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The camera swings around harshly, the glare from the streetlights obscuring the scene before the other man’s head enters the screen and shrouds the light from view.
“ Hellllloo , watchers!” Parker grins into the lens, bringing the phone up to his face. His hair is a rumpled mess, sticking up in odd places in an oddly charming way only Parker could pull off. Arthur chuckles and pushes his head away as Parker laughs. The camera is adjusted to a better view, the lighting now in front rather than behind.
“Hello, stream,” Arthur smiles, giving a little wave to the camera. The chat is going a million miles a minute with hello’s, hearts and emotes galore in greeting.
Today they stand in front of a very large, very abandoned theater. It looms behind them in the night like a giant, crumbling and old where it towers above.
It would be unnerving if the two men in front of the camera weren’t laughing cheerfully.
“Right right—chat! Hello chat, hello, and welcome—“ Parker spins with a flourish and spreads his arms open wide, “Carcosa’s End Theater! Where spirits of those who died in the accident are said to still linger within,” he finishes with a waggle of his fingers.
Arthur clears his throat and folds his hands in front of him like he’s getting ready for a presentation, taking over the intro.
“Carcosa’s End met its, well, end when the theater suddenly caught aflame during a play. Most notably, this play was the accursed The King in Yellow play from the old novel, The King in Yellow, which is the very story the theater got its name. In the novel it is said that, upon seeing Act II the reader will be driven to madness. Rumor has it that when the old theater went up in flames, it was during this very act. After it went down, they never decided to put it back into business,” Arthur tells the report. Messy stitched together rumors and superstition all stuffed with a hefty amount of coincidence. Still, it made for a good hunt nevertheless, and what better place for occult shit to happen than the occult shit town of Arkham.
Both Arthur and Parker can very much account for Arkham being shitty considering they both grew up and somehow survived to this point in the very town.
“Y’know English, much as this Gods accursed town is, uh, cursed with all the cult shit, certainly is still home,” Parker grins. “If we encounter some cultists—which I won’t be surprised if we do—at least I'll die on stream. We can put it in a funny moments compilation.”
“Parker we are not putting your death into a ‘funny moments compilation’” Arthur says, exasperation lacing his voice fondly.
“Nah nah, imagine it, Art! ‘UnPrivate Eye Funny Comp. Parker Faces Off With A Cultist’ with, like, five exclamation points and a shitty image of me being stabbed!”
“Parker, no—“
“Parker yes. I’ll haunt you until you make it!”
Arthur sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, glasses going crooked on his face. The chat is split between cheering for Parker’s antics and yelling for him to not get stabbed by a random devotee to a malevolent god.
It’s a very even split.
“Ok, if it brings you any comfort, I will try not to get stabbed. We’ve lived in Arkham for years, English! We know how to get outta these situations anyway.” Parker smooths over, and Arthur gives him a fond look. “Now, shall we hunt some ghosts, my friend?”
“Of course.”
Arthur takes his phone into his hands. He always was a more ‘behind the scenes’ kinda guy, wasn’t as, er, photogenic and enthusiastic as Parker was, but still somehow became his co-host. The chat would chant whenever ‘camera-guy’ would come on screen, and they chant now about ‘Holding Time’ just as they always do when Arthur goes to carry the camera.
He follows Parker into the crumbling building, Parker’s flashlight flying from one end of the theater to the other. Arthur squints in the dark as Parker turns around at him to say something, but he cuts him off.
“Wh—Parker are those sunglasses? It’s nearly twelve am!”
He also tends to serve as damage control.
“Oh it’s fine, don’t worry Art. Just protection from the eye snatching demons, wanna turn with ‘em?”
Arthur catches his arm and pulls him back before he trips over a fallen piece of rubble. He prepares for a witty comeback but the flashlight in Parker’s hand swings around as he’s jerked back and Arthur startles at what he swears is a figure standing on the charred stage. Instinctively at seeing Arthur’s frightened face Parker swerves around as well, shining the light about where his eyes were fixed but finds nothing.
