Chapter Text
A rather long time ago
“Tonight’s show will be spectacular,” Dream said with a rather maniacal grin. “It’s our ticket to greatness, gents.”
Tommy grinned back at him from where he sat, cross-legged, on the threadbare rug in the flat the four of them shared. It really was crazy, to think that so many years of work – of slumming it with psychic readings in small, seedy rooms in the backs of pubs and doing séances and channelings in the derelict homes of creepy, desperate people – were finally paying off.
“Well, yeah,” Sapnap scoffed, eyes gleaming. “We’ve only been invited to the first event ever held at the brand-spanking new Bad Mansion. It’s not like Lord Bad hosts the most prestigious intellectual salon in the entire city or anything. Anyone who’s anyone will be there. And Lord Bad has never invited any occultist or spiritualist to one of his parties before.”
“I’ll be the first,” George said smugly. “The Magnificent George, the premier conduit to the spirit world, the ultimate medium.”
“We’ll be the first,” Sapnap said with a scowl. “Us. This is a team effort, George, remember?”
“Well, yes,” George said, “but you’ve got to admit you three are more like my support staff.”
Sapnap’s jaw dropped.
“No, seriously,” George retorted. “The invitation says there will be a spiritualist reading by the Magnificent George. Not the Magnificent George and Friends. My name is the ticket into this salon, and it’s my psychic connection with the forces beyond that will make us successful –”
“You can’t be serious –”
“And, gentlemen, tonight’s spiritual reading is also going to reach entirely new levels,” Dream interrupted, “because we now have this.”
He gestured dramatically towards a small wooden chest with a brass padlock on it.
Tommy leaned forward and peered at it, frowning. What the hell was in that?
“What’s this, Dream?” George asked, frowning as well.
“It’s a real spiritual artifact,” Dream said, his eyes flashing with excitement. “I just got it from my antiquity dealer friend. He said that it’s for ‘piercing the connection between physical and spiritual’, it’ll increase your psychic range like a hundred-fold, George! Just wait til you see it –”
He unlocked the chest and threw open the lid with a flourish, revealing a large brass coin sitting in a nest of rumpled red cloth. The coin was nearly as large as Tommy’s entire palm, and had an odd-looking, two-headed emblem on it.
“This, my friends, is a genuine obelisk from the land of the Pharaohs,” Dream said smugly, pronouncing the last word with three syllables.
There was silence as they all regarded the object. George and Sapnap looked at the coin, then at each other, and then at Tommy.
Tommy shrugged back. He had no clue.
“What’s an obelisk?” George asked finally.
“And what’s a ‘fa-ra-oh’?” Sapnap asked with a frown.
Dream glared at them. “I’m surrounded by ignoramouses,” he muttered, sniffing in disdain.
---
All in all, the first appearance of the Magnificent George in front of high society at Lord Bad’s party was going pretty well.
Tommy was wide-eyed as he edged through the crowd in the grand ballroom of the aristocrat’s newly-built, modern-styled mansion. Some of the rooms in this place even had electric lights, it was fuckin’ incredible, he’d never seen anything like it before. The party was now in full-swing, and the place was packed with rich people with carefully coiffed hairstyles and fancy clothes, the women’s dresses glittering with gemstones and the men all wearing well-tailored suits. It was definitely the most high-class and intimidating setting they had ever performed in, so Tommy was being extra careful and efficient tonight as he performed his usual tasks – fetching materials the Magnificent George called for and guiding the ‘volunteers’ that Dream and Sapnap carefully selected for psychic readings through the crowd and up to the dais.
Now they were almost to the main bit on the agenda.
“And now, I draw aside the veil!” George cried triumphantly, his long gold-cuffed sleeves swinging dramatically as he gestured, holding the brass coin – Dream’s obelisk – high so that all could see its two-faced engraving. “Spirits, accept our sacrifice and tell us your secrets!”
Tommy stared, amazed and slightly scared, as a spark suddenly seemed to arc from the coin to the electric chandelier above. Around him, people in the crowd gasped and cried out.
Had that been part of the plan? It hadn’t happened when they practiced earlier …
And then suddenly the spark flickered and arced out again, this time hitting Tommy squarely in the forehead. He staggered backwards. It felt like he’d suddenly knocked his head against a hot fireplace grate.
Distantly, he heard some women scream.
The room suddenly got darker. Had some of the candles blown out? Damn it, Tommy had told Dream they shouldn’t put the candles by the open window –
The last thing Tommy heard before the rest of the lights seemed to blow out was Sapnap’s voice crying, “Oh shit!”
---
Tommy knew he had slept badly; details of the nightmares that had hounded him retreated from his grasp like a receding wave as he awoke.
He blinked.
He wasn’t in his cot. Actually … he wasn’t at home at all. He was in a dark, enormous room he didn’t recognize. Frowning, he got up to look around.
“Hello?” Tommy called, as he made his way up a long, narrow wooden staircase. The only source of light was what leaked around the edge of an ajar door at the very top.
Where was he?
“Sapnap?” he called out hesitantly. “Dream? George?”
He stepped out into a dark, gloomy-looking hallway lined with portraits of random people in gilded frames. This looked like Bad Mansion, he thought in surprise. He must have passed out after … whatever the hell happened last night. But why was he still here? The party was surely over by now. Even if he’d been out of it, why hadn’t Dream, George, and Sapnap taken him back to the flat?
“Hello? Is anyone here?”
None of the wall-sconces were lit, and the Mansion looked forbiddingly empty. What was going on?
Tommy was absentmindedly looking around when he got startled by a flash in the corner of his eye – maybe from a window, or a mirror? He stumbled next to an ornate door of dark wood and put his hand out to catch himself and –
There was no support. His hand went straight through the wall like it was so much foam, stopping with his forearm flush with the wallpaper. It was slightly peeling, stamped with dusty pink blossoms.
Tommy froze.
“What the fuck?” he whispered.
