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“Forget it,” Daniel yelled, turning away and walking to his car. “I got better places to be, pumpkins to carve, trick or treating to do. Happy Halloween, Johnny!”
“Ha, as if I’d question that, enjoy your pumpkin time or whatever.”
They stood outside a large house, which some would even call a mansion. There was no light visible coming from inside it at that time, which could have given them a warning about what was to happen later, but didn’t. Overall, it seemed, in fact, abandoned. Its walls lacked a fresh coat of paint, some windows were broken and there were some tiles missing on the roof.
Annoyed, they went their separate ways. Miguel had organised the whole thing, promising it would be a fun outing from the dojo, and still a useful lesson the students could implement in their karate. But as soon as Daniel figured out that it was compulsory to invade an abandoned house, that was where he crossed the line. That and the fact that rumours told that the house was haunted, and it was Halloween, but he preferred to leave it at that.
Johnny, on the other hand, had no morality issue in exploring the forgotten residence, if it wasn’t for the absence of all the students, and Daniel leaving. He sure as hell wouldn’t barge in a haunted house alone. But no one needed to know that either.
Therefore, it came to the time where both men intended to go into their cars, and their separate ways. Imagine their surprise to find both cars locked, and no keys in sight.
“Did you take my keys, asshole?” Johnny shouted, stomping his way up to him.
“Of course not! How old do you think I am, Johnny? Besides, mine are gone too.”
“Wonderful, that’s just... perfect.”
As they ranted about their situation and how they would get out of it, the sky went dark. Heavy clouds made their way above their heads, closing in the sky, turning the lovely blue colour of a chilly autumn evening into a dark menace, day turning into night as the downpour threatened to fall.
“I don’t care, Johnny! I’m just saying our keys have to be here somewhere!” Daniel insisted, scouring the ground with his eyes as he used his cell phone to shed some light, revolving the dirt with his foot.
A droplet of rain fell on the back of his neck.
“Look, I think it’s gonna...”
Before he could finish the sentence, a strong wind blew, nearly dragging them away, which was followed by a torrential storm, so uncommon for the time of the year, but not less soaking.
Simultaneously, which surely should have startled them, and perhaps did, the front door to the house sprung open, inviting them to the dark interior, drier, but not less frightening or any safer.
They ran inside and closed it behind them, the first of many mistakes, for when they tried to open it later, it wouldn’t budge.
“Shit,” Johnny cursed. “It seems we might be stuck here for a while, nice move, LaRusso.”
“Shush,” Daniel silenced him, holding a hand up as he looked up past the enormous staircase and to the second floor. “Didn’t Miguel say this place was abandoned?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Then why is there a lit fireplace upstairs?”
Johnny looked up and sure enough, he could see the gigantic fireplace, flames dancing and twirling.
“I’m gonna check it out.”
“What? Are you crazy?!” Daniel whispered, trying to keep it down.
“I’m cold, I’m wet. Besides, if there are people living in here, we might as well surprise them before they surprise us, right?”
“Right,” he replied, watching Johnny go up the stairs, “if there are people .”
As they reached the second floor, they weren’t surprised by poor homeless people in need for some warmth like they expected, and hoped for, but by... nothing. There was no one and nothing out of the ordinary, except for the fire burning unignited, which was odd on itself.
Johnny sat on the armchair, dragging it closer to the fireplace so he could warm up.
“You’ll get dust all over your clothes.”
“Relax, Danielle, I don’t care.”
He slumped back, while Daniel walked around the room, exploring.
“Geez, you’re unbelievable...”
There was a vast bookshelf on the opposing wall, filled with antique books Daniel would kill to get his hands on, but couldn’t wrap his mind around taking them home, that would be stealing, right? But he could take a look at them now, it wasn’t like they were going anywhere anytime soon. He browsed through the titles, ranging from centuries old readings to the most recent being from the nineties.
“Strange...” he mumbled to himself, flicking through the pages.
“What?” Johnny answered, not getting up from the comfort of the chair.
“Didn’t Miguel say this place’s been abandoned for the last fifty years?”
“Think so.”
“Then how come there’s an edition of Moby Dick from ‘92?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. See if you can find any magazines with hot babes in there.”
“Gross.”
At that, Daniel returned the book to its rightful place and continued to explore the spacious room. A nice antique rug covered most of the floor, stained and beaten up with the unrelenting effects of the passing years, but beautiful nonetheless.
“You know what else doesn’t make sense?” he said, kneeling to observe the delicate pattern formed by the yarn.
“What?” Johnny answered, uninterested.
“Why didn’t anyone take any of this stuff away? Steal it, or whatever...”
