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“I’m just saying,” said Vincent, “if ghosts were real, they’d definitely all fall in love with you.”
“No, they wouldn’t!”
“They totally would! You’re soft, cute, weak…”
“Vince!”
“...you’re a ghost magnet, I swear!”
“No, I’m not!” said Gilbert, distressed.
“Hey, Gilbert, Vincent!” Oz called, heading over towards them. “Working hard or hardly working?”
“Hi, Oz!” Gilbert said excitedly.
“Hey there. We don’t have any tours for a couple hours, and Alice is manning the gift shop, so I was thinking I’d show you guys a pretty cool getaway spot. What do you think?”
“Definitely!” Gilbert said excitedly, and Vincent looked over at him and raised his eyebrows with a smirk.
“Awesome,” Oz said with a quick grin, and gestured for them to follow him around the house, pulling aside a tarp to reveal a ladder leading up the wall of the Mystery Shack. “Ta-da~!” he sang out. “A secret ladder to the roof!”
Gilbert, who was scared of heights, made a tiny eep sound.
“Can we go up?” asked Vincent. “Or, wait, Gil’s scared of heights…”
“No I’m not,” Gilbert lied.
Vincent’s eyebrows climbed even higher up his face.
“Glad to hear it!” Oz said. “And yeah, if you guys want, I could show you my secret spot.”
“Definitely,” Gilbert enthused.
“Alright,” Oz said, gesturing to the ladder, “up you go!”
Gilbert regretted severely every single life choice that had led him to this moment, but he climbed anyway, screwing his eyes shut and merely following Vincent up onto the roof. Oz led them over it (now that he wasn’t fighting a wax figure to the death, Gilbert hated it up here) and to a flat section of roof with several pieces of paraphernalia scattered about, including the book Fruits of Uncertainty, with a picture of its two main characters on the front, and Gilbert was immensely reassured by the reminded of the time he’d killed wax replicas of them.
“This is so cool,” he said. “Did you bring all this stuff up here?”
Oz kicked what appeared to be a sleeping bag behind a shingle. “I may or may not sleep here sometimes,” he said.
“Really? Why?”
“Sometimes my father comes to visit my uncle,” he said. “Anyway! Check this out.”
Oz scooped up a pinecone off the roof and threw it directly at one of the large signs advertising the Mystery Shack, hitting the center of the T with perfect accuracy.
“Woah,” said Gilbert.
“You wanna give it a try, Gil?”
“Sure!” Gilbert said, feeling his face get hot. Vincent was smirking at him, for whatever reason, but Gilbert did his best to ignore him, grabbing a pinecone and throwing it at the sign, missing completely, and hitting Alice’s car, setting off the car alarm.
“Jackpot!” Oz said, grinning at him. “High five?”
Gilbert stared at Oz uncomprehendingly. The older boy was…really, really pretty. The sun made it look like his hair was glowing, and his eyes were glittering with mischievous glee, and Gilbert felt as though he couldn’t breathe.
“Come on,” said Oz. “Don’t leave me hanging here.”
Blushing madly, Gilbert high-fived Oz; Vincent cackled before throwing a pinecone of his own, hitting the tip of the M.
“Good job, Vincent!” said Oz. “High five?”
Vincent high-fived him with no hesitation.
They continued throwing pinecones at things until a car drove up, and someone hollered out the window, “Oh, Oz!”
“Hey guys!” Oz called, waving. He got up. “My friends are here…I’m gonna go spend some time with them, okay? Thanks for hanging out with me, you two!”
“Y-yeah,” Gilbert said, staring after Oz as he slid down the drainpipe and hurried over to the car. There was the faint sound of an argument about books as the car drove away, and Gilbert felt suddenly and fiercely disappointed.
“So, Gil,” Vincent said gleefully, “how long have you had a crush on Oz?”
“I—what?” said Gilbert. “No I don’t!”
“Yes you do,” said Vincent. “Your face is all red, and you literally went up on the roof when he asked, even though you’re scared of heights!”
“I’m facing my fears!” Gilbert argued.
“You never do that,” Vincent reminded him. “You have a crush on Oz !”
“I do not!”
“Oz and Gilbert, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G~!” Vincent sang out.
“No!” Gilbert said frantically. “I don’t—Vince, seriously—it’s not like I stay up all night thinking about him, or anything!”
“Uh huh,” said Vincent.
“Hey, Gil,” said Vincent, late that night. “What’re you thinking about?”
“Oh no,” Gilbert, wide awake and thinking about Oz, said directly into his pillow.
Vincent, who was a traitor, laughed at him.