Gingerly, he pulled his arm back out of the wall. It came easily, as if he were moving it through water.
After a brief hesitation, he poked at the wall again a few times to test it. Solid matter rippled, parted, and reshaped itself around his hand as it moved.
It was fucking eerie.
Tommy took a deep breath, closed his eyes and braced himself, and walked directly at the wall. When he opened his eyes, he was in a bedroom. Presumably it was the room behind the door he had just passed.
“What the fuck?” he repeated, but it came out as more of a croak.
There was a large floor-set mirror in the corner of the bedroom, next to a changing screen and dressing cabinet. He drifted over and stared at his reflection.
His hazy, semi-transparent reflection. He could seriously see the wall behind him, door and flowery wallpaper and all, through himself.
Oh shit.
He might be dead.
---
Life – or the afterlife, to be specific – in Bad Mansion wasn’t that bad, once Tommy had had some time to get used to the idea.
Now … Tommy hadn’t wanted to die. Life had been tough, for sure, and it had sometimes been hard to look forward and have any plans or hopes beyond the next day, or even his next meal sometimes. Things had gotten a bit better once he’d met George and the others, but life was still far from perfect. But he’d always had hope, a tiny candle of his own that he kept hidden and burning despite everything.
But now his life was over.
He’d only had 14 years.
He knew on some level that he ought to be furious with George (and maybe Dream and Sapnap too). He didn’t remember exactly what had happened the night of the party, but whatever had happened, it was obvious that something had gone terribly, horribly wrong during the performance.
But … whatever had happened, it had to have been an awful accident. Right? Despite the way George spoke about the reach of his spiritual powers, Tommy knew that their performances was mostly just theater. There were never supposed to be any real, potentially malicious, spirits summoned from beyond. No one was ever supposed to get hurt.
… Right?
Dream, Sapnap, and George were probably devastated at losing Tommy.
As he slowly drifted through the empty rooms and corridors of Bad Mansion, Tommy pondered his afterlife thus far. There were a lot of things that were definitely strange. The walking through walls and shit was the obvious one, but he also couldn’t touch or physically feel anything. He guessed both of these weren’t too surprising since he didn’t have a body anymore. But he had also discovered that if he tried, he could sometimes push doors open and move stuff around if he just thought at them?
Weird.
But the main topic he inevitably circled back to was why the hell he was here at all. Shouldn’t he have like, moved on? Why the fuck was he a ghost?
Now, despite all those years of trailing along behind George and the others, Tommy didn’t actually know much about the supernatural. But he had rather thought that ghosts were made from people who had died violently and/or had some unfinished business on earth – such as, for example, figuring out the circumstances of their violent death and bringing the guilty parties to justice!
… maybe Tommy had been murdered, and that was why he was a ghost?
But why would anyone want to murder him? Tommy wasn’t – hadn’t been – anyone important. He wasn’t rich or powerful or magically gifted. He was just a kid, running around being an assistant and general lackey for George, Dream, and Sapnap. Sure, he admitted he could be annoying, but he didn’t think he’d pissed anyone off enough for them to want to off him.
Or maybe the performance at Lord Bad’s party was the reason? Was it because someone was jealous that he was part of an up-and-coming spiritualist act that was gaining the attention of nobles and other rich, important people in high circles?
No, no one in their right mind would have killed Tommy to try and take his place in the Magnificent George’s crew.
… but maybe that just meant Tommy had been murdered by an insane person?
Whatever the case, he probably ought to do something about fixing this ghost business and moving on, Tommy mused as he drifted past the chandelier again and then turned into the library. But what? He had no clue what to do, and it’s not like there was anyone around here who he could ask.
George might know. But given that he and the others didn’t know that Tommy was now a ghost, it seemed unlikely that they would ever come back here to Bad Mansion. It sucked, Tommy thought glumly. Even if they couldn’t help, it would have been nice to at least see his friends again.
It would be nice to see anyone, really.
He’d gone through every single room multiple times and the mansion was definitely empty.
That made him a little uneasy. Why was the mansion completely abandoned now, when just a few days ago at most – Tommy hadn’t been circling that long – so many people had been gathered here for the party? At least, why weren’t Lord Bad and his family here in their new house?
Seriously, it was just Tommy’s luck to get killed in brand-new construction. Why couldn’t he have gotten killed in an old house that was already haunted, with at least a couple of ghosts hanging around? They might have been able to tell him what to do next.
But looking on the bright side, Tommy obviously didn’t have to worry about money or food anymore. And as for shelter, he had this whole freaking mansion to himself.
All to himself, because he was all alone, and maybe he would always be – NO, he wasn’t going to think about that.
So Tommy drifted yet another few slow circuits through the empty mansion, and after a while he went back to the bedroom with the mirror, where he managed to sleep for a while.
His sleep was restless, so he wasn’t quite sure how long he dozed. But when he next woke up, it was to an immense racket.
Scowling, he floated out into the hall to see what was making all that ruckus. He stared in shock at a group of about a dozen workers who were bashing at the walls with sledgehammers. A tall, reedy guy – probably their leader – was shouting something about demolishing the entire house.
Wait, they were going to do what now?
No way. No fucking way. This was his house. He’d fucking died in it, that meant he had rights. He had been homeless for a few years when he’d been alive, and it had really, really sucked. He sure as hell wasn’t going to stand around and let these people make him homeless again now.
What would even happen to him, then? Would he just be drifting aimlessly through the entire world, for eternity? NO –
Tommy squared his shoulders and zoomed towards the workers. He crept up behind one of the sledgehammer-swinging men and then screamed straight in his ear, “STOP IT!”
The man yelped in alarm and dropped his sledgehammer. Unfortunately, it landed on the next guy’s foot, and he shouted as well, cursing a blue streak.
Then someone else screamed “Ghost!” and pointed at Tommy. Oh good, he must be visible then.
A chorus of shrieking began.
Tommy swung around and faced the man who had screamed first.