As he analysed the object, he pulled it a bit off the ground, revealing a clearly uneven set of floorboards among the others.
“Johnny.”
“What?”
“Come here, there’s something here.”
Daniel peeled the rest of the rug away, discarding it in the corner.
“What am I looking at?” Johnny asked, as he approached him.
“Look, these floorboards are of a different colour.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well, there could be something buried underneath it, we should take a look!”
“Come on, man, leave that be, what good could come out of this?”
But it was already too late. Daniel grabbed the first plank with his bare fingers; it was loose, as were the others, so he easily lifted them up and away, one by one, until it revealed not one, but two skeletons lying in the small pit.
“Holy shit!”
“Great, I told you not to mess with that, it’s Halloween, an abandoned mansion, it was so obvious, man!”
They didn’t want to show it, but they were both scared. The skeletons looked real enough, holding each other as if they died like that, in each other’s arms. They were still in their clothes, and freakily enough, some hair was still attached to their scalps. One had pitch black hair, the other was eerily blonde.
“You know what...” Daniel started, “they kinda look like us.”
“What?!”
“See, this one has black hair and he’s in jogging pants... Fuck, Johnny, he’s wearing my clothes.”
“A-and the other’s wearing mine.”
Without uttering another word, they turned on their heels and ran to the stairs. Daniel beat Johnny to it, as he was closer and slightly faster, fuelled by fear. He ran down the stairs so desperately he even missed a step or two and in a matter of seconds was back on the first floor and aiming towards the front door.
However, as he touched the floor with his feet, he heard a series of loud noises and dust and dirt engulfed him from behind. When the dust settled, he saw that the stairway had collapsed behind him, not a single step was left standing.
“Shit, Johnny!” he yelled, fearing the worst as he searched through the wreckage. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.” He heard, his voice coming from above him. He looked up. Thankfully, the delay in Johnny’s reaction to run might as well have saved his life, he was still upstairs.
“I’ll jump.”
“No, are you mad?! You’re gonna kill yourself!”
“Yeah, it isn’t you trapped up here with those guys back there!”
He pointed at where the bodies lied and his voice faltered.
“Look, it’s okay. Let’s just meet at the other end, okay? I’m sure there must be another staircase in this house.”
Johnny walked fast past the fireplace and the grave, making an effort not to look down again. He passed through a door in the end of the room and into another, just as big and frightening as the previous one. In fact, as Johnny stopped to look around him, it was the same room, mirrored. The lit fireplace was there at the end, as was the chair he was sitting only a few minutes ago. The rug was pulled off the floor, but... there were no loose floorboards, no corpses in sight either.
Johnny tried to go back. He turned around and tried to go through the same door which he had just crossed, but as he opened it, he found a brick wall behind it.
“What the fuck...?” he gasped, taking a few steps back.
“Yeah, that kinda blew my mind too the first time around...”
He heard the voice behind him and turned around to see where it was coming from, assuming a fighting stance and getting ready to launch at whoever was playing tricks with his mind.
“Whoa, easy there, tiger,” the man laughed, holding his hands up in mocking.
“Who the hell are you?!”
He was a tall slim man, handsome, younger and fitter than Johnny but he knew he could still kick his ass.
“My name is Mulder.”
“Mulder? What kind of name is that?”
“Well, it’s my name. It was, at least. You think dead people have names?”
“Dead... what the hell are you talking about?! How do I get out of here?!”
“Ha, if I told you that, it’d be too easy. Besides, I don’t know, or I wouldn’t be here in the first place, am I right?”
“Y-you’re crazy. You’re a homeless crazy person and I need to get far away from you, find my friend and get the hell out of here.”
He walked past him to the other side of the room. Johnny grabbed the door handle, taking a deep breath before turning it and swinging the door open. There was just another brick wall.
“C’mon, man!”
“You said you have a friend?”
“Yeah, I need to find him.”
“Are you sure you wanna call him your friend?”
Johnny backed down for a moment, considering it.
“Well... we’re more like business partners.”
“Uh-huh. You lured him here tonight, didn’t you?”
“NO! We were both lured in here by a boy whom I will make sure to strangulate next time I see!”
“Huh.”
“What, what do you mean by huh?”
“Nothing, it just seems like you have a lot of misdirected rage. You must be a lonely man, right, Mr. Lawrence?”
“I don’t remember telling you my name.”
“Yeah, the afterlife does come with a few advantages. Did this Miguel tell you about the story behind this old manor?”
“No, he just said to meet him here, then he doesn’t show, the jackass.”
“Huh. You know, Mr. Lawrence, throughout the years I’ve done my share of interactions with the visitors of this house. But you, you are different.”
“And why is that?”
