Archive of Our Own ^beta

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“Okay, I think that’s the last one,” Neil grunted as he and Mike heaved Roger’s tom-toms one by one into the back of the van. “Right, Rog?”

“Yeah. Ta.”

Roger, stood at the back of the van, picked up his mum’s old rag rugs and wrapped them snugly around the drums, to keep them from rattling around like marbles in a jar – they were already a little banged up, they hardly needed any more dents if he could help it.

One day, he silently vowed to himself as he folded the corner of the rug under the edge of the drum to keep it tight and secure, he would have actual drum containers with cushioning inside and metal enforced corners and everything, like a professional. None of this wrapping around in rags crap, and his bandmates sitting on them to keep them from sliding about in the van.

Neil jumped up into the van with surprising cheer. He was just as glad to get out here as the rest of them; the atmosphere around the club was just so spooky, after hours.

“I call dibs on the bass!” he called and plopped his arse right onto Roger’s rug-wrapped bass drum which was set securely into the back corner of the van. Their van was tiny and repurposed, and all the seats apart from the driver’s seat had to be improvised on the fly – it was a couple hours’ drive back to Truro, and your arse really felt it on these makeshift seats.

“Be my guest,” said Roger magnanimously. “But if you put your heel through the drum head again I’ll just have to kill you, Neil.”

“Aw, let it go already, mate, that was only the one time!”

“One time too many, do you think I’m made of money, huh?”

“Oh, once you graduate as a dentist, then you’ll be swimming in it, mark my words, mate. Then you can buy all the drum skins you bloody want.”

“It’s hardly certain that I’ll even get the degree,” muttered Roger, tying a kitchen towel around his cymbals.

“Sure you will,” said Neil warmly. “You have the sharpest brain of all of us.”

“Yeah, if anyone makes it in London, it’s going to be you.” Mike, who had climbed into the van too, reached over and caught Roger’s neck in a clutch that was half an embrace and half a stranglehold, and Roger made a delighted howl of token protest.

“Alright, are we ready to go, folks?” Ricky had jumped into the front seat and leaned over to talk to them through the open partition – they’d broken the windowpane ages ago already and hadn’t bothered replacing it since.

“Yeah. I think that’s everything.” Roger patted around his trouser pockets, he had his drum key, and the van keys, but then he realized: “No – wait, my jacket!” His specs were in his jacket pocket, he wouldn’t dare to make the drive in the dark without them. “I must’ve left it in the dressing room—“

“Well, go get it, then. And be quick about it,” said Ricky and shivered, handing the club back door keys to Roger. “I want to get home as soon as. This bloody place always gives me the creeps.”

“Hear, hear,” muttered Neil.

“I’ll be just a sec,” said Roger and jumped down from the van. He turned to look at the club, windows all dark and uninviting. They had been the last ones to leave; even the barkeep had just told them to lock up after themselves and then fucked off with the rest of the staff, when Roger and the others had barely started to round their gear up.

Roger hesitated, feeling strangely reluctant to go back all by himself. The blackness beyond the windows seemed so all-encompassing, so unwelcoming, now that all the people were gone. “Erm – I don’t suppose someone needs to use the loo, one last time…?”

Neil cackled. “Aw, Rog, are you scared to go all on your own?”

“No!” Roger gave a glance behind himself. “I just, um…“

“You’re a big lad already, Roger – you don’t need a chaperone! Just go fetch your jacket and then we all can go home,” Mike said.

Ricky grinned and waved his fingers at him. “And watch out for the gho-o-osts!”

“Oh, piss off,” Roger snapped and walked to the door. “Back in a tick.”

Neil stuck his head out of the driver’s side window and hollered: “Try not to wet yourself if you get spooked!”

Roger just flicked a two-finger salute at them over his shoulder without turning, and heard them laugh at his retreating back. “Wankers,” he muttered under his breath as he turned the key in the lock and stepped in through the door.