“Geez, the hell you lookin’ at? Look like you seen a ghost,” Parker laughs, trying to ease the tension, but Arthur still stares. Parker is visibly tense and normally Arthur might poke fun at his fear because, well, Parker is all about fake it till you make it, but he never really makes it to overcome the fear of the occult.
He’s fantastic at conversation and making people comfortable, awkward tension is nothing on him. The gruesome and macabre of crime scenes is a sort of morbid curiosity and he reviews them with startling enthusiasm, but demons and cults shake him to his core. Unfortunately ghost hunting became more popular than his original true crime content, Arthur was the one who normally did the research before hunts so Parker wouldn’t chicken out. When they went on-site, Arthur was always there to be the tall imposing looming figure behind him to be a bit of comfort. Somehow he could be both brain and brawn.
So seeing Arthur ‘I’m really not scared of ghosts’ Lester, startled so hard he’s frozen, well, could you blame Parker for the shake that creeps into his legs?
“…Arthur?”
“It’s fine, Parker,” Arthur says with a wary smile, glancing at the chat held in Parker’s hand.
‘what happened???’
‘WTF WSA THAT’
‘arfur hold us’
‘HOLD HANDS CHAT’
‘I SAW SOMETHINFN’
‘THEYRE GOING TO BE SACRIFICEDHJSHS’
Chat is a useless comfort.
The donation jingle rings loud in the empty abandoned theater and startles both men so bad they nearly jump out of their skin.
‘Somebody was standing on the stage’
Scratch that, chat is not a comfort at all.
Arthur’s free hand trails to the pocket knife clipped to his trousers, running his thumb against the textured hilt. Parker’s glasses jostle off his nose and clatter to the floor. He bends down to pick them up quickly, looking around him as if the darkness would personally eat him, clipping the glasses to his shirt.
“Right, so, ah—why’s only half the place scorched?” Parker breaks the silence, choosing to ignore the dono and instead begins swinging the flashlight around again. It focuses on the stage (Arthur knows he’s scared shitless) where it’s black and charred, a lectern at its center as if the stage was a church.
“Ah,” Arthur prepares to present his research. Which means to say he’s preparing to present the bullshit rumors he read online.
“Apparently the fire only scorched about half the theater. It didn’t quite reach the audience, but the stage? Torched. They say ‘the King didn’t like the play, not doing it it’s justice to drive those who watch mad. So he destroyed it,’ or something. There were also mentions of a cursed artifact I read from other people’s reports? It was all quite silly.”
“Right…so what actually happened?” Parker turns to him with a cheeky smile. He knows Arthur always has some sensical theory or other information to disregard the accursed.
It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in the supernatural, Faroe beat that idea into the ground, he just liked to make logic of it all. Stick it to the ghosts that they aren’t special, that humans could set shit on fire too. Stuff goes up in flames all the time. Parker has set shit on fire. That’s why they have fire extinguishers in the flat.
“It was the nineteen-hundreds, everybody smoked. Someone probably dropped their cigar or something, set the thing ablaze. It’s not a stretch.”
“On the stage?”
Arthur shrugs. “Sure. Careless actor, clumsy backstage worker. Anything, really.”
They’re rounding the stage now. Parker keeps glancing behind him and Arthur can see the shake in his hands and he’s pretty sure it’s not from the cold.
“Did a lotta people die here?” he asks, and he squints up at the stage. There is nothing but the shimmering dust of age.
Arthur angles his phone up to look where Parker is looking, only to find nothing. Only, the camera becomes laggy, pixelating in the darkness and becoming slower. He brings the phone in front of him to look at the screen, camera looking to his feet as he answers “around 12 casualties, of what I could find. I read that the fire spread quickly but didn’t, y’know, reach the upper area,” he finishes with a motion to the seats suspended above them as a second floor, not untouched but not nearly as scorched as the seats up front. “They were able to get out fairly quickly.”
It’s not exactly ‘ Arkhams Most Haunted ’ but it’s scary enough.
And, yknow. Fucked up enough.
