Chapter Text
“… and all you do is just, walk around houses?” Grian folded his arms. “Shove some of your ghost detecting equipment around and say there’s a ghost or not?” He shook his head. “Do you understand how stupid that sounds?”
Impulse shrugged his shoulders. “I never said it wasn’t stupid. I said the pay was good for about 15 minutes worth of work.”
A bit away from the other two, Skizz gestured to the counter and wall filled with various items, each with varying levels of quality. “And this, my friend,” Skizz continued in his tour, “is all the equipment we will ever need.”
Scar looked into the glass counters, then over to his companion. “And you just, wave them around?”
Skizz nodded triumphantly. “Easiest cash I’ve ever made in my life.”
“But there’s only three of each thing.”
“These are the display ones, Scar. There are more in the warehouse.”
“And you’ve really found ghosts with them??” Scar looked towards Skizz, eyes wide.
“Well…” The older man looked to the side. “We tell people we have at least. But I’m not going to say anything if the pay’s good enough.”
Shaking his head, Grian looked over to where the other two of their crew were bantering. “They hired four people to look around and say ‘Oh, ghost here, 150 for each of you!’?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, when you put it like that…” Grian sighed, throwing a hand in the air. “Fine. I’m in. But I’m staying in the van.”
Impulse laughed, giving G a cross between a slap and pat on the back. “That takes the fun out of things! There’s nothing there, so you’ll be fine!”
The shorter man winced a bit. “I’m not a big fan of ghosts, alright? Even if they aren’t real.”
Joining the other two, Impulse nodded. “It’ll be fine.” He looked around at the others, then looked towards the corkboard that several potential job sites had been pinned to. “We’ll start with a small job to get you two into the swing of things. In and out, 15 minutes max.”
Skizz nodded. “Easiest mucho you’ll ever see.”
“You always say that,” Scar countered.
“Everyone ready?”
“Well now hang on,” Skizz started. “Do we have, like, a plan of attack?”
Impulse frowned. “Skizz, it's like every other job we’ve done. We go in with the stuff, see if anything happens, and then leave.”
“Wait,” Scar looked between the two more experienced men. “We aren’t even hunting the ghosts? Getting rid of them?”
“There are no ghosts. It’s just– we’ll show you.”
The rain was falling in a quiet rhythm as the van pulled up to the house, the streetlights illuminating the puddles on the concrete. Skizz put the van in park, killing the engine and headlights as to not disturb the surrounding neighborhood. Scar and Impulse hopped out of the truck, the first trying to cover his head with his jacket and the second walking towards the back of the truck. The older of the two men still in the truck looked at his younger companion. “What’s a matter, G?”
“I’m waiting for Impulse to open the back of the truck so I can sit in the van.”
“You’re really just going to sit in here? Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“My sense of adventure is in the back of the van with a cup of tea.”
Skizz shook his head with a laugh. “Can’t even handle one job, my word…” leaving the man as he went to the others. Grian huffed a bit, following after Skizz to join the group.
Impulse gestured to the walls, filled with the basics of what they needed. “Make sure you guys grab a flashlight, they told us that their breaker kept flipping.” He reached out, grabbing various tools; thermometers, glow sticks… “Shouldn’t be that bad!”
Skizz and Scar, the latter after a moment of hesitation, followed practice, grabbing various items off of the wall. Grian leaned against the desk at the far end of the van, watching them all silently. Impulse looked over to him, then pointed a tripod at the man, video camera on top almost touching his nose. “Once I get this set up you’ll be able to look through it on that computer. Don’t have too much fun without us out here.” He snickered as Grian pushed the camera out of his face, and shrugged. G watched the three walk into the rain, the intensity picking up ever so slightly as they entered it. After a moment, Grian had the thought that it hadn’t been raining when they left.
Probably nothing.
The house was cold, that much was certain. The other jobs that Impulse had done had been in warmer buildings, but the chill seemed to dig deeper than something just the weather would cause. As the three entered the house, three flashlight beams clicked on, wandering various ways throughout the house. Skizz looked over to his friend. “Dibble dop, do you know where the breaker is? Place is freezing–”
Impulse shrugged, taking in the space. “Didn’t say. We’re going to have to look for it.” The breath out of their mouths floated in front of them. “Something seems off here.”
