Chapter Text
Careers that jeopardized one’s life were commonly crucial occupations in society, but ghost-hunting was arguably not a part of the circle. There was a sense of immaturity to it, blindly following clues in a hope to find an apparition that couldn’t be scientifically proven to be anything more than a moment of delirium.
Despite their parents’ constant droning on how they were still young and could finally complete their university degree if they desired, Olive loved their job. There was a priceless thrill of danger accompanying every case, one they could never achieve with the regular office job. Fear spiked until they couldn’t hear faint whispers over the sound of their racing heart. Sanity dropped until the lines of reality blurred with their own paranoia. Vision blurred until they couldn’t properly navigate the house with the filter of radio static.
Every hushed whisper, every flicker of light, every trace of touch—it all was more of a reason to keep on running back, to welcome the gravitational pull with welcome arms and let the angry hunger consume them whole, all with a content smile playing on their lips. As if they’ve accepted their perpetual fate much sooner than they should’ve.
Sometimes, Olive mused, it would all be easier if they gave themselves up to the unknown vortex. Ghosts were most active under the comfort of night’s pitch black veil, when whispered secrets could easily be mistaken as an effect of mass hysteria. The issue was Olive became exhausted easily, a lingering reminder of their restless nights throughout high school and university—one hand nursing a hot beverage, the other tracing warped lines of text in a textbook. It wasn’t exactly a pairing that worked harmoniously. There was no angel choir, no fanfare, no eager applause. Instead, deafening silence would occasionally be cut off with the tick of the clock.
They pulled into the driveway of the supposedly haunted location, a sliver of the sun stubbornly visible on the horizon. It allowed them at least a good half an hour to psyche themselves up before having to enter the house.
Olive dug their hand into their cheek—a plea, a reminder, a taunt?—before they unfastened their seatbelt. They’ve maneuvered around the tight space before and do so again with ease as they slipped into the back of the truck. The rack is lined with expensive gear, so much so the company would kill Olive if they were to lose even a screw from the technology. There was a sense of familiarity in the devices, but also an echo of a complaint. The whiteboard lists the additional objectives they had set for themselves, checklists and bullet points written in a neat scrawl.
Olive hunched over the desk and booted up the computer. Images of the grainy security camera footage popped up onto the computer not long after, and Olive flicked through the cameras for the general idea of what each room looked like. It was nice to have, but they had never found a point in using the surveillance cameras.
They opened their worn journal, flipping to the last page where graphite adorned the wrinkled beige. Nellie Bellfield was the ghost’s name.
“Definitely a horse girl name,” Olive mused, accompanied by light laughter. They subconsciously raised their head and peered at the back of the truck, where the sliding door divided them and the murky outside.
“Well, it is a farmhouse, after all.” They paused. “Doesn’t mean ranch , though.”
Olive continued to scan the page. There wasn’t much information about Nellie; she died at this very house; the cause of death was blunt trauma to the skull, likely from slipping and falling due to old age. A series of images, similar to a comic strip, played out in Olive’s mind. They almost laughed at the thought of an elderly woman’s eyes bulging as she tripped over thin air, but they caught themselves; perhaps it wasn’t morally correct. There was not much other important information documented, so Olive’s hope was to find momentos of the life Nellie led scattered throughout the abandoned house. All to provoke the ghost.
Olive spent the rest of the extra time writing notes and lists with blank spaces for when they discover evidence and pacing around the van, muttering overused inspirational phrases.
There always comes to a point where tasks become too familiar; they’re repetitive and begin to bore someone. The air of uncertainty—the charade of predictability, always drew Olive back into the art of the paranormal, time and time again. They could never find themselves feeling bored about their line of work. Maybe the beginning would become tiring—navigating a dark, empty building with only their flashlight and draining sanity. Once they discovered the ghost room, however, it was always when things began to get interesting and they would forget a time when eyelids weren’t widened in shock and perpetual suspense.
In their head, the approach of the new hour was more dramatic than a single tick of their beaten watch. It was an indicator to head on out, nevertheless.
Olive secured their journal and pencil in the inside of their jacket, a special zipper pocket they had sewed themselves. They cracked their knuckles as they eyed the rack of equipment before them, deciding what they should take with them.