“GET OUT OF MY FUCKING HOUSE!” he howled directly into the man’s face, jabbing towards the front door for emphasis. The man nearly fell over his own feet as he rushed to comply.
Tommy kept on screaming unintelligibly through a veritable stampede, as the workers all rushed for the door. The reedy-looking supervisor was nearly trampled in the melee, dragged outside at last moment by a few of the guys.
Then Tommy slammed the door behind them and locked every single lock simultaneously with his brain, fuckin’ pogchamp!
They’d better not come back. They’d better learn not to fuck with haunted houses. Especially the one he was haunting.
---
Years later, a.k.a. Now
Wilbur snatched up the ringing phone on his desk and said smoothly, “SBI Ghost Hunters, we’ll sweep all your spooks in one fell swoop.”
At the other desk, Techno groaned and dropped his head into his hands.
“For the last time, we’re ‘supernatural investigators,’ Wilbur!” he hissed. “We need to market ourselves more broadly, not tell everyone we only deal with ghosts –”
Wilbur waved a shushing hand at his brother and made some ‘hmm-ing’ noises into the receiver.
“Sure, sure, we’d be happy to help you with that,” he said after a minute. “We usually take a look at the property first and measure the extent of the haunting and ascertain all pertinent spiritual metadata before we provide a quote. When can we – tomorrow? Perfect, let me just jot down the address.”
After hanging up the phone, Wilbur turned to Techno and said triumphantly, “See, it is a haunting job. Most of them are, so I don’t know why you’re so stuck on me saying ghost hunters. We have a great slogan for it –”
“It’s a goddamn tongue-twister, Wil.”
“Whatever,” Wilbur said impatiently. “What matter is that we have a new job, and it sounds like a big one. It’s one of those old turn-of-the-century mansions near downtown, the place has apparently been badly haunted for, like, decades. It might even be one of those things with multiple ghosts from different periods!”
“Joy.”
“Here’s the address. Can you start gathering background so we can show Dad when he gets back? We’re meeting with the guy, the representative of some family trust that owns the place, first thing tomorrow morning.”
---
Phil had started the SBI after serving for more than a decade on the city police force, leading the task force that focused on supernatural incidents. Considering that the number of such incidents and government bureaucracy were both endlessly growing, having a private consulting business seemed a logical next step. In a lot of ways, it was great. He could be his own boss, set his own hours, pick his own clients, and – most importantly – he had been able to hire both of his sons to work with him after they graduated from college. Overall, it was a fantastic setup.
But there were moments when he felt like rethinking the choices that had led him to the here and now.
Like this one.
“A living person,” Wilbur said sagely, “is really just an unhatched ghost.”
Their new client, Quackity, shot him a rather appalled glance.
Phil covered his mouth with one hand in what he hoped looked like a pensive gesture, while at his side, Techno rolled his eyes heavenwards.
“That’s why our empathy-driven approach, which relies on psychological analysis of the spirits and is supplemented by AI, drives our industry-leading success rate,” Wilbur continued earnestly. “Based on a deep understanding of spectral motivations, SBI provides a personalized ghost-removal service that is optimized for each specific haunting!”
“Er, that sounds great,” Quackity said, gingerly taking a step down the sidewalk, away from Wilbur.
With a rather resigned air, Quackity then nodded towards the aged Victorian mansion that the four of them stood before. “So, yeah, this is it. The old Bad Mansion. The place is haunted as hell. You know the history?”
“Yes,” Techno said, nodding as he pulled out the tablet containing their background research. “There’s a lot of documentation about the supernatural disturbances that have happened here; they seem to have been going on for nearly a century?”
“Exactly. The place was built about a century ago, by an aristocrat, Lord Bad – hence its name. But he and his family didn’t occupy it for long at all. It was haunted from the start, apparently.”
“Really,” Wilbur said, intrigued. “That’s unusual. Did something happen during the construction?”
Quackity shrugged, gesturing expressively.
“There’s no record of that,” Techno agreed, shaking his head, “but anything could have happened. All we know is that the mansion has changed hands several times over the years, but every time the new owners didn’t stay long. There were all the typical signs of a haunting – flickering lights, large objects moving on their own, strange noises and uh, what was described by one owner as ‘demented shrieking.’ The, er, disturbances were particularly violent whenever any renovations were attempted. For example, they only had electrical lighting in the guest areas like the front hall and ballroom originally, and despite multiple attempts they were never able to wire the rest of the house.”
“That’s why it’s crucial to get this sorted out ASAP,” Quackity said briskly, nodding. “The trust I represent is highly motivated to sell, and believe me, this place will go for a fantastic price if it can be sold. Weirdly enough, the haunting is responsible for preserving it – most Victorian-era mansions in the city were demolished long ago. So there’s the unique historical aspect, the killer location, and the house itself has good bones, but obviously it needs to be gut-renovated before it can be occupied. And if that’s not possible because of the haunting – well.”
“We’ll do a walk-through now,” Phil said with a nod. “As soon as we know the particulars, we’ll get back to you to discuss the mitigation plan.”
“Fantastic, thank you,” Quackity said. “And I’ve given you the keys? Perfect.” He reached out to shake Phil’s hand, Techno’s, and then, after slight hesitation, Wilbur’s, before walking swiftly back to his waiting town car.
---
Tommy’s eyes opened, and immediately narrowed.
Someone had broken into his house.
Again.
Goddamnit, he had literally just fallen asleep. How many more of these would-be invaders would he have to get up to chase away?
He drifted downstairs to get a better look at the most recent batch of death-wish intruders.
There appeared to be just three of them this time, he noticed with mild surprise. There was a very tall one with dark hair, a muscular-looking one with pink hair, and a blond one who looked older than the other two.
Ha! Tommy thought, satisfied. Before they used to send in large groups of men each time, but now they probably could only persuade a few to try. Word had undoubtedly spread, far and wide, of how thoroughly Bad Mansion was haunted. Good!
