Work Text:
Poe’s homes always came with a side of supernatural, maybe it was time to realize that it wasn’t the places, but the person inhabiting them after all.
—-------------------
Ah, he should explain. It hadn’t always been like this, in fact, there wasn’t really anything that presented strangely in his youth, all slammed doors having concrete evidence of a strong breeze doing so, all cupboards having mechanical hinges to close them quite quickly. Only when he moved into his first house was when the things started happening, which were once again chalked up to breezes and old furniture acting up.
He’d always loved old homes, growing up rich only leaving him wishing for an older house, creepy, crawly, and full of secret passages. Henceforth why his parents weren’t all that shocked when he showed them the old creepy building that he said he rented out for college. Ambiance, he said to them after his crisp clothes were swapped out for thrifted gothic attire, better for writing he said, after they found his stash of ink, quills, and parchment in his writing room. His parents were the first to notice the odd signs of spirits in his home, yet after all they saw their son do for his macabre lifestyle, they decided it was intentional and left it be.
Lord knows whatever ghost was haunting him hated it, all their cruel tricks turned away, or even worse, turned into writing ideas . Honestly, it was probably why the ghost stuck with him for this long, desperately trying to elicit a response from Poe as he artfully dodged around any proof that a ghost was, in fact, haunting him.
It wasn’t until he had dropped out of college to live in a cozy cabin he found for cheap, only 1.4 million for the peaceful scenery and calm atmosphere? Truly, a steal. The location was ideal, no neighbors to bug him, yet he was close enough to town that biking there and back only ran him about twenty minutes total. It was also easy to make friends, the woman who ran the bakery and her girlfriend, Lucy Maud Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott, frequently inviting him over for tea during his weekly grocery trips, in full truth, they were the ones who helped him see the truth about his haunted living.
Poe was fixing up the two with some tea, bustling about the kitchen as he searched for his floral glass tea set. Louisa was there to help him, searching the lower cabinets that Poe couldn’t fully bend down to reach at the moment, sitting in a chair writing all day was truly horrible for his back, something Louisa could attest to herself. It was only when she stood up that she saw the teapot in question fly towards his head from behind, only for Poe to twirl around and catch it with ease, saying his thank you’s to the air and moving on. The teacups all came clamoring out of the cabinets, which Poe once again received with ease. The worst thing was that he acted as if nothing was wrong , only cocking his head quizzically when Louisa tried to explain that what had just happened was in no way normal.
Lucy, ever her savior, saw the tail end of the ordeal, and explained to Poe in shock, what a ghost was. The spirit must have had a temper of steel, as Poe only nodded, and went to go write his ordeals down as writing material. Lucy offered some cleansing items, sound, salt, incense, but he refused, simply stating that they had coexisted for this long, and there really was no reason to stop now. After leaving, the couple made a silent agreement to just roll with whatever happened in that strange home.
—-------------------
The ghost was quieter after that, barely causing a stir for a few weeks on end, leaving Poe about to catch things that weren’t there. Such an odd end to the routine, only disappearing after the acknowledgment that it existed. Well, in all fairness, it had been quite a long time since he moved out.
Yet in the early morning hours, weeks after Louisa and Lucy had first come over, a voice shocked him out of his half-sleep.
“So are you dumb, or just ignorant? Don’t answer that, it’s the same either way.”
Opening his eyes with a groan, Poe sat up in bed and looked for the familiar red braids of the woman who loved to show up unannounced to drop him off baked goods, only to see a pale figure floating above him at the foot of his bed, looking down at him with closed eyes. On a second glance, he was see-through, the old wallpaper of the bedroom visible through the guy. He continued, almost as if he didn’t know that Poe could actually see nor hear him berating him from mere feet away.
“Eight long years, Poe. Eight years since you randomly showed up in my home, and not a nod in acknowledgement. It’s astounding how idiotic you are- I threw a literal knife at you, and what do I get? A chuckle. A. Chuckle. Any normal person would have run screaming? Why haven’t you? I could read anyone during my haunts with Yosano, but you? You elude my mind’s grasp so often, I’m not sure I believe that you’re doing it intentionally.”
Sleep seeped away from his mind, giving him clarity to the happenings above his bed. A ghost was mere feet from him, and had just admitted to trying to assassinate him. Huh. The specter was also quite loud in vocalizing his distaste with Poe’s unintentional evasive behavior, even going so far as to undermine his intelligence with varying degrees of profanities.
“-The drivel that comes out of your mouth couldn’t even hold a match to what you somehow manage to put down on paper, you bumbling idiot! I can’t even fathom how much easier it would be to even interact with you, if you would only accurately portray your thoughts- God! I hate writers.” The spirit finally looked down at his face, making eye contact with Poe. It was the first time that Poe looked back, and the ghost knew. He looked on in an approximation of disgust, recoiling back as Poe offered a small wave at the person hovering half-way to the ceiling.