“The fact that we’re in a cold, dark house doesn’t seem off?”
“I mean, I could have expected worse house wise. But it's just–” The two poked their heads into a bedroom. “Something feels weird.” He frowned at Skizz’s judgmental expression. “What? I'm just–”
“Found a bone!” Echoed through the house, catching the other two off guard. Finishing the conversation with silent glances, the two sighed and wandered over to find their companion, holding a femur up like a baseball bat. “It’s weird that the rest of the skeleton isn’t here, but maybe this part got separated.” Scar swung the bone bat, his imaginary home run getting a standing ovation.
Skizz frowned, looking at the bone. “Scar, buddy, are you sure that that’s a fake bone? It doesn’t look like plastic to me.”
Scar shrugged, “of course it is! Who would keep a real bone in their house? I mean it’s probably like a super high quality prop, you know how cosplayers are these days–”
Grian wandered around the van, almost bored out of his mind. Maybe the house wasn’t that bad, but the idea still gave him the creeps. Something had felt off the second that he had gotten to the agency, but he couldn’t quite place it. As he paced, the man took notice of the menagerie of black screens on the wall opposite him. He hadn’t remembered those screens earlier, but the poor lighting of the time probably had something to do with that. Looking around for a second, Grian grabbed a lone radio on the desk; most likely his that he had left there on accident without memory of the event. “Impulse?” the man in the red sweater asked, a chorus of frightened noises covering up any reply he might have gotten. “. . . was that a yes?”
“WE HAVE RADIOS???--”
“Did you not– Scar, I HOOKED IT UP TO–”
The shouts got quieter as Impulse sighed over the comms. “Yes?”
“Were there always a bunch of monitors on one of the van walls?”
A pause. “Monitors?”
“Yeah, about four of them?”
“I don’t remember there being any monitors.”
A strange chill went down Grian’s spine. “Right. I won’t mess with them then.”
He could hear a click through the radio, and a muffled “Power’s on!” as he began to pace again. “I mean, it couldn’t hurt to see what they’re hooked up to, right?” Impulse eventually stated. “Maybe the boss was just trying something new.”
“Sure.” Grian hooked the radio onto the side of his pants, taking a step towards the monitors to see where a power button might be. After feeling the bottom of the monitors for a moment, a button pressed under one of his fingers, the monitors lighting up in front of him. He took a step back, frowning at what he was looking at.
He watched the dots on the map move around, two shaking around each other while a third wandered around the rest of the map. Frowning, the brunette looked down at the screen below, cocking his head to the side as he figured out what he was looking at.
A radio click, “Impulse?”
“Yes, Grian?”
“Sanity.”
“What???”
“There’s a sanity board here.” Impulse frowned as he looked around the house, EMF reader in hand. “And a map. I’m assuming the other two are still bickering in the same room?”
On the other side of the house, Impulse heard the echo of his companions through the radio, “YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH, We are doing important research here!”
The leader of the group sighed. “A map’s useful, but I have no idea how a sanity board would work.”
The radio crackled. “It says your sanity is lower compared to the rest of us.”
“But I feel perfectly sane.”
“There’s an average here too. Around 70, for whatever that’s worth.”
The dining room looked a bit… off. Half of the plates that he supposed had been on the table were scattered over the floor. “Guys,” he called out. “I think I’ve got something here.”
Footsteps echoed through the house as the other two came up behind him. “Impulse, I need you to–” Skizz cut himself off as he looked into the kitchen. “Weird.”
“Weird is all you have to say?” Impulse turned to look at his companion. “Where’s Scar?”
“I told him to put his bone in the van.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
He just shook his head as he cracked a glow stick open, leaving the UV light on the table. Setting the thermometer next to it, he flicked the light on. “Let’s not start a fight on the job, alright?” Skizz sighed, but gave a short nod. With that assurance, Impulse walked away to grab some more tools.
“Scar, that bone is NOT coming in here, you can’t just steal people's things!” Impulse heard Grian’s shouts as he walked back into the rain, shaking his head with a chuckle. Scar jogged past, grinning like a madman as he re-entered the house. The shortest of the group just groaned as he kicked the bone into a corner. “I swear–” He looked up as he heard Impulse walk in. “We’re working with idiots, Impulse.” He sighed, leaning back against the desk. Gesturing to the wall of monitors, he asked, “any ideas?”