Now he just had to show this trio of would-be daredevils what their so-called courage had bought them.
The three men split up in the foyer, heading off deeper into the mansion in different directions. Tommy decided to follow the one with dark hair towards the kitchens, gleefully bobbing in anticipation.
---
FUCK!
Things had been going so well – Tommy had successfully scared the tall, dark-haired man into shrieking, dropping all his supplies in a confused trail littering the length of the hallway, and then tumbling down the short staircase near the kitchen. The man had been trying to desperately crawl away from Tommy’s acrobatic swoops and screeched threats when all the commotion unfortunately brought the other two rushing over to help their companion.
And they were carrying some sort of weapons.
What the fuck were these things? Ordinary weapons wouldn’t hurt Tommy, of course – how could a knife or bullet do him any damage, anyhow? But these strange gun-like objects seemed to emit light. And somehow, that light was corralling Tommy –
The large sheet of light coming out of the gun-like thing held by the blond man was like a giant curved wall, somehow forcing him to move to the corner of the room, away from the crumpled form of the dark-haired man. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but the staticky, buzzing sensation when it touched him wasn’t pleasant either.
He tried to zoom around the edge of the thing to get away, but to his dismay another curved section of light – guided by a gun held by that annoying pink-haired man – got in his way.
Feeling the beginnings of panic, Tommy lunged for the one remaining open side, only to have it blocked by the curved light shield guided by the dark-haired man, who had finally regained his footing and retrieved his own weapon.
Shit! It was like Tommy was now surrounded by a loosely-formed sphere of the stupid buzzing light surfaces. What the fuck was this stuff? This had never happened to him before –
The only positive he could see was that the sphere was very loose, as if it were just made of pieces of giant paper that were slotted together. There were gaps. If he could just zoom through one of them –
Tommy had just been taking aim for one promising-looking gap when the pink-haired man walked up to the edge of the sphere, peering at him. When he caught sight of Tommy’s face, his triumphant expression immediately fell.
“Oh shit,” he muttered.
“Oh,” the blond man said when Tommy was shoved into clearer view by the shifting, buzzing surfaces. “Oh, mate.”
“It’s a kid,” the dark-haired one said in dismay.
“Hauntings by children and teenagers are often the most violent,” the pink-haired one said grimly. “Maybe he’s a poltergeist?”
“No, wait,” the blond one said, reading something from a weird black box he held in his other hand, that he was pointing at Tommy. “Techno, mate, come look at this –”
The pink-haired one went to peer over his shoulder and his eyes widened. “Holy shit,” he murmured.
“What is it?” the dark-haired one demanded, looking between Tommy and the other two. “What’s wrong? What should we do now?”
Tommy bared his teeth. “What you should do now is LEAVE,” he snarled, pouring every ounce of malice he could summon into the final word. He was pleased to see them all stagger backwards, buzzing-light-sheets be damned.
“No, wait –”
“This is my house,” Tommy growled, glaring at the three men one by one. “And I’m haunting it. Go find your own place.”
“But you’re not dead, mate,” the blond man said.
Tommy paused. What the fuck –
“You’re not dead,” the pink-haired one agreed. “Therefore, you can’t be haunting this house. Technically speaking.”
Tommy stared at them.
---
A little while later, they were all sitting at one corner of that stupidly enormous grand dining table that had like fifty place settings. Well, the three weird men were sitting, and Tommy was kind of … hovering near a chair.
Tommy wasn’t entirely sure why he was humoring them. Those uncomfortable buzzing light things were gone now, so he should really have just regrouped and finished throwing them out of his house.
Sure, the blond one, who said his name was Phil, had startled him by dropping that bombshell, claiming that Tommy wasn’t actually dead. Because … seriously? Had they looked at Tommy properly? It just was not possible that he wasn’t dead.
No, these men were obviously delusional. Tommy should just go back to bed. And if they didn’t take the hint and leave on their own, he could always come back and chase them off later.
… but on the other hand, Phil seemed nice. His voice was quiet and kind, and he was looking at Tommy and talking to him more patiently than, well, almost anyone ever.
It’s not like anyone ever stopped by to chat. And it’s not as if Tommy had other super urgent things that he needed to be doing right at this moment.
“What’s your name, mate?” Phil asked, his face open and gentle-looking.
“I’m Tommy,” he replied simply.
“Okay, great, thank you Tommy. These are my sons, Techno and Wilbur,” Phil said, nodding to the pink- and dark-haired men in turn.
They both murmured quiet greetings, and Tommy nodded stiffly, scowling at them. He hadn’t forgotten the buzzing light things.
“You keep saying this is your house, mate,” Phil continued carefully, watching Tommy’s expression. “Did you live here? With your parents, maybe?”
Tommy shrugged. “No. I died here, though.”
Phil exchanged a pointed glance with the others. Techno immediately began poking at some strange-looking flat black book he held, while Wilbur leaned forward and stared at Tommy intensely.
“So that means it’s my house,” Tommy continued, rather defensively. “It’s like compensation, innit?”
“But you didn’t die here, mate,” Phil said gently. “Remember? You’re not dead.”
Tommy stared at Phil belligerently.
“You keep saying that, but I’m obviously a ghost,” he objected. “I can walk through walls and fly and shit, and I’m see-through, in case you didn’t notice –”
“Yes, but –”
“The only way I figure all that can happen is if I’m a ghost,” Tommy finished with a shrug. “I think there’s just something wrong with that box of yours, big man, if it’s saying different.”
“That device allows us to classify all known types of ghosts and spirits,” Techno explained, tapping on the box in question decisively. “And you’re not any of them.”
“Maybe I’m just some kind you don’t know about,” Tommy said challengingly, cheering up. Fuck yeah, he was his own special kind of ghost!
“But this other tool here is telling us that you’re a dissociated consciousness,” Phil said calmly. “See?”
He turned another box so that Tommy could see colorful lines and blinking lights on it. Tommy stared at it blankly and shrugged. He had no clue what he was looking at.