“Absolutely not.” He said, and disappeared soundlessly.
The logical conclusion was that it was all a dream, the stress of meeting a deadline getting to him and filtering through his brain into slumber. Yet, to quote the literal ghost that he had just been visited by, Poe was far from normal, and quite tired at that, so it really wouldn’t hurt to go back to bed for a bit, no?
The answer to that question was debatable at best. On the bright side, the smoke alarms didn’t go off! However that was clearly the manuscript he had been working on into the late hours the night before ablaze in his sink. Half past eleven, and he still couldn’t care about the old thing, it really was a terrible read, and there was no denying that he had certainly thought about lighting it on fire, just for a clean slate.
Either way, he dumped an old cup of water into the bin, and moved to go grab something easy for breakfast. Sunday’s didn’t hold much worth for Poe, it was more a day to rest and recharge; deal with things that he felt like doing, do chores he needed to, a garden variety of things that involved him staying in his house. On his worse days, it was just a full day for him to lie in bed, not moving in fear that whatever uncomfortable film that he believed was on him would dig deeper, seeping into Monday mornings and tainting the week. Luckly, it was a medium day, no extra effort put into things, but certainly things to be done.
The trashcan was still smoking as Poe walked past with his canned coffee, curls of it snaking up his waist. It resembled a spider, in his mind. Maybe something to add to the rewrite of whatever he had due for that old deadline? Nevertheless, he sat down at his desk to pull out some paper and the process notes he had for the print-a-la-blaze.
“Not even smoke spiders scare you? God I hate writers so much, it’s like nothing phases you idiots- I could leave a snake head under your pillow and you would not only overlook it, but you would think of ways to describe it!” There was a man sitting at his dining room table, fluffy black hair shooting out to the sides underneath a light brown hat, matching the rest of his detective-esq ensemble; white shirt under a black vest, with a poncho over it, the same color as his hat and pants. He looked familiar, flashes of an emerald green coming to mind when he wracked his brain for who this was. Did this person break into his house? Yet, he still looked irritatingly familiar, and on a closer look, Poe realized why.
It was the supposed ghost from last night. There was a dead man sitting at his dining room table, a dead man who was grinning at him in some sort of way, some sort of horrible, nauseating way, that made him think that a shark was swimming after him, and he had been idling around in the ocean for eight years, thinking nothing of the fin that was rapidly approaching him.
Eleven forty-five in the morning, fresh out of bed, and Edgar Allen Poe was afraid for his life. He should have been afraid a lot sooner, years and years ago, but blissful ignorance and quick reflexes kept him complacent.
Fear, such a bland word, especially in writing; there were too many alternatives to list, and even more than that to pair it with. It was always hard for him to portray the feeling correctly in his works, something he had gotten a lot from publishers across the country, but only for the fact that he had never experienced it. Sure, there was anxiety for interacting with people, but never true, genuine fear. What he felt in the moment, seeing the otherworldly lounging peacefully and menacingly at the same time in his safe space, was like feeling a rock suddenly appear in all of your internal organs, making you want to curl in on yourself, to sink to the floor in a daze as you beg to be spared for just a moment longer.
It was exhilarating .
The ghost let out a laugh, “If all it took for me to get my way was just for you to see me, I would have done this years ago-” He opened his eyes, the sharp emerald green cutting through Poe’s own gaze, only to narrow them in displeasure once he saw Poe excitedly jotting something down on a stack of papers, only looking up every so often. “What are you doing. This isn’t how this was supposed to go- You were supposed to pass out in shock and die, this isn’t how it’s supposed to go!” He exclaimed. The windows rattled as his tone soured, annoyance and anger showing as he spoke louder and louder.
“Mhm… yeah… uh, could I get your name? Just for my notes, but also because we’ve been living together for the last eight years or so.”
“Ranpo. Edogawa. Ranpo.” Ranpo looked about five seconds from bursting a ghostly blood vessel, plain aggravation poorly masked on his face. In his defense, it had been eight full years since he had been seen by another person.
“Great, great. So Edogawa, how exactly did you-”
“No, stop. Just please call me Ranpo. I’ve been haunting you as best as I possibly can for nearly a decade dear Edgar, and I refuse any formalities sent my way.” There was less rage now, more calm exasperation as he watched all too familiar events unfold before him. Writers. God .
On Poe’s side of the story, he was truly wondering what events led him here in life. Any sane person would be shaking in their boots, the otherworldly knowing them by first name, and then denying any sort of respect towards them? Terrifying to the average person. Yet, as Ranpo had so gracefully pointed out, Poe was decidedly, not normal. Truly, he should be bolting, running into town to his friends to beg them to let him stay until the big scary ghost went away, and maybe in an alternate timeline, he would have. Yet Ranpo wasn’t big, and he was only scary for a second, so he really saw no need to drag Louisa and Lucy into this anymore than necessary.