The next day, Gilbert was doing his level best to act like a normal, functioning member of society. He had thought he was doing well, but Oz and Alice had both asked him, separately and multiple times, if he had a fever, and Vincent was giggling every time he looked at him.
“Hey, Alice,” Oz said, when it was nearly closing time, “I’m going to be showing Elliot and Leo some places around town again tonight, so you don’t need to wait up.”
“You’ve been doing that for ages, Oz,” Alice complained.
“They’re new to town, they need help,” he told her. “It’s alright. I’ll be back in tomorrow, you know.”
“Hmph,” said Alice.
“You can come with us, if you want?”
Alice shook her head. “I’ll enjoy having the house to myself,” she said, putting her nose in the air.
“Does that mean we can go with Oz?” Gilbert asked quickly.
Oz and Alice looked at each other.
“Sure, if Alice is chill with it,” said Oz. “We’d be glad to have you!”
Gilbert and Vincent high-fived before Alice could even say “Yes”, and Oz and Alice exchanged amused glances.
“Well, have fun, you three,” Alice said. “I’m going to be binging crap television all night!”
“What,” Elliot, the teenager they’d met the other week when they accused him of murder, said, looking flatly at Oz. “Are you babysitting tonight, or something?”
“Don’t be rude, Elliot,” said Leo Baskerville from the driver’s seat. “Hello, Gilbert and Vincent. It’s lovely to see you again.”
Gilbert waved, and Vincent didn’t say anything; Oz herded them into the backseat before getting in himself and seemingly picking up out of nowhere a lively discussion about some old books which rapidly devolved into an argument between himself and Elliot as Leo interjected with either an insult or a fist every few minutes until they pulled up at what appeared to be a dilapidated, abandoned old gas station.
“Welcome one, welcome all,” said Oz, cheerfully getting out of the car with the air of Alice giving a tour of the Mystery Shack, “to the condemned Dusk 2 Dawn! It was closed several years ago after the mysterious deaths of its owners, which for legal reasons the Mystery Shack has nothing to do with—”
“You killed someone?” said Elliot.
“Legally,” said Oz, “no. Anyway! Rumor has it, this gas station is very haunted…by ghosts that pay the water and electricity bills, and keep trying to get a landscaping company to come by and fix it up. Inside, they’ve got multiple arcade games and a bunch of nonperishable snacks, so I was thinking we could hang out in there for the evening.”
“So we’re babysitting,” said Elliot.
“Your mother is babysitting,” Oz replied, “if you’re lucky.”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s saying,” Leo explained with the air of a saint, “that the little rich boy got raised by nannies every day unless he was particularly lucky. I don’t mind spending time with kids if they aren’t annoying. Are we going to try and contact any ghosts tonight?”
“Obviously,” scoffed Elliot. “Though I don’t know why we’re bringing the kids along.”
“We’re practically teenagers!” Gilbert said hotly.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever,” Elliot said, waving his hand at him.
“Elliot, seriously,” Oz said, sounding disappointed in him. “They’re cool.”
Gilbert glowed at that; Vincent started snickering at him.
“Anyway!” Oz said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s climb the fence.”
Gilbert was very glad that he’d gotten the chance to work on his fear of heights the other day, but he still ended up needing to be assisted by Oz, who was very nice about it, and Elliot, who complained the entire time. Vincent, of course, was able to hop over the fence easily and by himself, and so, unfortunately, were Elliot and Leo.
Oz began to pick the lock on the door, but Elliot, who seemed to think he was taking too long, just straight-up kicked the door down, and the five of them spilled into the convenience store.
It was indeed fully stocked, and there were a few arcade games on the walls, so everyone split up to find the most fun things to do before contacting the ghosts: Elliot and Leo began perusing racks of old magazines, Oz made a beeline for the cash register, Vincent started poking through the candy aisle, and Gilbert went for the arcade games.
“Hey, Gil!” Vincent called, hurrying over and waving a few packets of candy. “Look, they have Smile Dip! It’s been banned in five countries, including this one. Wanna try some?”
Gilbert swallowed. “No.”
“Your loss.” Vincent ripped the package open, poured the contents directly into his mouth, and then wandered back towards the Smile Dip display, a slightly manic look in his eyes. Gilbert watched him go, wondering if he should maybe do something about that, but he came to the conclusion that it was Vincent’s problem, not his, and returned his attention to the games.
A few minutes later, Elliot let out a shout.
“There is literal tape in the shape of a body on the ground!” he yelled.
“Lie in it!” Oz yelled back.
“Don’t do that,” said Leo.
“Are you calling me a coward?” said Elliot.
Interested, Gilbert abandoned the video game (simulated violence, he found, was far less fun than real live violence) and wandered over, getting distracted for a moment by Vincent rolling around on the floor and foaming at the mouth before deciding that that was just Vincent being Vincent and continuing on over.