“What the fuck does that mean, big man?”
“It means,” Wilbur spoke up for the first time, rather cautiously, “that there might be a way for us to reunite you with your body.”
Tommy flinched as if he’d been physically struck. What? His body?
“Wil,” Phil murmured, a note of warning in his voice.
“Dad, we have to try,” Wilbur said earnestly, leaning forward to stare at the other two men. “Tech, come on, you know we’ve got to!”
“Hold on, wait, wait a minute, do you mean that …” Tommy struggled to form the words. “Do you mean that I would be alive again?”
“We can’t make any promises,” Techno put in, “but it’s a possibility.”
Tommy gaped at them, unsure what to think or say.
“We’ll definitely try, mate,” Phil confirmed, glancing between his sons and Tommy. “Like Techno said, we can’t make any promises – this is a complicated situation. But we’ll do everything we can to help you, alright?”
---
“The first thing we need to do,” Wilbur said after they regrouped following a short break, “is understand exactly what happened to you. All the details, okay? When and where and how and why.”
Tommy was still feeling deeply shaken. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea that he could be alive again. That just … wasn’t something he’d ever, ever imagined would be possible. At most, he’d hoped that someday, somehow, he’d finally figure out how to move on, into whatever true After awaited him.
But even if this felt impossible, he had to try, didn’t he? This was the best shot he’d ever had, that he probably would ever have. And even if it did turn out that he was really just a new and previously unclassified type of ghost, maybe Phil and his sons could still somehow help him move on?
But he really couldn’t let himself hope for anything more than that. Re-lighting that tiny candle felt like it would take all the energy he could ever possibly summon. If he hoped too much, and if what Wilbur, Phil, and Techno were suggesting failed, Tommy felt like the despair would consume whatever was left of him, like a conflagration of so much loose straw.
“Tommy?” Wilbur prompted gently.
“Well, the ‘when’ and ‘where’ are easy enough, big man,” Tommy said, looking up and realizing he’d paused a bit too long while thinking; they were all staring at him. “I was definitely alive and well when we came here. Whatever happened to me – dissociation or actually death or whatever – happened here, in Bad Mansion.”
“But where exactly in the mansion?” Techno asked, pushing at his strange black book again.
“Umm …” Tommy glanced around and pointed. “We were set up in the grand ballroom, over that way.”
“You said ‘we’,” Phil noted, leaning forward. “Who was here with you?”
“There were loads of people. It was a big party that night,” Tommy explained, watching as the three men exchanged another glance. “Lord Bad was throwing it, and I was here to work the performance.”
“The performance,” Techno repeated, frowning. “What kind of performance?”
“By my spiritualist group,” Tommy replied easily. “Magnificent George’s outfit.”
Silence.
“‘Magnificent George’?” Wilbur repeated after a beat, baffled. “Isn’t that like, a monkey?”
Techno snorted and Phil said dryly, “That’s Curious George, mate.”
“Magnificent George – hang on. Phil, Wil, I think I’ve heard of him. Let me see –” Techno tapped on his strange black book, looking excited.
“You’ve heard of him?” Tommy said eagerly, bobbing forward.
“Yup, here we go,” Techno said after some more tapping, sounding satisfied, “I knew I’d read about that troupe. Here, it’s in one of my college history books –”
“Wait, we’re in a book?” Tommy stared at Techno in astonishment.
Techno nodded, turning around the strange black book and holding it up for him to see. “Yeah, see? Look, here in this section about ‘notable spiritualist charlatans of the early 20th century’ –”
Tommy leaned forward, eyes widening in delight as he saw a grainy black-and-white picture of George in his favorite turban, sitting serenely next to a table with a crystal ball on it. Standing a few feet behind, flanking him, were Dream and Sapnap, wearing dark suits and imperious expressions.
Tommy beamed. His friends! And they looked so fancy in the photograph –
“Oh man, this is so poggers,” Tommy whispered, his face briefly blinking into sharp focus and near-opacity as he turned to grin at the three men. “They finally made it big, someone wrote about them in a real book, and called them notable too!”
“Tommy, it’s calling them notable charlatans,” Techno drawled as Phil stifled a laugh. “That’s not exactly ‘making it big,’ you know?”
Tommy frowned. “What’s a charlatan?”
Lips twitching, Wilbur explained.
“Well –” Tommy struggled a bit to contradict this, and then gave up, shrugging defensively. “Whatever, big man. At least they’re notable ones. And famous! That’s what matters, innit?”
“But anyway,” Tommy said without waiting for a response, gesturing at Techno’s strange black book again, “you know who my friends are now, right, and what they look like, yeah? I can’t leave Bad Mansion … but maybe you could go find them, and talk to them? They can explain exactly what happened the night of the party, and how I got dissociated or whatever. And then you can fix it?”
There was a pause, and then Phil leaned forward.
“Tommy,” the blond man said gently, “do you know how much time has passed since the party?”
---
Tommy was silent, hovering near the corner of the grand dining room.
He could distantly hear the others talking quietly amongst themselves. He knew they were kindly giving him some time to feel better.
“I didn’t realize it’s been so long,” he said finally, his voice wavering a little, as he turned back to the table. “I mean … I wasn’t expecting to see them again, because why would they come back here, right? But I didn’t think it would be because they’re all dead!”
“I’m sorry, Tommy,” Wilbur said quietly, while Techno grimaced and nodded.
“Look, mate,” Phil leaned forward and stared intently into Tommy’s eyes. “We’re sorry about your friends, we really are. But you’re still here. You’re not dead. And the most important thing right now is figuring out how you became dissociated from your body, so we can try to reverse it.”
Tommy blinked rapidly. He … obviously had no real eyes. He couldn’t cry. Why did he feel so teary, then?
Okay, he needed to stop. He needed to get it together. He needed to think about the future now, if he was ever to have one.