Trial and error has slowly become Olive’s best friend. A backpack carrying the equipment initially seemed like a good idea, but it was a pain in the ass trying to hide from the ghost whilst lugging around pounds of expensive equipment, an absolute magnet of sound. A utility belt worked for quite some time, but when the company grew to be reasonably profitable, they bought more devices, until not all of them could slide perfectly into each loop and pocket.
Soon it evolved to simply carrying as much as they could into the house at a time. The tactic still got the job done. The constant back-and-forth got a bit irritating at times, but it was only another excuse to lose themselves in the looming shadows.
Olive gave up on trying to shatter the ordinary and reached for the EMF, video camera, and flashlight. They opened the truck’s sliding panel, ascending with a screech. Olive winced at the metal scraping against metal; the sound akin to nails on a chalkboard was worse than the voices of most ghosts. They stepped out of the truck when their stomach dropped.
“I’m forgetting something,” Olive said. They whipped their head around, their braid brushing against their shoulder, and scanned the truck. Their eyes roamed, but their eye prescription was evidently not strong enough. “What am I missing…?”
And their eyes narrowed on the glint of metal resting on their desk. The house keys.
They smacked their lips together. “Ah.”
There was a certain buoyancy to her steps as she ran up the concrete pathway. Her childlike excitement was enough to make him smile in complete and utter fondness. She turned around and grinned at him, and his whole world tilted on its axis.
She placed her hand on her hip, adjusting her weight to one leg. She rolled her eyes in subtle tease, “You’re so slow!”
He laughed. His casual strides covered an annoyingly long distance with each pace; he was halfway to where she stood at the foot of the porch stairs in a blink of an eye.
“ I’m the one who drove us all the way here, in case you forgot,” he reminded her, jutting his pointer finger in her direction.
“And?” She raised a pierced eyebrow. Vague memories of her squeezing his hand from pain flashed through his mind. He dropped his hand to subconsciously rub his wrist. “Is that meant to mean anything?”
“It means you’re supposed to feel sympathy for me,” he frowned, but the ends of chapped sugar curled up when she tugged at glossy raspberry.
“Whatever, whatever. I guess I’m sorry.”
She outstretched her hand, and he was never one to refuse her. She tugged him closer, until they’re chest to chest, until she had to crane her neck for their eyes to properly meet. Her arms looped around his neck, she stood on the tip of her toes, and he remembered what love is when she kissed him sweetly. It was the most familiar feeling, the most comforting, as if he had returned to the west coast; the sand burning under his bare feet, the blazing sun casting an angelic halo over his head, the ocean emitting the smell of sea salt and nausea—except the ocean’s tides slowly became stronger, crept closer until the water brushed against his feet. Before he knew it, he would be submerged under the translucent blue and lost in its broken beauty. His pitiful laughs would be muffled, lost to the sea.
Hazelnut pulled him back up, just as she had pushed him down.
“Does that make it all better?” she cooed, but the words were dipped in sarcasm.
There was a glint in his half-lidded aquamarine. One could easily mistake it for the sun’s rays, but she knew better. He knew she did.
“I don’t think so,” he pouted. His fingers danced around the hem of her shirt—baby pink and jagged from her uneven cutting. He avoided eye contact, but he heard her short breath, a small laugh.
“What do you mean by that, Wilson?” Her words were laced with sugar and awfully genuine. Once, it stood as the sign of a darker challenge, a signal to run; but now, all it did was elicit a non-committal hum and a shrug from him.
“I feel like you’d know by this point, Nellie,” he mumbled and pressed his forehead against hers. His neck was unbearably sore. She giggled. His complaints disappeared without a trace.
“Remind me?” Nellie smiled softly.
He pecked her lips. She wrinkled her eyebrows.
“I’m tired,” he whined. Nellie unwound her arms from behind his neck, laughing a siren’s symphony. “Maybe another day.”
“Russel, careful. There’s a promise in there,” she pointed out, with her signature grin. Russel laughed, shaking his head. “Where’s the keys?”
He dug into his jacket pocket and handed her the single key attached to a key ring. Bronze eyes widened in pleasant surprise.
“The honor is yours.” He swept his arm towards the front door.
She blinked as she processed and visibly gulped, but all she radiated was electrifying excitement. Anticipation was evident as her legs trudged through the thickened air. It was almost exhausting, the practiced exercise.
