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Jean let out a long suffering sigh as he toed off his boots and flopped back onto the cheap motel bed, metal springs digging into his back through the threadbare blankets.
“We're here now”, he exclaimed, gaze drifting across the ceiling. He could make out silly little shapes in all the places where the white paint was chipped and peeling. A mouse right next to a skull. A pumpkin. Three lit candles. Or maybe those could be lollipops. “Why are we here, Marco? And please don't bullshit me with the art museum again. We did not take a fifty mile detour into buttfuck nowhere for you to visit some shitty college art museum.”
Somewhere in the room Marco chuckled shortly before hauling their duffle bag onto the second bed, old frame shaking and creaking in protest.
“Well, to be fair, the museum does sound interesting”, he hummed, opening the zipper with quick, determined movements and collecting an armful of items out of the chaotic depths. Jean already had a creeping suspicion. Years spent at Marco's side would do that to a person. “But no, we're not here for that.” A stack of papers landed across Jean's chest with a light thwack and he raised lazy hands to inspect them. Various prints of online articles, one of them from wikipedia, others from obscure websites Jean really should know by now but had never cared enough to get into. Marco was the one obsessed with the research, Jean was only tagging along. Mostly.
“The Dover Demon”, he read aloud, thumbing through the various articles. “This isn't Dover. We're in...” He actually had to reach up to grab the tiny old notepad from the bedside table, quickly checking the motel's address. “South Hadley. Huh.”
Marco didn't say anything, just fiddled with his equipment, assembling their cameras. Plural. Jean never should have expected to just get a standard summer roadtrip out of this. The question was if he ever really wanted to. Ever even tried.
When Marco still hadn't answered minutes later Jean caved and started skimming through the articles for a while longer, paragraphs of descriptions about that little thing they'd apparently be hunting down. Then...
“Are you fucking … the only sighting was in '77? Marco this is far-fetched, even for you”, he groaned, letting the wad of papers flop back against his chest before he slowly turned his head.
There was an array of different items laid out on the bed next to his by now. Three cameras, various scanners and instruments. Some familiar, some he'd never seen before. Marco was just checking the batteries on something that looked like a piece of radio equipment but probably wasn't.
“Check the last few pages”, he hummed, dark eyes flicking over at Jean with an excited little sparkle before he turned his attention back to the device in his hands. “There has been another sighting. Three teenagers saw it again, right here, each two nights apart. The last one two days ago.
Jean rolled his eyes but still picked the papers back up, flipping to the last pages. There was an article printed from a local news website with less than professional design. It was an interview with three kids who claimed to have seen the “Dover Demon” earlier this week, right on the outskirts of the town they were currently staying at.
“They're kids, Marco. They probably found out about this thing online, decided to pull a prank and this … 'reporter' fell for them. Mystery solved.”
Marco shot him another glance, putting down the piece of equipment he'd been fiddling with before scooting over and sitting down on Jean's bed right beside him.
“Maybe”, he hummed and took the papers from Jean, flipping to a sketch one of the kids who saw the thing first back in the seventies had drawn. It looked weird, small and humanoid with a large head and huge eyes, skin smooth and coloured in a strange, sickly orange.
“But wouldn't it be cool to get something like this on camera? Looks creepy, doesn't it?” Oh, there it was. The Glow. The thing that happened when Marco was set on 'pursuing the truth', no matter what. It might just be the sole reason Jean had been putting up with this for years. Because that strange boy was way too gorgeous when he was about to hunt down creatures.
“Looks like your standard alien if you ask me. Just smaller and … orange?”
Marco hummed and flopped back onto the bed, body so close to Jean's as he held up the sketch with one arm stretched out to the ceiling.
“It's not, though. I don't think...” Jean couldn't help but snort a laugh and shake his head before turning it to look at Marco. So close.
“Well, what do you think it is?”
“A faerie.” Another snort, Jean raised a sceptic eyebrow at his friend who just kept smiling at him, dropping the arm that had still been holding up the picture for them onto his chest.
“What, really?”
“Yeah. They can shapeshift, change planes on a whim. Makes more sense than alien, there were no reported UFO sightings along with Dover Demon sightings, no strange lights, noises. These things travel inconspicuously.”
“Alright but … faeries?”
Marco shrugged and thumbed through his little makeshift binder again, opening it on another article.
