Chapter Text
"Why do I have to sit in the back?" Dusty huffs, arms crossed. "I'm not a little kid."
"You may as well be," Trevor snips, looking in the rearview mirror and rubbing at the graying hair of his temples. "And be glad you are!"
"I'm in my twenties!"
"Yeah, still basically a kid, just none of the benefits of being one," David says flatly, eyes locked on the road. The depth of the night shadows is enough to make his heart race, his eyes flick to every waver of light, his hands grip the wheel tight as his muscles.
But under the thick sweater, the tightly-knitted mittens, and blockade of braids, neither of the other two can tell his stress. His arms are relaxed, his grip is loose, and his eyes are barely taking in the road. And he doesn't mind them living in that reality, that's why he's the one who always drives.
"None of the benefits of being old enough to be an adult either," Dusty grumbles, sinking into his seat. "Don't even get to pick the radio station."
"The radio hasn't had a signal in ages," Trevor says, slapping it to make his point.
"Can't pick the temperature either."
"I told you to put on some proper clothes before we left!"
"I don't like how sleeves feel under my denim!"
"So don't complain!"
"Pipe down." David releases his grip with one hand for just a moment to pat Trevor's shoulder. "It's just one overnight trip to meet those producers, and then if they like the pitch we can try to negotiate for a van or something to get home."
"I still don't see why we need to meet with them. I produced our trial episodes just fine all by myself."
"Yeah, Trev, but if we don't find a way to turn a profit you'll just run out of money."
"I wish I'd never met you two."
Dusty gasps. "Please don't have said that!"
"Yeah mate, where'd that come from?"
"If I'd never met you two I wouldn't be undergoing the indignity of this roadtrip and actually enjoying it. You've ruined my personal standards for myself."
"Awww." Dusty grins at him. "We're your family."
"You are not! Shut your mouth!"
"We're your family, we're your family," Dusty sings teasingly. Trevor makes noises of affront that are so bird-like David can't help but wonder if they're all him or if he's run some real birds over.
"Aren't you the one who made us take those 'family photos?" David says, smirking a little despite the gnawing dread in his gut. He hates driving where there's no streetlights, he hates driving past empty fields, he hates driving in unfamiliar places, he can't let the other two drive.
Trevor slaps him lightly on the arm, and David almost jerks the wheel and sends them crashing, but the small twitch in his arm is lost to the statue-still tension of his body.
"Yes, but that doesn't mean he gets to mock me about it all! It's mot my fault you two wormed your way into my life! Just make a TV show together my arse..."
"Hey, look." Dusty point out of the window opposite to his seat. "Is that a house?"
"Finally!" Trevor rolls his window and squints out at the faint lights in the distance. "We can ask for directions!"
"What? We're not lost."
"Our phones lost service hours ago and we have no other maps, I think it's a safe bet we're not on the right track."
"Yeah, well, who's fault is it we don't have any printed maps?"
"I had to test the shredder!"
"Right, yeah, and I had to test the new forks with your leftover curry."
"I KNEW IT WAS YOU-"
"Guys!" Dusty leans forward as much as his seatbelt will allow. "Even if we're not lost, let's find somewhere to sleep!"
"You guy can sleep in your seats."
"You'll pass out at the wheel though, and we'll all go on fire."
"You know, it's this kind of imagination that took us from a PG rating to PG-13."
"Hire another writer then."
"Fine." David takes the next turn, the car shaking concerningly as they drive along the bumpy dirt road to the little distant lights. "If's it a little hotel we'll stay here, if not we'll ask where the nearest one is. Happy?"
"Yeah." Dusty smiles, pleased with himself. "And I think we should get room service, too."
"Says the one who never remembers his wallet," Trevor grumbles.
They pull up to the building, and all hopes sink.
The house was probably once bright pink, but in the light of their headlights they see only faded, peeling paint, bright spots only visible when a strung breeze shifts the ivy crawling all the way up to the half-decayed roof. It's tall, taller than any house they've seen that wasn't an apartment block, but small, like there can be only two or three rooms per floor. The windows above the second story are all smashed and shattered, but the glass is surprisingly intact on the second and first floors. The door as also once bright, probably close to David's favorite shade of blue, but now is as peeled and faded as the rest of the house.