“Um. My apologies? Either way, I would just like to ask you a few simple questions before you leave, if you even can, about the otherworldly? It would really help me out as a horror writer, and you have been trying to kill me for eight years.” Poe had a pen at the ready, he didn’t really own any technology at the moment, all of it had been mysteriously broken about a year and a half ago, and he only really used it to jot down notes. Well, at least there was an explanation for that now.
Ranpo snapped, pointing at Poe and leaning forward with an intrigued grin, “Say that again. About the ‘not being able to leave’, and this time, elaborate.”
“Well, it’s obvious, no? You seemed so annoyed with me not being afraid nor being able to see you, one would assume that you would have given up around the three year mark. It provides ample time to try a variety of things, yet also enough time to come to the conclusion that your efforts would be futile. Moving on, what is it like to phase through solid objects? I’ve been going off of the basis that a ghost’s molecules would navigate through the spaces between an object’s molecules, but that’s pure speculation-”
Poe rambled on for a while longer, scribbling down things on his papers as he rambled on, animatedly gesturing around with his pen while Ranpo sat in the same spot, watching. There wasn’t really a moment for him to answer questions, but he still found it amusing.
Poe stopped to breathe, only to be met by Ranpo chuckling.
“Smart, for a writer.” He said, and folded in on himself to nothing.
-----
Life went on either way. It wasn’t like the discovery was anything too shocking to him, he could just hear the snickering before something went crashing, and he noticed the writing in lipstick on his mirror more (which, Ranpo insisted was the blood of wildlife [as if Poe couldn’t see the tube of Lucy’s lipstick behind his back]). The only thing that really changed was how the wildlife reacted, Ranpo had taken to simply trying to inconvenience him, which ultimately ended up in his favor. Raccoons were particularly drawn to the paranormal, and soon there was a whole family showing up every night to scratch and chitter at his back patio door, making noises akin to laughter as Ranpo tried to scare them off in confusion. It would be a lie to say that Poe didn’t laugh with them from time to time, just to be met with a pointed stare and a pebble thrown at his chest.
Even after the raccoons left when Ranpo stopped coming out to interact with them, one stayed. Eventually, it broke into his house, waking Poe up with a scream from Ranpo as it jumped at him over and over again. It seemed to be having fun, so why not let it be? Plus, Ranpo had taken to shaking up his packages in attempts to slightly damage whatever was inside them, only for the last one to be filled with an expensive ink and quill set that was subsequently ruined. He apologized after, but Poe was still a little salty after the whole ordeal.
Two months and three weeks later, nothing had changed in Poe’s eyes. It was just like having a particularly feisty cat, and a raccoon as roommates. The cat would knock things around and poke at the new bamboo plant that Poe had growing in the kitchen windowsill, and the raccoon would spend a week naming itself Karl. It was quite the oddity to see cheerios spelling out shoddy letters every morning, even stranger to see his ghostly housemate eating them throughout the day.
Offhandedly, Poe asked if Ranpo wanted anything from town, when a thought made him do a double-take. What would Ranpo even need? Could he interact with anything that Poe could even buy? Ranpo, on the other hand, was looking at him like he had just said that he was off to join the circus, tilting his head incredulously and squinting at him.
“Ed, I don’t think you can get me anything from the shops that I could, yknow, actually touch. But thanks for asking! It’s always refreshing to see hospitality used in the present day.”
“Oh. Yeah, uh-” Did Ranpo want his own room? He was living with him for over eight years now, and not once did he have a proper designated area. Was he just sleeping on the roof? Or even worse, was he taking the couch? Oh, how all those hospitality lessons from his youth failed him.
“Do you want a room?” He blurted out, “I’m sorry, I just realized that it’s almost been a decade and you’ve never had a space for yourself. I can renovate the house? It’s no big deal to add a room for you, seriously.”
Silence hung heavy in the air, the nervous form of Poe standing in the open doorway, feeling the crisp breeze of early spring on his back as he watched Ranpo stare at him in silence. It was not at all reassuring when said ghost doubled over in laughter, clutching his stomach and wheezing while Poe stumbled over his words. Eventually he stopped, far after Poe’s face was beet red and hidden in his hands.
“I suppose you wouldn’t know actually, sorry! Ghosts can do this thing where we have a little pocket realm to get energy back. It’s almost like sleeping, but you have to be very conscious of time, ‘cause ghost years are different from human years; It’s basically a whole load of technical junk, don’t worry about it. I am coming with you into town though, that one lady with the crusty chihuahua looked at you weird last time we visited the bakery, and I’m gonna mess with her. Only I get to inconvenience you while waiting for snacks!”
