Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Phil had always had a fascination with houses. He himself had never lived in a house as a child, at least not for a very long time. The longest he’d ever stayed in a house was a week or two, and those times were usually when a member of his flock was ill, or they got caught in particularly poor weather.

His family was mostly made up of arctic tern hybrids with a bit of some other bird species like blue jays and robins mixed into the bloodline. They were a nomadic people by nature, never content to stay in one place for too long and always a bit disconcerted when they felt like they were trapped with no access to the sky.

Most of Phil’s childhood was spent camping if they were in rural areas or staying in roost hotels if they were in urban ones.

His family was a large one made up of about 20 flocks each with anywhere from 10-30 members. The flocks group owned various properties around the world, only a few of which were proper houses. Though what places were owned by the family changed from one season to the next as lesser used ones were often sold off to buy ones in more frequented locations.

Phil’s flock had had around 20 members when he’d been growing up. They’d only stayed on family-owned properties about 20% of the time, and the houses they spent even less time in. So, living in a house had never really been a part of Phil’s life.

Perhaps that was why he’d grown to be so fascinated by them.

Phil loved houses. He loved all sorts of houses. It was so interesting how many different types there were, and he was intrigued by how people would sometimes choose one and live in it for their entire lives.

Phil’s love for houses led him down the path to become an architect, though houses were not what he typically built for his job. Mostly, he was commissioned for things like large office buildings and museums, and he did love designing those things, but between those larger jobs, his eyes were always drawn back to houses.

Once Phil had established himself as an architect and had a good amount of cash saved up, he on a whim one day when strolling through a residential area near one of his newer projects, decided to pick up a rather expensive and labor-intensive hobby.

He’d started buying houses, but not to live in them. No, most of the houses he’d ended up buying were not fit to live in when he’d purchased them.

Phil bought the houses no one wanted anymore. The decrepit, the old, and the ugly: those were they types of houses Phil bought and he bought them to fix them up.

He saw something in unwanted houses that no one else could. He’d look at certain buildings that to most looked unsalvageable and could see something amazing in his mind’s eye. Then, he’d buy them when no one else would.

There was something so exciting about houses, about homes. He always moved into the houses he bought as soon as they were safe enough for human habitation. He’d move right in and get started despite still leaky roofs and drafts that left a chill in the air.

Some childish part of him loved it, loved the experience of living in a house and was giddy for the opportunity to live in a way so foreign to himself.

He always took the utmost care when fixing his houses. He didn’t do any work on houses for clients demanding things. He had no time limits. He could just fix up the house however he pleased at his leisure, and he never stopped until he was satisfied.

A lot of different work went into fixing houses, and in the early years he’d hired different people like plumbers and roofers, but over time he’d learned to do everything by himself. Except in special circumstances, everything was done by his own careful hands. He was particular about his houses and making sure they end up aligning to his vision for them.

He’d research how the houses looked when they were new, tearing up carpets to see the original floorings and peeling off layers of wallpaper to get a glimpse of what the house was and not just the shabby paintjobs it’d had. He’d try to find old pictures of the neighborhood with the intention of restoring the homes to their former glory.

He’d interview neighbors and try to see how the houses were meant to fit into the neighborhoods around them. He’d even learned to restore most types of furniture for cases where antiques were still in the houses he bought.

Then, when he was done, he’d sell the houses.

He was always just as particular about selling as he was about the renovation. He didn’t sell houses for the money like most house flippers did. He made plenty of money elsewhere. He’d much rather see a happy family who needed the house and fit it and the neighborhood than get a good price from it. Often, he even ended up taking a loss on the houses.

He’d always felt a twinge of sadness when he had to move out of a home but, well, it wasn’t in his nature to stay in one place anyway no matter how much certain houses pulled at him.

Surely, he’d have gotten bored of all of them anyway when there was nothing more to fix. Better to leave before that happened and the magic was gone.

He’d just finished one of his commissions when he found his next pet project house. His mother had messaged him that they’d decided to stop at one of the family-owned campgrounds which had been a few hours flight away from the roost hotel Phil had been staying at after selling his last house. He’d decided to meet up with his flock for a bit since it had been a while.

The nearby town where his flock often grabbed supplies had been a larger one, bordering on a small city. As Phil always did when he went somewhere new, he’d found himself wandering around and looking at the local architecture for inspiration.

He’d been wandering through one of the quieter neighborhoods, one with large, well-maintained houses and many children playing in the streets when he first saw the house.

He’d fallen in love with it before he’d even seen the For Sale sign in the front yard.

It was a stunningly beautiful three-story house even if it stuck out from the surrounding homes with its chipped paint and sad-looking sagging roof. Phil had jotted down the information on the For Sale sign instantly and had called later that day.

The realtor had jumped at the chance to show him the house and Phil was given a tour two days later.

Phil found himself even more enamored by the house upon seeing the inside. The house came partially furnished. Everything was covered in sheets to keep off the dust, but when he peaked under them, there were wonderful old pieces still in pretty good shape.

It had been a multi-generational family home, he was told, much like all of the other homes around it. This was in what was called a ‘herd neighborhood’ and was filled mostly with herding hybrids such as sheep, goats, and cows. Most herds had lived in their homes for generations. Most families were living in homes their own ancestors had built.

The family that had once lived in this house had apparently shrunk to nothing, the last of the household members dying out when Phil had only been a few years old. The furniture still in the house was the original from when the family once lived there.

It was… too good to be true, Phil thought, especially at the price point. Though, honestly, it was too late for him; he’d already bought the place in his heart.

To his surprise, his well-trained eye hadn’t found signs of any problems. There weren’t any indications of mold or structural damage. There was some water damage in the basement and the roof was in bad shape, but he couldn’t figure out why the place hadn’t sold in the last almost 4 decades.

“Okay,” Phil finally said to the realtor after the full tour of the house. “I am going to buy it, but level with me. What’s wrong with it? Why hasn’t anyone bought it in all this time?”

The realtor seemed reluctant to say, but she did eventually speak. “People have bought it,” she said. “Multiple people have tried to renovate it throughout the years. The last people bought it 7 months ago, but they gave up trying to do anything with it within a week.”

“Why?” Phil asked. “Is there structural instability? Black mold.”

“No,” she said, “Nothing like that. They just… They said it was haunted.”

“Haunted?” Phil said slowly as though tasting the word.

“Everyone who has ever tried to renovate this house has cited that as the reason they resold.”

Now, Phil had bought and renovated many homes in his time, including one or two “haunted” ones. He’d found no evidence of any hauntings unless you counted a draft or two and some faulty wiring. One home had even ended up having too high carbon monoxide levels which had caused hallucinations. Phil had figured that out swiftly since the first thing he always did after purchasing old homes was test for that sort of thing.

Phil had no doubts this “haunting” would be something similar.

“I’ll buy it,” Phil said decisively. The relator had seemed clearly relieved.

Because Phil always bought his houses up front, he was able to close on it within a week of first setting his eyes on it. In that time, he flew back to get the possessions he’d left in a storage container after moving out of the last house and rented a moving van to drive himself and his things back to the town.

His flock had already flown off by the time the paperwork was ready to sign, and there was nothing to slow him down from moving in and getting started as soon as the keys were handed to him.

He drove straight from the relator’s office to his new house. Parking the moving van in the house’s driveway garnered instant attention from the entire neighborhood.

This was not something Phil was particularly unfamiliar with; neighbors could be nosey, especially when someone moved into the unsellable house on their street. Phil watched with amusement as little heads poked up over the fences on either side of his house. When he glanced at them with a smile, they all went scampering off.

Phil shook his head, and simply started unloading the van.

Children, Phil soon realized, were not the only eyes on him. He caught the occasional curtain fluttering oddly in windows across the way and one older woman unabashedly stared at him moving in from her porch a few houses down. He waved at her. She did not wave back.

Phil shrugged the behavior off and continued moving in his things. He took the boxes labeled “kitchen” to the kitchen but left pretty much everything else in the living room for now, unsure which of the house’s many bedrooms he wanted to move into quite yet.

It wasn’t until he was unloading his last box that one of his many observers finally spoke to him.

“Moving in?” a voice called as he was locking the van. Phil glanced over to see a woman standing in the next yard over. She was leaning casually against the fence stood between them.

“Temporarily,” Phil answered, moving the box in his arm to hold it against his hip.

“Temporarily?” she asked.

“I’m not one to stay places very long,” he said with a shrug. He moved towards her as he spoke. It became clear as he approached that she was a sheep hybrid. Her hair was more woolly than curly, and her ears stuck out to the side.

“Then why are you buying a house?” she asked him.

“I’m an architect,” he explained. “I like to buy houses no one wants and fix them up before moving on.”

“I see,” she said, not quite frowning at him, but not quite smiling either.

“Actually,” Phil pressed on cheerfully in spite of the lukewarm reception. “I would have ended up talking to you at some point anyway, but I might as well ask now. Do you happen to have any photos of the neighborhood from back when the house was lived in?”

“Why?” she asked, a bit of curiosity in her tone.

“I like to try to maintain the integrity of the houses I renovate whenever I can,” Phil explained. “Some things might have to change or be updated, but I like to make sure homes don’t lose what they once were and still fit into their current neighborhoods.”

She considered him for a moment. “I certainly have some old photos from when I was a kid,” she said. “I might even have some from inside the house if you’d like those.”

Phil smiled. “I’d love to have interior pictures if you have them,” he said. “I have to admit I’m not as familiar with renovating such large multi-generational homes, but I want to do it justice. So, anything that can help to that end would be appreciated.

She nodded and it could have been in agreement, but it also looked like she was deciding something.

“Puffy,” she offered, holding out a hand.

“Phil,” Phil replied with a smile, shaking the hand. “So, you know a lot about the house?” he asked.

“I knew the original owners,” Puffy replied. “Their son was good friends with my older brother.”

“Oh, I see,” Phil said. He had seen a child’s bedroom on the second floor during the tour and had wondered about it since the relator had been vague in saying the original family line had died out. “And he…”

“Car wreck,” she answered. “All three of them together, and that was the end of the Soot line.”

“That’s horribly sad,” Phil said.

“It was a long time ago,” Puffy replied with a shrug, but there was something in her eyes that belied her nonchalance.

This was a herding neighborhood, Phil recalled. Even if the two houses had held different families back in the day, the two lineages had surely lived next to each other for generations. Having the entire family that had once lived there suddenly and ruthlessly uprooted must have left a scar on the neighborhood as a whole.

“Well,” Phil said. “I hope I can do the Soot home some justice. Maybe give it some life with a new family. Seems like a good neighborhood for a family with a lot of kids.”

“It’d be nice to have kids next door again,” Puffy agreed.

Phil glanced up at the house for a moment. The curtain in the window moved much in the same way the ones across the street had been all morning. He’d have to check if there was a draft, but that also reminded him.