They are kind of breaking and entering but nobody in Arkham is gonna care. The building looks like it’s about to collapse. Arkham police don't care anyways.
They round the corner and start up the stairs, dusty and old and creaking with their weight. It’s old polished wood that bends and groans and Parker holds onto Arthur’s hand with a death grip. If the stairs were to collapse beneath them, well, that would be less than ideal, but Arthur’s not sure if that’s better or worse than contracting asbestos.
“Art if the stairs collapse and I fall through them you’ll catch me, right?” Parker calls back, turning his head to look at Arthur. He hums, angling the camera up where the chat is talking about dangerous second floors in old buildings, and answers “Probably not.”
“Oh fuck you, if I’m going down you’re coming with me, hand in unlovable hand.”
“Is that why you’re crushing my hand right now?”
“Yes, fuck you.”
Arthur snorts as Parker promptly runs into a spiderweb and screams, stumbling a few steps and screaming more as a part of the step breaks under his foot, dragging Arthur with him as he stumbles. Arthur grabs him by the arm to stabilize him in his frenzy and picks out the webs in his hair.
“Park, I would very much prefer not falling into splintering wood,” he says, amused, combing his fingers through Parker’s hair and flicking the sticky webs off of it. “You’ll have to wash your hair tonight.”
Parker glares pointedly into the camera, the chat split, half of them laughing their asses off while the other awws.
Arthur flicks his forehead when he’s done.
Parker headbutts him.
When they reach the upper floor, Parker does a one-over of the room, dusty and old and moldy.
“….I do not want to get black mold disease.” Arthur deadpans.
“Ehhhhhh It’ll be fine,” Parker waves off, rifling through his little side bag as Arthur wanders the premises.
It’s dingy and rotted and, quite frankly, cold. Arthur’s crewneck does little to shield him from the draft.
The seats are charred and torn and graffiti painted on the walls. Surprisingly, he sees few cult sigils. The closest thing is the Yellow Sign, and that’s debatable as an actual claiming of territory or mindless graffiti for the theater dedicated to the book.
“We know what time it is folks!” Parker grins, holding the tripod in one hand and one of his hunting devices in the other. The phone is put into place and stood on the wooden railing, decently wide so they don’t fear it falling too much.
“Spirit box? Already?” Arthur hums, walking backwards from the camera.
Looking over the ledge, he can see the theater at a better angle.
Part of the roof has caved in, either from age, the fire, or both. The stage curtains are a dirty golden yellow instead of the traditional red or blue, half burned and left open on the empty stage save for the lectern that stands at the upper center.
Arthur squints and thinks he sees something sitting upon it.
He thinks it's a book, actually.
The sharp static of the spirit box interrupts his thoughts, the thing almost falling out of Parker’s hands where he startled himself.
“I forget how loud this thing is,” Parker sneers at it, knocking the thing with his finger. He clears his throat, playing up the theatrics where Arthur huffs a laugh at it, and says loudly “any spirits up for a chat tonight?”
The spirit box continues being the hellishly loud thing it is, incomprehensible static blaring from its speaker.
“Any ghosts? Ghouls? Demons, even?”
Arthur rolls his eyes. “You’re just asking to get possessed now,” he laughs, leaning in closer to the radio.
Somehow, the static seems to become muffled as if a blanket has been laid over the top of it, softening the sound. Before Arthur can ask if the batteries are running low, a voice comes from the static.
“ Who are you?”
Parker freezes. It came out more demand than question, if Arthur was being honest, but the startling part was how clear it was.
He elbows Parker in the ribs when he's quiet for too long and Parker shoots him a look that's a crossbreed of scrunched up annoyance and fear.
He puts on some fake confidence and says with a flourish “Peter ‘Parker’ Yang, resident, er, investigator, and my good partner Arthur Lester, at your… presence.”
The spirit is quiet but hasn’t left, considering the static is still muffled.
“You are not a fucking investigator.”
Parked mocks offense. Or, actually he might be genuinely offended, Arthur cannot tell by this point.