“Because, you’re so deeply involved in your self-centred, narcissistic existence, you don’t even have the faintest idea of why you’re here! That’s... that’s something.”
“Screw you,” Johnny barked, ignoring the laughter from the man. Or ghost. “LaRusso! LaRusso!”
“That’s your um... friend?”
“Yeah.”
“You know why you’re here? ‘Cause you’re lonely. You’re so lonely you teamed up with your arch-enemy, am I right? Hell, you spent your whole life blaming him for every screw up you made in your life, and now that you got to know each other, you can see that you’re more alike than any of you care to admit. Am I right?”
“I-I should go,” Johnny answered after a minute.
“Then go,” Mulder said, and just like that the brick wall was gone.
Daniel ran to the other side of the mansion, eager to just find Johnny and get as far away from there as they could.
He found himself in the final room of the house, which was oddly much like the library they had encountered upstairs. In fact, all the rooms of that residency looked exactly the same, minus the corpses.
Daniel turned to the bookshelf, surely something in there could guide him out of the situation. He started taking the books out, perhaps there was a secret passage to somewhere behind the bookshelf, somewhere with a staircase.
“This one should be of your interest.”
“What?”
Daniel turned around, a book in his hand. It was a woman, petite, red-headed, beautiful in complexion, with a superior aura that compensated for her small stature.
“The book you have in your hand. It’s the story of the former occupants of this house.”
Daniel looked at the book, its black leather cover shone as good as new, even if they didn’t make covers like that for the last decades. On it, the gold letters formed the title: The Ghosts who stole Christmas.
“Well... what is it about?”
“Oh, it’s a beautiful love story, about two star-crossed lovers who made a pact on Christmas 1917, never to spend another Christmas apart. That was only possible through a murder-suicide, of course, which haunts the house to this day.”
“Right,” Daniel rambled, trying to find something to say and disguise the trembling in his hands.
“Didn’t your lover tell you about this, Mr. LaRusso?”
“How do you know my name?”
“I am... I was an FBI agent once, I have privileged information.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Then, my crack pot partner dragged me to this house on Christmas Eve, in hope that we would find the love we had in one another and he could quench his lifelong thirst for love and reassurance of not being alone, and we failed, so... let’s just say we now have all eternity to figure it out.”
“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have a lover. And it’s not Christmas Eve.”
“We learnt to work with what we got, Christmas, Halloween, it’s been years since a couple so desperate as you come in here.”
“We’re not a couple!”
Scully laughed, more to herself than to Daniel, who still stared at her with wide eyes.
“Aah, the denial... Tell me something, does your ‘business partner’ have anyone else in his life, besides you?” she paused. “No? Don’t you think it is remotely possible that he has that subconscious desire? Desire which he cannot deal with due to years of internalized homophobia and which could very well drag him to the grim conclusion that the only way out is through a murder-suicide in an abandoned house known to be prone to these types of occurrences?”
Daniel took a few steps back, trying to put the gears of his mind into motion, to get away from the woman’s unstopping ramblings to breathe – to think .
“Does your friend have a problem with anger , Mr. LaRusso? Hm? Does he deal with his problems using violence? Even some degree of alcoholism, perhaps?”
“No, he-he wouldn’t hurt me.”
“No? He’s really out of it.”
Daniel turned around, following the voice, finding a man standing behind him, who walked over to Scully while both smiled, as if the twist Daniel felt in his gut was a cause of enjoyment for them.
“Your ‘business partner’? I had to help him down the stairs, he kept rambling about how you ruined his life, kicked him in the face. I gotta tell you, I’ve seen my share of crazy, but... this one, he’s something,” Mulder laughed.
“Who the hell are you?!”
“This is my ‘partner’, Mr. LaRusso,” Scully said patting Mulder gently on the chest, right over a clearly visible bullet hole. “You are so sure Mr. Lawrence wouldn’t harm you, go ahead then, the exit’s right over there!”
At that, they vanished into thin air, leaving Daniel alone in the room. His mind, wandering to ‘84. He knew Johnny still held a grudge, but they had been doing so well, teaching together. Was it possible that it was all just a ruse to get back at him? To kill him?
“LaRusso!”
He heard Johnny yell, as he barged in from the door Daniel himself had come from. He was different somehow. His face was contorted in anger, his eyes wide and dazed like a mad man.
“Johnny! Come on, man, we should get out of here!”
Johnny ran up to him, fists in the air. Daniel tried to defend himself, but he was too fast and too strong. Johnny easily shoved him to the ground, grabbing at his hair and banging his head against the floor, once, twice, three and four times, until finally he stopped. Daniel’s vision was blurry and disturbed, and he was unable to move, but still he could feel the blood accumulating under him, wetting his clothes and his hair, and see as Johnny got up and calmly climbed on a chair, tied a rope into a loop and on a chandelier, then adjusted the loop around his throat. Before he could see anything else, his vison faded and the world went dark.