“I hear the place is haunted,” he mentioned to Puffy.

“Hmm,” Puffy said with the ghost of a smile. “I’ve heard that too. That’d be odd considering the family didn’t even die in the house.”

“Well, I was told everyone that’s tried to renovate has claimed there are ghosts,” he said.

“Strange,” she replied, amused. Her eyes flickered to a nearby bush where Phil suddenly noticed a couple of pairs of eyes peeking out at them.

Phil inexplicably had a feeling that perhaps some of the alleged ghosts were a bit more alive and child shaped than his predecessors knew.

“I’ll be sure to pass along a message to any ghosts I see around the neighborhood to lay off of you,” she promised.

“I would appreciate that,” Phil said, “as well as any of those old photos you mentioned.”

“I’ll stop by tomorrow,” Puffy said, turning away. “Come on Junior, Finely,” she called, “leave the man alone and come get some snacks.”

Two little figures went darting out of the bush after her. The three disappeared inside the house next door.

With a headshake and a smile, Phil turned back towards the Soot house.

Phil didn’t do much that first day. All he did was look around the house a bit more thoroughly than he had on the tour and take off all of the sheets to inspect the furniture. Most furniture on the first floor looked to be in good condition. He might need to fix a few things up, but most of it was more than fine.

He spent a bit of time investigating the two downstairs bedrooms and ended up choosing the less furnished one for himself. While taking the furniture covers off in the more furnished room, he found most of the original owners’ personal possessions were still there including clothing, jewelry, and family photos.

His eyes caught on one family photo sitting on the dresser. It was of a smiling young couple with a boy of about 5. The parents seemed to be sheep hybrids like their neighbors, though their son showed no hybrid features in the photo.

Eventually, he’d need to empty out that room and sort through the contents, but for the time being, the other, much less personal bedroom served him much better.

It was one of the more livable places Phil had moved into, he decided after uncovering everything on the first floor. It was a bit dusty in some places and the appliances were old, but it was clear that at least the main downstairs rooms had been cleaned out repeatedly over the years even if no one had managed to get around to cleaning out the personal items.

He took a break to grab lunch at a nearby diner and picked up groceries and a more updated television than the house currently had so he could watch Netflix on something other than his phone. Then, he drove the van back to the local drop off place for the company he’d rented it from.

The neighbors’ eyes on him seemed to be slightly less antagonistic when he flew back to the Soot house, though he could just be imagining it.

His afternoon was spent uncovering the furniture on the second floor. There were three good sized bedrooms and a bathroom, though one of the bedrooms was empty and the other only had a bed and a single dresser. The third bedroom, however, was filled with all sorts of things.

It also was the only room that didn’t have furniture coverings. He’d noticed that when he’d been given a tour, but since everything still seemed to be in good shape, he’d guessed that the last owner had started with this bedroom and hadn’t remember to recover everything before selling.

The sheets that were meant to cover everything were in a pile in the corner of the room.

Phil guessed that this had been the bedroom of the little boy in the photo downstairs. The theme of the room seemed to be rather simple: sheep and blue. The walls were painted a nice baby blue color and the sheets were of a similar color but with an additional faded design of little jumping sheep.

There was a toybox in the corner and to Phil’s confusion, a few of the toys were spilled out on the floor. Had no one even touched this room enough to clean up the boy’s toys in decades?

With a frown, Phil walked over to one of the toy trucks and bent down to pick it up. He jumped when he felt something cold touch the back of his neck, whipping around, but there was nothing there except the window’s curtains fluttering lightly.

That was strange, but he shook it off, assuming it had just been a draft and his mind had jumped to odd conclusion considering the supposed haunting was on his mind. He turned and put the truck back in the toybox. Nothing else happened as he placed the other few toys scattered about in it as well. That confirmed his thoughts that the initial coldness had really been nothing.

He stood up and went about inspecting the rest of the room. Everything seemed fine despite having been uncovered for an indetermined amount of time. He felt around the windows to see if that was the source of the draft he’d felt, but he couldn’t feel any air blowing leaking through and the curtains were now still.

As he pulled away from the window, his eyes fell on a flash of color. There was a feather on the windowsill and a strange one at that. It was a bright, almost incandescent blue and about as long as the palm of his hand.

Had a bird managed to get in? Phil wondered. Or perhaps the last owner had been a bird hybrid. Phil studied the feather for a long moment but couldn’t place the species.

Odd.

He set the feather on the nearby desk for now and turned to leave, but he stopped when he almost stepped on a stuffed animal.

It was a fragile looking old blue sheep that looked as though it had been hand sewn long ago. Phil bent down to pick it up with careful fingers.

There was a slam from behind him and Phil jumped a foot, wings mantling, only to realize that he’d left the toybox slightly open and the lid had fallen shut on its own. A hand over his heart, he stood up and placed the stuffed sheep carefully on the bed.

He stepped back towards the doorway, eyes instinctually going towards the toybox even though logically he knew gravity had been the only reason for the movement.

He headed back downstairs after that and spent the rest of his evening setting up the television he’d bought earlier and getting it to connect to the wi-fi that one of the previous owners had thankfully managed to get set up in the house before bailing.

The first few days were normal. Puffy came by with all sorts of pictures from inside and outside of the house, which was a great help to Phil refining the imagine he had for this house in his head.

He spent a good couple of days cleaning everything, though he spent less time on the second floor and found himself avoiding the child’s bedroom upstairs without even realizing it until later.

He found three more of the feathers as he cleaned, but still could not identify what species they were from.

Phil spent around a day uncovering things in the basement and inspecting that water damage he’d seen before.

The basement had obviously at one point been a sort of apartment. Perhaps teenagers or young adult family members would live down there. It looked like it had originally been a set of 5 bedrooms and two bathrooms with a main living space in the middle. It still had a couple of counters where Phil imagined a small kitchen once was.

He'd need to pull up the entire floor that had been damaged as well as take down a couple of the internal walls, destroying two bedrooms. He might think of rebuilding the walls afterwards, but he’d have to think about it. A larger living space might be more beneficial for a family that moved in here.

Most of the downstairs bedrooms were used for storage and there were plenty of family heirlooms he’d have to move out before he could fix the water damage, but overall, the basement was stable and not a priority.

The attic was a different story. The attic was a huge space and knowing the type of home the Soot house had once been, Phil wouldn’t be surprised if it was originally used for extra sleeping space, but it had clearly been used for storage for years even when the Soots lived here. He doubted the family had even known all of what was up there.

Unfortunately, Phil quickly found many places where the roof had clearly leaked and there were signs that various animals had gotten in there and made some of the old boxes their homes.

Upon seeing some of the ruined heirlooms, Phil resolved that fixing the roof would be his first big project. He moved everything from the attic to the two extra bedrooms on the second floor and then started to plan a design.

The house currently had a pitched room, and according to the pictures Puffy had lent him, it pretty much always had, but Phil had a bit of a different idea in mind that he thought would still fit into the neighborhood well.

Still, even though he liked the idea with his bird brain, he had the feeling the neighbors might be a bit tetchy about that sort of change. As his resident neighborhood expert and appreciated liaison to the locals, Phil brought his idea up with Puffy for approval before starting anything.

The Soot house didn’t have much of a yard, and while that was fine considering there were plenty of spots for kids to run around and play at around the neighborhood, Phil thought perhaps turning the pitched roof into a flat roof with a nice rooftop patio would be beneficial to any family that moved in.

Despite it coming from Phil’s sky-oriented brain, Puffy voiced none of her own or other’s objections to the idea. She and the other neighbors just seemed to appreciate that he’d asked.

So, Phil took a few weeks to remove the original roof and replace it with a flat one. Later, he’d design the rooftop patio, but for now the place just needed a nice solid roof.

Throughout the whole process, Phil didn’t really see many signs of the so-called haunting. True, he spent most of his time outside working on the roof, but he still slept and ate in the house without any problems.

Sometimes he’d notice a draft he couldn’t find the source of, or he’d swear he heard footsteps creeping upstairs. Every so often there’d be a bang from deeper in the house or something would not be where he remembered putting it. However, overall, there was nothing that would send him running like the previous buyers.

The one time he’d almost freaked out was when one morning, he’d found the same stuffed sheep he swore he’d put on the bed upstairs sitting innocently on the couch downstairs. The television had also been on even though he’d have sworn he’d turned it off the night before.

Phil had not touched it. He’d simply left the house to go work on the roof. When he’d returned to have lunch, the sheep hadn’t been on the couch anymore. He’d dared to look and had found it upstairs on the floor near the bed much as it had been when Phil had walked in there the first time. Phil had left it there, thoroughly creeped out and certain he had to have just imagined its presence downstairs that morning.

That sort of thing only happened the once while he was fixing the roof though, and he’d managed to pretty much forget about it by the time the project was finished.

He’d turned his attention to the basement next, wanting to get a start on replacing the damaged floor.

The first step would be, of course, to get everything out of the basement. Unlike the roof, there was nothing pressing he had to do structurally, so he decided to take his time and sort through things as he moved them upstairs.

There wasn’t much furniture down there anymore except for a very, very old couch and some chairs. He brought those things upstairs first and found only one of the chairs looked salvageable. The other things he hauled out to the curb.

Then, he started to move the various boxes of heirlooms and junk upstairs. Most of the boxes from downstairs were clearly put there long before the Soots’ untimely deaths, though they seemed to be a bit newer than a lot of the things Phil had moved from the attic. He hauled them upstairs one by one.

That’s when the stranger occurrences began to get more frequent.

At first, Phil just assumed he was being forgetful and putting things in places he didn’t mean to while distracted. The piles he was making would get messed up and some things he swore he put in the throwaway pile would end up in the keep one.

He’d walk into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and would hear something in the living room moving, but when he went to check there was nothing there.

The worst it got was when he found a box of antique toys. Phil had glanced away from the box for a moment only to hear a whirling noise. He turned back to see one of the wind-up toys walking merrily across the floor.

Phil started to feel disconcerted as he sorted through the boxes. Sometimes he could get through the whole day without anything particularly strange happening and some days it felt like he was always sensing something strange happening out of the corner of his eye.

And then he’d finished with all of the boxes that had been shoved in the old bedrooms and moved onto the group of boxes he’d found under the stairs.

These boxes were different because they were more recent things, things that had likely only been in temporary storage like holiday decorations, a fancy tea set, and little trinkets.

Phil had been sorting through one of the boxes of trinkets like normal. He’d moved to put a small jar of seashells into the throwaway pile. However, as soon as he’d put it there, one of the old, already broken plates in the throwaway pile suddenly shatter on the ground.

The odd thing was Phil was pretty sure that plate had already been on the ground.

He’d felt cold air brush across his skin like someone was looking over his shoulder and literally breathing down his neck.