Huh, ghostly worldbuilding on a Tuesday afternoon. Who would have thought? He noted it away for later, and walked out the door as Ranpo appeared in front of Poe, floating down the path into the road.
--------
It was a few weeks after Poe purchased a new laptop, Lucy wanted some way to talk to him, and Poe really saw no use in having a phone either way, so he went out to the next town over and grabbed one. It was nearly an hour’s drive, and Ranpo was a menace to drive with, so if the thing ever broke, it would most likely stay like that until Lucy dragged him out of his home to fix it. He couldn’t say that it was only for personal use either, some of the new publication agencies weren’t big on in person meetings, and he had a myriad of fresh horror stories at the ready thanks to Ranpo’s presence. It had been a few years since Poe used a computer, and Ranpo died long before the idea of technology was a thought in anyone’s mind, which led to some very close calls vis-a-vis ads about animals and their diets. Somehow, the question of what to feed Karl came up. Was it okay to feed raccoons human food? He really liked grapes. One of the ads said that you shouldn’t ever feed grapes to dogs. Do dog rules apply to raccoons?
Unsurprisingly, they couldn’t figure out what they should be feeding Karl in the end. Said raccoon being unnervingly absent only added to their fear, and Poe ended up messaging Louisa in a panic.
Bookwyrm
11:17 AM
Louisa what do raccoons eat
11:17 AM
Louisa please we dont know and what if we poisoned Karl
11:19 AM
Is ‘we’ you and the ghost??
11:19 AM
Also, I don’t know. Maybe ask the guy who runs the farm shop? It’s three blocks down from the bakery, Lucy can show you.
11:19 AM
I told you Ranpos name why do you never use it
11:20 AM
Its rude to be honest
11:20 AM
Anyway were on our way now thank you for the information
Poe went to find Karl while Ranpo closed the laptop, rushing to get him down to that farming shop that Louisa mentioned while the threat of a sick raccoon loomed over them. The sound of new messages dinged from his laptop, going unnoticed as the three rushed out the door and to Poe’s bike. Shouted apologies came in bunches as he narrowly swerved past people on his bike, Karl sitting in the basket while Ranpo blew like a kite in the wind behind him, only keeping up by holding on tightly to Poe’s shirt collar. He barely saw Lucy sticking her head out of the bakery door, laughing and shouting to Louisa as he flew past on his bike.
When the farming store was in view, Poe screeched the bike to a halt, gravity sending Ranpo ricocheting forwards and crashing onto the sidewalk, while Karl was gripping the wicker basket with his paws like his life depended on it, which it kind of did. As Ranpo looked up, he yelped, and scrambled back over to Poe, out of view from the window. Even while see-through, Ranpo looked noticeably paler.
“My dad’s in there. That's his store”
Poe could not be more confused, as he assumed that if Ranpo was dead, so was his father.
“Not my actual dad. But, he sort of… raised me? I died at 14, and then the Grim Reaper was doing a thing where he was allowing the young spirits to be raised like normal kids and accompany him on work things sometimes? And when I died I was one of two kids who was a ghost at the time, and I’m realizing as I say this that he probably lied to me about that, but yeah, the guy behind the counter is Death. The Grim Reaper. Technically my dad.”
Well, that meant he could absolutely see Ranpo, and alive people probably weren’t supposed to live with ghosts for eight and a half years, so they needed a plan. It wouldn’t be good for either of them if Ranpo had to leave, and quite troublesome as well.
“I’ll pretend like I can’t see you.” Poe said, while Ranpo looked at him skeptically. “I mean! If he’s your dad he’ll probably just think that if I can’t see you, then you’ve just started haunting me? I don’t know all the ghost rules, okay!? You never answer my questions!”
It was a horrible plan, thoroughly and truly, yet Ranpo agreed to it anyway. He simply stated that he was going to hover around his shoulder and for Poe to act scared if something fell over. It was an idiotic idea, but they really, really didn’t want to kill Karl by accident.
The interior was what you would expect, the smell of soil and various animal feeds floating on the air whilst various farming and gardening tools hung on the walls. A man with long grey hair stood behind the counter filling up bags of timothy-hay and setting them to the side. Poe risked a quick glance behind him, and Ranpo was visibly sweating. He approached the counter with Karl in his bag, and the man looked up.
“Ah, hello there, do you need any assistance? If you’re looking for anything specific that we might not carry in store, please inform me and I will see if I can help you locate it in a location close by.” He flicked a glance to Ranpo behind him, just barely narrowing his eyes.
“Hello! I was wondering if you had any... raccoon feed? A few months ago this raccoon kept showing up on my porch for food, and then he broke in a few times, and then he kept breaking in so I just ended up letting him stay. We’ve just been worried that we’re going to accidentally poison him.”