Had Daniel remained conscious, he would have seen Scully’s face lighting up in sheer joy as she climbed down the chair, eyes glistening and lips curling into a smile.
Johnny ran back the way he had come from, crossing threshold after threshold and room after room, but he still found himself always in the library, with the fire burning and the ruined staircase.
He stopped for a moment to catch his breath, that’s when she appeared. A woman, desperate, as if she was just as scared of being there as he was.
“Quick! You must hide!”
“What? Who are you?”
“Scully, my name’s Scully. LaRusso has gone mad!”
“What?! Where is him?”
She grabbed him by the arm, dragging him across the room.
“He’s coming after you! Talking about how nothing makes sense anymore, ‘cuz his wife dumped him, the kids are all grown up, he’s talking about killing himself! Oh, no...”
Johnny turned to look at where she was staring at. There was someone on the floor, and blood, so much blood.
“Daniel...”
He broke free of her grasp and ran up to him, kneeling by his side as he searched for any sign of life. He touched the hollow of his throat, waiting, hoping for just a faint pulse and then, Daniel opened his eyes.
“Daniel, I’m getting you out of here, I-”
“It’s too late, Johnny. I am sick and tired of being alone. Years and years of working and working, coming home to a wife who hates me and children who can’t get far away enough from me... Now... now I don’t even have that, and I can’t spend the rest of my days alone.”
“You’re not, you’re not alone. You got me, okay, you-”
Before Johnny could finish, he felt a sharp pain to his gut. He looked down, Daniel had pierced a sharp fireplace poker through his abdomen, ruthless and cruel. Johnny fell back, holding the object still, in hope the pain would subside if he didn’t move it. But it didn’t. Instead, the blood gushed out like as water sprays from broken pipe, rapidly staining his hands and his shirt.
Johnny felt dizzy and light-headed. He laid back on his back on the floor, his head just by Daniel’s feet, then he closed his eyes.
When he was satisfied Johnny wasn’t going anywhere, Mulder stood up. He looked down at him with a mischievous grin, then Scully came to join him and together they admired their joined work, his hand resting on the small of her back, as their trademark gesture hadn’t gone away even after thirty years.
“We did it, Scully, this time we did it!”
“Thank God for karate and unresolved middle-aged men!”
When Daniel came to, he was alone in the room. His head pounded and the room was spinning around him and he knew he didn’t have much longer. He put out a hand on the floor, propping himself up, shakily and painfully. As he stood up, he quickly got a hold on the couch, then stumbled on towards the exit, using the furniture and the walls as support. He grasped at his chance of survival, feeling the warm liquid that poured from his head run down his back.
He got to the front hall, and the door was so close, but still so far. He heard a thud, and as he turned to look, he found the stairway he had seen crumble to pieces not so long ago, standing intact. Was he hallucinating? Nothing made sense, but still Johnny was crawling down, a hand on his stomach, grunting in pain as he slid down the stairs, leaving a trail of blood behind him. Hadn’t he hung himself? Did he change his mind at the last minute?
Daniel walked up to him with difficulty, determined not to leave him behind.
“Get away from me, you psycho son of a bitch!” Johnny cried out between grunting from pain and Daniel froze.
“I-I wanna help.”
“You stabbed me! You fucking stabbed me, you coward!”
“You’re crazy! You banged my head against the floor!”
That was when it hit him. It couldn’t be true. None of it. Johnny wouldn’t beat him up, and he was sure as hell he never stabbed Johnny.
Just like that, the pain was gone. The dizziness too. In fact, everything got back to normal.
“Johnny, this is it.”
“What?” Johnny asked, breathing in short painful gasps.
“I didn’t stab you, I would never hurt you. It was all them.”
Johnny stared at him for a moment, the relieving feeling of the lack of pain taking over his body.
“Come on,” Daniel whispered, grabbing his hand and helping him to his feet. “Before they come back.”
They ran to the front door, hand in hand, and left the God-forsaken house. The rain had stopped, and from a balcony upstairs, Scully and Mulder watched the two men leaving.
“We almost had them, huh?” Scully mumbled.
“How did those two fools figure it out, and we didn’t? They are so troubled!”
“I guess,” she added, eyes fixed on their joined hands, “we did something good here tonight, even if we didn’t intend to. Maybe the only way out was facing what they felt for each other.”
“Yeah,” Mulder said, holding her by the shoulder and bringing her close, “at least we had some fun.”