There doesn't seem to be any lights on.
"Must've been a trick of the moonlight or something." David puts the car in reverse-
And it stalls.
"What?"
"I'll check." Dusty gets out and pops the hood. Smoke billows out, and Dusty coughs as he stumbles to David's window. "It's not good anymore."
"We just got her tuned up!" David gets out and takes a look himself, shining his phone flashlight onto the engine. "Oh, for fuck's sake..."
"Still no service," Trevor reports from the passenger seat. He looks up, up, up, to... "Do you think we could get a signal from the top of that?"
"What?" David turns and looks at the house. "No, none of us are going in there, have you lost it? This place could collapse any second."
"Well how else are we supposed to get out of here?"
"We just need to let the engine cool down and Dusty and I can take a closer look."
"And how will you fix it without tools?"
"I- ... Dammit."
"Hmm! Thought so. If we won't go in for service, we'll have to to check for tools. If we have to go in for tools, we may as well try to get a signal while we're at it."
"What if someone lives here?" Dusty looks up. "I mean... it's not impossible. Right?"
"We'll knock."
"Trev, wait-"
Trevor is out of his seat and rapping his knuckles against the door before David can protest.
The door creaks open, the knob falling right off.
They all stay very, very still. Trevor's previous confidence is gone, and now his fist shakes as he stands there.
"Don't go in," David hisses as Dusty steps behind the taller man.
"Of course I'm not going in," Trevor hisses back. "I've seen films!"
They're all still for a very, very long time.
Dusty tugs on David's hand. "Can we get back in the car? I'm getting cold. And it locks."
"Right. Yeah." David sucks in a sharp breath. "Trev, back in the car."
Trevor blinks, and shakes out of the stupor of silent fear that had gripped all of them. "Car, yes, back in the car."
They all go to their doors and-
No.
No.
David pats himself down for the keys. "Who closed the doors?"
"The wind must have caught them." Trevor's hand is still shaking. "You didn't leave the keys inside. You never do."
"They aren't in there," Dusty confirms, looking through the window and shining his own phone light in. "Did you drop them?"
"I clipped them to my belt loop, I can't have dropped them."
"Let's just break the window."
"It'll still be cold then." Dusty rubs his arms. "What do we do?"
Slowly, all eyes turn to the house.
"We all agreed that was a terrible idea," Trevor reminds.
"Yeah." David kneels down to search the ground, but the keys are still missing. "But it might be the only idea now."
"Wait." Dusty walks a little farther away to a lone dying tree. He picks up a large fallen branch and heaves it over. "Okay, now we can go."
"Want me to carry that?"
"I've got it."
They slowly approach the door. David finds himself at the front of the group, despite Dusty being the one with the 'weapon'. They step inside, and the chill of the night is instantly washed away, though not pleasantly. The inside is musty, choked, overly warm and untouched for who knows how long.
"Are the walls... felt?" Trevor presses closer to David, and Dusty tightens his grip on the branch. David shines his light around the room.
Felt. The walls are padded with felt. It might've been a sort of blueish shade once, maybe teal, but there's so much dust gathered on the fabric it's hard to say for sure. There's rips and tears all over, exposing old decaying wood.
The furniture is in no better state. Three chairs sit in the center of the room. An old rocking chair lays on it's side, one of the arms completely rotted off. A plain chair like meant for a school desk sits to it's left, looking ready to shatter if anyone even thinks about sitting on it. A large armchair sits to the farthest right, just as dusty and discolored as the rest of the fabrics in the room, the seat and back sunken in and so squashed they probably feel like solid wood instead of cushions.
A clock sits above a cracked fireplace, the only thing in the room in anything close to decent condition. Even then, the glass over the face is cracked, stretching across the entire bottom. It almost looks like it's frowning.
"This is a house of horrors," Trevor whispers. "And I thought Dusty's designs were disturbing."
"Hey." Dusty shakes his branch a little. "Remember me, holding this?"
"Shh!" David shines the light at the windows. Instead of showing the outside, there's more felt pasted over the glass. Probably some kind of sky picture, but again, dust and grime.
The only saving grace is that there don't seem to be any bugs or spiders.
They shuffle further into the house. "Maybe there's a toolchest, like Trev said," David whispers as quietly as he can. "Can use it to pop open the car for the night."