He nodded, and pulled out some papers from a small stand holding pamphlets on the local wildlife.
“That doesn’t really exist actually, raccoons are generally wild and feed on a variety of things, seafood, berries, and sometimes smaller animals even; we don’t have anything on what to feed them, as we usually get people in here looking to keep them out, but these should be good for you on basic knowledge.”
Karl chirped from where he was at Poe’s side, and clambered onto his shoulder; Raccoons were always smarter than people, and loved to be the center of attention. The man chuckled and gave a small nod to Karl, who chittered back at him.
“With his size, I’d say you’d want some cat food as a standard meal, and then some eggs and fresh fruit as treats. Standard rules apply, same as every animal, no chocolate, nothing too processed, and try not to give him a lot of fats. There’s a vet in the next town over who treats wildlife. Dr. Yosano can check him for any diseases, and see if he needs anything special for way of living. He’ll probably need a name though, so you might need to think one up for him.”
“Oh! His name is Karl. He spent a week naming himself. It was quite confusing to see cheerios spelling out a name on my table every morning without reason!” Poe almost made a joke about being haunted. Almost . He thought better of it when he remembered that there was a literal ghost floating behind him, and the man in front of him was the Grim Reaper. What a world he lived in.
“Well, you got a smart raccoon there. My son once brought a squirrel into the house and kept trying to feed it candy.” The man once again shot a pointed look at Ranpo. “Anyway, we keep cat food in the back, so if you want to look around for a few minutes, I can have someone bring it out to you.”
Poe said his thanks and went to browse the seeds, the last frost date was two months ago, and if he wanted a decent corn harvest, the green beans needed to go in the soil as soon as possible. It was necessary to get the crops the nitrogen they needed, especially for planting the corn in a new bed. The squash starts ended up getting eaten by some wild elk, so he needed to find both fertilizer and weed repellent. It would be a miracle if there were squash starts in the store, but the ideal planting date had come and gone, leaving any Three Sisters kits long gone.
He could hear loud whispers from the isle next to him; Ranpo and another person talking while Poe compared fertilizers and their benefits.
“Dad says you need to visit more! It’s been eight whole years, Ranpo!”
“Listen, listen, I’ll visit in a few days, ok? I’m just busy right now.”
“With what? That guy can clearly see you. I mean, if you didn’t want Fukuzawa to know, why didn’t you just stay outside?”
“...Pull your hat down Kenji, it’s too far up.”
“You can just say you forgot that was an option-”
“Go give the man his cat food! Kids these days…”
A young kid with vibrant blonde hair and a straw hat covering his forehead rounded the corner, holding a bag of cat food in his arms.
“Here you are mister! Fukuzawa can ring you up at the counter for this, and whatever else you might need!” He handed Poe the bag, and went back to behind the counter. His hat shifted ever so slightly while walking, revealing the edges of a gaping hole, straight through his skull. It almost was imperceptible, but it was a clear bullet wound. Was everyone around him dead? Was it played out in the stars, destining him to be alive in a sea of souls? At least it was good writing material.
Ranpo was itching to get out of the store. If not for literally everyone in his immediate vicinity being able to see him phase through walls, he would have done so ages ago. He watched as Poe took his sweet time gathering gardening items, wondering why anyone would willingly want to spend their time and energy growing plants for half a year. Perplexing, truly.
It wasn’t until they had actually left, long after all worries were calmed about any accidental poisonings, that Ranpo had something click in his mind. Kenji was the one who gave Poe the kibble. Kenji , the boy with a bullet-wound through his skull, the boy who died nearly 10 years ago, the boy, who by all means, should not have been visible to Poe at all . He groaned, but didn’t bring it up, it wasn’t important unless the two ever saw Fukuzawa again, and that likely wouldn’t happen until they were out of cat food.
Oh, how wrong he was! While they didn't run out of kibble in three days, Poe was left alone in the house with his father, unaware that he knew their poorly concealed secret. It’s the worst feeling to be interrupted whilst in the middle of writing, your soul being pulled out of the events you work so hard to portray accurately; the smallest of things could knock you off your train of thought, crumbling the half paragraph you already had down into dust. Additionally, it was always Ranpo that came knocking his laptop closed, cutting him off for a much needed break.
Poe went to grab the door, the sound of metal-on-metal from the antique door knocker he had purchased a while ago shocking him out of his enthrallment. Ranpo was off somewhere else, either exploring the forest or messing around in the attic, he really had no idea. Of all people, he didn’t expect to see Fukuzawa on his doorstep.
“Ah, hello Mr. Poe! I just wanted to stop by and check up on Karl. First time pet owners usually overlook some small things, and I seem to recall you being quite panicked over accidentally hurting your raccoon on accident.”
