Chapter Text
You hadn’t intended to stalk them, it’s just that they were the most interesting thing to cross your path in what felt like millennia. And you’re pretty sure it’s called haunting when you do it, anyway, seeing as you’ve been dead for three years. Three linear years, anyway. Whatever they had going on back there in the darkness barely counted as ‘time’, in your opinion, and you wanted no part of it.
“Can you please stop clicking that god damn pen?” Your eyes are drawn to the larger of the two men you’d been haunting (It’s stalking. Let’s not kid ourselves.) for the past several months. He’s sitting on the floor of the van, untangling wires, like he has been for about twenty minutes now. It’s been an increasingly frustrating process, and you kind of wish you could help, if only to make him stop making that murderous face at his partner. His partner, who has been clicking his pen for the last five minutes, muttering to himself and pacing back and forth beside the van with a notebook in his hand, has not noticed. “Hey!”
“We did a murder storyline last month, and a suicide right before that, so maybe we should go with an accidental death story soon, after this one,” Specs is still muttering. You move towards him- it's weird, trying to walk as a ghost. You sort of move your legs, but you also sort of just go to the place you’re headed towards. Like teleportation, or something like it. You end up at the tail end of where he’s pacing, watching him walk towards you, and you put out your hands, putting as much concentration as you can into them. Like you expected, nothing happens, and he walks right into and through you without so much as a shudder. You can’t help but feel disappointed anyway and go back to your spot at the corner of the van, between the two.
“It’s not fair,” you complain out loud, sitting on the bumper. The fact that you can sit on a physical object, but you can’t touch a person, is baffling at best and infuriating at worst, and makes you wish you had someone, anyone, who could teach you the rules. You watch Tucker struggle with the wires absently as he continues to glare at Specs, who finally glances over at his partner.
“What?” Specs huffs, defensive and impatient. Tucker gives an exasperated grunt and shakes the tangle.
“Stop. Clicking. Your fucking PEN.” He demands, through clenched teeth.
“My pen? Oh, right,” Specs sounds almost apologetic, but then he clicks it several times in rapid succession. “This pen?”
“Oh my god,” Tucker growls, tossing the wires off to the side and jumping out of the van, shoes landing heavily on the dirt. “I’m going for a fucking walk.”
“Alone?” You agree, the abandoned hotel may or may not be actually haunted (present company excluded, of course), but it’s still dangerous to wander around at night alone. Tucker flips him the bird without a backward glance, and Specs frowns, clicking his pen one more time. “Asshole.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” you promise, and follow after him, ‘skipping’ the distance to wind up at his side. “He’s right, you know.” You know by now you’re not going to get a response, but it hasn’t stopped you from carrying on your one-sided conversations yet.
“Asshole,” Tucker says, kicking at a loose bit of brick on the ground. It’s not actually a response, not one directed at you, but you take what you can get.
“I mean, you both are, but you make a good team, too.” He walks around the side of the hotel, and you follow, looking up at the creepy place. “Man, I bet this place is just crawling with spirits back in the darkness.” The darkness was densely populated with ghosts and... other things... especially in buildings like this one. Even your house, the version that you ‘woke up’ in, had a few unexpected extra bodies hanging around; they freaked you out so bad you’d run outside before it even registered that you weren’t even really home. Well, you were, but you weren’t. Your body was probably still in the bathtub where you left it, but you, the way you were now, had bolted and never gone back.
“Locked. Fucking great.” Tucker’s voice draws you out of thoughts of darkness and you focus on him again. “How am I supposed to get set up if he keeps locking it every time we go back out?” You eye the door and without thinking, you skip to it and shove your arm through it, patting the other side until you find the door handle; with a soft click, it pops open. Tucker, who’d started back the way he came, stops dead in his tracks and slowly turns back around. You stare at your own arm in amazement, flexing your hand experimentally. “Must not have turned it right,” you hear Tucker mutter as he pushes the door open. You continue to follow him, still a little stunned. You’d never been able to do that before. What had changed? You have no idea where to even start.
