Chapter Text
Something William didn’t expect was how boring it was to be dead. After he died, all he could do was wander around his home and look at it, discovering things he had forgotten about. He had found his old bop-it from when he was younger, but he struggled to stay tangible long enough to grab it, let alone play with it, so it sat abandoned on his bedroom floor.
William had never been allowed in the attic when he was alive; he was always told that it was too dangerous for a kid his age. But danger didn’t matter much to a ghost, did it?
He had built the attic up in his mind to be some wild lair full of equipment for dark magic, or a lab to make a nuclear bomb, anything cool, really, but all that was there were some dusty boxes and a large book.
William had squinted at the cover of the book, struggling to read the title in the low light. Eventually, he gave up and went back downstairs, disappointed in the lack of new things for him to do.
Thankfully, his stuff was still here, even if he couldn’t use most of it. His room remained untouched even after his parents moved. It must’ve been too much for them to go through their dead son’s stuff, which William figured was fair, especially considering that a lot of his stuff was still splattered in his blood.
Admittedly, being surrounded by your own dried blood all the time is a little unsettling, but at least they had taken his body. Absently, William wonders what they did with it. Maybe he was buried in the graveyard near the school? Or maybe he was cremated and thrown into the sea? He shrugged off his thoughts as he arrived back in his room. He floated above his bed and decided to go back to trying to unlock his phone.
His hand hovered over the power button as he focused intently on making his hand tangible, eyebrows raising in surprise when he saw the screen turn on, prompting him to enter his passcode.
“Holy shit!” William shouted, doing a quick circle around the room in celebration before he returned to his position, smiling widely. He made it two numbers into his passcode before he was interrupted by a loud slam of the front door.
William jumped up and quickly floated to the door, forgetting completely about the phone laying open on his bed.
Standing in the doorway was a boy. He had bright red hair poking out from behind a bandana that was tied around his head. He had a wild grin on his face as he carried boxes inside at a speed that was far too fast to be natural.
Through the door, William could see another person outside, moving at a much more reasonable pace. He couldn’t see them well from here, but they looked familiar to William.
They must’ve been moving in, William figured. A little strange considering that all his stuff was still here, but who was he to judge? He was just the ghost haunting the place.
As the figure grew closer, it struck him. That’s Vyncent!
William’s eyes lit up, and he moved towards the doorway, opening his mouth to greet him before realizing that Vyncent wouldn’t be able to hear him and deflating. Great. He thought sadly, His only friend from his old school was moving into the house he was stuck in, and he couldn’t even talk to him!
Before William could mope too much about his current situation his thoughts were interrupted by a very loud voice coming from his room.
“Hey, Vyncent? Do you know why this room is covered in blood?”
Shit! William sped towards his room to see the red-haired kid staring into his room with confusion on his face.
“What?” He could hear Vyncent’s voice from the other room, followed by footsteps trailing down the hallway.
“What are you talking about, Dakota?” Vyncent asked, peering into the room. “Oh. Well, it did say that we were buying the house as-is.” He was as matter-of-fact as ever, the only difference was a slight scrunch of his nose and a small frown.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think there was gonna be a fucking murder scene!” The boy- Dakota, apparently- exclaimed, clearly distraught by this revelation.
“Yeah, Not quite,” Mumbled William, passing through Dakota to get into the room.
Dakota shivered and looked at Vyncent, “Did you feel that? Like that sudden chill?” God, this kid was so loud, William would be getting a headache if he could.
“No? What do you mean, Dakota?” Vyncent tilted his head to look at Dakota.
“Like, suddenly there’s this bone-deep chill.” Dakota paused, expression suddenly getting serious, “In my bones, Vyn.”
William could almost laugh at the ridiculousness of this situation, but he just huffed out a breath as he continued to watch the two of them. After all, it's not like he can do much about it anyways.
“That doesn’t make sense, though?” Vyncent questioned.
“I don’t know, man! It was just…” He trailed off, “Really creepy.”
Vyncent shrugged and walked into the room, stepping out of the way of the large pile of dried blood in the center of the room. His eyes quickly landed on the phone sitting face-up on the bed, the screen still turned on.