“I am, yeah,” said Leo. “You don’t have the balls to lay in it and get possessed by a ghost.”
“Like you do?”
“I get possessed by three ghosts every day before breakfast.”
“Fuck you! I’ll get possessed by a better ghost!” Elliot said.
“Hey, watch your language in front of Gil and Vince!”
“They’re Nightrays,” said Elliot, “they’ve heard worse,” and then he lay directly down in the taped-out body shape and began convulsing.
“Oh no,” said Leo dryly, “my boyfriend’s been possessed by a ghost. What ever will I do?”
“I can really sense how much you love him!” said Oz. “If that were Alice down there, I think I’d be in hysterics.”
Gilbert froze. Oz…and Alice...were…?
“I hate fucking straight people,” said Leo.
“Then stop fucking them.”
Leo flipped Oz off.
“Are you and Alice…together?” Gilbert asked tremulously.
“Ew, no,” said Oz. “I’m…uh, do you know what gay people are?”
“The Nightrays are incredibly homophobic,” said Leo, “so probably not.”
“Alright,” Oz said, crouching down in front of Gilbert. “So, ‘straight’ people are boys who fall in love with girls, and girls who fall in love with boys. ‘Gay’ people are boys who fall in love with boys, and—”
“Oh, like me,” said Gilbert before blushing madly.
Oz laughed and ruffled his hair. “Me, too!” he said. “So no, Alice and I aren’t dating. We’re platonic life partners, which means…hm, how should I put this…basically…”
“Stick to the actual basics,” said Leo, “I think the ghost will start talking to us any second now!”
“Uh, she’s my closest friend in the world,” said Oz, though he privately thought to himself that saying She is my world would be a lot more accurate.
“Can you date people, though?” Gilbert asked.
“I mean, yeah, if I want and we talk about it,” Oz said, with a quick glance over at Leo to see if he was listening.
Oz was quite taken with Leo and Elliot. They had popped out of the blue around two weeks ago with strong opinions on literature and homicidal tendencies, and Alice didn’t mind him having a summer fling so long as it stayed over the summer, and so, as long as they didn’t bully his charges too much, Oz had decided to violently flirt with both Elliot and Leo for the duration of their stay.
Leo, however, was nudging Elliot with his foot, and so, after patting Gilbert’s head one last time, Oz climbed back to his feet, not noticing Gilbert’s blush.
“Any change?”
“No, not ye—”
Elliot vanished.
“Elliot!” Leo screamed, attempting to rush to the taped shape on the floor, but Oz grabbed him and held him back.
“Wait,” he said, “you don’t want to get grabbed too, and—”
There was a burst of feedback from the speakers in the ceiling, and then Elliot’s voice shouted, “Oh, nuts!”
“Elliot!”
“Leo?! What happened?!”
“I told you not to lie in the tape, you fucking idiot !”
“Watch your language, there are children present!” said Oz. “Speaking of—where’s Vincent?!”
Gilbert pointed at where Vincent was still foaming at the mouth on the ground.
“Aw, piss,” said Oz. “I mean—oh no.”
“I think he’s just messing with us,” said Gilbert. “I mean, he was doing it before you guys summoned the ghost, so…”
“He’s right by a bunch of Smile Dip,” said Elliot’s voice from the speaker. “V—one of my older brothers told me that that’s a seriously potent, nonaddictive psychedelic…do you think he might just be tripping really hard?”
“He was eating a lot of Smile Dip earlier,” said Gilbert.
“I am finding out so many things I wish I never knew,” Elliot said in a tone of fascinated horror. “You weren’t worried about this at all?”
“It’s candy,” said Gilbert. “It’s not dangerous. Plus, Vince acts out for attention a lot. It’s okay.”
“We’re looking into therapists for them,” Oz hissed above Gilbert’s head.
“And how’s that going for you?”
“Well, we’ve been blacklisted from most practices in town, but I’m sure we’ll find someone good eventually.”
Leo huffed out a slightly shaky laugh. “We’ll help you look,” he said, “for the sake of our futures. Elliot. Where are you?”
“I’m in the fu—freaking security cameras,” said Elliot, “I think. It really blows. We’ve been ticking off the ghosts in here…I think we need to do it some more, if we’re going to get the answers we’re looking for.”
“Answers…?”
“We want to know,” said Leo, “whether ghosts are bound by time. ” He set his jaw. “Elliot, you had better not die on me!”
“I won’t!”
Leo strode over to one of the glass refrigerated containers and put his foot through it, Elliot shouting in a burst of static when the glass made gouges in his leg. Heedless of this, Leo grabbed bottle after bottle of spoiled milk before he vanished as well.