Oh God. The grim reaper was on his doorstep, asking about Karl of all things. Was Fukuzawa’s old-man face just a clever ruse? Maybe he was concealing a horribly terrifying skull and had to hide his real face to not kill everyone who saw him from fright? The Grim Reaper could have many tricks up his sleeve but he had no way of knowing. How oblivious he was to the rules of the dead, the otherworldly staying present in his life, yet their rules unbeknownst to him. For all he knew, he may actually have been privy to them; writing always put him in an odd headspace, detaching from his surroundings to craft up a world good enough to send out to the public, it was quite… eccentric.
Nevertheless, Poe still invited Fukuzawa in to tour the house and chat over some tea. Lavender mixed with earl grey, a personal favorite of his after experimenting with infusing herbs and flowers into various different teas. A light brew with a heavy taste, not too dissimilar to the current situation; A nice and reasonable reason for a visit, accompanied by questions interweaved between idle conversation about plants shook him to his core. In his years spent writing, he knew that Fukuzawa was dancing around the subject of the supernatural, dropping off-handed comments here and there that the normal person wouldn’t catch. Living with a ghost that basically edited his works had its pros and cons, and this situation was just one more con added to the list.
The air went stale as the question of the hour was asked, a pressure weighing down on his shoulders, blanketing him in dread as he scrambled for an answer that wouldn’t incriminate him.
“Do you believe in ghosts, Poe?”
A simple question, a yes or no to the common person, yet eight and a half years surely meant something. He pretended to think over his answer, but truly, he was noticing all the little things left behind from Ranpo’s presence. All small, all minuscule, but still present to Poe.
“I mean, I don’t see a reason to? I’ve surely never seen a ghost, but if one wanted to throw a teacup at me, I wouldn’t deny that it was there.” The safe answer; a mixture of both, whilst he denied ever seeing a ghost at the same time. He wasn’t a great actor, but he was certainly good at selling his opinions, which this certainly was. He expected an array of things, all dealing with the man in front of him. What he didn’t expect was an all too familiar voice behind him.
“Boooo, that’s a lame answer! C‘mon Ed, that’s such a boring way out of the situation, I really thought that you could do better. How disappointing!”
He was not going to look behind him. Ranpo was absolutely floating behind him, probably snickering at his plight from four feet off the ground. Instead, he took a sip of his tea, not breaking eye-contact with Fukuzawa.
…Fukuzawa who was currently laughing into his fist. Poe set down his cup with a groan, raising a certain gesture to the ghost behind him as he looked down at the floor.
“My apologies, I was inclined to believe that Ranpo had informed you beforehand that I was aware of the situation. I only realized otherwise when I first arrived here.”
Of course Fukuzawa knew he could see ghosts. Of course. In all fairness, he did send a dead teen to help him out with cat food, so, that should have been somewhat of an indication to Poe. All the same, he still felt like an idiot.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you’re not just here for Karl? Your son isn’t too good at whispering, sorry Ranpo.” Ranpo gasped in offense whilst Fukuzawa nodded in agreement, clearly thinking back on many memories, “Well, I’ll excuse myself then. This is as much Ranpo’s house as it is mine, and I would hate to intrude.”
Poe left to his room and went back to his writing. This one was more of a personal project, but it still kept him entertained for a few hours while Ranpo caught up with his dad. The scritching of pen on paper both kept his mind sharp and dulled his other senses, so much so that he hardly noticed Ranpo float into the room and flop onto his bed, watching him write in silence as Poe worked diligently. Eventually, he stopped for a break, joining Ranpo on the mattress. It was later into the night now, the sounds of the day replaced by cricket songs and toads croaking outside his window. The hazy orange was almost entirely the navy blue of the night, and a sense of coziness was prominent in the air.
“Hey, Ed. Do you remember when I first stopped trying to kill you? When I went into town with you and mentioned that stuff about ghost rules? I think I should tell you about that now.” Ranpo sighed, looking at the fireflies lazily drifting in between trees, pinpricks of light shining through the window.
“I died when I was fourteen. Plain and simple. I was a kid detective in the 1800’s, and criminals didn’t like me very much. Someone took that personally, and I was called to his house for case information and dinner. Little did I know, he had ‘accidentally’ provided alcoholic drinks for us to enjoy during the meal. I was really out of it, and he tricked me into drinking poison. The last living memory I have is vomiting up blood, and seeing my house off in the distance with a lamp still lit.”
There were a few more seconds of silence while Ranpo draped the blanket over Poe.
