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“Come on Skizz! We don’t have long before Gem has to go home and I wanna explore this house now!” Impulse yelled, grabbing his best friend’s hand and pulling him down the street, much to his chagrin.
“Okay- yeah, but what if I don’t want to explore the house, come on dipple dop this place is scary!” Skizz certainly was right, the house they had emerged before was imposing: sharp roofs of dark wood, grey-black with age and rot; windows broken, like jagged teeth waiting to eat up the kids that stood before it; every floorboard a pitfall, a clawtrap, a rotted bug nest.
A small patch of grass just inside the gate seemed the only truly alive—though the whole structure seemed to be gazing down at then—place, wildflowers and poppies littering the area in a strange shape, almost like a person laying on their back. Gem sat down and started making a flower crown,
“If you guys are gonna go in there I’m gonna stay out here and play, it looks stupid!” She pouted, chubby child’s fingers making remarkably deft work of the long thin stems of flowers, bunches of hyacinths, tall daises, bushes of lavender and other splashes of pink, purple, blue, yellow.
Impulse stuck his tongue out at his younger sister and stormed right up to the front door, uncaring of the strange shiver that ran through him, or the hungry groan of the foundations below him as he kicked open the door and shoved his sunglasses back up his nose from where they’d slid down.
Skizz followed sheepishly, warily, but just as stubborn as his tightly curled hair and his best friend; pausing at the threshold as a chilly wind blew through him.
Gem sat, watching her older brother and his friend step into the old, empty house, and scrunched her knees to her chest to keep warm from the sudden cold breeze, otherwise unbothered as she continued her flower crown.
He was crying again. Tiny, baby fists slamming against his comforter for no discernible reason… to his parents. His fuzzy, small vision caught glimpses of things not actually there, shapes of red and black and grey that he couldn’t quite define or grasp, only he was certain they were getting closer.
He screamed, and two shapes that he knew, recognized, trusted, came quickly, leaning over him with smiles he couldn’t really make out with his tiny, overwhelmed eyes. The swirling, shifting colours receded, they felt Bad, but they felt less bad when his parents were here.
They murmured to him, and he babbled back, giggling and relishing in the soft laughs he heard in return, they kissed his forehead, once, twice, but then… they left?
He sniffled, as the.. the Things grew closer, closer, closer. The red eyes were all he could see, blinking, angry, excited, he didn’t understand, he was just a baby.
Scar stopped crying, closing his eyes and sleeping peacefully, the shady figures gone, now that one had gotten what it had wanted.
Grian grumbled, carefully dropping an immense stack of books onto the library desk already littered with volumes and flopping down beside them, no coffee, no energy drinks, no food, in the library, and not even water in the older sections, in case the books crumbled to dust or something.
Good, the tiredness made him more focused, and if he was actually going to help Impulse and Skizz and not make a total fool of himself, then Grian needed to know everything, and he meant everything.
Fake, fake, maybe real, fake, oh that one might work, maybe that one, definitely fake, huh…this one was odd, it’s cover was leather—and by its age it was likely the real deal—with some purple writing of some kind emblazoned across it.
Actual, real life, dust erupted from where Grian blew to read the faded pages, fingers tracing over the ancient symbols and patterns, the letters he mouthed out but didn’t understand, the breeze through the silent archives knocking his hair into his eyes. He sighed and brushed it back, flicking through the book, searching for a page he could understand, or that was at least in a language he recognized,
Probably meaningless, he closed the book and picked up a more promising one, scanning the contents.
“It’s not fair!” Skizz stomped his foot, standing right at the top of the stairs of this weird old house, refusing to go any further.
“Yes it is! We went to the park yesterday because you wanted to, so we’re here exploring today!” Impulse countered, arms flailing in anger.
“But exploring’s scary and mum said it was bad because people could live here,”
“This place is old!! There’s no way anyone lives here-“ at that moment, Impulse was cut off by a haunting moan from deeper in the house, and the door right behind him creaking open.
Impulse spun and his classic sunglasses flew off his face, he fumbled for them and knocked into Skizz, who was thrown off balance and for a moment… nothing happened. He grabbed for Impulse, for the banister, for anything but the air he clawed at.
And then he fell.
Crash, snap, horrible awful breaking bones and tearing muscles and small, far too small, noises coming from the curly haired boy falling, falling, fallen.
Impulse was silent, sunglasses clenched tight in his fists like an anchor, though he couldn’t even comprehend why he’d need an anchor.
Skizz coughed and sat up with a frown, glaring up at Impulse from the bottom of the stairs, the blood pooled around him already fading into nothing,
“That hurt!”
Impulse’s jaw dropped, then he laughed, “I’ve got to try this!” He stepped back, stuck his tongue out in concentration as he eyed up the distances—doing maths that was most definitely not correct—and threw himself down the stairs, landing with a bone shuddering snap.
Skizz’s eyes widened as he shuffled over and poked Impulse’s bloody face,
“Dipple dop?” Impulse sat up, grinning wildly through a bloody mouth already fixing itself, giggling with excitement.
“We should’ve died! Skizzle! We can’t die!!” As he spoke, Skizz watched the blood fade from Impulse’s face and giggled too, waiting only a moment before punching his best friend in the shoulder for shoving him down the stairs.
Scar tripped, sure, he should definitely have been more careful in the woodshop at school, but let’s be real it was probably the teacher’s fault for leaving a group of kids nearly unsupervised around far too many power tools than was reasonable.