Nellie had been well-acquainted with those porch steps; hell, she remembered herself—barely learning to walk—tripping over the shallow stairs and her mom catching her before she fell. It was her grandparents’ house, and every winter, she would visit them. She remembered the memories shared. It was impossible to bore herself with flipping through the beautifully mundane story book of her past at the estate. Sometimes it felt like the little girl described within the lines of the book was someone unknown to her. Her grandma had always told her whimsical tales of magic and enchantment, and Nellie thought that perhaps the very place was magic.
The house was supposed to be inherited by her mother after the passing of Nellie’s grandparents, but from a young age, Nellie’s mother grew fascinated by the mystery of the city. The days in the secluded farmhouse soon became too slow for her, and the rush of the city matched her pace perfectly.
So, she ran away to the big city once she was old enough to be considered an adult. She found Nellie’s father, fell in love, had Nellie. It was meant to be the perfect timeline, where everything went according to a storybook plan—where everything resulted in a “happily ever after”.
Yet here Nellie was, running back to pick up the broken pieces.
Despite her facade, she was always the mediator.
Olive twisted the key in the door, hearing the satisfying click . They turned the golden knob and sighed at the sight of the encompassing wood interior. It felt odd how everything still looked so clean . It didn’t hold up to the definition of the word, but the dust and mold felt minimal between the cracks of the furniture. The house wasn’t the stereotypical abandoned building. The ghost’s death was recent—at most, just over a decade ago. Olive just didn’t know why no one moved it afterwards, nor why did no one report activity until now.
They tried to recall the floorplan as they navigated the house through the lens of the video camera. They paused abruptly when a speckle of white swept past.
“ Oh .” The tension in their shoulders relaxed. “It’s just a piece of dust.”
There was more than enough dust floating around the place.
No ghost encounter so far, Olive made it to the breaker, located in the workshop. Red boxes of metal surrounded by a tangle of technicolor wires, the light on the breaker flashed from red to green with the flick of a switch.
They traced their finger along the metal tools hung along the far wall, metal tainted with flaking orange and brown from age. There was a matching set in the middle and various brands on the top and bottom, to the left and right. The handles of the primary set were sleek yellow, albeit scratched white from use. Olive wiped away the dust, accidentally uncovering an engraving sealed in the material.
“ K.B. ?” Olive whispered, hushed like a secret lost to the wind. Perhaps it was. “Nellie Bellfield , right? The ‘B.’ likely stands for Bellfield, then.”
They looked up to glance at their surroundings. Metal shimmered under the moon’s steady gaze.
“Sibling, partner, parent…her real name? A nickname?”
Sometimes it was hard to imagine another life occupying where Olive currently stood, breathing and walking and laughing. There were so many moments they had lived through—breath-taking, exhilarating, devastating, freeing moments that remained undocumented. Moments that only were recorded in the crevices of Nellie’s mind, even ones that she may have wanted to share with the world but was taken away too soon to fulfill her hope.
It was fascinating. It was terrifying.
Olive shook the thought out of their mind. They were already prying into uncharted territory; their restlessness had already brought them far past the barrier blocking the restricted land. They needed to get back to the other side before the unknown dangers caught up to them.
Olive took a step back.
Olive called, “Nellie? Nellie? Nellie ? Where are you? Are you here?”
The silence spoke for her. The wooden floorboards creaked, sounding louder than before, despite the same pressure pushing on it.
Assorted spirals and lines of mahogany transitioned into sleek white tiles as Olive crossed the kitchen threshold.
They remembered their other tools, neglected in the comfort of their jacket. They gingerly sat the video camera down on top of the countertop, deprived of proper use after a decade of abandonment. Olive unzipped their pocket and took out the EMF. The immediate buzzing startled them, elbow knocking against the counter, blue and green lights straining their eyes. Level 2. Nellie was now active.
Olive held their flashlight in their free hand. The beam of light reflected onto the dishes both tucked away in the depths of cabinets and precariously stacked on one another in the kitchen sink. They didn’t dare take a step closer in that direction.
An object crashed against the floorboards. The EMF indicated Level 3 activity.
“Ah, thanks a lot,” Olive muttered, distaste evident in their tone. They sighed as an afterthought; the venom was misplaced, and they were already feeling the effects of a lack of sleep.