“Tell us what happened during the party, mate,” Phil said bracingly. “Something unusual must have happened, right? What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Yeah, the performance was different because George had this … thing,” Tommy frowned, thinking back. “It was the first time he’d ever used it.”
“A thing,” Wilbur repeated. “An object?”
“Yeah,” Tommy nodded.
“Do you remember what it was? Or even what it looked like?”
“Dream had just gotten it that same day, he said it was called … something,” Tommy scrunched up his face, trying to remember. “Like an oval disk? Yeah, that sounds right. The oval disk of … farrago, or something.”
Phil, Wilbur, and Techno exchanged a glance.
“An oval disk?” Wilbur echoed, frowning. “Here, wait – how about I draw it, Tommy, and you tell me if it looks like what you saw?”
“Good idea,” Phil murmured. He fished out a notepad and pen from their supplies and passed it to Wilbur.
“Farrago,” Techno repeated, drumming his fingers on the table as he thought. “Fargo? Or maybe Faroe? Could it be some kind of artifact from the Faroe Islands?”
“No, wait!” Tommy said excitedly, his form suddenly flashing more solid again before returning to its usual haze. “I remember now – Dream said ov-a-lisk, without a ‘d’ sound. George and Sapnap didn’t know what it meant, either.”
“Ov-a – oh, wait, an obelisk?” Wilbur tore off the sheet on which he had been dubiously shading in an oval before. On the new one, he quickly sketched an obelisk. “Like this?”
“An obelisk – Tommy, could the word have been pharaoh?” Techno asked, straightening and looking excited.
“I guess …” Tommy said slowly, but then he frowned, looking disappointed as he peered at Wilbur’s drawing. “No, that’s not it. It wasn’t long and pointy like that. It was like a big coin.”
“But this is what an obelisk looks like,” Wilbur objected, frowning as well. “It’s not a coin, it’s a tall column, like a stretched-out pyramid.”
“Maybe it wasn’t ‘obelisk’ then,” Tommy said with a shrug. “The thing Dream brought, that George was holding when it happened, it was like a coin. A big one. It was made of shiny metal, maybe brass or something?”
“It was big for a coin,” he repeated, crinkling his eyes as he tried to picture it. “It was almost as big as my entire hand. And there were two faces on it, on the same side, I mean. And it sparked. That was what killed me.”
“Dissociated you,” Phil corrected him, and Tommy rolled his eyes.
“Fine, big man, dissociated me. But yeah, there was this huge spark – I remember, it was like lightning. First it sparked from the thing – the obelisk or whatever – up to the chandelier. It … wasn’t supposed to do that, I’m pretty sure. George looked pretty surprised when it happened, plus people started shouting. Then it sparked again, and that’s the one that hit me.”
He looked up at the three men, who were all staring at him with serious expressions.
“And yeah, I don’t remember anything after that til I woke up again, and then I was a ghost. Or … whatever I am.”
“Two faces,” Techno murmured thoughtfully.
Wilbur held up another sheet of paper. “Did it look like this?”
Tommy stared at the rough sketch of a coin, with two heads joined at the skull, faces looking out in opposite directions, and nodded.
---
“I strongly suspect,” Phil said quietly, “that we’ll need that coin to reverse the process.”
Techno grimaced, glancing over to the corner of the room where Tommy was hovering, staring absently into space. The not-ghost boy, he had observed, seemed to do that a lot.
“But before that,” Phil continued, looking at his sons seriously, “we need to find his body. That’s essential.”
“I don’t think he knows where it is,” Techno replied in a low voice. “But it’s likely here in Bad Mansion, don’t you think?”
“Almost certainly,” Phil said with a nod. “He consciousness wouldn’t be able to travel far from where his physical body is anchoring him.”
“So we need to search for the coin and for his body,” Wilbur said thoughtfully. “How do we split it up? And at least one of us should definitely stay with him, to keep him grounded in the present, don’t you think? Did you notice how he seems to sort of phase in and out?”
“Yes. You’re right,” Phil replied, and paused, thinking. “You two stay here, and start searching for his body, alright? I’ll go consult with your mother about finding the coin.”
“If we’re going to stay in the mansion for the duration, we should probably let the client know,” Techno said, and Wilbur nodded.
“I’ll take care of that,” Phil said with a nod.
---
To save time, Phil decided to video-call Kristin and update her on the situation while traveling to her office at the university.
“Oh, the poor kid,” Kristin said softly when he finished.
“He’s in rough shape,” Phil agreed as he started the car and turned on the headlights. It was already getting late. “Do you have any ideas about what the artifact – this two-headed coin – could be?”
“You know, the description reminds me of the Janus coin,” Kristin said thoughtfully. “Oh, hang on, Charlie just walked in.”
“Hey Phil!” Charlie said cheerfully, peering over Kristin’s shoulder at the phone screen. There was a brief interval while Kristin updated her research assistant on what Phil had shared so far.
“The physical description does sound like the Janus coin …” Charlie said, frowning. “And the effect makes sense, too. But the last time it was reported used, I remember it said the person’s consciousness went with the coin, instead of staying near the body. So this is somehow different?”
“So perhaps the coin is on the premises, and his body is elsewhere?” Kristin murmured.
There was a dismal pause.
“For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume his body is still in Bad Mansion,” Phil said at last. “Assuming that there was … an uproar following what happened, it seems more likely that the people in that performance troupe would have kept the coin with them and stashed the body, rather than vice versa.”
“Sometimes with cases of dissociated consciousness, it’s enough to just have the spirit confront their body,” Charlie ventured.
“That’s true. But in this case, if the coin was responsible for the dissociation, I think we’ll need all three components to reverse it,” Kristin replied. “Tommy’s spirit, his body, and the coin.”
“I think so, too,” Phil replied with a sigh. “Anyway, Techno and Wil are still at the house now, looking for his body.”
“And – you said that a spark was the triggering event?”
“Yes,” Phil nodded, slowing down to make a turn onto the state road. “Tommy said there was a strange spark from the coin in the performer’s hand to the chandelier overhead.”