"Good plan." Trevor's voice shakes.
As suspected, there's only two rooms on the whole floor. The kitchen/dining area is in no better state, and no less felt-covered. The table in the middle is completely collapsed, broken into three pieces by a fallen light fixture. The chairs are all knocked over, the floor cracked beneath them. The fridge door hands open, empty. Old broken dishes are piled in the sink, a centimeter of cloudy, foul-smelling water layering the bottom. The shelves are crowded with cans with rotted labels, unreadable and flaking off.
There's a staircase to the side, but about five steps up it's completely collapsed. There's now way to get up to wherever it leads.
Across from it, by a shattered mirror, is another staircase. David tests it first, placing all his weight on each step slowly, slowly. The other two follow just as slowly, up, up...
They reach three small bedrooms.
Small for rooms, large for closets, with a letter on each headboard. The rooms are in complete disarray, but like downstairs, they're insulated and warm.
"We shouldn't split up," Trevor croaks.
"No," David agrees. "Let's, um... let's all take this room." It's the one with the bed that says 'R'. "We'll look around some more in the morning."
"We're not going to sleep here," Dusty whimpers.
"You're the one who wanted to stop to sleep," Trevor snaps. He rubs his face and sighs. "We'll... take shifts. None of us want to be here, especially not unaware."
"... Alright." Dusty climbs into the bed, and David pushes Trevor in after. Dusty hands David the branch.
"I'm used to staying up," David says with a shrug when Trevor glares at him. "You two get some sleep, I'll wake you up in a couple hours."
"You better."
David sits in a little chair by the bed, eyes glued to the door, grip tight on the branch.
There's nothing in here with them.
There must be something in here with them.
He stays there, tense, still as a statue. It's worse than driving. It's why he can't let the other two do it.
Maybe Dusty and Trevor were right, though. His eyes are playing tricks on him now. For a second he thinks he sees light in the hall. And then thinks he hears Dusty humming, but Dusty is sound asleep. Well, not sound. He's frowning and tossing and turning. It's a miracle Trevor is still asleep, frowning as well but stiff as a corpse where he lays.
David nods off for a second. He feels it coming, but can't resist. His head dips forward, his eyes slide shut, and-
I'M NOT GOING BACK INTO THAT HOUSE!
He jolts back awake with a small gasp, an incomprehensible and quickly-fleeting flash of nightmare leaving his heart hammering.
The door, loose on it's hinges, creaks and sways despite the complete and utter stifling lack of breeze.
"Give them a couple more minutes," he mumbles to himself. Maybe they'll wake up on their own. Dusty is whimpering now. Trevor is sucking in shallow breaths. Of course they've having nightmares. This whole situation is a waking one.
-in my-
David rubs his eyes. There go the imagined voices again. He thought he'd have a little longer before the sleep-deprivation hallucinations. His record is five days with just a few cat naps throughout. Trevor had almost killed him.
-not one of those guys-
His head dips again, and he startles back awake. He sees a light in the hallway again. No he doesn't. Nothing's out there. Something's out there.
-eal with it myself I guess.
The door creaks, and David realizes why this place scares him.
It's haunted.
The specter is so translucent it's barely visible at all, just a faint red tint to the air, so faint David would think it's just another trick of his eyes if it weren't for it's eyes. It towers, taller than David would be standing up, and it's eyes rest atop it blood-red head and stare down unblinking. They're wide, slightly off, pointed down at him. David's heart can't decide if it should race or just stop, and it leaves him lightheaded.
The specter tilts it's head slightly, a curtain of red falling to the side and revealing jagged teeth and exposed gum. Just like the rest of it these features ae barely visible, but the specter seems to almost... not glow, but have light around it, like it's walking on a plane where the electricity never stopped working and the bulbs were more than shattered glass.
Oh, look at that.
David's hand flies up to grip his throat. He didn't speak, he's sure he didn't, has this otherworldly apparition stolen his voice? He can't open his own mouth, but he also can't move, can't look away, can't think, and he's sure it's just panic making all of that so impossible.
The specter looks to the side, at something David can't see. The curtain of hair-or something trying to be hair- falls back over the unmoving mouth, and puff forward as the specter speaks to an invisible audience.
There's ghosts in my room.