They scanned the room once again. It sounded muffled to have occurred in the kitchen, distorted by walls and distance, but they didn’t have the confidence to confirm that quite yet. Nothing was concrete; the only thing consistent was the constant shattering of Olive's views on normalcy. They weren’t afraid of the bruises and wounds, not of the plunge in icy waters, but sometimes the craving for what they used to have would come. And then it would go, but not without a lingering burn.
“Hi,” Russell smiled, wide and fond. His eyes sparkled of unbreakable promises and unspoken secrets. He held Nellie’s hand with his own, interlocking their fingers, mind momentarily stuck on the difference in size.
They both stood in the middle of the kitchen. Aching limbs testified to the dwindling hours spent lugging box after box into their house, until boxes of their belongings occupied most of the house. Cardboard soon became the most familiar sight. Russell was obsessed with familiarity. Nellie despised it. They fought and clashed, but at the end of the day, they clicked together; two pieces of a puzzle, yin and yang, lock and key. One’s weakness was the other’s strength. At the end of the day, they were inseparable.
On an impulse, Nellie decided to buy shitty alcohol and drink it to celebrate their new residence. Russell lied and said it was a good idea. Nellie caught onto his lie; he stuttered when he did so. She didn’t think it was a good idea either—she just wanted an escape.
“Is the farmhouse not enough of an escape?” Russell had quipped.
Nellie smacked him across the head and directed him towards the nearest grocery store.
They were tired, but they were present and giggling like lovestruck teenagers. Perhaps in another universe, they were. Throughout highschool, they may have shared stolen glances during mundane lectures and walked hand-in-hand as they walked class to class. It was a shame that in actuality, whenever they casted eyes upon each other, it was narrowed eyes and hateful glares. One spewed words of venom, unbelievably petty and immature, and the other reciprocated the useless tirade.
What had happened?
The details were fuzzy and warped from the alcohol that was in their systems. Russell sometimes wished that he hadn’t been controlled by peer pressure and chugged as much cheap booze for perhaps. It was laughable, how history repeated itself.
“Hi,” Nellie murmured. There was a tug on Russell’s eyebrows, and she frowned, tracing the instinctual pull with her free hand. The tension released. She flicked the side of his head. “What are you thinking about in there?”
Russell pouted at the brief sting. “I dunno—nothing, everything, all at once. I swear, I can see the answer to the universe.”
“How profound.” Her eyes dazzled in feigned amazement. He snorted. “No, really, what’s up?”
“The ceiling,” Russell said, sadly immediate. Another flick. “Ow! God, nothing is up.”
“To be fair, God could be up,” Nellie shrugged. Russell narrowed his eyes. “You never know what the man is up to…that was by accident.”
“Sure, sure, it was.” Russell sighed in the crook of her neck. It spoke of indifference. In Nellie’s eyes, indifference was worse than anything else. She let him have a few beats of lulling silence, but when he reluctantly peeled his face away, she cocked her head in question. “It’s literally nothing, I promise.”
Nellie sighed, impatient.
“It’s just—” He paused, on the verge of cracking. The uncharted waters below didn’t look the most welcoming. He let out a sound, high in pitch but so, so pitiful. Russell removed himself from Nellie’s hold and leaned against the counter. He picked up his wine glass and swirled the crimson liquid inside. It was one of the only things they had unpacked. “Just thinking about us in high school, I guess.”
Nellie let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Yeah? That’s it?”
Russell hummed, bringing the rim of the glass to his lips. He sipped. “We were just so dumb back then, it’s unreal.”
“So you say,” Nellie said. Her agreement remains unspoken. She pulled herself onto the counter, legs swaying in the air, feet hovering over the floor. “We were absolute dicks to each other. I think I liked you since the beginning, but I thought the—like, the, like, cliche butterflies were hatred.”
“How do you misinterpret it that bad?” Russell laughed, wounding Nellie’s ego and fueling the scarlet flush in her cheeks.
“I don’t know!” Sound defense, truly.
“Honestly, I—it became one of those things where I didn’t know why I hated you. I forgot why I did, I guess. It was kinda ‘just because’.”
“Yeah. It was, like, just established from the beginning.”
A pause. Russell noted the uncharacteristic quiet from Nellie. He glanced her way. Her head was hung, staring longingly at her twiddling thumbs. Eyes glued to what laid below, afraid to look up.