“Okay,” Phil had said as calmly as he could. “We can put that one in the keep pile.”

The cold had left as soon as Phil put the jar into the keep pile.

Phil had taken to asking out loud before putting anything into the trash pile after that. The corrections were a lot less violent when he asked first. Phil’s arm would simply be pushed by what felt like cold fingers towards the keep pile if he wasn’t supposed to throw the object away and nothing would happen if it was okay for the item to be pitched.

Phil really didn’t… he didn’t know what he was doing. He’d started out thinking that the haunting was a couple of neighborhood kids let loose by parents who didn’t want a family home ruined even if its owners were gone. Now he was asking his living room permission to throw away a paper towel with a crayon drawn Christmas tree on it.

And he was being told “no.”

He was surprised how calm he was able to be about it all.

He still slept in the house. He still cooked in the kitchen and ate while watching Netflix on the couch. He still planned out home renovations.

He just sometimes got woken up by the sound of banging doors and running feet in the middle of the night. He just sometimes felt eyes on him while he cooked and felt the couch shift next to him while he watched a movie. He just always asked permission before doing anything to the house.

It was fine.

Everything was fine.

Perfectly fine.

Until the old plumbing in the kitchen burst.

The water pressure had suddenly dropped to nothing, and Phil had known what that meant. It took him a few hours to figure out where the leak was based off the wet patch on the wall.

Phil had already anticipated that he’d have to replace all of the plumbing in the house eventually, but he’d really hoped it’d last him just a bit longer. He knew how to fix a burst pipe, but it was still going to be a hassle since he’d have to cut into the wall to get to the leak.

He was so distracted by the frustrating task at hand that he’d somehow managed to forget his… friend.

At least, he’d forgotten his friend until he had turned off the main water, had gotten his toolset, and was just about to cut into the drywall.

The air went suddenly frigid in a way that stole the breath from his lungs, like he’d stepped out of a warm car into a blizzard. Eyes bore into the back of his neck like an actual weight. There was a slam as his toolkit hit the floor.

Phil went deathly still.

“The pipe burst,” he explained through dry lips. “It’s going to damage the house. It’ll make the walls moldy and weak and will make it hard to use water. I need to cut into the wall to get to the broken part.”

There was a pause as Phil’s words were considered and then the room slowly thawed out. Phil shivered as warmth returned to his fingers and toes. He took a steadying breath even though he could still feel himself being watched.

Phil went about the task he’d set himself as calmly and as efficiently as possible, though his hands were a bit shakier than normal. There were no more protests, but the presence did not leave. It continued to watch him the entire time as he patched the leaky pipe. He’d eventually have to find a way to replace everything, but it looked like his repair should hold for now.

He stepped back from the wall, still feeling like eyes were watching him.

“I’m probably going to have to replace more of the pipe later,” he said out loud. “I’m going to leave the hole for now, but I’ll patch it up later and repaint it good as new.”

The feeling of eyes still didn’t leave.

Phil swallowed and tilted his head in the direction from which he felt the gaze coming from. He instantly froze.

There was something there.

Chapter Text

“Hello?” Phil said to the figure crouched half behind the kitchen counter. It was a little boy, the little boy, the one from the picture in the downstairs bedroom, and he was staring at Phil. At least, Phil thought he was staring at him. It was a bit hard to tell since his eyes didn’t have pupils.

That boy is not alive, was Phil’s first thought when his brain rebooted. He was translucent and, in fact, his legs and arms faded into nothing before getting to his hands and feet. Phil could really only make out his face and the upper half of his torso with any clarity. His eyes weren’t actually eyes, but voids of blue that were glowing faintly. What Phil could see of his skin was not marred but was sheet white, and he wore a faded yellow sweater.

The room was silent for a few long moments as Phil stared into his emotionless eyes.

“Hi.” The whisper came to Phil upon a breeze that blew the visage away.

Phil nodded.

Phil turned around.

Phil left the house.

He thought he probably stood outside in the driveway for about 20 minutes before Puffy came out of her house.

“Hey Phil,” she called, looking over the fence at him. “You doing alright?”

“Yeah, uh,” said Phil. “Just getting some air. I think the fumes are getting to me.”

“Oh, are you painting today?” Puffy asked.

“No.”

She gave him a confused look which was probably fair.

“Would you like some lunch?” she asked.

And well, Phil was hungry and… not really ready to go back into his kitchen at the moment, so he nodded.

“We’re not really fancy with lunch around here,” Puffy said apologetically as she poured him a cup of tea. She’d given him a ham sandwich, some Cheetos, and some chopped pineapple on a paper plate that was in the shape of a frog. He was pretty sure she’d forgotten she was making lunch for an adult until she handed it to him. “Kids are in and out at different times, so we don’t usually cook anything. You should come by for supper sometime. That’s usually a bit more put together.”

“This is great,” Phil assured her. “Thank you.”

She smiled at him and went to pour herself a cup of tea before sitting across from him.

Two screaming children and one shrieking goat suddenly blasted by the kitchen door, racing down the hall. She winced apologetically.

“I’m sorry about them, it’s…”

Phil waved her off with a grin. “They’re fine,” he said. “I’ve spent plenty of time around kids myself.”

“You have?” she asked, curiously.

Phil nodded. “I grew up in a flock of about 20,” he said. “We never really,” he waved his hand at the house around them, “settled like you lot, but that just meant the kids had more new and interesting things to get up to at every turn.”

“Oh, even kids who’ve lived in the same neighborhood their entire lives can find new things to get up to, trust me,” she said. “My brother and I once decided to try to keep a squirrel as a pet. We hid it from our parents in the basement and there is still a hole where it chewed through the wall down there.” She pressed a finger to her lip. “Come to think of it. Now that I’m the head of the household, I should probably stop hiding that hole and fix it.”

“Nah,” said Phil with a grin. “Gives the house character.”

“And if I’m not careful, more squirrels.”

“I could patch it up for you if you’d like,” Phil offered. “Not the worst hole I’ve patched in a house.”

“I might take you up on that,” Puffy said. She tapped one of her fingers on the teacup and watched him take a bite of his sandwich. “Why do you renovate homes?” she asked after a moment. “Most people who’ve bought the place next door have been doing it for cash. They just wanted to gut the place. A few even wanted to turn it into apartments, but you seem different.”

Phil shrugged. “I’ve always liked houses,” he said. “It’s why I became an architect in the first place. There’s just something about them that’s so charming. Houses say a lot about the families that lived in them and the neighborhoods they’re a part of. There’s history there and they tell a story. Going through and gutting one gets rid of all of that history. Why do that when you could put in a little effort and preserve it instead?” He glanced at Puffy. “Your home is very nice, by the way.”

She snorted. “It’s a mess,” she said dryly.

He shook his head. “It’s lived in,” he said. “It’s the sort of house I would like to have.” He popped a Cheeto into his mouth. “If I were the type to live long term in a house, that is,” he added once he’d swallowed. “But no, your house is lovely. It’s alive.”

“Thanks,” Puffy said with a bit of pride in her eyes, and she should be proud of it. It was generations of work and love that had gone into this house.

They chatted amicably for a bit then about her house and the different oddities it had beyond just a squirrel hole in the basement.

She waited until he’d finished his food and had another warm cup of tea before broaching the topic of why he was there in the first place.

“So,” Puffy said, looking at him. “What’s got you shaken up this morning?”

Right, Phil thought, taking a sip of his tea to give himself a moment to think. How did you tell someone that you just saw a ghost in your kitchen while still seeming like a sane person?

“You said the last members of the Soot family died in a car accident away from the house, right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she confirmed, brow knitting.

“You’re sure,” Phil said. “None of them died in that house?”

“Yes, Phil,” she said. Phil was pretty sure his looking like a sane person goal was not being met. “I’m sure.”

“Well…” Phil said, trying to figure out where to take the conversation from here. “It’s just… I.”

Puffy sighed heavily. “The kids aren’t messing with you, are they?” she asked. “I made sure to tell all the neighbors to lay off, but Milly’s always been a bit techy with strangers and her grandchildren really are sweet kids, but they can get into trouble and…”

“No,” Phil said. “It’s not. It’s not the neighbor kids.”

She looked at him for a long moment. “You don’t think the Soot house is haunted?” she asked, dubiously.

Well, yes. Yes, he did.

“I don’t know,” Phil said instead of admitting that outright. “It’s just that things have been happening and I’m starting to think, whatever is going on, maybe some of the things that spooked off the old contractors weren’t just the local kids with bedsheets.”

“But haunted?” she asked. “The Soot house?”

“Look,” Phil said with a sigh. “Can you just humor me for 10 minutes? You’re sure a normal car crash away from the house is all that happened? There was nothing odd about the accident? Or even about the family before it?”

Puffy seemed uncomfortable at the question, so Phil tried to change his tactic slightly.

“Even if it’s not haunted. I’m not saying the house is haunted.” The house was so haunted. “I’d still like to know something about the people whose possessions I’m going through. It’s honestly a bit unsettling sometimes. Everything is still there. Maybe learning a bit about them will make it feel less unnerving.”

Puffy looked off to the side, still looking a bit uncomfortable, but she did sigh.

“I was just a little girl,” she said. “I don’t really have much more information than what I’ve already said. I was 6. Their kid was 8. One day he and my brother were climbing the oak tree out back and the next.” She shrugged. “Gone. It shook everyone. The neighbors, my parents, my brother.”

She paused, picking up her teacup and swirling the liquid around for a moment, but she didn’t take a sip.

“It was the first time my brother or I were ever exposed to death and my brother was never quite right after it. The two of them had been best friends. That’s why I have so many pictures from inside their house. The two of us were over at their place all of the time. They were nice. The Soots were kind and well loved. They hosted neighborhood parties often. They were very charismatic. Any event whether they were hosting or not, they’d usually provide the music. Mrs. Soot liked to play the guitar and her husband sang. The whole neighborhood honestly never recovered from their deaths. That’s part of the reason people have been so territorial over that house in the past few decades.”

“And their son?” Phil prompted.

“Wilbur,” Puffy said with a brief smile. “Wilbur was so sweet, but also a mischievous thing. He and Schlatt, my brother, would get into so much trouble all of the time, but Wilbur was a charmer, and he knew how to use it even at 8. He used to steal sweets from any adult that gave him the opportunity and would redistribute them among us kids calling it ‘revolution’.”

She glanced away from Phil.

“He didn’t deserve to die so young. He hadn’t even shown his hybrid traits yet.”

“He hadn’t?” Phil asked.

“Late bloomer, I guess,” she said.

A never bloomer, Phil thought.

“Here,” Puffy said. “Let me show you something.” She pushed back her chair and walked over to a chest, opening one of the drawers. “This is the album I dug up for the pictures I gave you before, but I didn’t show you all of them.” She flipped open the book and set it down in front of him.

