Chapter Text
The last thing Max remembers is screwing his eyes together to keep himself from crying. He couldn’t, especially not in front of a bunch of nerds like the ones surrounding him.
When he finally opened his eyes, he knew he wasn’t in the old Waylon house anymore, in fact, he didn't even know where he was. This place was dark and cold, and he could no longer feel the piece of wood he fell on impaled in his chest. Max was pulled away from his thoughts by a gentle voice,
“Hello Max.” Max looked around for the source of the voice, and locked his eyes on an almost ethereal being. She’s pretty, with long white hair cascading down her body and ending at her lower back.
“A…are you an angel?” He felt stupid asking, but if he was being honest with himself, he knew he was dead and this was the best explanation he could come up with. She gave him a small smile before speaking, something about the gesture felt warm.
“I guess you could call it that, my name is Webby.” She extends one of her hands out to Max, and he reaches out to her. “I don’t want to concern you, but you shouldn’t be here, it’s too dangerous for someone as young as you.” Max scoffs in response.
“I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m not exactly alive and everything” Webby laughs gently in response, not the kind of laughing he was used to from his father, but the kind where you can tell it’s from the heart.
“You’re not, but we’re not exactly the ones who deal with the dead…” Max noticed her trailing off and leaned towards her.
“Unless?”
“You’re a smart boy,” she said with a half hearted chuckle, “You died in the old Waylon house, is that correct?” Max nods, wishing she would get to her point. “Many of those stories are true, my brothers… They spent a lot of time in that house. I suppose they want something to do with you.”
“I’m guessing that’s not a good thing?” Max kind of laughed to himself, but Webby only gave a soft smile in response.
“I can send you back to Hatchetfield to keep my brothers away from you, but it’s not a permanent solution.” Max wishes in that moment that Webby would have said anything else, he doesn’t want to go back to his old life, the one where he had to deal with an angry father everyday, the one where everyone wanted to run from him. As if she read his mind, Webby spoke again, “I can’t send you back alive, even if those kids hadn’t dismembered you, the damage was too much for a mortal body. But I can send you back as what you know as a ghost, you’ll be able to go where you please, but just promise me to stay out of trouble.”
Max took a shaky breath and nodded. “Will you still be there?”
“I’ll be there as much as I can, you’re not the only special one in Hatchetfield… If you ever need me, I’ll know.” And with that, the darkness around the two of them faded and he was back in the Waylon house, his body was no longer where he remembered it, and he noticed a flash of pink under the floorboards.
“Am I… there?” Webby nodded, and Max immediately tried to pull up the floorboard, to his amazement, it actually moved. “I thought you said I was a ghost.”
“I actually said ‘what you know as’, sweetheart.” Webby said, an amused smile on her face. “Our rules are a little different in the white.” When the floorboard was fully pulled up, he spotted exactly what he was looking for, laughing at the irony.
“I can touch this?” He said, pointing towards the abandoned ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ bracelet he saw on Grace's wrist everytime the two of them talked. Webby nodded, with a sense of intrigue at his priorities. “It was an accident, those kids don’t deserve to get in trouble for something they didn’t intentionally do.”
“Very well, you’re going to need to put that floorboard back yourself, you know?”
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When Stephanie woke up that morning, she was praying to herself that last night was just a bad dream, that they didn’t kill the most popular kid in school and they DEFINITELY didn’t bury him under the floorboards of the house.
What she didn’t expect when she opened her eyes was someone looking straight at her, sitting on her desk. Even if she had, she did not expect that person to be a visibly dead Max Jäegerman.
As Stephanie screamed, the only response she got in return was a shaky breath followed by the words:
“You can see me?”