“Time doesn’t work the same for us as ghosts, unless we’re haunting. One ghostly year is nearly fifty human years, it all passes by so fast that you just don’t think about it. Fukuzawa picked me up about ten human years after I died. I don’t remember what he told me, something about a randomized pick, but one thing led to another and suddenly I was almost a normal kid again. A few weeks later, human or undead; I don’t know, but there was another kid my age. She got splashed with a corrosive acid after being accused of witchcraft and died, and Fukuzawa took her in. It was nice to grow up like that. A mix of a ghostly upbringing and a human upbringing, I almost miss it.”
Ranpo turned on his side to face Poe’s sleeping form. He hadn’t consciously heard any of that, and Ranpo almost wanted to keep it that way. He’d love to pretend that he just appeared out of the ether, mischievous acts and loud personality thought up by an imbalance in the world’s energy levels, but every living thing had to go through something. There was no way to stay the same as you once were, no matter how many hurdles you jump to ignore it all, even the strongest stone was prone to erosion at the end of the day.
Ranpo turned off the lights with a sigh, hitting the switch by Poe’s desk after settling away the papers and ink he left out. There was a small doodle of him in the margins, smiling as his hat tipped downwards over the left half of his face. Ranpo drifted back over to the bed, and looked down at the person who had just passed out from exhaustion.
He smiled and adjusted the blanket before leaving the room, lingering in the doorframe.
“Goodnight, Edgar.” The whisper of an ‘I love you’ as the door closed drifted on deaf ears.
------------
It was the middle of June, about five weeks after Fukuzawa had stopped by for the first time, and currently time for the scheduled check-up they had for Karl. Ranpo and Poe were running a bit late, it was 3:20 when their appointment was scheduled for 3:15, however the vet was in the next town over and traffic was a menace .
The clinic wasn’t anything remarkable, sterile and clean as all doctors offices were, with blue stripes accenting the desk in the front. A woman in a lab coat sat at the computer, her black, shoulder length hair being pulled away from her face with a butterfly pin. Tattoos lined her arms, giving the appearance of bone appearing through gaping holes. Poe could almost swear he saw something move in one of them, but it might have been a trick of the light.
She looked up as the door closed behind them, grinning when she saw Ranpo floating next to him.
“Ranpo! I didn’t know you were my 3:15, what a surprise! Fukuzawa tells me all about you and your little human after he sees you guys on Sundays, what a treat to finally see him in person!” She walked out from behind the counter, shaking Poe’s hand with a firm grasp. She pulled him down a little, not enough to be noticeable, but still enough for her to say something in his ear.
“I’ll keep this quick; If you hurt my brother, they’ll never find your body.” Her tone was eerily calm, like a honeyed fly trap in the stifling summer heat, and suddenly Poe was a lot more aware of the not-tattoos on her arm- Snake vertebrae circling the bone in her forearm menacingly. Karl, the little menace, scampered off of his shoulders to perch on the doctor’s snagging her name tag as he moved. ‘Dr. Akiko Yosano’ it said, head veterinarian underneath her name in dark grey indented letters.
“Well then, I’ll get this little guy to his check-up. Take a seat right over there, and make sure that Ranpo doesn’t break anything.”
There was a vet tech looking out from the door by the seating area, half his face visible through the checkered pane of the window. He left quickly once Poe spotted him, shooting one last glance at Ranpo before walking away. He was most likely another spirit, an easy assumption to make when everyone he had met in the past few months was dead. He sat down anyway, chatting with his publisher over email, looking up every so often to make sure that Ranpo hadn’t caused any property damage. A little over an hour later, Yosano came back out with Karl in one arm and a small paper bag in the other.
“Okay, so everything’s mostly good with Karl here, all I saw was some starting signs of pancreatitis in basic scans, which can be easily explained away with the fact that you didn’t know what to feed him for a while, but he’ll need to have this mixed into his food for the next little while.” She handed him the bag and shifted the raccoon around in her arms. Karl chittered through bites of celery, lightly waving the stalk of it at Poe.
The drive home was calmer, Ranpo had left around 4, simply stating that he was bored and going to take a nap. Karl lounged on the passenger side of the dashboard, accidentally spilling small chunks of celery onto the floor after Yosano had given him the leftovers from the bag she opened for Karl as a parting gift, she was accompanying Fukuzawa for Saturday’s lunch meetings, he was told, and suddenly there was a bag of celery in his hands.
Domestic life was fun, almost specifically catered to him it felt like. Lazy days spent in the company of one another was blissful, their outings even more so. They visited the bakery so much that Louisa was almost entirely able to see Ranpo, and Lucy could when she wasn’t paying attention. It was a bi-weekly outing there, Ranpo had recently discovered that he had a sweet tooth the size of an ocean, and he didn't like going out on his own.
Sometimes people would look at Ranpo, always the same few who weren’t too sure that there was something there, but there was certainty that it was odd. Maybe he should have paid more attention to them, looked only the slightest bit closer at who exactly was looking at Ranpo weird. Maybe then, it wouldn’t have happened like it did.