It was a picture of a child’s birthday party and Phil could recognize the living room he’d spent quite a bit of time in since purchasing the Soot house.

A boy sat in front of a giant birthday cake that looked like it could feed 50 and have leftovers. Recently blown out candles were still on the cake and the boy had a wide smile on his face.

It was the same boy Phil had seen that morning, but the version in this picture was so very alive, a fresh 8 if the banner hanging behind him was anything to go by and smiling widely at the camera.

He and a group of kids were all seated at a card table.

“That one’s me,” Puffy said, pointing to a little girl with her face half away from the camera, “that’s Schlatt.” She pointed to the child right next to the birthday boy, “and that’s Wilbur.” She pointed to the boy that Phil recognized from that morning. “Want to know what happened right after this was taken?”

Phil raised an eyebrow. “Sure,” he said.

Puffy smiled and turned the page. Another picture had been taken, clearly only seconds later judging by where everyone was still sitting. However, this picture had a bit of a blur to it as the subjects were moving. Wilbur had turned from the camera and now had a handful of cake in his fist. He was shoving it in the face of the boy Puffy had identified as her brother.

“He deserved it, I assure you,” Puffy said, grinning at the boy getting cake smashed into his face.

Phil laughed. “What did he do?”

“You know,” Puffy said. “I don’t even remember anymore, but I know he deserved it.”

“And there’s no sibling bias there, I’m sure,” Phil joshed.

“None at all,” Puffy said, her eyes sparkling.

She looked down at the picture, eyes softening into something sadder.

“Oh, I miss them. It’s been so long now, but I do still miss them.”

“Them?” Phil asked.

Puffy shook her head. “I haven’t seen my brother in decades,” she confided. “Honestly, he’s probably as dead as Wilbur by now. Losing his best friend at that age, it messed Schlatt up. Our parents tried, but nothing worked. He needed professional help but getting him a therapist wasn’t even a thought that’d cross any of their minds back then. When he didn’t get any help, he sought it in other places. He got into drugs and dropped out of school. Our parents tried to crack down, but it wasn’t enough. He ended up running at 17 and no one’s heard from him since. The family tried to track him down a few times, but if he’s alive, he covered his tracks well.”

“I’m sorry,” Phil said, looking down at the picture of the two boys: one was dead and the other had self-destructed, but they looked so happy and alive in the picture. Wilbur’s face was the one that had stared at him this morning even if his eyes were swallowed by blue now unlike in the picture. Phil couldn’t help but feel his heart gentle towards the boy who’d died far too soon.

“It was a long time ago,” Puffy said, trying and failing to brush it off. “That’s why I’m a children’s psychiatrist now.”

“You are?” asked Phil.

“Yep,” she replied. “I own my own practice and everything.”

“That’s impressive.”

“Thank you,” Puffy said, reaching for the photo album again. “Do you want to see more pictures?”

“I would,” Phil agreed.

They spent a while going through the rest of the photos, many of them including Wilbur, Schlatt, and Puffy. As they flipped through, the idea of Wilbur got less and less scary. The child was a ghost, sure, but he’d been a person once. He’d been a little boy. And really, what had he done to Phil but play with toys and get mad when Phil tried to throw away his things? He’d never tried to harm Phil and with the soft way Puffy spoke of the boy, Phil didn’t feel like he ever would.

“Thanks,” Phil said once they’d looked at the last picture. “That actually helps a lot.”

“Helps with what?” Puffy asked. “The haunting?”

“A few of those had a different angle of the living room,” Phil replied with a shrug.

“Oh,” Puffy said, looking down at the album. “Fair enough.”

Phil stood up. “Thanks for the lunch,” he said. “Let me know when you want that hole patched. It’ll be a thank you for the sandwich. For now, I should probably get back to the house.”

He did not see Wilbur again for quite a while after that first time. He continued on with his renovations as planned. He finished up sorting through the last of the things from the basement, making sure to ask out loud for Wilbur’s opinion. Wilbur continued to give it in the customary nudges he had before.

While Phil did not see Wilbur again, he did start to sense him lingering around a bit more. That, or he was just getting better at noticing when the boy was around.

Wilbur spent most of his time on the second floor, Phil had deduced. A lot of that he spent in his own bedroom, but Phil had noticed him drift around the bathroom and the other two bedrooms as well. He’d even noticed a few of the more interesting objects from the attic Phil had temporarily stored in the empty bedroom were out of place. He would also venture downstairs to the first floor frequently, mostly to watch Phil when he was working on the house. Occasionally, Phil would feel him brush past while watching television.

Phil had gotten into the habit of going to visit him in his room at the end of the day if he wasn’t already lingering around Phil. He was careful to always knock and ask permission to come in as he’d come to understand that it was Wilbur’s space. Usually, the door would pop open slightly after Phil’s knock.

Phil had taken to picking up the toys that were scattered around the room and putting them back in their home in the toybox. Wilbur didn’t seem to mind as long as it didn’t seem like Phil was trying to take one of them out of the room. He’d sometimes give the room a quick dust or tidy up the couple of blue feathers he found in the corners. Other times he’d just sit on the window ledge or the edge of the bed and have a brief conversation with the walls about what he planned to do to the house the next day.

He made sure to tell Wilbur when he finished sorting through everything from the basement and told him that he planned to do more to the basement the next day. It had been an invitation that Wilbur had taken him up on.

“The floors got damaged,” Phil said out loud, sitting in the middle of the empty basement. He could feel eyes on him. He pointed to where the water damage could clearly be seen. “I’m going to have to replace the floor. Those walls are also a bit damaged. I’m probably going to have to knock them down. I was thinking of leaving them down and making those two bedrooms part of this living area, but I’m open to reconstructing the bedrooms later once I’m done.”

There was no answer, but Phil could feel cold air brushing the back of his neck.

“Now,” Phil continued, still facing forward. “I don’t have pictures of the basement, but I can kind of tell what the flooring was like before from the undamaged parts. I think we should leave it as hardwood, but we could do different types of wood and colors if you want.”

He’d brought his laptop downstairs and brought it into his lap to type in the site he normally ordered supplies from. He searched up different options for hardwood floors. Then, he set the computer down on the floor next to him.

“There’s a lot of different options we can get,” he said. “I was thinking maybe something just a bit darker than the original. What’s your preference?”

There was a long stretch of silence. Phil could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up straight as the presence behind him grew in intensity. Phil held his breath. There was a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye and Phil saw an arm reach out towards the computer, pointing at one of the choices on screen.

“Yes,” Phil said. “That’s a really nice one.”

The stranglehold on his chest loosened as the arm disappeared and the presence backed off a bit letting Phil breath.

“Now,” Phil cautioned. “I’m going to order that today, okay? Once it gets here, I will have to tear up the old flooring and make sure there’s no damage underneath before putting our flooring in. It will look bad temporarily, but it will look really, really good once I get our new floor in. Like I said, I’m also going to go ahead and tear down the damaged walls at that point, but again, we can put them back if you want.”

There were no clear signs of protest from the presence lingering at his back, so Phil took that as consent.

He ordered Wilbur’s choice of wood right after their conversation and then spent the days waiting for the order’s arrival setting up all of the tools he’d need to start tearing up the floorboards. Once done with that he starting to go through a few of the boxes that had been in the attic.

He brought the wood inside once it arrived and let Wilbur study it for approval. Only then with the replacement flooring already in the house and after explaining again why he had to replace the floor did he finally start tearing up the basement flooring.

He started to see Wilbur more frequently while he worked on the basement, though it was never an almost full Wilbur like he had been that day in the kitchen. Phil mostly saw him in brief flashes in the corner of his eye. These flashes slowly grew more and more frequent as the days passed.

With permission, Phil ended up not rebuilding the walls he’d torn down, but simply expanded the living area. Once he’d replaced the old floor with the new flooring, he asked for Wilbur’s opinion on paint and carpet for the remaining three bedrooms much in the same way he’d asked about the floor. He’d also gone ahead and replaced the downstairs plumbing and the bathroom fixtures in the one remaining downstairs bathroom.

He found the little boy sitting almost fully formed in the corner of one of the bedrooms one of the days after putting in the carpet.

Phil slowly put down the toolkit he’d been carrying and approached the boy’s flickering image. He sat down a few feet away.

“Hey,” he said. “Wilbur, right?”

The boy stared at him and then nodded

“I’m Phil,” Phil said. “I’m not sure if I’ve ever introduced myself.”

The boy shook his head.

“I’m here to fix up your house, okay?”

Wilbur nodded once again.

“Alright,” said Phil. “Feel free to hang out and watch as much as you like. You’ve very good at picking out things. Do you like how the rooms have turned out so far down here.”

Another nod.

“Okay,” Phil said. “I’m going to get to work.”

He’d had a flickering shadow sticking to him that morning, though the boy had faded away again by lunch. Phil still went up to his bedroom that evening and tidied up before bed.

The shadow that lingered in Phil’s peripheral became a more common thing, to the point where it was there more often than not during the working hours. It was only around Phil, however.

The neighbors had started to get used to the idea of Phil fixing up the Soot house and had started to nose around, wanting to see what he was doing to the house. Many had managed to invite themselves over under the guise of gifting him casseroles or pastries.

Wilbur ended up being an early alert system for Phil about these visits because the second any living being other than Phil stepped foot onto the property, he’d vanish, retreating to invisibility and to his room.

He clearly did not like people being in his house, because he’d be a bit tetchier after someone visited. He was more likely to throw things when Phil did something to piss him off and his toys often ended up in strange places those days.

He would always calm down after a bit though. One time Phil was even pretty sure he’d done his best to apologize to Phil after one of his more intense tantrums where he’d broken one of Phil’s dinnerplates. A plate Phil didn’t recognize had ended up on the counter the next day. It didn’t at all match his plates, but Phil had still made a point to use it though very carefully as it was clearly old (and after testing to make sure it wasn’t painted with lead). He thought that Wilbur was pleased by his usage of it by the way he seemed to flicker at a different frequency whenever he was around while Phil used it.

The plate debacle had been during the beginning of Phil’s kitchen project. In truth, Phil had probably taken more time than strictly necessary to investigate the current set up and plan out how he was going to redesign it. Pretty much everything in the kitchen was currently on its last leg with how old it was if not already broken and he’d known that would be the case going in. Still, he waited until he’d looked at all the fixtures and sketched out a plan before broaching the topic.

If he was going to replace the kitchen sink, he should probably replace the plumbing first. That of course meant tearing into the walls of both the downstairs and the second story as the first story had the kitchen and two bathrooms and the second floor had one bathroom.

He explained as much to Wilbur even though they’d already somewhat had the conversation when the pipe had burst.