As soon as he was inside, a blast of cold air swept past, banging the door shut behind him with a slam that resounded in the empty echoing walls of the empty foyer, and made Roger wince.

The club was built on an old tin mine, Roger remembered all of a sudden and completely unbidden, and repressed a shiver. He started down the dark corridor and tried very hard not to think of the miners, children mostly really, who’d been stuffed down the narrow mine shafts with their shaggy little ponies, suffocating under the rubble when the shafts crumbled. This place was supposedly crawling with their ghosts – not that Roger actually believed in the old-wives’-tales.

He made his way further into the bowels of the club: it was old and maze-like, all the hidden nooks and compartments that felt so cozy during daytime hours were now filled with shadows that stretched and concealed the dark corners from view. He flicked on light switches as he went, but the flickering lights just added to the uneasy feeling weighing on Roger, instead of alleviating it. It felt as if the lamps were there only for show, shining only as much that was necessary to create an atmosphere and not actually light anyone’s way properly. Roger, with his rotten eyesight, always had trouble navigating the stairs to the dinky little stage here, and the guys made fun of him for stumbling every time.

It was just so strange how eerie the atmosphere turned when all the people were gone from a place as lively as this. This club had booked them almost as a weekly act until now, the proprietors liked them and paid them a fair compensation for their troubles —the remuneration was on the lesser side, of course, but it came with free drinks, so it wasn’t that bad a gig at all. At least they knew that every Saturday they had a place to play.

Roger rounded the corner behind the bar, walked past the little stage and into the backstage corridor with the loos and the dressing rooms. The wind howled in the hollows and slits of the old roof – sometimes the whole place groaned and creaked like a great big sailboat on sea, the thick wooden beams on the ceiling sighing with the damp and wind.

He knew where the sounds were coming from, but still they struck an uncomfortable cord in his heart, making his skin crawl. Roget told himself to man up and get on with it. He would just be in and out, and soon he’d be back in the van with his friends, and they could put this place behind them for another week.

It was strange, though, how the way to the dressing rooms felt so much longer than usual, somehow. He wrapped his arms around himself, rubbing warmth into his arms. Wait a second. He stopped to look around himself. He was absolutely sure he had already passed that ugly dying houseplant in its big pot, earlier. Was he going in circles? But how could he – they’d been playing this place since last year, they knew the building and its backrooms like the backs their hands by now, so why would he get lost now? It made absolutely no sense.

The air was getting colder with every step. Roger could actually see his own breath in the air as he went, his breathing picking up speed. Oh, he didn’t like this. He didn’t like this at all. Had the heating really been so bad back here, all the time? He didn’t remember it ever being quite this cold.

A lamp above him, flickering desperately, went out with a sharp crack right as Roger passed under it. He couldn’t help letting out a gasp, a cloud of vapour escaping from his mouth. There was a high-pitched pinging noise from above him as the metal of the lightbulb cooled down, and he squinted in the dark, peering towards the end of the corridor where the lights were still on.

He saw, to his eternal relief, the familiar painted sign on the door reading ‘DRESSING ROOM’, illuminated by the ceiling light as if beckoning to him. Finally! The corridor looked just as it always had, now; maybe he really had just gotten confused in the darkness, without his specs.

He hastily walked to the door, raised his hand to the doorhandle and was about to push the door open, when he was suddenly frozen to the spot:

He heard noises, from beyond the dressing room door!

The sudden fright sluiced down Roger’s legs like ice water, rooting his feet to the floor and raising every hair on his body into goose flesh. He didn’t even dare to breathe, as he pricked his ears, and listened—

And there the noise was again!

He heard – human voices. Yes, it was people, maybe two men. But the dressing room light wasn’t even on, he couldn’t see anything shining through the gap between the door and the floor.

There wasn’t supposed to be anybody at the club anymore, Roger and his mates were supposed to lock the doors after themselves. How could there still be people inside?