“The Cree call them Mannegishi. Little tricksters who live in rivers and drown people in the rapids.” Jean studied the drawing of the tiny, six-fingered figure for a while, skimming the article briefly.
“Charming”, he commented. “Looks different than the Demon thing though.”
“Of course it does! This drawing is hundreds of years old, the other one barely forty.” Marco dropped the binder back down with a flurry before suddenly standing up to go back to checking his equipment. Jean sighed deeply, again, but couldn't help the little smile sneaking onto his lips as he watched his friend work.
“When are we heading out?”
The answer had his heart pound with excitement.
“Tonight!”
About an hour later they were both poring over a map spread out on the dirty grey carpet of their motel room. Marco had circled the places the kids had seen the Dover Demon with red marker and by now they had narrowed it down to a few possible places the thing might appear again tonight.
“So Mary first saw it between eleven and eleven thirty at night. Josh said it was close to midnight and Katherine is sure it was at around twelve thirty. So we should get here...” Marco tapped one of their possible locations with a green pen “At around ten, just to make sure we have enough time to set everything up. Then we can go over here and here...”
More soft taps that left little green dots on the map. “And still be finished before eleven. Just in case. I mean it sounds like the appearances get later with every sighting so it'll probably appear at around one but we can never know.”
Jean hummed softly, eyes following the red trail of sightings and then their green markings of plausible spots for the hundredth time and he still wasn't getting happier with it.
“You did notice that the sightings follow the slope of the river?” Marco paused his scribbling on a notepad close-by and leaned back over the map.
“Yes? That's our best clue, down the river each about a mile apart. Why?”
Jean furrowed his brows and pulled the stack of Marco's research closer again, flipping to the article about Mannegishi and quickly finding the line he'd been looking for “'One of their biggest delights - a completely non-heroic form of trickster behaviour - is to crawl out of the rocks and capsize the canoes of people canoeing through the rapids, spinning them to their death'”, he quoted before pushing the papers away again. “Am I the only one concerned about this drowning thing right now?” Marco looked at him for a long moment, head tipped to the side and lips slightly pursed. It was kinda cute.
“I didn't know you suddenly believed in faeries”, he hummed, voice just a bit teasing, and Jean shrugged.
“I don't know. I just don't wanna die running after this thing.” Marco shrugged with a smirk and went back to scribbling his notes.
“Don't bring a canoe then.”
It was unusually cold for June as they left the hotel at nine thirty and set out to visit the possible appearance spots. Jean left Marco with setting up the cameras and all of the other equipment they'd apparently need to catch the Demon or Mannegishi or whatever. He'd never gotten into the fiddly tech equipment his best friend used for this particular hobby.
Of course, he knew how to handle a camera and Marco had shown him how to use those things that looked like Geiger counters but were actually supposed to measure something else entirely. But he best leave it to Marco to actually choose a spot to set up the cameras and hide the other gadgets they'd brought. He didn't need another lecture on backlighting and diffusion and all these other weird things that were apparently very important when trying to film little imaginary monsters. Or not imaginary. What did he know.
The fact remained that in all their years of “hunting” they'd never come up with a single picture or video that wasn't ridiculously blurry.
Sure, Marco's weird measuring equipment had shown strange patterns and recordings sometimes but irrefutable proof still looked different. And as long as Marco couldn't present him with just that Jean had decided to stay a sceptic. It made him sleep better.
On the rare occasion that he actually got a full night's sleep around his best friend. Setting up the cameras and other equipment in all three spots took them about as long as expected and by eleven they had huddled up behind some bushes, kneeling down on a blanket Marco had brought for them.
Jean couldn't help the smile when he first saw it and Marco easily smiled back at him in the shadows of the woods.
“Can't have you ruin your pants again”, he hummed as they settled in for what promised to be a long wait. Jean just shrugged, pulling his jacket a little tighter around his shoulders.
“Might be too late. There were a lot of thorns in our way...”
“Only you would wear designer jeans to crawl through a forest at night.”
It was a talent of Marco's. Conveying the sassiest comments in such a calm, easy tone that one didn't notice what he'd said until it was too late. It was one of the many things that made him oh so adorable to Jean.
“Well, I'm trying to … hey!”
As was that giggle. And that friendly little bumping of shoulders Marco did to make sure he knew it wasn't anything but harmless banter between friends.
“Okay, okay”, Jean breathed, swaying to the side to bump Marco's shoulder in turn. “Noted.”