“Why?” asked Wilbur with his oddly echoing voice. He was seated on the floor in front of Phil who’d taken a seat on the couch. He was curled up with his legs pressed to his chest and his stuffed sheep off to the side. Phil had never seen the stuffed sheep move or seen Wilbur actually touch it, but it seemed to appear in different places, usually when Wilbur was feeling morose.

“The plumbing is getting old. Remember when the pipe burst? That’s going to keep happening if we don’t fix it and it will get water everywhere in the walls which is bad. It can destroy walls and flood the house. We don’t want to paint the walls and fix the floors only to get more water damage.

Wilbur seemed to consider this. He did not seem happy about it. “Okay,” he said anyway.

“I promise to put everything back to right afterwards,” Phil said.

Despite his agreement to Phil’s plan, replacing the plumbing distressed Wilbur more than any person arriving at the house had. He’d been mostly fine with Phil tearing up the basement, but he was a bit more protective about the first floor and was especially protective about the second.

Phil spoke to him calmly about what he was doing and why as he worked even if he’d already explained it a dozen times. Wilbur was rarely soothed by this, and Phil spent a good amount of his time working with freezing fingers and a sensation similar to a balloon recently rubbed on wool pressing to the back of his neck. Yet, Wilbur did restrain himself from doing anything destructive.

Even when Phil was done for the day, Wilbur would still seem anxious. He often would not let Phil into his room when he stopped by in the evenings. The few times Phil did get to go into the room, he had a lot to tidy up as far more toys and clothes than usual would be scattered around the room.

In the night, Phil was more often woken to sounds: footsteps and slamming doors and frantic murmurs in the walls.

He was quick to hasten his work on the project as much as possible while not decreasing the quality of the repairs.

Finally, he’d finished replacing everything and could move on to fixing the walls. He could almost feel the tension in the house slowly release with each hole Phil patched.

“See,” Phil said with a smile. Wilbur had appeared to watch him clean up his supplies in the upstairs bathroom. He was sitting in the hallway outside of the bathroom and his void eyes seemed to be roving over the newly patched up walls. “It’s all fixed up now, just like I promised. We just need to do a bit of painting and it’ll be good as new. Plus, the house is healthier for it.”

“It should be yellow,” Wilbur said. It was the first he’d spoken to Phil since the plumbing project had begun, and it was the most words he’d spoken at once ever. “It’s always been yellow.”

“I’ll make it yellow then,” Phil promised.

“Good.”

“I’ll get some paint squares tomorrow morning and we can pick out what looks best. I’ll have it all nice and painted by tomorrow night.” It wasn’t the order he’d usually do things. Usually, he’d patch up the walls downstairs as well before painting everything but having the second floor done would make Wilbur feel best, so he’d do that.

Phil thought he must have proven himself trustworthy with that project. He’d told Wilbur what he was doing and why and then had carried through on those promise.

Wilbur quickly became more comfortable with Phil. He started to linger in Phil’s shadow even more than he had before, curious not only about what Phil was doing to the house, but what he was cooking for dinner, what he was watching on Netflix, and what he was doing on his phone.

He also started to speak more and more, the number of words he spoke each day increasing exponentially until Phil’s day was filled with echoing childish chatter. Wilbur seemed to have a lot to say about many, many topics and Phil was the only outlet he’d had in decades.

Phil didn’t mind. It was nice to have company. Phil had been without his flock for a very long time and even though it was by his own choice, not being content with the lifestyle his family chose, he still found himself lonely at times.

It was hard to be lonely anymore with a little ghost talking his ear off as he ate his dinner.

“…and that is why I hate anteaters,” he said decisively. His hands were fully visible and folded in front of him as he sat across from Phil at the table. His serious expression made him looked like a miniature businessman proposing a new advertising strategy to his boss. All he needed was a little suit.

Instead, he was wearing an orange shirt and a pair of jeans. The physical versions of these objects were currently in the bedroom upstairs, Phil knew. He did not understand how ghostly clothing choices worked, but Wilbur had been changing his outfit more frequently lately. He did still often wear the yellow sweater Phil had first seen him in however, as it seemed to be his favorite.

“Uh huh,” Phil said in agreement to his anteater slander.

He did not even know where the topic of anteaters had come from, but Wilbur had made it his mission today to explain to Phil exactly why anteaters were the worst animals ever and an ‘affront to God.’ Finally, after hours of this, he seemed to be finishing up.

“You sure know a lot of things,” Phil said.

“My mom used to take me to the library every Saturday and would let me rent the documentaries from the grown-up shelves.”

“Oh, did she?” Phil asked. Despite how much Wilbur spoke now, it was the first time he’d mentioned his parents.

“Yeah,” Wilbur said, “but she and Dad both left when we died. Only I stayed.”

Phil blinked. He did not know much about how ghosts worked, but he honestly hadn’t been sure Wilbur even understood his deceased state, yet he’d just mentioned his death so casually and without even a flinch.

“Oh,” Phil said after a moment. “I’m sorry. I bet you miss them.”

“Yeah,” Wilbur said, looking down at his still clasped hands.

Phil scrambled for something more to say. Wilbur just sounded so sad in that moment. “You said you like documentaries,” he said.

“Uh huh,” Wilbur replied.

“Well, you know Netflix?”

Wilbur scowled at him. “You mean the weird VHS player that I still can’t figure out how to work?” he asked, crossing his arms sullenly.

Phil’s lips twitched. “Yes, that,” he replied.

“What about it?”

“Netflix has a ton of documentaries. Would you like to watch a couple with me tonight.”

Wilbur perked up, bouncing up and down a bit. “Yes!”

So, that is how they spent their night. Phil, Wilbur, and Wilbur’s stuffed sheep sat side by side on the couch while the television droned on about different topics. Wilbur turned out to be insatiable when he had unlimited documentaries at his cold dead fingertips. They did not just watch a couple of documentaries. They watched hours and hours of informational movies about history and various animals.

Phil tried to at least half pay attention to the first two but ended up subtly scrolling through his phone as the night pushed on, trying to stay awake as exhaustion started creeping up on him.

Eventually, between the fact that they were watching a documentary about the making of silverware through history and it was edging on 2am, Phil gave into his bodies demands.

He fell asleep.

There was still a documentary playing in the background when Phil finally woke up with a crick in his neck from falling asleep sitting up on the couch.

He groaned and moved to sit up only to notice something warm was leaning on him. Phil glanced down in confusion to see a small little body curled up against Phil’s side with a stuffed sheep in his arms. A bit of drool leaked out of the little boy’s mouth and onto Phil’s shirt as he snoozed peacefully.

Still not fully awake, Phil reached out a hand to touch the boy’s face only to find soft but solid skin that was warm to the touch.

His hair was a bit crusty where Phil touched it like it had hairspray in it and he was confused to find he was wearing a suit jacket that looked a bit silly on someone so small. Phil didn’t think he’d ever seen someone this young in a suit except maybe at a wedding.

Or a funeral.

Phil hesitantly cupped his cheek, again surprised by the solid warmth coming from the body laying half on top of him.

It was Wilbur, but with flushed cheeks instead of pales ones and fingers that clutched at Phil’s shirt instead of phasing through it.

Phil poking at his face seemed to be waking him because he stirred with a disgruntled churring sound that had Phil flinching in surprise. That… sounded like a bird sound, but Phil had never heard anything like it before. However, much like he could recognize that a person speaking Italian was speaking a human language, he could tell it was a bird sound and he could tell the mood of the sound. He simply could not deduce the full meaning.

Wilbur’s nose twitched as Phil’s flinch woke him fully, and his eyes flickered open.

They weren’t blue.

His eyes were a deep and expressive chocolate brown that looked up at him hazy with sleep before sharpening just a tad. “Mmm, Phil?” he slurred.

“Wilbur,” Phil replied.

He frowned and cuddled up to Phil more.

“I feel weird, Phil,” he complained, closing his eyes again and burying his face into Phil’s chest.

“Uh,” Phil said, pretty sure he could sus out the origin of the weird feeling. “Do you?”

“I want something,” the boy whined.

“What do you want?” Phil asked. Idly, he found himself rubbing the boy’s back gently, still marveling at the fact that he could do that.

“I don’t know,” he huffed. His grip on Phil grew tighter.

That is when Wilbur’s stomach growled.

Wilbur pulled back slightly, looked down at his own stomach. He frowned.

Then, he turned to blink up at Phil. “I want cereal.”

Chapter Text

The surprise on Puffy’s face when Phil knocked on her door at… Phil didn’t even know what time it was, would be comical if Phil wasn’t in the middle of freaking out.

“Do you have cereal?” Phil asked her, noting she still seemed to be in her nightclothes.

“What?” she asked.

“I need cereal. Do you have any cereal?”

“Uh, yes,” she said. “Come in.” She stepped back from her front door and let Phil follow her to her kitchen. “What’s going on, Phil?” she asked as they walked.

“You know how I thought the Soot house might be haunted?” Phil asked.

“Yes...”

“It’s not,” Phil said.

“Oh,” Puffy replied, “Well that’s good then.”

“There is no ghost,” Phil told her as she reached up into her cabinet to grab a box of fruity pebbles. “The kid is alive. He’s in my kitchen and he wants cereal.”

“One of the neighbor kids snuck into your house?” Puffy guessed.

“No,” Phil said. “It’s not a neighbor kid. It’s… it’s his house.”

“There’s a kid living in your house?”

Was there a kid living in his house? “I…think so,” Phil said.

Puffy gave him a confused look.

“Here, just,” Phil said. “Come see. It’ll make a lot more sense.”

“Okay,” she said skeptically. She stopped to throw a coat over her nightshirt and then let him lead her back to the Soot house.

However, when he and Puffy stepped back into the kitchen, Wilbur was no longer there. Or at least, he wasn’t there in the same way he’d been when Phil had left, but Phil could still feel that pseudo-electric charge in the air that told him Wilbur was present.

Puffy was eyeing him dubiously, and he expected her to at any moment ask him if he’d had some sort of nightmare, but Phil put up one finger to ask her to wait.

“Hey, Will,” Phil said. “Can you come back out?”

A disconcerting rolling sensation churned through the air at the request and Phil glanced at Puffy just now remembering how much Wilbur hated other people in his house.

“She’s a friend,” Phil soothed. “It’s okay. I promise. Will you please come out for me?”

There was a moment where Phil didn’t think anything would happen but then he felt the air shift slightly and there he was. He was transparent once again with voided out blue eyes, but he was visible. Phil heard Puffy inhale a sharp breath of surprise but didn’t pay her any mind for now.

Instead, Phil knelt down to be at Wilbur’s level and held out the cereal in offering. “I got some cereal like you wanted. Don’t you want to eat some?”

Wilbur considered the box for a long moment.

“Fruity pebbles?” Wilbur asked. His voice was echoey again, but not as much as it usually was. It was somewhere between his usual and how he’d been this morning when he’d woke up next to Phil.