A shiver ran down Roger’s spine. Unless they… unless they weren’t… people. Or weren’t people anymore. Fucking hell – he’d never been a strict sceptic, per se, but did the universe really need to show him that ghosts existed, on this night of all nights?

Despite the crawling fright in his whole body, despite his every instinct screaming at him to turn heel and run, he found his body bending forwards, pressing his ear against the door that was freezing cold. His stuttering breath escaped in clouds of vapour, temporarily blinding him with every breath, and he listened, with his eyes wide and blinking.

Suddenly the muffled voices became crystal clear, as if tuning a radio and hitting a station in the middle of static:

“Oh, for fuck’s sake– what are we even doing here, huh?” a smooth, annoyed voice asked. “We aren’t allowed to even be back here, are we?”

“Stop your whinging, mate, I know what I’m doing. I wanted you to see— Something really creepy happened to me here, way back when,” a higher voice answered – almost as high as Roger’s own, come to think of it. “We were playing a gig here, and afterwards, I forgot my jacket in this very dressing room. And when I returned for it, the spookiest thing—“

“—but why are we here?” interrupted the other voice rudely. “Are you expecting something disturbing to happen to us here? Because let me tell you something, darling, I have no intention of dying here in the hands of ghosts, or anything else!”

“Where’s your sense of adventure gone, huh? You just want to crawl right back to Deaky.”

“And what’s so wrong with that, if I do?”

“Coward!” accused the higher voice.

“This tour was supposed to be an opportunity for us to get to know him, y’know, not just a—a trip down ghoulish memory lane for you, Roger!”

“Yeah, I bet you want to ‘get to know’ him, alright,” muttered the one called – Roger? A violent shiver ran down Roger’s spine at that.

“I don’t like your tone one bit,” snapped the deeper voice. “Just what exactly are you trying to imply, dear?”

“That you fancy him rotten! And I don’t even need to imply anything because I’ve got eyes just like everyone else, we all can see it clear as day— Ow! Stop it, Fred!"

“Shush!” Hissed the low voice – Fred? “Put a sock in it, you minge!”

“What’s the point, it’s not like they’re going to hear me— Ouch, ouch— will you stop hitting me, for fuck’s sake?!”

“Shut up! I am not that obvious!”

“Sure you aren’t,” muttered ‘Roger’. “You’re only all over the poor bloke, all the time.”

The one called Fred made a frustrated growl at the back of his throat. “Ooh, I hate you, Roger!”

“Yeah, yeah. I love you, too.”

Roger’s forehead creased in a frown as he listened. Did ghosts usually sound quite so— argumentative? Did ghosts swear like this?

There was something painfully familiar about the two voices. Roger couldn’t quite place it, but it felt as if he knew them, and yet he didn’t. Like something he had just forgotten but which in his heart, somehow, he knew. Something like nostalgia for things that had never even happened was suddenly choking him.

The deeper voice kept on going: “And it’s positively arctic in here! I’m freezing me tits off!”

“Oh quit your whining, Freddie— Wait. It is colder than it was just a moment ago, isn’t it?” The quality of ‘Roger’s’ voice changed into something fearful. “Oh, fuck.”

“What?”

“It was exactly the same the last time – first it got terribly cold, just like this, and then the door would…”

‘Roger’ trailed off, and Roger leaned in even closer to the door to hear more, lips trembling and ear frozen stiff, when suddenly the door just caved in under him, swinging open, and he fell right into the dressing room with a shout.

The voices inside the room screamed, and there was a sound of clothes rustling, as if two people were scrambling to cling to each other.

“Fucking hell!”

“The door! It opened on its own!” shrieked Freddie.

Roger stumbled into the dressing room, and when he raised his head, he and stopped dead and all of his hair stood on end: He was staring right into his own eyes from the face of a stranger, and he felt his heart skip a beat out of sheer fright.