“Am too! I’m a private investigator for ghosts. Ambassador of the Spooks. I take your cases and put them in neat little reports.” he replies matter-of-fact-ly.
“That's a lie, I do the research, he goes and gets scared shitless.”
Parker puts an offended hand on his chest and gasps, the spirit laughing .
The chat is going insane. Some people think it's fake.
Honestly, if Arthur was an audience member, he would think this was definitely fake.
He continues looking around as Parker collects himself in true dramatic fashion. He won't pretend he isn’t a little unnerved, searching the place to see if he can actually see the spirit, or any others, or something else that might be a danger so he could get them out of harm's way while Parker entertains.
His eyes land on the item sitting on the lectern again.
“Whatever—Mister Spirit, care to tell us any tales of the great Carcosas End Theatre? Perhaps on how it ended, preferably?” Parker moves on, taking on an interviewer-like mood as he asks the ghost questions.
Act now, think later, he supposes. At least he hasn’t passed out from shock or something.
The ghost scoffs at the question, hilariously enough. “Can’t you just use your funny little glowing rectangle things instead of asking some fucking dead guy about his hundred year old trauma?”
Parker freezes, eyes wide.
He puts a hand over his mouth and the guy in the spirit box starts cackling his ass off. It’s a deep, villainous sounding thing, but sort of infectious as Arthur stifles a laugh of his own while Parker looks embarrassed.
“Arthur, I'm such a bad interviewer..” he mumbles dejectedly, pushing his face into Arthur’s shoulder, shaking with the effort to not laugh at the poor man.
Arthur decides to take the initiative while Parker wallows in his despair. He lifts Parker’s hand holding the spirit box and asks “was that you we saw on the stage earlier, friend?”
A low thoughtful hum passes through the thrumming static.
“Yes. I had to be sure to protect what is mine.”
“That was you?!” Parker swerves around, having regained his energy. “You scared Arthur! Arthur!!”
He shakes the man in question to fully get his point across.
“You walked into my fucking house!” the spirit switches from mysterious to angry.
“Dude, your house is kinda shit not gonna lie. I thought we were gonna get stabbed by a cultist.”
“I don’t want to live here?! I’m stuck in this place?!”
“Wait, really? When you die are you just stuck?” Arthur interjects, head tilted in curiosity.
“……I don’t know.”
Parker squints into the nothingness in disbelief.
“Wow, I would not want to be stuck in this place. What's it like living in a burned down theater?”
“Well I’m not really alive— “
“You know what I meant.”
“— but , it’s boring. Sometimes people like you come along and make it a little interesting, until they start talking to me like a five year-old,” the spirit seems to audibly roll its eyes, the annoyance clear in its voice. “ At least you’re interesting conversationalists.”
“Look at that, English!” Parker grins proudly, “we got approval from the—uh, Art?” He stops, looking around to find a major lack of Arthur in the vicinity.
“Did you take my fucking partner?” He snarls at the spirit box, any sense of caution gone with the wind quickly with the prospect of Arthur going missing without his notice. The spirit answers, almost offended, “I didn’t do shit .”
Parker grabs the live camera, scans the room behind him, looking for—fuck, he doesn’t know. A cultist? A demon? Arthur would at least tell him he was walking off, right?—
“Where the fuck are you going.”
Parker is about to tell the guy off, ghost or not, curse it out because he’s looking for his fucking best friend , until he realizes its not talking to him at all.
“Arthur, what the fuck are you doing?!” Parker runs to the railing, slams his ribs into it and leans over. He's almost threatening to jump off if it means he could tackle Arthur right then and there for walking off like that.
….And he’s completely ignored, great , he’s about to do something stupid and Parker has to be the smart one.
Hes walked onto the stage, Parker can see him, and he heads to the upper center where that little lectern sits there, unharmed against the burns. His hands reach up to take something that sits on it.