They fell quiet, then. Though in the silence between them the night got a chance to unfold all it's sounds around them. A couple hundred feet to their right Jean could hear the murmur of the river, water rolling against the stony shore in a slow, soothing rhythm. Occasionally a bird or other water inhabitant would move and splash loudly, those noises sharp in the softness of the night.
Around them, closer, they could hear the hum and scuttle of insects and other small animals in the underbrush. Years ago that noise alone, the knowledge that something was crawling and scrambling all around him had been enough to send shivers down Jean's spine and make his skin crawl in nervous disgust. Nights like these, so many he'd lost count time after time, had helped him overcome that feeling.
He'd found a way to sit back and enjoy the quiet flourish of the night around him. If only because Marco was right there next to him, a warm and relaxed presence close to his skittish mind and heart, bringing a calm into the moment that Jean had never been able to find by himself, sitting on the cold forest floor in the middle of the night.
He didn't know how much time had passed when his stomach answered the soft hooting of an owl nearby with a demanding growl. Apparently it had at least been a few hours since dinner, some simple burgers and fries at a diner close to their motel. They had been greasy and a bit overdone but even bad food became tolerable if he could joke about it with his best friend.
Marco didn't comment on his stomach's cry for food. But he did reach into the nearly empty duffle bag to the side and procured a few granola bars that they wordlessly shared between the two of them. He smiled over at Jean when they had finished, face thrown into shadows and a few specks of light from the dimmed camera screen.
“Better?”, he asked, voice barely a whisper and yet it was almost too loud after their silence. Jean just nodded.
After that they sat in silence again. It was easy. Comfortable. Maybe that was one of the reasons it had become so easy for Marco to convince him to join in on those crazy hunts. At the end, it was always time well spent. Not because of the creeping through forests or swamps and hiding in grimy underpasses or abandoned buildings part. Those were necessary evils in all this. What Jean had really come to like was the simple, companionable silence while they waited for some supernatural creature or other to show it's ugly face.
He usually didn't do well with silence. With long stretches of inactivity. But for some reason it became much more simple, actually enjoyable, if Marco was there to ground him and keep him still. Maybe one day he'd work up the courage to admit that to his best friend. But for now he'd stay quiet and breathe.
It must have been much later, though there was really no way Jean could say for sure, his sense of time abandoned him completely during these nights, when Marco took in a sharp breath, head swivelling to the side and hands balling into fists on his thighs. Jean felt his stomach drop, breath shallow as he slowly turned his head. There was a rustle, a snapping sound to their right, like something had stepped onto a branch, and Jean felt his breath catch. It was an animal. Probably. But maybe it wasn't.
Another noise, almost silent steps on the moss-cushioned forest floor, the soft swish of leaves. Marco turned back to him, eyes huge and lips parted a bit as he blinked at Jean for a few moments, then reached out to adjust the camera on it's stand, turning it so it pointed into the direction of the sounds.
At first the eerie green glow of the night vision didn't show anything, just trees, bushes. But a few seconds later, seconds during which Jean couldn't help but hold his breath with tension, there was another rustle, branches of a bush to the right swaying.
He could hear Marco's breath hitch. There was nothing to be seen in the darkness of the night behind the screen, but the camera revealed it, the flash of green between leaves, light reflecting from the eyes of … something hiding back there. There was a sudden pain shooting through Jean's thigh as Marco's hand flew over and grabbed it with excitement, nails digging into his flesh even through the protective layer of his pants, forcing a strangled little groan from him.
There was a flurry of movement on the camera screen, branches swishing wildly as the reflecting eyes disappeared and the rustle moved away from them, quickly.
Marco swore, a colourful word he'd never let out in any other situation, and reached for the camera again, working to quickly detach it from the stand.
“It's getting away”, he hissed and Jean scrambled to his feet. He knew what that meant, this wasn't his first hunt. “Heading for … location three. The camera there might catch it and the readers should be tipped off but...” The camera came off with a quiet click and Jean accepted it easily when Marco shoved it into his hands.
“Got it.”
With that he was gone, pursuing the thing that might or might not just be some fox or whatever. But he was faster than Marco, not as broad and strong but shorter, still a little lanky with a better reaction time. It was easier for him to jump over fallen branches and squeeze between trees, using the camera screen with it's night vision to map out his way and keep an eye on the moving branches and leaves ahead of him.