Whatever the reason, Scar tripped, and he landed right on the box of saws, crashing through them and feeling their jagged teeth biting into his skin: his neck, his face, his arms, legs, cutting tendons and veins and arteries.
His friends rushed to help him and Scar only grinned, accepting their arms to pull himself out of the pile of tools that he was pretty sure should’ve killed him. Ah well, the wounds sealed up quickly, leaving only a few scars, and though the teacher marvelled over his luck at having not severely injured himself, no one really questioned anything.
That was just the way Scar was, clumsy, easily injured, constantly looking the wrong way, moving at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing (never ever give him a circuit to put together unless you want to see it explode); but also exceedingly lucky, whenever you looked too closely did his injuries not hit as hard? Or did they simply heal faster? Or maybe it was something else, did he always have that scar there? Or quite so many on his legs? Where did those big ones on his back, chest, face come from? He was just a kid—a tween if you asked him—he couldn’t have been injured that much.
Could he?
Grian put back all his books—some of them even in the right place—including that weird leather one he was now certain was important, but not to him, and left the library, ignoring how they slammed their doors behind him, and how the time was so late it was early.
He knew he shouldn’t be going home this tired, he could get a taxi or a friend, but there was no way he would. So, he opened the door and sat in his car, then groaned and got back out, and in the drivers side, flicking on the ignition and only nearly driving into the street lamp that lit his way.
It was fine, this was fine, it’s not like he was driving drunk or something, he was a model student, and he now had a business he was part of. He pulled out along the road and hummed a tune to himself, trying to stop his eyes from dropping, despite how heavy they felt.
Just drive, just keep driving until you get home, easy.
Pop.
It wasn’t a slam, a crash, a thud, or any other horrifying noise Grian expected of a crash, but it was certainly enough to wake him up. He slammed his hand down on the wheel in frustration and it made a pathetic honk, so he just growled and squeezed himself out of the car—or what eas left of it—and surveyed the damage.
“Great! Just great! That car was all of my savings, oh I’ll have to walk to my lectures, or-or get Impulse to drive me or something if he’s busy, no- no way am I asking Scar, even though we have all the same damn lectures, and oh look there’s no way I can salvage this thing! There’s a street lamp right through the front… window…” something suddenly dawned on Grian, and he slowly edged towards the drivers seat again.
“That.. that should’ve killed me-“ lights blinded his minds eye as he saw the street lamp topple through the window and cut a horrid gash through his chest so deep he felt phantom ribs snap and organs pulll away. Then he heard the pop again, and he stared at the wreck.
“That did kill me.” He stood in silence for.. however long it took for the sun to rise, then got out his phone—when he’d finally come back to his senses—and checked who was online, grumbling something about not dying as he called Scar to come pick him up.
Gem stood in the hallway of the client’s house, an uneasy expression on her face as she watched the Impulse, Grian and Scar busily move around setting up cameras and testing for ‘dots’ or something,
“Okay, okay guys I want to help, but you understand that if I die that’s it, right? I can’t come back like you guys can-“ she blurted out, shuffling on the spot, debating going back to the van and waiting things out there.
“You might be, and besides, I found the monkey paw so we can bring you back if we need to,” Grian called out, waving the withered hand while moving around a spirit box, trying to get a good reading.
Gem shuddered at the sight of it, still not used to the idea of just finding cursed items in a client’s house, but moved a little further into the house, “alright fine, how did you guys even.. find out you were immortal? It feels like a weird thing to test-“
Impulse laughed and clicked on a camera, “oh man, Skizz and I are pretty sure it was one of the houses we went into as kids, that did it to us, but when did we find out? Uh, I may have pushed him down a flight of stairs and then jumped down after him-“
“You WHAT?! Impulse! You could’ve died!” The ghost chose that moment to flicker in and out of sight with a terrifying wail, and Gem paused, “fair point-“
“Uh, mine was pretty recent, I was studying up on ghosts because Impulse had just invited me to help them and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself-“ Impulse laughed loudly at that, “-though I inevitably did anyway, and I may have tried to drive home after not eating or sleeping for like, thirty six hours, and crashed into a street lamp, which then fell on top of me,”
Scar then piped up, “oh I don’t remember my first death, I’ve just always come back, but I think I’m the only one of these guys who gets actual injuries from my deaths, pretty sure I’m more scar tissue than skin at this point!” To which Grian rolled his eyes and shoved his spirit box away, getting out a thermometer and moving to another part of the room.
Okay, fine, maybe this was safe? Gem walked into the middle of the room just as Scar snapped a photo and ran,
“Ohhhhh there’s a hunt coming! It burnt the crusi-thingy and hissed in my ear!” He called out, as the whole group sprinted for the door.
It slammed right in front of them, and while Gem tugged fruitlessly on the handle, the other three ran to various hiding spots: a cupboard, behind the couch, the corner of the room.
She heard the hiss, and ran, two sets of footsteps and her own heart beating faster, faster, faster, then she felt it, cold, clammy hands around her throat, tighter, tighter, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe, her own hands scrabbled at her neck as her vision went dark, but she couldn’t touch the ghostly ones squeezing the life out of her.
Then it all went dark.
She woke up in the van, hearing Impulse’s voice saying “I wish- SHE’S BACK!” And a clatter of something small dropping to the floor.
“What the hell was that?!”
“You died!” Scar said with far more energy than she felt was necessary,
“But more importantly, you came back on your own, so somehow you’re just as immortal as we are,”
A crackle of the phone was the only warning before Skizz’s voice came through the van, “hey Gem! I heard you died! Congrats on coming back from the ether!”