“Don’t touch that!” the spirit snarls at him, and he doesn’t know if Arthur can’t hear him or if he doesn’t care. “ Don’t FUCKING TOUCH THAT—“
And Parker cannot hear over the static and screams, but he can see, he can see Arthur and the writhing, coiling shadows that weave over him and drag him down where he falls onto his knees, trying to claw them off of his arms and face and eyes— and Parker runs.
He drops the stupid spirit box, stumbling over his feet because damn it all, his best friend is in trouble.
He gets halfway down the rotted stairs before they give out under his feet and he’s falling.
The phone in his hand shatters when he drops it, splintering wood stabbing into him. He barely checks himself over, just makes sure he hasn’t been impaled, and gets back up. There's cobwebs in his hair and more than a few splinters and fuck his ankle might actually be sprained, but none of that matters right now. He uses the little bit of moonlight streaming in from the collapsed ceiling and searches for a way out of the splintering pit he's found himself in. He climbs out of a hole in a wall, earning himself a few more scrapes, and sees Arthur on the stage still, wrapped in those shadows like a suffocating veil.
Yeah, his ankle hurts, yeah, he’s bleeding from somewhere on his face, but that doesn’t stop him from clambering up the stage like a madman.
It’s loud. He can’t tell if the screams are Arthur’s, the spirits, or his own. It sounds like wind has enveloped him from all sides, and the shadows that lick just the edge of him feel like cold slicks of water before disappearing back to envelope Arthur.
The man in question is kneeling on the floor where tentacles of shadow have masked his eyes and his fingers keep slipping through them where he tries to tear them off. His movements have become slow and sluggish now, his chest rising with a clear effort, and Parker cannot ignore the sinking fear in his gut.
In front of him a book lies open where the masses of shadow seem to emit from their pages.
Parker gets a terrible idea.
“ARTHUR!” He shouts, hands gripping the man’s shoulders. Arthur’s hands still from his face, half raised midair. They land on Parker’s forearms and Parker can feel the shake in his body.
He can’t hear Arthur, but he knows. He knows he’s asking if it’s him.
“Yes , yes, it’s me! We’ll—We’re gonna get you outta here, okay English? Okay?” He yells over the noise, breaths coming quick as he searches the man for what he needs. “You’re gonna be okay—I promise, okay? I promise.”
He yanks the pocket knife from where it was clipped to his pocket and flips it open. He keeps a hand on Arthur, makes sure he knows he’s still there for him, while the other scrambles across the stage searching for that damned book.
He yanks it over to him and rakes the blade through its pages with a satisfying tear.
Almost immediately, the shadows stop emitting from it, but they all retreat into Arthur . He slumps forward when they’ve all disappeared and Parker catches him, dropping the knife and gathering the man to his chest where the color returns to his face in heaving breaths.
Arthur’s hands shake as they reach up to his face, scratched up from his panic to tear the tentacles away.
“Park..? ” He rasps out, “Parker I…I can’t see…”
“What?”
“E-Everything's gone dark, I—“ he inhales shakily and Parker holds him tighter. “I can’t—there’s no—“
“It’s okay,” Parker interrupts before he can start spiraling. The exhaustion is catching up with him and he feels like he’s going to fall backwards. “It’s—It’s okay. You’re okay—“
“ What the fuck did you do.”
They both jump and Parker’s getting ready to start running, but Arthur gasps and wisps of shadow begin to fly away from him. Their centers glow a soft yellow and they build into a figure, dressed in tattered, scorched robes of yellow and gold.
Arthur blinks and follows the wisps path to a tall figure, tanned skin and dark hair, confusion and anger piled all into one expression.
“I…I cut the book.”
“You…cut my book? The cursed book? The one I’ve been protecting so that fucking idiots like you don’t touch it?”
“Hey, fuck you man! There was nothing in that book but you!” Parker hisses out. The spirit actually has the audacity to look confused.
He collects himself, looking actually remorseful before taking a deep breath and asking “are you okay..?”
“I…I can see again,” Arthur laughs in disbelief, “so that has to mean something.”
“That, um. That’s because I stopped possessing you.”