“I know you’re the big tough one, with your mohawk or whatever, but you could have at least pretended to be a little scared,” you joke, shaking your arm a little. “I bet Specs would have freaked out.” Tucker leads you through hallways and staff rooms, all the way to the lobby, where he checks on a few of the cameras he’s already set up, checking audio levels and other stuff you don’t really understand. “You guys gonna go into any of the rooms or you just gonna do the episode in here?” They hadn’t gone upstairs so far, and you were pretty sure at least one of the rooms upstairs had to be the scene of a murder or something. You’re not sure why you’re so sure, but it seems right.
“Didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I see you crying,” you hear Tucker singing quietly to himself, and you grin. He only sings when he’s totally alone, and you have the sneaking suspicion that he does it to keep himself from getting creeped out. You hum along, taking a stroll around the enormous lobby. It’s a fine example of a haunted location, covered in dust and cobwebs, papers scattered on the floor, chairs overturned. It’s almost cliché, but it works well enough for their purposes. When you reach the foot of the stairs, you hear footsteps, and you tense, looking back to Tucker, whose back is to the room at large as he fiddles with one of his cameras. You jump back to his side and try to tap his shoulder with no luck. The footsteps get closer, and you consider trying to lock the door, but it opens before you can follow through.
“There you are!” Specs gasps out, bending over to put his hands on his knees and catch his breath. You rub a hand over your face and exhale, relieved. Tucker jumps, knocking his hands into his equipment and causing it to wobble dangerously, though he manages to catch it before anything disastrous happens. “Couldn’t. Find you.”
“Just been in here,” Tucker grumbles, setting the gear back in place. He still looks irritated, but that’s sort of just how he looks sometimes. “You about ready?”
“Yeah.” Specs straightens and adjusts his glasses, taking a deep breath. “Once we finish the audio test, we should go over the script again, so you remember it all this time.” You roll your eyes. They’re both so needlessly antagonistic sometimes. Tucker’s frown indicates that this is going to be another spat, so you decide to head upstairs and investigate for yourself. The boys’ arguing fades as you ascend, skipping multiple stairs at a time until you reach the second floor. It’s quiet up here, still and empty. You glide along the hallway, peering through doorways. Each room is much the same as the one before it, dusty and devoid of anything particularly interesting. This one has a bedframe mostly still intact, that one has a moth-eaten sheet on the floor. There’s a broken window in this one. It reminds you of the broken windows in the house where you met Specs and Tucker, and you hum the song Tucker had been singing earlier as you and your mind drift along.
When you’d run from the house where you died, you’d ended up in total darkness. You were constantly running into other spirits, who for the most part just stood there, staring into the nothing you were drowning in. There was no way you knew of to quantify how long you spent in that horrible place, wandering endlessly until, inexplicably, you saw a light. As you drew closer, you realized it was a lantern, and someone was using it to navigate. A woman, young and terrified, but a fire in her that nearly burned as bright as the lantern. It took you a moment to realize that this woman, whoever she was, was alive. ALIVE.
You weren’t the only one to take notice of her. Your fellow denizens of the darkness were moving, slowly but purposefully towards her, and you got the sense that it wasn’t to offer a tour. You did what you could, pulling some of them away, pushing some of them down, but there were just so, so many. You remember how you’d pushed past the horde to reach her and grabbed her shoulder.
“You have to get out!” You’d shouted, and she looked at you, actually at you and not through, then shook her head.
“I can’t, I have to find someone!” You’d shoved off another pushy spirit and threw out an arm to block another one.
“Then you have to hurry. I don’t know what they want with you, but the living don’t belong here.” She’d given you a grim, determined look before nodding decisively and pushing through the spirits. You followed her, keeping the most active ghosts at bay as she kept going. She lifted the lantern and illuminated a door you’d never seen before, on the porch of a house that seemed to bloom out of the nothing and into existence. When she’d gone inside, you’d gone too, and you’d stayed at her side until she found a young woman, hiding in an upstairs bedroom, mascara streaks on her cheeks. Another living soul.
Then you’d stayed at their side until the older woman led you all back to another building, a hospital. It was swarming with spirits, but they did not approach the pair, to your relief. When you made to follow them inside, however, something stopped you. It wasn’t a physical barrier, but when you tried to take a step, your leg refused to move forward. The woman with the lantern had given you a sad smile and explained that they’d had to set up a ward, to keep her body safe. She was grateful for your help, and wished there was something she could do for you, but you’d shaken your head. There was nothing you really needed, not anymore. She asked for your name, and you gave it, but a guttural sound off in the darkness behind you had cut off any further conversation.