It was Roger himself, alright, and yet it wasn’t quite him – this other Roger was older, different: His hair was longer, falling over his shoulders in a strange feathered cut, and his clothes were exotic, galvanizing – sequins and beads, silver bangles on his wrists and chains on his neck.

With him was another man, with the most beautifully wicked dark eyes and the blackest shiniest hair he had ever seen – he also was wearing outrageous clothes, women’s blouses and the tightest jeans known to man, trouser-legs wide and flared. It was utterly strange.

They were grabbing at each other in absolute fright, huddling together in the corner of the dressing room. But the strange thing was, they weren´t quite corporeal – they were slightly see-through, hazy, as if seen through a dirty mirror. They weren’t quite there, not quite clear, avoiding Roger’s eye like a mirage.

The most frightening thing of it all, however, was the fact that they looked right through Roger as if he didn’t exist. Their spectral eyes searched the room frantically, their gazes travelling from corner to corner, past him and straight through him, like he was the ghost, and not them.

“Roger, what’s happening?” the one called Freddie asked shakingly.

“I wish I knew,” replied the other Roger.

“Hey – you two – who are you? What’s going on?” Roger bleated, his voice sounding pathetically small and thin.

“Shh—! Did you hear that?” asked other-Roger immediately in a hushed voice.

Freddie frowned. “Hear what?”

“I’m right here!” shouted Roger in great puffs of vapour, chest stuttering in the cold, and waved his hands around. “Can’t you see me?”

“That!” breathed Roger again. “It’s almost like – someone talking –“ His eyes widened. “Oh, I can even see the breath in the air—“

“No, no, no! This isn’t happening –  get me out of here!” wailed the one called Freddie, looking close to tears, hanging onto other-Roger’s arm so tightly his knuckles shone white even in the darkness. “Get me out of here, now, Roger, or I swear to God I’ll—!”

“On three, Freddie, we’ll sprint through the door, and then we keep running until we’re outside,” other-Roger said in a low voice, all the while eyeing the room suspiciously. “No stopping, no matter what. Okay?”

“Okay,” agreed Freddie in a faint voice, and other-Roger patted his hand.

“Good. Take my hand, Freddie – I’ll count now, and then we run,” he said. “One, two—"

“Hey, you two, maybe we should—” began Roger, stepping in front of the doorway, lifting up his hands.

“Three!” The two spectres took off in a mad sprint, hand in hand – who could’ve known ghosts wearing strange platform boots could run so fast? – and ran straight into Roger, right through him like he didn’t exist at all, like he was just a wisp of smoke, and a full-body shiver passed through Roger like cold water pouring down his back.

Other-Roger and Freddie all but jumped through the dressing room door, and sped down the corridor.

“Oi! Wait!” Roger cried, stumbling after them, forcing his fear-stiffened legs to move. “Don’t leave me behind—!"

“I can hear its footsteps,” gasped other-Roger.

“It’s following us!” shrieked Freddie. “Do something!”

“What the hell do you think I could do?”

“This is all your fault – you figure it out!”

“Just – keep running, Freddie!”

Every time Roger passed under a ceiling lamp, the lightbulbs fizzed out, plunging them further into the darkness – and each time it happened, the other-Roger let out a shout.

“Fucking hell, Fred – This exact thing happened to me back then, too! The lamps kept breaking as I passed—”

“Oh, my God, shut up, shut up!” panted Freddie. “I don’t want to know!”

They kept running through the dancefloor, and the bar, to the foyer, and all the way to the door, and finally wrenched it open with a victorious shout. They burst out of the door into the night air, and Roger, desperately, followed suit… and then stumbled to a halt, when he saw what was outside.

There was a van, waiting for them in the tiny parking spot behind the club – but it wasn’t their van, the old and trusty Reaction gigging van, no: it was a big, futuristic looking long-wheeled transit van, fit for a king, something Roger and his mates could never afford.

Other-Roger and Freddie made a beeline straight for the van, with Freddie screaming: “John! John, start the fucking engine, we’re leaving!”