“Yep,” Phil said. “Come on, weren’t you hungry?”

Wilbur titled his head and then life slowly began to bleed into him as Phil watched. The blue glow faded from his eyes as his natural brown eyes came into focus and color spread out from the apples of his cheeks until his entire body was solid and flushed.

“I’m hungry,” Wilbur said.

“Alright. Do you want it in a bowl with milk or do you just want some cereal?” Phil asked.

Wilbur’s little face screwed up in an expression similar to the one he’d worn while insulting anteaters. “With milk Phil. I’m not a savage.”

Phil snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, alright little shit. I’ll go get you some milk.”

He straightened, intending to grab milk from the refrigerator only to remember Puffy’s presence.

“I don’t understand,” she said, breaking out of her stunned silence as Phil moved. “I don’t… Wilbur?”

Wilbur turned to look at her with his eyebrows drawn together. “Who are you?” he asked, eyes hooded with distrust.

“I’m Puffy, she said. “Puffy from next door.”

Wilbur shook his head with a frown. “No, you’re not,” he said. “Puffy’s a little girl.”

“Wilbur,” Phil reminded as he pulled the milk out of the fridge. “I think you’ve been…” he hesitated, “gone for a very long time.”

He frowned over at Phil, looking ready to respond, but Puffy was already scrambling for her phone. “I have pictures,” she said. “Our family has a group Facebook page. We have an album dedicated to old family photos.”

She pulled up the page on her phone and despite the leeriness still in his expression, curiosity apparently drove Wilbur to lean over and look.

“See, here,” she said. “This is me from when I was six. You’d recognize me here, right? Then, here’s one from a couple of years later,” she swiped across the screen, “and here’s one from a couple of years after that.”

Phil had finished pouring a bowl of cereal by the time they’d gone through enough pictures to convince Wilbur of the validity of Puffy’s claims.

“Oh,” he said with an expression Phil couldn’t identify on his face. “You really are Puffy.”

“Yeah,” she confirmed. “I am.”

He sort of grimaced. “I’ve been dead for a very long time, huh?”

“I’m not sure if we should call whatever is going on with you dead,” Phil said, “Come here and eat your cereal.”

Wilbur’s stomach rumbled violently as though suddenly reminded again that hunger was a thing. He nodded eagerly and scrambled over to sit at the table in front of his bowl of cereal.

Phil and Puffy exchanged a look. Phil just shrugged and took a seat at the table next to Wilbur. After a moment, Puffy took a seat across from them. Her eyes never left Wilbur as he ate, as though she was worried he’d disappear if she looked away.

Which… he just might.

Wilbur devoured the bowl of cereal quickly, picking up the bowl to drink the last of the colorful milk at the end, leaving him with a milk mustache.

The contrast between that silly sight and the next words out of his mouth gave Phil whiplash.

“I am dead though,” Wilbur said, returning to the conversation from before without missing a beat now that he’d satiated his hunger. “I remember dying. A truck hit mom’s car and we all died. There was an ambulance and everything. If I didn’t die, I’d be in a hospital, not haunting my house.”

That was all true, however, “You don’t seem very dead right now,” Phil pointed out.

Wilbur blinked down at his own very fleshy hands and then shrugged. “I was dead though,” he said. “So, I have to be dead now. You don’t just stop being dead after being dead.”

Phil reached out a hand towards him. “May I?” he asked.

Wilbur gave him a curious look but nodded. Phil laid a hand on his forehead like he was taking the boy’s temperature. Wilbur instantly pressed back against the touch.

“You’re pretty warm for being dead,” Phil said and then moved his hand towards the boy’s neck to feel for a pulse. It strummed steadily under Phil’s hand. “And you have a heartbeat.” He moved his hand to hover under Wilbur’s nose. Wilbur scrunched up said nose at that even as warm breath puffed over Phil’s fingers. “You’re also breathing and just ate. I didn’t go to medical school, but I’d say that counts as alive.”

“I did go to medical school,” Puffy said, “and yes, I’d say that counts as alive. How that’s possible though, I have no idea. Especially considering he hasn’t aged a day in literal decades.”

Phil looked between the two of them. That was right. Wilbur was supposed to be older than Puffy.

“What exactly do you remember from the car crash?” Puffy asked.

“Hmm,” Wilbur said, a line showing up on his forehead as he thought really hard. “I remember I was hurt really badly. I was bleeding and Dad had been squished by the truck since it hit his side. Mom wasn’t moving and was bleeding too. The ambulance got there, and the doctors were trying to talk to me, but then I went to sleep. That’s when I died, I think. I don’t know how long it was, but eventually I woke up.”

Phil couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable with how blasé he was when he spoke of his parent’s death as well as his own almost death. Yet, he guessed it made sense that he’d accepted it after all this time. That or he’d grown numb to it having no way to process anything for decades.

“Could he be a phoenix?” Phil asked. Phoenix hybrids were pretty rare, but they cropped up every so often.

Puffy shook her head. “Phoenix come back to life within days,” she said. “Plus, they burn when they die and that suit…” she trailed off.

“What?” Phil asked.

“That’s what they put you in for your funeral.” Puffy said with dawning horror. “You were buried alive.”

“I don’t think so,” Wilbur said with a frown. “I’d already died by then if it was after my funeral.”

“Wilbur, you’re alive right now,” Puffy said, seeming to struggle a bit to put her thoughts into words. “You were buried. And now you’re alive.”

“Do you remember anything between, er, falling asleep after the car crash and ending up here,” Phil asked.

“Oh yeah,” Wilbur said easily. “I didn’t wake up here.”

“Oh, you didn’t?” Phil asked, not expecting that. He’d been under the notion that Wilbur was somehow tethered to his house because of how possessive he was of it. Then again, if he truly wasn’t a ghost, that wouldn’t make sense.

“No,” Wilbur said. “I woke up somewhere else.”

“Where?” asked Phil.

And he’d spoken about the car crash that had destroyed his life in one fell swoop with a nonchalance that bordered on disturbing, but here he seemed to stutter. Literally, his entire visage flickered in and out twice before solidifying once again.

“I don’t know,” Wilbur said after a minute. There was just the barest tint of an echo to his voice. “It was dark, and everything hurt. I couldn’t move much because I was boxed in.”

Wilbur paused and looked down at the table for a brief moment before seeming to shake off his gloom.

“Then I could move though!” he said. “I figured out I could go through things, and I wasn’t trapped anymore. No one could see me when I tried to talk to them, so I decided to walk home. Since I was obviously a ghost, I decided I should just haunt my house. Then people started to move my things and I’d get mad and throw things at them until they left. Phil’s nice though,” he said, smiling over at Phil. “I like him.

“You were buried alive,” Puffy said. Wilbur just frowned at her, looking fully prepared to argue he’d been buried dead, but Puffy cut him off. “We need to call the police.”

As it turned out, and it really shouldn’t have been a surprise for Phil, Wilbur was not a big fan of the police coming to his house. Phil and Puffy quickly realized this fact when he disappeared once again and refused to come out.

The police likely would have not believed Phil’s story if he did not have an account by a well-known psychiatrist in town to support his claims.

…

Also, if one of them hadn’t made the mistake of picking up the stuffed sheep Wilbur had left on the couch that morning.

She’d gotten a plate thrown at her head.

Phil had attempted to talk to boy back into corporality, but beyond just not liking strangers being in his house, he also was likely scared and confused about the fact that he was not as dead as he’d thought he was.

Nothing Phil said managed to convince him to turn visible, let alone return to his physical form when the police were around. The police department sent many different sets officers over the course of the next two weeks, but other than the occasional object being lodged at the strangers, Wilbur didn’t let his presence be known.

After enough accounts from officers that there was really something invisible throwing things at them, they managed to get a judge to sign off on an order to dig up Wilbur’s grave. As anticipated, the child sized casket was empty. The only signs anyone had even been buried in it to begin with were the fingernail marks scratched into the inside of the lid.

That news had sickened Phil and he’d wanted nothing more than to give the boy a hug. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option at the moment.

Even after the news that Wilbur was most certainly alive somehow due to the empty casket, he still refused to appear when anyone except for Phil was in the house. When it was just Phil, he’d appear across the room, not quite tangible, but visible. He’d proceed to glare at Phil and refused to speak.

“I’m not going to apologize for calling the police,” Phil finally said to him after a month of this. He was seated at the kitchen table, trying to eat his lunch. However, it was difficult to eat when void blue eyes stared at him accusingly from behind the living room doorway. “It was objectively the correct response.”

Phil got to watch him walk all the way over to the table, staring at him with dead eyes all the way, and slap Phil’s sandwich out of his hand onto the floor.

He made eye contact with Phil for a second and then disappeared once again. Phil heard Wilbur’s bedroom door pointedly slam shut the next moment.

“That is not the appropriate way to express our emotions,” Phil called up the steps.

All of the lights in the house went out in response.

Phil had had to reset the breaker because the little shit had shorted out the power.

Nothing worked to improve Wilbur’s mood and he spent most of his time pouting in his room when not staring at Phil. There was nothing Phil could do to make him go corporal. It was upsetting for Phil knowing that he was there and real and alive, but also unreachable. He still was of the opinion he and Puffy had done the correct thing by notifying people that Wilbur was alive, but he hated that Wilbur was so upset. He couldn’t even try to reason with the boy considering Wilbur would disappear any time Phil tried to discuss it with him.

Phil didn’t know what to do. So, he continued to fix up the house, though he kept himself to small projects not wanting to upset Wilbur more. Life returned almost to how it had been before Wilbur had started interacting with him, when it had just been Phil being lightly haunted by the boy.

He didn’t chatter to Phil while Phil made himself dinner or join him while he watched movies. Even the noises at night had dropped off. It was almost more eerie for the house to be silent through the night after having gotten used to being woke up by the sound of slamming doors or footsteps a couple times each night.

It wasn’t noise that woke him up one night almost two months after the first time Wilbur had woken up alive. Instead, Phil was jerked out of sleep by a gut-wrenching dread.

Still half asleep, he had no idea what was happening, but noticed the room was as cold as an ice box.

It felt like someone was staring at him.

Phil’s gaze shot down towards the end of the bed to see glowing blue eyes staring at him through the dark.

“Wilbur?” Phil croaked.

The little boy’s form started crawling up the bed towards Phil’s face leaving no impressions on the parts of Phil’s body they seemed to touch other than the sensation of creeping cold. Phil honestly half expected the boy’s head to rotate 180 degrees as he scuttled across the sheets.

“Did. Did you need something?” Phil asked him when Wilbur came to a stop, cool breath whispering across Phil’s face. He stared at Phil for a long moment, lips pulled into a frown and then the blue glow to his eyes dimmed as the bed next to Phil dipped suddenly under his weight.

Wilbur’s warm body fell over Phil’s chest, the boy’s head flopping onto the opposite side of Phil from his knees.

