Chapter Text
Nudge.
...The milkshake...or the chocolate milk...? They were about the same, weren’t they, but one of them was banana...
Nudge.
Cold nose against his cheek. Go away, Mystery, we’re trying to order. Hmm, the banana is yellow. Fruit milkshake. Orange straw. He wanted it.
Go away, Mystery. Down, boy...
Nudge.
Maybe Lewis will want that pink one. See if there’s a purple straw. Which one to do want, buddy?
Nudge-nudge-nudge.
“M-Mystery...down, boy...”
Mystery was practically head-butting his side now. Arthur’s hazy dream slowly faded out of existence; blurring and dissolving until eventually he had no idea what he’d been dreaming about. But it was something good. Something relaxing. He blinked, slowly, and let the world come back into focus. Then he realised that, actually, his jaw really hurt. He’d been grinding his teeth, and - ow – his neck was stiff. He’d fallen asleep half-slouched over his laptop. Mystery was peering up at him reproachfully. Vivi’s soft snores were chiming somewhere to his left, undisturbed.
He yawned, slowly, and flopped down on the floor of the van, laptop against his chest, eyelids drooping again.
And then he remembered what had been keeping him awake before, and any ounce of sleepiness his brain had been harbouring evaporated like ice tea over a dap fat fryer. His eyes slid back open in resignation. “Mm...”
The dull ache in his chest returned, and he sat back up, stifling a yawn, semi-aware of the heaviness under his eyes. He opened his laptop again. All right. Maps. Maps. Concentrate. You can do this...
Ohmygodnosomethingcoldwastouchinghisarm -
He spun around and –
Mystery was nudging his side, harder. He jumped. “Mystery! Don’t do that!”
The dog whined, loudly, and ran about in a circle for a second before leaping out of the truck. Arthur dove after him, realising too late that he was still holding the laptop and almost let it fall to the floor mid-dive. He caught it in a frenzy of flying limbs, “No, Mystery!” There were cars and trucks going by, he couldn’t –
...There were no trucks or cars. The road was...pretty sparse. Arthur swallowed and set his laptop down next to Vivi. Mystery was standing outside the van, watching him expectantly, tail wagging and eyes broad to the point they could’ve popped out.
“What is it...?” A chill was prancing its horrible way up his spine. “Mystery?”
The dog barked, loudly, but apparently not enough to wake Vivi. He scooted to the front of the van, practically bouncing up and down on his feet. The message was clear. Get moving. Now. Arthur’s head reeled. What? Was something coming? If Mystery was getting so worked up then –
He swallowed. What did he tell Vivi? Why hadn’t he awakened her?
Following his gut, or rather Mystery’s since his was churning rapidly, he closed the van doors, got into the driver’s seat, and started up the engine. It was a good thing he hadn’t eaten. He wouldn’t have kept it down.
The van began mulling along, slowly, so the motion wouldn’t wake Vivi in the back. His heart was pounding in a horribly familiar way that made his already stand-up hair straighten. They were driving down the road now. Going away, from whatever, thing, whatever...
He smiled, nervously, a bead of sweat rolling down his forehead. Everything was fine. Just –
From the distance, a pair of headlights glared at him from over the hill. Arthur’s eye twitched; unease giving away to indignation. Wait a minute, they were on the wrong side of the road! No way was he giving pass –
Then, the noise. At first it was just a normal car horn, angry and demanding, then it echoed, then it echoed again, reverberating like ten were blaring at once, each new blast piling up until it was deafening and distorted. And yet he could hear Vivi mumbling in the back –
It was coming right at them –
Closer –
Wait that isn’t a normal truck -
Arthur’s insides felt like they were collapsing in terror, his fingers had frozen stiff on the wheel and he gawked, eyes bulging, as the truck came zooming right towards them –
He saw magenta, he saw purple, and black, and he saw –
Shitshitshitohgodhelpme –
Black.