The rain had been coming in droves for the past day or so, thunder starting to roll in as dusk hit. It was his favorite time to work, the wind rattling the windows as they’re struck with raindrops the size of ping-pong balls while lightning flashed over the horizon, truly ideal. It was nearing three in the morning, lamps and candles providing light as Poe typed diligently on his laptop. A knock sounded from the door as the clock struck the hour, loud and solid. Who in their right mind would be out at this hour, or in this weather? That wasn’t the knock of anyone he knew, ghostly or human. It sounded again through the silent house, both Ranpo and Karl were sound asleep for the night, so Poe was left to work in silence.
The man he saw from the vet’s office was standing on his porch, donning a thin black hoodie over a rumpled grey t-shirt. He was soaked from head to toe, the only thing dry on him was a plastic bag he clutched as if he’d die if he let go.
“Good, good, you’re awake, this would have been much more troublesome if you were sleeping.” The man shoved his way inside Poe’s house, rummaging around in the bag he carried with him and mumbling to himself. After a few seconds, he pulled out a metal rod, about ¾ an inch in diameter. There was a cross engraved shoddily on one of the ends, surrounded by what looked like Elvish to him.
‘Banishment in His Name’
He was an exorcist. An exorcist had just walked into his house. What did he know? He had seen Ranpo in broad daylight multiple times, a couple times on the street, and what Poe only hoped was for the first time at Yosano’s clinic. The way he held that stick screamed danger as well, he treated it like it was Excalibur, all mighty and powerful.
“Sir, you need to leave.” Poe gestured firmly to the open door, rain was starting to get on the rug by the entrance now, the ends of it soaked even after a few seconds.
The exorcist looked at him like he was the crazy one. “No- No, you don’t understand - You’re being haunted, I have to fix it. It could show up at any second now, it’s what the witching hour does to those wretched things, you don’t understand .” He was gesturing wildly now, swinging his arms and whatever he had in them wildly around.
It was almost in character for him, an absolutely atrocious idea that was sure to fail in some way, but at least this one was rooted in some sort of truth. Poe wasn’t the strongest. That wasn’t to say he was weak either, he could throw a punch and lift a rifle, but he was no body builder. The guy was a few inches shorter than him, and he really didn’t look all that strong. Poe took the plunge.
He was quick about it, or that’s how it went down in his mind at least, grabbing the man’s wrists as hard as he could to try and restrain him in any way possible, just long enough to get him out of the house. The exorcist started fighting him, desperately wrenching his wrists out of Poe’s grip. There was a lot of shouting, none of it heard over the intensity of the weather whipping past the door. How shameful of him, he didn’t even see the thing coming before the violent pain of a crack came from his skull, sending him to the floor instantly. There was barely time for him to register the fact that he was bleeding heavily before the second blow came, again, again, and again down on his mangled head. The last thing he felt before finally losing consciousness was the feeling of the murder weapon free falling onto the remains of his brain. The seconds he was conscious were agonizing, he wanted to vomit from the pain, but all functions of his were offline after the third blow, something much much worse than a migraine on steroids kept him down.
Ranpo came back from his nap with a karmic sense that something was horribly wrong . Poe wasn’t in his room, Karl wasn’t in any of his normal sleeping spots, and he could hear the front door open, the rain crashing onto the hardwood floor. Poe was on the floor surrounded by a pool of dark blood, all stemming from his head. Whatever killed him was also coated in the stuff, nearly at the center of it.
Ranpo broke down sobbing, silent tears wracking his being as he looked down at the body of the man he cared for with everything he had. The wind was still howling, blowing in not only leaves, but people as well.
Yosano came barreling in like a woman on a mission, she was still in her scrubs, she took a late shift at the clinic after someone found a box of cats on the road, half dead, and she still had her medical bag with her.
“What’s wrong, something is- Oh. Oh God. Ranpo, I’m so sorry, I’m so so sorry-“
Ranpo stopped listening after that. Yosano could save anyone and anything, unless it was already dead before she arrived. She could have gone on a whole spiel, but all Ranpo heard was frenzied static around him, turning his brain to cotton. It was unclear how long he sat on the floor in that horrible mess, the pool growing larger with every second spent there.
Eons or milliseconds, no one knew how long he waited before his whispered words were heard.
“Please come back. I love you. Please come back.” It was just that mantra on loop, slightly increasing in volume everytime, but nothing above a horse whisper.
“I wouldn’t leave you even if it meant death, Ranpo.”
Poe was standing across the room; Incorporeal, but still there in all of his tall, awkward glory. He was smiling while hunching in on himself ever so slightly, clumsily floating a few inches off the ground.
Ranpo was running over to kiss him before he even knew that he was off the ground.