Phil stared at the ceiling for a long moment questioning every choice he’d ever made that led him to this moment.

Then, he patted the back of Wilbur’s crusty hair.

“Are you done being mad at me?” he asked.

The only answer was an agitated puff that blew warm air across Phil’s arm. Wilbur’s hands clenched tightly at Phil’s shirt.

“Alright, come here. That can’t be comfortable,” Phil said with a sigh, reaching for him. Wilbur gave a protesting squawk as he was dumped from his spot on top of Phil onto the bed. The sound once again pinged as a bird sound even though Phil couldn’t decipher it.

Phil was quick to offer one of his arms in sacrifice, stretching it out so the boy could nestle himself against Phil’s shoulder. Little knobby knees dug into Phil’s side as Wilbur curled up into a little ball and scootched closer.

Wilbur was fast asleep within minutes and Phil was quick to follow him into slumber.

Wilbur’s pouting became a whole lot less distressing and almost became amusing after that, mostly because Phil finally managed to figure out how to convince the boy into corporality. Wilbur had made himself corporal exactly three times. Two of these times had been to fall asleep on top of Phil and the other had been because he wanted to eat fruity pebbles.

The first reason was a bit hard to replicate. Phil did learn that if he put a movie on Netflix and took a nap on the couch, sometimes he’d wake to a little alive boy pressed to his side. This was slightly more frequent if Phil shifted his wings into existence, as Wilbur seemed to like to hide under them when he had the chance.

It was fledgling behavior. Whatever kind of bird or bird adjacent thing Wilbur was, that was the same.

The problem with the napping strategy was that it was not consistent. Sometimes Wilbur seemed to want to cuddle up to Phil and sometimes he did not. More often than not, Phil woke up from his nap still alone. Besides, most of his time spent with Wilbur corporal was then spent with Phil asleep, and Wilbur would usually leave as soon as Phil was awake.

So, Phil decided to try a different strategy. He needed something that Wilbur would consistently want to do, but that required him to be physically present. Luckily, despite the many years that had passed, Puffy had some information in that regard.

They started with food as that had worked once before. Puffy remembered that Wilbur whenever he was allowed to pick (and sometimes when he wasn’t) where a group went to diner, he’d choose a dinner only a few blocks away from the house and ran by one of their neighbors. The diner was still open, though the ownership had been transferred over to the next generation by now.

They still mostly had the same menu, and while Puffy did not remember Wilbur’s order, the old man who now only worked at the restaurant on Tuesday mornings and Saturday afternoons did remember it. He’d apparently always order the same thing when he came in, and the old man remembered it because it had been Wilbur’s father’s order too though cut in half with curly fries instead of straight.

Phil instantly upon learning this put in an order for Wilbur’s preferred meal, chocolate milkshake and all, as well as something for himself, and then took it all home.

To be even more enticing, Phil set out the meal on the coffee table so they could eat on the couch instead of at the table, and then called for Wilbur.

“Hey Wilbur,” Phil called up the stairs, figuring he was likely lingering in his room. “I bought you a cheeseburger and fries from a place called Lenny’s down the street.”

Phil waited for a few seconds and then heard footsteps on the stairs. He looked up and was happy to see a fully solid boy descending the stairs.

“I got you a milkshake too,” Phil said with a smile as the boy approached.

Wilbur crossed his arms and gave Phil an impressive scowl. “I know what you’re doing,” he said hotly.

“Do you not want them?” Phil asked, arching an eyebrow.

Wilbur narrowed his eyes but walked over to plop himself down on the couch.

Phil tried to keep the smile off his face as he booted up Netflix and started up a documentary in the background as they ate.

Wilbur ate everything Phil had brought him, but he started to get droopy by the end. He finished the last of his milkshake and curled up on the couch to half doze while the movie played in the background.

He always seemed to be tired when he was in the physical realm. Phil didn’t know enough about whatever he was to know if he should be worried about that fact. Did being a ghost make him tired? Was there something wrong? What could Phil even do if there was something wrong?

Phil finished his own meal a bit slower than Wilbur had eaten his own watching the little boy’s head bob as he tried to stay awake. He was still in the suit he’d been buried in and there was make-up on his face and hairspray in his hair.

“Hey,” Phil said once he finished eating his own dinner. He placed a hand on Wilbur’s shoulder and the boy leaned into the touch, sleepy enough with a full stomach to temporarily forget his ire. “Would you want to take a bath real quick?”

Wilbur blinked a bit and looked up at him. He nodded sleepily but didn’t move to get up from the couch.

“Here,” Phil said, standing up himself. He was easily able to scoop the light body into his arms. Wilbur didn’t protest the move. In fact, he turned his face into Phil’s neck and clung to his shirt.

Phil carried him to the upstairs bathroom, figuring that was the one he’d be most familiar with even if the bath had been replaced since he’d last used it. Phil set him down on the toilet seat and turned to start running a bath.

Wilbur was watching him when he turned back around. He looked more awake now, but still seemed pretty sleepy.

“Just a quick one, alright,” Phil said. “To get that gunk out of your hair and off your face.”

Wilbur nodded.

Phil had luckily stocked the bathroom with the basics and grabbed shampoo, conditioner, and soap from it as well as a clean towel.

When the bath was full, Phil turned the water off and then hesitated, looking at him.

“Are you… Do you usually take baths by yourself?” he asked Wilbur. He was about at the age where kids started to bathe themselves, and Phil wasn’t sure where Wilbur stood on that.

“Yeah,” Wilbur said.

“Okay then,” Phil said. “I’m going to go find you something to wear from your room and then I’ll wait outside the bathroom. Shout if you need anything. I won’t be far.”

“Kay,” the boy said, rubbing at his eyes.

Phil ducked into Wilbur’s room. It looked like it always did. He’d found that despite the years they had been in Wilbur’s closet, most of his clothes were still intact. Most of the things in Wilbur’s room were oddly intact and clean. Phil would think that the room had suspended itself in the same way Wilbur’s body had if he didn’t notice that the patterns on most of the clothes were faded.

He found the yellow sweater Wilbur favored in his ghost form as well as a t-shirt to go under it and soft pajama pants.

He could hear the sound of water lightly splashing when he returned to the hallway outside of the bathroom, but he still knocked anyway. “You okay in there?” he checked.

“Yeah,” Wilbur called back.

“I have a change of clothes. I’m going to put them inside the door, okay?”

“Okay,” Wilbur agreed.

Phil opened the door a crack and slipped the change of clothes inside. Then he waited, leaning against the wall opposite of the bathroom.

Wilbur was pretty quick with his bath, and it only took a few minutes before the door was creaking open once more.

Phil smiled when he saw the boy’s clean face and towel tousled hair.

“Feel better?” Phil asked.

Wilbur nodded.

“Why don’t we get you to bed,” Phil suggested, reaching over to guide him towards his bedroom with a hand on his back. Wilbur climbed up onto his bed at Phil’s urging and Phil grabbed a comb from the boy’s dresser.

Wilbur hummed contentedly when Phil reached for his hair, happy to let Phil comb through the now clean locks. He was practically asleep by the time Phil finished, so Phil carefully tucked him into his bed.

He slept through the night and even came down for breakfast before eventually disappearing again.

Over the next few weeks, the government eventually stopped sending police officers and started sending doctors, therapists, and social workers.

Wilbur was as impressed by most of these strangers as he’d been by the police officers. Eventually, after a good dozen or so doctors, many of whom seemed more interested in Wilbur’s hybrid abilities than the fact that he was a child whose health condition was unknown, there was one that seemed pretty good.

Wilbur seemed to sense the same thing that Phil had because he was a bit more tolerable of the man than he was of most of the people in his house. Phil decided to take a chance on the doctor and try to convince Wilbur to tolerate a checkup.

He invited the doctor to the second floor.

“Wilbur,” Phil said, knocking lightly on the boy’s bedroom door. It creaked open under his hand and Phil stepped into the room. The doctor respectfully hung back in the hallway. “The doctor’s here again. Could you come out for just a bit?”

The lack of response was a clear enough denial.

“What if I gave you a present?” Phil asked, pulling a recently bought stuffed whale out of the plastic bag he’d carried upstairs.

Wilbur’s bed noticeably had many more stuffed animals stacked on top of it than it had a few months prior. It also had a brand-new set of sheets and piles of different textured blankets. His stuffed sheep had its own place on his nightstand where it was easily accessible.

There was still no response to Phil’s bribe offer.

“He’s really soft,” Phil enticed, stroking a finger over the stuffed whale’s head. “Don’t you want to feel him?”

Wilbur blew in on a breeze from nowhere, his eyes still void blue. He glared past Phil at the doctor in the hallway.

“Please Wilbur,” Phil begged. “Just a quick check-up. That’s all I’m asking. Just to see how you are.”

“I also have lollipops,” the doctor offered.

“A stuffed animal to hold during the check-up and a lollipop after,” Phil tempted.

And finally, finally, Wilbur bled into the world of the living. He held out his hand wordlessly for the whale and immediately hugged it to his chest once Phil forked it over.

Phil looked over his shoulder at the doctor and nodded. Only then did the man step into the room.

The check-up went surprisingly smoothly considering Wilbur’s reluctance to allow it. The doctor measure his height and weight and then listened to his heart and breathing. He’d even managed to convince Wilbur to give him a bit of blood for tests, which had surprised Phil.

Wilbur had remained corporal even after the doctor was done, likely in order to have the promised lollipop. Yet, even once the doctor left and he was done with his candy, he stayed around to eat dinner and watch movies with Phil on the couch. Phil carried him to bed when he fell asleep.

The blood tests they got back were… disturbing to say the least. Specifically, the toxicology test. Phil hadn’t really even considered it, but it did make sense no matter how horrifying the concept was. He had traces of formaldehyde and glutaraldehyde: embalming fluid in his blood.

The doctor said it did explain some things like why he always seemed tired when physically present. He’d developed acidosis, but luckily the doctor was able to treat that and his body seemed to be working through the toxins and replacing them with new blood every time he was in the living world considering the levels when his blood was taken again a few weeks later.

They also started some genetic testing and while a lot of that still hadn’t come back, they’d confirmed he definitely was not a sheep hybrid. No one knew what he was, but the general consensus was whatever it was probably explained why he was alive. The doctor agreed with Phil that he was something like a phoenix.

Of course, even without the doctor’s agreement, Phil would have been pretty sure Wilbur was a bird hybrid by this point.

Wilbur began spending more time fully corporal after the doctor started treating him, seeming to feel better physically. It came with things like eating three meals a day and sleeping in his bed most nights. It also came with things like trills and chirps and whistles to express things like hunger or tiredness.

The sounds were still somehow both so familiar and completely foreign to Phil. His brain did not understand the sounds exactly, but they did ping very quickly on fledgling-needing-things instincts.