“What.” Parker deadpans. The man actually looks embarrassed.
“I’m bound to him,” he answers, “because you ruined the book.”
“Because you were killing him!”
“Because he touched my book. ”
“And—what, now you’re stuck to him? Is that it?”
“That’s exactly it, round of applause, everyone. He knows what ‘bound to’ means.”
“Hey, don’t get sarcastic on me,” Parker bites out, and then turns to look down at Arthur. “And you, what the hell were you thinking?!”
Arthur makes a pained face, avoiding both Parker and the spirits glare, looking anywhere but their faces. “I said I read about a cursed artifact..”
“And your idea was to find it?! ”
“I didn’t think it was actually cursed!”
The spirit looks exasperated and Arthur is pointedly trying not to look at him.
“You were talking to…a ghost that outright said they were stuck here…and still thought it was a good idea.”
Arthur stays quiet and Parker just sighs, falling backwards and taking Arthur down with him. He thought he was the dumb one. At least he wasn’t going around and getting possessed.
“ God, I’m suddenly exhausted,” he groans, hand patting around for his phone to check the time. He opts to not tell Arthur his phone shattered. He needed an upgrade anyway. The ghost moves to sit cross-legged next to them and Parker doesn’t have the energy to shoo him away.
Parker has thirty-eight new messages and four missed calls.
Arthur looks over and cringes.
“Oh God, Tess was watching. I hope Faroe didn’t see that,” Arthur bites his lip at the thought. Parker hits the call back button and it rings only once before Tess picks up.
“Are you okay?!”
Oh god, he feels so bad.
“We’re fine, kid, don’t worry,” he sighs, putting the phone on speaker and laying it on his chest.
“Mr.Yang please, I saw you fall through the stairs and the stream crashed.”
“You fell through the fucking stairs?!” Arthur exclaims and, oh yeah, he didn’t see that part.
“We’re fine, don’t call the police, I’m not trying to get arrested tonight, just—we’ll be back soon, ‘kay? You’re getting a raise for putting up with this bullsh—crap, promise.”
“ Mr.Yang—“
“See you guys soon!” He hangs up. He then shoots a message to his moderators that, yes, they’re alive, no, don’t call anybody. Please. And then turns off his phone, wiping a hand down his face.
“So like, is Mr.Ghost coming home with us if you’re cursed now or what?”
“I have a name, you know,” the spirit glares, crossing his arms. The beads wrapped around his wrist jingle slightly and, up close, he thinks he can see a smatter of faint freckles on his hands and face.
“Spit it out, then.”
“John Doe.”
Parker stares him dead in the eye from his spot on the floor.
“That is not your name.”
John sighs heavily. “It is. I promise you, it is. I was the actor for The King—you could probably find my name in a…pamphlet or something?”
He knocks his head against the wood floor. He cannot deal with this right now.
And then he hears sirens.
“Oh for—I’ll drive,” Parker sighs, moving Arthur off his arm so he can get up. Arthur just continues to lay there. He goes to stand and promptly starts falling sideways and, yeah he definitely messed up his ankle.
Someone catches him. Johns looking down at him where he landed in his arms.
“You can touch me?!”
“You’re in my domain !”
“Okay, I’m driving,” Arthur groans, standing up and moving to carry Parker in a limp. He ushers him into the car and slams the door when he gets into the driver's seat. John has faded halfway out of reality now, being too far from his domain, but assures he's not going anywhere.
“That's less comforting than you think.” Arthur says as he lights the ignition.
John glares at him from his seat in the back and Parker cannot get over how ridiculous the situation is. They’re literally stealing a ghost.
“Right—Parker, keep your seatbelt on, John, don’t possess me, and we can get out of here no problem,” Arthur commands before hitting the gas a little too fast, and leaves the theater behind them.
Parker reminds himself to make a post assuring everyone that they didn’t die, but for now, he thinks about the fucked up ghost actor in their backseat, his partners eyes who were definitely not that gold before, and opts to fall asleep in the passenger seat instead.
He can think about it later.