Vyncent picked it up and showed it to Dakota, who let out a surprised laugh, “Who starts their password with 69!” He laughed, “Obviously you end it with 69.”
Vyncent raised an eyebrow, “Your password is ‘6969’, Dakota. It both starts and ends with 69.”
“Oh.” Dakota said, “Yeah you’re right, Vyn.”
Dakota’s eyes lit up, “Wait, I have an idea!” He reached for the phone in Vyncent’s hands and William groaned, sensing where this was going.
Vyncent handed the device over to Dakota, watching curiously as he hit two more buttons before shouting out in celebration. “It worked!”
“What worked, Dakota?” Vyncent asked.
Dakota turned the device towards Vyncent again. It was unlocked, revealing a cheesy home screen with two glowing wolves with some text in the center. It read, ‘there are two wolves inside of you, they are fucking.’
William resisted the urge to fall through the floor, just to avoid the embarrassment of having to watch them go through his phone, but he stayed, determined to be here, even if he couldn’t do much.
“What was the code?” Vyncent asked.
“6969 of course!” Dakota declared, clearly proud of his deductive skills.
“I really should have expected that,” Vyncent nodded sagely, a certain app on the phone drawing his attention. “Dakota? What’s ‘The Poetry Slammer’?”
William’s heart dropped.
“I dunno, Vyn. Maybe we should find out!” He passed the phone to Vyncent, who tapped onto the app.
On the screen was a seemingly half-finished poem.
Ghost boy. Never noticed boy.
Scared boy, hidin’ in a bathroom stall.
Sad boy, cryin’ alone in his room.
Lost boy, diggin’ his nails into his skin.
Hurt boy, coverin’ his scars.
Almost boy, Broken boy, Ghost boy.
But maybe a ghost boy’s what he’s meant to be?
William rushed over to Vyncent and in a rush of panic, he slapped Vyncent’s hand, sending the phone tumbling to the floor.
The movement shocked all three of them, William looking down at his hands in awe, he hadn’t been able to make that much of him tangible before, let alone move with enough force to move something like that! He was ecstatic, but he had to put that on hold until after this whole situation was dealt with.
Vyncent looked down at his hand, unmoving, “Dakota? I think I know what you mean by that chill now.”
Dakota stared at Vyncent like he’d seen a ghost, Which William guessed wasn’t wrong, “What the hell was that, man? Did you mean to drop it, or-?”
Vyncent shook his head, astonished, “No, It felt like it got slapped out of my hand. But like, by a really cold hand.”
Dakota’s eyes widened, “Do you think it’s a ghost?”
“I don’t know, Kota.” Vyncent said, “I’ve never felt anything like that before…”
“That’s so cool, dude! We should try to talk to it!” Dakota exclaimed excitedly, switching from foot to foot.
William was taken aback. Why would they want to talk to him? He was just the creepy ghost living in their new home. If anything, William would’ve expected them to want to move out if they knew he was here, but Dakota seemed… excited.
“How does that work?” Vyncent asked, making no moves to grab the phone from the floor.
“I dunno, maybe it can hear us?” Dakota asked, “Hey ghost! Can you hear us?”
William deadpanned. How the fuck was he supposed to answer that?
Vyncent, ever the voice of reason, spoke, “How are we supposed to know if they can hear us, Dakota?”
“Oh. Good point,” Dakota thought for a moment, “Hey ghost! If you can hear me, flicker the lights!”
That was better, but unfortunately, William did not know how to interfere with electricity. What he did know how to do, though, was flick a light switch. He floated over to the light switch and focused on making his finger tangible long enough to push the switch down.
“Woah!” Dakota exclaimed, “That’s so cool! There's like an actual, real-life ghost!”
William couldn’t see how this was exciting, but he might’ve been biased by the whole, ‘being dead’ thing.
Vyncent seemed surprised that it worked, “Yeah, I guess so,"
If William was able to stay tangible long enough, he would be hugging Vyncent right now. Bless him for being the only one with common sense.
But since he was unable to do that, he opted to slap Dakota in the back of the head, watching as his hand went straight through him.
"Well, this is bound to be interesting," William spoke to himself, shoving his hands into his pocket as Dakota shouted to no one person in particular
"Hey! What was that!?"