The thing had a definite headstart but it seemed to be pretty short and Jean was closing in on it, long legs crossing a wider distance than the small frame he thought he might just be making out on the screen from time to time. A few minutes into the hunt they were passing location three but the thing passed the camera set up there on the wrong side, making a bush right behind it rustle and move and Jean cursed.
His legs were burning, sitting on the cold forest ground for hours had made him stiff and the sudden shift to a quick-paced chase was unforgiving on his body, breath rattling through his lungs so hard he could barely hear the tell-tale rustling and snapping anymore.
But there was a noise that got louder the longer his pursuit went on. The rushing and gargling of water. He must be getting close to the river. Running after a thing that might or might not want to drown him.
Just when that thought occurred to him the trees opened up on the screen and seconds later he was skidding to a halt at the very edge of the riverbank. It was a gentle slope down into the water, the camera screen revealing smooth, worn gravel shining beneath the surface.
Outside of the night vision screen the water looked pitch black, only reflecting the odd fleck of light from the stars spanning the cloudless sky above.
Jean took a step back, to be sure, and just in that moment there seemed to be an odd sparkle in the water to his left, almost like big, round eyes reflecting light.
It was gone when he swivelled around to point the camera at the spot, the green tinged screen just showing the same gurgling water and smooth stones lining the bed.
He took another few steps back until he was standing between the trees again, panning the camera from left to right, up and down the river, but nothing conspicuous showed up. Another bust.
He knew very well how later that night, when they'd made it back to the motel, Marco would copy all the material onto his laptop and not stop poring over it until he'd analysed each and every frame of his chase, outlined every possible glimpse of the creature, whatever it had been in the end. He'd keep going until the sun came back up and Jean would crawl out of bed to take a shower, until Jean would usher him back into the car so they could get going. He'd fall asleep in the front seat, exhausted but happy and beautiful.
And Jean would have to deal with his sighs and snores and the way he sometimes talked in his sleep and try to somehow calm his heart from wanting to beat right out of his chest. As fun as the nightly stake outs and chases were, the real reward was the day after, when Marco was still glowing with the leftover happiness and excitement of a hunt.
Jean huffed a soft sigh as he finally retreated back into the forest.
“Jean?”, echoed Marco's voice from somewhere between the trees a distance away. “Did you get it? Let's meet at spot three!”
It was still tricky to find each other in the darkness as they kept calling for another, following their voices until they finally met up somewhere around their third camera. Marco looked dishevelled when Jean pointed the camera at him, skin sickly green and eyes reflecting weirdly in the night vision. But there was an excitement in his expression that was way too cute.
“Did you get it? On camera?” He almost vibrated when he asked the question. It was too bad Jean had to shake his head.
“Nah, I don't think so. Disappeared when I got to the river. Sorry, man...”
Marco's shoulders sagged and he let out a little, frustrated grunt. But he was nothing if not good at bouncing back. He had to, after all these years without finding any definite proof. This was just another normal night for them.
So Marco shrugged just a moment later and smiled at the camera.
“Would have been too good. Let's pack up and head back, I wanna take a look at what you got.”
It didn't take them nearly as long to take the equipment down than it had setting it up hours ago.
Soon they were on their way back to the motel where Jean kicked off his boots and wriggled out of his pants to fall into bed. A quick glance at his watch told him it was almost two thirty in the morning. No wonder exhaustion was tugging at his limbs.
As expected, Marco didn't show any signs of getting into bed anytime soon, turning up his computer and sorting out all the different devices he'd used tonight for closer inspection. Years ago Jean would have scolded him, tried to shove him into bed to get some damn sleep already.
But this was Marco, beautiful, annoyingly determined Marco, and if he wanted to analyse every second of video material and other recordings they had taken tonight until sunrise, he would do just that. So Jean just buried deeper into the thin pillow.
“Night, Marco.”
“Goodnight, Jean”, came the soft answer. “Sleep well. And thank you, I'll behave for the rest of the trip.”
That, of course, was a lie. Maybe not a conscious one, definitely not malevolent either. Marco probably believed it himself, that he could just enjoy the rest of their roadtrip the way they had planned it. But in a few days, a week tops, he'd do some research into sights they could visit on their route and find a weird article or another and before either of them really knew what happened he'd drag Jean into another hunt.
And Jean, well … he'd never want it any other way.