“A spark might be necessary again, then, but I’m just guessing,” Kristin said, running a hand through her dark hair as she thought. “If it doesn’t work without it, we could try that.”
“But first we need to track down the coin, right?” Charlie said, glancing at her. “Do we have any clue where it is?”
“As a matter of fact,” Kristin said as she began to type, “I do have a few ideas. The Magnificent George, eh?”
---
“How come you call him Phil?”
“What?” Techno glanced over, startled, from where he was placing strange-looking flameless candles at intervals to illuminate the nearly pitch-black basement. They had decided to triage the hunt for Tommy’s body with Wilbur looking upstairs while Techno and Tommy searched the basement, since that was where Tommy had remembered waking up the first time. The enormous room was packed full of random boxes, surplus construction materials, and other tripping hazards and potential hiding places.
“Phil,” Tommy repeated, floating through a few crates to hover a ways away. “He said you and Wilbur are his sons, right? But Wilbur called him ‘dad’ before, and you called him by his name.”
“Ah,” Techno said, nodding in understanding. “It’s just habit, mostly. Phil and Kristin – his wife – adopted me when I was a kid. Just a few years younger than your real age, actually. It was just easier for me to call them by their first names back then, and it stuck.”
“So Phil’s not actually your dad?” Tommy asked quietly.
Techno looked up at him, and this time, Tommy felt the weight of his full attention.
“He is,” he replied simply. “He’s not my biological parent – that is, we don’t share blood,” he added when he saw Tommy’s face scrunch up in confusion. “But he helped raise me, and we love and support each other, and we also enjoy being together. He’s my dad. And he, Wil, Kristin, and I, we’re family.”
“Oh,” Tommy said.
Techno seemed content to continue to work in silence.
After a few minutes, Tommy ventured, “George and Dream and Sapnap … they were like my family, in a way. I lived with them for years. They were the only people I had.”
Techno made a noncommittal sound as he inspected another large crate and moved it out of the way.
“Except … they left me down here, somewhere,” Tommy said, staring around the grim darkness of the basement, somehow made more eerie by the torchlight. “That’s … not what family does, is it?”
Techno turned to look at him again, his gaze intense.
“No,” he said flatly. “It’s not.”
Tommy hesitated. “They probably didn’t realize I wasn’t dead, though,” he said in a small voice.
“Regardless,” Techno replied, shaking his head. “If they had tried to take you to a hospital, or even taken you to have a proper burial and last rites, someone else would have taken a closer look at your body, realized that you weren’t dead, and could have stepped in to help you.”
Tommy felt like the air had grown thick and heavy, even though he wasn’t technically breathing it. Summoning his old bravado, he forced out, “They probably would have said they did me one better than a boring old funeral in the paupers cemetery, because this way the whole fancy new Bad Mansion ended up being my crypt.”
“They sound like assholes,” Techno observed, startling Tommy into a laugh.
“They could be …” he admitted, his voice trailing off.
“Your real family wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Techno said, giving him a rather strange look. “They wouldn’t stop trying until you were whole and healthy again.”
Tommy found that he had no response to this, so he shrugged and continued using his weird and handy brain powers to nudge old crates and boxes around, searching for anything that might contain, well, him. On the other side of the basement, he could hear Techno moving things around as well.
Some time passed in pensive silence, and then –
“Tommy.”
Tommy turned around at the odd note he heard in Techno’s voice, and drifted closer to where the pink-haired man stood, his massive arms crossed. He had just shoved aside a loose concrete slab in front of what looked like an unfinished fireplace, and was staring down into a crevice.
“I think,” Techno said grimly, “we’ve found your body.”
Tommy drifted to Techno’s side and stared down in fascinated horror at … himself.
His body looked almost as if he were asleep – if he could have ever fallen asleep wedged into a narrow stone pit, that is. That day, he had been wearing a new jacket that Dream had gotten him, he recalled. He had forgotten all about that jacket. He’d been so pleased with it then; it had been the newest thing he’d ever owned, and it had several bright buttons and accents in his favorite color, red. The jacket, along with the rest of his clothing and his hair and skin, was now coated in such a thick layer of dust and cobwebs that it seemed like a gray cast. The coating was semi-opaque in the way that contrasted how Tommy himself was now semi-transparent.
There was no decay.
“Why,” he murmured, inching backwards, “why’s it not, like, rotted? It’s just –”
“It’s the power of the artifact that did this to you,” Wilbur explained quietly. Tommy startled; the tall man had come up behind them as quietly as if he were a ghost himself.
“While it kept your consciousness apart from your physical body,” Wilbur continued, “it was forced to also hold your physical body in stasis. Frozen in time.”
---
It was not long afterwards that Phil returned, carefully making his way down the long, rickety staircase to join them in the basement.
Wilbur opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Phil opened his hand to show them all a large brass coin.
Tommy’s eyes widened as he saw the two-headed emblem, as memories came rushing back to him. Their old flat – that ratty wooden chest – the crumpled nest of red cloth – that white-hot spark – his friends –
His body.
He swallowed, glancing over at the enclave where it still lay. Where they must have hidden it, like a dirty secret, and left him.
“You already got it?” Techno asked incredulously. Phil nodded, his expression a wee bit smug.
“Where was it?” Wilbur demanded, wide-eyed.
“In a museum,” Phil replied easily, pocketing the coin again.
Techno and Wilbur exchanged a bemused glance.
“And the museum just happened to be open, in the middle of the night, for you to borrow it?” Wilbur asked delicately.
Phil shot them an amused look. “No.”
Then he sobered, going over to stare down at Tommy’s body in the stone pit for a long moment. Tommy couldn’t see his expression.
“Let’s get started,” Phil said bluntly, turning back to them, his face set. Wilbur and Techno nodded and began to move other boxes around.