Then they were gone, back into, you presumed, the land of the living. The ever-present crowd of the dead that had trailed along in your wake shuffled to a stop, and everything was silent again. After that, you’d made it a point to find other buildings, houses and hotels and sadder places. You hadn’t run into any more of the living in the darkness, but you’d found much worse than emptiness lurking about. There were monsters, too. Some were demons, you were pretty sure- at least the ones with hooves probably were. They scared the hell out of you, frankly. Something about the way they looked at you when you had the misfortune to cross paths with one. Like you were a mouse facing a lion.
Other monsters were once people, and they were almost as bad. More than once you’d stumbled into what had clearly been a murder den. The victims wore their agony like some twisted masquerade, faces eternally contorted into images that would haunt you for the rest of your... well, not life. A lifetime, maybe. The murderers themselves were always much livelier, some beaming with pride, some glaring at your intrusion. One even spoke to you, and his voice, like rusted nails, had stuck in your head for ages.
Then, after countless places, you heard a call from somewhere in the darkness. It led you to another house, old and decrepit, with broken windows and cracked walls, with a door in the kitchen. Not to the kitchen, but in the middle of the floor, standing alone. And it was open.
When you stepped through it, you found yourself in the same kitchen, but there was light. Multiple lights, actually. And cameras. And two people, talking about ghosts and how the place was haunted by the ghost of a murdered child. You learned a few things very quickly- they were called Specs and Tucker, they ran a ghost hunting show, and they were (and you meant this in the kindest way) IDIOTS. A brisk look around told you there were no such ghosts hanging out here, and you hadn’t seen any on the other side, either. You also learned very quickly that here, you could not be seen, you could not be heard, and you could not touch or be touched. Still, the antics of the two living amused you, and you found yourself laughing for the first time in... well, there was no way to know. It felt like a long, long, long time.
When they packed up to leave, you just. Invited yourself along. You couldn’t touch them, but you found you could still ride in their van, somehow. You stayed in the van when they went home, and just sort of never really left after that. You had no desire to go back to the darkness, despite how easy it was to fall back into it- let go of yourself enough and you could find yourself right back in that empty eternity. You did that once, and had panicked, thinking you’d never get out again, but when you focused on your newfound companions enough, you’d popped back into their van, with them none the wiser. Going between the two was much easier after that, but you did your best to just stay put in this world.
A sound jolts you out of your reverie, and you are immediately on alert. Something is making a scraping sound, and it’s echoing faintly down the stairs from above. The higher you climb, the louder it gets, until you reach the fifth and final floor. In the middle of the hallway, there sits a figure, hunched over with its back to you. They are dragging a chipped knife along the wall, and with each pass, there is a scraping sound that sets your teeth on edge. You take a step forward, and the knife stops, mid-pass.
“Hey,” you call out, and the figure jerks in your direction, and you have a very, very uneasy feeling settling in the pit of your stomach. “Where you from, buddy?” Slowly, the figure stands, and they are all long legs and long arms and long fingers, and when they finally turn to you, you see they are also very, very much dead. “Ah, my neck of the woods, I see- oh, bad choice of words, sorry, man.” The figure does not respond but a line of blood flows from the gaping wound across his neck. “Not much of a talker, huh?” He stares at you with black beady eyes, and the hand clutching the knife tightens its grip. You flick your eyes to it, then back to his damp gray face, and try not to wrinkle your nose at the sight of his partially decomposed features, since you’re trying to be polite. “That’s fine. We don’t gotta talk.” You prefer it when they’re silent, anyway. It’s the ones that talk that are the most difficult to deal with. They have Opinions which are usually not the kind you’re interested in entertaining. Because they’re usually violence. “Now, you know you’re not supposed to be here, right?” His lip curls in a sneer and you know this one’s gonna be a problem, even if he’s one of the quiet ones. You take another step forward, hands open to show they’re empty, but he raises the knife, and you pause. “Come on, man, I’m already dead. Like you.”
“Can still... hurt you,” he gurgles, wetly. Blood stains his mouth, dribbling from the corners. Great. A talker.