Impulse just shrugged. “I don’t have any. How does any of this work?”
“No idea. But the map seems to line up with what you guys are doing.” Grian pointed towards a green dot walking towards the dining room. “That one’s Scar,” his finger moved to a purple dot already there, “that's Skizz,” and folding his arms, “and yours is yellow. I’m assuming, of course.” The brunette nodded towards the lower screen, glasses sliding down his nose. “Matches the colors there.”
The older of the two nodded, looking at the board with a frown. “That’s so weird. Maybe this is like… a test or something? No idea.”
Their radios cackled as a voice came through, “…prints! On the– on the cabinet!” Scar sounded overjoyed with his discovery.
Impulse looked towards his companion, the rain drumming ever so constantly on the roof of the van. “We’ve never gotten prints before.”
Impulse and Grian walked through the house quickly, reaching the dining room as Scar held the glow stick up to the cabinet door. His scarred face fell as the two came in. “It faded away.”
Skizz made eye contact with the other two. “Buddy, we’ve never–”
A wheezing growl echoed throughout the house, the lights in the dining room flickering. Scar gave out a yelp, jumping into Skizz, as Grian shouted and hid behind his companion. As the first two fell over, the light flickering went out. Impulse looked back, and Grian was gone. He heard the radio click, and then a “I am NOT going back in there Impulse.”
The remaining three looked at each other. “Impulse,” Skizz started. “I’m starting to get your meaning on this house feeling weird.”
“Is there a real ghost here?” Scar managed as he stood up. “I thought you guys said the ghosts weren’t real!”
“They aren’t!” Skizz shouted in response. He hopped up as well, looking towards Impulse. “Are they pranking us or something? Is this a prank?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“I don’t know you’re the one who picked here!”
“I’m just doing my job!”
As the two started bickering towards the truck, Scar looked down at the book that he had dropped on his fall. He frowned, watching the pencil roll over the pages. Then the pencil moved upwards. He took a step back as the pencil started scribbling, almost shredding the page with a ferocity that whatever was moving it had. “Guys?” He called out, to a lack of a response. “Anyone?” fumbling, he found the trigger on his radio. “Guys?” Scar started walking towards where the others had been. “The– the ghost started–”
The radio shrieked in static as the two men reached the front door. Skizz frowned, trying the front door. “Did you lock this on your way in?”
“No, why would I do that?”
Grian looked over to the third board in the van as the static erupted, the bar graph riding the very top of the chart. “Guys, something’s happening inside.” He frowned as the static covered any response. “Guys? Scar, you still there?”
The dining room erupted as Scar took a step away, plates and glasses flying as he started away. The man winced as a cup launched into his arm, and he started to run. The lights flashed, obscuring his way out of the house, while unearthly wheezing followed behind. He could hear his heart racing, the rhythm uneven and loud, all loud.
Scar, running towards the front door. Scar, tripping over a launched notebook, words of murder scribbled on its pages. Scar, staring up at the most horrendous face he had seen, slashes through face and neck, jaw hanging open–
Scar, his own hands struggling against an invisible rope as he tried to loosen the bands of death from his neck.
Scar, the light fading from his eyes as the ghost walked away.
The lights in the house stopped flashing.
“What was–”
“Shhhh–” Impulse held a finger up to his mouth, looking up in the dark closet to his friend. They held their breath in pained seconds as they ticked by. Eventually, the ragged breathing faded away. “I think we’re good.”
“What was that thing??”
“I don’t know! A ghost?”
Skizz groaned as he pushed the closet door open. “Ghosts aren’t real, buddy–”
Impulse stood up, pushing the other side of the door open. “Clearly! But something was out there!” Head in hand, the blonde grabbed his radio. “G, did you see anything on the camera?”
Both of them heard the front door open as the response came through the radio, “Not really. The boards were being weird.” Grian poked his head into the blue bedroom the two had hidden in. “Either of you have Scar with you?” After a strained silence, he sighed. “No, then. His sanity meter was acting weird.”