“Nellie,” he called, a sound so distant despite their close proximity.
Silence.
“ Nellie ,” Russell repeated, firmer.
Nothing.
He set his glass down and stood in front of her. Nellie still forced her head down. Russell tentatively pried apart her clasped hands with a gentleness only he possessed. She made no effort to protest. He took her hand with one hand, traced comforting circles on her thigh with the other.
Still, Nellie didn’t speak.
“I’m here for you,” Russell reminded her.
“I know.”
It was meek, frail to not shatter fragile glass. But it was a start.
“What’s wrong?” Russell murmured. Genuine concern seeped in, sweet syrup rotting his teeth.
In place of words, a sniffle. His reaction was immediate; his hand tracing circles was quick to raise to her jaw. His touch wasn’t delicate enough to treat her like a porcelain display—it wasn’t meant to, despite how hopeless she felt. It was just gentle enough to show her how much he cared. It was sickening how it was everything.
“Christ, since when did I become such a sad drunk?” Nellie laughed, void of humor. The question was rhetorical, meant to lighten the mood she had dampened. When she lifted her head to reveal droplets accumulating, Russell’s brows only furrowed.
A droplet of rain smeared the canvas of rose gold, bleeding the rosy figures of the intricate painting.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she feverantly shook her head, “it’s dumb.”
“Can’t be if you’re crying.”
“I blame it on the alcohol.”
Russell laughed, though a reaction unexpected. Still, she cracked and weakly tugged at a corner of her mouth.
“You’ve had two glasses,” Russell said in mild amusement. He’d seen her down much more without much hassle.
“Oh,” Nellie uttered. Russell’s stare never wavered. Nellie swore his flooded irises hypnotized. “I guess I was just really, really shit to you throughout high school.”
“If that’s really worrying you, it’s all in the past now,” Russell reminded her. “I’m here, I’m okay.”
If Nellie acknowledged his words, she didn’t voice it. “Doesn’t that shit leave scars?”
“Yes, but that also means the wounds have since healed,” Russell amended. Nellie looked at him, unconvinced. “We wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t forgiven you, if we hadn’t forgiven each other. I love you. I know you reciprocate the feeling.”
Nellie threw her arms around Russell’s neck, the sudden action causing him to stumble. She laughed. He feigned hurt, but the fleeing sound was enough to soothe his worries. He wrapped his arms around her middle. He was a sap, had been called the title many times before, and cherished the moment for forevermore, a permanent engraving of the mundane.
Olive pitied themselves sometimes.
They were nothing short of a mess, sore limbs wandering, an exhausted mind directing uncoordinated movements. Yet this was their occupation, and they had and would dig their grave again and again with a masochistic cheerfulness. If they weren’t careful enough, the figurative language would eventually become reality.
Olive stared at themselves in the mirror at the foot of the staircase, cocking their head. They didn’t have the energy to gaslight themselves into thinking they looked good; however, they didn’t look bad, not necessarily. But their clothing was already coated in a light layer of dust and dirt and the color of dusk blemished the skin under half-lidded eyes. Olive decided on presentable .
They carefully applied pressure on the first stair with the ball of their foot. The creak wasn’t loud enough to cause worry. They began to ascend the staircase when Olive’s jacket got caught onto the railing. Huffing in mild annoyance, Olive tugged the fabric from the winding wood. When the fabric was free from confinement, they continued their trek. Olive shone the flashlight against the walls, the beam of yellow highlighting the cracks and crevices, to ensure they don’t accidentally scratch more scars into the old wood. The house already carried too much history.
The hallway of the second floor was darker than the downstairs. Boards were haphazardly hammered into the hallway wall to cover the broken window, blocking iridescent moonlight. Olive still shivered at a gust of wind.
Positioned against the opposite wall sat an old cabinet, a dark shade to match with the aging wooden walls behind the piece of furniture. Olive noticed a set of photo frames and walked towards them. They giggled when they were close enough to see a shattered photo of a cat on it. White dotted with black spots, every intricate hair was visible as it smooshed itself against the camera lense with wide eyes, brimming with innocence and curiosity.
A crash startled Olive. The door to their right had just flug open, beckoning them to further explore the horrors of the estate.
Olive wasn’t one to deny such an opportunity.