“Leo!”
Oz looked around wildly. “Stay behind me, Gilbert,” he said lowly, “everything will be alri—”
Oz vanished.
Gilbert screamed, looking around wildly for help—Vincent was still limp and foaming on the floor, separated from Gilbert by bloody broken glass, and Elliot was shouting obscenities, and the frozen cartoon on that cereal box looked far too much like Leo for comfort, and the video game Gilbert had been playing earlier had lit back up, and a pixelated Oz-figure was destroying enemies in it with a scythe.
There was nobody else there. Nobody else to help.
Gilbert sat on the floor and sobbed.
“I’m only twelve!” he wailed. “I’m too young to die!”
A pair of cold fingers took his chin and lifted it up, and he found himself confronted with a desiccated, rotting face. “No, child,” the ghost breathed, “you are the perfect age to die.”
“Wh-what?”
“Teenagers,” said the ghost, “are the scum of the earth. Count yourself lucky that you will never have to become one of th—”
The ghost shattered. For a moment, Gilbert saw a ghostly scythe and the silhouette of a large black rabbit hanging in the air in front of him, before it vanished and someone started screaming. Elliot was back in the tape, and Leo was in front of the drinks refrigerator once more, but Oz was on the ground next to the ruined arcade game, clutching his head and screaming—screaming—screaming—
Oz did not stop screaming, even when the three conscious inhabitants of the room rushed over to him. His fingernails had dug so deeply into his scalp that he had begun to bleed, and, after a few horrified moments, Elliot and Leo scooped him up between them and sent Gilbert over to collect Vincent (who could, it turned out, stand, though his balance was terrible and he was giggling at everything and went limp against Gil at every possible opportunity), and they drove back in a cacophony of horrible noise.
Alice, furious, sent Gilbert and Vincent upstairs, though they could still hear Oz screaming and Alice yelling at Elliot and Leo from their attic room. Vincent had decided that Gilbert’s lap was the best place to take a nap, and Gilbert didn’t want to disturb his sleeping brother, so he could do nothing but sit and listen until eventually, Oz’s screaming tapered off, and then Alice came up into the attic and crouched in front of Gilbert.
“What did you see?” she asked, uncharacteristically serious.
“Wh…what…?” he sniffled.
“Before Oz…collapsed. What happened?”
“There was a ghost…it got Oz and Elliot and Leo,” Gilbert said. “It said it was g-gonna kill me too, and then it—shattered, and there was a see-through scythe, and I think a rabbit? And then it was gone. And Oz was…was…” He scrubbed at his eyes. “Is he going to be okay?”
“Obviously,” said Alice. “You think I would ever let anything bad happen to him? —But Gilbert. I need you to swear something to me.”
“What…?”
“I need you to swear to me that you’ll never ever ever mention the rabbit and the scythe to anyone, ever. If you do, then…then people are going to come to take Oz away from us, do you understand?”
“What? No. Why? Why would they take him? What…what is that rabbit?”
Alice hesitated. “I…can’t tell you that,” she said. “Sorry. It’s very powerful, but it won’t hurt any of us here in the Mystery Shack. Oz doesn’t…know it exists, and every time he might he gets hurt, like you saw today. So you can never tell anyone, alright?”
Gilbert nodded. “I…I’ll keep it a secret.”
“Good boy,” Alice said, and she reached out and patted his head. “Let’s…get Vincent in bed, okay?”
She sounded weirdly like she was imitating someone else, but Gilbert was tired and upset and so he didn’t ask, instead helping her take Vince’s shoes off and tucking him into bed. Then Alice stared at him for a moment and attempted to do the same with him.
“...I can take care of myself,” he said.
“I know that!” she snapped. “When I was your age I could too. But…he said I didn’t have to. That it’s okay for kids to be taken care of by their adults, and…and that it’s important to…to accept help from those around you.” Strangely, she looked like she was about to cry. “He told us both that…and he loved us both so much, Gilbert, so damn much and I don’t know why…and he’s gone now, they both are, but I’m not, and I swear I’ll do right by you and Vincent just like he did right be me and—” Alice cut herself off. “...Anyway. Get into bed, and I’ll tuck you in.”
Gilbert, off-balanced by the sudden outpouring of genuine emotion from Alice, did as he was told, and got the covers pulled up to his chin just like Vincent had, and then Alice leaned forward and quickly kissed his forehead, just like she’d done for Vincent, before turning and heading to the door, stopping when she was framed in the doorway, still holding herself like she was trying to be somebody else.
“Goodnight, Gilbert,” she said. “Goodnight, Vincent.”
And then she closed the door and went away back downstairs.