Both heads turned to Grian at that statement. “What do you mean, weird?” Impulse asked hesitantly.
“‘S a question mark.” The shortest of the three stepped aside to let the other two out. “And he isn’t answering.”
“So we just–”
All three of them stepped into the hallway, looking toward the living room. Grian hesitated for a moment, then took a step forward. He could feel that something was wrong. The lights in the house had turned themselves off, and G flicked the living room light on.
Impulse watched Grian visibly pale before he made it to the same spot his companion was at, Skizz following close behind. All three stood in silence, their friend a couple feet away, contorted into an almost unnatural position.
“Is he–”
Impulse elbowed the black haired man behind him, grabbing Grian’s arm and leading him out of the house. Skizz grumbled for a second before following, watching the house warily as they made their way to the van.
“We have to call 911. He can’t–” Grian let out a groan. “He can’t be dead.”
“Was that going to happen to us?” Skizz muttered. “Were we going to be monster meat if we didn’t hide?”
“Yeah,” G looked up. “How did you know to hide?”
Impulse shook his head. “The lights were flashing, and I didn’t like the noises, so we went to the closest closet.”
“And it didn’t find you?”
“Do we look like Scar right now?” Impulse started pacing. “Do any of you have a phone?” After looks of panic and ruffling through various pockets, it was Impulse’s turn to groan. He frowned, thinking through their options. They had a probably dead friend, an actual ghost that could kill them, and no phones. “Let’s go to the hospital.”
“Why the hospital?”
“Do you want us to just leave Scar in there?”
“Well–”
The blonde scoffed. “Right. I’ll go in and get Scar. You two can sit in the front of the van and when I come out, you can drive us to the hospital.”
Grian practically shouted. “You want to go back into the murder house to get Scar?? What happens if you die too? Hmm? Do we go and try to get you too?”
“No!” Impulse looked to the side. “If I don’t make it out–”
“Right. Here’s what’s going to happen.” Grian folded his arms. “We go to the police. Tell them that something dangerous in the house killed our friend. We let them handle it.” He practically glared daggers into Impulse. “We are NOT being heroes right now. He is dead, and he is gone, and we are not risking our lives for a dead body.”
Skizz nodded silently as he walked out of the van. “You two hang tight in there,” he called back. “I’ll drive us there and you two hop out.”
The two sat silently on either side of the van as they heard the door open, then slam shut. Impulse stood to hit the door control as the engine revved. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.
He hit the button on the control, the door sealing the two into the back of the van.
And everything went black.
Impulse jolted awake, surrounded on all sides by the equipment the agency had to offer. The display cases were impressive, sure, but that was the last thing on his mind as he stood up, looking around the familiar walls of the agency. In the loft above, he heard the soft groan of Grian, who he could see was slowly getting to his feet. He could hear a muffled “what the–” as Skizz pushed himself up from the floor of the van, and as the three all stood up, they looked towards the center of the agency.
Scar was lying on the ground in front of the board, face calm as it looked up towards the roof. The three all glanced to each other, each making their way over to their fallen comrade. Impulse kneeled near the man’s face, hesitantly reaching out to check a pulse. Grian and Skizz kneeled on the other side, Grian muttering before getting louder, “Scar, Scar, are you here? Are you–”
Green eyes burst open and Scar sat up, almost butting heads with both Grian and Impulse. He was panting, as if he hadn’t been able to breathe for the past hour. After a minute or two, the man calmed down, taking a moment to catch his breath. “I was–” he eventually managed. “And the ghost–” He looked to the others. “Dude… that was not fun. Would not recommend.” Scar looked at each of the others. “It was– it was so cold, and foggy–”
“Scar, buddy, it's alright–” Skizz looked around for a moment. “There’s no ghost here.”
“That’s what you guys said at the house!”
Grian sighed. “I’m with Scar on this one. There wasn’t supposed to be a ghost.”
“We didn’t know there was one!” Impulse facepalmed. “I’ve been trying to tell you guys that!”
The silence was strained at best as the four sat on the ground. None knew what to say, or even what to think. Nothing in the day had gone right. At all. Eventually, Scar looked up to the board that they had seen before they left. He frowned, tilting his head to the side as he read what was scrawled on it.
“Poltergeist?”