A tall, blonde man emerged from the driver’s seat, looking bemused, and spread his arms. “What the hell’s gone into you two? You took bloody ages! I was this close to going looking for you, if you hadn’t come out now!”

“Never you mind that – just drive, drive!” shouted Freddie. They ran all the way to the van and then collapsed against it, trying to catch their breath still clutching each other’s hands.

“Calm down, Freddie – what’s the matter?” The blonde man approached them carefully, as if he was trying to calm down a spooked horse. “Roger? What’s going on? Are you alright?”

“We’re—we’re fine now,” panted the other Roger. “But we’re not going back there, ever again!”

The blonde man frowned. “What on Earth happened to you two?”

The backdoor of the van opened and more people climbed out from the back of the van, and Roger let out a gasp: He didn’t know any of them, at all.

“What’s the big commotion?” Asked a tall, curly-haired man. A slightly shorter bloke with dark brown hair reaching his shoulders followed after him.

These complete strangers gathered around other-Roger and Freddie, who seemed to know them well. As the shorter bloke with the wavy brown hair came closer, Freddie dropped other-Roger’s hand from his as if it burned him, and other-Roger rolled his eyes.

“This was the worst idea Roger’s ever had!” Freddie squawked indignantly.

“Well, I’m sorry!” snapped other-Roger. “I wanted you to see this place, but how could I have known we’d be chased out by a gh—“

“Slow down, the both of you. What happened, exactly, Freddie?” the younger man asked in a calming, no-nonsense voice, gently laying his hands on Freddie’s arms, attempting to calm him, and it worked like a charm: Freddie went all pliant and a little red in the face, and other-Roger grinned to himself.

“We saw a ghost!” said Freddie, his voice warbling.

“A ghost?” the curly-haired man seemed extremely sceptical, and scoffed. “Ghosts don’t exist.”

“Well, this one certainly did, Bri!” He turned towards the curly-haired one – Brian – and gave him the stink-eye. “Are you calling us liars?”

“I’m not saying you’re lying, per se… but are you quite sure you weren’t just – hallucinating?”

Other-Roger bristled. “Oh, piss off, Brian! We aren’t psychotic – we actually saw it!”

“And heard it,” added Freddie. “Oh, it was awful!”

“What happened then?” asked the tall blonde man.

“Well—” began other-Roger, but the one called Deaky – what the hell kind of name even was that, wondered Roger absent-mindedly – interrupted him.

“Maybe it’s for the best if we all just go to the van to warm up, what do you think?” he suggested, gently steering Freddie towards the back door of the van by his shoulders. “You can continue your story there, while we drive back to the cottage. It’s getting dark.”

“Oh, alright,” agreed Freddie, and let himself be guided inside. The whole group trailed into the van, with the tall blond man manning the driver’s seat, and then they drove off.

Roger watched the spectres go, with his feet as if rooted to the ground and without moving a muscle, their van vanishing into the descending October darkness like it was just a shimmering mirage, and his heart squeezed. “What on Earth’s going on?” he said aloud, in a pitifully small voice.

Where were his friends? Where was their van? Even the club backyard looked different – a low wall that had surrounded the parking spot was gone, and in its place was just smooth asphalt, and the few scraggly trees and bushes he remembered being there were not, anymore. It was as if he had stepped into a completely different world that he didn’t recognise.

He felt his knees starting to wobble, and a lump constricted his throat. He’d never felt so lost, and so alone. Here, the spectres had found their friends, and Roger had utterly lost his. His other self – his strange doppelgänger – had disappeared without a trace. What did that mean for him, now?

…and what else could he do, but go back inside?

He retraced his steps back into the club, dejectedly, frustrated tears stinging in his eyes. All he wanted to do was to go home, but… where was home, now? And what if—what if he couldn’t ever return to the place he left? It was too horrible to even contemplate.