Wilbur hadn’t known he was a bird. His entire family had been sheep as long as anyone could remember, but apparently somewhere along his parents’ bloodlines there had been some mystery bird and the stars had aligned in Wilbur for him to express those traits.

Once he was told he was probably a bird hybrid of some sort, he did say that he thought he might have shifted into a bird sometimes while incorporeal. (Things apparently got fuzzy sometimes when he was not around physically.) Yet, even with that knowledge, he still struggled to shift any of his hybrid traits into being.

He managed to pull his wings out eventually. They were blue, unearthly looking things with golden tips that Phil had carefully preened whenever they appeared despite having never seen anything like them before.

Things settled down eventually for the most part once Wilbur was given a clean bill of health by his doctor. Different scientists still wanted to do some tests, but between their one trusted doctor and Puffy keeping them at bay in addition to the fact that if anyone came calling Wilbur didn’t like, he could just go invisible and lob household objects at them, it wasn’t too much of a bother.

The only thing that didn’t really settle down was the social workers, in fact, as the government understood the situation more and more, those calls became more and more persistent.

They quickly learned not to try to take Wilbur and put into a foster home by force. The last one who’d suggested such a thing had been egged for his efforts.

The one they sent after him was more cautious. She was a dog hybrid with a warm, open face. “Wilbur,” she said to the flickering figure in front of her. Phil had managed to get him at a table and mostly visible, but he’d refused to go any further than that. “I understand this is hard, but you need a legal guardian.”

“This is my house,” he said with a threatening rattle. “I live here.”

“I know,” she said. She side-eyed Phil briefly and then leaned closer to Wilbur across the table, “but someone needs to take care of you. We have options. There are a few nice, registered foster families that are willing to take you.” She pushed a small stack of files at him. “We have a nice family of sheep like your parents were. Or if you want a type of bird family, there’s a local flock of chickadees.”

“I don’t want chickadees,” Wilbur said, going corporal briefly only to slam his fist down on the table next to the files.

“If you’re looking for a bird hybrid,” Phil interjected. “Couldn’t I become a foster father.”

Wilbur turned to face him, eyes brown even though most of the rest of him was in his ghostly form. “You want me?”

The social worker was frowning in a way that edged on a sneer. “Migratory birds are typically not considered good foster placements,” she said.

“And why not?” Phil asked.

“Foster kids, especially ones like Wilbur need something stable.”

“I can be stable,” Phil said instantly.

She eyed him with a grimace.

“I sort of own the house,” Phil said. It was a bit of a legal grey area at the moment since Wilbur definitely inherited the house, was legally an adult even with an 8-year-old body and had never abandoned the property. “I’m a bird hybrid as well. He likes me. We’re a good fit.”

“Ah, but you are also an arctic tern hybrid,” she said with a condescending smile. “I doubt you’d even be interested in a few months’ time.”

The implication that he’d loose interest in any child depending on him, let alone Wilbur who he’d personally coaxed into existing again over the past half a year, based on the fact that his family liked to move homes frequently stunned him to silence for a moment.

The same could not be said for Wilbur.

I want Phil!” Wilbur shrieked and, oh, yeah, there was a bird hybrid in there somewhere because both Phil and the social worker winced at the sound. “I want Phil! I want Phil! You can’t make me go with anyone else! He said he wants me! I want Phil!”

“Wilbur…” she said, somewhere between scolding and exasperated.

“AHHHHHH,” he screamed. It was not a human scream. It was some unearthly bird-like shriek that Phil might expect from a creature from hell.

And it did not stop until the social worker fled from the house.

They sent a new social worker.

This one clearly did not like the idea of Phil fostering Wilbur either, but she didn’t voice her disapproval. She just set them up with the correct paperwork and gave Phil a withering glare as she instructed him not to move while legally responsible for Wilbur.

Apparently, if he wanted to fly off, he needed to give Wilbur to another foster family. If he eventually adopted him, he could move, but would need to take Wilbur with him. She spoke like she expected Phil to abandon a chick even if he wanted to move. What did she think flocks did with their young?

He gritted his teeth through the lecture however because it meant he got the papers signed off on.

He’d be looking into adoption as soon as possible, but not because he wanted to move away. This was Wilbur’s home, and he was attached to it, and Phil… well Phil thought if he had to stay in a house, it was a good house to stay in. He couldn’t even see leaving at this point even if that went against what his instincts were supposed to say.

He did, however, want Wilbur out of the foster system’s hands permanently. Sure, Wilbur had proven they couldn’t do much to him, but Phil still didn’t like the way the social workers had looked at him and Phil.

For now, though, Phil was legally his guardian which was a relief. When he carried the boy to bed that night after he fell asleep during a documentary once again, there was no place Phil would rather be than that still half unfinished home.

Wilbur’s age had been a bit difficult to calculate. They’d ended up going through the process to get his age changed so he wasn’t legally in his 40s. The paperwork for that had been dreadful.

Wilbur had asked when they changed his age if they could change his birthday too. He said it would feel weird to celebrate his old birthday without his parent. His original birthday had passed months ago, and he’d spent most of the day incorporeal in his room. Phil had let him do what he wanted to grieve both his parents and his past life.

Today, however, was his new birthday, so Phil was throwing him a party. It was mostly being held on the newly completed rooftop patio, though the house and small backyard were also open to the guests. Wilbur had invited the entire neighborhood and pretty much everyone had shown up.

The neighbors, even the ones too young to have ever met Wilbur, had been overjoyed when the news broke that he was actually alive and home. Phil had met everyone on the street since Wilbur had started being willing to see people. Wilbur was the neighborhood darling, a missing piece of their community sliding back into place unexpectedly. It didn’t matter how odd the circumstances were or that he was not technically a herd hybrid, the community was willing to accept him without question.

That open armed welcome had extended to Phil as well and he now got on well with most of the neighbors. However, there was one member of the community Phil had yet to meet, because he wasn’t quite a member of it anymore.

Puffy had figured that even if her older brother, Schlatt, was somehow still alive, he probably wasn’t much changed from the last time she’d seen him. He’d never come home and her parents’ efforts to find him through the years turned up nothing. But, well, she’d figured he still deserved to know about Wilbur if she could manage to find him, and so she’d tried.

She’d been surprised to find him sober, though only relatively recently so, in a town 2 hours away and with a 3-year-old son.

Puffy had told him about Wilbur as delicately as possible, and he’d apparently not known how to take it. Wilbur’s death had been what had sent him into the spiral he’d just managed to drag himself out of for his son’s sake. If the fact that Wilbur wasn’t dead had been mind bending to the entire community, it had to be even more life flipping for him.

It had taken Puffy a while to talk him into coming and seeing his old friend for himself, but he’d agreed to come to Wilbur’s birthday party.

Phil hadn’t wanted to get Wilbur’s hopes up because Schlatt had been a bit flakey when it came to communicating with Puffy over the past couple of weeks, but he’d still decided to warn the boy and had shown him the one current picture of him Puffy had managed to get him to send. It was a picture of him and his son.

Phil had been worried when he still hadn’t shown up an entire hour into the party but then he noticed a car pull up outside. Since the only person invited to the party who would have come by car was Schlatt, Phil quickly pulled Wilbur aside.

Puffy went downstairs to meet him and show him where they were. The other party goers made themselves scarce then, though Phil imagined they’d still be watching from the sidelines.

The man Puffy led onto the rooftop looked tired and not because he’d gotten up early to drive here. Phil knew he was only a few years older than Phil himself, but he looked decades older. Any resemblance to the boy Phil had seen in the picture of Wilbur’s 8^th birthday was gone. One of his horns was badly chipped and his teeth when Phil saw a flash of them as he spoke to Puffy looked, well, like a drug addict’s teeth.

Yet, he seemed to be holding the very anthesis of himself in his arms. Held against Schlatt’s shoulder was a very young boy with little stubs that would one day be horns poking through his hair. He wore a onesie with a pattern of little mini tacos on it and held onto the chipped horn of his father with one hand. His opposite thumb was in his own mouth as his eyes looked around at the various party decorations curiously.

Schlatt and Wilbur met eyes then, and Phil had to wonder what they were both thinking.

“You look old,” was the first thing Wilbur said, because of course it was.

“You don’t,” Schlatt returned easily. “Guess I did manage to catch up to you in age in the end, eh?”

Horror seemed to flicker across Wilbur’s face. “Hey, wait, no!” Wilbur protested. “No fair! I’m still older than you!”

“Wilbur, this is your 9^th birthday party,” Schlatt pointed out.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m still older,” Wilbur said, crossing his arms.

“Riiight,” was the response. He bounced the toddler in his arms when the child turned his face to him. “Sure you are.”

Wilbur’s mouth dropped open in offense. “Phil,” Wilbur whined. “He’s being mean to me on my first new birthday!”

“Oh no,” Phil replied, reaching down to ruffle his hair. “What a travesty.”

Wilbur glared at him and then at Schlatt once again. “I’m older,” he grumbled to himself, but then seemed to let it go for the moment. “Is that your baby?” he asked curiously, looking at the toddler who’d turned curious eyes on Wilbur’s display.

“Nah,” said Schlatt. “I left mine in the car. Picked this one up off the street.”

Wilbur scowled at him, unimpressed.

Schlatt’s lips pulled up into a half smile and he bent down to give Wilbur a better look at the toddler. “This is Tubbo,” he said.

Wilbur looked at the child. “Hello Tubbo,” he said cheerfully. Tubbo perked up at the sound of his name. “I’m Wilbur. I’m your godfather.”

“Oh,” Schlatt said in surprise. “Er, I’m not sure about that…”

“You promised I’d be godfather!” Wilbur said, offended.

“Ah, yes, I did do that,” Schlatt conceded, “but you see, Wilbur. Currently, you are 9.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Wilbur insisted.

He reached forward and snatched Tubbo from his father’s arms before Schlatt could protest. Tubbo seemed thrilled by this development judging by the way he tried to grab Wilbur’s face. It was a bit of a comical sight since Tubbo was honestly a bit too big for Wilbur to hold him.

“He’s my godson,” Wilbur said. “No take backs!”

“I…”

“I’m going to feed him cake! Do you want cake Tubbo?!”

“Wait, I…” Schlatt stuttered, but Wilbur was much too quick for him, dashing off towards the already cut cake with the toddler. “What just happened?”

“Wilbur just nabbed your kid,” Puffy said. “Good luck getting him back.”

“This is the weirdest day of my life,” Schlatt commented. “And I once did LSD in the back of an antique store that sold decorative skulls.”

Puffy reached down to pat him on the shoulder.

Phil glanced over at Wilbur who’d managed to get a slice of cake. “Wilbur, no,” he shouted across the roof. “That’s not how we feed babies.”

He hoped Schlatt had brought another onesie.