunting now?”

“Yes. But do tell, Rabbit. Why are you still so insistent on it?”

“I’ve liked watching you mess with the house. I wanna observe more.” Pete explained, though a scowl did cross his face for a moment. “And for god’s sake, quit calling me that.”

Tinky stared at Pete, for so long to the point it became uncomfortable. Pete rocked himself side to side, trying to ease his nerves and awkward feeling. The goat man spoke up soon enough. 

“Alright, Peter. But you’re among the dead now, so you’re taking the reins of this haunting. Let’s see you do your worst to this place.”

“Oh?” Pete exclaimed. “Thank you. Cool. Just, wow—” He stopped and thought for a second. “Granted, I’m still technically human. What can I do?”

“Wreck shit up.”

“As in?”

“Break things, release some teenage angst! Have a little fun, Spankoffski. Is that so bad to want?”

“…no,” Pete said. “I ‘spose not.” He stood up. “Cool. I’m gonna haunt this bitch so bad!”

“Haunting is a craft that takes time to perfect. Your friends in the attic are proof of that.”

“Lay off, they did their best,” Pete said. “And I’m gonna do my best, too.”

He swiftly marched down the hallway to the kitchen. Tinky followed behind. Pete turned back to face him. “You know what I’ve always really hated? Mom’s tacky plates. Frogs are certainly a choice for theming your dinnerware. Not a good one.” He took one of the plates out from the cupboard. But then he stared down at it. He’d intended to break it. He was even contemplating it now. But Pete suddenly felt a smidge of guilt for it. 

“What are you waiting for, Rabbit? Do something. Take some reins for once.”

Pete shook his head and placed the plate on the counter gently. “I can’t.”

“You spend all that time being so angry and insistent on revenge and you can’t even destroy one stupid plate?”

“It doesn’t seem nearly as cathartic, now that I try,” Pete said. 

“You’re fucking useless, Peter.”

“I’m not.” Pete said back. “Just anxieties kicking in, I guess.”

“And morals, and overthinking. You humans are so pathetic.”

“At least I don’t need to be summoned. I can do as I like and have free will.” Pete sighed. “The more that I think about it, the less fun trying to haunt the house on my own would be if there’s no one here to spook.” He stared up at Tinky. “What’s wrong with me?! Even something I fought for so hard to make happen doesn’t seem any fun!”

“It’s your fragile human emotions,” Tinky said. “You still want something else, don’t you?”

“I got what I wanted. For my parents to acknowledge me and get the hell out of here.”

It suddenly struck Pete maybe he didn’t need this external help after all. Maybe he could ask Tinky to unfreeze time, get him to leave, and then hope he could get his parents and Paul and Emma to leave each other alone, and he could try and make up for pulling such a stunt in the first place—

“You want much more than that, though. Don’t you, Rabbit?”

Of course he did. He wanted to be happy. He wanted to leave here and never look back. He wanted to go to college. He wanted whatever Star Wars installment was next to be actually good. He wanted a cup of chamomile tea right about now. 

And most of all, he wanted his brother back. Even just for a moment. 

Tinky looked down at Pete as he looked away. “Don’t think I haven’t forgotten about your note on the roof. Or your brother. Teddy and I have become rather acquainted, you know. If you want, I could perhaps…retrieve him for you.”

Pete’s eyes lit up ever so slightly. “You can do that?”

“Of course I can. Locate him in the Black and White, get him back here, give you one-on-one time. He must be one hell of a guy for you to have gone this far for him.”

Pete could talk to Ted again. That’s all he wished for, really. And the chance was just being offered, easy as that. 

“Please,” he said. “Please. If you can really do that, it’d be the highlight of…of anything. It’ll have made the past day or so worth it.”

Tinky grinned. “I’ll do my best, Rabbit,” he promised. And with a flash of bright yellow light, he was gone. Pete stood at the counter, not knowing what to expect at all, just hoping he hadn’t been duped. 

He just had to give himself some time to wait. It had only been a few minutes, after all. 

But sure enough, he heard some sort of thump from down the hall, and when he looked to see, there was Ted walking in his direction. His big brother. He was really here. A ghost, of course, but that didn’t stop Pete before, obviously. And now Ted was right there in front of him. 

Ted looked at him and grinned. “Hey, Petey—”

Before he could begin to say anything else, Pete had ran to him, wrapping his arms around his brother tightly. “Ted…” he whispered. Despite burying himself deep into the hug, rendering himself near unseen, he smiled, too. “I’ve missed you so much. But now you’re really here. Fuck, I missed you, Teddy…”

“I know, Pete,” Ted said. Pete sniffled, and he continued. “C’mon. Don’t cry.”

“I can’t not cry. I’ve never felt more happy and relieved than right now.” Pete looked up at him. “I’ve wanted to talk again for so long.”

“We’ve got plenty of time for that now, Pete,” Ted said. 

Pete didn’t reply. He buried himself in the hug all over again. His brother was back. That’s all he really needed in that moment. 

And all the meanwhile, T’noy Karaxis waited once again. This would just be a detour, until Peter was in the mood to comply, willingly or not, once more. He could wait. He could give him all the time in the world if necessary. The game would be all back on track soon enough.