“Yeah, but what’s the point?” You keep your tone even and calm, despite how much he’s starting to freak you out. “Can’t be as satisfying as when you did it to the living, and those are out of stock at the moment.”
“More... will come. Downstairs...” he chokes the words out, blood spraying over his chin. God, you wish he wouldn’t talk. “Two... already.” Well, fuck. You force yourself to remain calm and focus instead on the space just behind his right arm, and jump- you grab his wrist and twist his arm behind him in one fluid motion, digging the knife out of his hand as he struggles to pull free. More blood bubbles out of his neck and mouth as he snarls and claws at you with his other hand. Gross.
“I tried to do this the easy way,” you remind him, then yank the knife free with your other hand and plunge it into his stomach. He gurgles again, and you grip both his arms tightly before throwing yourself backwards.
And you fall.
The darkness welcomes you back, like a parent welcomes back a retrieved runaway child. There’s a place for you here but it’s not the kind you want. There’s no comfort here. You fling your passenger away as you land, and he hits the floor of the hotel, skidding to a stop against the wall. Your back hits the opposite wall and you slide down it, inhaling deeply, despite not needing the oxygen. The man you brought with you is fumbling around the knife handle on his stomach, but you’d shoved it pretty far in there and it’s making it hard for him to get a proper grip.
“Listen man, it wasn’t personal,” you say, getting back to your feet. “But then you had to go and bring my friends into it.”
“Piece of shit,” he spits, more blood spattering the ground. You shrug.
“Might be, but not for that. For this, however,” you skip to the space beside him, and lift your foot as high as you can. “For this? Oh, definitely.” And you bring your foot down on the knife handle with all your strength, driving it through him and into the floor. He roars in pain and swipes at you with his long arms, but you’ve already jumped back out of his reach. Up and down the hall, doors are opening, and two or three faces peer out, faces all masks of blood and pain. They ignore you and move, flickering, towards the man on the floor, reaching for him, trading their suffering for fury. “Huh. Guess I was right about there being a murder here before.” You don’t stay to watch their revenge. It’s not yours to watch.
You blink and then you’re back in the other world, hallway empty once more of the dead. It’s still pitch-black outside, so you head downstairs and hope you haven’t been gone too long. No matter how long you thought you spent in that other place, you were always wrong. You reach the lobby to find that the boys are packing up and you sigh. It’s a lot of fun to watch them film, and you hate that you missed it, but there’s always next time. Maybe. Maybe not, if they keep picking places that turn out to be actually haunted by assholes like Knife Guy.
“Can you get that one?” Tucker asks, pointing to a small duffel bag that he usually carries extra cables and other stuff in. Specs shrugs and shoulders it, his other hand already full of gear. One more trip, you estimate, and they’ll be ready to leave.
“What would you do if we actually got a ghost on camera one day?” Specs asks, and Tucker rolls his eyes as they both head for the exit. You follow, with a grin. If only they knew.
“Ghosts aren’t real,” Tucker scoffs, and you cross your arms in a mock display of offense. Behind him, Specs gives an aggravated sigh.
“Just humor me for once?”
“Fine. I don’t know, I guess I’d probably start looking for the highest bidder.” Specs isn’t impressed by this answer, you can see it in his face. “Then I could retire.”
“That’s all that would mean to you? A paycheck?” Tucker doesn’t answer for a while, not until they reach the van, and he looks unusually pensive as he unloads his burden.
“Look. Completely honest answer? I’d probably quit.” You’re as surprised as Specs looks. “Don’t stare at me like that.” He takes the stuff his partner carries and tucks it away in the van securely.
“Why would you quit? Getting proof would make our lives so much better! We’d be famous, we’d get funding to do actual research and-” Specs is rambling animatedly, his hands all over the place in his excitement.
“Because if there really are ghosts, I highly doubt they’ll be friendly,” Tucker says, poking the Casper logo on Specs’ jacket.
“Most of us aren’t,” you agree. The boys trek back inside, with you trailing behind.
“They won’t be able to hurt us,” Specs argues. “Probably.”
“Yeah, I’m not gonna be hanging my hopes on a ‘probably’. It’d take something pretty significant to get me to stay.” Tucker hefts up the last of the camera equipment, apparently done with the conversation. Specs wasn’t.
“Didn’t think you were such a wuss, Tucker,” he smirks behind his back, picking up the remaining box and digging the keys out of his jacket pocket.