He saw nothing, but he heard it all. Crash, bang, sizzle, clatter, every onomatopoeic description of noise there was, it was there. He was spinning, tumbling, his back hitting something, Mystery was howling. Then he landed, face-down, curled up into a little ball as he felt red-raw metal and wire shower upon him, singing his skin and hair. He trembled violently as the wreckage skidded to a halt.
The silence was worse.
Just his heartbeat. Thud. Thud...
Arthur opened his eyes. Nope. He couldn’t see a thing. Not even his own mismatched hands. His breath escaped him, shaky but there – he was alive. He pulled his fingers away from his hair, and tried to call out. But every part of him ached. “Vi...”
Mystery. Vivi. Oh God, were they –
Please no, please no -
He could hear rummaging. Metal flipping over, getting tossed. Someone was making their way towards him. Giddy relief flooded over him. They were alive, they must be –
No. It wasn’t. He could – he could hear –
Cold terror seeped through him, and his face blanched.
The metal rubble of the van covering his little hidey-hole was torn away. He knew, even before that, that it couldn’t be either of his friends. And looming above, glaring down at him gripping the remains of the truck door like it weighed no more than paper, was –
The Ghost.
Light-eyed sockets narrowed, dangerously, and the spectre tossed the door away without as much as a glance. Arthur’s shriek got trapped in his throat and he cowered away, but the phantom reached in and seized the front of his shirt –
He hoisted him out of the wreckage, up into the air. Arthur’s breath came out as a panicked squawk. His hands flew to the bony fingers gripping his shirt, but he couldn’t pry them free. “Wh – wh!”
The phantom’s eye sockets narrowed even more, if that was possible. Rage radiated off him like a furnace. He turned, letting Arthur sag down to the floor – but he didn’t let go. He started dragging him away, his grip vice-like on his T. Arthur started fighting immediately, kicking and scrabbling at the ground, at the broken metal, anything, but he couldn’t find a hold. He started whimpering, then calling out, a wordless noise of pure, unbridled horror. Then, finally, he managed a ‘sentence.’
“HELP! OH GOD PLEASE, DON’T, VIVI, PLEASE, HELP! HELP ME!”
A sharp tug cut off his wails, the Ghost hoisted him up and his arm wrapped around his neck and shoulder, clutching him against his side, leaving his legs to continue dragging uselessly across the ground. It made it even harder to try and grab something, anything, to slow it down. “HELP! P-Please, please...!”
Up until then the phantom, the wraith, whatever he was, had been glaring ahead, ignoring his pleads. Then he glanced down at him, eyes sliding low to glower at his captive with an obvious but silent message – shut up.
The grip around his neck tightened, he could barely breathe. He couldn’t do anything. Just squirm and wonder what he had in store for him.
“V-Vivi...!”
A sudden tremor sang through the Ghost’s posture at the name, and he hoisted Arthur into the air again; the giant hand now coiling around his throat. Arthur shuddered, horror completely blanking out any intelligent thought. The phantom jerked him closer, so that his violent magenta eyes were just a centimetre away, cold, clammy skull against his forehead –
“..a...”
His eyes rolled back, the blood rushing from his head to his fingertips, and he passed clean out, going limp in the Ghost’s grip.
The phantom didn’t budge for a moment, glaring daggers into his pale, fear-stricken face.
Then, behind him, he heard calling. A dog barking. His eye sockets widened, the ghostly equivalent of a blink, and he glanced over his shoulder.
Vivi, utterly unharmed to an extreme level, came stumbling onto the roadside, panting, hair a mess. The woman stopped short when she saw him, mouth hanging open, eyes wide behind tinted glasses. Mystery was by her leg, teeth grinding in alarm when he registered just what he was seeing.
The phantom scowled and wordlessly slung Arthur over his shoulder - and vanished in a blur of pink smoke. Vivi’s hand reached, shock stealing her voice right out of her throat.
“...!”