He walked all the way back to the dressing room, and now the club building didn’t warp his path or hinder him in any way: even the lights that had shattered previously just flickered back to life when Roger passed under them, like he was overwriting everything that just happened.

The temperature got higher with every passing step, too. He couldn’t see his breath anymore and his teeth stopped chattering – by the time he reached the dressing room door again, everything was back to normal. He felt the blood returning to his hands and cheeks, making them tingle.

He hesitated for a long time in front of the door that had started all of this, then pushed the door open, and stepped inside. Everything looked exactly the same. Even his jacket was lying in a haphazard pile on the vanity table where he had left it, just hours ago – but now he felt like it had been a lifetime since he was here last.

He quickly grabbed the jacket and checked the pockets – his ugly but necessary NHS specs were there in their little case, and his wallet in his breast pocket. He pulled it out and checked the bill compartment. There, his fingers met a hidden piece of cardboard and he pulled it out: it was a photo from last summer of him and Jill kissing passionately on the beach, taken with his own camera and developed in Ricky’s father’s shed, because Jill didn’t like idea of some photographer’s assistant ogling her in her new bikini.

Roger closed his eyes in relief. Oh, everything was exactly where it should be. He traced Jill’s fey little face gently with his thumb, and then pushed the photo back to the wallet. He shrugged the jacket on, checking his specs one last time, and walked out of the room.

He was half expecting for the world to go tilting again, the corridors to change shape and the lightbulbs explode and rain shards of glass onto his hair – but nothing of the sort happened. He could walk back to the front door without a single hitch.

He crossed the foyer with apprehension clawing at the pit of his stomach and opened the front door, fully expecting to see the same strange, changed backyard as previously, with its weird wrong vistas and no friends in sight. He didn’t dare look up, so he shuffled out with his eyes glued to the tips of his shoes, and pulled the door closed behind himself, the latch of the lock catching with a click.

“Oi – Roger! There you are, mate!”

He blinked. That had sounded just like – Ricky!

He raised his head slowly. There it was, their trusted white steed of a van, and his friends, smoking while leaning against the side of the car.

“Well, you certainly took your sweet time,” Mike said with a grin.

Roger had never, ever been so happy to see his bandmates’ faces in his life. He was so intensely relieved that he just ran straight to Ricky and all but fell right into his arms.

“God, I’m so glad to be back!” he cried.

“Whoa! What’s the matter, Rog? Are you okay?” Ricky patted Roger gently but awkwardly on the back, and exchanged worried glances with Mike and Neil over his shoulder. The others gathered around him, just like the spectres had done for other-Roger, and Roger felt the strangest sense of déjà vu that made his head swim. He let Ricky keep him upright – his knees felt a little wobbly, again.

“Oh, I’m okay – I think.”

“Blimey, mate, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” said Neil, patting Roger on the shoulder.

“I think I actually did,” said Roger, not smiling at all. “Or something like that, anyway.”

“What?” asked Mike with a slightly shaky laugh. “You’re taking the piss, aren’t you?”

Roger just shook his head. How could he even start to explain what the hell he had experienced back there? “Oh, it doesn’t matter. C’mon, let’s just get out of this place. I don’t want to be here even a second longer!”

“Amen to that,” said Neil.

“You do look frightfully pale, mate,” commented Mike. “Are you really good to drive?”

“I’ll take the first shift,” Ricky offered generously. “Just – hop in, Rog, why don’t you, and tell us everything while we drive? Start right from the beginning.”

“You’ll just laugh at me,” said Roger sceptically, as Ricky started to steer him by his back towards the van.

“We promise we won’t – much,” assured Mike with a grin.

Neil added: “You look so shaken that I don’t think I even want to laugh at you.”

“How generous of you,” commented Ricky in a dry aside, and Roger snorted.

“Thanks, guys.” 

Roger felt such a wave of fondness for all of them, then, that he almost forgot everything that had just happened—

—but he didn’t turn back to look up the window… you never knew if one of the ghosts turned back to return the look.