“You wanna get ghost-murdered, be my guest,” is all Tucker responds with, and the topic is dropped. The door is locked behind them, the packing of the van is completed, and you take your spot behind the passenger seat, fingers idly toying with the ball of wires Tucker had abandoned.
“I picked food last time, it’s your turn,” Specs says, as the van pulls out onto the road. You look over at the dashboard to see the clock reads 4:52, and you wonder where he thinks is even going to be open this early in the morning in a crummy little town like this one.
“No, I picked last time, because I also had to take my order back when they got it wrong,” Tucker corrects him. “And the cashier just stood there and stared at me for like five minutes.”
“Just go to like Huddle House or something,” you huff, leaning your head against the back of the seat.
“You think there’s a Huddle House around here?” Specs asks, rubbing at his left ear. You sit up straight and stare at him, but he doesn’t look in your direction, and after a moment you conclude it has to be a coincidence.
“I think they call them Waffle Houses this far south,” Tucker muses, looking out his window at some of the signs as they pass.
“Maybe you guys should get a cooler and just bring your own food so you stop fighting over who has to choose all the time,” you sigh, settling back into your spot. Specs hums thoughtfully and puts his hands behind the headrest, tapping his index fingers.
“How much do you think a cooler costs?” Ok, what the fuck. You twist around and lean forward to poke your upper body between them, staring at Specs as hard as you can.
“I don’t know, why?” Tucker shrugs.
“Maybe we should just pack our own food in the future. You know. For times we end up in shit hole towns like this one?” He sounds uncertain, but Tucker raises his brows and purses his lips, considering the concept. You cast your thoughts around, trying to think of something else to say to test this new development, but all that comes out is
“You remember Peanut Butter Jelly Time?”
And Specs snorts, amused. Tucker looks at him suspiciously, and his partner looks over at him, smirk fading as he takes in his expression.
“What’s funny?”
“You... did you not just ask me about Peanut Butter Jelly Time?” Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. You move back to the back of the van and try to calm down, but your mind is racing, and you can’t stay still. He heard you. He HEARD YOU. Not well, maybe, but there’s no way he coincidentally had the same thoughts at the same time as you, not three times in a row. You crawl back toward the front and dip your hands wrist-deep into the wire tangle, fiddling with it while you try to get your thoughts in order. You keep your mouth shut until they find a Waffle House and go inside to eat, and then you cover your mouth with your hands to muffle the sound as you shout into them.
“Ok, ok,” you gasp, dropping your hands again. “Ok. Need to be smart about this.” Your hands go back to fiddling with the wires and you stare out the windshield towards the restaurant, where you can see them taking a seat in the corner by the jukebox. “No more just talking to myself out loud. Around them,” you add, realizing that you’re doing it right now. “We can make contact eventually, but we need a plan. Don’t just blurt out ‘hey guess what ghosts are real and one’s been haunting you for almost a year’.”
By the time the boys get back in the van, you’re mostly calm again, though you haven’t been able to really devise much of a plan beyond ‘be careful and be quieter’. The drive is peacefully silent for a long while, with both humans sufficiently appeased with food, and you, hesitant to try communicating again so soon. It feels, inexplicably, like tempting fate, and you’ve enough experience with that particular beast to know better. You pass the time instead by listening to the soft patter of the rain as it begins to fall on the windows, and the tick-tick-tick of the turn signal on occasion. Ghosts don’t need to sleep, nor do they really even need rest as far as you know, but you enjoy the brief echo of normality it brings to close your eyes and rest your head on the back of the passenger seat as the lullaby of the road soothes you.
This imitation of a nap is interrupted by the eerie sounds of the X-Files theme song, signifying that Specs is getting a phone call. You try to settle back into that nice comfortable not-sleep, but he starts excitedly smacking the side of Tucker’s seat repeatedly as he talks about... an exorcism? Well, that should be fun to watch. You haven’t seen them try that yet, outside of one of their staged episodes. You catch some other details, something about a girl being haunted, and they were told by a psychic that she was in danger. With a promise that they’d be there in a day or so, Specs hangs up, and starts shaking Tucker (until Tucker yells at him for screwing with the driver). Well, whatever comes tomorrow, it’s sure to be entertaining.