Tommy looked back and forth between his goddamned body in the pit and the calm nonchalance of the three men who were clearing a large space in the center of the basement. “Aren’t you, like, creeped out by all this?” he demanded.
Phil laughed softly and Techno gave him a crooked smile. “Nah, this is far from the grisliest thing we’ve seen on the job, kid.”
“Really?” Tommy asked, interested despite everything. “Like what?”
“Oh, we’ll tell you loads of stories once we get home,” Wilbur said a bit absently as he laid down a clean white cotton sheet on an area he had just swept clean, and carefully smoothed out the wrinkles.
“Well, the sanitized versions, anyway,” Phil said with amusement.
Home.
Tommy stared at them as they continued their preparations.
If this worked, Tommy would be back in his body. The job would be done, and then Techno, Wilbur, and Phil would leave to go home.
… and Tommy would also have to leave Bad Mansion. If he wasn’t a ghost, if he wasn’t haunting the place, he would have no right to be here anymore. Even if he tried to stay, anyone could force him out.
Where would he go then?
His friends were all apparently long gone. The flat they had once lived in was surely gone too. The entire world – based on how these men talked, and the strange tools they used – seemed to have changed dramatically over the long years that Tommy had been cloistered in Bad Mansion.
“What if this –?” Tommy began and stopped, frightened despite himself. What if this didn’t work, he had almost said. But worse – what if this worked?
Phil stopped what he was doing and looked at him.
Maybe he should just –
“Maybe – maybe it’s better to just leave things as they are,” Tommy blurted out, staring fixedly at the rickety wooden staircase behind Phil, the same one he had climbed up all those years ago. “I’ve been here this long anyway, I can just … stay, I guess. I promise I won’t scare anyone else, okay? I’ll let them knock down the walls and change stuff up if they want.”
There was a startled silence. And then –
“Kid –” Techno began.
“Tommy, no,” Wilbur said vehemently. “We are absolutely not leaving you here.”
Startled, Tommy looked up to meet their steely gazes.
“That’s just not something we’ll ever do,” Techno said flatly, nodding in agreement.
“But I won’t cause any trouble,” Tommy objected. “I told you, I promise –”
“Tommy, no!” Wilbur repeated, more heatedly. He shot to his feet and came to stand in front of Tommy. He reached out a hand as if to grasp Tommy’s insubstantial arm before remembering, and withdrawing.
“Tommy,” Wilbur continued earnestly, “this isn’t about Bad Mansion. This is about you. You deserve your life, kiddo. Not being trapped all alone in some moldering old empty house for decades. You deserve to grow up, to go to school, to have hopes and dreams and ambitions. You deserve to have a – a real family, real friends, a real home. You deserve to be happy, Toms.”
Tommy stared back at him, wide-eyed and shaken.
“And we’re going to do everything in our power to make sure you get all of that. If this doesn’t work, we’ll find something else that does, okay? We’ll keep trying. We’re not giving up. But you can’t either, do you hear me?”
“Wil’s right, mate,” Phil said from behind them, his voice quiet but firm. “And if you’re worried about what you’re going to do, or where you’re going to go after you’re back in your body, don’t be. You’re coming home with us.”
Tommy’s eyes snapped to Phil’s face, flabbergasted. How had he known what Tommy was thinking? And … going home with them? Did he really mean that? But Tommy wasn’t anybody to them –
“You just need to trust us, mate. Please. Can you do that?”
Tommy stared up into Phil’s eyes, surely reading the man’s mind more clearly than anything George had ever managed. Kindness lived there, Tommy saw, and warmth, along with a fierce, unwavering resolve.
Slowly, Tommy nodded.
And somewhere deep within him, a candle kindled to life.
He watched, as if from a great distance, as Wilbur and Techno gently lifted his body out of the pit, carried it to the center of the cotton sheet, and laid it down with great care, arranging his limbs.
From where he was crouched next to Tommy’s body, Techno placed the brass coin in the stiff, cold hand and then looked up at where Tommy hovered. Determination was written plainly across the pink-haired man’s face.
“Come here, Tommy,” he said firmly. “Come here and touch the coin.”
As if swimming against a riptide borne of hope and fear, Tommy slowly drifted up to Techno’s side.
Then he closed his eyes and reached out.
---
“Seriously?” Quackity’s tinny voice came through the speaker, sounding incredulous. “Are you sure?”
“Very sure,” Techno said briefly, leaning against the car door as he watched the others. “Our office can send you a certification that Bad Mansion is now free of any entities associated with supernatural disturbances. That should be all that a prospective buyer or renovation company needs.”
“That’s … fantastic,” Quackity said after a beat. “I mean, we didn’t even get your quote yet. When Phil called and said you might need extra time, I thought for sure you were going to come back and say it was impossible. I even started contacting explosive demolition companies. This – this is really amazing work, Techno. Thank you so much, to you and your colleagues. Please just send your invoice to my office –”
“There’s no charge,” Techno said.
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“What?” Quackity said finally.
“Yeah, everything’s closed out on the account from our end.”
“I – what? You can’t be serious. Clearing a haunting of this magnitude usually costs a fortune –”
“Very serious. We got everything we wanted out of the experience,” Techno replied, watching as Phil guided Tommy slowly up the walkway to their house, his arm firm around the boy’s shoulders. They had helped Tommy wipe the worst of it off his face and hands, but his skin and hair were still matted with the dust and cobwebs of decades. Despite that residue, the boy was looking around with wide-eyed wonder, taking in the blooming window planters, the honeybees hovering near the gardenia bushes, the squirrels that were running along the roof.
“Are you sure –?” Quackity was saying distantly in his ear.
A few steps ahead, Wilbur had just taken out his key to unlock the front door when Kristin pulled it open from the inside instead. She beamed down at Tommy.
Tommy smiled back, hesitant and hopeful.
As Wilbur ushered Tommy and Phil into the house and then followed them inside, Techno levered himself off of the car and began to make his way up the walkway.
“Very sure. Everything’s in order for us now.”